Things 2 2 1 – Elegant Personal Task Management
Top 10 Effective Task Management Tips. Make To-do Lists. To-do lists are classic, yet powerful and effective more than ever today. Back in the day, people kept handwritten notes for ideas and things to get done. They are like your everyday essentials and add to your effective task management tips. Just because an online task management software doesn’t have the features you want, doesn’t mean it won’t be there tomorrow. The best task management software companies are constantly iterating and releasing new features on a regular basis. Use these tips to help you find the right task management software for your personal projects. The negatives of task-oriented leadership are that it can lead to a lack of employee autonomy and creativity, which can result in low morale in the office. When an employee has to work under very strict deadlines and excessive task orientation, it can bring the company culture down.
Regardless of where you stand in the organization hierarchy or personal accomplishments, this blog is for you. Here is a list of handpicked task management tips that you can work with today to accomplish your milestones without them getting the better of you.
Our daily lives revolve around a certain number of tasks that we identify along the way to achieve our ambitions and SMART goals. In the struggle to be at the top of our game and retaining our competitive edge, we often bite more than we can chew.
Although everything seems of high priority, something goes amiss in this race of getting things done and keeping your head. Some of us create a long to-do list to accomplish – before a certain time period or a certain age. Others spend so much time perfecting a single task that by the time it shines, it is obsolete.
Workload balancing and time management skills are not only associated with project managers or bosses. In fact, these skills need to be adopted on each level especially working in a team. If not, it can render dire consequences for a project altogether.
According to a study by Cornerstone, work overload decreases productivity by 68% in employees who feel they do not have enough hours in the day to complete their tasks. So, what are the essential task management tips that we all need to be effective and efficient, simultaneously?
Top 10 Effective Task Management Tips
1. Make To-do Lists
To-do lists are classic, yet powerful and effective more than ever today. Back in the day, people kept handwritten notes for ideas and things to get done. They are like your everyday essentials and add to your effective task management tips.
Now, people have smart to-do list apps that give out notifications and reminders before the task is due. It is easier than ever before to jot down ideas in the form of images, voice notes, text and so much more.
Shivani Siroya is the CEO of Tala, a microloan startup. Siroya states: “I’ve figured out how to make all these digital systems work for me, but I have to admit, at the end of the day, a list on paper still feels the most useful.”
Make it a habit to arrange a list of things to do. Also, make use of the many free and premium to-do list apps that will help you do just that.
2. Prioritize
Understandably, not everything on your to-do list needs to be done right away. Yes, there are some great ideas that can help you take your game a notch up. However, it is important to establish what is important at a specific instance.
Michael Mankins is a Bain & Company partner and co-author of “Time, Talent and Energy”, a CMI Management Book of the Year. According to Mankins, “Liberating time requires eliminating low-value activities altogether, not merely capturing them on a list,” he stresses.
Take help from the BCG matrix, and understand the strengths and weaknesses of your projects as well as the opportunities and threats it is facing. Once clear with what matters at the time, you can define the importance of the tasks better.
Things 2 2 1 – Elegant Personal Task Management Tool
3. Schedule
Scheduling tasks is a great task management skill and keeps the team focused on what is at hand without going off-track worrying about other tasks. However, keeping on track is a major struggle in itself.
Did you know that according to a study, a person wastes about 21.8 hours a week? Professionals are more or less affected by distractions that seem harmless at the moment but result in major setbacks later. These distractions include phone usage and small talk.
According to a study by Udemy, more than a third of millennials and Gen Z (36%) say they spend two hours or more checking their smartphones during the workday.
Next, make a schedule and allot start and due dates. By assigning a due date to a task, we tend to be more aware of the cost it incurs, both monetary and time-wise.
One of the best ways is to go Agile. Create backlogs and assign it to a sprint. This also gives a better perspective on the time required for each task completion.
4. Be Flexible
Holding your stance is a great quality to embody if you want to achieve milestones and deadlines. However, some instances and situations require revisiting already made decisions. Being flexible is #4 on our list of the top task management tips.
This can be due to a sudden change in the market trends, change in customer drive or if a certain task appears to overshadow others.
Any of these factors, if not acknowledged on time, can strip a team off potential chances of success and growth. It is important to be on the lookout for likely loopholes of if another opportunity seems to be passing us by. Be flexible with deadlines when you need to be.
As stated by Osman Khan, CEO, and co-founder of the online auction house, Paddle8, in a Forbes interview,” In the right roles and with the right people, flex does offer tremendous productivity improvement.
It gives people time to process properly, and it gets them out of the office in terms of being bogged down in day-to-day admin. So, there is more thought leadership that comes to the table, and that’s where your creativity and innovation come in.”
See also:
15 Best Productivity Quotes by Productivity Gurus
5. Manage Change
Being open to change is important but mastering the how-to of it is equally important. Most of the times, we are unable to drive the change needed for a certain project or in our strategy.
However, this skill can help increase the chances that your project meets its objectives 6 times more than with poor change management.
With the Scrum methodology, you can be open to and manage change easily through the daily Scrum meetings. The daily scrum gives you an opportunity to not only have an overview on the tasks being done but also the bottlenecks they may face. This way you can alter backlogs to better suit the changing requirements.
6. Delegate
Being over-burdened is a real thing and if not addressed well, it can significantly affect productivity. By the end of the day, we are only humans working with other humans. Each of us hold a unique set of qualities when it comes to patience, resilience, working under pressure or getting a task done in the least amount of time.
According to Eli Broad, philanthropist and founder of 2 Fortune 500 companies, “The inability to delegate is one of the biggest problems I see with managers at all levels.” Hence, it is downright crucial, to not only be aware of your own strengths and weaknesses but those of your team, too.
When you stay vigilant, you can better analyze who can better help out at a certain stage. One of the best task management tips is to know how to delegate tasks, to the right person.
This opens windows for the other person to experiment and grow as well, which leads to growth in your team.
7. Be Involved
After helping the team sort out their priorities and delegating critical tasks, leaving the arena is a complete no-no. Setting up a team and schedule is great for success, but it also needs to be consistently followed upon.
If a project requires a daily scrum meeting, increasing workload or approaching deadlines can lead teams to give it a back seat. This may often lead the management to stay aloof in hopes that the team will suffice by itself. In reality, this is the time to be more involved than ever before.
Did you know that according to a study by the University of Ottawa, 33% of projects fail because of a lack of involvement from senior management?
Instead of micromanaging, be present and reachable if the team needs you. In order to make the most of your plans, prioritization, and scheduling ensure that all steps are followed by everyone in the team. This includes stakeholders and clients.
8. Be Patient
At times things may not go as planned causing us unprecedented setbacks. As per a study by Wellington, only 37% of teams in the U.K. reported completing projects on time more often than not. It is only human to feel overwhelmed and experience a dip in your morale at such times.
By mastering the art of patience, you can get through difficult situations and help your team get back on its feet sooner as well.
As Jack Ma, entrepreneur and founder of Alibaba says, “The very important thing you should have is patience.”
9. Communicate
The importance of communication has been reiterated on numerous channels on a variety of levels throughout the years. However, statistics prove that this is an area where professionals, even managers lack skills in.
The anomaly here is that despite the criticality of this skill, proven time and again, professionals choose to look the other way when it comes to communication. Whether it is your personal task management or project milestones to be achieved in a team, people seldom decide to state their mind. https://lcxsg.over-blog.com/2021/02/google-chrome-update-version-for-pc.html. This is where team collaboration software plays a vital role in ensuring smooth communication between the concerned parties.
Fear of seeming incompetent, lack of availability by managers, and playing the blame game are some of the bland reasons why the most important information goes amiss. This can lead to major setbacks, in the long and short run.
https://coolzfiles858.weebly.com/mobile-casino-games-no-deposit-bonus.html. According to David Grossman, in “The Cost of Poor Communications”, a survey of 400 companies with 100,000 employees each stated an average loss of $62.4 million per year (per company) due to insufficient communication among employees.
Things 2 2 1 – Elegant Personal Task Management Software
10. Use Task Management Software
Having the right ammunition can win you battlefields. The same goes for battling effective task management and time tracking. Technology has paved the way for many startups to become market giants and has built billionaires.
The right tool at the right time can render wonders for your personal and professional life. Task and project management skills may have a lot to do with on our personal traits and qualities but adopting the right task management tool can raise chances of success exponentially.
Be sure, to research and choose the right task management apps for you and your team.
Some of the free project management tools you can consider today are nTask, Asana, Trello, Wrike and more. However, be practical and adopt tools according to what is feasible, not just what is reining the market, keeping in mind finances, learning curve and team requirements.
You can start with free task management and productivity apps, and upgrade along the way.
Which task management tips have helped you manage your workload? Share your story and lend us some tips in the comments below.
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Work is usually tiring and stressful. Is there anything you could do to make it easier? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is 'yes, if you’ll create the best personal task management system for you and your team'. How does it help to regulate a workflow and why especially managers are in need of creating the personal task management system that works for them? We have the answers.
According to the latest research published in 'The Wall Street Journal', the work routine of the manager takes more than just sitting down at the desk. In their latest article, 'Which professions can make you smarter?', they explore the daily routine of the average executives and managers and claim that these jobs are far more creative than we thought. Since the SMB managers must routinely block out distractions and exercise reasoning and problem-solving skills, with time they become real experts in multitasking. Moreover, their ability to be focused is improving gradually and finally, they are able to solve more than one problem at a time. This is a valuable skill when you are in charge of workflow and monitor the progress of other workers as well, but the bigger the business, the less possible is for the manager to cope with everything without any help. While your team is growing so is your need to have a personal task management system that allows you to monitor the progress of each employee, assign tasks, create dynamic checklists online and much more!
What is personal task management system?
In short, the best personal task management system enables you to focus more on the tasks and less on creating the to-do lists for various units as well as worrying about deadlines and last-minute projects. When all your tasks for the day, week or month are already scheduled and the data is conveniently stored in one place, the job of the manager becomes more fuss-free and less stressful than it was ever before. Previously, the managers could rely only on manual handwritten checklists, a stack of Post-it notes, notepads and maybe some inconvenient to-do list that would be rewritten and updated often. Later appeared the bulky and clumsy software. Finally, today on the market there are hundreds of the employee task management tools you can choose from-
a. Expensive flashy and trendy apps that are still complicated and offer more features than you could ever use
b. Free apps that are so basic you wonder if they’d be helpful at all
c. Paid apps that look just right and offer everything you need along with a simple intuitive interface, but you are not sure whether it is worth the price or not
So what to choose? What personal task management will be just right for you? Wonder no more. To make your choice easier, here are some steps that will help you to pick the best to-do app and gradually to create the personal task management system that is just right for you.
How to pick the best personal task management app
Only five years ago there were approximately more than a few hundred apps and websites built to manage your tasks during the day, week, or month. Now, the actual number of to-do apps might be twice that if not in the thousands. Search to-do apps in the App Store or Google Play Store and you’ll get hundreds of results. So where do you begin your search and how to make a final choice?
First, do not look for the right software in the app stores. Instead, check out the websites that offer the essential features of the classic to-do list along with extra features that are useful at a reasonable price. Find the software that works best for you and then download their official app to stay connected 24/7.
In general, it’s best to start choosing the right software with your task management method-
a. Do you group the tasks in a certain way?
b. How many employees do you have?
c. Do you need to write extra details along with comments and profound feedback or do you keep task descriptions short?
d. Do you want to keep a record of everything that was done?
e. Are you in need of reminders?
f. Do you want to visualize your progress etc.?
Answering all these questions will help you to determine which task management method to follow. If you need a basic to-do list, choose the simple 'Grocery List' app. However, when you organize your task into detailed projects with attachments, subtasks, comments, and feedback, you need powerful software that enables you to get all things done quickly and easily to communicate with your team anytime and from any location.