Smarter, more visual task management with Droptask
(MoneyWatch) How do you manage your flood of tasks and projects every day? Some people use the clean sheet task list approach, writing out each day's to-dos on a fresh sheet of paper. It's a powerful tenant of the Getting Things Done strategy, but it doesn't always scale well when you manage a lot of big projects. You might also try tools. I am a big fan of Trello, for example, which lets you organize to-dos as lists within projects, and collaborate with others. Here's a new web app that rivals Trello for its ability to help you take command of a wearying number of tasks and projects.
Droptask is the most unique twist on task management I've ever seen; it doesn't look like a task manager at all. Instead, it actually looks like a Venn diagram (or, perhaps more accurately, like Venn's lesser known cousin, the Euler diagram). Imagine creating circles for each major project you're juggling, and then filling those circles with bubbles that represent all the discrete tasks you need to perform. It's a great way to visualize your activities.
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Of course, Droptask is highly configurable. You can assign keywords and deadlines to specific tasks, and assign them to other Droptask users. Completed items can be marked as such, and you can filter the view to show just items that meet specific criteria, such as by tag, by due date, and so on. You can switch to a calendar view and see which items are due on which days.
In some ways, Droptask is yet another social media-influenced project management platform. You can attach notes and filers to tasks, and participants can log comments so everyone can see the project status and collaborate.
What's it missing? First and foremost, mobile apps. The Droptask folks promise that's coming, though, so, so you'll have to have some patience if you want to manage projects with Droptask on your iPhone.
Personally, I'm quite taken by Droptask, and have been trying it out as a way to wrestle control of my formidable array of tasks and projects. My favorite part, though, is the site's gorgeous look. Believe it or not, I eagerly await opening Droptask to see the colorful and geometric project dashboard. It's a rare project manager I look forward to seeing every day.
