You need to plan your work every step of the way, but you also need to be prepared to revise and adjust on an ongoing basis. Before you can make a realistic work-plan, you have to know how long each task is actually going to take. Start with a big project, break it into manageable tasks, estimate accurately how long it will take to complete each of the tasks, and then set a timetable of short-term deadlines based on those realistic estimates. Then you've got a plan! Of course, no matter how great the plan, you will always be subject to real-life interruptions. Emergencies, wild-goose chases, and distractions spring up and disrupt the progress of a perfectly realistic plan. Don't be thrown off. Pay close attention to real life and be prepared to revise and adjust your plans every step of the way. That means your plan needs to be dynamic. That means you need to use your plan as a tool and that means taking notes.

If you take notes and maintain a to-do list, and make your own checklists, note-taking is a process that turns a plan into a tool. If you take notes every step of the way at work, then on an ongoing basis you can use your note-taking to adjust your to-do lists, to track your progress, to revise and adjust your work-plans as needed. You can use note-taking to create new checklists. You can use your checklists as step-by-step instructions to help you ensure quality and completeness in your work. If necessary, you can make checklists for your checklists. And then as you work on every task, responsibility or project you can use that note-taking to note the completion of every detail. It's the note-taking that turns the plan into a tool to guide you and track your progress.