Archive for December, 2011

Task Management Software to Boost Your Time Management

Friday, December 16th, 2011

Task management is the key to time management.  If you can prioritize your tasks and

Getting things done
task management system

understand what you need to do to get closer to your goals (will this task take me closer to my goals or not?) then you have the road map to success.  Then the question becomes whether or not you choose to follow it.  Choosing the proper tools to assist you with managing your tasks can be the key to you following your tasks.  Read on for more on what task management software is available for you or not.

Handling your tasks effectively is the first step for time management. There are plenty of choices for task management software on the Internet.

Of course, at the most basic level, all you need to manage your task is a pen and paper to put down your tasks. But task manager software makes the job faster and easier.

Following 4 software can better your time management by offering more functions than paper-based system.

Mylife organized

Mylife organized is based on getting things done (GTD) system. The software allows you to make a list of next actions and categorize them on the basis of GTD criteria like context, importance and so on. It follow the principle of GTD to the letter but somehow doesn’t feel easy to use. In my opinion, Vitalist (below) looks more successful in embodying the GTD system.

However, If you seriously follow GTD, take a look at the software because it seems to be rated favorably by many users.

Abstractspoon ToDoList

Mylife organized costs 45 dollars. ToDoList is more price competitive. It’s FREE. But don’t be deceived by its price, the software is way better than ordinary commercial software.

ToDoList has several good features that cannot easily found in commercial programs. The interface is intuitive. It supports hierarchical data. It can have numbered items and sub-items. It allows open file format such as xml and txt.

You can make as many lists as you want with ToDoList. You can add tasks and sub-tasks in the list. Each task has a pane in which you can write memo in rtf or txt. This is very useful because you can include various information for each task like memo, websites, and contacts.

Rememberthemilk

Web-based applications have become an established trend. Many websites exist that are dedicated to task management. Rememberthemilk is one the big players in the area of web-based task management.

It offers functions that are not available with desktop software. For example, you have notification through email and SMS. You can also collaborate with colleagues on the same list.

Checkvist

Checkvist, although a new web-based task manager, looks very promising. It offers very easy and intuitive interface.

It reminds of Bonsai, palm outliner, with its versatile uses. Just like the Palm program, Checkvist can be used as an outliner and task list thanks to the hierarchical format.

You add task with Enter key and sub-tasks with Shift-Enter. You cross a task as one with space bar. Simple enough.

Checkvist is a beta program but stable enough to handle many data. If functions such as due dates, data synchronization with desktop PC are added, it may become one of the best online task managers.

Sunny Ley enjoys writing articles about various topics like time management, personal productivity, and home improvement. You can also check his recent website that covers a black shoe cabinet [http://www.shoecabinetonline.com/black-shoe-cabinet] and other kinds of shoe cabinet [http://www.shoecabinetonline.com/].

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Warning: Use These Time Management Tools At Your Own Risk

Thursday, December 8th, 2011

This is an interesting post about how the tools we use to help make our lives much easier

Time management matrix as described in Merrill...
time management matrix

can sometimes add to the frustration and work load in our lives if we don’t use the tools correctly.  Time management is no exception to this rule.  There are many powerful time management tools out there than can really help effectively manage our time, but they can also drive us down the rabbit hole as well if we are not careful.  Read on for more about how time management tools can wast our  time if not used effectively.

Are you managing your time efficiently? Or do you often find out that the time lost in working on your time management is more than the time saved from it? This is by far the biggest risk, along with losing money on bad tools or bad time management training.

Remember:

The point of time management is to improve the way you use your time, free up your brain from unimportant tasks, and free you up from stress. If instead of this your efforts to manage time end up in less time for you and more stress, you are obviously on the wrong way.

Tools and software can help you a lot to control your time better. Instead of having to remember activities and techniques, time management tools help you automate them. But… sometimes there is a risk. Let’s explore three major types of tools and the risks associated with them:

Low Risk: Calendars
Calendars help you organize your events, meetings, dates, important milestones and other duties. They help you not to miss your visit at the dentist and can remind your friends to come at the party tomorrow. Many calendars are free and have nice features like email reminders, sending iCal invites and so on. Calendars are very useful time management tools and you should use them. But use them properly, because otherwise they can get you in trouble too.

The main risk with calendars is to rely too much on yours. If you expect your calendar to know your appointments better than you (which is it’s purpose anyway), what happens when it doesn’t work well? What happens for example if you rely on receiving email reminder about an appointment but exactly this time the email arrives in your spam box? Such events are rare and that’s what makes them so unexpected.

You should never rely 100% on technologies. If an event is important for you, insert it in 2 or 3 calendars, put it in your phone alarm, use the good old method with paper and fridge magnet.

Medium Risk: To do lists
To do lists are neat little apps that let you create projects, assign tasks to them, reorder them, and mark them done when done. While bloody simple, these apps are very useful for time management. They help you not forget the tasks you have. They help you write your ideas as tasks in very simple way. They help you watch how you accomplish a project. Very nice!

What’s so risky about them? Just think a little. What happens with the tasks that you forget to write in the list? I’ll tell you. They never get done.
Then what happens with the not-so-easy tasks? I’ll tell you. They never get done, because you always move them after the others and if by any chance they remain the last in the list, you come up with new ideas and new tasks.

And finally, when your to-do list becomes too large, it causes the decision block. How to order the tasks, which ones to do first? When you have a long task list you can easily feel depressed and lose your motivation.

But don’t get me wrong, to do lists are great tools when used right…

High Risk: Time management charts
Time management charts are supposed to help you visualize how you spend your time, figure out the time wasters, and figure out which activities you do in your most productive time. They can be extremely powerful in giving long term results by helping you organize your daily routines and productive time better.

They can also lead to extreme time waste if not used correctly. Imagine what happens if you underestimate the importance of proper tracking and enter values in the chart “as you feel them”. Generally you will decrease the time spend to time wasters (think checking your Facebook account), because you don’t feel them as wasters. At the end the time management chart will show totally misleading information.

Another even more common risk is just to spend too much time maintaining your time management chart and then get no useful results. You don’t need another addiction – if you can get useful results from using time management charts in a couple of weeks, drop using them for good.

Don’t forget that time management tools are created to help you and they will, if you use them well. And if you combine them with the best time management activities you will be the master of your time!

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The Key To Time Management – Putting First Things First

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Time management can be very tricky if you look at it as trying to manage your time.  It

Cover of "The 7 Habits of Highly Effectiv...
Cover of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

is much more manageable when you look at it from the point of view of managing your tasks, and prioritizing them.  Following the philosophy of the 7 habits of highly successful people, you will get a good foundation of how you can manage and prioritize your tasks.  Read on for more!

Our time is without question our most precious resource that we have available to us today. Unfortunately, far too many people take for granted this resource and as a result, are not very productive nor are they very effective in what they do.

While there are numerous strategies available to us today, in my opinion no one describes how to manage time better than author Stephen Covey. If you do not recognize his name, he is the author of the book “The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People” and in this book, he describes a unique process on how to manage your time very effectively so that you can become productive.

To paraphrase some of his ideas from his book, one of the ideas to better manage your time is to describe your day and your time in a metaphor. Think of your day as a bowl which represents the 24 hours we have in a day.

Next visualize three big rocks which represent the most important things that you need to get done that day.

Next visualize a glass of sand which represents the less important things you need to get done in your day but still need to be completed.

Finally, visualize a glass of water which represents all the distractions you have in your life which happen each day.

As Stephen describes, in order for you to fill your bowl without it overflowing, you need to place these items in a very particular order. For example, if you were to place the sand and water in first and then tried to fit the rocks in last, the bowl would overflow and you would not have any room to fit the rocks in.

When we think about the lesson from this metaphor, it demonstrates to us that in order for us to become more effective, we need to “Put First Things First” and organize our day so that we always have the time to get our most important activities done first.

By forming this new habit of prioritizing our activities, you will find that you will start to become more effective and productive in each and every day.

If you would like to get more information about time management and other personal development ideas, make sure you read the resource box below and click on the link to my blog.

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