Many people end up at a certain point in their life searching for a task management software to help them refocus and keep their finger tips about the most important thing. Task management products organize, schedule and ensure that tasks get done on time. On short it can boost your productivity. When you are better organized and more focused on what you want to do, you save time and reduce stress.

Good task and project management software was hard to find a couple of years ago when individuals were using Outlook. Nowadays productivity has become almost an obsession of geeks everywhere, so the increasing request for such tools generated a large base of good task and project management solutions. There are a great number of choices to help manage the tasks, ranging from standalone applications to web-based services.

Exactly what are users looking for?

Most of them are in fact looking for a personal organizer application to place some order in their busy and messy life. “Initially, I somehow were able to keep everything in my own head. Then, when i began to take on more projects, I realized that I needed an activity management system to keep me organized and focused.” says Deborah Woehr a freelance researcher and writer. These personal organizers generally take the form of the so called “TO ACCOMPLISH List” applications where users create a list of tasks for which they set a start date, some deadlines and a priority – something very easy.

The Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology

Almost all of the to-do-list applications nowadays adopt, to one degree or another, the GTD approach to task management according to the work-life management system by David Allen that delivers concrete solutions for transforming overwhelm and uncertainty into a system of stress free productivity. Apps vary as to how tightly or loosely bound to GTD they’re. The issue, though, with To Do lists and personal organizers is that are only good for your work. Task management or task tracking software is a lot more than just a to-do list. In a business most of the tasks are collaborative and require multiple associates to satisfy several tasks in one project. In this instance you need a credit card applicatoin where assignments could be made, all tasks could possibly be tracked, and completed work could possibly be archived. This is the true task management tool. Users sometimes need to manage multiple projects and delegate work to resources, schedule tasks with time and even create plans. That is a further step to an upper level: project management or project planning software.

Why do we need a task management application?

Every day we spend usually on urgent but low priority tasks as the most significant ones get delayed until another day. Unfortunately, that “a later date” might never arrive. The famous Pareto principle of 80/20 rule applies here: 80% of all important work gets completed if you try to find out the 20% of high priority tasks. Basically a highly effective task management software must provide you with the best way to find these top 20% of important tasks for a effective project management process. This is the major problem with task management applications: they might need an excessive amount of effort on users part. You can easily spend a lot of time on organization, and not enough on getting things done. Way too many apps spoil the productivity. Task management apps should flow, should make using them easier than writing things down on a piece of paper.

Benefits of an activity management tool

allows you to organize, assign and prioritize tasks

lets you establish goals and milestones and to manage deadlines

you don’t need to remember all tasks and more productivity using reminders

entire work integration, effort delegation for increased efficiency and reduced costs

the breakdown of complex tasks into smaller deliverables that can be controlled with minor difficulty

A task management software can be an essential component for organizational and business operations and may make managing the project simpler.