Multitasking is not an unfamiliar term for many of us. It has
happened so many times in our lives that we had to juggle between our
professional, personal and other type of tasks. The pressure to
execute important tasks intrudes into our mind and we cannot relax
till we have finished them.
But we also have been
through moments when we forgot to remember important tasks just
because we had so many tasks at hand or we simply forgot them to
perform them at a right time. Such human forgetfulness can land us in
awkward situations. For example we have to face the ire of our
seniors/bosses on account of forgetting to do an important task
entrusted to us or lose trust and goodwill of our friends and
acquaintances when we forget to extend them favors which we promised
at some point of time. At such moments, we definitely feel the need
of some assistance which would have made us remember that we had an
important tasks at hand to perform.
We need to reorient
ourselves and set true priorities for our tasks, so that we can give
them due focus and perform them until their appointed time. We ought
to know clearly which are our most important tasks that we need to
perform urgently and which are our lower priority tasks which we can
do later, so no ambiguities remain. But merely setting the priorities
would not help much. We still need help to know when we need to do a
particular task, otherwise it will slip off our memory.
Writing down our tasks on
a piece of paper, setting up alarms in our mobile may help us at a
personal level, but such tactics would not be very effective at the
organizational level where so many workers are working in an
organization and are entrusted with a variety of tasks. Here also the
tasks that need to be performed vary in importance. Some are truly
important tasks with higher priorities set for them and other tasks
that are associated with a lower priority. In such situations missing
tasks can also create problems or even catastrophes may result if the
higher priority tasks are not performed at the right time.
But as is the case with
humans, they fail to perform important tasks at the right time due to
their forgetfulness, negligence or on account of being too busy and
an organization cannot afford such an erroneous conduct and has to
pay for such blunders right through its nose.
Let us take the example
of a surgeon failing to bring out the needle from the abdomen of
patient after an operation and the patient thereafter is complaining
of constant pain. And for this reason, he has to be operated again.
If the surgeon had cared to make a checklist of the instruments used
in the operation and had simply counted the number of instruments
both before and after the procedure and found them to be equal in
number, such a situation might have never arisen. Sometimes a small
wise effort saves us from enormous suffering later.
Choose Mediums That
Organize Tasks
Such ugly situations can
be effectively avoided if they we choose some mediums that help us in
proper and accurate documentation of tasks and help us in their
timely and planned execution through proper tracking. These aids
should be easy to access and use.
In the organizational
context, one important thing that needs to be kept in mind is that
nowadays workforce in many organizations around the world comprises
of employees who are based in different locations in the world and
are from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds. So such
mediums should be easily accessible to all such men and facilitate
their working as a team and abridge their cultural and geographical
differences.
Our search for such
effective mediums for task documentation, execution and tracking ends
at task management tools though there are other applications around
like spreadsheets, etc, but which help up to a limited level. These
web-based applications enable proper classification, description,
documentation, allocation, execution, tracking and controlling of
tasks. By using these tools, an organization can streamline its
functioning and perform its tasks in an organized and planned manner.
By adopting these, an organization can work more efficiently and save
costs and time and boost its profitability. As these are online
tools, they remain within the easy reach of various employees based
in different locations and they can easily connect with their
organization through these.
Challenges In Choosing
The Best Task Management Tool
Those organizations who
have come to know about the efficacy of these tools for better
management of their tasks and those who have never used these tools
ever before, have a new challenge at their hand; how to choose the
best tool for their needs. As there are so many task
management tools out in the market who are shouting at the top of
their voice that they are the best, is confusing the prospective
users even more. These organizations are not sure where to start and
whom to give the favour. So where lies the remedy?
Suggested Remedies
The easiest thing for
them would be to go with the reviews of a particular tool and spend
time reading and analyzing them. These reviews have been written by
some great technology enthusiasts who love to test new applications
and give their input on these. So this at least can give them some
idea over how a particular tool is faring. But in some cases
different technology experts may rate the same tool differently. So
the same application being ranked differently by different people
will not always provide clarity over such matters. But this idea does
hold some merit.
Another thing that may
enthuse the prospective users, is the free trials offered by some of
these application providers. An organization can choose to go with a
free trial being offered by a particular task management tool.
Usually these trials span a fixed number of days and in most cases
these are a month long. During this time, an organization can use the
application and have a feel of it and see how it benefits their work.
Thus an organization tends to know how a particular application
works and can accordingly make up its mind for upgrading to its paid
version, if it is satisfied with the results.
Different task management
tools have different set of features and cater to different types of
organizations. Some cater for freelancers, while others are designed
for small sized, medium and large sized organizations and some of
these are scalable for all sizes and flexible for all types of
organizations. So an organization before choosing to go with a
particular tool, should know pretty clearly what its needs and
requirements are and whether a particular tool can do justice to
these and whether it would be suitable for its size.
More Clarity on How
These Tools Work
There are numerous videos
on display in famous video viewing sites which gives a fair idea on
how various task management tools function, so that is going to help
the users know how to proceed while working with a particular
application.
Users can also approach
support staff of various task management service providers and
inquire should they have any queries or confusion about their use, so
that would also help.
Multitasking Can
Indeed Be Achieved
The availability of
such tools gives us a hope that we too can perform our multiple tasks
with precision and focus without ever forgetting them if we choose to
prioritize them in the right manner through such aids. Using these
tools would incur costs, but such costs are negligible considering
the benefits these would bring. Organizations using these would be
saving their time, costs, improving efficiency, pushing their sales
up and will be able to provide timely and quality services to their
clients and customers. These tools provide immense scope for
organizations to grow and prosper. Forgetting tasks will become a
thing a past as humans can easily forget these, but these tools never
will.
Author
Bio:
Sharon
is a Business manager of ProofHub, a web based
project management software
that facilitates management of projects and helps in their faster and
accurate accomplishment as per schedule. It enables the team members
who are spread out in different locations in the world to collaborate
over project matters. They can define, document, discuss, organize,
coordinate, review and control different project matters efficiently
which results in their quick resolution. With its use, organizational
objectives can be achieved effectively along with the generation of
intended gains and assets.
