Streamlined CEO

Unlocking Productivity: Mastering Task Management

• Karalee Gault • Episode 35

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Ever felt like you're juggling too many tasks with too little time? Join me, Karalee, on Neurodivergent Bytes as I introduce you to task management! How I handle my ever-growing checklist of business and personal tasks. In today's episode, we're not just talking about keeping track of what to do; we're revolutionizing how to do it. By marrying category-based time blocking with intuitive workflow, I've said goodbye to the paralysis of a rigid schedule and hello to productivity that resonates with my neurodivergent brain. Listen in for a transformative perspective on task management that might just change your life.

Navigating the maze of project management tools can be a nightmare—I know because I've been there, through a staggering 40 systems. But my trials led me to the goldmine: ClickUp. This episode peels back the layers of ClickUp's complexity, revealing the simple power it holds for those who take the time to master it. Not stopping at mere organization, we'll discuss the game-changing benefits of operational audits to blast through business bottlenecks. Whether you're a solo entrepreneur or managing a growing team, this candid chat is packed with actionable guidance to streamline your operations and elevate your efficiency to new heights.

ClickUp -Grab Your Own Account: https://clickup.pxf.io/c/4849151/1416724/16855

Getting Started Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZXtvBBrUiB-jQ8E6Xhs_2zJaNNbz902E

Work with Me Form:

theproductivityimpact.com/work-with-me

Free Operations Audit:

theproductivityimpact.com/landing/operations-audit

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Karalee:

Hello, hello, amazing humans, welcome back to neurodivergent bytes. I am your host, Karalee, and today we're actually going to be diving into task management. Now, I haven't done an episode on task management in a hot minute, but you may know if you've been listening for a while, that my task management system of choice is ClickUp. ClickUp is my central hub for business. Everything gets filtered through it, but primarily it's to keep me on track. What in the world do I need to do today? What do I need to do tomorrow? What's due in three months? When are these bills due for business? Like? When does this project have to be done? What are the deadlines Right Now? How can I sort it out? What information do I need to have for my business? So I use ClickUp as information storage, but also for task management so due dates, what they are, breaking things down. I use it for calendars, so events and what needs done for different things, launches we can put it all together there. You can have your launch plan and your actual task of what you need to do each day, right? There are so many ways to use task management, but specifically how I use task ClickUp for my task management is what I find to be a game changer for myself, and there's a lot of other clients I've worked with as well that I integrate or streamline their ClickUp for them to where they can use it to keep information storage on ice Right.

Karalee:

So many things have been brought to our attention when it comes to technology in business and communication. All that because well, maybe because of the pandemic, but even before that right, all these things existed before that, but now we see the real power of how they can keep us connected Right. And so if you want to give ClickUp a try, you can go ahead and head below. I also did a starter series on my YouTube channel. Today. You can also get you started as well, to just kind of walk you through the basics of ClickUp and to see if that would be something that you would like to work with. And, of course, we have full scale ClickUp setup as well here, and you can go ahead and head to the show notes and fill out the work with me form If that is something that you'd like to have more information about. All right.

Karalee:

So task management like what the world is it Right? Task management is when you're able to take all of the millions of things that are in your brain and we're able to organize it down into something like ClickUp and it's going to remind you when things need to be done. Right, it's kind of like when we use our Google Calendar Right, it's just a doctor's appointments. It reminds us when our kids have events at school. It reminds us of, you know, gatherings that you have with family, right?

Karalee:

A lot of us use Google Calendar, or whatever calendar, as our task management, and that is time blocking at its finest, when you actually block out the time on your calendar for a specific task. However, although my name is Karalee and that does not work for me, that actually is a very overwhelming, very triggering and I will get nothing done. So I have a different form of how to do this, and that's basically blocking off time for a certain category of tasks, right? So let's say, for example, social media, marketing sort of thing, networking stuff, like you know that realm. Let's say I have an hour for that and I am going to, and there's tasks I have to do for this category, and then say there's 10 of them and now I'm going to go. Okay, here's the start of my hour. I'm pretty good about this. This feels pretty good. And which ones inside of these tasks, which ones feel really good, though, all right. So it doesn't mean that it's number one. It could be number 10. It could be number four, whatever Right, but I'm going to go with the ones that feel the best. So I'm blocking off time to work on my business, but I'm not forcing myself to do a specific category or task at that given time. I'm allowing that time to come. I'm allowing that time to come and I'm allowing myself to feel very into what feels good for me.

Karalee:

Okay, and that's something that doesn't like helps me with task paralysis, you know, analysis paralysis even, because I'm just leaning into what feels good, what is pulling me in. If it's nothing, that means I'm overwhelmed and I need to go do something like meditate or read a book I need to, you know or do that thing that's been nagging you like, maybe clean that room or you know whatever's been nagging you like. I just need to get this done so that way I can focus. Right. Don't ignore those things because you're not going to get as much done Right. Your tasks are not going to get checked off if we have other things that are literally taking up so much space and energy in our brain. So go to that one thing and come back and you feel so much better.

Karalee:

I actually did that last night. There was I have so many projects to finish. And I was like, okay, I have time to work right now. I want to work. What is bugging me, like, what can I do? What is being pulling me in, what feels really good to work on. And it was actually a project that was on the books for Friday but it was something that was bugging me that I kept putting off and I'm like the due dates approaching, I'm like I do need to do that. It doesn't matter if I scheduled it for Friday. It feels good to get done now and there's nothing on the schedule for today, like I absolutely have to finish right, because I don't do it quite like that. I like I put like this is what I'm doing for the week and we figure out how we can break it down, what feels best. So I ended up getting that project like 95% done, because essentially hyper focused on it, because that's what felt in alignment to me at the time and it was bugging me and all these things. So I was able to actually get it done really, really fast, and so take that into account when you're talking about your task manager, especially if you start having things get overdue or if you find yourself like things are really getting slowed down. It could be a bottleneck.

Karalee:

If you listened to last week's episode, I talked about operations and what bottlenecks are, and bottlenecks are where things slow down significantly. Right? Is this a place where things slow down significantly for you, as in managing your tasks, right? Like? Or you or your tasks just written all over the place on post-its and in notebooks and thrown all over the place? Maybe they're thrown in your Google calendar, but they just keep passing and you actually haven't completed them, right? Do we have a central hub where we can literally check it off or we can change the date, or you know what I mean Like we can actually keep track of what's going on with it, right? That's why I like ClickUp, because they can keep track of all of those things. And so find yourself, get yourself organized Aside.

Karalee:

Today, what are you going to use for task management, whether that be a paper planner, whether that be a notebook that's dedicated to task management for each day, or something, whether that be an online software like ClickUp not even going to name any other ones, because I don't like them Anyway, but there's things like Asana, andrello and Notion. Those are the ones that are most talked about. Okay, I have tried every single one of them. I still like ClickUp the most, and so that's me.

Karalee:

I love ClickUp, but, as a little tidbit, I actually used to hate ClickUp. About two years ago, when I first tried it, it was super overwhelming and I was like there's no way. I even bought a course and it's still to make any sense. But actually what happened was is I didn't have someone that could explain it to me and I didn't also have the knowledge of what a task management system was supposed to do for me. So like it was overwhelming. Two years later almost three now, I guess Now I'm like OMG, clickup is the best. Love it.

Karalee:

It does everything I need and I know how to organize it, which is also why I help you organize it, because you don't need to go through three years of trying 40 plus different project management systems to figure out how in the world they all work and which one works best for you and all the things right. Facebook will bring up all the you put in Google project management or task management systems and it's going to bring us them up and then Facebook is going to take over from there and then it's going to clutter your entire feed with all these ads for all these other systems. So, actually, what I did a couple of years ago was literally screenshot all of the project management systems that popped up on my Facebook and I went and did a free trial. I went and tried the free trial to kind of get an inside look into it, right? That is how I found all of these different things about task management and what it's supposed to do for me. But I want to shorten that for you.

Karalee:

You don't have time to go out and try 40 different task management systems, nor do I recommend it. That was overwhelming, but it was my job, like I was like this will help my job, so it's totally worth it, right? But that's how. There's more than 40 and that, and yeah, like the four I named are just the ones that are more well known, right? And so so many different things. So if you're like I need a task management system, I'm not really sure what I need, I suggest click up and or send me a DM. We can get it figured out where you can get started, but click up does have a free. They do have a free version, free for life version, and obviously there's more when you pay for it. I do pay for it right now, but I didn't pay for it for almost a year and a half and then I decided I needed a few more features. So I paid for it. But, yeah, you count free for a while. So, yeah, that is why I'm so passionate about task management.

Karalee:

I literally my click up got a little overran. Be honest, right, I'm not perfect. My click up got a little overran. There's a bunch of overdue stuff. Like I need to. I need to do an operations audit on my own business again, because things are definitely slowing down, there are bottlenecks, and so, like I'm working toward really refining my task management again, because as I'm growing and as I'm doing more things, I've had to go in there and archive stuff. I've had to move things around. Like my business is pivoting, right. So like I've had to like what do I need now? What do I not need? What is the most efficient way to do this? You know how can I streamline this, right? So I do that about once a quarter, because that's what's needed. Once a quarter things have shifted or things aren't relevant anymore, like we got to clean up all the overdue stuff, that some of those overdue things actually you don't need to do and you actually just needed to leave them or put them in a parking lot of some sort, right Do? Parking lot is something that you kind of create and then you just it's like it's parked for later. It's kind of how we look at it. It's like parking lot, right, each idea is a car and it's parked. I love that. So you know, this is how we clean up things.

Karalee:

And if you haven't done an operations audit on your business yet, I actually put together the top five most common bottlenecks that I find in businesses and I put it together in a guide for you and I ask you five questions and then I break it down into small pieces to where you can actually work it out to see if you have, if you have, a bottleneck In that area right in your business and then we actually work through like solutions filled with a bonus. There's also a bonus in there of two personalized recommendations for me to make the most difference really, really quick in your business when you actually fill out the whole guide and send it to me so I can kind of see inside your business and what it looks like, right. So this is game changer for your business, especially like the task management is game changer. But really doing a full operations assessment on your business is really doing a full operations audit on your business is really going to be game changer. And then there's also options, of course, to work with me and do a full scale of your everything on operations assessment as well. So there are totally options. The DIY operations audit is completely free to you.

Karalee:

We walk through the five most common bottlenecks in your business, in businesses, and then this is geared towards someone with a team or someone that wants to bring on a team, or, if you're really one and silly the foundation, like I recommend to, where, when you are ready to scale, bring on that first team member or bring on another team member that you're able to really have those five Things that I talk about, to be able to have those like already streamlined before even bring on a team. I am always someone that has said we need to have the foundation in our systems and in our operations Before we even bring on a team member, because I have worked for teams that have those, and I've worked for teams I have not guess which ones were much better to work for. Yes, the ones with that have the foundation in place, right? I have had a business with the foundation in place and I have had a business without the foundation in place. I have tried to add a team member in both of those scenarios. Guess which one went better? The one where I had the foundation in place, right? This is what I love to teach. This is what I love to support people in, right, so it starts with your task management.

Karalee:

Get a task management tool, stick with it, okay, you're not sure what it is that you need. Send me DM and then grab the DIY operations audit, completely free to you. You can head to the show notes and get all of that and, seriously, just start seeing if you have any of those bottlenecks, for things slow down significantly in your business, because task management might be one of those things that you address. Hey, it's one of the questions. A lot of people don't have task manager down.

Karalee:

All right, it's actually question number one. It's the most common, which is why we're doing an episode on it, right? But there's so much more to it. So I break it down even more than I did today in this podcast episode, right? So if you have any questions, head to the show notes, follow me on one of the social media platforms, send me a DM. We could totally chat. All right, completely open to supporting you and seeing what your next steps might be. If you haven't grabbed the DIY operations audit, go ahead and do that. Like I said, it's free and we can get you really started on laying that firm foundation to either bring on that team, or be prepared to bring on that team, or really Refine that team and figure out what in the world is going on there, right? So have an amazing rest of your day and I will talk to you next time. Bye for now.