Choosing a Task Manager Tool

Your choice of task manager is personal and needs to be what works best for you. It can be a paper planner, a digital app or a mixture of both.

Key features to look for include:

• Trusted and reliable – Available anywhere and anytime – online or offline so you can count on it to capture ideas seamlessly. (THIS IS A DEAL BREAKER FOR ME!)
• Frictionless – It should be fast, simple and easy to use.
• Multi-platformed – It should work on: mobile phone / tablet / laptop / iOS / Android / Web / Windows…
• Intuitive – So that there is a short learning curve to get started.
• Built in daily / weekly planning features.
• Ability to share tasks with other collaborators.
• Ideally free or have a feature-rich free plan.

A Roadmap to Help Choose

There are hundreds of to-do task manager apps to choose from. Here is a brief pathway extracted from the Keep Productive website, a great productivity resource, to get started:

1. Watch this 13-minute video by Francesco d’Alessio from Keep Productive, “Best To-Do List Apps For 2023” [12:51] Jan. 23, 2023. It will give you a flavour of the various styles of task managers. – Interesting overview of basic to-do list apps. Ranks Microsoft Todo as no. 4 The Best Free To-Do App. and Todoist as no. 2 he Best, All Round To-Do List App
2. For a deeper dive, refer to the Keep Productive Toolfinder blog, “10 Best To-Do List Apps of 2023“.
3. If you are just starting out, drill down even further and choose one of the three more popular apps listed in this review:

• Todoist – “No. 2 – The Best, All Round To-Do List App” especially in the paid version.
• Things 3 – “No. 3 – A beautiful, reliable and thought-out app” But this app only runs on Apple devices.
• Microsoft Todo – “No. 4 – The Best Free To-Do App”. This app integrates with Office 365 applications such as Outlook, Teams and Planner.

My Tool of Choice – Microsoft Todo

I have been using Microsoft Todo for many years. It ticks off most of the features listed above. It’s free, works well offline, is cross-platform, allows for sharing tasks and connects with other Microsoft Office apps such as Outlook, Teams and Planner.

If you are considering Microsoft Todo, here are two videos by Leila Gharani, a Microsoft Office expert, to get up and running:

1. “How to Use Microsoft To Do & Get Organized!” [13:32] Mar. 16, 2021
2. “How to Use Microsoft To Do With Outlook, Teams & Planner” [11:14] Mar. 23, 2021

Key Takeaways

• If you don’t use a task manager, start!
• The choice of a task manager tool is personal and needs to work for you.
• Choose a tool and try it for a month to see how you like it.
• Use your task manager everyday to develop habits for efficient and effective use.

Share Your Thoughts

Do you use a task manager and, if yes, what do you use? What do you like about it?