8 Task Management Strategies To Boost Productivity

Emails. Browser notifications. Slack DMs. Feeling overwhelmed and not sure where to look or where to start? Trying to respond to all of the noise while your task list seems to grow exponentially is challenging. Here are my top task management strategies to help you calm the chaos and get sh*t done.

Why Task Management Is Important

Task management is important because if tasks aren’t managed, chaos will ensue very quickly. It’s not just about getting things done, but about getting the right things done in the right order.

As a project manager, you need to manage your own to-do list and your team’s tasks. With so many moving parts, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. To keep this from happening, you need task management skills—breaking work into right-sized tasks and giving realistic deadlines, documenting upcoming tasks, and following up as tasks get closer to their due dates.

8 Task Management Strategies

Starting your daily routine as a project manager with a well-managed task list is good for your wellbeing and helps you create a more peaceful work environment. Here are eight task management strategies to calm the chaos and bring control to you and your team’s to-do lists.

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1. Use Task Management Software

You don’t have to do task management alone. There are plenty of task management software options and task management apps that can help you and your team stay organized and manage everything that needs to be done, who needs to do them, and when. They have tools for creating lists, visualizing your workload, and reminding you about when tasks are due.

Some of these software tools integrate with collaboration tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams so you can get instant alerts when something has been completed. Many of them also have mobile apps, and some even offer AI features or integrations. Remember to double-check any AI recommendations. If something feels a little off, it probably is.

2. Set Clear Goals & Expectations

When assigning tasks or delegating to your team, set clear goals and expectations. For example, I make it clear that I expect my team to proactively tell me when they are going to miss a deadline before they’ve missed it. The more notice I have, the more time I have to work with anyone impacted and reorganize dependent work that can’t be started.

Goals also help with both motivation and benchmarking. For example, if the team completed 25% more tasks than the week before, this can help them feel accomplished and show them how they are pacing. 

Benchmarks can help you measure your team members’ performance, too. If you have three designers on a team, let’s say, you can compare them to each other and set expectations accordingly. 

• Let’s say designer A completes around six tasks a day, while designer B does seven, and designer C does 12. 
• Assuming tasks are of similar size and that designer C is the most experienced, you might set a goal to have designer A complete seven tasks a day and designer B push themselves to eight. 
• If designer C has more seniority and experience, it’s not fair to push designers A and B to the same standard, but it’s worth trying to push them to work more efficiently.

Author's Tip

Be careful not to incentivize the team to rush through important tasks to hit a benchmark. Another word of caution here related to burnout: pushing the team to exceed goals too hard or too often can increase the risk of burnout. There is a fine line between making things engaging and fun and pushing too hard.

3. Prioritize

Effective task management often comes down to prioritization. Look at your task management tool or to-do list and determine what is most urgent and most important.

How do we define urgency? It can vary, but let’s start with time-bound items. If something is due immediately, that should be your team’s highest priority, especially if not accomplishing it will hold up someone else, or a client’s work.

Then, look at the impact of the items on your list. The items that impact the most people should be addressed first. For example, if setting up a project plan allows your team of 20 to plan their schedules for the next few weeks, do that ahead of, say, responding to an email about an internal meeting that can wait.

One way to prioritize is to use an Eisenhower matrix. Draw four quadrants on a piece of paper and plot your tasks according to urgency and importance. 

• The left upper quadrant should have the most urgent and most important tasks (do these first)
• The right upper quadrant should have urgent but not important tasks (decide if you need to do them)
• The lower left quadrant should have tasks that are not important but urgent (try to delegate these) 
• The right lower quadrant should have tasks that aren’t urgent or important (do you really need to do these?)

Time management is also a factor. You may find yourself with 15 minutes of downtime between meetings and want to use the time wisely. Highlight a few smaller tasks that you can knock out quickly as time allows.

Author's Tip

Your priorities won’t be the same as other team members or project managers in your org, and you may have to push back when there is a misalignment between your priorities and someone else’s. This comes up a lot in the digital agency space more so than for project managers who are in-house.

 

Agency project managers may be juggling 4 to 5 (or more) projects at a time. There are a lot of people with different priorities involved—external stakeholders, agency leadership, and the client’s broader team. Learning to prioritize also means pushing back on having too many competing and even conflicting priorities.

4. Limit Multitasking

This one might feel counterintuitive, but I promise it’s not. When you multitask, you do a lot of things either: a) not completely, or b) not well. You have to focus to make any headway on your task list.

Sure, a quick yes or no Slack message to a colleague while you’re listening to a design presentation might be okay occasionally, but what happens if you miss a critical decision or action item that comes up in conversation? You could accidentally derail the whole project!

Block out a few distraction-free windows (i.e. time blocking) in your day to knock out some of your tasks. This is easier said than done, but let your team, your client, or your boss know you need to go heads down for 45 minutes and focus on the tasks at hand. You’ll get a lot further than you would in 2 or 3 hours of trying to complete tasks and do other things at the same time.

Another reason to avoid multitasking is that context switching can cost you a lot of time. If you get halfway through drafting an email and stop to answer a Slack message, it might take you 20 minutes to get back to the same point in the email you were at before you were interrupted.

5. Use Visualization Tools

I personally like a good visual when it comes to mapping out my to-do list, and I use different kinds of visuals for different kinds of task lists.

I like a paper list for the most important things each day. It feels so good to cross off items as I complete tasks and to see the visual reminder of my progress. And yes, I know I can do this in project management software, but there is something about pen and paper I like.

For the bigger picture (i.e. the whole week), I like an organized Asana Kanban board view that lets me move tasks between columns for not started, in progress, and done work. At the end of the week, it feels good to see all of my tasks in the done column.

For project timelines, a Gantt chart helps you see where you are and where you are supposed to be. Some tools can create this view automatically, which saves you more time for other tasks.

6. Delegate

You don’t necessarily have to complete your entire task list by yourself. Delegating tasks to other team members can free you up to focus on other things.

Note-taking is one of my favorite tasks to delegate. As the project manager, it almost always falls to me to take notes, but this is challenging when I am also responsible for making sure all agenda points are covered, watching the time, updating the project management tool, and keeping the discussion going. 

I often need to update the project management tool or move timeline items during the meeting, so if I can delegate note-taking or even some follow-up tasks to my team, I can keep things moving more efficiently.

You can also consider delegating the note-taking and follow-up drafting to AI. There are plenty of tools out there for automatically drafting meeting summaries and action items.

7. Keep Things Flexible

Another way to optimize your task management abilities is to be flexible. For example, if you know you focus better later in the day, save tasks that require the most focus for later and complete smaller, easier-to-manage tasks in the morning.

Planning around your energy levels is a great way to stay on top of daily tasks and maximize your productivity. As long as you can hit your deadlines and due dates, it’s fine to be agile and do things in a way that works best for you!

For example, I struggle to update project timelines when everyone else is working. My attention always goes to Slack messages, resolving urgent team needs, and responding to client emails. It takes me way less time overall to do this task first thing in the morning or at the end of the day.

I also find that sometimes even if I set dedicated time for a specific task, I might move it based on my energy levels or what else is on my to-do list. When writing this article, I moved around writing time on my calendar to make sure I was prioritizing tasks that were more urgent while still leaving time for writing.

If I find myself struggling to focus on longer or more tedious tasks, I sometimes use the Pomodoro technique to give myself blocks of time with scheduled breaks. If you are unfamiliar with this technique, you work for a focused period of time (usually about 20 minutes) followed by a break. There are even timers specifically designed to facilitate this way of working.

8. Set Clear Deadlines

When it comes to managing tasks, setting clear deadlines can make things more achievable. It can also help if you or someone on your team is prone to procrastination. 

There’s more to this than setting a deadline and hoping for the best. Build in milestones or checkpoints along the way so you track progress or be alerted to a lack thereof.

Being clear about what needs to be done and when can also help with prioritization. Set deadlines further out for less important or less urgent tasks, so team members can focus on what matters most in the moment. Don’t let tasks linger too long or they could fall through the cracks as more urgent needs arise. 

An Example of Task Management

In order to practice task management (and the time management strategies behind good task management), I’m going to walk you through a little exercise.

Here’s a sample task list; the priority tasks are mixed in with those that are far less urgent. Look at the list and determine what you should do first, and more importantly, why that particular task should be completed before the others?

1. Review last week’s time tracking and make a note of who did not complete their time or did not track enough billable time.
2. Respond to Client A’s question about edits in the second round of designs.
3. Set up a meeting with Client B because their feedback on their map design is not clear enough for the designer to implement.
4. Check in on Client B’s microsite UAT.
5. Send Client C questions about their plans for tomorrow’s landing page launch. You need to confirm tracking they want on the page, the URL, and whether they want to handle launching or have your team update the DNS records.
6. Complete your article by the deadline and bill for it once it’s edited.
7. Update the timeline for Client D. They were late in sending feedback on the style guide and moodboard. Now that it’s approved, the designer can start working on the designs.
8. Set up a meeting to discuss Client E’s contract, which expires in 45 days. They want to renew, but it could take 14 business days on their side to get a new agreement signed.

So, what is the right order for these tasks? What is the highest priority item on this list?

If you said #5, you are correct. The first thing you want to do is make sure you are ready for tomorrow’s launch. The more time you have with the responses from the client, the better off you will be. 

What about the rest of the tasks? What order would you put them in? You don’t always have to do tasks in real time; you can schedule them to maintain efficiency and avoid creating blockers or bottlenecks.

What’s Next?

If workflows, productivity, and streamlining operations make your ears perk up, you’re in the right place! Join The Digital Project Manager membership community for more insights like these to help you grow in your career as a project manager. The community also offers courses, templates, and other resources to help you manage projects.