We are Time’s Subjects, and Time Bids Be Gone

I’m looking for some advice on task management. I need a method with intrinsic value which transcends digital applications.

Too much to ask?

Medium is mostly filled with people giving advice. That’s OK; it’s a good thing.

I do it all the time. I love putting opinions into a melting pot and seeing what happens. Sometimes general consensuses emerge from the ether.

That’s why I love my system for knowledge management. It’s not perfect, but I have a system in place to deal with everything. I put things in and sometimes themes emerge. I love using Obsidian for this.

Obsidian is my happy knowledge place.

But the idea of applying a similar approach to task management has, as yet, eluded me. Kind of like my ability, or lack thereof, to appreciate Shakespeare. So lets try to do both.

And that’s where I would like your help.

I’m looking for a task management happy place.

O task management, o task management. Wherefore art thou task management?

If there’s one thing people like to talk about, its productivity. I don’t have a problem with my productivity but I do have a problem around the concept of ‘getting things done’ (in the words of David Allen, whose book I have yet to read, but want to).

You see, I’ve always struggled with task management. I just don’t get how I can love planning of ideas and organising how I might enact those ideas, but not love task management.

I love everything behind the concept, there is just something deeper preventing me from connecting.

And I’ll no longer be a Gantt Chart

I’ll give an example. I have a strong dislike of Gantt charts. They just never work for me. But I don’t know why.

They should. I mean, there’s numbers and colours and they are essentially a graph. I love graphs. And I love numbers. And colours.

Here’s the most simple, but beautiful and effective-looking Gantt Chart for a PhD I’ve ever seen:

Here’s the link if you want to use it for yourself: Madeline Taylor’s Gantt Chart (thanks to The Thesis Whisperer for linking to this one).

I mean I just LOVE it. It looks so useful and pretty and organised and uncomplicated; I want to use their approach so bad.

So why can’t I? It makes me itchy.

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me

The number of times I’ve started trying to implement something and it didn’t stick is too many to count.

I love structure, so why do I hate the ‘structure’ of task management?

I’ve tried Monday and similar things. I’ve tried ToDoIst (hated that one), TickTick and Notion for managing tasks and todos. I’ve tried using Outlook in a more structured, time planning-y way including Microsoft’s ‘To To’ app.

I’ve tried installing plugins like Full Calendar and Fantasy Calendar in Obsidian but I haven’t yet gotten them to work for me. A new note for everything in my calendar; yikes!

Because I find task management tricky, at the time of writing, tasks in my Obsidian are strictly forbidden! Obsidian is my happy knowledge place and I intend to keep it that way. I don’t want tasks cluttering my thought processes.

I’ve tried mobile apps like Habitica and Sweep (<- for housework) but using them came with a distinct feeling I was procrastinating rather than ‘doing the thing’.

Nothing will come of nothing

Nothing seems to work. But something has to.

The only things I get to work, or at least that I keep coming back to, are my physical desk diary and my Outlook calendar.

I only use Outlook because it’s the system my university uses. It’s OK, but wouldn’t be my chosen calendaring app. I know I need a digital calendar as the alarm reminders really help. Trouble is my work calendar is locked to improve security and therefore won’t export to apps like ToDoIst.

Although I love my Collins Colplan Weekly A4 Diary (not an affiliate link), carrying around an A4 book everywhere is not practical, so sometimes I miss things.

And, as someone who often works in a lab, I don’t always have my phone on me.

Yet when I miss things and they don’t get recorded somewhere, it’s as if they don’t exist.

Summer’s lease hath all too short a date

If something is not in my calendar, it won’t get done.

I missed an abstract for a deadline for a conference last week due to the fact the date was not in my diary. Ooops. My supervisor was annoyingly understanding …

Whatever system I come to use will need manual adjustment and tweaks. I wonder it if is my inconsistency with these that is causing my challenge?

I also wonder if the idea of a ‘task’ is inherently linked to ‘something I have to do’ and I may not want to do the thing. So I avoid it and the system associated with it.

How can I make my task management procedure intrinsically rewarding, in the same way that my knowledge management is?

Is it that I haven’t developed task management as a healthy habit?

Like the healthy habit I developed with coffee:

Keeping Coffee as a Healthy Habit and Not a Daily Requirement

When coffee is a both a ritual and a drink I enjoy, how can I reap its benefits whilst keeping on the straight and narrow when it comes to…

Knowledge EcologyAnnette Raffan

How can I develop a healthy task management habit?

What’s done is done

I do journaling occasionally and I like looking back and seeing from where I have come. It’s nice to see what has been done, what I have achieved and what I have learned. This is inherently rewarding surely?

I look forwards to my weekly review, yet I don’t do it consistently enough for it to be useful.

Why I Love Doing a Personal Weekly Review in Obsidian

A personal weekly review can be a very effective technique to focus on what is going well and to eliminate the things to help keep your focus.

Knowledge EcologyAnnette Raffan

I love that tasks and todos are 3D; they have a history, a present and a future. And that’s just the time aspect. They also have a depth associated with these. I want to be able to use this.

I’m a great reflector, especially when it comes to my experiences with a coach for my PhD. This means that there are other dimensions to a task being done (or not done). Ones that I might be able to make more exciting, and less ‘tasky’.

They are not just tasks to be checked off but are threads to be interwoven into a rich tapestry of life.

OK, maybe that idea is a little too romantic, but you get the gist. How can I ensure I have a system that results in a piece of useful art?

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together

A task has learning, reflection and more tasks. They link to knowledge and ideas I want to pursue. My tasks are ultimately intertwined with what I think, when I think and how I think.

But I don’t like to see a task when I’m working with my knowledge.

Task management is also intertwined with my energy; when I have it and when I don’t. I could plan things beautifully, but if I have an off day, it all goes out the window. How can I have a system that picks up where I left off?

I mean, sometimes I have a to-done list. I find these useful when I feel like I haven’t achieved anything. How does such a thing fit into task management? I would need the ability to have ‘retrospective tasks’.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises

I feel like I have wasted so much time trying to implement approaches I never stick to. And that doesn’t include the time thinking about the thinking of a system to implement…

So this time, I want to request advice and suggestions from everybody here. Hit me up with how you do task management.

Where did you get your inspiration?

How much time do you spend using your time versus managing your time?

How do you create your life tapestry?

I don’t want a complicated setup, I need a system with intrinsic value that transcends apps; one that I enjoy spending time with and is ultimately useful.