About task management

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:49:48 +0200

Task management is an underestimated aspect of project and self-management. Self-management not in psychological sense, but about managing your personal resources.

I have to admin that this topic sounds boring, but I gave my best to write an engaging and insightful post.

Over the years I tried various ways of managing task in very different settings. Depending on if you are working in a team or alone, in a big project or side hustle the requirements for managing tasks can very different.

In the spirit of resourcefulness I always looked for the task management system that meet all requirements and is still flexible enough to adapt for new one.

In this post I want to first give you an idea on what I have tried so far, what worked and what did not. Then I explore aspects or call it dimensions of task management.

Lets get started. In order to note tasks you need some kind of system to take notes.

Taking Notes

Taking notes is a basic function of a computer. Instead of writing it down on paper, you open your favorite note app and start writing. If you are proliferate writer or fear that you forget stuff then you require a more sophisticated editor.

Doing Tasks

Note taking is intertwined with task management. If you are trying to accomplish a big project you will need a big board to visualize and track everything. Just writing a text about a project is not enough. You need to be able analyse, plan, assign and calculate. In this context task management is at the intersection of project management and note taking.

Tools

Over the years I have tried many tools for note taking, managing tasks and doing project management. Just to name a few: logseq, asana, trello, joplin, zettlr, roam, orgmode, vscode extensions, evernote, onenote, standard notes, pen and paper, nextcloud collective, plain txt files, apple notes, notes in webdav calendar, confluence, jira, …

Odoo and Obsidian

Righ now, I am working with Odoo and Obsidian. Obsidian is by far the best note taking tool that I ever used and it will probably stick with me for a long time. Odoo is my business and therefore I have to dog-food the Odoo project apps. Odoo allows me to extend the project apps in any way I wish.

Atlassian Products

I have worked in big projects and was tortured with Jira and Confluence for a life time. Terms like epics and stories were strongly coined by Jira. Atlassian products encourage micro-management and that is sit.

If you are user of Atlassian products, please sober up and setup a proper system like Odoo project and Obsidian.

Terms

At this point I mentioned tasks, epics, stories and project. It is very important that you and your team have an exact understanding of what this means. I can assure you that if you ask for a definition you get as many definitions as people asked.

In experience task and project management is about these four:

project
phase
task
todo

Project and Phase

A project consists of multiple phases. A phase defines what is done during a time period. Compared to a milestone, a milestone defines a deadline and a result. I really do not like milestones. Working on project must be a process and not measured by its result. A successful project is the result of a working process.

Todo and Task

A todo has two states. It is either done or not done. A task can have multiple states and most importantly can change over time.

Your personal way of managing task can be different from how you manage tasks in a team or in the company. However, the one thing that has to work across individuals, teams and organisation is task planning.

Delegation

Many teams underestimate the importance of delegation. Assigning a task is not about changing a name on card, it transfers freedoms and responsibilities from one person to another.

Unclear delegation often leads to expectation mismatch and misaligned results.

To what point can a collaborator make his own decisions and at what point does it take the consent from the team?
Does assigning a task also requires a confirmation from the assigned?

Such Questions need be answered beforehand.

Board

In order to manage tasks, you need to write them down. Remember? The best way to do so is on a project board. A project board has multiple columns and a task passes from the left column to right. These columns are also the state of a task. One left could be “ready” and on the right “done”.

Backlog

What if a task is not relevant any more? Should it just be deleted? On board you can also add an outer left column called “Backlog”. Backlog means that whatever it is, is not important anymore, but might be relevant in the future and therefore you do not want forget about it.

Postlog

And the postlog (invented by me) is the very opposite of the backlog. The postlog column contains tasks that exist for the entire life-cycle of a project. For example “project administration” starts when the project is created and done once the project ends.

So we have many project boards with tasks and todos. We established on how to delegate these things and what they mean. Our personal resources are finite and therefore we resource planning.

Planning

Stick with weekly planning. Every Monday morning (at my company) we walk through the running projects and decide what we want to achieve this week. People can signal for help or give inputs when asked.

Scope

We avoid communicating deadlines and plans to our clients. Organisations and software move at different speed. The scope of a software project changes the very moment it started. Trying to

This post ended up as a brain dump. I hope it was an interesting read and got some new ideas to manage task at your company or for for yourself.

Struggle with arbitrary knowledge

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 15:27:00 +0000

This post is about a thought I wanted to process and thus wrote it down.

At work I often find myself to be exhausted from dealing with intensive thinking patterns. In my definition intensive thinking patterns are caused by issues which occur often, cannot be solved easily and require a sustainable solution. This sounds very broad, let me give you an example.

I am currently working on a big software development project. As I joined the project only recently, I managed to grasp only a small part of the whole. While working on tasks I often have to navigate a huge file tree with complex dependencies. Doing so always requires a lot of attention and caution. Moreover, there a various build processes in place which make the project even more obfuscating. Inconsistent naming within files and code increases complexity and in result the chance of me doing mistakes. However, from experience I know, that a file or data structure with a strict syntax and taxonomy can be handled much easier. By defining naming conventions and providing a certain degree of predictability for naming concepts, complexity can be reduced drastically. On the opposite if a project has less restrictions on naming conventions, a long history of changes and dealt with various opinions, I find myself to struggle working with it.

A random encounter introduced to me to the term “arbitrary knowledge”. And I think this term describes the challenge I am facing very well. Arbitrary knowledge is knowledge which is difficult to acquire. It takes more time and effort to understand something or learn about a new topic. The unpredictability of arbitrary knowledge prevents your thought process from connecting the dots easier. So if you end up working on a complex project and find yourself struggling, it may may not be caused by a lack of effort or abilities, but on the very fact that you have to deal with arbitrary knowledge. But how can you deal with such a situation? I have thought about a few steps which help reducing the need for arbitrary knowledge and thus decrease complexity.

Simple steps to reduce arbitrary knowledge

Avoid Abbreviations

Working with abbreviations increases productivity within a closed group, but makes it much harder for new members to tap in.

Avoid Generics

Generics are common in programming, but are also used in other disciplines. Generic terms are more likely used to describe something. We tend to abstract concepts and systems, especially in software development. But often for no obvious reason. Re-usability is not supposed be a first class-citizen when writing code.

Reuse Naming Concepts

On the other hand what should be reused are naming concepts. At best there are concepts in place at a corporate level and they do not have to be defined for each project.

Communicate Standards

No standard is worth something if people are not aware of it. Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? Often you build standards yourself while solving an issue, but never communicate these standards to your team members. Make sure they aware of them.

Projectmanagement on Janik von Rotz

About task management

Struggle with arbitrary knowledge

Simple steps to reduce arbitrary knowledge