How can you improve Task Management?
a lot of people have a task management app when it comes to their productivity system. I use one myself. However, I am not using this app as it supposed to be used.
usually you put every task you have to do, in the app and this very quickly, compared to setting up a calendar event.
most of the apps allow you to create sub-tasks. This is pretty awesome as you can think through a project and note down all the milestones or necessary steps.
for me there is one big downside when it comes to task management apps:
the app doesn’t block your calendar to reserve a spot to actually get the task done. This is especially an issue if you have a lot of meetings during the day.
In the next couple of weeks I will publish an article about time blocking, so stay tuned for that!
Tasks or No Tasks?
if you search the internet you will find basically two different opinions on this topic. One side is totally for a task management app and the others are against it. Let me explain the differences:
those who are against an app as task manager, are the ones that are driven by meetings and have tasks that are coming from the outside mostly.
Perfect example is every employee, that is working within a project team. The project defines all the meetings and urgent topics to deal with.those who are vote for an app, are the ones that are more flexible in their scheduling. Those people have the option to do a task when they want to.
An example are all the creators out there which are self employed. For them it is important to get a task done until a deadline, however, if they do it in the morning or evening doesn’t matter.
I have a lot of meetings during the day. To get things done I need to reserve some time to complete my tasks. Just having a tasks app isn't helping cause I have no dedicated spot to do them.
now it’s up to you to discover which of those types you are. Depending on the answer you should use a task management app for quick notes or use it for your task planning.
Use the Tasks app for Quick Notes
once I get a task, I quickly note a reminder in my tasks app so I won’t forget. Once I have a couple of minutes to spare I put the task as a blocker in my calendar so I have reserved time to actually do it.
The trick is to be as precise as possible with the note in the tasks app so it’s short but still contains the main information.
once added to the calendar I delete it from the tasks app. My tasks app is basically a quick note app and replaced my sticky (paper) notes.
Benefits of this Method
here are the main benefits:
I don’t have to wait for the meeting minutes to see what needs to be done.
adding a quick note takes only a couple of seconds vs. creating a calendar event directly.
after adding the quick note to my calendar I have a dedicated time slot to do the task.
creating a quick note in a tasks app is also easy on the go with your mobile phone.
Apps I use
for my private tasks I use todoist cause it’s easy to handle and available on all platforms I use. It has the benefit of having different projects so I can put a different tag on different tasks. I still see all the tasks in the daily overview no matter what project they are for.
as my company uses Google Workspace (G-Suite) I use Google Tasks as it is completely integrated at work. It is simple and absolutely enough for the purpose I am using it. There is one downside compared to todoist. I can create a list for every project I have, however, to see the tasks I have to select the list first (except you have a reminder set up).
Alternative Method
you might have noticed that I use the term “quick note” very often. This means you can of course use a app which allows you to take notes very quickly (by shortcut for example).
I found the note apps always a little bit to much overloaded. For me a task is not a note. A note is something I have to access in the future for reference. For a task I have done, this might not be the case. I might need to access the outcome of the task like a table but the task itself doesn’t really matter.
If you don’t want to use an App
there are a lot of sticky notes and journals out there which is totally fine. I have a journal for myself, however I don’t use it for tasks.
here is my recommendation if you use a journal or sticky notes for your tasks: block time in your calendar to get the tasks done! (pretty obvious advice at this point of the story, I know)otherwise you will probably lose control over the tasks and the amount of them.
thank you for your time,
daniel
Resources
as always, if I have some resources to share you will get the link to it here:
