A Task Management Tool Beyond Organizing Your “To Do” List

Time management and task management are very closely related.  A powerful task management tool can also help you to manage your time as well.  Like any tool however, it only works when you use it, so you have to use it to get any benefit.  In this article, the author talks about task management styles that are effective.  This is the 100,000 foot view, so you will want to look for more detail, but at least you will know where to start looking.  Read on for more information on task management.

The problem with most task management tools is that they don’t really look at how you can break down your tasks to make things easier. Let’s face it, it’s easier to procrastinate than to take on most of your organizational needs. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With just a few steps you can make that mountain into a molehill.

Think about whatever it is you have to do. It might be cleaning up your office workspace or organizing your garage. If you get the big picture it can scare you away pretty quickly. I liken this to weeding my garden. If I take the time to count the weeds, or worse, if I think about how many weeds there are, I’ll probably just remove the stakes and chicken wire and get out the lawn mower. End my misery quickly.

But if I think about one row, suddenly the pain doesn’t seem as great, and if I just think about that tomato plant on the end, and how much I’m going to enjoy those beefsteaks on my next burger, suddenly the task is less daunting. That is the real trick to organizing and most professional organizers will tell you the same thing.

Take the TV show Clean House: Friends of mine had the “pleasure” of being selected for that show and they got quite a cleanup and upgrade for the cost of having strangers in their house ordering them around. But the point is, they broke all the steps down. They had a process that they follow every show. It’s the same formula. They don’t start ordering the new furniture until they have the house cleaned out. They don’t set up for the yard sale until the house is cleaned up. Get it?

If you are cleaning up your office space, start with your desk. But don’t be overwhelmed. Just start with one of your drawers, then the next, then the desktop.

Every single thing that you want to do can be broken down into steps. So before you get overwhelmed by the job, break it down into a series of five or ten steps. Then break those steps into four or five tasks. It’s the same task management your parents used and it can easily work for you. Big picture, small tasks, mission accomplished.

In order to make progress in your life or business you have to commit to making change. Do you really want to improve your situation? A quick way to do that is by visiting 10 Minute Transformation

Is ten minutes too much time to spend to live better?

Robert Britt


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Master Your Workday Now: A New Strategy for Task: Control Chaos

The author explains that the Workday Now system is fundamentally different from other task management systems because of its “bottom up” approach. Most other systems suggest first building a big picture, vision statement to guide …

Publish Date: 03/30/2010

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