Organising Work and To Do Lists

[Guitarcarfanatic]

Bit of a weird one - what do people use to manage their work? I've tried Todoist, Wunderlist (now To Do), Outlook and Onenote but always lose discipline with it.

What does everyone else do?

 

[Hyburnate]

I'm posting here to get notified...

I'm in a very unfortunate position of primarily handling large projects with other project managers involved, my day-to-day is MS Project alongside Trello but as per your post I've also used things such as Todoist...

I really like Trello for internal tasks...

 

[randomshenans]

What are you trying to manage? More details of what the types of things are would help understand the simplicity or difficulty of the task

 

[EMarkM]

When I got my first iPhone (the second one they made - the one with 3G), I started looking for To Do applications that eventually sent me down the rabbit hole of the "Getting Things Done" book by David Allen.

My goodness, this really did introduce me to a new way of thinking. I still use many of the principles today, but, having stopped work to move to the homemaker role in 2017, some of it has gone by the wayside a little.

Two of the apps that really struck me back then were Things and Omnifocus. Both were good at what they did, but the Things development team seemed to have some issues at some point, and the user base fell out with them rather, despite (or perhaps partly because of) them winning some Apple design award or other.

Omnifocus it was, then, for a while, but several years ago I switched to Alarmed by Yocotville. As another app reviewer put it, the developer of this has a better understanding of time then most people will ever need.

The only criticism of it I have ever really seen is that it only shows the "next" iteration of repeating tasks, rather than having them laid out ad infinitum. The person criticising this presumably wanted to see how future iterations would affect their calendar.

I love it, and use if for all my repeating tasks.

Hope this helps. I have no connection to any of the developers mentioned; I am just a happy Alarmed customer.

 

[Guitarcarfanatic]

What are you trying to manage? More details of what the types of things are would help understand the simplicity or difficulty of the task

Ranges from emails and phonecalls, to parts of a project etc.

 

[Pho]

Trello is really simple to use and doesn't feel like a chore in organising things all the time - https://trello.com/. Also free.

I'd start with categories of "To do", "Doing" and "Done" if you want something simple.

 

[Freakbro]

Post it notes

 

[Randomface74]

Notepad++ for high level work todo list.
Old school paper for personal chores list.
Jira for projects involving teams of people.
I make a google doc for anything significant I work on so I can always look up why I did something a certain way when someone asks me years later. Lost count of how many times this has been clutch.

 

[m@rty]

The built in notes app on my phone, keep it simple yo

 

[crazy8s]

Post-it notes or a notepad

 

[Minusorange]

Microsoft To Do is my favourite

 

[ash_scotland88]

Within a group wunderlist.
Personal just had jotted somewhere.

But also don't mock a white board for team lists. Sometimes the simplest is the best.

 

[Throrik]

The built in notes app on my phone, keep it simple yo

This for me, with a mixture of the tools I use for work, which for my sins is Connectwise plus a well organised Calendar.

 

[shifty_uk]

I use Asana across the business, great features, nice aesthetics and integrates well with everything, time tracking software, help desk etc etc. My teams would be lost without it, especially under these remote working circumstances.

Its got a free subscription too which is much better than Trello.

 

[bainbridge]

I use Outlook and an A6 page per day diary.

 

[swillsy]

I whack everything personal admin related (e.g. haircut, eyebrow wax etc.) in a personal calender Gmail and work stuff in my work one. It means you take the time out to do the job. For long term "to dos" - i.e. planning decorating, purchases etc. I use Todo list but I preferred Wunderlist!

Pro Tip - I have a separate to do list for gift/present ideas which I add to throughout the year and makes Xmas shopping very easy!

 

[Richard - London]

I use Anylist as it syncs great accross all my devices, use it for to-do for home, work, shopping lists, christmas gift ideas.

 

[LeopoldScotch]

I use Notion. I'm very new to it, previously using Google Keep and Tasks but I'm liking it so far. Free for personal use too

 

[ianh]

At my previous job as a technical Instructor (in Aviation) we would start out with a blank piece of paper and 6 months later we would have mapped out a course, designed it, created all the material and finally taught the entire course, and the entire planning was done using Post-It Notes on a whiteboard in a "Scrum" office for visibility, with once weekly meetings with stake-holders to ensure we had access to all the technical equipment/specialists we needed to complete whatever section of the Post-It Note we were on.

We were a multi-Billion pound international company which carried out training across the world on the use/repair/build our new multi-million pound equipment and we were as "low tech" as using a bit of sticky paper in our office. Whilst it worked it would be a massive failure in our current "WFH due to COVID" times yet when I left in 2018 we still had no plans to transfer to a tech solution "just in case" because "well it's working so far, why change?"

 

[Guitarcarfanatic]

Thanks guys, all useful. I've played around with Trello and Asana today and like both. Although, revisiting Todoist...I'm not sure why I left. A bit of time spent in IFTT and I have managed to automate some admin I have to do when prospecting leads as well.

Good to see what else other people are doing. I will definitely use Trello or Asana to streamline my next formal RFI/Tender bid though.

Cheers,

Rob