Friends, let us talk about concept of Tasks Management in Smart Manager
First step is to define place for your
Tasks to reside. If
you operate in multiple contexts, create documents with context specific name
For
Personal tasks it can be P Tasks, for business tasks B Tasks, office Tasks O
Tasks and so on If initial letter is same for more than one context two
letters can be used
Hope you are moving along. Going to the next step ..
Add all known Tasks to the appropriate
context. This is a recurring process. These documented tasks come under Planned category
Example Getting son’s book goes to P Tasks
whereas Talk to service provider goes to B Tasks
Segregating
the tasks according to context helps you balance different roles you play with ease
Moving on, select
tasks which you intend to do in the coming days and move them to Scheduled category. Allot start and
completion schedule dates for each of these tasks
Add to Pending list also (under
Expecting/ Pending list*)
As you start work on a scheduled task,
move it to Progress category. Many
times, tasks may not be completed in one
go. Whatever activity is performed, add a numbered update (U1, U2 and so on) to
describe it. Always add date of starting and completion in each update. If an
activity is completed in 1 day, add one date
Make
U1, U2 bold (if support is present to do this) to easily identify Task stages
It’s good to create an execution plan
for Tasks. It brings clarity as to how the complete task would be executed and
also to have better schedule estimation
Each activity which is part of plan should
be added as a planned update (U1’ , U2’
and so on) to describe the planned activity. Special symbol should be used to
distinguish planned update from executed update. Same symbol used twice can be
used to mark updates which are in progress
Schedule can also be added to planned
updates
Once the task is completed move it to Done category
Separate each task with special
character. Don’t use numbers as tasks are moved in different categories or
shifted up/down in list, it could consume lot of time to update numbering
Always update Expecting/Pending list* as
you work on tasks
Have you identified your contexts yet ? Do a little brain storming and add some tasks to appropriate contexts. Start following the above process to get comfortable with the approach.
Let's move on to tasks categories
Tasks categories
Planned Tasks
which have been documented but not assigned a schedule yet. If broad priority
is known, keep Tasks with higher priority on top and vice versa. This helps in
quickly moving top tasks to scheduled instead of thinking every time which
tasks to pick in the case where tasks are present in random order
Scheduled Tasks
which have been assigned a start & completion schedule
Progress Tasks having at least one executed/ongoing update
Done Tasks with all planned activities executed
Deferred Tasks which are not to be done in immediate future due to certain
constraints
No response Tasks
where you are dependent on an external entity for execution but you have not
received necessary response from them yet and expectation for getting response
is bleak
Need external input Tasks where you have performed actions in
your scope and are waiting for someone else’s input before proceeding
Done/Repetitive Tasks which have been executed once but
need to be repeated at a certain period of time again in future. Define: Repeat interval, last executed,
upcoming execution date, dates on which execution happened
Sample
B Tasks
Progress
Do analysis of existing web sitesU1
Analyzed 5 sites SD 10 Aug’12 ED 12 Aug’12 U2’
Share analysis document for review 13 Aug’12
SD: Update Start Date ED:
Update End Date U1 Executed U2’ Planned
Stay tuned for more !
If you like it, don't hesitate to share it further and do a favour to your friends
Thanks
Aman Preet Singh
GlobalFactor
Next: Snapshot
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* We would talk about this in future post
