Best Results Organizing

Let’s talk about tasks.

How do you keep track of what you have to do? How do you make sure you’re doing the “right” things, the ones that are your highest priorities? How do you keep yourself from getting stressed out by everything waiting to get done?

Beyond your own progress and productivity, how do you make sure your team (whether that’s your department or committee at work, or TeamFamily) is being efficient, getting the right things done, and not duplicating efforts?

There are a wide variety of methods (originally created in analog formats, later adapted to the digital world) to collect your “aspirations” (things you want to do or should do) and track progress. The most common method of noting what you need to do (so that you don’t forget it) and monitoring what you have completed, is a checklist, but we’re also going to look at two other types of tools for keeping on top of your tasks and projects.

CHECKLISTS

The most basic type of checklist is a “to-do” list. You write down what you have to do — and hopefully, you do it. (Motivation is beyond the scope of today’s post, but feel free to check out Count on Accountability: 5 Productivity Support Solutions and Flow and Faux (Accountability): Productivity, Focus, and Alex Trebek to address ways to get from knowing what you intend to do to actually achieving it.)

If you only have a few items, and you don’t have to worry about the order in which tasks are accomplished or who is getting what done, a to-do list is fine. If you have three or four tasks (say, two errands, a phone call, and a package to box up and mail), you can even get away without checking off the completed items. For our purposes, we’ll even leave aside the debate over checking things off vs. crossing them out. We’ll leave that for a future post! (But Paper Doll is Team Check-It-Off.)

Of course, there are more intricate checklists. In Dr. Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto, he wrote about the power of a checklist to combat the problems that arise from the sheer (growing) complexity and volume of human knowledge and our efforts to strive to be better, build bigger, and live more boldly. No matter how much specialized training we have and how we use technology to support our efforts, things go awry. Tiny steps get missed.

But the humble checklist can be the solution. In Gawande’s book, he looked at how mistakes in the operating room (contributing to both mortality and morbidity) have dramatically declined since the institution of the World Health Organization’s Surgical Safety Checklist in many countries.

©1942 Life Magazine, August 24

Since 1935, airline pilots have developed and used pre-flight checklists to ascertain that the maintenance and on-deck crews have accomplished all tasks, in the proper order, before takeoff.

Almost all manufacturers have training manuals with checklists delineating proper safety and other precautions for smooth production efforts. In the construction field, they’re called punch lists, and they ensure that the architect, the contractor, the sub-contractors, and even the building owner complete all of the dependent and interdependent tasks so that everyone can finish the job efficiently and safely.

Checklists can be analog (paper) or digital (anything from a document on your computer or in the cloud to a desktop or mobile app).

The appeal of analog is that it’s familiar. You pull out a piece of paper and start listing all of the things you need to get done. Voila. For greater granularity, you can develop sub-lists to improve your productivity. For example:

1) Group all of the tasks that involve errands in one list, then visualize where you’ll have to drive, and develop a sequence so that you travel the fewest total miles.

For example, if you had six errands, you could zig-zag from one to the other, or you could plan a route that would take you to the farthest location first and then complete more tasks as you travel back toward home. 

There are even apps that will optimize the most efficient routes, based on what is commonly known as the Traveling Salesman Problem, without you having to do all that math!

Most are designed for delivery companies rather than personal errand runners (and are priced for them, too), but there are a few worth checking out to amp up your out-of-the-house to-do list progress:

• Circuit – free routes for up to 10 stops, then $20/month
• MapZen – really for only the programmers you know, but this article can help
• RouteXL – sadly, it doesn’t integrate with your phone’s GPS, but it is free!

2) Group conceptually related tasks into sub-lists. For example: calls to return, research you have to do, things you have to write. You will improve your productivity if you can get into a flow state, focusing on what task type. 

3) Prioritize tasks in your lists so that the most time-sensitive are done first. small victories breed success, and if you get the time-pressured tasks completed first, you’ll have more mental energy to focus on the things ones in line.

When you’re analog, you can easily see everything planned for the day or week (or your “life” lists) and you can make changes wherever you are, as long as you have a writing implement and (given that we just came out of a nine-week notebook series) paper. No charging, no waiting for something to power up, no waiting while an app updating. 

Of course, analog lists have a few downsides. The more information you add, the messier your list get. It’s harder to update when plans and priorities change, and then you get a page full of scribbles, and the only way to update to a clean list is to start a new page.

Then again, for some people, that’s the exact appeal of analog; the writing and re-writing of tasks gives you an opportunity to continually reconsider the relative value of tasks in your life. If you’re constantly going to the store to pick up a few grocery items, this frequent review may convince you to upgrade your grocery planning game or even outsource to a delivery service so that you can plan once a week and have food auto-magically appear. (Think: Instacart or Shipt.)

Also, it’s easier to lose an analog list than a digital one. You may prefer your task lists to be created digitally so that, once synced, everything you have to do lives in your phone and computer, going wherever you go. I bet you have at least one task app right now, and perhaps many. One site recently recapped The 82 Best Cross-Platform Tasks Apps of 2021, including their platforms, prices, and whether they support collaboration!

While having your ride-or-die key features may be important, as with most systems, whether it’s notebooks and planners, or software and apps, commitment to one system is generally the biggest signifier of success. Some of the most popular task apps for individuals include:

• Remember the Milk – a classic! Free or $20/year for Pro with advanced sorting, sub-tasks, Apple Watch support, and unlimited task sharing
• Teux Deux – free on mobile, $3/month or $24/year
• AnyDo – free, or from $3-$6/month, depending on billing frequency preference
• Things 3 – Apple only and pricey, but it has die-hard fans; $50/Mac, $10/iOS
• Google Tasks – free with your Google account
• Reminders – free, and built into all of your MacOS and iOS devices)
• Habitica – if gamifying your tasks might give you a little more motivation

If you’ve got a team, and you’re looking for serious project management rather than task lists, you might consider:

• Asana – free for individuals and small teams, $11/user/month for Premium, and $25/user/mnth for companies. Asana is a full-on project management tool.
• Basecamp – the limited personal version is free; for businesses, it’s a flat $99/month
• Trello – free for individuals and small teams, $10/user/month for teams up to 100 users. (Trello is a stellar tool and, in my opinion, much more user-friendly than the other options. More on Trello later.)

GANTT CHARTS

If you’re working through a repeated project, one that generally has the same set of steps performed each time (whether it’s prepping for a vacation, on-boarding new employees, or migrating to a new cell phone), a checklist will give you confidence that you haven’t missed an essential action.

When you’re the only one performing the tasks, and each step is fairly distinct and short-lived, a checklist is enough. But when you’re dealing with multiple projects (each of which have multiple dependent tasks), especially when your whole team is involved, project management devotees find that a Gantt chart is useful.

Gantt Chart Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay 

A Gantt chart is basically just a horizontal bar chart showing the timeline of a project. It’s one way to visualize the project schedule so that you can track the work as it’s getting done (or, not getting done) and noting the key milestones as you as your team hits them.

Each horizontal bar represents a task or element of the project, and however long the bar extends represents how long the task will (or should) take. Think the bars on a Gantt chart like how your cable TV menu shows the programs on individual, horizontal lines, one line per network, and how a sit-com takes up a short time range, a one-hour drama takes up twice as much space, a movie extends even further, and a football game extends off the screen and you have to keep scrolling.

Color-coding identifies which person or team is responsible for each task, and you can use symbols to identify dependent tasks.

While a checklist clarifies what needs to be done and tracking can be updated with a simple checkmark, it’s not very refined. A Gantt chart offers some distinct advantages. You can:

Get clarity – The Gantt chart requires that you have a project plan in place and that you develop a timeline to accomplish everything. A checklist starts as a brain dump of all related ideas, and then may morph into something orderly if precision is required. But a Gantt chart requires precision at the outset – what tasks will be done? By whom? In what order? Started when? Completed when? Which  elements are dependent upon other elements being completed?

See time – With a Gantt chart, you are going to estimate timelines with the knowledge that while some things may be completed earlier than expected, other stages will take longer. As necessary, you can update and lengthen the bar for applicable stages. If only the cable TV on-screen guide would update, in real time, when a sporting event ran long so you wouldn’t have to keep checking to see if your show was ready to start!

Each adjustment gives you the opportunity to evaluate potential changes to your process. Will you have to delay your project launch? Or might you authorize overtime or bring in people from other departments (or outsource) to deliver the project on-schedule. Visualizing time in, well, real time, means you know if you need more (human or financial) resources.

Give everyone the big-picture view – The more people are involved, the harder it is to see what’s going on with other teams. A Gantt chart offers perspective and serves as a real-time status report without need for a meeting that could have been an email, or an email that could have been “Just look at the Gantt chart!” With the chart, you know when it’s about to be your turn start, and to deliver, your part of the project.

Gantt charts have some downsides. It takes a while to set them up, and you really need to develop them digitally, as anything beyond the most simple kind will get messy on a whiteboard.

You can create free Gantt charts from templates online or in software you may already be using:

• Google Docs – free, and you probably already have a Google account
• Microsoft Excel, Word, and PowerPoint – if you work in an office, you probably already have these 
• Timeline by Asana – especially advantageous if your team is already using Asana

• Airtable – which has the advantage of being pretty (and check out the video below for an in-depth look at Gantt charts in general, as well as Airtable’s approach)

• Agantty – check out the company’s YouTube page for lots of helpful tutorials
• Canva (another pretty option, with lots of templates and customization options, but less easily updatable than the spreadsheet-based options)

There are also web-based software options specifically designed for developing Gantt charts, available at varying price points, including:

• Toggl (free for solo users; $8/user/month for teams, and $13.35/user/month for businesses)
• SmartSheet ($14/user/month for individuals, $25/user/month for businesses)
• ProjectManager.com (free for up to three users; $14.user/month for teams, $25/user/month for large businesses)
• Clickup (a visually appealing solution, with a free level and an inexpensive ($5/month) unlimited option)
• GanttPro ($15/user/month for individuals, $8.90/user/month for teams)

A checklist is simple. A Gantt chart is more complex, but streamlined and visual. Alas, neither is very inspiring. Luckily, there’s a tool that mixes the elements of both to provide visual motivation for your productivity.

KANBAN BOARDS

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay 

One of the most increasingly popular ways to track tasks is through the use of tasks boards, often known as Kanban boards. Kanban is the Japanese word for “billboard,” and I think a Kanban board can serve as a billboard, advertising and promoting your tasks to you.

Kanban boards come out of the Japanese lean manufacturing process, but all you really need to know is how to make a simple one to work for you:

• A Kanban board has columns, sometimes described as “swimlanes,” to help you visualize each element of your efforts at various stages in the process.
• Cards, sticky notes, or icons depicting the task move, from left-to-right, through the stages represented in those columns or swimlanes. This lets you (and your team members, if applicable) see where each task falls in the progress toward completion.
• At minimum, there are three columns: To Do, Doing, and Done. If you prefer, say Pending, In-Progress, and Completed. (But it’s so much fun to move it to the right-most column and shout, “Done!!!”
• In the To Do column, set up all of your brainstormed tasks from that brain dump, just waiting to move forward. There can be a melange, or you can group them by task type.
• When you start working on a task, move it to the Doing column. And, as you’ve probably guessed, once you’ve finished, it can move to the Done column.

Unlike a to-do list, you can see your status and feel motivated. Unlike a Gantt chart, it doesn’t feel so formal!

And you can absolutely make your own Kanban boards. Obviously, this has diminishing returns the larger your group is, but it’s great for you on your own, for your family, or for your small group (dorm suitemates, colleagues in the same office, etc.)

If you want a visual representation of what you (and maybe your family or team) needs to do, you can be as low-rent or as happily crafty and DIY as you prefer.

Me? I’m all about low-effort. If there’s no whiteboard in the space where my client and I are working, I’ll use two vertical strips of blue painter’s tape on the wall and a stack of multi-colored Post-It® notes. Instead of a massive list of tasks that creates a sense of overwhelm, we:

• Put each task on a sticky note.
• categorize tasks types by color – perhaps phonecalls in blue, things to write in red, bills to pay or invoices to send in green
• Select the highest priority task(s) to put in the middle column. Get working!

You may wonder how you can be “doing” more than one task at a time, but the Kanban/task board works best looking at day-by-day progress. If you call the doctor’s office to make an appointment but have to leave a message, leave it in the “doing” column until the doctor’s office calls back and you’ve scheduled the appointment. If you’re writing a document but have to pause while you wait for some data to come in, for today at least, it stays in the doing column. Of course, if a task stays in “doing” more than a few days without any forward momentum, you’ll need to reconsider.

You can take a photo of your board and share it with team members via Dropbox, Evernote, GoogleDrive, etc. Post-it® even makes its own app for scanning, capturing, and sharing! (See what Post-it® has to say about Kanban boards!)

No painter’s tape? Try party streamers.

No wall space? No white board? How about a window or a mirror? Be creative and think vertically.

If you prefer something a little more artistic, office supply giant Quill has put together a nifty infographic on creating a task (AKA: Kanban) board.

How to create a customizable task board to prioritize your lifeInfographic by Quill

If you want to DIY your own digital Kanban board, make a few columns in a spreadsheet like Excel or Google Sheets. Label the top row with column headers for To Do, Doing, and Done. As you work on a task, cut it from the first column and paste it into the second. When you finish a task, cut it from the second column to the third. 

But really, if you’re going to go digital, pick one of the Kanban-making apps. The bright colors, drag-and-drop features, and advanced resources will make it worth your while.

• Trello – There’s so much built-in automation, I can’t think of a better place to start. (There’s a lot more you can do, as this video shows, but Trello was created to make Kanban can-do! 

There are so many sites getting into the Kanban game, that rather than list other apps, I’ll just point you to some recent round-ups:

• 17 Best Kanban Apps to Improve Workflow
• 8 Terrific Trello Alternatives in 2021
• Best Kanban Software of 2021

The big advantage of a Kanban board is that you (and everyone else) can see it and stay motivated.  In your house or office, when the Kanban board is on the wall, it’s a great billboard.

But what if you have 15 people on your team, spread across five cities and two continents? Your Kanban may be in Google Drive or iCloud or in the dedicated software, but I find that things that “live” in your computer or phone just don’t have the same immediacy as brightly colored sticky notes on your wall.

Or do they? What do you think?

Checklists, Gantt charts, and Kanban boards: what do you use for yourself? What would you like best for your team? I look forward to seeing which techniques and which apps have caught your eye.