Are you still scribbling your to-do list on a piece of scrap paper? Perhaps you’ve dabbled with various digital to-do lists, only to let them fall by the wayside.
Enter a task tracker, a single place where you and your team can organize and prioritize task that needs to get done. Many task trackers can do even more, with features like time tracking or task management.
Read on to learn how task trackers like monday work management can help increase productivity and ensure that you actually get to all the tasks on your list.
What is a task tracker?
In the simplest terms, a task tracker is a smart to-do list, but in actual fact, it’s much more. A task tracker helps make sure no tasks slip through the cracks. You can use it to manage your team members’ tasks, too. That said, you’ll find that most task trackers let you do a lot more than just check off activities. Many task trackers come as a part of a larger task management software that also includes time tracking, reporting capabilities, and automations too will help you stay on top of recurring tasks.
How can I make task tracking more efficient?
At first, a to-do list might seem as simple as adding tasks to a list and checking them off as they’re completed. However, if it were that easy, there wouldn’t be tons of different tools and methods to help you actually complete your list. Before we get into why your to-do list often goes uncompleted, let’s look at some ways to make tracking tasks more efficient.
- Work in chunks: Break tasks down into easily digestible chunks that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time. This will help you stay motivated and on track.
- Prioritize: Make sure you prioritize tasks to ensure that you focus on the most important ones first.
- Track progress: Set small goals for what you want to accomplish in a day or week and track your progress accordingly to see what still needs to be done.
- Automate reminders: Use automations to send yourself reminders via text, emails, or push notifications for when tasks are due.
- Streamline communication: Set up a communication system with your team to keep everyone informed and on tasks, priorities, and progress.
- Delegate: Don’t be shy about sending tasks to other team members who can do a better job in a shorter amount of time.
- Use the right tools: Leverage different tools digital to-do lists or task tracking software to help you stay organized.
Why tasks on your list aren’t getting completed
At work, “task list zero” is even more elusive than “inbox zero.” There always seems to be a couple of items left on the list. More often than not, these tasks are stuck on your list for a reason. Here’s why tasks might not get completed.
1. Your list has too many items
A fundamental problem is that you have just too many items on your list.
Even President Dwight Eisenhower struggled with this and developed a method for prioritization focusing on 2 criteria: importance and urgency. We’ve even got a handy Eisenhower Matrix template to help you embrace this method.
The key here is to take things off your immediate to-do list to reduce the clutter and help you focus on essential tasks or goals that are more urgent or important. Tasks that aren’t as urgent can be delegated, postponed until you have time to come back to them, or sometimes even removed if they’re not critical to your ultimate goals.
2. The tasks aren’t specific enough
“Create a new website” isn’t a task. It’s not something that you can simply do and cross off your task list, but rather a goal that’s made up of many different tasks that span a long period of time.
Break down deliverables into clear-cut tasks that show exactly what you or your team should be working on at any given time.
For example, break the website design into a concept, wireframe, mockup, and other smaller deliverables. Based on this, you can create individual tasks, like drafting the wireframe or reviewing and editing the wireframe, and then share them with your team.
3. Your to-do list isn’t organized properly
When your to-do list is disorganized, it can put you off from even tackling tasks in the first place. Best case scenario, you start working on a task but find you don’t have the right resources or information to complete it, relegating it to stay forever on your list.
An organized task list includes more than just the name of a task. You need to know who owns the tasks, if other team members need to be involved, when it’s due, how urgent it is, and have access to any documents that could be helpful in completing your task.
Organizing your to-do list will not only help you complete more tasks but also help you come to your list every morning with peace of mind.
What benefits does a task tracker provide?
When used correctly, a task tracker comes with several advantages. And when you use intuitive and customizable tracking software like monday work management, it doesn’t have to be a lot of work either.
Here are a few concrete ways a work task tracker tool helps you work smarter.
- Get a centralized view of your workload. Sure, a paper to-do list is handy, but it’s harder to view the entire state of your work in one glance and move things around if necessary.
- Work is easier to delegate. When you know every single task you need to complete, it’s a breeze to figure out who else on your team can help.
- All your information will be accessible online. Since many task trackers are online or in the cloud, you can keep track of your tasks no matter where you are. No more forgetting that stack of sticky notes at home.
- You’ll work faster. Instead of spending valuable time figuring out what work you need to do, you can focus entirely on the actual task. That means more work gets done in less time.
- Track where you’re spending your time. Time tracking is another key benefit of most task trackers. The average employee is only productive for 2 hours and 53 minutes a day, but when you track time by task, you’ll see exactly where you can improve your team’s efficiency and productivity.
- Better measure progress: With a task tracker, teams can see what task is being done, who’s doing it, and when it needs to be done by. This helps keep track of the progress of each task and overall project.
How do I find the right task tracking software for my team?
With so many task tracking software solutions on the market, knowing which one is right for your team is a task in and of itself. Before looking at specific solutions, identify your needs as an organization so that you can get a better idea of the features you’ll need. Try to answer the following questions:
- Are you managing a project?
- Are you managing tasks for your entire organization?
- Do you want to handle personal to-dos?
- Which features are most important to help you complete your company’s specific tasks?
- What’s your budget for a task tracking tool?
- Would your team be ok with a solution that requires more technical expertise?
For personal to-dos, most apps will do, as long as they have native versions for your devices.
But if you’re managing a team of multiple people, projects, and complex workflows, a basic app won’t be robust enough to handle all your tasks. For professional teams, you want to make sure the solution you choose has some specific features.
What features should task tracking software have?
When shopping around for a task tracking tool or digital to-do list for your team, you don’t necessarily need a solution with the most features, but you do need to make sure it has all the essential features. Let’s take a look at some must-have task tracking features.
Task ownership and assigning
If you can’t assign tasks to specific members or to a team, things can easily become chaotic. The last thing you want is multiple members working on the same thing or tasks falling through the cracks.
Collaboration and communication features
Team members should be able to collaborate on tasks and communicate when they’re stuck, need help, or have updates on an item. Look for features that allow you to add files, comments on each task, or have an internal messaging system.
Prioritization and categorization
Adding a clear status of each task’s priority and category will help your team focus on the most important ones without getting sidetracked by lower-priority tasks.
Automated reminders
Since your to-do list is only efficient if you actually work towards completing it, a task tracker with automated reminders will help you stay focused and nudge you when a task is almost due.
Visualization tools
With visualization tools like color-coded task statuses and multiple project views like Gantt, Kanban, or timeline views, managers and teams can get a much better overview of a project’s status and what work is left to be done.
That’s where monday work management comes in.
How does monday work management help with tracking tasks?
If you want to get more tasks done as a team, there’s no better task tracking software than monday work management. That may seem like a bold statement, but we’ve helped so many teams become more productive that we’ve stopped being shy about it. monday work management is a total solution that encompasses task tracking and a lot more. As a task management solution, monday work management offers all the features you need for personal or team use.
Here’s a quick look at some of the features you’ll get with monday work management that will help your team stay efficient and productive:
- Easily create, prioritize, and assign tasks with a visual drag-and-drop interface
- Monitor task status with clear, color-coded boxes
- Implement WBS, Kanban, or other techniques with pre-made templates and custom views and timelines
- Expand every list item with as many subtasks as you need
- Break tasks down visually and edit deadlines on an interactive timeline
- Track time directly in the platform to see how long is spent on each task
- Visualize team progress and project status with report dashboards and graphs
- Collaborate directly on tasks with threaded comments, mentions, and file attachments
- Get reminders on task deadlines and cut down on manual work with custom automations
- Create smoother workflows with 70+ integrations and 200+ apps with the work tools you already use like Slack, Zoom, Dropbox, Zapier, Google apps, and more
- Complete tasks on the go with native apps for Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac desktop
monday work management: a solution that’s up to the task
Get a handle on your ever-growing to-do list with monday work management. While it can be used for multiple purposes, as a task tracker, it gives you everything you need to organize, prioritize, and complete all the tasks on your list. Ditch the pen and paper and the dozens of other digital to-do lists you’ve tried and organize everything in one place with monday work management.
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