The blog

Does some­one who has a case man­age­ment sys­tem real­ly need a to-do-list? It is appar­ent what to do next by look­ing in the sys­tem, so there is no need for you to remem­ber any­thing yourself.

And what about those who have a CRM-sys­tem? The next activ­i­ty for the client you are work­ing for at the moment is ready and the sys­tem can remind you when it is time to do the activ­i­ty if you want it to.

Not to men­tion the project-tool. Who­ev­er uses one or sev­er­al of these, for instance Share­point, have all the steps of the process read­i­ly avail­able in the tool, so why should they need a to-do-list as well?

The only straight answer to these ques­tions is:

”That depends”.

Depends on what?
You need a sep­a­rate to-do-list …

• if the activ­i­ties in the sys­tem are so ambigu­ous­ly for­mu­lat­ed that you still find oth­er ways of remem­ber­ing to call some­one, e‑mail, check, or sched­ule some­thing, et c


• if you only update the case or project pri­or to the coor­di­na­tion meet­ings or even just before clos­ing the whole case or project

Here is the deal: If you do not use the case man­age­ment sys­tem to keep track of all the ​”small things” you have to do such as call­ing, e‑mailing, writ­ing, send­ing, call some­one back, con­vene col­leagues for meet­ings et c, then you still have to keep these things in your head or writ­ten on notes, in an app or some­where else. You have no use of the sys­tem in terms of ​”remem­ber­ing” what you have to do.

Do this
If you do not believe you need a to-do-list since you already have a project-tool, a CRM-sys­tem and a case man­age­ment sys­tem, then at least ask your­self the fol­low­ing two questions:

• Do you write down things you need to remem­ber to do in some­place oth­er than in the system(s) you are using?


• Do you check sev­er­al tasks off at the same time in the sys­tem, and not very often at that, rather than check­ing the tasks off one by one as you com­plete them?

If you answered ​”yes” to one of these ques­tions, you need a real to-do-list in addi­tion to what­ev­er sys­tem you are cur­rent­ly using. If you already have one, then you have already dealt with this issue. If not, then deter­mine what the one and only loca­tion you write down all the tasks you need to do, which you do not do imme­di­ate­ly, will be.

If you are lucky, you will be able to add the tasks to your case man­age­ment-/ project-/ CRM-sys­tem so that they auto­mat­i­cal­ly syn­chro­nize with your dig­i­tal to-do-list, for instance like you can for Outlook’s Tasks (if you are using Out­look for e‑mailing).

Clear overview once again
If you get your­self one sin­gle to-do-list, in spite of hav­ing a case man­age­ment sys­tem (or some­thing sim­i­lar), you will have a clear and con­cise way to gath­er all your tasks which are not con­cerned with the cas­es you are man­ag­ing in the sys­tems. You will there­by get a much clear­er overview of all your com­mit­ments and will be able to influ­ence your work­ing-sit­u­a­tion to a greater extent. With less things clut­ter­ing your mind, you will be able to focus on and think about much more impor­tant mat­ters. You will also be less dis­tract­ed by some­thing you hap­pened to catch a glimpse of since it was at the top of the pile, and will be able to main­tain greater focus in your work.

What have you combined?
Have you com­bined a to-do-list with some form of coop­er­a­tive sys­tem so that it actu­al­ly works well for you? Tell me!