How my task management tools change over time
Aug 23, 2015
4 minutes read

I passionated about task management and productivity since I was in high school. The first time I heard about task management is when I came across LifeHacker website. Lifehacker provides productivity, self-improvement, and so on articles. I love to read those articles and then want to apply practices that I have read so I start to looking for task management tools.

And these are the task management tools that I have used over time.

Homework notepad

this is the first tool that I had been used since kindergarten until my middle school. In my school, the homework notepad is required for students to list their assignment.

there are four columns:assignment name,due date,and parent signature on each pages. I don’t quite remember whether it helped me to hand my assignment on time though :).

Notes on my desk

When I was in my middle school, there are things that I always forgot to bring to my school. Things like the Khlui(it is a vertical duct flute from Thailand), my science projects, and my colored pencils. I had to call my parents to bring them for me to school(My school is about 10 mins walk from my house). Then I started to write a list of things I had to bring to my school on a note and put it on my desk. So the next day,it will remind me to bring my stuffs before i went to my school.

Planner books

I had tried several planner books but I can’t really stick to use them. It’s nice that is intuitive and allowed rooms for creativity. I have seen videos on Youtube where people shares how they organise their planners. The most popular branded planner that I have heard of is Filofax. It’s expensive and hard to find a retailer in my country.

Lazy Meter

Lazy Meter is like a to-do list with charts. It tells you how many tasks you actually get done vs how many tasks you postpone. I used this for a while and then I move to Wunderlist. Unfortunately, this service has been closed.

Wunderlist

I used Wunderlist v1. Back then, there isn’t much features that I want like sub tasks and tags. Now, Wunderlist v2 is better. I might give it a try someday.

Evernote

I usually use Evernote for note-taking but Evernote could be your task management as well. If you search Evernote+GTD, you get the Secret Weapon in your search results. I have tried that. One task for one note and one project for one notebook. It sounds good, promising, and brilliant. But it’s kind of messy in my Evernote account and not practical for me. I want a separate view to see what I gonna do today, what I will do next.

2Do

This app is brilliant. I had been used it for 3 years(from freshmen to junior year). 2Do is only available on iOS devices and Andriod. It has a location-based notification, tags, project lists, and subtasks. But I want to use the app on my PC as well. So I switched to Trello.

Trello

Trello is a kan-ban board with awesome features. I had used it for a year. One problem that I faced is i have multiple boards and now it’s hard to keep track of. I want a dash board where I can see all my task across boards.

Asana

What I love about Asana is the ‘My Tasks’ view like I mentioned in my previous post. I can move tasks across 4 sections: Today, Up coming, Later, and New Tasks

I changed my task management tools over times because the complexity of my works. I remembered that I loved to spend time looking for a new perfect task management tool. The one that will be my only solution for my task management and then I realized it doesn’t all about the tools, it’s about how I work and manage my tasks.


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