Naw, you’re experimenting to discover what works for you and what doesn’t. That’s the growing pains. But I’ve discovered that my task management needs will change over time depending on my life situation. I’m not afraid to set aside a method and use another method that will work. Personal Kanban works at different times of my life and I’ll use it wheb appropriate.
I’m an advocate of developing a system. A system is a series of habits that can be easily replicated with predictable results on hopefully 80-90% of the time. Habits or routines gives me comfort. I know what I’m doing. I’m not scatterbrained in the middle of a busy day. I already know what I want to do and work on my pre-planned work for the day. Of course I allow a little bit of wiggle room to be flexible but I generally have a good idea of what I want done.
Checklists
Using ideas from the book “The Checklist Manifesto”, I have a daily review checklist, a weekly review checklist, a monthly review checklist, and a quarterly review checklist.
I took time to figure out what went into each checklist and fine tuned it to fit my needs. I never got it right the first dozen times. And I’m tweaking it little by little to fit my current needs.
I’ve seen my system break down because I skipped something in my checklist. Go through the checklist and I’ll have fixed 90% of my errors. Prior to designing my checklists, I’ve always had the urge to just reboot and restart my OmniFocus database from scratch. It gave me temporary relief until I started bogging down again when I stopped using my checklists.
I kept my checklist out of my task manager. I’ll have it in an outline document and most often printed out and placed on a clipboard on my desk. When I need a particular checklist, I’ll bring it the front of the clipboard. I don’t clutter up my OmniFocus database with these “meta” checklists.
Atomic Habits
One thing I’ve learned is to build habits. Habits gives me a sense of comfort and relief. I’m more secure knowing that I have most of my projects and tasks in OmniFocus (or whatever task manager you prefer).
I build up habits or routines throughout the week. Mondays are my admin work days focusing on administrative paperwork and meetings that needs to be taken care of for the week. Tuesdays are my errands day. Wednesdays and Thursdays are my deep work days where I can dive deep into a project and make progress. Fridays are my days to wrap up work, check in with the bosses about project status and other pending work, and finally to do my weekly preview for next week.
I build up a habit and schedule a time block for my end-of-day daily review. Friday afternoons or evening have a time block for my weekly preview. Four days before the end of the month, I’ll have my monthly preview to plan next month’s Big Rocks.
Develop a habit to use the checklists have kept me sane.
Get a system first and then find a tool second.
I’ve been there where I’m constantly flitting between task managers thinking that I’ll figure it out “this time around.” But if I develop poor habits to do my checklists, my problems still carry over to the new tool. Develop the system, habits, and checklists and I can take it to almost any task manager. When I went to work for a company, they used Asana. I was able to apply many of my systems and habits and use Asana as the hammer/drill/saw/whatever-tool. I had my fundamentals down pat. It was easy to transfer to Asana. I just had to learn how to use Asana’s capabilities to apply my system. When I transferred to another office, Todoist was the tool of choice. I applied my system there. I was able to apply 80-85% of my system to Asana and Todoist and then used other apps to fill in the gaps. Currently, I have OmniFocus for 75% of my system, Due app for another 5%, iThoughts for another 5% (higher level goal planning), Fantastical for my calendar needs (5%) and DEVONthink for my notes needs (the remaining 5%).
Don’t hop between apps frequently
I haven’t switched from OmniFocus in the last 12 years. There’s just too much overhead and time spent transferring tasks and projects from one app to another. There’s that sense of relief I get when I do a complete rebuild because I forced myself into reviewing everything on my plate. But that feeling goes away quickly because I didn’t keep up the habits of maintaining my task manager lists. Doing the different reviews (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly) has kept me fine-tuned. I haven’t had to reboot in a long time. I try yo make sure my reviews usually hover around 15 minutes to 45 minutes. If any of the reviews takes longer than 45 minutes, I might break it up into different days to work on parts of it. My quarterly review might take up 30 minutes on Monday and another 30 minutes on Tuesday. I suspect I have ADHD because anything longer than 45 minutes is soul-crushing to me. I become unfocused and would rather do something else.
Then I feel like dog poop because I’m unfocused and don’t feel like maintaining my system any longer. But breaking it up into bite-sized chunks (15-30 minutes) have made things easier. Nibbling away at my tasks has helped me immensely.
I’ve looked at other task managers that have popped up and loved many of their features -Things’ beautiful UI, the Kanban in Todoist, the flexibility in Amazing Marvin are among some of the features I wished OmniFocus had. But I’ve been able to look at many of those features and figured out how to do them in OmniFocus or with other complementary tools. Thus, I’ve never had to stray from OmniFocus in the last 12 years.
It’s ok to hop from app to app but I don’t want to make it a habit. The tool is not the answer. The system is.
This will take time to develop the habits, develop the system, and develop the checklists but I think you’ll get there. I’ve been where you’re at but I’m glad to come out alive…