The Best Way to Structure Tasks in ClickUp

In this video, I'm going to walk you through the best ways to structure your tasks inside of ClickUp. And this is going to help make sure that nothing slips through the cracks, make sure your team has full clarity in terms of what they need to do on a daily basis, and then also provide you full clarity and visibility into project progress on a daily basis. And so, really, the main reason that I'm creating this video is because one of the biggest mistakes I see teams make when they jump into ClickUp or really any other project management system is, is essentially what they do is they create tasks and assign those tasks to multiple people. So I want to quickly walk through an example of what this may look like, show you why this doesn't work, and then provide a recommendation for how you can fix this. And so essentially, let's go over. We're writing a blog post for one of our clients. And so essentially, what you would do, and oftentimes what most teams do in their project management system is they go ahead and create this one task. As you can see here, see here, this is a blog post labeled. The name of it is Best Airbnbs in Pennsylvania. And I take this, and I have a start date, and I have a due date on here. The start date is when this is actually going to begin. The due date is when we should finish this deliverable for our client, finish this blog post. And essentially what I do is because we do have a lot of different steps in this, like writing it, like proofing it, like creating a thumbnail and actually communicating with a client and publishing it. We go ahead and assign this to three or four different people of who will actually be involved in that process. So essentially what that does, and the reason that this does not work is because with that process, with that sort of task structure that you have now, essentially no one is going to understand who is responsible for which step. Because essentially, if I have a view of tasks that are just assigned to me right here, I'm going to see this one down here, this blog post, the best Airbnb is in Pennsylvania. Again, that's going to be assigned a bunch of different people, due on September, September 3rd, let's say. And I don't know, like, I see this, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Am I supposed to write it? Am I supposed to be perfecting something? Am I supposed to be designing the thumbnail? Or what task in this process am I actually in charge of? I don't really know that. You may make the excuse like, hey, Our team's been working in this for a while now, so everyone really knows what their role is. But this is not going to be scalable because as you could think over time, as you bring new people on board, they're not going to know, hey, what am I supposed to do within this workflow? And sure, yes, you might be able to communicate a bunch in this parent task like this, to be able to figure out who is doing what and things like that. But with that, you're also not going to know what specific day is my step due, which is going to make it hard for us to really plan these projects and get them delivered on time, because no one's going to know, hey, when is the writing? When's the first draft due? When do we need to prove it by? When do we need to get to this client? By? It's hard for project managers to plan those projects. And so within that, in addition, it's going to become super difficult for project managers or account managers to really know where we're at with all of these projects. So, as you could think, if we're doing 100 blogs for all of our different clients, as we get more and more scale within the projects that we're doing, it's going to be very difficult for them to be able to keep track of progress across all of those. Because as you can see here, if I just have this one task assigned to multiple people, maybe use the status to kind of see where it is, but we're not going to really know exactly which step we're at, how much time maybe we've spent on this, and really where we're at, especially at a high level. So it's going to be very difficult in your account managers and project managers are probably going to get a little annoying because they're going to be checking in every hour, say, hey, where are we? Where are we? Where are we? So that they can keep track of all that to inform the clients. And so that becomes super difficult. And then in addition to that, you're also going to lose visibility into workload and capacity, because the way that workload and capacity works for ClickUp in really any project management system is if I have a workload view here, essentially the three elements that you need are the due date, which you can see here, that's sort of where that's being pulled in, then the time estimate, which actually fills up this bar here, and then also the assignee. So if I have a task that's assigned to multiple people, that's essentially going to take that time estimate and split it up amongst all these people. And then if I have a start and due date on that task, it's also going to spread out that time estimate as well. So it's going to be very difficult to know like when that work is actually going to happen, when does that work, when does that time estimate actually need to be applied? In this workload view, it's going to be very difficult to actually get full visibility into any of this. So you're going to overwhelm or maybe underwhelm some of your team because you're not going to have any visibility into workload at all. And so that's a reason you don't want to do that as well. And so really the way that people fix this and what they do to essentially maybe solve this issue of assigning one task to multiple people is they create that task, let's say it's. It's in ClickUp here. And. And then they'll only assign it to one person. So they assign it to the one person that's actually going to be in charge of the start of this project. And then what they do from there is say, hey, you're assigned to this, you're in charge of maybe whatever that first step may be. And then when you're actually done with your task, you should go ahead and just adjust this status to whatever that next step is. So maybe your statuses are a bit more detailed. And the status says writing the first draft, it says proofing, writing the second draft, designing the thumbnail. And all those different steps are built out as statuses. So essentially when someone needs to go reassign this to the next person, they change the status. And then you have a bunch of different automation set up and ClickUp that'll then unassign that person and then reassign the next person. But again, what happens is, if I want to have a good view of my work here, I'm not going to know what I need to do in the future because that step will essentially just randomly pop up on this view here. Whether I'm in here or, or in the home view, I'm not going to know what I need to do essentially until the day that task actually gets reassigned to me. So I'm not able to plan ahead. And again, I'm not going to have any access to workload of capacity because I'm only seeing that task really the day of or maybe a day before. So it makes it very difficult for me to plan my work, plan my day, prioritize certain tasks and actually get these projects delivered on time. So really both of those versions, whether it's just one task with multiple signees or using the status with a bunch of different automations to unassign and reassign, that is not going to work. And then in addition with all that, you're not going to collect really good data to know, hey, did we complete tasks on time? Where was time tracking actually going? In those individual steps and things like that, you'll lose a lot of good visibility even just beside besides the project progress overall. And so really the best way to solve this issue and the way that you need to structure your tasks to really make sure you get good workloading capacity visibility and also understand project progress and to make sure everyone knows what they need to do and how they need to do it, you need to take that specific parent task like this and break that up into different subtasks. And so essentially it's the same exact parent task. But now this is basically going to be used to group up all of the work that actually needs to happen to complete that specific deliverable. So I still have the best Airbnbs in Pennsylvania. That's my blog post, that's my deliverable that we're doing for the client. But now what I do is I break that up into bite sized pieces. So I have all of my different tasks like proofing the copy, applying blog proofing, revisions, designing the imagery, sending it to the client for review, scheduling the publish date, so on and so forth. And then all of these individual tasks are then assigned to individual people. So now each person knows what they need to do. In addition, they're also going to have due dates on each of these tasks so they know when they need to do as well. So I need to do proofing the blog copy and that's due on Monday. And then also they're going to have a time ascent on there, which is also going to then populate this workload view. Because I have a due date, I have a time estimate, and then I also have an assignee on all of my tasks which will give us good visibility into workloading capacity as well as help us plan out in the future. Because I'm going to know for myself, hey, I need to apply client design revisions to the blog on August 3rd. So I'm going to have a good visibility into the future of what I need to do so that I can plan my work ahead and then just stay consistent with our timelines to make sure that we're delivering this on time for our clients. So this is going to be great for when we actually go to scale the business and bring more and more people on, because then it's easier to delegate work, plan out these projects, and just make sure everyone knows what they need to do and when they need to do it. In addition, as you see, as I complete these subtasks and I'll jump into ClickUp to show you this in just a moment, as we close all of these out, that's also going to populate a nice progress bar, which is a custom field inside of ClickUp that's going to show us how far along we are. And then in addition, if I want to drop down, I'm able to see exactly which step in this process we are at at every given moment. So it's going to make it very easy for your project managers and account managers to not have to check in every 15 minutes and be super annoying because they're going to understand the status of really all of our projects at a very granular level, which is super helpful. And so if I jump into ClickUp here to show you the big difference between these two, as you'll see, this is our one parent task assigned to multiple people. We have a start date and due date. I'm not able to see the progress really here because there's no subtasks underneath that. And so if I drop this down, you'll see how much better this can potentially be. So now I have all of my tasks again, everyone's able to plan ahead. I can see when I need to do specific steps that'll give me good visibility of workload into the future as opposed to just today, which helps me plan ahead and just makes it easier for our project managers. And then in addition, one of the best pieces to this is I'm also able to take this. And so I have all my tasks here and then I have this one assigned to me. Write the blog outline and interview guide so I can actually click into my task and I'm able to come right here. And so this is what I need to do. I need to do this, I need to write the blog outline and interview guide. In addition, I also know how I need to do it. And so what you're able to do with all these specific steps, especially as you bring on new people onboard, new people into the company and you want to make it a very systematized business, I can then take that process, that standard operating procedure or documentation for how to complete all these steps, and I can connect them directly to where the work is Living. So now I know how to are what I need to do. And then in addition, I know how I need to do it because the standard operating procedure to complete that specific step is right inside of the task. So it's gonna make it very easy for me to follow the process for how I need to complete this specific step. In addition, if you have any checklist items as well that need to be done to give your people basically reminders for don't forget to do this, this or that. That way, again, more process living where the work gets done. It's gonna be very easy to build those checklists into these subtasks as well, because you can't really do that as much within the parent task. So this just makes it very easy for you to just make sure there's very consistent sort of behavior in all this because your proven process is right there, you're going to have checklists for reminders and the how and the what is all going to be connected together. In addition, what we're able to do, as you can see this, I can easily, as we go through this and say Gabriel then finishes his task, he can close this out. And what that's going to do is that's actually going to start to populate our progress bar right here, as you can see. So as we complete those subtasks, that'll give a good view at the high level, at that parent test level, how far along we actually are in this progress for the specific project or deliverable. And I can drop that down and see exactly which step I'm on. So again, that's a great view. And then if I actually get into the individual contributors of what how they're going to see their work, because everyone always talks about like, hey, how can I make my project management system easy for all of my individual contributors that are working? Because sometimes it can be overwhelming. And so what you want to have is just a nice task view like this, where essentially it's just filter on overdue for me. And again, I can come here, I can click directly into my task. I know what I need to do and I know how I need to do it, because that SOP is living right here as well. And then in addition, I can easily come here. And tracking time sometimes can be difficult if we're jumping from system to system or I don't know where I'm supposed to track my time. So if I have to view just like this, I can easily say, hey, I'm writing the blog review guide, I come here, I track my time. I do it again. Process is living right there for how to do it. I complete it, I stop tracking my time, I close this out. And then I can communicate in the parent task too, to put all that communication in one place for the team. So it makes it so easy for your team to work and collaborate together and then just make sure again they're following that proven process to get that work done. And then as you can see, after your individual contributors get their work done, just like that workflow I showed you, I'm then able to get an amazing view for project managers, for account managers or whoever needs to see this. I can come here and see all of my different deliverables in one place if they're named like this, with again the subtasks underneath there. And then I'll be able to see the progress for all of these in one specific view across all of my clients. I can see the overall status of where this is if I want to. And I can also drop this down and again see exactly which step we're at. As you can see, I just closed that one task in this one, and now it's populated my progress bar here and actually close that out. And then again, all this is going to be so easy for our project managers, account managers, to see the status of everything drill down into any individual details that they may need. And then if we're all communicating in one place as well, that's all going to be in the parent task for maybe that additional context or anything that I would need to see in there. And so it's going to make it very, very easy for the team to work collaborate together across different teams and, and just delegate work in general. So that's just a huge step that everyone should do to really organize their tasks to make them easier to see progress of your projects, as well as just assign this workout to the rest of the team. And so one more tip that I want to give you to really help build this whole entire system and structure your tasks like this. Because you're probably sitting there and you're like, hey, that's going to be so difficult for me to build all of these out and really assign my team to that. Because the reason I do this other process is because it's just easy to put those tasks in there and I don't really have to think about it. Well, what you want to do, and the biggest recommendation I can give you and I'll attach another training to really how to build all this out in the description below, is you want to build a process library just like this. So I have a whole separate space where essentially in here what I'm able to do is I can build out all of those workflows that I just showed you with all the different steps and with all the due dates which can be remapped, especially in ClickUp when I actually deploy a template, all those time estimates, any of those custom fields, and then again I have all my steps there, I have all the documentation for how to actually complete each of these steps. And then I actually go inside of ClickUp and I can save this directly as a template just like this so that I can use it over and over and over again. So there's not really any excuse for me having to build all that from scratch, because as long as I build it as a template inside of ClickUp, then I can use it, use it over and over again to make it very easy for me to just again delegate that work and follow that process of not having one task assigned to multiple people, because all this is going to be built out just like that. So again, I'll attach some training in the description below and how to actually build out that process library and templates to give you like the ability to essentially build all this out very easily. But that's the biggest recommendation I can give you. Don't take a task and assign it to multiple people. Don't, don't just use the status to automate the process of reassigning work. Build it out like this so everyone can confidently close their tasks, they can track time against those tasks to give you good data like that and then in addition just make it easier for them to see what they need to do, how they need to do it, to make sure nothing slips through the cracks. So if you want more tips just like this and how you can make your ClickUp workspace easier to use, give you better visibility and just make your team a little bit faster and more productive inside of ClickUp. I highly recommend that you check out our how to use ClickUp guide. This is about 56 pages of just dense information about how we at Zenpilot and we're ClickUp's highest rated solutions partner. How we at Zenpilot structure our ClickUp workspace and use ClickUp to collaborate amongst the team. So highly recommend you check out this resource. I'll attach this to the description below and in the comments I'll pin the comment there. So feel free to go check this out, download it and start optimizing your ClickUp workspace to help your team be more productive, more profitable, and healthier inside of ClickUp. But I appreciate you watching today's video. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below and I'll see you again next time.