Organizing the work itself

My assistant manager and I had too many open items and no shared place to keep them. We planned a working session to list everything, rank it and decide who owns what.

What I asked

How should we organize all of this, using software we already have?

What came back

A tool recommendation and a meeting plan.

The tool was the task board that comes with our office software. No new purchase, no new login. Claude explained when a simple list would be the better choice instead, which told me it was not just naming the first thing that came to mind.

The meeting plan was the valuable part:

• Write down every open item first. Do not filter and do not debate.
• Pull out anything with a deadline that is close or already past.
• Group the rest into a handful of themes.
• Give each item a simple priority.
• Give every item one owner.
• Agree on a short, regular check-in so the board stays current.

The part that surprised me

Because Claude has worked with me on most of these projects, it suggested the groupings itself: grants and compliance, purchasing, technology projects, personnel, budget and reporting. It also pointed out that two items had outside deadlines that had already passed, and said those should be handled first in the meeting, not filed with the backlog.

It offered to fill in a starter board so the two of us could react to something instead of facing a blank page. That is a good trick for any meeting.

I am also building a workbook to track our goals for the year the same way.

Where it falls short

A board only works if two people keep it up. No software fixes that. And its picture of my workload is only as good as what I have told it. One of the "deadlines" it flagged was for a grant we ended up not applying for.

Try it

Ask for the agenda, not just the tool.

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Part of the series 27 ways I actually use AI. Claude drafted this post from the record of our work together.