Keeping track of 'things'

A simple paper to-do list: quick, cheap and easy to create. It can be shared immediately with your colleague sitting next to you without any further set-up time or explanation. In many ways it may suit your needs.

A digital task list can expand and improve on the paper because it better copes with scale. This might include: tracking many hundreds of things, allowing lists to evolve over time, or putting this stuff in the cloud. The ‘to-do’ app will allow you to filter out what’s not relevant at that moment by removing distraction. For me, I still use GQueues after 14+ years – it works for me.

Email is our most trusted technological friend. We use it to gather and store information, but the truth is it may not be the best tool for this. Some messages are critical while others are noise – either way they all take up time and attention so it’s important to use email well. Mailboxes are poorly suited to storing operational data such as order details, as they are a static record of communication and fundamentally they are not collaborative. To combat these issues, I highly recommend keeping a clean inbox alongside a to-do list and a production management system.