Easy Task Management Methods You Can Start Using Right Away — For the Time Management We Often Forget About

In the previous Vol.15, “A Day Only Has 24 Hours?”, we talked about dividing the day into 8 hours each for sleep, work, and personal time—making a total of 24 hours a day!
But have you ever found it difficult to finish your work within those 8 hours every day?
As work increases, personal time and sleep seem to disappear in no time, don’t they?
Let’s take a look at the daily lives of our staff.

This time’s example is Terada, a new designer at BOEL.
There is a timeline featured in BOEL Inc.’s recruitment content, “A Day in the Life of a New Employee!”, which we’ll use as a reference for this discussion.

The daily schedule consists of arriving at work at 10:00 AM, working throughout the day, taking a one-hour lunch break starting at 12:30 PM, and leaving the office at 7:00 PM.
That means spending 9 hours a day working.

But can you really leave at 7:00 PM every day?

When work piles up or communication does not go smoothly, it often means continuing to work past 7:00 PM.
There are many different projects, each with its own deadline.
In addition to project work, much of Terada’s work involves coordination with team members.
That’s why it becomes important to keep both personal tasks and teamwork running smoothly.

To simplify the workflow, a typical day may include a morning meeting, ongoing production work, creating design drafts assigned by senior staff, gathering materials for a presentation for a new project scheduled for the following week, and participating in planning meetings.
Since there are many tasks, some of them must be handled simultaneously.
Sometimes there are simply too many projects, making the day feel hectic.
At times like that, it’s important to stay calm (take a deep breath first!) and decide how much time to allocate to each project. By working through them according to schedule, it may be possible to finish on time and leave the office at 7:00 PM.

Most creative projects cannot be completed in a single day. Even short projects often take several days, while others may span weeks or even months.
Typically, illustrators and graphic designers first create the visuals, engineers then build them for the web, and directors manage communication and project progress as the entire team works together on production.
Because of this, an important point is for everyone to share and understand the current status of each team member’s work.

Why not start by trying to “share each task with everyone on the team”?
We share a weekly “to-do list” at the beginning of each week, and a “today’s tasks” list every morning.
The weekly “to-do list” includes ongoing projects from the previous week, new projects starting that week, and scheduled internal and external meetings. These are then broken down into daily tasks to create the “today’s tasks” list.
This makes it easy to see who is working on which project and how far along they are.

In the “to-do list,” we include task deadlines, and in the “today’s tasks” list, we write the expected completion time.
If one task falls behind schedule, it can cause a domino effect that delays the entire workflow.
However, because everyone can see the situation, it becomes easy to provide immediate support when needed.
In addition, these lists help identify progress and issues in the production process, allowing the entire team to work together on improvements.

By looking at the “to-do list” and “today’s tasks,” everyone—not just individuals—can understand whether planned work has been completed.
While writing tasks on paper is one way to share information, it can be unclear whether everyone has actually checked it, and it may not ensure full communication.
For real-time sharing among larger teams, using a web-based task management service is recommended.

The key point of using a “to-do list” and “today’s tasks” is to clearly declare and share the expected completion date and time with everyone.
By doing so, you become more aware of deadlines and can speed up your work.
It also enables better coordination among team members based on clearly defined schedules.
As a result, tasks can be completed within the planned time, making the overall workflow more efficient.