How to Organize Tasks and Knowledge in Work Daily
A clear, actionable guide with practical examples for software developers aiming to become the go-to expert.
Hey - this is for Software developers / knowledge workers in general.
I’m working in Goldman Sachs as a software engineer, and I would like to share my system for organizing tasks and knowledge that has worked in favour of me for quite some time now. Considering the financial domain knowledge that I had to dive in headfirst without any prior experience, having a system stands mandatory to cope-up and excel when you are thrown ten tasks and their deadlines as well parallelly through one side. I also had to learn the “user” non-tech speak which requires lucid breakdown of problems and hits the mark with timelines and promises.
Let’s get straight to it now, we come across massive amounts of information in our work. We generate enormous amounts of inferences and data ourselves too. And the challenge is making sense and retrieving it at the right time in the right way.
Difficulty is either we don’t store the piece of information and we are fine with figuring out ourselves the next time - essentially taking up huge swaths of time in the quest for rediscovering or we end up with so much overhead to store the information that by the time we jump through the hoops of our “knowledge management system” that we created for ourselves, we miss out on the details that should have been saved - sometimes we don’t even bother to open up this system solely because it is not helping and rather adding to the problems; If you don’t fall into both these categories then there is a high chance that, you store the information somewhere, maybe as a simple list in one note or a single page in Evernote or in the “webs” of Obsidian or even as bookmarks or in confluence pages (or any wiki-like websites you use), but then when it comes to retrieving the information you just can’t find it because you don’t know where to search, sometimes even forgetting the existence of it at all.
So, we defined our problem(s), now what?
We need a system that is not complicated, has clear division of concerns, easy retrieval of information and can keep a record of progress & timelines.
This is because when we want to retrieve information, we can either use spatial (or relating to a topic of interest) or temporal dimensions to search for it. The latter is important as sometimes it is all a story in our mind and we can link together pieces simply by tracking down the timelines, quite like how detectives work.
Let me introduce my system here. This might be like other existing systems but heavily drilled down to my requirements and requirements in general for software engineers. This is platform agnostic; no point in talking about which App you use to enforce this system because at the end of the day you need some kind of underpinning organizational tactics to manage the inflow of information and everything else comes second.
You just need four Sections that can store multiple pages - list of pages.
Divide your lists into four categories - you don’t need more when you are starting new: Tasks, Saves, Quick & Goals
The titles are self-explanatory - Adhere to the list naming to get a hang of it.
About Tasks:
If someone asked you to do something or if you promised to deliver something by today put it in the Tasks list.
Every task line item should have - Urgency (and/or deadline date) and status
Each item should be an “Action” not a general statement
Each item should ideally be one single action, it should not have ten different tasks within it.
You can use themes if you have groups of tasks from different projects - specify themes using square brackets. Start each task with the theme.
Do not have more than one task list for the day.
Review your task list as soon as progress is made - add/strike off/update/remove tasks as you see necessary.
Review your task list three times for sure - Start, midday and End of day.
Strike off tasks done for sake of storage, do not remove them.
When there are more than ten items in the tasks list - it is time to start a new list.
Move the tasks that still needs to be completed to the new list
Sequentially name the lists. Example TodoList-1, TodoList-2, …
If there are more than ten items in your list, you can keep an extended list but make sure to group them using themes wherever possible.
I keep this list in addition to JIRA tickets where the task is tracked and effort reported.
This keeps the JIRA ticket clean
I can add my additional comments and jot down notes quickly besides the task itself for ETAs and doubts.
Example Task list:
[Enhancement project] Send email to users re-confirming the following requirement and its implementation - TODO - [V.IMP - by EOD]
[Elimination project] Create new accounts in new space for the following users: UserA, UserB, UserC - In Pogress - [by EOW - 09/21]
[Project A] <JIRA TICKET LINK> New logic to support real-time low latency updates: - In Progress
Analyze current latency - use these libraries in this way - DONE
Add new logic here - In progress
Ask doubt to manager regarding the current approach decided. - TO DO - [IMP - by EOD]
[Project B] Schedule meeting with team-a to talk about an API they can expose
About Saves:
If you get a piece of information worth preserving and it is not a task, put it here.
Preserving ⇒ it is like a word in dictionary / article in Wikipedia / how-to steps
It is not:
a task
some news
evidence (but how to make evidence is a Save)
Saves should have a meaningful, generic, and all-inclusive title. Don’t be hesitant in making it a long jam packed with all the keywords you are likely to search for.
Take time to re-visit the titles of the past 5-10 saves start of every week and whenever a search is made for a page ⇒ Improve the title every time you revisit based on what search key made you reach this page.
Make a save as detailed, long, and explorative as possible.
A save should be filled with mutually independent ideas from other saves. Example:
A save that talks about what a 9-digit client account number is, how to retrieve client accounts, their important fields, account levels and structures and anything related to accounts shall keep as complete information as it is possible about accounts.
This should be independent from another save talking about products, product fields, product categories, how to retrieve and load products in QA for testing etc.
Any overlap between them should go on a separate page and an effort needs to be made to add lines in both accounts and products page to indicate existence of a link. Example:
A particular product is only allowed to be traded by certain accounts.
This can go in another page titled: “Special products traded by certain accounts only”
This save can contain all such relations.
A different kind of relation can have its own save.
Themes can be applied to Saves - but title is the key here for searching.
About Quick:
Anything that is temporarily stored until moved to another place - short to very short term. This is your scratch pad for jotting down or brainstorming or quickly saving and forgetting temporarily about structure in which you save information to avoid missing any details while the data streams in.
You want to make sense of data coming from multiple sources quickly - jot them all down in one page in Quick list as and when they come.
Example:
If you need to collect screenshots for the steps of a particular workflow in an application - add it to a page in Quick temporarily.
If someone told an information that needs to be saved/remembered but needs time to be properly written to Saves or Tasks, then put it here.
You are looking into a production issue - you can capture details of the error trail, jot down the possibilities, store key time stamps and timelines of events.
You get a phone number or a link or a piece of chat or an email or combination of all these, put it in here.
You are making a presentation - you found 5 different webpages that you need to sort and reconcile using, then put the links or even relevant points from them here.
You have an upcoming review, and you need to shortlist people to give you a review. Jot down the names of people as soon as you think about them or interact with them.
About Goals
Your long-term aspirations, goals and heading - your vision for yourselves
This can have its own post but in general, to hit the needle in the head - ask yourself the question - “Where do you want to see yourselves in 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years?”
Write down the answer for this question in Goals.
Hope this helps anyone looking out for answers from the real world.
A simple, structured system for tasks, saves, quick notes, and goals can dramatically improve your productivity. Keep it flexible, update regularly, and stay consistent. This method helps you manage the constant influx of information without getting overwhelmed.
Try it out, adapt it to your workflow, and see how it streamlines your day. With a little structure, you’ll stay on top of tasks and always know where to find the info you need.
Get started—organize smarter, work better!
