BEST WAY TO MANAGE YOUR TASk

A PROJECT OF

Workshop on time and workload management

Submitted to: submitted by:

Prof: Namrata chugh Sahil Jain

GGDSD COLLEGE 3206

KHERI GURNA,BANUR BBA-5 th semester

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my special thanks of gratitude to my teacher (Prof. Namrata chugh) as well as our Director (Dr. Baldev Sachdeva)who gave me the golden opportunity to do this wonderful project on the topic (best way to manage your task), which also helped me in doing a lot of Research and i came to know about so many new things I am really thankful to them.Secondly I would also like to thank my parents and friends who helped me a lot in finalizing this project within the limited time frame.

SAHIL JAIN

Content

Contents………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………3

Introduction………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….4

Task management………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..5

Why time and task management is important……………………………………………………………………..6

Task Hierarchy……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..7

Pen and paper task management…………………………………………………………………………………………8

Need……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………11

Excuses, excuses………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….12

Levels………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….13

Task life cycle………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………17

Activities supported to task………………………………………………………………………………………………….18

Best way to manage your task………………………………………………………………………………………………19

TIPS………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………27

BIBLOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..28

Introduction

Everyone has tasks to do and limited time to do them regardless of their role: employee, student, homemaker … the only difference is the type of tasks and the route via which they come in.

This is the first in a series of four blog posts looking at task and time management. In these posts I describe my method of managing my work tasks – I have other roles also for which I use a similar method.

This first post is an introduction to time and task management - why it's important and why we often don't do it. The second post will look at the process I use to manage my tasks. The third post tells you about my tips & tricks for beating procrastination and distraction. The final post looks at various software tools that might help with this process.

There is no right or wrong way to manage your workload and other tasks that you need to do. You have to find a way that works for you. Hopefully by sharing my current thoughts and practices you can use them as a starting point for finding a strategy that helps you.

What is Task Management

Task management is as integral to the project management discipline as a ball to the game of football. Without task management, there is no project management software. Therefore task management is the primary foundation of project management. In other words, there is no good project management software without a good task management system as an integral part of it. Task management is the process of managing tasks through the project’s life cycle. It includes gathering requirements, planning, status tracking, testing and creating final reports when tasks are completed. Individuals use task management to organize and accomplish personal goals for everyday chores. Teams rely on task management to collaborate and achieve group goals together. Tasks could have status, start date, due date, people who are assigned to them, comments, tags and attached files. More advanced task management systems support dependencies, recurrence, priority and complexity.  The market is saturated with to-do list and task managers of varying maturity and functionality. The hope of this tutorial is to educate the reader about the attributes of good task management. We also aim to clarify terms used by project management practitioners when task management is discussed or planned.

Why time and task management is important

Poor task and time management leads to additional stress, and let’s face it: life is stressful enough as it is. If we don’t adequately manage our workload, we become less productive, struggle to meet deadlines and forget to do important tasks. Perhaps more serious than this is the knock on effect: we end up always trying to “catch up” with things, and we forget to make time for fun & relaxing activities which are essential for our well-being or feel guilty for enjoying ourselves because we think we should be doing more important things. Good task and time management, then, is not just about increasing productivity but giving ourselves a better quality of life.

For me, it is important to have a method of managing my tasks and time which gives me structure but also allows flexibility to work around unexpected obstacles (e.g. urgent tasks cropping up, illness, something not working). It also needs to have built-in techniques to keep me on task - by making me aware of when my concentration is poor or I have otherwise lost focus - and to help me beat procrastination.

Task hierarchy

This is the most complex part of this guide. Most people have different ways of organizing the different parts of their lives, but the one that I have seen the most often and found the most useful is the division of life into:

Health

Wealth (including career)

Relationships (friends, family, significant other)

General Happiness (catchall for everything else)

It would therefore make sense for our tasks to fall into these categories too. Sure, there will be the everyday mundane that doesn’t really sit inside that hierarchy. Things like going to the bank, doing the laundry, doing the grocery shopping. For this reason, I also recommend a general “Everyday” category for such things.

Now for some people this is too structured. In which case I would recommend:

Projects: personal projects you have that you want to complete, like redecorating the living room, cleaning out the garage, or finishing a certain book.

Events: e.g., planning a dinner party, organizing a family trip out of town.

General Errands: same as the “Everyday” list above.

Things For Later: ideas that you want to revisit one day, just not at the moment.

Pen or paper task management

Pen and paper is the simplest form of task management, and the one that most people use. The biggest problem with pen and paper is actually that most people start to develop a great task management system, Then they stop using it or maintaining it due to the busyness of their lives.

The benefits of paper are many. It is very simple – you don’t need any complicated or expensive equipment, and it’s something you could easily teach to your mom/dad/family or any non-technically-inclined friends.

That’s not to say there aren’t downsides compared to other task management systems, the biggest probably being that you have to copy tasks over to the next day every single day to maintain a functioning system.

With that out of the way, here’s what you’ll need:

Paper. Preferably in the form of a notebook (I recommend letter or A4 size).

Post-it notes.

At least 2 different colored pens – one for writing, one for highlighting.

Getting this system started is straightforward. Sit down, and take the time to write down everything on your mind. Write down all the things you have to do, all the random thoughts you have – everything. Grocery shopping for this week? Write it down. Doctor’s appointment in 2 weeks? Write it down. Call Jean back about that party next week? Write it down.

You should end up with a large list of unorganized thoughts and actions the first time you do this. Now you need to sort. In general, there will be three types of items you have listed: tasks, appointments and information.

You want to separate these out. Appointments will go in your schedule or calendar (we have a great piece about that here). Information should technically go into your personal wiki, but if we’re being simple here, transfer it to another notebook for the time being. Tasks are what you want to focus on for now.

Taking this list of tasks, start ordering them – start at 1, and go through to x, where x is the number of items on your list.

There’s no real need for categories with a paper system, it just tends to complicate things. You may find that certain tasks group together well around events or projects, and if they do you can list them that way.

Now that you have your initial list of tasks, it’s time to learn how to use the system effectively. You’ll have two lists: an “immediate action” list, and an “everything else” list.

At the start of every day, pick a new page in your workbook, put down today’s date, and list down all the “immediate action” items on your task list. These are tasks that are due today, or overdue, or will be completed in the next couple of days. Usually about 5 items is right for most people. All the other tasks, should sit in a separate notebook or in a page at the back of your notebook – we’ll come back to this second list later.

Now as you start your day, look at task number one, and start doing it until it’s done. Then onto task number two, and three and so on…

As you complete each task, tick it off or cross it out using a different colored pen. You can also reorganize the order of tasks on-the-fly if necessary.

At the end of every day, transfer everything left over to the next day. Now is also the time to take a look at that second “everything else” list, and see what needs to brought into your “immediate action” list for the next day.

If you have random thoughts or ideas during the day, grab a post-it and write it down. At the end of the day, the content of these post-its should either go into your “immediate action” list or “everything else” list – the post-its themselves should go in the bin.

For example:

Need of task management

Task management systems represent a method of making your business run more efficiently, it allows you to stay up to date, on time and on budget for all of your project and management requirements. Even small businesses benefit from a task management system, and the system will grow in line with your business. Task management allows you to spend less time managing what everyone else is doing and spend more time doing valuable work for your own brand. It makes the day to day running of your business much easier and keeps your employees on track and sane. Knowing all that you know now, do you believe that you need a task management system? It is truly your decision, every business is different and your own requirements and processes will impact this decision.

Excuses, excuses..  why we don’t bother 

We often make excuses as to why we don’t manage our workload effectively. Here are a few I’ve used in the past (you might recognize some of them…):

“I work best under pressure.” – I told myself this because I had poor task management practices and didn’t want to admit it. I did produce good work under pressure of a looming deadline, but it was stressful and other things that needed doing didn’t get done.

“I’m naturally disorganized and it works for me.” – I used this one to make myself feel better. The reality is that yes, I am naturally disorganized, but it didn’t work for me: not doing the things I needed to get done made me feel guilty and stressed.

“It takes too much time!” – The phrase time management is used a lot, and I used to kid myself that I don’t have time for time management because I should actually be doing things instead. The reality is that time passes regardless of what you do: you can’t really manage time.  But you can manage what you do in that time. This is one reason why I prefer the phrase task management. One of my tasks is to make sure I’m using my time effectively and keeping my workload under control … it’s a process that’s under continual review.

Levels Of task management

There are three levels of task management s, each targeting different project complexities and team sizes.  I have grouped these task manages as beginners, Intermediate and advance. For each, the required attributes and functionality is listed and explained.

Beginners Task management systemWhen managing task for personal use or simple projects all the functionality provided by advance task manages is not needed. Here we have listed the minimum functionality needed to complete basic personal or simple projects.

Title: A task should have a title; this helps to state the reason for the task in one simple sentence.

Description: Task description is used when the task title is not enough and more information should be give to the person the task is assigned, to make things clear.

Start date: When the task starts

Due date: When the task ends

Assigned to: Individual who is responsible for completing this task

That is all needed for a simple task manager to provide. Most to do list have this level of functionality. Quite a lot could be accomplished even with is simple task management system. An example if simple project management is Asana.

Intermediate task management system

For more advance projects when a few people work together, the task manger needs to provide more functionality and features than listed above to be effective.   In addition to all features listed above, this type or task manager needs to provide the following:

Recurrence: In many projects a task is repeated daily, weekly or monthly. A recurring task helps to simplify this by creating the task once and using it as many times as needed.

File attachment: To support task description or files needed to accomplish or verify the task, the task manager should have a facility for attaching files to tasks. Incorporation of third part file storage systems like Google Drive and Drop Box is a big plus.

Status: The clear showing of a task’s status is very important and can trigger action by the project manager or the team as a whole. A task could have one of the following states:

o Backlogged

o Open task

o Assigned

o Worked on

o Late

o On time

o Completed

o Failed

o Forwarded

Tagging: A good task manager provides tagging to label task for easier search and grouping.

Search: A good task manger provide search by different attributes like assigned to, status and tags.

Percentage completed: This provides a tool for the person working on the task to tell the rest of the team what percentage of task is completed at any given time.

Comments: During task’s life cycle question may arise. The system should be able to provide the ability for the team members to add comments on task for effective collaboration.

Advance task management system

Complex projects specially those involving multidiscipline functionality need more advance project management software than the two mentioned above. These projects need robust applications which can manage all cycles tasks go through from inception to completion.  In addition of features mentioned in the above two paragraphs, advance task management applications have the following elements:

Dependencies: In complex projects, a task might be dependent of another task to complete before it can start. Or a task can’t start unless another task has already started. These requirements are called dependencies and the task which suppressed a task are called predecessor. There are four types’ dependencies of which Finish to Start is the most widely used.

o Finish to Start- Task A can’t start before task B is finished

o Finish to Finish- Task A can’t finish until task B is finished

o Start to Start- Task A can’t start unless task B has started

o Start to Finish- Task B can’t finish unless task A has started

Priority: Each task has a priority level from low to high. The project managers set the priority when the task is assigned.

Complexity: This is for grouping tasks to simple to very complex. This helps the project team pay extra attention to tasks which are harder to accomplish.

Bug Tracking: Advance task management system has facility for entering bugs during testing. Tasks could be linked to bugs related to them

Gantt chart: Even though Gantt chart was developed in 1950’s, it is still the best method for visualizing tasks in one graph. Advance Gantt charts let the user manipulate task data right from the Gantt.

Burn-down chart: Burn-down chart is another visualization tool for comparing the project plan against the project’s actual progress. It shows if tasks are on time as planned or late. It also predicts the estimated project finish date based on project’s own up to now data.

Advance project management software are used by from simple to multi disciplinary projects which need advance task management plus tracking tools needed to run projects productively.Binfire, Wrike and Clarizen are examples of project management software which have advanced task management tools.

The market is filled by task management software vendors who claim to have what you need to be productive. Not all teams are the same, try and choose the application that

fits your needs. Refer to buyer’s guide for purchasing project management software for a complete step by step guide on how to select software for project management. This guide specifies the requirements of task management software as part of a good project management application.

Task life cycle

The status of tasks can be described by the following states:

Ready Assigned Terminated Expired Forwarded Finished Failed

The following state machine diagram describes different states of a task over its life cycle.

Activities supported by tasks

As a discipline, task management embraces several key activities. Various conceptual breakdowns exist, and these, at a high-level, always include creative, functional, project, performance and service activities.

Creative activities pertain to task creation. In context, these should allow for task planning, brainstorming, creation, elaboration, clarification, organization, reduction, targeting and preliminary prioritization.

Functional activities pertain to personnel, sales, quality or other management areas, for the ultimate purpose of ensuring production of final goods and services for delivery to customers. In context these should allow for planning, reporting, tracking, prioritizing, configuring, delegating, and managing of tasks.

Project activities pertain to planning and time and costs reporting. These can encompass multiple functional activities but are always greater and more purposeful than the sum of its parts. In context project activities should allow for project task breakdown, task allocation, inventory across projects, and concurrent access to task databases.

Service activities pertain to client and internal company services provision, including customer relationship management and knowledge management. In context these should allow for file attachment and links to tasks, document management, access rights management, inventory of client & employee records, orders & calls management, and annotating tasks.

Performance activities pertain to tracking performance and fulfillment of assigned tasks. In context these should allow for tracking by time, cost control, stakeholders and priority; charts, exportable reports, status updates, deadline adjustments, and activity logging.

Report activities pertain to the presentation of information regarding the other five activities listed, including graphical display.

Best way to manage your task

 Once you find out what works for you and strive to implement good habits, you'll be plowing through your work with renewed energy in no time. For example, making sure you get plenty of rest and exercise and creating self-imposed deadlines can improve concentration.

1. Make a list of daily and weekly tasks.

A bullet-form list is quick and easy to read and follow. Be thorough and include extra tasks that may inevitably arise in your day. It's

best to be realistic.

2. Decide what's most important. Some tasks may have priority, such as making a meal, doing homework or keeping an appointment.

3. Divide tasks throughout the week or month.

Give yourself additional time to relax. Get plenty of sleep to think more clearly and creatively. Leave time to do work that is not a priority. Set aside time to take care of anything unexpected. Some things take a little longer than anticipated. Leave time for error.

4. Accomplish small tasks.

Break down your more time-consuming tasks into smaller increments. Do your math homework in two half hour sessions, taking a break in between. Have fun in between chores. This creates less stress with a more reasonable use of your time.

5 Stay focused. Try not to start a new project until a previous project has been completed. Concentrate on one thing at a time and do it well. Write "Focus on Priority" on post-it notes. Keep them near the phone, computer or on

the refrigerator to remind yourself.

6. Review your progress Sit back and look over your work.

Have you progressed as far as you should? Is there a more efficient way to accomplish what you're doing? Reassign portions of your project to another day. Delegate to others, if needed.

7. Be flexibleTry to complete your projects, but if unable to do so, complete them up to a certain point and leave them for another day.

8. Plan a deadlineStay on track and on schedule. If you are scheduled to do something, do it, unless it is very inconvenient or impossible to do so.

Tips Make a plan for the day and follow it!

Begin your day by doing the most important task first. Just getting that done will have

accomplished a lot.

Have enough rest before starting your work.

Leaving projects half-finished will make you feel disorganized. Plus you'll feel as if you

haven't accomplished anything.

Before studying, meditate to relax your mind. Concentrate on one thing that needs to be

done.

Social Sites distracts you from what you want to accomplish... So try to turn off the

Internet or simply turn off your laptop. However if you do work on the lap top and need

the Internet just use parental controls or any other external software that will allow you

to block sites temporally.

Log time spent on distractions and breaks. You'll realize more time could be available.

Log time with a chess clock.

Get everything ready before you start. For example: A pen, books etc. Try to get a glass

of water or a fruit to refresh your mind.

Don't leave tasks saying "I can do it later". Do what you're scheduled to do, right now

and right there.

Advantages of using a to do list Focuses your mind on important objectives You are less likely to forget to do tasks Writing a list helps order your thoughts It helps show the bigger picture You don't need to hold everything in your head. It saves time It helps you decide on priorities: the most important and the most urgent You are less likely to become sidetracked You get the reward of ticking off your achievements You feel more in control You have a record of what you've done You always have something to work on

Working Schedule of a day

8.30 Get up 9.00 Breakfast 9.30 Read newspaper 10.00 Lecture 11.00 Coffee with friends 11.30 Work in library 12.30 Lunch 1.30 Careers Information Room 2.00 Lecture 3.00 Seminar 4.00 Sports Centre 5.00 Dinner 6.00 Listening to music at home 7.00 Work on CV 7.30 Chatting with neighbour 8.30 Union Bar 11.00 Party at Abigails 2.00 Home and bed

BIBLOGRPAHY

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/assistivetechnology/blog/Time--Task-Management-Introduction/

https://www.binfire.com/blog/2016/08/introduction-task-management-tutorial/

http://www.business2community.com/strategy/need-task-management-system-01586964#OgkHE472gwFoRVG0.97

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_management

http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Organized-and-Concentrate-on-Your-Work

https://www.kent.ac.uk/careers/sk/time.htm