How to Reach Your Goals and Get Everything Done: The Best Planning Tools and Methods

To achieve the company’s goals, it’s important to properly plan time and distribute the amount of work. Special project management tools can help them do this.

The Best Planning Tools

Trello 

The program has an interface that is as simple as the highest-quality games that pay real money in South Africa allows you to create a virtual whiteboard with task cards, add colleagues to it, set labels, deadlines and attach files.

Pros:

• You can combine personal and work tasks in the same profile.
• You can integrate additional tools (Slack, Dropbox, Google Drive).
• Suitable for scheduling personal tasks, product and team management.

Cons:

• No time-tracking, you can’t keep track of the time spent on the task.
• The program doesn’t make a report on the work done.
• It’s designed for work in small teams, not suitable for large companies.

Asana

Project management tool with a wide range of features: there is a board with tasks, time-line mode, a portfolio of tasks with their statuses, metrics and goals.

Pros:

• You can edit projects, sections, tasks and subtasks.
• Any task can be added to several projects at the same time.
• There is a handy calendar that synchronizes with tasks.
• It’s possible to exchange messages with users.

Cons:

• Users complain that the program is difficult to learn because of the clutter of features.

Todoist 

The tool allows you to record and organize tasks, set deadlines, reminders, track your progress with productivity tracking and conduct collaborative projects.

Pros:

• The program supports voice reminders.
• You can display reports on tasks.
• You can create a hierarchy of tasks.

Cons:

• No task statuses.
• No built-in calendar.

Time Management Methods

Stickers

Start small! Take two or three colors of stickers and prioritize them. Let the red ones be high-priority items, the yellow ones be secondary items, and the green ones be non-priority items. You can assign your own way, but remember which stickers correspond to which priorities.

• Write out all your tasks according to their degree of importance.
• Post them in chronological order, as you would like to perform them.
• Create yourself a board or stick them directly into your planner (diary).

Points

If you don’t want to bother with paperwork, there is also a point system. Assign the degree of priority to the task with a point. Take 5 points for a priority task and reduce the priority to secondary tasks.

• Spell out the tasks and assign points.
• At the end of the day, mark whether or not you succeeded as planned.

Eisenhower Matrix

The Eisenhower Matrix has two main criteria: importance and urgency. To plan your time according to this methodology, you need to ask yourself how important the task is and how urgent it is.

Important and urgent tasks are those with clear deadlines. Failure to meet them has negative consequences.

Important and non-urgent tasks are those that have no deadlines, but still need them for personal growth or company growth.

Unimportant and urgent tasks are those that don’t require specific skills.

Unimportant and non-urgent tasks are those that won’t help you reach your goal.

Goal Decomposition

The essence of the method is to divide the global task into several subtasks. This way it will be clear where to start and how to achieve the goal.

Let’s imagine that your global goal is to change your life. Let’s clarify it: you are not satisfied with your job, and you are looking for online courses that will help you move to another profession. Now we can divide this goal into subtasks, the gradual completion of which will lead to the goal:

1. Open Coursera.
2. Decide on the direction of your studies.
3. Choose a course.
4. Gain basic knowledge.
5. Get a new job.

Decomposition works in business, too. When the global goals of a project manager or company head are achieved through simpler tasks like changing the tone of voice, creating a blog, or expanding the product line.

Pareto Method

The principle of the method is that 20% of efforts yield 80% of all results, and vice versa. Concentrate on those things that are in that 20% and write them down as important.

For example, you are a freelancer who has many customers. Identify those who pay better and more consistently, and do the work for them first. That will be your 20% of work, and they will bring you 80% of your income.