Occasionally, I've been asked to produce a Gantt chart for a project.
A lot of the time, I was the only person assigned to that project. This mostly happened back when I was a student, though my coworker is currently in this position.
To my understanding, a Gantt-chart is used for planning out which tasks your resources (usually people) are going to be assigned to at a particular time. This also allows me to define the critical path, and get a sense of the time estimate of the project (e.g. if Bob has 3 tasks that each will take a day, I know that I need at least 3 days to get that part done. Or I can swap in Steve and Alice to do one of the tasks each to get it done in 1 day, but I have to pay 3 salaries).
Subsequently, if I'm creating a Gantt-chart for a project only containing me, it seems a little pointless. Surely everything is on the critical path. I can't do task 1 and 2 at the same time, even if task 1 and 2 have no other resources (apart from me) in common. If they do have some pre-requisite, then all the Gantt-chart will do is nail down the ordering.
By and large, I'm just writing down all the tasks that need to be done in some linear order. At this point, surely I can just have a table of dates and tasks? What value is a Gantt-chart adding for me here?
When presented with something that doesn't make sense, I assume it's me that's misunderstanding something. So: Are Gantt Charts useful for single-person projects? How?
Edit: To clarify, I understand the point of a schedule. I have a little planner that has the tasks next to the deadlines (both external and self-imposed). I also can make time estimates of the tasks (so I know I can't start task B until next Monday because I'm doing task A until then). I could, if requested, produce a Gantt-chart from my to-do list, but it's not going to help organise anything: I'd just have a wall-poster of the stuff I've already got in the planner.