Digital Chaos Control

Tag: tasks

How to Use a Visual Task Management System to Stay On Top of Stuff

Do you want smooth and efficient task management?

Tasks are those often-reoccurring items that you need to complete on a timely basis. Poor task management may leave you feeling frustrated because your to-do list keeps growing and it seems like you’re not getting anything done.

Most task management and productivity tools focus on very linear thinking. But what if you’re a visual thinker?

The whiteboard is the traditional system for making a visual representation of a project and completed tasks. As we moved into digital tools for project management, the Gantt chart (a type of bar chart) became popular. It was sometimes printed out and displayed to show the project progress. These days, project managers have supplanted the Gantt chart with daily meetings. During these meetings, they move post-it notes, representing the tasks and due dates, around a white board.

For individuals and small teams, digital tools are more efficient and practical. Using these tools, you can access your tasks on the go, keep notes and track progress on them, or share them with someone else. One example productivity tool is Trello, which implements something called a “Kaban” board. Trello puts your tasks onto “cards’, and your cards into columns, so that you can arrange your to-dos by lists. An example might be: Column one is “This week”, Column two is “Today”, Column three is “Done”. You can easily move task cards between columns.

Trello is a great brainstorming and collaboration tool. For daily task management, here’s a blog post that I wrote about a tool called Wunderlist: Task Management for the Super Efficient. Here’s an interesting perspective on using both Trello and Wunderlist together: Trello and Wunderlist.

Get the “Controlling the Chaos” Newsletter and receive a free PDF download
“Drowning in Email – A Lifeline for Communications Overload”

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

June 22, 2016
Don’t Take My Post-it Notes Away

Are you someone who still uses post-it notes for to-dos?

You’re not alone. For a visual person, it can be helpful to glance at those colorful notes to see what’s next in the queue. If you’ve read my post on task management here: How to Stay on Target with Your Goals, then you know that there are some visual task management systems. There are also project management systems that have returned to using post-it notes.

One of the problems with post-it notes is that your system can get messy.

If you’re very organized, then you have them on your white board in neat columns , but if you’re not, then they may be stuck all over the place. Also, you have to be in the room to see them.

If you don’t want to let go of your post-it habit, then there’s an iOS app for you, created by 3M, the maker of post-it notes. You can keep your notes and still go digital to organize them and bring them with you.

The app is called “Post-it Plus App”. First, take a picture of your notes. The app will recognize individual notes, allow you to move them around, and also create new notes.

In my screenshot example above, I started with my notes posted on a wall but not organized in any way. After I took the picture, I moved a note in the app to create a new “board”, and then organized other notes onto that board.

Now I can see at a glance my personal to-dos board, and my work to-dos board.

If you don’t work on an iOS device, or if you’d like a more efficient way to work with post-it notes, then consider using Evernote. Here’s a nice post about the Evernote post-it system: Evernote Post-it Notes. More information about Evernote here: Use Evernote For a New Level of Organization.

Get the “Controlling the Chaos” Newsletter and receive a free PDF download
“Drowning in Email – A Lifeline for Communications Overload”

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

May 31, 2016
3 Reasons to Stop Using Email as a To-do List
Staying on top of email chaos is not easy.

Even after you’ve followed the steps to manage your email inbox (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive), you still need to deal with those emails that need a follow-up task. How do you make sure that you get those done, and that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle?

There may be event invitations that you leave in your Inbox to remember the date. There may be questions from clients whose emails you need to follow up on later. There may be business partners sending information that you’d like to read when you have time.

The easiest way is to have a daily routine to review and act on those emails. If you flag the most important emails, you can review them daily. You can then delete them or archive them as you finish your follow-ups.

But it’s easy to get behind with those email tasks.

You may find yourself with a list of flagged emails that just keeps growing. They’re all important, but how do you find the time to get through them? Are they all equally important?

Here are three good reasons to not leave those emails as to-dos in your Inbox:
1. You may have to read the emails to see what they are. In a to-do list, you have clear task titles. You may even want to use the “action title” method that I mention in this blog post: I never finish anythin….
2. It’s not easy to prioritize your email tasks. You can try using different color flags or stars, but then you have to take context into consideration. Are you mixing your personal and work emails? What about emails from clients mixed up with emails from vendors?
3. While you’re working on your sorted, prioritized Inbox, you have emails coming in. You won’t see them until you change your sort order back to dated order.
Have another look at my blog post here: How to Integrate Email with Task Management and think about installing a task manager instead.

Get the “Controlling the Chaos” Newsletter and receive a free PDF download
“Drowning in Email – A Lifeline for Communications Overload”

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name
May 27, 2016
How to Stay on Target with Your Goals
What is productivity?

Productivity means performing on target according to your goals and deadlines. Let’s say your goal is to create a social media presence and have twenty followers. You’ll need to set a deadline to achieve that goal, break it down into achievable tasks, and assign a due date for each task.

If you’re working unproductively, you won’t meet your goals by the deadline. This results in missed opportunities, loss of income, and perhaps a drop in confidence.

There are many reasons for missing your deadlines, including unexpected obstacles, distractions, and unproductive employees. But you can mitigate the risk by making sure that you have good productivity tools in place.

Start by setting up your system.

You need:
- Task management or project management software
- Documented goals and deadlines
- Activity sets for each goal
- Due dates for each task with reminders
Here’s my blog post on my preferred task manager called Wunderlist: Task Management for the Super Efficient. For project management, I like Insightly for ease of use, others prefer Asana or Basecamp.

The next step after setting up your system is to determine your best method for working productively on a single task.

This includes considering your work layout and your most productive time of day. Also consider limiting distractions during your work time by turning off notifications. Start by reading my blog post here about “perceived” productivity: How to Remain Productive.

One productivity method is “Getting Things Done”. I’ve mentioned this in previous blog posts. Here’s a post about this and other methods for productivity: The Busy Human’s Guide to the Best Productivity Systems.

As you’re working toward your goals, you will not only have to deal with distractions, you will also have to deal with shifting priorities.

Let’s say, for example, that after reaching 10 followers on social media, all 10 are requesting a consultation or more information. These are new tasks that you have to integrate into your system.

Do the following at least weekly:
- Review your deadlines
- Analyze your productivity and the factors affecting it
- make adjustments
The white board is the traditional system for making a visual representation of a project. As we moved into digital tools for project management, the Gantt chart (a type of bar chart) became popular. It was sometimes printed out and displayed to show the project progress.

These days, these methods have been replaced with methods that recognize the shifting priorities of projects.

Teams have daily meetings run by project managers. They move post-it notes around that represent tasks.

There are now project management tools that use a more visual method. One example is Trello. Trello implements something called a “Kaban” board. It puts your task cards into columns so that you can arrange your tasks by lists.

An example might be: Column one: “This week”, Column two: “Today”, Column three: “Done”. You can easily move task cards between columns.

Whatever your working style is, once you’ve got the right systems and the right tools in place, you’ll be able to reach your goals consistently.

Get the “Controlling the Chaos” Newsletter and receive a free PDF download
“Drowning in Email – A Lifeline for Communications Overload”

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name
May 23, 2016
How to Manage Emails and Tasks
If you’re like me, you spend a good part of the day in front of a computer. I have several to-do lists, consisting of project tasks, business tasks, and personal tasks. Throughout the day, I’m also getting phone calls and emails.

The phone calls are easy because they’re immediate.

I take notes during the call, bring up my calendar for scheduling, and then fill in my intake form with the information that I’ve written down. I can then transition to my task management tool, my project management tool, or my CRM (customer relationship management) tool. If I get the call when I’m away from the office, then I will do some of this on my mobile device and the rest when I get to my computer

Some emails are easy.

If I see any emails come in from a paying client or a potential client, I will deal with that email shortly. If those come in when I’m out of the office, I’ll respond on my mobile device.

Other emails become to-dos on their own.

There may be invitations to meetings or events or lunch. There may be clients out of the office currently and whose emails I need to follow up on later. There may be business partners sending information that I’d like to read when I have time.

Every single one of those emails becomes a task in itself. But they’re not on my to-do list, and they’re not organized into my daily blocks of time that I allocate for certain tasks. There is a risk that, by using my email inbox as another task list, there are things that won’t get done.

It may be fine for you to keep emails as tasks in your inbox. You could schedule some time every day to deal with those tasks. It’s a good idea in general to block out time every day to do email anyway – to categorize emails, archive, delete or flag. You can sort your inbox so that the flagged emails are at the top, and then spend that time dealing with them.

It’s easy to get behind with these emails tasks.

You may find yourself with a list of flagged emails that just keeps growing. They’re all important, but how do you find the time to get through them? Are they all equally important?

It may be more efficient to integrate those emails instead with whatever task management system you’re using. See my blog post here about email/task integration: How to Integrate Email with Task Management.

If you’re not using a task manager, then here’s some that you can check out:
1. Outlook
If you use Outlook for email and calendar, then it may make sense to use the built-in task manager as well. The downside to this is that you can’t quit your email program to focus on your task list. You may find that other task managers fit your needs better.
1. Google Tasks
If you use Gmail and Google Calendar, then Google Tasks may make sense for you. The interface is easy to use and it functions just fine as a straight-forward task manager.
1. Apple Reminders
Apple Reminders is another good, simple task manager, for use on Apple devices only. If you don’t need collaboration, then Apple Reminders should work for you.
1. Wunderlist
This is my choice for a task manager. I have Wunderlist installed on all of my devices so that I can sync and access my to-do list wherever I am. I can create multiple lists, sub-tasks, a “starred” list, a “today” list, and I can share lists.
1. Evernote
Evernote is more of an information organization system then a task manager. But many people like to use it for their to-do lists. You can create an Evernote Notebook for your to-dos and assign reminders for them.

Email can be a distraction in your otherwise productive day. It can be stressful to see those emails tasks piling up. You’ll need a regular routine to stay on top of those email tasks, whether it’s dealing with them as them come in, flagging them for follow-up, or integrating with your task manager.

Get the “Controlling the Chaos” Newsletter and receive a free PDF download
“Drowning in Email – A Lifeline for Communications Overload”

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name
April 12, 2016
How to Integrate Email with Task Management

Staying on top of email chaos is not easy.

Even after you’ve followed the steps to manage your email inbox (see my blog post here: 4 Steps to Becoming More Responsive ), you still need to “deal with” those emails that require a follow-up task. How do you make sure that you get those done, and that they don’t get lost in the daily shuffle?

The easiest way is to have a daily routine to review and act on those emails. If you flag the most important emails, you can sort your inbox by flag. You can then review those emails daily and then delete them or archive them as you finish your follow-ups.

However, a more efficient way is to merge your email with a task management system. Your emails will then become integrated with your daily to-do list.

If you’re an Outlook user, then you can use the built-in Outlook task manager.

Flagging an email in Outlook actually assigns a follow-up task. If your email account is a POP account, this is pretty straightforward: open the email and select a flag for Today, Tomorrow, Next Week, etc. If your email account is an IMAP account, you have only the option of a flag with no follow-up date. You’ll have to drag the email to Tasks (in your sidebar) and then assign a due date.

If you use Mac mail, you can drag an email to your Reminders list.

Click on the “i” at the right of the reminder, and then choose the day that you want to be reminded on.

If you’re a Gmail user, you can create a Google reminder from an email.

Open the email, click on “More”, and then select “Add to Tasks”. Your Tasks window will open in the bottom right-hand corner. You can then click on the arrow next to your new task to give it a due date. (If you use the Google Inbox app on your mobile device, then see my blog post here: How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox).

You can also integrate your email with dedicated task managers such as Wunderlist.

Here’s how it works with Wunderlist: when you’re running the app on your device and signed into your Wunderlist account, you can send emails to your Wunderlist Inbox by forwarding to me@wunderlist.com. Once the email is in your Wunderlist Inbox, you can give it a due date.

If you’re keeping your to-do list in Evernote, then I suggest creating an Evernote Notebook.

You could call it “My Tasks”, and then you can then forward emails into that notebook. (You find your Evernote email address by going to “Account Info”.) When you forward an email to your Evernote email address, you can specify a notebook by adding “@<notebook name>” to the subject line. For example, if you forward an email titled “Request for more information”, you would add your “My Tasks” notebook name to that title, so: “Request for more information @My Tasks”. If you’d like to tag the email, also add “#<tag>” to the subject line. You can then go to your Evernote app and assign a due date.

Many of us like to use our email inbox as a todo list. It’s possible to do this, particularly by using flags to prioritize, but it’s more efficient to have all of your to-dos in one place, including emails that you need to follow up on.

SUBSCRIBE TO MY NEWSLETTER

Get the “Controlling the Chaos” Newsletter and receive a free PDF download
“Drowning in Email – A Lifeline for Communications Overload”

* indicates required

Email Address *

First Name

Last Name

April 7, 2016
How to Manage Your Gmail Inbox
If you’re dealing with Gmail overload, then you have options to get organized and efficient. (If you haven’t yet read my blog post on email organization, then you may want to read it and come back: 4 Step to Becoming More Responsive). Google calls folders “labels”. Google starts you off with your email organization by automatically creating labels for “Promotions” & “Social” and filtering emails into those labels.

Here are three options for your Gmail organization:
1. Read your Gmail using any mail reader, such as Mac mail or Outlook. You can take advantage of the organization features built into those programs.
2. Manage your inbox through Google’s web interface. From that interface, you can create labels & filters, and also star important emails.
3. Manage your inbox on your mobile device using Google’s Inbox app.
Google based their Inbox interface on the idea that most of us use our email inbox as a to-do list.

Through the app’s interface, you “check off” an email item by swiping right to move it to “done”. You can also “snooze” an email, which allows you to select a time that the email will get moved back to the top of your inbox.

Filters are called “bundles” in the Google Inbox app. You can create new labels with rules. You turn filtering for each label off and on by selecting the label under the menu and disabling or enabling the bundle. If you have an email in a bundle that you want to follow up on, you can pin it so that it shows up as an individual email in your inbox. Then you can snooze it or create a reminder.

Here’s a great post on TechRepublic about creating Google Inbox bundles: Create Your Own Bundles

Your Google reminders are also part of Inbox. You can create new reminders or look at your reminder list and check things off.

Do you need some one-on-one or group help with your email management?
March 17, 2016