The blog

For you who pre­fer lis­ten­ing to read­ing, this post is also avail­able as an episode of the ​“Done!” pod­cast:

Work­ing togeth­er here and there

Many peo­ple I meet have one or sev­er­al oth­er tools in which they col­lab­o­rate with oth­ers and where they also have things not­ed that need to get done — even down to the detailed to-do-task-lev­el. It might be a CRM-sys­tem, a case man­age­ment sys­tem, a sup­port sys­tem, a project man­age­ment tool or some­thing else along those lines.

What do we do if this col­lab­o­ra­tion tool is not con­nect­ed to or com­pat­i­ble with our reg­u­lar to-do-list tool so that the tasks are auto­mat­i­cal­ly trans­ferred to our tool and we can have them gath­ered in a sin­gle place? When we can­not seem to con­nect them, we will have tasks in two places — some on our reg­u­lar list and some in the col­lab­o­ra­tion tool!

When this is the case, should you move the tasks from the col­lab­o­ra­tion tool to the list man­u­al­ly or is it OK for them to be divid­ed into two sep­a­rate locations?

Well, it depends on how you sched­ule your work and man­age your time.

Two places or one?

If you set aside time when you only work on the tasks in that oth­er tool, it will not mat­ter if those to-do-tasks are only writ­ten down in that par­tic­u­lar sys­tem and not on your list. This is so since when you are work­ing away on one of the hours des­ig­nat­ed to the col­lab­o­ra­tion tool, you will only pick tasks from that sys­tem or tool any­way. Your ordi­nary list has noth­ing to do with these sessions.

But, if you at any giv­en moment need to choose the right task to do right now and that next task could come from either the oth­er sys­tem or your reg­u­lar list, it will be eas­i­er if you can see all the tasks you have to do in a sin­gle view and on a sin­gle list. Then you real­ly ought to trans­fer the tasks onto your actu­al to-do-list.

Do this

If you cur­rent­ly have some to-do-tasks on your reg­u­lar to-do-list and some in a col­lab­o­ra­tion tool and want to make it eas­i­er to pri­or­i­tize amongst all your tasks, then do this:

1. Take a moment to con­sid­er whether you can set aside time to only work on the tasks in the col­lab­o­ra­tion tool. If it is, there is not real­ly a prob­lem and you do not need to do any­thing else with the lists.
2. If it is not prac­ti­cal or pos­si­ble to do this, find a way to still gath­er all tasks on a sin­gle list. You can, for instance, :
   • Find out if there is a direct con­nec­tion pos­si­ble between the col­lab­o­ra­tive tool and the dig­i­tal tool you use for your to-do-list. An exam­ple of this is how you can eas­i­ly view your tasks from Microsoft Plan­ner in Microsoft To-Do. If so, this is a prefer­able solution.
   • Find out if the ser­vices Microsoft Pow­er Auto­mate (in Microsoft 365) or Zapi­er can con­nect the two tools and if you can allow Flow or Zapi­er to trans­fer tasks automatically.
   • Move (or rather, copy) the tasks from the col­lab­o­ra­tion tool to your sin­gle to-do-list man­u­al­ly. As I see it, this should be regard­ed as a last resort. If the man­u­al copy­ing becomes too cum­ber­some, have anoth­er go at the first sug­ges­tion above and see if you can­not some­how find a bet­ter solution.

Less scat­tered

If you con­scious­ly and clear­ly design and con­struct a way to deal with the fact that you have your ​“own” tasks in one to-do-list tool and oth­er tasks in anoth­er tool, you will feel less scat­tered and con­cerned that you will for­get some­thing than you oth­er­wise would. Instead of look­ing here and keep­ing an eye there and try­ing not to miss some­thing over there, you can be cer­tain that you always know where you need to look at any giv­en time to select the next right task to work on. You will not feel haunt­ed by the feel­ing of hav­ing for­got­ten some­thing and can relax know­ing that you have a com­pre­hen­sive idea of what you need to do.

What’s your way?

How have you solved this com­mon conun­drum which you share with many oth­ers? Have you man­aged to gath­er tasks from sev­er­al tools and places into a sin­gle loca­tion in a clever way? If so, please feel free to tell me in an email straight away.

(By the way, do you want to know how I have organ­ised my to-do list?)