Streamline your activity with visual task management

Monday, April 30th, 2012

Task management strategies can be boldly divided in two types: traditional and untraditional. Traditionally, you write down your to-dos or manage them in Outlook. The weak point about this kind of task management method is that you cannot always focus on what is really important because a list view doesn’t bring you visibility. Untraditional methods use psychological tricks. One of those is visual task management technique which you can finally apply to your Outlook tasks with the help of special software.

When Eisenhower has created his famous Urgent Important Matrix computer technology was not yet as developed as to put it into a form of an application. Nowadays, we have TaskCracker – the first visual task management add-in for Outlook which is based on this famous time management technique. The logic of this method is simple: tasks can be urgent and important. Not all of the important tasks are urgent, not all of the urgent tasks are important. When you place your tasks into the four quadrants of the matrix, you can visually see which tasks help you focus on going straight forward to your goals, and which ones are simply time-waters. This method was put in the concept of TaskCracker which I got a chance to review for you today.

Where to start

I downloaded the trial from TaskCracker.com and the first thing I wanted to check is what the developers of this software claim: the application installs in less than 30 seconds. Indeed, it took me 27 seconds after I clicked “Accept” and before the add-in has installed. Good start: a time management application should not waste time. I decided that further exploration of the software quite valuable, so I opened my Outlook. The add-in was already there in the form of a left-bottom-corner button:

How it looks and works

The interface of TaskCracker is really neat. It is operated with simple drag and drop. After I installed TaskCracker and opened it in my Outlook, my Outlook tasks were already there, in a form of a visual matrix where high-priority tasks are colored light-red and low-importance tasks are light-green. The light shades of the color-code are nice to look at and didn’t nerve me even though I had many high-priority tasks to do. Basically, TaskCracker can be called just another view for my tasks, like other Outlook tasks views. The only difference is that this time it is visual and I don’t have to open each task to move it to another day or change its priority. I can re-organize my tasks with drag and drop in a couple of minutes and see how much workload I have, and how I can use my time better. The visual view didn’t leave me thinking what I should start with. And whenever I need to delay some task and find some free time for something important, I don’t need guessing: I can already see ‘the map’ of my life where I can make my own path.

Visual Task Management

I would like to add a couple of words about the benefits of visual task management.

First of all, when it is applied to Outlook tasks, I don’t need to switch between applications to plan my workload. My Outlook tasks are already organized visually when I have TaskCracker. I recall times when I was admiring many visual applications for IPhone or web-based: they all look nice and the general idea is great, but I simply don’t want to use different tools for the same business. Not this problem is solved.

Second, we can analyze visual information quicker rather than textual. It’s enough to take a glance at the matrix of your tasks to see how busy you are, what’s important and what’s less. So this way, you can plan your time with much less effort because, basically, a list view doesn’t give you that prospective.

When it comes to re-arranging your task list, its optimization doesn’t take much time with drag and drop. TaskCracker matrix view makes it possible to put the task in the given cell of the matrix and it automatically gets the priority and the deadline that you assign to it: no need to open tasks one by one anymore. When you switch to any other Outlook view for your tasks, the priorities and the deadlines will be already assigned as you’ve changed them.

Summary

TaskCracker is simple to install and use. Planning and task management with visual matrix application becomes more strategically right because you can see the prospects at a single glance. Last but not least for a task management software that you use daily, it looks nice and even stylish and using its visual matrix is rather pleasant. I suggest you to try the solution: the trial is free anyways and the download link is right here.

Product video:

TaskCracker visual task management helps focus your effort and see prospects through better strategic planning: all without leaving Outlook.

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