Personal Time Management Software to Take Control of Your Tasks and Projects
Personal time management software takes control of your tasks and projects. Good personal time management is about protecting the vital few things that matter from the trivial many.
So any personal time management software really needs to tick the following boxes:
☑ Can the software capture all my tasks?
☑ Can I organize these tasks by project or context?
☑ Can I prioritize these tasks?
☑ Is there a weekly planning tool that allows me to schedule my time for these tasks?
☑ Can I define goals in the key areas of my life?
While there are literally 100s of time personal time management software programs available…too many for me to test…..I decided to road-test Achieve Planner's 30 day complimentary trial.
After downloading this personal time management software, I was able to access their Training Center, which helped me understand the program and access a time management training course and outlined to me the productivity process (shown below).
I found their screen shots and training resources very helpful and it soon became apparent that their time management system was one that I could trust.
☑ Can I capture and organize all of my tasks and projects?
Most people have multiple projects that they work on.
I work as a psychologist, time management consultant, and lecturer at university - so I had my fair share of multiple projects flying at me.
So an important question was:
Am I able to get all my projects into the one system?
What I found useful was
that I was able to capture all my projects in a central place.
Once I had defined my projects I was able to outline the tasks from start to finish on that project and assign priorities to these, as outlined in the screenshot below.
I was able to capture all of my tasks in one central place. I can't tell you how good this was to get my tasks out of my head an onto a trusted system.
It became apparent pretty
early on that this software is great for fans of David Allen’s Getting
Things
Done (GTD) methodology as it supports GTD-style Contexts and Next Action
Lists. The first step of this time management software resembled the GTD software solution.
☑ Can I prioritize tasks?
The ability to prioritize tasks is critical in any time management system.
Why?
Because in today's world of work the average worker has over 300 hours of backlog to get through. So it is critically important to focus on what matters most rather than the trivial many that crowd out these vital few tasks.
Achieve Planner allows you to prioritize using the ABCD method of prioritization. Importantly it allows you to do this at the project and the task level which focuses you on the correct side of the 80/20 principle.
☑ Planning and scheduling tasks
After prioritizing your tasks it is critically important to be able to schedule these tasks into a weekly planner tool - to protect your time in advance. Achieve planner provides similar weekly planning tool as seen in the screen shot below.
In short, the program allowed me to prioritize and plan my work, and then work my plan!
One weakness of the program was that it did not suggest the best way to structure my weekly plan. However I cover this in how to set up a great time management schedule.
☑ Can I define goals in the key areas of my life?
One of the first steps of Achieve Planner was to get me working on my goals. I made goals in the different areas of my life and put these goals into clearer short-term objectives.
Why is this important?
Because rather than just focus on work-related goals, the software program actually started to clarify and organize the other areas of my life that were just as, if not more, important to me.
It pushed me to make SMART goals in each of the areas of my life which in turn made a positive impact on my work life balance.
These short-term objectives made up the actionable tasks that we put into the planning process. I was able to work my tasks into a daily and weekly schedule.
The time management software helped me to keep track of the goals that I set in each area of my life.
Achieve Planner helped me to stay focused on the top priority tasks throughout the day, and as such not only makes this software good for personal use but also an excellent option for your employees.
Conclusion for Achieve Planner's personal time management software
While it was quite a steep learning curve at first, as the month rolled on, the approach of this software really harnessed my energy in the key result areas of my life.
After 30 days of using this time management software I found that I felt more focused while at work was able to get more things done.
I found that this personal time management software helped me to use my time more effectively.
It helped me to focus on my priorities rather than focusing on stressful things such as having too much to do.
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