Task management is a crucial soft skill, yet it remains largely undeveloped.
※ This is about personal task management, not project task management, where you manage your own tasks independently.
The word ‘management’ may not be suitable. It might be better to consider it with a different term. As engineers, why not perceive it as engineering? Thus, Task Engineering.
Why is task management so important, you ask? Because it’s a skill necessary for autonomous work.
Those who can’t work autonomously are unfortunate. They’re stuck in a Reaction Driven mode, driven only by the atmosphere or suggestions from people around them when they physically congregate. While this works for some, it usually doesn’t. As I mentioned in Online Meeting Sucks, the essence of engineering lies in focusing intensely in solitude. Collaborations and meetings can refine what you’ve made with that focus. Socializing or retreats are okay occasionally. Still, the most crucial is solitary focus.
To concentrate in solitude, personal task management is necessary. You have to discipline yourself. It’s work, so there will be opportunities for communication. You’ll need to switch between focus mode and communication mode, which also requires self-discipline.
Just as you need skills in editors or terminals to program, you need the skill of “task management” to discipline the “human known as an engineer” who conducts engineering.
Let’s dive into the topic. Task Engineering is the engineering approach to effectively handling the concept of tasks.
There is no clear theory or system yet, but I’ve organized it into an online book.
I believe the necessary concepts are roughly in place.
From here, I’ll pick up the components of Task Engineering, based on the above online book. Try to grasp the kind of concepts required, and consider how you might implement them, especially as an engineer.
Although the focus of this article is personal task management, I believe there are three categories at this perspective, which I’ve organized into 3P.
| Name | Target | Main Characteristics |
|---|---|---|
| Project | Project (Team) | Assignment, coordination, overview, and detail |
| Partner | Partner (Couple, Parent-Child) | Task sharing and messaging |
| Personal | Personal (Individual) | Unique to each person |
Each genre is entirely different. Particularly, project task management and personal task management need to be distinguished.
When you hear ‘task,’ you probably think of project tasks. But the main field of Task Engineering is personal tasks. You can leave project tasks to project management or development methodologies. Instead, we are severely lacking in the perspective of individuals seeking their ways of handling tasks, and I believe it should be strengthened as Task Engineering.
Personal task management resembles the activities of an athlete. Ultimately, it involves visualizing tasks, determining priorities while observing them, and tackling them one by one. Though visualization and prioritization are crucial, what is even more important is the power to “actually execute the tasks written down.”
Programs operate as per the coded instructions, but humans don’t work that way. Yet, one must operate that way. It’s physically and mentally demanding, hence I liken it to being an athlete. Maintaining a healthy body and a sound mind through habitual practices is essential.
Conversely, there’s another type. For those inherently restless and unable to remain still, the concept is apparent. They can’t become athletes (hence personal task management doesn’t suit them inherently), but they perform highly because of high mental processing power. I refer to this as Applier—skilled at applying creatively.
To summarize:
It’s a lengthy explanation, but I want to convey the central point in this section. In personal task management:
Thus, avoiding mismatches such as athletes relying on environmental power or appliers attempting to build their systems is advised.
The strategy in task management refers to the approach or mindset utilized. It’s categorized based on “what to rely on.”
Here are some main strategies:
Next, the stance in task management refers to the handling pattern of tasks, like a mental model. Strategies were about “how we manage,” while stance concerns “how we handle.”
Here are some main stances:
What did you think? You’re likely resorting to some of the above strategies and stances. Employing multiple depending on circumstances is also normal. Though I haven’t introduced radically new concepts, articulating and understanding them holds significance. Like engineering, it too begins with articulation and design.
An Altask is something that resembles a task but isn’t handled as one. Unlike tasks, different handling strategies are necessary for Altask.
Examples of Altask are:
Events are straightforward examples, likely managed via a calendar. No one would attempt to manage events via a task list. There exist several Altask instances beyond events.
Ans: No, it’s not your imagination.
In fact, it’s crucial.
Task Engineering is not only about confronting tasks. Just facing tasks alone doesn’t achieve task completion. One must pay attention to Altask, the cause of task occurrence, and the nature and upkeep of oneself executing tasks.
These surrounding areas are included in Task Engineering. Thus, seemingly unrelated-to-task matters appear addressed.
It’s impossible to retain all tasks inside your head, completing everything without procrastination or indecision. Realistically, it’d be best to rely on remembering when necessary. While you might know reminders, this “system to remember” is incredibly vital.
There are workflows and reminders.
Workflow (Waypoint) refers to places one frequently traverses in everyday life. If your PC desktop is cluttered with icons, it’s touched daily, and that becomes your personal workflow. A Slack channel seen daily in a project could also be a workflow. There are dashboards or daily notes, and lately, “workspaces where AI resides” like ChatGPT Projects are also observed.
By having a workflow, keeping tasks there means they’ll eventually be seen and remembered. I call this Trap Remind—the nuance of setting a trap to catch or ensnare yourself later.
Next, Reminders refer to systems that make you recall “the previously planted elements” at “a future timing.”
A simplest example, an alarm clock informs (indirectly) waking time by sound at a specified time. We usually use calendar-based reminders, receiving alarms or pop-ups a few minutes prior.
Also, physically gathering for work permits the good or bad atmosphere, informing naturally (or forcibly) what to do next—another type of reminder I dub as Atmosphere Remind.
Regarding reminders, it’s simple: The more you know about reminders, the more possible it becomes to plant detailed reminders. Reconsider it. If an alarm clock was your sole reminder, how inconvenient would life be? Inevitably, many appointments or things to do later are forgotten….
Interruptions are an engineer’s nemesis—I assume there are no objections. Some might accept them as a necessary evil, but they can be reduced, perhaps eradicated. To achieve that, understanding “what interruptions fundamentally are,” “what mechanism causes them,” and “the alternative mechanisms to create to avoid them” are essential considerations.
Another concept distinct from interruptions is Tangents. While interruptions are forced upon you externally, tangents are when you yourself get distracted, like momentarily checking upon a smartphone notification.
Task Engineering treats interruptions and tangents comprehensively. For instance, utilizing the SWAP matrix I developed divides them into 4 patterns for easier handling.
| Strong (Delayed Strongly) | Weak (Delayed Weakly) | |
|---|---|---|
| (Active) Interruptions | Pattern 1 | Pattern 2 |
| (Passive) Tangents | Pattern 3 | Pattern 4 |
※ Delayed refers to the situation when Task B arises while working on Task A, necessitating either to delay one. Delays for Task B indicate “Delayed Strongly” due to self-strength, while delaying Task A signifies “Delayed Weakly,” losing to Task B.
Literary Task Management (LTM) refers to literature-based task management. Abbreviated as LTM.
This concept is under development in Japan, inspired by literary programming. Traditionally, tasks were treated like tickets as mechanical data.
In LTM, journaling, planning, and researching are initially documented as texts. Task information is also inscribed as required. If extraction of tasks is necessary, it will be performed effectively from the text. Thus, it’s phrase-first.
Why so? Because it allows a focus on context. Blindly proceeding with visible task processing without context is unwise. Generally, tasks have logical contexts without correct answers, requiring optimal strategy planning in their context. LTM permits easier contextual awareness, also benefiting subsequent analysis through generated AI data feeding.
Although it might be less familiar to engineers, some already utilize Obsidian or similar tools to establish personalized text stations locally.
Personal task management is an essential skill for autonomous work. Despite its significance, it remains unstructured—probably due to the word ‘management,’ hence the new term ‘Task Engineering.’
As a Knowledge Architect and Soft Skills Engineer, structuring the fundamental concepts of task management has been my major work in recent years (as referenced in the online book at the beginning). In this article, I provided a brief overview of the characters in Task Engineering based on the book.
What do you think? You might now understand that managing personal tasks is not so simple after all. It’s still in the developmental stage and requires your trials and discussions. Please consider stepping into the world of Task Engineering!