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A survivor's guide I’ve worked in lots of big companies over the years. All are very different, but they do have one thing in common – they all spend a huge amount of time in meetings. They love them! They think nothing of arranging a 4 hour meeting attended by 30 people. That’s 120 man-hours nobody will get back. If the meeting is weekly, 10% of the week has gone for ever. Some people seem to spend their whole time in meetings. How do they ever get any work done, we ask? Answer: they haul it home and do it there. Hunched over their emails while everyone else is having fun. That’s no way to live. And it kills productivity. We go to work, to work. Not to meet endlessly. Meetings are important, but they must be kept under control. If you are chairing a meeting, that’s your responsibility. Here are my tips for how to make it more productive. 1. State your purpose Suppose you are managing Project Apollo, and you have arranged a weekly progress meeting. What’s the purpose of the meeting? Obvious, you say – ‘To review progress on Project Apollo’. But when attendees read these words, different movies are playing in their heads. For Angela from Marketing, the purpose is ‘to stop Development slipping again’. For Masood from Dev, it’s ‘to call out a delay and blame Marketing’. For Paul from the PMO, it’s ‘to update myself on the project and avoid picking up any actions’. These motivations will be there whatever you do, but if you make the purpose more focused, the meeting will be better. To tease out the purpose of a meeting, imagine what would happen if there was no meeting. You are experienced enough to know that without a weekly progress meeting, the project will fail. So the purpose of the meeting is linked to the success of the project. Perhaps the real purpose of the meeting is ‘to ensure Project Apollo delivers successfully on 31 March 2020’. Now the purpose is clear, you can make sure that everything that happens in the meeting is dedicated to that purpose. 2. Limit the attendees A meeting isn’t some kind of party. It isn’t rude not to invite a friend. No-one will be offended if they aren’t on the list. They can get on with some work. You must invite only those people who are essential to the purpose of the meeting. An attendee is essential to the meeting if: (a) they know something the meeting needs to know (b) they are empowered to participate in any decisions (c) they have the authority to make any follow-up happen Try to keep the attendees down to less than 10 people. Any more, and they will each have less than 10% of the air time. That’s a very poor use of their time. 3. Limit the time This is a hard one. What if Project Apollo has 8 work streams? Each work stream leader will take half an hour to present progress. That’s four hours gone again! How can it be a progress meeting if they don’t present progress? Here’s the answer – let them produce their PowerPoint progress reports, but make them publish them to all attendees the evening before the meeting. Get them to start with just one summary slide of key discussion points for the meeting. When you get to the meeting, don’t even look at the other slides unless you need them for the discussion. Normally you won’t need to, if all attendees have prepared properly. You should be able to run a big meeting (10 people) in 2 hours max. A meeting of 6 people should take no more than one hour. A 1-1 meeting should take half an hour. You might also like to try a walking meeting. Here's a great article by Spot on what they are and how to host them. 4. Choose your place Most companies have lots of meeting rooms. All fully booked. Arranging a meeting place is a nightmare. Another reason to limit the number of attendees. If you can’t find a meeting room, go somewhere else. Maybe a coffee bar, if the subject isn’t too confidential. Actually having no room at all is best, if you can manage it. Hold the meeting by phone. Then people don’t have to travel to your meeting. And phone meetings tend to be more focused and disciplined. The act of using a phone seems to encourage people to hurry up and stick to the point. If everyone is in the same building, try a stand up meeting. Again it’s good for meeting discipline. But don’t try to hold a stand up meeting in a room with chairs! People will just plonk themselves down anyway. 5. Run on time Arriving late for a meeting is a bad habit, and it’s infectious. I have worked in companies where arriving on time seems to be considered rude! Rushing in ten minutes late apparently lets everyone know you are a high energy, in-demand sort of person. If you attend four meetings in a day, and they all start 10 minutes late, that’s 40 minutes a day down the drain for everyone. 400 minutes altogether. But it’s considered normal. And yet if you go home 40 minutes early every day, you aren’t pulling your weight. Make a deal with your colleagues. If they arrive on time, you will start the meeting on time and finish it 10 minutes early. Then they can get to their next meeting on time too. But running a big meeting to time isn’t so easy. To make it easier, divide it into shorter chunks, and publish a timed agenda. And put a clock on the wall. If the meeting is long, take a five minute break every hour. You will get more than that time back, in reduced tension and more concentration. 6. Prepare When you prepare for a meeting, you should know how you want it to turn out, and you should have a game plan that is going to get you that outcome. If you have a 1-1 with your boss, you know what questions she is likely to ask you, so have your answers ready. And think up some killer questions of your own. Back to the Project Apollo progress meeting. You already know the progress (or lack of it). You are the project manager. You know that Kevin has fallen behind with his testing, because of a defect that stops his tests from running. Your aim is to avoid a delay to the project delivery date. Talk to everyone involved, and tease out the options. Then the meeting can concentrate on deciding the best course of action. This is much better than a long presentation from Kevin, dropping the bombshell and begging for forgiveness. 7. Make a record Always make notes of your meetings. Even in a quick chat over a coffee, you might make a promise to a colleague. So write it down as soon as you can. Unless you keep a record of your meetings, they just evaporate. It’s like they never happened. All those solemn promises are soon forgotten. If the meeting is formal, publish formal notes, straight away. Many managers like to use Excel spreadsheets to record actions, with due dates, who requested it, and so forth. But I prefer to use a simple email, because it’s easier to write it, and read it, on my iPhone.  Here’s the format I use: 12/1 Kevin will find out the cost of an extra test rig, and let us all know by Friday. 12/2 Masood will immediately assign his best designer to work on a fix for defect 4097. The names are in bold so the actionees will notice the actions when they are rapid-reading your email. 8. Follow up Chairing a meeting is a big responsibility. All those man-hours ebbing away. Emotions often run high, even if they are well hidden. Angela may be furious with you for ‘letting Kevin off the hook’, as she sees it. So talk to attendees afterwards, when you are wandering around. Get feedback. Try to do better next time. And go to see Kevin on Friday, to get his answer. Good luck! Andrew Boswell July 2016 Feedback Did you find this blog post useful? Do you have anything to add? If so, please leave a comment. And please share it with your friends, using one of the buttons below. You might also enjoy Drew Page’s article about how to give negative feedback (and receive it). To manage the actions arising from your meetings, use a good to-do list manager like TaskAngel. You can try it for free at taskangel.com.

The new TaskAngel Online is now available for free trial. For many years, TaskAngel To-do List has been helping busy people manage their time, but only on Windows, iPhone and iPad. In recent months, customers have been asking for a version that runs on Mac and Android. They have also been asking us to remove the dependence of TaskAngel on the Toodledo task management service. Now there’s TaskAngel Online. It runs beautifully on Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and Chromebook. TaskAngel Online stores your tasks, notes and other information in a highly secure database, to keep everything in sync across all your devices. It doesn’t need you to be a member of Toodledo or any other service. Now please go to our TaskAngel Online web page to get more details and start your free trial. What's New In TaskAngel Online Features Here are the properties you can define for your tasks. You use them to manage and filter your task list: Title Completed Star Start Date Due Date Repeat Priority Goal Folder Subtasks Note, using Markdown formatting All of your tasks can have subtasks, and your subtasks can have subtasks too. Organising your tasks There's a search bar that will list tasks that contain any word or phrase. You can use this for hashtags in your task titles and notes. The filter menu gives you a quick list of overdue tasks, or high priority tasks. There are convenient filters for all properties of your tasks. Sort Presets let you group and sort your tasks. For example, you can group by priority, then apply a three-level sort by due dates and other properties. Notes You can also have stand-alone notes, organised into folders, with rapid search and filters. This gives you a simple alternative to apps like Evernote and Bear. We will be progressively adding more features, in response to feedback from you and our other customers. Subscriptions Previous versions of TaskAngel just required a one-off payment. But TaskAngel Online has more ongoing costs, because of the global database it uses to store your tasks and notes. Without income, there will be no TaskAngel. This is your contribution to the TaskAngel project. Any Platform TaskAngel Online can run on any device with a browser. Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android phones and tablets, and Chromebooks. If you have something else, try it and let us know. Tell Us What You Think TaskAngel Online is a new product, and we want it to be right for you. Please let us know what you like, and what you don't like. Just go to our Contact page. Now please go to our TaskAngel Online web page to get more details and start your free trial. Read more: Get Started with TaskAngel To Do List Author Andrew Boswell Author of TaskAngel, and CEO of MyPocketSoft. Our company is dedicated to helping people face the challenges in their lives. We do this by harnessing advanced software technologies and turning them into products that are delightfully easy to use.

Effective task management consists of both hard and soft skills. Mastering many skills that allow you to see a job through from idea to completion is crucial in the workforce. But did you know that your task management abilities can do so much more than make you a great leader? The vast majority can easily be utilized in your everyday life. Here are a few examples. Team Building Team building at work means you have the insight and ability to create teams of individuals that complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Learning how to put together an effective group for your critical projects is essential to your company’s profitability. You can also use your teambuilding prowess as a soccer coach, day camp leader, volunteer organizer, or youth minister. Delegation Learning how to delegate means being okay with letting go of tasks and responsibilities that you’ve always had a hand in. This can be tough as a business owner or manager because you know that you will get the job done right. However, it’s not efficient to be a master of all things. A few job functions to slide aside to another include social media advertising services, paperwork, accounting, building maintenance, and customer service. Apply the same principle to your home life by paying someone else to landscape, perform minor home repairs, or grocery-shop. Organization Being highly organized is not only for the obsessives among us. When everything has a time and place, you rarely have questions about your next project or duty. Whether you use apps, whiteboards, or a tool like TaskAngel to keep you organized, you already know that this will keep you from multitasking, working harder than necessary, and missing important steps. Make a point to be organized at home, too, and you may find that stress starts to disappear. Something as simple as using a closet organization system can help you get up and out the door quicker each morning. Prioritization If you want to boost your productivity, Lanterna Education recommends doing the hard tasks first each day. The idea of prioritizing difficult or undesirable tasks might not sound appealing, but rest assured that you’ll feel better once the worst of your day is done. For no other reason, do what you don’t want first so that you are not exhausting mental energy and dreading it until the end of the day. The same goes for home. Need to have a difficult talk with your spouse or partner? Don’t wait until bedtime. Is the dishwasher on the fritz? Fix it first to avoid a pile of dishes and the stress that goes along with that. Humor We can’t all be Ricky Gervais, but we can take our sense of humor with us everywhere we go. You likely don’t want to be known as the jokester at work, but humor does have its place on the time clock. For one, having a fun work environment boosts productivity. It also relieves stress and can lessen the risk of burnout for you and your employees. Furthermore, having a little fun here and there will strengthen your office relationships and may even enhance your ability to solve problems. All of this is true at home, as well. Having a sense of humor, especially when you have teenagers, will help you hold on to your sanity and come up with effective solutions for whatever comes your way. Task management skills fall into many different categories. From staying organized to learning how to laugh, these abilities will make you a better boss. But you can also apply the same methodologies to your day-to-day life. Take the time today to evaluate your task management skills, and refine them if you find that you fall short. And if you need help staying on top of your workload, get TaskAngel today! Author Stephanie Haywood, Guest Author Stephanie Haywood is happy to be living her best life. Personal development and self-care gave her a boost when she needed it most, and now she works to share the gift of self-knowledge, self-care, and self-actualization with everyone who visits MyLifeBoost.com.

Are you constantly feeling like you work long hours but are never getting anything done? You may find yourself looking for distractions to avoid a project you just don’t have the energy for. Turns out, you may just need a couple of minutes away from your work to reboot your productivity. Not to mention, if you have paid time, or annual leave, off sitting around waiting to be used, it may just be the right time to take it. If you’ve ever taken a vacation where you’re able to unplug from everything, you may already know how this feels. You’re ready to get back to your coworkers and dive into new projects. You may even find yourself checking things off your to-do list faster than you could prior to your time off. If you’re in need of a little reboot, we have outlined our best tips to ask for or take your vacation even when work doesn’t stop. If you aren’t able to fit a vacation in your budget or get the time off, we provided easy ways to cope without a long break at work. Check out Mint’s infographic on how to boost your creativity, productivity, and even your wallet! Kayla Montgomery Our guest author for this article is Kayla Montgomery. Kayla is a digital content marketer who helps Mint create helpful and compelling stories worth sharing. Her background in digital marketing and creative writing has led her to cover unique topics ranging from business to lifestyle. In her spare time, she enjoys working out, writing for her own blog, travelling, and exploring all the in’s and out’s Austin, TX has to offer. To learn more, connect with Kayla on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kayla-s-montgomery/

Do you ever feel like you’re way over your head when taking on projects offered to you? Or, even when you go to speak up in a meeting? If you’re constantly feeling like a fraud, you may be experiencing imposter syndrome. Turns out, 70 percent of millennials are going through the same things as you. Not to mention, some of the highest achievers are hitting these roadblocks. Serena Williams and Tom Hanks being a couple of them. This fraudulent thought may stop you from chasing your biggest goals or allow you to feel pride when achieving others. Recognizing these thoughts and pushing past your self-doubt is one of the essentials to success. If you think you may be dealing with imposter syndrome, Mint created an infographic explaining the different types, how each type may affect your finances, and tips to overcoming it. Push past your self-doubt and push past to conquer anything you put your mind to! Kayla Montgomery Our guest author for this article is Kayla Montgomery. Kayla is a digital content marketer who helps Mint create helpful and compelling stories worth sharing. Her background in digital marketing and creative writing has led her to cover unique topics ranging from business to lifestyle. In her spare time, she enjoys working out, writing for her own blog, travelling, and exploring all the in’s and out’s Austin, TX has to offer. To learn more, connect with Kayla on LinkedIn

Sometimes a task is complicated and you have to follow a step by step process. In that case, make each of those steps a ‘subtask’ of the task. Then you will have a parent task with subtasks. If the task is set to repeat, you can set its subtasks to 'Repeat With Parent'. Then when you complete the parent task it will be repeated along with its subtasks. A subtask isn’t allowed to have its own subtasks, so this is just a two-level thing. If you are syncing TaskAngel with Toodledo, you must have a paid subscription to Toodledo otherwise the subtasks will not sync correctly. With TaskAngel for Windows, subtasks are handled differently from TaskAngel for iPhone and iPad. Subtasks in TaskAngel for Windows Select a task and tap on ‘Add Subtask’ on the toolbar. In your task list, the blue bullet, next to each task, changes when a task is the parent of subtasks. Tap on that bullet to show or hide its subtasks. To change the order of the subtasks, drag them by their bullets and drop them where you want them. Subtasks in TaskAngel for iPhone and iPad On TaskAngel for iOS, open a task in the Task Editor, and tap on the ‘Add Subtasks’ button at the top right. When viewing your Task List, parent tasks are indicated by a ‘parent and child’ symbol to the right of their title. To open its list of subtasks, tap on that symbol. You can change the order of the subtasks by tapping Edit and dragging up and down.

Here’s a question for you. Between this morning and right now, how many times did your computer or phone chime at you to let you know you just got another email? Chances are, your number is somewhere around a dozen or more. Many advisors think that keeping those alerts turned on is no big deal. After all, who would want to miss a critical, time-sensitive message? What if a journalist on a deadline wanted to get a quote from you? Or what if a client had an urgent question about his portfolio? And so, “new message” alerts continue to ping throughout the day. Some of those emails are informative. Others are fun. Many are a complete waste of time. But here’s what unites them all: they kill your productivity. Two reasons to stop email notifications from ruining your day There are at least two reasons why you should turn off your email notifications right now and never look back. One, chances are that any given new email is more exciting, interesting, or entertaining than whatever project you are slogging through. And so, your brain welcomes the distraction. Two, it’s easy to rationalize that one little email won’t hurt your productivity that bad. Besides, taking short breaks is good for you! Put those two reasons together, and you begin to see that email notifications will conspire with your brain’s natural chemistry, causing you to get distracted dozens of times before lunch. And yes, that one email might be short enough. But the truth is that it will take you a long time to get back into the working groove! What’s even worse, allowing your email inbox to drive your workflows is a big strategic mistake. It’s a certain path to doing busywork instead of focusing on important projects and deadlines that will move you and your practice forward. Disable email notifications to boost your productivity Email should be your means of connecting with the world, collaborating with your team, and helping your clients. To accomplish that, email does not need to generate any reminders, unread badges, or pings. However, it does need to take its place as a tool in your toolbox — not your boss, whip, entertainment, or treat. So, go into your email settings and turn off notifications. Don’t worry, you won’t forget that you have an email inbox. You don’t need anything to remind you to check your messages periodically! Now, designate a couple of time slots per day when you will work with your email. That’s right. You won’t scroll through it looking for the most exciting or fun email while skipping over any messages that look hard or boring. Instead, once or twice per day, you will methodically read every email, take (or note) your next action, and move the email out of your inbox. But what about emergencies? In my experience, the fear of missing an extremely time-sensitive message is over-rated. Think about it. How often is an email so important that you absolutely must stop what you are doing and read it immediately? The truth is that you get many important emails every day. Most of them can wait until you are finished with whatever you are focusing on. If it’s a true emergency, it shouldn’t be in your e-mail at all! And, if you are worried about missing something time-sensitive, add a couple of email scans to your daily schedule. During a scan, you are simply monitoring your inbox for anything that might demand your immediate attention. And, you guessed it, scans aren’t happening throughout the day whenever you feel like taking a break. These are scheduled interruptions that allow you to get in and out of your inbox quickly — so that you can get back to work. I leave you with this reminder. Your attention is even more valuable than your time. Guard it like it’s priceless. This article was originally published on ModelFA.com You may also find this article useful: Get On Top Of Your Emails Chris Belfi Our guest author for this article is Chris Belfi. Chris is the founder and CEO of MaxPotential Coaching. His company works with executive-level leaders and business owners who are drowning in their own success and feel underwater in a sea of things they are supposed to get done. Through proven techniques, MaxPotential Coaching allows executives to take control of their endless to-do list and the other details of their lives and work, go home on time, and create the space to do what matters most to them.

Have you ever worked yourself to the point of exhaustion? If so, you’ve likely experienced burnout. We have burnout to thank for the failure of 1 in 10 businesses. Even worse, it’s estimated that businesses lose $3 billion annually because of negativity associated with burnout. Small business owners and entrepreneurs who put in too many hours are all at risk of burnout. It causes you to feel unmotivated about your work, and can even have mental and physical health affects such as a lowered immune system or even depression. So how can you avoid burnout? From funding your business to building a team, this infographic from Fundera will help you stay motivated every step of the way. Jeff Smith Our guest author for this article is Jeff Smith, VP of SEO and Editor at Self Lender.

Getting Things Done® is  a very practical process for personal workload management. Thousands of people all over the world are using it. It is described in David Allen's book "Getting Things Done" TaskAngel has many features that make it a natural tool for Getting Things Done®. As recommended in GTD®, everything is collected together in one big list. So you can see it all. Then the filters let you see what's relevant to you right now. GTD organizes tasks into Projects. A project is a set of individual tasks that combine to a single outcome. With TaskAngel, you use Folders for your projects. And on Windows, you can even call your folders 'Projects'. GTD gives Contexts to tasks and identifies your Next Actions. TaskAngel supports both features directly. Filters help you make the best choices. One click gets you all your Next Actions, or all tasks for your Computer, or all overdue tasks. You can filter by words or phrases too, so you can see all tasks concerning Sarah, ready for an upcoming call or meeting. You can read all about GTD® on David Allen's website, or get "Getting Things Done" from your library or favorite bookstore. Are you a good project manager? Have a look at this article: How to break a project! GTD® and Getting Things Done® are registered trademarks of the David Allen Company. TaskAngel is not affiliated with or endorsed by the David Allen Company.

One To-do List Across All Your Devices You only need one to-do list in your life, but you never know when you are going to want access to it. TaskAngel lets you maintain one to-do list wherever you are. The one reference list is on Toodledo. This popular cloud service is one of the first and best designed specifically for to-do lists. You can find out all about it from their web site at www.toodledo.com. If you are already using Toodledo, you can use TaskAngel with your existing account. You can run TaskAngel on all your Windows PC's, iPhones and iPads, and keep them all in step with your one list. If you have an Android phone or tablet, they have other to-do list apps that will sync with Toodledo. TaskAngel passes data back and forth with Toodledo so that all the computers and devices are kept up to date, so long as you sync them all regularly. It syncs straight away when you make a change, and every hour if even if you don't make a change. You also have a sync button that lets you kick off the sync process at any time. On iPhone and iPad, you can change the sync frequency in Settings. On Windows, the Sync menu allows you to turn off Instant Sync (sync when you make a change), and Auto-Sync (sync every hour). Toodledo To sync with Toodledo you need an account. You can use a free one, but if you want to use subtasks you will need a paid Toodledo account. You will also have to pay if you want Toodledo to use a secure connection to TaskAngel. iCloud TaskAngel on iPhone and iPad can use iCloud to sync with itself on other Apple devices. To use this feature, go to Settings. You can't use iCloud to sync with other apps, or with TaskAngel on Windows.

Your Next Action It's no good just listing your tasks. You have to do them! You can only do one at a time. So which one is it going to be? Scanning your entire task list can be overwhelming, so organize tasks into Folders and perhaps assigning them to Goals, Contexts or Tags. The next step is to identify which of them are 'next-actions.' The Next Action is the next physical task that needs to be done, to move forward. Each of your folders should have a next-action. On your entire Task List, you will usually have several of them. To identify a next-action, click the Next Action icon in the task editor, or set its Status to Next Action. If you click on the icon again, Next Action is turned off, and the Status becomes None. To list only your next actions, click on the Next Action filter. This is an excellent way to narrow down your choice of what you are going to do next. It's a great procrastination beater! Filtering Use the filter list to filter your tasks according to their properties. For example, Due in 1 week, or in Tax folder, or Completed, or Starred. There is a wide variety of filters for you to explore. Each one of them is designed to cut through your to-do list and get you to the shortlist of tasks you are interested in right now. On Windows, the Custom Filters feature lets you define your personal filters using any combination of the built-in ones. Searching The search box gives you another quick way to cut through your list. Just type some text into the search box, and you immediately get a list of tasks that contain that text. On iPhone and iPad, the search looks not only at the titles but also into the notes inside your tasks. This type of search is known as a Deep Search. On Windows, you can choose between a deep search and a restricted one that looks only at the titles of your tasks. Sorting On iPhone and iPad, TaskAngel always sorts your lists automatically. On Windows, you have an additional level of control. You can choose up to three different properties to use for sorting. The Hotlist Sometimes a task comes in that is so important that everything else takes a step back. The hotlist helps you keep a focus on those immediate tasks. The hotlist is automatic. A task gets onto the hotlist if you give it Top Priority, or if it is due today or tomorrow. Remember you should only set a due date on a task if you have promised to someone else it will be done by that date, or if you need to do it to keep a plan on track. If you have a lot of bogus due dates in your task list, your hotlist will lose focus. On iPhone and iPad, there is a setting that lets you fine-tune the rules for getting onto the hotlist. On Windows, you can get the same result by using a custom filter.

Use Folders TaskAngel helps you the most when every job - no matter how big or small - goes onto your to-do list. But that can mean hundreds of tasks can end up on your list. To avoid getting overwhelmed, organize them into folders. You might want to create a folder for each of your projects. ​A project is a significant outcome made up of a number of tasks. For example "Decorate the Master Bedroom" could be a project. This would contain several tasks, including things like "Buy paint". Projects remind you why each task is being done. On Windows, you can even use the word 'project' instead of 'folder'. But you may want to use folders for another natural grouping of tasks. For example "home-making".​ You can have as many folders as you like. Your folders show up on the Filter List. On Windows, use the Edit / Folders menu item to create, rename and delete them. On iPhone and iPad, tap Edit when looking at your folder list. When you create a task it goes into the default folder which is called Inbox. Put a task into a folder by setting the task's 'Folder' property when you are creating or editing it.​ To see all the tasks in a folder, tap on the folder in the filter panel. Make your folders so that no more than twenty tasks are held in each one. Then when you filter on a folder, your task list is short enough to get your head around. If you have free-standing notes, you can put them into the same folders as your tasks.​ If you archive a folder, it and its contents become hidden from view. It's almost as if it was deleted, but you can get it all back later when you need it.​ On Windows, use the Archive menu item. On iPhone and iPad, use the Archived property when you are editing the folder. There is a 'show archived folders' setting to use when you want to get a folder out of the archive. When you delete a folder, its contents are deleted too, although on Windows you can choose to move its contents back to Inbox when it is deleted. Read more... Set Goals Goals are things you are striving to achieve, with a longer-term perspective than you have when you are thinking about individual tasks and projects. There are three types of goal, each with a different time horizon: Lifetime Long-term Short-term​ Short and long-term goals can contribute to long-term and lifetime goals to form a hierarchy. For example, you might set "Be healthy" as a lifetime goal. And you could set "Keep fit" as a long-term goal that contributes to it. If you decide to take up jogging, you could have "Start jogging" as a short-term goal. To get started, you could have "Couch to 5K" as a project, in a folder containing tasks like "Download Couch to 5K Podcast" and "Buy some running shoes."​ Read more... Give Context Contexts say where you are going to do each task. They help you decide which of them you can do right now, wherever you happen to be. You can create whatever contexts you need. Here's a suggested list  to get you started: Calls Computer Errands Home Office Shopping Work Anywhere Contexts are perfect for shopping lists. Every time you think of something to buy, create a task with the 'Shopping' context. Then when you are out shopping, tap on Shopping in the filter list, and there's your shopping list.​ Read more... Add Tags​ Tags are labels you can give to tasks, to help you organise your workload in any way you want. Each task can have as many tags as you like.​ A tag is just a word. It can be a hashtag if you want, but there is no need to add a # unless you prefer it. Use Emojis Put emojis in the titles of your tasks, goals etc, to catch your eye while you are working on your to-do list. Break Tasks Into Subtasks​ If you have a complex task, you can break it down into subtasks. The parent task and its subtasks form a task group. You can set the whole group to repeat together. Set a repeat pattern for the parent task, and set the subtasks to 'repeat with parent.' When you complete each subtask, it stays as an unrepeated task until you complete the parent.​