Managing tasks
...or the legend of Sisyphus
Most of us would handily agree that managing tasks in our professional and personal lives is an uphill battle, at best. The word “Sisyphus” may come to mind - you’ve probably heard the reference, and if you haven’t read the legend itself, check it out on Wikipedia.
There’s also The Myth of Sisyphus essay by Albert Camus that explores the absurdity of our existence and compares it to that of Sisyphus, who must perform his task ceaselessly, carrying that rock up the hill, knowing all the while that the rock will roll back down and he will have to repeat this cycle endlessly, meaninglessly, for eternity.
I know what you’re thinking: “OMFG, only one task?! Lucky bastard!”
I’m right there with you.
So, until we all get as carefree as Sisyphus and are down to just one meaningless task to complete over and over, let’s take a look at how Microsoft 365 with Teams and Planner can help you get through a week that makes Sisyphus look like he’s on a bloody vacation.
Note that the rest of this post is lightly instructional in nature, so feel free to skim it and come back to it later when you want more. Find the lollipop, though.
Teams and Planner
“Oh here you go again with Teams again” you say. Yes. Like I said in the last post/email/message, Teams is your office workspace. The second item I listed in the long list of what you’ll accomplish with Teams was “Teams is where you will plan your projects and check off your tasks” and the way you will do that is with Microsoft Planner integrated into Teams.
Truth be told, you don’t need Teams to use Planner. Planner is its own application, and you can go to https://tasks.office.com to access it. Teams, however, allows us to group different applications and technologies within the context of your work.
One of the first things we do when we set up a team either for a client or a project is adding a tab for activities and tasks related to that project. We usually stick it in the General channel, but it really can go anywhere in the Team.
When you’re starting off with a new Team, you will create a new Plan, but if there’s an existing one, you can select it as well. In the video below, I ultimately select an already-existing plan.
The newly added plan shows up as a tab in your Team, along with a default To Do bucket. After you create your plan, take a few minutes to explore - check out the ability to add buckets to group tasks, switch views to show the tasks in a Calendar or Gantt form, and so on.
When you create a task, you start off with a simple title/due date/assignment fields right on the simple task card, but you can then open the task details to fill in advanced information.
In the below video you will see me assign the task to George, add start and due dates, switch priority, and put in some details along with a label (customizable).
All changes to the task are recorded, and you can add comments. If the task is complex, you can even add a checklist of things to do that must be done to complete the task - this is especially useful if you’re assigning the task to someone else and you want to make sure they follow your guidance.
You can add the same plan to a different channel as well - unfortunately, as of right now Planner view does not allow saving of filters, so you’ll have exactly the same plan view on every channel.
Planner will email you tasks that are coming up, and will remind you when they’re overdue. Very useful.
One app to rule them all
Let’s say that your bucket list (ha ha) is getting long, and you really think that your team would benefit from another plan - specifically dedicated to events, for example.
You can create a second plan, the same way that you did it the first time around. In the screenshot below, I’ve created an Events-specific plan and added it to the Events channel. It’s showing my “Brownstone Party” bucket, with a single “Pre-party checklist “task that has a checklist of things to complete before the party.
Now my General channel has generally applicable tasks, and the Events channel will show tasks that are dedicated to event planning.
You can imagine that between multiple teams and multiple plans it might be difficult to know what’s actually going on and keeping track of what’s actually assigned to whom, when, and so on.
But wait, we have an app for that!
The video below shows you how to solve this very problem - this right here is the tasty tootsie roll at the center of the lollipop 🍭.
This is HUGE, because it means that if you simply start using Planner for managing all your projects, your task list will never by a mystery. Furthermore - and this is equally important - as your team grows and task management (and creation) goes to other people, you will be able to scale your activities across multiple team members and projects, and still have access to all of them in a single place, regardless of where they actually live.
One of the reasons why we at art|Works Initiative advocate certain approaches is precisely this: the ability to scale up a process so it works as well for a team of 20 as it does for one person.
Mobile
There’s a mobile app for your Android or iPhone device. Get it.
Planner Pro Tips:
Name your plans with your Project/Team/Purpose
This is a scalability tip. If you grow to have 20 plans, having 10 (or 2) of them be named “Project Tasks” will be terrible, especially if tasks accidentally end up in the wrong plan. “PTP Brownstone Event” is a much better name than “Party Planning”.
Be specific, but keep it short.
Outlook integrates your tasks!
If you click on Tasks in Outlook, it’ll take you to your personal To-do. It will look similar to the Tasks app in Teams, but it won’t show you all your plans.
Boo.
…but wait!! If you click on the Assigned to me view, it will, in fact, show you all the tasks in your personal to-do list and all the tasks assigned to you across your plans.
Use the Buckets
These will help you organize tasks much better than if you just use a To Do bucket by itself. Keep in mind that Buckets don’t have to be categories. You can use Buckets to organize tasks by team (Volunteers vs Staff, for example), or by Kanban-style groups (To-Do, Doing, Done), or by planned stages of tasks (Sales, Discovery, Delivery, Training, Post-Mortem), etc.
Use Task Comments
When you add a task comments to a task, an email is sent to the task creator and the person assigned to the task. It’s a great way to focus conversations around the task!
In conclusion…
I could go on, but I won’t.
Let me know what you think!