TickTicktaskmanagementapp

So welcome everybody to today's learning objectives. And what we're going to be talking about today is a product that I discovered, um, at— because I read a ton of articles about project management and task management, and I'm always looking for something that helps me get, you know, stay on top of all of my tasks. So this is one that I have found is very helpful. It also has some features that if you find that the feature set can be extended into another product that you have, or even conceptually applying some of these things, I think is useful. So, this is specific to a product called Tic-Tac. And TickTick is basically a task management tool. It's not a project management tool. Um, you can create little mini projects, but it's not as robust as something like Monday or Asana or Trello. Um, on the other hand, the best task management tool is the one that you use. So whatever you can use to keep yourself on track. And so This integrates with work and personal. So when you're kind of struggling to keep up with all the stuff you have to do for work, plus any personal stuff you have to do, having it all in one place but divided out has been helpful. You can share tasks from specific lists, which I'll show you. This tool is also on your browser. There's apps for Linux, Mac., Windows, iOS, Android, in the browser. So it's, it's pretty much everywhere you need it to be. Um, so it's on your phone. So if something occurs to you, no matter where you are, you can quickly add a task. Um, so for that kind of reason, I've been playing around with it. Uh, So a couple of things to note. Um, I ran into the limits of what it would do in the free version fairly quickly, and for that reason I went ahead and paid the $35 for the year, um, with no regrets, uh, because it just seemed like it was worth it if I was gonna use it and use it well, then the premium version is $35 a year. Um, and I'm, I'm, and for that reason, and because I'm paying for it, I also feel like I'm a little bit more invested in trying to get it to work. So it has task— this is really task management. And so you just create task lists and there's a lot of, um, additional insights you can add to your task lists. It also has things like, um, prioritization. It has a Pomodoro timer if you will look at that, um, a habit tracker, a countdown tool, um, and then you can input from a variety of different places. So one of the things that I always suggest when you get a new tool is to go into the settings and play around with and, and get to know what the settings are so that it not only works the way you work when you get started with it, but also as you're using it, you go, ooh, I need to change this setting. So, and then of course you want to set up two-factor authentication and backup codes and all that kind of stuff. So I'm going to flip over, um, to the TikTok interface. As you can see, I have mine very kind of plain, and so When you get started, you go up to Settings, and like I said, I have the premium account, so you can toggle on and off features. So if you go, okay, I'm never using this countdown feature, which I have discovered I really don't, I can just turn it off. The Pomodoro, I don't use that a lot because I use the, um, the Windows tool that's built into Windows more frequently, and it's not something that I need outside of my desktop environment. Habit Tracker, I'll show you what these things are, but again, not tracking any habits. I probably should, but mostly it's the calendar, the Eisenhower Matrix, and the tasks. And then so those are the big features that you can turn on and off just so you have a less busy interface. Then you've got Smart Lists. And Smart Lists are basically, lists that pre-populate based on criteria, and you can again show them, show them if they're not empty, things like that. You'll see there's a sign to me. It is something that you can share with people. Again, I'm not confident that it's the best tool for a group. The Windows feature equivalent to this is called— I'll show it to you if I can. It's called Focus Time, and it's built into the Windows operating system. So if you type Focus Time It's not being very friendly with me right now. Focus Time is just a little tool that's a Pomodoro, um, tool built into the Windows operating system if you want a Pomodoro timer just built in. Okay, so getting back to TickTick, again, notifications. So do you want to get in-app reminders, mobile reminders? Do you want to share the notifications? You can change the ringtone and you can set up email notifications. I am on a quest not to get any more email, and so getting an email reminder may be the right thing for you because that's how you remember best, but I'm, um, I'm letting the desktop reminders do the work for me, or just checking the thing. And collaboration, you can— I'll show you how to collaborate on a particular task. So it's really not um, across the list. It's more on a task basis. You can create sticky notes. You can add desktop widgets. So if I show you the desktop widgets, so you can have these things permanently on your desktop. So this is the Eisenhower Matrix. So you can move things to the quadrants, and then you can see all your tasks, and you can add a task. So you don't even have to have the app open. You can have these little widgets open on your desktop if that's, um, more appealing to you. Depends on whether or not you have a messy desktop. A lot of people save a lot of stuff onto their desktop, and for that reason, probably not the, uh, the best thing to try to add. Um, and then the, the paid version lets you integrate, and that's where— that's what made me pay for it. So I've integrated both my Google Calendar, which is for personal, and my Outlook for work and Slack because we use Slack at work for communications and my Gmail and Outlook and all this other stuff. So I can see all the different things that I can do and integrate with and see everything in one place. Cuz again, that's, that's the struggle that I have. Um, and then there's all sorts of shortcuts. So if you're a, uh, a keyboard shortcut person, you can create and assign, um, keyboard shortcuts to add new tasks. And things like that. So like I said, I always go through the settings and just get familiar with what my options are. The other thing I wanted to show you is that there is extensive help. So it's help.tiktok.com, and if you can't figure out how to do something, um, for one thing they have a nice little kind of tutorial, beginner tutorial, but if you need to figure out how something— do something like you see that it lets me add notes, but I can't sticky notes. So if I want to figure out where the sticky notes are, then you can go into and, and see just how to add the sticky notes. So I've been having this help kind of open while I'm using it to get better at learning how to use the different features and so on and so forth. Okay, so I'm gonna kind of walk you through what's on the left-hand column. So, and again, remember, these are things that we can show. These are the, what they call smart lists. So you can start with all, and this is a combination of basically everything organized by when it's due. So we've got what's due today, what's due tomorrow, what's due in the next 7 days, what's due later. And this is coming from both tasks that I've assigned and also my calendar. So again, and that's my Google Calendar, that's my Outlook calendar, and then the tasks. So it's all in one place so I can get to see everything if I wanna focus. I can just look at what's due today or over the next 7 days. Now, one thing you'll see here is this inbox. So inbox is if you were collaborating with someone and they sent you a message through Tiktik, you would see it in your inbox. My feeling is you would want to move it somewhere else. Um, also you can, you can decide whether you want to keep your completed items or not. You— they can not be visible, they can be visible. But one of the things I kind of like about the visibility of what I've done or completed is the feeling of completion. I can look at all those things that I've already done and checked off my list, because supposedly in time management, um, methodologies, they suggest that checking something off actually gives you a little bit of a, uh, a serotonin 'cause you've done something. So I have no problem with, uh, boosting my self-confidence a little bit every day and checking something off the list. But I think where the meat of this is, is really going into, um, lists. And so you can just have a— all your tasks and just have a long list of tasks. But what I find is for me, um, My tasks are divided by 4 primary areas: the HOA, because I'm the president and y'all can all wish me condolences for that, and then the work that I do with the ABA Law Practice Division, and then stuff for home, and then stuff for work. So you can create as many lists as you want to. There's 2 types of lists: there's notes and there's tasks. So if I wanted to add a notes list, and I'll show you one notes list, this is just kind of a running area where I'm keeping article and web ideas. And so if I wanted to add another notes list, you just press on the button, and then I'm going to call this ABA LP Ideas. You can give it colors. You can choose your view. You can do a Kanban kind of view. You can do a Gantt timeline view. Um, and for notes, obviously that's not so much of a thing. Um, and then you can create folders. I have not created folders because I haven't added that many things, and I don't want to get overly complicated with the, um, the organizational system. And then choose whether you want a task list or a note list. This one's gonna be a note list, and I want to show this. I can show it in my smart list, so that'll have it appear up here, or not. I don't need it to show. So now I've added this. If I said, okay, I don't want this— and I misspelled it, and if you misspell something, you can go back and correct it. If I wanted to pull this list of notes into this section, I believe I can by creating a folder, but I think I can drag this into here. And drag this into here, or maybe not. If you want to delete something because you messed up, you can ungroup and get rid of it. Um, so these are my ideas, and you can, you can order these, um, however you want to. So this is gonna be more of a, uh, quick ideas. And leaving these a little separate, I find is easier because when you're on your phone, and I use this on my phone a whole lot, it's easier to kind of see this from the list and add the right thing to the right place. So if you want to add a task list, same process. You add a task list, you give it a name, a color. How you want to view it, if you have a folder, and then show in the list. But I'm— I've already created quite a few of these, so what I'm going to do is go into one of them to kind of show you what these look like. So this is my ABA Law Practice Division list, and I have two different— well, three different things I have going on with them. I have the tech show, I have the, professional development board, and I have the magazine. So for that reason, um, this task list could get pretty long, um, within it. So I'm going to add sections. So you go up here and you can add a section, and we're going to call this magazine. And PD board. And then So as I have things, um, that I need to put into a section just to keep it, uh, more organized, I can drag these into these sections. I think I can drag them into sections. With that little guy, and so on and forth, so forth. So I can, um, start organizing these a little bit better. Um, again, you don't have to be super organized. You can be— you can just have it a long list. It's really how you work, how best you work, all that. So, um, and then within a task— so let's add a task. So I'm going to go into ABA LPD, and I'm going to look in the magazine area, and I'm going to click to add a task, and we're going to say So once I've done this, obviously we want to add, um, some context. So I can click on Date and Reminder. This is where you start being able to create repeated tasks and things like that. So what I'm gonna do is add date and reminder. So this particular one is going to be, um, it's due January 3rd, which is a Saturday, but that's what they told me., and then you can say what time, if that's important. We'll pick random time. Um, and then you can actually create this on repeat and you can create custom, or you can do daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, every weekday, so on and so forth, and click okay. Then within here, if you type a slash, you can add formatting, checklist, attachments, tags, um, link task and notes from other sections, all sorts of stuff. So we'll add a tag, and I've already created a tag called Article. So I can go over here and everything that I've tagged is Article. So I can see all the articles I have due or all the slide decks I have due. Um, so that's also helpful, and that's just applying a tag. And you can add more tags, add tags on the fly. Um, and then I can add subtasks. So in this case, let's say my subtasks are, um, my computer's not keeping up with my typing today. Okay, so simple checklist. A lot of times a task that we create has a lot of subtasks. So this allows you to create subtasks so you can check them off. And then if I had a template or something like that, if I hit the slash, not in that area, in the description, I can add an attachment. So if there was a template that I tended to use for this or something like that, I could attach it here. So it's just kind of ready for me to go. And then this is here. I've tagged it, I've given myself a due date, and it will show up in all tasks. If I go to the tags again, it helps me see all the articles that I have due. And if I go into slide decks, I can see the slide decks that I need to create. Again, this is my use case. Your use cases will be different. Um, but that's kind of the idea of it. And then If I wanted to turn this into a template, um, and this is where I'd have to look it up, there is a way to turn this into a template. You also can link to a parent task, so you can make parent dependencies. Um, and then Collaborate, convert to a note if you decide this is a note, not a task, and start a focus timer and do all sorts of other things. And that was a right-click. So this is the desktop version. So there's right-click. If you open this in your browser, there is not a right-click. So that's kind of the main gist of it. Um, and then we've got all these other things. So there's our tasks. And then we've got the calendar, and you can look at your calendar. These are my imported calendars. It's just viewing my calendar in Google and in Outlook. I just had my yard overseeded, and they left me a note and said that I have to water my grass every day, so I have to remind myself to do that. And you can toggle this. You want to see an agenda, multi-day. So if you look in an agenda view, it gives you a list. So however you tend to like to see things, um, and how far out in advance you go. And then over here you've got how you wanna arrange it and if you wanna subscribe to more calendars. So if you just wanna see calendar view, um, you can do it like that. This is interesting. This is the Eisenhower Matrix. So If you remember when we looked at, um, the slide decks and they show up in red, that's because in the Eisenhower Matrix, here's all the tasks that I have not assigned. So you just drag and drop. So this is showing me not urgent and unimportant. That's where they all default. Um, obviously that is not a reality, so we can go ahead and pick things that— well, okay, so get ready for Halloween is neither urgent nor important. It is something I have on my to-do list. Um, getting reimbursed for my meeting is urgent and unimportant. What I like about this exercise is that it forces you to look at your tasks, the things that don't necessarily have deadlines, and think about where does this really fit, um, in terms of urgency and importance. And so for that reason, if you have not assigned a due date, then it starts helping you think, where should this go? Other things this does— this is the Pomodoro. If you just want to use Pomodoro, it's defaulted to a 25-minute focus, which is a sprint in Pomodoro world, um, or you can just switch it over to a stopwatch and do however long. You can also edit, um, your focus settings. So if you want to do 26-minute increments, do it in 26. Um, how many of you have used or have tried, uh, Pomodoro for creating focus time so that you, you work in theory uninterrupted for a specific amount of time, or at least you try. You can chat at me, or yes, thumbs up. I do too, and I actually block time out on my calendar so that I have the best chance of being undisturbed. Um, but that's, you know, they've got that built in here. Then this is the habit tracker. And so let's say we're going to try to create a habit of checking LinkedIn. Once a day. You're trying to boost your professional development. We're gonna do it daily, activate it. Um, if I've done this starting today, forever, I will do it in the morning. I'm gonna set my reminder for 8 because I'm gonna do this before— whoops. Before our day begins, or at the beginning of the day, and pop up habit log and then save. So if you're trying to get in the habit of doing gratitude journal or, you know, posting on your social platforms or whatever, you can give this a shot. And then the last thing is a countdown. Um, and this, this is just, you know, counting down to your birthday or the weekend or New Year's Day or whatever, whatever makes sense to you. Um, probably something I will not use that much. And then of course the nice thing is there's a search, so you can search. So if I want to say tech show Then I can go to the text show task. There's lots of other things you can do. You can create filters. You can, um, again, task, subtask. Um, if you add a task with a date, so if you say Next, let's see. So if I put November, it's got, it's got enough intelligence to identify that the due date is November 1st. If I type in November 5th, it will put it on November 5th and so on and so forth. So it's kind of nice because it identifies that. And then again, you can— here you can flag it by priority. That's different than the Eisenhower Matrix, but they do have the same colors. Um, and then again, flags. And then you can add, um, you can put it wherever you want to if you want to move it. And then you've got attachments, templates, and all that. Another thing that I find useful is that you can forward emails into this, and that's where the inbox comes in. So I'm going to, um, do this for you. So this is my reimbursement for the fall meeting. I'm going to forward it. I have saved TickTick as a, um, a contact, and then you send it and it shows up eventually in your inbox. It'll take it a second. And then once you do that, um, I promise you it works eventually. Um, and where do you find that email address? All right, again, go into your settings and then into— oh, there's your template. So you can create task templates, note templates, all that kind of stuff. Um, where did I find that email? Add task via email. If you click on this, it gives you this, the unique email. You copy it and then you can add it to your contacts. Now, the reason I added it to my contacts and I use the unique email That's because I don't have Outlook integrated entirely with, um, the system. And I didn't set up this account with my Outlook. I set it up with my Gmail. So if I'm in Gmail, I can just send it to to-do@mail.tictoc, tic-tic.com. If I'm in Outlook, I, I can send it to this unique email address. My computer is being really slow and clunky today, so we'll switch over to PowerPoint. So I created kind of a little slide deck. Again, the, the Eisenhower Matrix. Um, you can also create sticky notes and put them on your desktop. Uh, I ask a group of associates at a big firm how they manage their tasks, and a lot of them told me that they use sticky notes on their desktop, which seems really— I mean, and a print calendar and, you know, print task lists or whatever. I have, and I will be fully, um, admit that I use pieces of paper to write my checklist down, so I'm trying to get out of that bad habit. So, um, cross-platform integration, again, it's $35 for the year. That seems a small price to pay if you can get it yourself to use it because you've paid for it and it's got that great help, um, to help you walk through all of this. So let's see if I can get that. Of course it is completely stuck and this is when The Task Manager comes in handy because I just have a whole lot of things running. If y'all could see the list of things that I have running on this computer, it would probably give you palpitations because it is giving me palpitations right now. So there, there's the email I forwarded. I don't know why I felt the need to prove that to you, that it really do really work, but it really does. And then once you get that, if you say I want to move this You wait till you get those, that crosshair or crosshatch, and, um, you move it to the appropriate area if you don't want it to sit in your inbox. And then you can give it a due date and all that kind of stuff. Um, cuz even though I said it's not important, there's probably a due date attached to this. I'm probably supposed to do it in the next 30 days or something, so we'll just I— what I find with tasks is if you don't give them a deadline, then they're not real. So give yourself a deadline for things like this. It's important but not urgent. So if we look at our, um, list, we can see that we move it to the reimbursement area. It's urgent but unimportant. I mean, it is important, but not that really. So, um, I'm gonna stop sharing and then I am going to stop recording and I'll let y'all ask questions and we can talk about just time management and tools and things like that. That's pretty much— again, it's a simple tool, not very expensive, lets you bring in things from all aspects of your life so you can kind of maintain visibility no matter what it is you're doing. Because the reality is we only have so many hours in a day for life and work, and so this is just a way to try to stay on top of it.