Why I Don’t Use A Task manager As A Project Manager

What are the benefits of managing your projects in a notes app as apposed to a to-do list manager? That’s what I’ll be answering in this week’s episode of the Working With Podcast.

 

Links:

Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin

Your Digital Life 3.0 Online

Carl’s Time Sector System Blog Post

The FREE Beginners Guide To Building Your Own COD System

Carl Pullein Learning Centre

Carl’s YouTube Channel

Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes

The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page

 

You can subscribe to this podcast on:

Podbean | Apple Podcasts | Stitcher | Spotify | TUNEIN

 

Script

 

Hello and welcome to episode 146 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

This week, I have a question about why I manage my projects in a notes app (and occasionally a spreadsheet—but you didn’t know that did you?) So, what I decided to do to answer this question is to take you through why I find to-do list managers are a terrible place to manage projects and to challenge some preconceived ideas about how best to use a to-do list manager and a notes app as well as other tools. 

Now, before we get to the question and the answer, if you have missed it in the last couple of weeks, my Your Digital Life 2.0 course has become Your Digital Life 3.0 and it is practically re-recorded from the ground up. You now have the Time Sector System in there as well as how to manage your files, your email, your goals and your notes. It’s pack full of great tips and tricks.

So if you are looking at building new ways of working for the post-pandemic work life, then now would be a great time to get yourself enrolled. It’s a great course and will set you up wonderfully with a productivity system that works for you so you take full advantage of the digital tools we all carry around with us every day.

Okay onto this week’s question which means it time to hand you over to the Mystery Podcast Voice for this week’s question:

This week’s question comes from Abigail. Abigail asks, Hi Carl, I have been watching some of your videos on YouTube and your approach to using a to-do list seems very different from other people I have watched. My question is why do you manage your projects in your notes app and not your to-do list? Isn’t that what a to-do list is for?  

Hi Abigail, thank you for your question.

Now, I spend a lot of time each day reading productivity and time management forums, blog posts and books and the biggest mistake I see is people creating elaborate and complicated systems. Complexity is the number one productivity killer. No matter how busy you are—or think you are—building yourself an elaborate and complex system is just going to make you feel even busier. it does not solve your problem. 

The only way to become more productive and bring some kind of balance into your life is by creating a system where you spend very little time inside your to-do list. Your to-do list only needs to tell you what you need to do today. 

Now here’s the biggest mistake I see. people trying to manage projects inside their to-do list. Now I know where this came from. It came from a misinterpretation of GTD—that’s Getting Things Done, by David Allen. 

Now GTD never said manage your projects inside your to-do list. GTD is all about creating folders based on your contexts. That’s people, place or thing. What that means is you create a list of folders based on a place, which could be your office or home, a person, your partner, your boss or colleagues or a thing, which could be a computer, your phone or iPad. 

So if you had a task that required you to use a computer, you would put that task inside your “Computer” folder. If you had a task that required you to do it at home, then you would put the task inside your “home” folder etc. 

Now, you can create an additional list for your projects, but it is only a list of projects, not a list of tasks associated with those projects and this list is only used for review purposes.

All your project support materials, your plans, mind maps and documents related to your projects go into your project folders which are kept nearby. 

Now GTD was written in the pre-digital age—or pre-smartphone age--and things have changed a lot since then. 

What has happened now is people are trying to manage everything from their to-do list and all that does is create every increasing list of tasks that only the loudest and most urgent get done. Everything else often gets lost somewhere inside a folder and only be discovered once a task bankruptcy is declared—which when you try to manage everything from inside a to-do list will inevitably happen.

In talking with some very productive people I discovered this approach to task management is not a very efficient or effective way to manage your work. 

Let’s look at a better way.

The first step I would advise anyone is to look at where you do most of your work. For me, I work out of my little studio in my home. So for the most part of the day, I am working at my desk with my laptop. I write there, plan there and do all my admin. So, my primary work tool is my laptop. If I go out for a class or a meeting I take my iPad with me so I have my teaching materials with me and I can write any meeting notes (and, of course, I always have my phone with me.) 

Now, once you know where you do most of your work and you know what devices you have, the next thing to look at is software. 

This is where things can get complicated very quickly. The best thing here is to use the tools built into your computer. So if you are a Windows user, use Microsoft’s tools. That would be Outlook for your email and calendar. OneNote for your notes and project support materials, To-Do for your task list and OneDrive for your documents. 

Now, if you don’t like Microsoft’s software, and I know a few people don’t, then you always have the option of using Google’s suite of apps. Gmail, of course, and Google Keep and Tasks—although Google tasks is very very basic and may not meet your needs over time. 

If you are an Apple user, you have some excellent apps in Apple Notes, Reminders and iCloud. 

So there’s quite a lot of choice. If you are starting out on building your own productivity system, stick with the built-in apps first. As you develop your system, you can look for third-party alternatives, but I would not recommend you do that initially. You want to be focused on creating a system first and looking for the best third party alternatives will only distract you from that endeavour and likely force you into arranging things in a way that may not meet your needs. 

Now how do you build a system that works for you? 

Well, this depends on the type of work you do. For example, I have quite a lot of coaching clients that I need to manage. For that, I use a simple spreadsheet. I maintain all admin details related to those clients in a spreadsheet that contains their email address, how they prefer to communicate, when they started their coaching programme and when the programme is due to finish. I also can add a few notes there too just in case I need to be reminded of something later. It’s a kind of customised CRM system

For the actual notes from my calls with my clients, I keep all that in my notes app in a folder called “coaching”. That means when I have a call with the client, I can quickly find the note and have that ready on my screen so I can add notes during the call. It also means I can do a review of our previous call and remind myself of their deliverables.

Ideas for this podcast and my YouTube videos are all kept in my notes app as well as the content schedule for this week. 

Each client also has a folder in my cloud storage drive too. Inside there are any documents related to that client as well as the feedback I send them after each call. 

One thing I don’t do is have a project folder for each client in my to-do list as well. That would just create a huge list of unnecessary folders. Instead, if I have to do something for a client all I need do is add a task such as “send Mike Smith a copy of my email workflow” - that would go to my inbox and later when I do my planning for tomorrow, I will process that by deciding when I need to do it. For something like sending a copy of my email workflow, I would probably do it directly from my inbox as it would only take a few seconds to do. 

So what you are trying to do really is build a workflow with clean, clear boundaries. Your calendar will tell you where you need to be and with who and at what time. Your to-do list will tell you what tasks you need to perform today and your notes will give you the details of those tasks and any supporting information you may need in order to do the task. 

So, for example, I may have a task today to clean up my website. Now that could be a very big task with a lot of different parts to it. I may want to change some images, I may wish to rewrite some text and I may wish to change the fonts or colour scheme. Having all that in my to-do list would just be crazy. I can’t put sample images in my to-do list, I can’t have all the text changes I want to make in my to-do list because to-do lists were never designed to hold that kind of information. 

Instead, all that information is contained inside my notes app (or a document in my writing app) 

This means I see on my to-do list a task that says “clean up my website” and I will have linked the note related to that directly to the task—all I have to do is click on the task and I will be taken straight to the note. From there I am ready to begin work. 

And yes, quite often there is a master task list in my notes app. Why? because when I check off a task in my notes app, the task stays there and is crossed out. It doesn’t disappear as it would do in a task manager. This means when I want to review progress on the project, I can quickly see what has been done, what still needs doing and any communications I have had with partners or clients about deadlines and milestones. 

Everything is in one place which makes deciding what needs doing next simple. 

So for me, a to-do list is exactly that. It’s a to-do list, not a project management tool. For me, there’s too much going on inside a project to effectively manage it from a to-do list. There’s too much information for one, and it is very hard to see what has been done. All a to-do list will tell you is what needs to happen next and that can be very misleading as each task is treated equally inside a task manager. There’s no indication of how long a task will take unless you start adding labels with time estimates, which starts you down the road of complexity creep. 

Inside my notes app, I can create a timeline for when the different parts of a project need to be completed by. This great when I do my weekly planning because I can instantly see which projects I need to push forward next week and I can then add tasks to my to-do list based on that knowledge. For example: “work on Time and Life Mastery update” and link that task to my note related to that project. All I have to do is check my calendar to see which days I have time to it, and then add the date to my task. 

The glue that brings all this together is my master projects list. This again is inside my notes app and every Sunday, when I do my weekly planning session, I check this list and review deadline dates. All this is in a single note with a table that lists all my active projects, with their deadline dates, where they currently are and what still needs to happen to complete the project. It’s simple, very quick to read, as my projects are organised by deadline date, and I find making decisions about what I need to work on next week is quick. 

As I use Evernote as my projects notes app, I also link my master projects list to the individual project’s note so I all I need do is click on the note link and be instantly in the project’s note. 

So, the reason I do not use my to-do list to manage projects is first, to-do lists are not project management tools. They are just task managers. There’s just far too much information required to maintain projects effectively for a to-do list. I’ve found—through a lot of trial and error—that the best place to manage projects is in a notes app, which is a modern-day equivalent to the GTD project support folders. 

It also means I have instant access to what has happened on a project and what still needs to be done and a timeline that tells me how much more time I need, or if I need to extend a deadline and if I am on target to complete the project on time. A to-do list is never going to give you that kind of instant information or feedback. All it will ever do is give you a list of tasks with varying degrees of difficulty and not tell you what you have already done (unless you go hunting for your completed tasks which is an incredible waste of time) 

Now I know it is hard to let go of old habits. There is a perverse comfort seeing a long list of tasks to do because it makes us feel busy. But I for one do not want to feel busy. I want to feel in control and know that what I am working on right now is exactly what I need to be working on right now and not have to worry about other things that may have got lost inside a task list manager that is full of tasks and I don’t know where they all are. 

So there you go. Abigail. I hope that has explained how and why I do not use a task list manager to manage my projects. I just found it never worked well with the more longer projects I have to do. Managing a simple home improvement project could be done quite easily inside a to-do list, but the type of projects I and most people are working on, there is just far too much additional information coming in to be able to effectively manage all that from a to-do list manager. They were not built for that level of information. 

I do get a lot of questions about this system—a system I call the Time Sector System—where your to-do list manager is organised by time sectors. If you want to learn more about this, then I wrote a Blog post about the basics of the system which I have linked to in the show notes and if you want to build a similar system for yourself I do have the Time Sector Course—again the link to this is in the show notes.

Thank you for your question, Abigail and thank you to all of you for listening. It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.