5 Steps for Handling Your Tasks Better

Ok, so you started a new project or activity within your organization. Your team is eager to start working on it. Congratulations!
Now, let’s talk business.

WHY DIVIDING A PROJECT INTO TASK MATTERS?

Well, the first thing you need to do, when you start executing a project, is task definition and delegation. Not an easy job to do, that’s for sure.

In project management, a task is an activity that needs to be accomplished within a defined period of time or by a deadline to work towards work-related goals. It is a small essential piece of a job that serves as a means to differentiate various components of a project.

When you define tasks, don’t even think for a second that’s it. The true work just begins. First of all, to be truly productive and on time, you need to determine your MITs.

What are MITs?

Most important tasks. In one of our previous blog posts we’ve explained a great way you can organize and prioritize tasks.

If you fail to identify those, you will be working on your project in a defensive rather than offensive mode.

This is the scenario:
You will spend much more time just wandering within your TO DO list, reacting to tasks done and trying to fit them in an ad hoc plan. In the end of the day, you will feel overwhelmed, upset, and too drained to do anything else. In other words, you and your team members will be lost.

To avoid that from happening, not only do we have to define our MITs, but we also have to tackle them first thing in the morning.

In the morning? Why then?

It’s simple. In the morning we’re all fresh and well-rested from the day before, no matter how difficult it was. Everybody in the office is enthusiastic about the new day and it is the quietest part of the day.
So, make sure you and other team members dedicate each morning for defining and re-defining your project’s MITs. A meeting at the end of that work wouldn’t hurt either.

To do a good job at it, first you need to determine some long-term goals.

Try to actually write them out somewhere and create a plan towards their achievement. And remember:

A goal with no plan is a pure wish.

Ask yourself:
What are the three most important things that I can do today that will help move me closer to those goals?

Here are some advice on that. Broken into step by step list. We really couldn’t make it easier for you. Just follow our list and read twice solutions you will find at the bottom of this blog, and you’ll be just fine.

STEP 1

Give your goals an exhaustive overview. Write them down and then read and re-read them.
You should know that a list with more than 2 or 3 goals is excessive and not well defined. Try to do it over and over again until you come to the desired number of solid goals.

STEP 2

Now, review your long-term plans for the achievement of your goals. Those plans should be detailed enough to give you a hint on how you’ll achieve the goal. Make those plans simple – if it doesn’t fit to a definition of “how to get from point A to point B”, you are not doing something right. Try again.

STEP 3

Create a monthly, weekly or daily milestones towards the achievement of your goals. Break apart your plans into milestones. One way to do it is to split any measurable goal into distinct parts, and then commit your time to each one of them.

STEP 4

Create a plan of action. Determine what objectives need to be fulfilled and what actions you have to perform to get closer to achieving that milestone? List it all.

STEP 5

In this last step, select your MITs from your weekly plan and determine how you can best achieve that week’s objectives.

GANTT CHART IS YOUR FRIEND

It’s a tool with the ability to boil down multiple tasks and timelines into a single document. Another benefit is that your stakeholders will easily understand where your team currently stands in a process.

Also, using Gantt chart creates an opportunity for team members to leverage each other’s deadlines for maximum efficiency. For example, if one team member waits on the outcome of three other tasks before starting a crucial piece of the assignment, he or she can perform other project tasks.

As individual tasks intertwine on Gantt charts, this situation encourages new collaborations that might not have evolved under traditional task assignment systems.

Ok, now you have it clear how important is task prioritizing, its dependence and intertwining. You might be wondering how Teodesk can help if simply using a Gantt chart will do all the work.

HOW TEODESK WORKBOARD CAN HELP?

Teodesk Workboard is an extremely intuitive and efficient feature with a goal to manage all business processes and projects.

You can divide tasks into subtasks to be more productive and accurate on its progress, and to design a complete checklist for the project. The Workboard Overview provides a clear summary about the progress of the project/operation by showing the executed (sub)tasks, phases and number of blocked or paused tasks, subtasks can be created within a task. Moreover, relevant documents can be uploaded and there is a possibility to add a document description. These subtasks and documents can be organized by name, due date and responsible person.

TASK DEPENDENCE

A task that is intertwined with other can easily be paused or blocked in order to respect the MIT schedule and Gantt rules of tasks order. This feature gives you the possibility to make tasks dependent on each other by blocking assignments which means that it is impossible to start a blocked task before the related task is completed. This is highly beneficial when there is a strong dependence between phases or assignments.

All phases and tasks are easily retrieved by using the filtering. Any item can be found by filtering on assignee, due date, status, and name of task or keywords.

CLEAR AND HELPFUL OVERVIEW

To be clear on how tasks are distributed, the Phase Overview includes information about the person responsible, phase details (start date, end date and status), phase description and progress of (sub)tasks. The Phase Overview can easily be customized to your style or method of doing business.

REPORTING AND COMMUNICATING HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER

And just to be sure everyone is on the same page, you can create reports directly from the app. Admit it, wouldn’t it be nice if you could create reports with just a few clicks? Everyone can in charge and authorized can gather all the data from the project’s tasks and create reports in a matter of seconds.

And not to leave any stone unturned, Task Discussion makes possible for every task to has its own independent communication between team members in a form of chat.

This way, every single team member is included into this way of operating things and everything stays on the Teodesk app, so no misunderstanding could get in the way of your successfully executed project.