Managing Multiple Projects Successfully
INTRODUCTION
Those of you who know me, know that I am typically managing about 10 different projects at any one time! I enjoy the variety of being involved in a wide variety of activities and companies, but success requires a system and discipline. If you are reading this article, you probably already know this and are curious to learning how other people manage their time and projects.
As a project manager I am fortunate to know how to manage software developers and plan out software projects, especially those at the inception stage. This skill has come in handy over the last few years as I realized that I needed a better note taking/idea management/project management tool to help me in my daily work.
I’ve always been interested in efficiency and for as long as I can remember I’ve always kept everything important digitally. That meant using tools like Evernote (in the old days when I used a Mac) and more recently OneNote to take my notes and hold all those odd bits of information. And then of course using my trustee ScanSnap 500 to scan in all that paper that you can’t get away from.
The paper is important — I am a very visual person and like to use a pen to scribe and sketch out ideas, or take notes during a presentation. I know I can use a keyboard but for me there is a big creative loss when using a keyboard compared to a pen. Call me old school but there is something very analog and natural about it. There are whole sub-discussions on this topic alone!
As a consultant, I’m constantly listening, writing, thinking, and suggesting new ideas and solutions to problems, so the ability to sketch and think in real time is critical for me.
The best technology change happened about 5 years ago when Microsoft introduced the Surface Pro. This was a revolutionary new pen enabled tablet that was designed with digital inking as a first class solution. I bought that tablet the first month it came out and, as my colleagues know, I’m a big Surface fan (just as big now as I was a Mac fan up to that point!).
I thought this was going to be nirvana, using my device to take my digital notes. But I ran into a software and organizing problem. All the apps that were currently available like OneNote just didn’t look and feel right to manage all the projects I had, to work that way I needed. Eventhough OneNote allows you to create a group of notes, and take inking notes, the visual presentation of all this information was just not working for me. I needed an app that followed a simple ‘Projects’ philosophy, and also showed me the information in a quick and visual way, just like I would expect to if seeing notes on different pieces of paper.
What I needed was a digital version of Index Cards. And that is the story of how we are here today - 3 years later and how I developed the Index Cards app to be the app that I needed and wanted to manage my ideas and projects.
In the next section of this article, I will now demonstrate how I use the app to do this and how you can too.
HOW I MANAGE MULTIPLE PROJECTS
Let’s get right into it.
At the time of writing, I’m working on many different projects and ideas. For each project I create a stack in the software, and customize it with a logo to easily visually differentiate each project. You can see this in figure 1 — this is an actual screenshot of my current projects. Can you feel a sense of ‘visual organization’ already?!

Within each project stack I organize my thoughts, ideas and plans using the digital index cards. If we drill into each project, you can see I am using the ‘Groups’ feature to organize my thoughts (cards) for that project. You can see in Figure 2, how for the Index Cards software development project, I have a number of different groups that helps me to organize all my information cards.

As you can see, I have different groups to organize my ideas, such as Development Tasks, or Marketing Tasks, or Ideas. In the picture above, you can see that I can quickly visualize and read what is on each card. This helps massively, since in other apps you have to click on a page title to read what is in that page. By seeing all the information as card image thumbnails we have a very information dense and quick interface, which is ideal as a project manager when you have to look back quickly at lots of past information. I am able to recognize my sketches and notes quickly. It’s helpful to see the cards and they are shown in order, so when I go back into a meeting I can bring up the last few cards and quickly recap the project and be ready to move that project forward from the last discussion. I’m up to date and can pick up a project where I left it.
Here is what you have to do in OneNote for example (Figure 3):

Can you see the difference! It’s just not very visual, quick or information dense. You might also notice a subtle difference in that the grouping feature of OneNote is not as clear and obvious. You can do a sub-group, like shown, but I think that is not as simple or easy as compared to Index Cards app.
To see the real power of the Index Cards app, when you use it on a big monitor, you can quickly see all your notes as well as any Tags that I have used to categorize. In another of my projects, for example, I’ve flagged cards with the tags ‘High Priority’ (orange) and ‘Feedback’ (blue) -(Figure 4). I can change the colors of the Tags to whatever I fancy.

I use the power of tags and the app to be able view cards with certain tags. In the Tag View you can see all the different cards by tag (classification). In Figure 5 you can see I have categorized cards with many tags, including one called ‘To-Do’ (the orange one).

If we click on this To-Do tag, the app intelligently shows me the projects for which I have cards tagged as a ‘To-Do’. (Figure 6). Note, compared to Figure 1, not all the projects are shown in this filtered view.

If I then click into a project stack, I will see those cards tagged by ‘To-Do’. One of my stacks is an example stack I created for this article. You can see the card is flagged with the ‘To-Do’ tag. I find this view really helpful and efficient, since of all the hundreds of cards that I have, I can quickly filter down to just a few that have actions and focus my attention on those. (Figure 7).

As a project planner, I also use the cards to help me plan. There are two elements to this. First, If you are familiar with the Project/Stage/Task method of professional project management, I have designed the app to follow this structure. You can create a Stack for a Project. Each Group is a Stage. And each Card is a Task.
This is very helpful when planning out new projects.
Finally, I built-in ‘templates’ into the app to help with thinking and planning. As a fun example that makes my point, I am currently planning a trip to Europe. If you are like me the actually planning part is half the fun, but it does require a bit of mental juggling to ensure all your trip is scheduled well! I built in a variety of background images to Index Cards app, to act as guide-lines when using your digital ink pen. You can see in the previous Figure 7 I am using a To-Do template, which just helps to organize your (messy) writing. Similarly, I’m using a different ‘Weekly Planner’ template to help organize my trip schedule (Figure 8).

There are many different templates such as To-Do, X-Y, or Weekly Calendar as above. Plus you can import your own. Have fun with this feature of the app!
CONCLUSION
As you can see I’m a big fan of the Microsoft Surface, and I love managing my projects with my Index Cards app. I hope this article has been helpful and given you a few ideas on how to better manage your projects. I hope you will choose to give the app a try and I’d be delighted with any feedback you have to make the app even better!
Thanks,
Prem

