task and calendar management

Productivity

Manage Your Calendar Like A Pro

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Manage Your Calendar Like A Pro

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There isn’t a more widely used and recognized productivity tool than the calendar. People use calendars for all sorts of purposes including the planning of daily activities, remembering birthdays, and scheduling meetings… just to name a few!

There is no one size fits all system to manage your calendar but let’s start with the basics and understand why calendars are essential for effectively managing our time.

Calendars - the Ultimate Productivity Tool

Calendars – the Ultimate Productivity Tool

It is no secret that calendars are one of the most effective tools in the productivity toolbox. Digital or physical, calendars help us manage our time, check items off of our to-do list as well as remind us of important upcoming events. In a nutshell, calendars…

Encourage Routine

Calendars are a great way to record and ensure that we follow a routine. Making your bed may not find its way onto your calendar but you may reserve Tuesdays for general housework for example. Creating a predictable routine that can be seen on a calendar is an effective and visual way to ensure that you either keep up with an existing routine or establish new ones.

The bonus? Routines are a great tool to help manage your mental health by promoting consistent and healthy habits. Our brains like routine because it takes much less energy to automate activity than have to figure something out each and every time. This gives our brain a break and can redirect energy to more pressing or important tasks.

Help to Manage and Prioritize Tasks

Managing tasks does not mean that each and every single thing you need to do is added to your calendar – not only would this be a waste of time but it would be completely overwhelming! Reserve calendar space for events and anything with a time attached to it. Once your calendar is populated with time-specific items, it can inform associated tasks that will eventually find their way onto a to-do list.

For example, you may note that a report is due at the end of the week but you also have a presentation due on Wednesday. Knowing that information will help you populate your to-do list with the most timely tasks related to the report are completed first. While it may seem obvious, tasks associated with the most imminent deadline automatically find their way at the top of the priority list.

Keep Schedules Manageable

While time blocking is an effective technique to manage the hours in a day, the same concept can be used on a macro level to ensure that you are effective with your time overall within the bigger picture of a calendar. Whether you reserve the first day of the month, the second Tuesday or the whole last week for specific activities, being consistent will help keep your schedule manageable and hold a place for activities that you have to regularly accomplish.

Part of managing an effective schedule is including your downtime just as if you would include any other commitment – your schedule is not manageable if it only includes work-related activities. Noting vacations, date nights, or even scheduled time for hobbies will not only help you remember to actually commit to these activities but will also block in the space so that you can’t fill it with something else. If you are using a calendar effectively, it is impossible to overbook yourself.

Encourage Accountability and Realistic Expectations

There are only so many hours in a day, days in a week, and weeks in a month… Overscheduling kills productivity and most of us are guilty of doing it.

When our calendars are packed, the first thing that often suffers is our health – both physical and mental. The things that fill our bucket like time with friends, days off, and hobbies get pushed aside to make space for everything that we over-committed to. The next thing to go is sleep. Lack of sleep can be devastating to your wellbeing, your body needs sleep to regenerate just like a muscle needs rest after a workout, if you keep pushing long enough, the damage could be irreparable.

Whether we are bad at guessing how much time is needed to complete a task or we simply give ourselves way too much credit and assume we can get something done quicker than we actually can, keeping a well-managed calendar is one way to keep us accountable and set realistic expectations of our available time.

Communicate Availability and Enforce Boundaries

Especially true for digital calendar systems, calendars can communicate availability for certain activities (work or personal). On the same note, calendars communicate when you are not available and help to enforce any boundaries that you may have set for yourself.

Many families use calendars to communicate busy schedules. This can be especially helpful if the members of your household have a variety of commitments and activities and need to communicate travel arrangements or even the timing of meals.

Calendar Management Defined

Calendar Management Defined

Simply put, calendar management is effective management of your time using a calendar as a tool. Often, people reserve calendar management for professional activities but it’s equally as important in your personal life. For the purpose of this blog, calendar management will be discussed mainly in the context of professional work.

When you have an effectively managed calendar, your priorities are clear. Items that fill the page (or screen) are those that are essential to your work. You can look at calendar management in both the short and long term.

Short-Term Calendar Management : When it comes to calendars, people generally think of them as a snapshot of a single month. While a month may not initially seem to be a short-term time frame, most people agree that a calendar is most effective for weekly and monthly overviews of activities.

Long-Term Calendar Management : Long-term calendar management is often used for strategic development and project management. Having an overview of a couple of months or even a year helps to create a backbone in which smaller and smaller components are organized.

Calendar and Task Management

Calendar and Task Management – What is the Difference?

Tasks don’t belong on your calendar – there, I said it.

It’s important to distinguish between items that belong on a calendar and those that are more appropriate to be added to a to-do list. The general rule of thumb is that a calendar is reserved for events that are scheduled at a specific time, think:

  • Client calls
  • Conferences
  • Doctors Appointments

Those are just a handful of examples of items that have a specific time attached to them. While you could argue that tasks can also have times attached to them, most tasks take less than 30 minutes. Your calendar would quickly become cluttered and less useful if every single task were included. Even if your calendar is used for some longer time-specific tasks, you will find that you have tasks recorded in two or more locations because your short tasks need to live somewhere else. Keeping all tasks in one place is a much more effective way to manage day-to-day activities and ensure you don’t miss anything.

It is helpful to think of tasks as negotiable or more flexible than timed commitments. Life happens and sometimes tasks don’t get done so it is easy enough to move them on to tomorrow’s to-do list. Check out Master Your To-Do List and Get Things Done for some great tips on using this effective tool in collaboration with your calendar. A time block for a certain category of tasks is something that can live on a calendar because it encompasses a group of tasks like checking emails that will happen at a certain time.

Why Calendar Management

Why Calendar Management?

If the answer “productivity” isn’t enough for you, there are a number of other reasons why you should prioritize learning and implementing effective calendar management that indirectly support productivity but also stand on their own as reasons to better manage your calendar.

Capturing and Recognizing a Record of Achievement

Much like a journal will help to capture instances of achievement or advancement, looking back at past calendars will demonstrate the progress that can only be observed with the passing of time. Even if you weren’t a calendar managing pro a year ago, if you had any sort of system, reviewing it will allow you to see progress and provide a record of achievement

Whether you are looking at personal milestones or those of an organization, calendars are a fantastic way not only to record progress but to look back, bask in its glory and learn.

Adapting Processes and Gaining Insight

While you are sitting back and admiring a year of accomplishments, take special note of deadlines that were missed. While this may seem counterintuitive, recognizing where you fell short will help you plan in advance and not repeat whatever system or schedule that landed you there in the first place.

To help gain insight, ask yourself these questions as you review past calendars:

How often was a deadline missed?

If there was only a handful of times where a deadline was missed, go easy on yourself, life happens! If you noted that you were consistently missing deadlines, that could be a sign to say that you need to factor in more time to complete work. It may also be helpful to analyze your feelings towards a certain activity. If you are always missing deadlines to submit final reports for example, is this a task that you may be able to outsource?

When a deadline was missed, was it consistent in the underestimating of time needed?

For example, if given a couple more days, would most of the projects or activities have been completed on time? If you are tempted to offer a one-week turnaround for a report but history shows that you rarely accomplish that task in that amount of time, start saying ten days instead and give yourself more wiggle room.

Is there a theme in the types of deadlines that were missed?

This one may be harder to spot but well worth investigating. If you note that you are consistently missing deadlines, were they always with the same client or the same category of task? Understanding that our motivations may differ based on certain types of tasks or even those that involve other people is incredibly helpful for future planning.

What can you learn from asking these questions? A whole lot!

Not everything is sunshine and rainbows but looking back will help you better plan and account for time more effectively in future planning activities. No one will mind if things take you a little longer to complete if they can count on you to be consistent in your submissions and deadlines. Consistency certainly looks better than regularly missing deadlines and underestimating the time needed to complete a task or project.

Team Collaboration and Communication

Technological advances in shared calendar options have made it easier than ever to be transparent about our schedules and availabilities. Having a shared calendar makes project planning and scheduling significantly more convenient, keeping everyone on the same page and is a must for every functioning team in this day and age.

While there are certainly risks of overscheduling activities or of others inserting themselves into spaces they perceive as “free” the pros outweigh the cons when it comes to productivity and transparency.

Let’s face it, no project in the history of projects has ever been completed without some kind of calendar system. Large projects or ambitious strategic plans simply don’t happen without being mapped out on a calendar. Add in the sharing functionally, it’s much easier to assign tasks and responsibilities to the team but also to see what other people are working on to paint a clearer picture of the progression of the project.

Save Time and Energy

It takes time and energy to create an effective calendar management system that works but it is all worth it because a well-managed calendar has been shown to save people hours every week!

Technically speaking, you are not actually creating more time but by dedicating even 1 hour a week to updating and managing your calendar, you will inevitably find efficiencies and structure your available time in a way that allows you to get more done and feel as though you have more hours in a day.

The bonus of using digital calendars is that most will allow you to easily schedule recurring events. Say you have a regular team meeting every Wednesday at 2:00 pm, put it in your calendar on repeat and you won’t have to remind yourself every week to include that in your calendar. This is also a handy function if you like to reserve a block of time for creative work such as writing. Reserving these blocks in a shared calendar will also help you establish boundaries and reduce distractions. Check out this blog on 10 Simple Ways to Reduce Distractions at Work for other ways to set boundaries outside of your calendar.

Effectively Manage Your Calendar

Top 20 Tips To Effectively Manage Your Calendar

Given the sheer number of calendar platforms and both digital and paper formats, there are countless ways to effectively manage your calendar that best fits your needs. That said, starting with a few of these helpful tips will greatly increase your calendar’s effectiveness.

1. Be as Precise as Possible When Scheduling Time

Look at your history, do you regularly block 30 minutes when you know that the meeting always goes over?

You are not doing yourself any favours by underestimating or overestimating the time that something will take. If you have any past data to reference, learn from it and you can better predict the true amount of time that you will need to block for a specific activity. Sometimes, activities are new and you will have to do your best to estimate the time it will take. That is perfectly fine but in the case of something new, always factor in more time as opposed to less.

It is also helpful to consider Parkinson’s Law – the task will fit the time allotted for it. New tasks and activities aside, as you become more comfortable with a certain activity, refine the time block that you have reserved for it.

2. Use Meeting Scheduling Programs

While it is a bad idea to give people full access to book themselves into your calendar, reserving several time slots that other people can insert themselves into is a great way to manage your calendar, be available to others, and respect your available time.

Programs like Calendly work by letting you set the times you have available and people can simply book a meeting in a time that you have already set aside for that purpose. This can look like office hours Monday and Thursday from 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm. To be even more precise, you can offer the option of 30-minute blocks. This sets the standard that people should plan for no more than 30 minutes per meeting. Specifying the length also means that you won’t have one person blocking up 2 hours of your time.

Not only will this make your availability clear but it will also protect the time you need to focus on important tasks.

Account for Buffers and Transition Time

3. Account for Buffers and Transition Time

If there is one tip on this list that you should implement immediately, it’s this one. Way too often, we expect ourselves to instantly switch from one task to another, like turning a light switch on and off. Not only is this completely unrealistic, but it’s also not at all how our brain works and it ends up eating away at the valuable time from both tasks. While people may use the term buffer and transition interchangeably, there are a couple of important distinctions:

Transition Time

Your brain needs time to effectively shift between tasks. Factoring in even a 10-minute transition between activities will help you come down from the previous activity and enter the zone for the next one. It may seem like a waste of a 10-minute block of time but that time and more would be wasted between tasks anyway if you were to simply jump in.

Buffer Time

Buffers are a similar concept but differ in that their intention to account for tasks that may go over their allotted time. Meetings are a great example when it comes to showing the effectiveness of buffers.

Let’s say that you have a 1-hour meeting scheduled. Based on past reviews of your calendar, these types of meetings are generally on time but sometimes go up to 10 minutes later. Because you know this, you add a buffer in your calendar for 30 minutes. Lucky for you, the meeting ends right on time but one of the speakers was particularly interesting. Because you factored in that buffer between that meeting and your next engagement, you can take that time to introduce yourself. On the other hand, say the meeting was completely dry and a waste of time, you now have 30 minutes to watch cat videos and bring some joy back into your life.

4. Plan for Planning

Great calendars don’t just happen, you need to make them happen. Use that calendar of yours and plan some time dedicated to planning and calendar review

If you work traditional hours, the following are great times to review your calendar

  • The last 30 minutes of your workday
  • The last hour on a Friday
  • The last weekday of the month

Planning should be a regular activity done daily, weekly, and monthly. Not only will this help you draft a to-do list, but it will give you space to look ahead and effectively organize your time and accurately schedule future activities.

Have as Few Calendars as Possible

5. Have as Few Calendars as Possible

Calendars are an effective way to manage your time but this is one case where more is not better.

Having a Google calendar for personal, Outlook for work, a small one for your bag, one on your desktop… having too many places to park your commitments will guarantee confusion.

Decide on one system if you can, two if you want to keep your personal one separate from work. Luckily, you can often add events to multiple calendars but having fewer places to look at will save you time and energy.

Managing your own calendar is hard enough but managing a team calendar comes with its own set of challenges – the same rule applies. Have one central place where your team can be confident holds all the information they need.

6. Schedule an Interruption Free Day Once a Week

Meetings are just part of the deal in most organizations, especially when you work with a team. That said, meetings shouldn’t rule your calendar.

It’s important to plan for at least one day a week where you can focus uninterrupted, essentially having a day where you do not schedule or participate in any meetings. If you use some kind of calendar booking system, ensure that there are no available slots on that day and communicate this clearly.

People greatly underestimate the value of scheduling uninterrupted time but it is the secret weapon when it comes to productivity.

7. Add Events and Meetings to Your Calendar Immediately

While this may seem obvious, too often we tell ourselves that we will add it in later – Don’t wait! When later rolls around, we end up unprepared at best or with a conflict at worst. With most of us having our calendar in our pocket, it will only take a minute to add something in for safekeeping.

This rule also applies while you are in meetings, schedule follow-ups before the meeting is done to ensure that you can plan appropriately for the next meeting.

Use Reminder Features on Your Calendar

8. Use Reminder Features on Your Calendar

If you are using a digital calendar, chances are that it has the ability to send you notifications or reminders. You can set the window but it is helpful to have a 15-30 minute heads up that you will need to transition to the next event or task.

Use reminders with care though, they can become excessive, be disruptive to your flow state and negatively impact the quality of work you are putting out. When used correctly, however, they are an excellent tool in your calendar management tool box.

9. Use Time Blocks

After the tip about accounting for buffers and transitions, time blocking is arguably the next most effective tip for calendar management. Time blocking is a simple concept: designate a block of time to a specific task or a group of like tasks in order to better focus on them. As mentioned in a previous tip, individual tasks don’t belong on your calendar but time blocks are a great way to ensure that you are being reasonable with your own expectations of the available time to complete them.

A general rule of thumb is to make blocks at least 30 minutes long to ensure that you have enough time to get into the zone of whatever task it is that you need to do. It can also be effective to look at your blocks in the morning and afternoon, creating large blocks of time in which you can work on specific tasks.

If you want to learn more about this concept, check out Time Blocking – A Time Management Trick to Get in the Zone .

10. Say “No” or “Later”

This is a great tip for so many reasons. Too often, we are quick to say yes and then figure out how to make it fit in an already packed schedule. When you work backwards like this, it will only end badly for you. Pause and ask yourself:

Is this task relevant to my priorities and scope?

Is someone asking you to design a pamphlet when your role involves data entry? That is an obvious example of a task being outside someone’s scope but it can be more complicated than that. The request itself could be something that is within your scope but may not be on your priority list. Say that it is Monday and you have a presentation to make on Wednesday. If a team member approaches you and asks if you will help them proofread a draft report for a client due next week. Your instinct may be to help your teammate but that could jeopardize your ability to finish the presentation that is actually part of your job. In this case, you could inform them that you can take a look only after your presentation is done or, better yet, suggest another team member who may be more appropriate for that task.

Do I have the actual time available in my calendar to complete it?

Maybe the task is relevant and in your scope, great! But will it fit in your calendar? This can be especially tricky if your higher-ups have unrealistic expectations of deadlines. If you have managed your calendar well and find that there is simply no way to fit something in and complete it with any kind of quality, there are a couple of options. The first option is to delegate the task to another team member. Another option is to bring your calendar to your team lead, explain that in order for you to complete the task, something else has to be removed from your plate or rescheduled for a later day. Oftentimes, having the visual of your time is enough for team leads to better manage their expectations.

Would I have to say no to something else in order to say yes to this?

The task is in your scope and you can fit it in your calendar… but should you? Understanding that saying yes to something means you are saying no to something else. Once you have filled the available block in your schedule, it becomes unavailable for something else that you may want or need to do more. When something has entered your calendar, removing or rescheduling it is much more work than ensuring that it is something that should be there in the first place.

On a related note, if there is one thing that shouldnt take up space on your calendar it is update-type meetings. With collaboration-based programs like Teamly, it is easy to see what everyone is up to without wasting an hour of everyone’s time for a meeting.

Consider Time Zones

11. Consider Time Zones

With more and more people working remotely, it is important to consider time zones when adding items to your calendar if you have a geographically scattered team or clientele. It is helpful to schedule the event in your calendar in your local time but leave a note for what time that translates to on the other end. Not only will it give you context (is it very early or late at night for them?) but also adds that little extra personal touch when you acknowledge that your time zone isn’t the only one in the world.

12. Batch Meetings

Arranging to have all your meetings happen on one day is an effective way to manage your calendar. If having every meeting on one day isn’t possible, arrange for the meetings that you can control to live on either end of the meetings that are non-negotiable. In doing this, you can make the most use of already being in the mindset needed to be effective in meetings.

Meetings Getting Derailed? Here’s How to Keep Things on Track is a great blog if you find meetings taking up more than their fair share on your calendar.

13. Design a Colour Coding System

One of the most popular (and fun) ways to manage your calendar is to use a colour coding system. This visual type system has been shown to be incredibly effective and is relatively easy to implement. While colour choice is completely personal, consider the following suggestions from Calendar.com :

  • Grey – meetings, grey is neutral and balancing in your calendar.
  • Red – detail-oriented tasks, red catches your attention and signifies the importance.
  • Purple – creative activities, think brainstorming or writing.
  • Blue/Pink – more relaxing and less taxing tasks.
  • Green – think health, lunch breaks and downtime.
  • White – keep it simple and designate white for prep and organization time.

Depending on the type of work you do, another option is to colour code based on the client or project that the work is for.

14. Be Clear on Priorities

Simply put, if someone else were to look at your calendar, they should be able to clearly understand your priorities. A calendar is a representation of how you spend your limited time, what ends up with a place in this system needs to be tasks, activities, and events that serve you professionally and personally.

Keep Your Calendar Accessible

15. Keep Your Calendar Accessible

This one is a given but worth mentioning… What good is a calendar if you are constantly forgetting it or digging for it? Most people use digital calendars nowadays so if your phone is handy, so is your calendar.

If you are still clinging to a paper calendar, make sure that it is in a format that you will actually carry around, whether that is a small pocket-sized book or a full size one that lives in a bag.

16. Respect the 4 D’s of Time Management

If you are unfamiliar with the 4 D’s of time management, here is a quick refresher:

  • Delete – see tip #10, but remove anything on your calendar that doesn’t actually need to be there.
  • Delegate – are you the best person for this task? If not, pass it off to whoever is.
  • Defer – maybe the task does belong to you but does it need to be done right at this moment? If not, schedule it for a time in the future that makes more sense.
  • Do – this one is self-explanatory, do what you say you will do.

One of the most effective ways to manage your calendar is by ensuring that what is on there actually needs to be there. Remove the clutter and what’s left are the things that not only need to be done but need to be done by you.

17. Schedule Catch Up Times

Life happens, but keep a spot on your calendar so that your tasks and commitments don’t fall behind when something inevitably disrupts your flow. I know it seems a bit odd to reserve a timeslot in your calendar for something so non-specific but you will thank yourself later for having a guilt-free catch-all space. If you don’t end up needing this space, think of it as a break (you know… for cat videos).

18. Change Your Calendar View

Digital calendars will let you toggle between day, week, month, and even yearly views. It can be very helpful to change your view every once in a while and gain a new perspective on your commitments or even catch something that you may have missed.

19. Appropriately Label Calendar Items

While it may be tempting to simply slap the label “Meeting” in your calendar, it tells you very little about what is actually happening at that time. Who is this meeting with? What is the topic? Who will be there? How can you be expected to show up to this meeting prepared with very little detail?

When you label events in your calendar, it helps to note the type of event, who it is with, and the purpose. An example would be – Brainstorming Meeting with Marketing Team . Short but still informative.

Schedule the Perfect Day/Week/Month

20. Schedule the Perfect Day/Week/Month

The perfect day/week/month will never happen and even if it does, it will never happen again. That said, having a template for these ideals will help you better prepare for reality and give you something to strive for. Adjust this template over time until it becomes a more accurate depiction of reality and use it to base all your scheduling activities.

Calendars are standard when it comes to time management and productivity. You won’t get far without an effective calendar management system so start with some of these tips and you will be well on your way!

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task and calendar management

What is Calendar Management? A Complete Guide + Best Practices and Tools

Jacqueline Florida

Content Writer

calendar management with Magic

Time is precious, and with so many things to do, business owners and leaders have to use it wisely. The key on how to increase business productivity ? It’s effective calendar management to balance and streamline your duties and responsibilities.

Get the most out of each workday by making sure that you cover all your bases. To help you manage plans and meetings, a calendar manager can keep your schedule organized using the best calendar apps suited to how you work.

In this guide, we’ll delve into the intricacies of calendar management responsibilities, the benefits they bring, plus expert tips and scheduling tools to streamline your to-do list.

  • Effective calendar management is crucial for maximizing productivity and balancing responsibilities, making it a key factor in business success.
  • A dedicated calendar manager can organize your schedule using the best tools and practices for calendar management tailored to your work style.
  • Calendar management for executive assistants involves coordinating travel plans, gatekeeping appointments, and prioritizing tasks to ensure your schedule is optimized for high-impact activities.

What Is Calendar Management?

Calendar management is the ‌systematic organization of meetings, events, and duties to maximize the ROI you can get over time. It covers routine but essential tasks like addressing meeting preferences, scheduling time slots, and preparing for meetings.

This process typically involves the use of physical or digital calendars, calendar management platforms, and tools to facilitate planning, tracking, and coordinating of your daily tasks.

Managing Your Calendar Management as a Busy Executive

Effective calendar management affects your day-to-day success as well as your business growth. That said, such calendar tasks can take up too much of your time.

Having a dedicated schedule manager can free you up from this work—and what better way to hire a calendar manager than to outsource‌ it? To succeed at calendar management, your virtual calendar assistant should have these three core skills mastered:

  • Time Management: A well-managed calendar ensures efficient and strategic time allocation. How well a dedicated schedule manager handles calendar appointments boosts your productivity and ability to deal with many aspects of your business.
  • Technical Proficiency: They should be proficient in calendar management tools and software like digital calendars, scheduling apps, and collaboration platforms. The ability to use features like automatic email follow-ups, reminders, sharing options, and integration is also a plus.
  • Priority Management: Task batching and classifying according to their order of importance lets you know what to focus on. It also helps assess if you need to delegate essential tasks to keep within your set schedule.

Priority Management

Calendar Management for Executive Assistants: Why Delegate It?

Among the wide range of responsibilities that rest on an executive assistant’s capable shoulders, calendar management takes a prominent place. Offloading your calendar management responsibilities to an EA is not just for convenience; it’s a strategic move with far-reaching benefits.

Focus on Core Priorities

As an executive, you have high-level tasks that require your undivided attention. With executive calendar management services, you can allocate more time to critical decision-making and priority projects.

Let’s say an executive assistant to the CEO of a growing tech startup manages their calendar. The EA can organize critical board meetings to discuss funding opportunities. Meanwhile, the CEO has uninterrupted time to review presentations, strategize, and prepare for the meeting.

Coordinate Travel Plans

Travel arrangements can be tied to calendar management for executive assistants. As they take charge of your meetings, events, and personal appointments, they can coordinate travel plans. This can include booking flights, reserving hotel rooms, organizing ground transportation, and creating itineraries.

Meeting Preparation

Preparation is key to productive meetings. An executive assistant takes on the task of gathering and organizing relevant materials, be it contracts, meeting briefs, and background research. This way, you’re well-informed and ready for each engagement.

Meeting Preparation Activities

Gatekeep and Screen Appointments

Ever had a meeting that could’ve been an email? An EA serves as your buffer by screening and organizing appointments based on your preferences and the importance of each meeting. This ensures that your time is allocated efficiently to revenue-generating activities.

For example, a Sales VP is flooded with meeting requests in the midst of a product launch. An EA carefully reviews each request, prioritizing client meetings and internal strategy sessions. Then, less critical meetings are rescheduled or assigned to the right team member.

Reduce Stress and Mental Workload

We all know that managing a busy schedule packed with strategy sessions, team conferences, and one-to-one meetings can be mentally taxing. Plus, you have other things to think about as an executive. By delegating calendar management responsibilities to EAs, you can focus on critical decision-making without the added stress of scheduling.

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Why is calendar management important.

A well-maintained calendar is valuable for optimizing time, coordinating schedules, and ensuring productivity. Here are some reasons why effective calendar management is essential:

1. It Optimizes Your Time

Calendar management helps you optimize time by scheduling and prioritizing critical tasks, appointments, and events. Effective time management ensures that your work hours are allocated efficiently, reducing the risk of double bookings or missed deadlines.

2. It Helps with Organization and Planning

A well-managed calendar offers a clear view of your upcoming commitments, deadlines, and external and internal meetings. It helps you plan your daily agenda, set realistic goals, and allot time for your weekly tasks and projects.

3. It Prevents Scheduling Conflicts

With centralized calendar management systems, you can easily identify any scheduling conflicts or overlapping commitments. Then, you can adjust appointments or priorities to avoid stress and inefficiency.

4. It Promotes Productivity and Accountability

Calendar management systems also hold people accountable for their time. It helps you and your team stay focused and organized, reducing distractions and boosting productivity. By scheduling time slots, you can also have a record of how time is spent to track progress, evaluate efficiency, and identify areas for improvement.

calendar management responsibilities

12 Calendar Management Best Practices to Optimize Your Time

If time permits, you can take charge of your schedule with this practical calendar management tips list. However, if you’re short on time or experiencing decision fatigue, it’s best to leave it to a virtual assistant for efficient goal achievement.

Either way, organizing your core priorities and daily schedule will make you more productive even as your business grows. Here are 12 calendar management tips you can put into practice:

1. Set Precise Meeting Schedules

Effective calendar management sets meeting durations depending on the agenda. Ideally, meetings should last from 15 to 45 minutes. However, planning and brainstorming can take around 30 minutes.

Consider how long exactly a meeting should take to save critical time on your daily appointments. You can use the extra time to catch up on emails, prepare notes for the meeting, or grab a quick meal.

2. Use an Automated Meeting Setup Platform

Manage your time with a calendar platform like Google Calendar and Calendly. These let you set your availability and make appointment setting easier as they email a link to other people. They can just click your link and set an appointment with you on one of your available slots.

Such automated scheduling tools also allow you to send email reminders, follow-ups, and other notifications without any hassles. They are convenient for home, work, and classroom needs, making communicating and collaborating so easy.

3. Give the Pomodoro Technique a Go

The Pomodoro technique is a productivity method that breaks down large tasks into smaller ones, setting a pattern of work and rest. This time management technique allows you to go through your daily agenda without the risk of burnout and stress. You can use any timer or tools like Marinara Timer and Focus 10.

Pomodoro Technique

4. Dedicate Time for Planning

Yes, planning and scheduling time slots should be included in your schedule since it’s also a task. Setting a time to organize the short and long-term details of your schedule saves you time and stress in the future. This way, you can effectively leverage task batching and delegation.

Proper planning also ensures that you have enough time to accomplish your essential tasks. This also allows you to be prepared for unforeseen challenges and roadblocks and readjust as needed without completely disrupting your workflow.

5. Create Gaps For Meeting Transitions

Don’t set internal and external meetings and tasks back to back. Though you think this is optimizing your time blocks, it can lead to decision fatigue. Plus, some unplanned commitments may pop up and need prompt answers or actions.

So, add gaps when scheduling meetings and projects. Breaks between meetings allow you to do small but urgent tasks. For instance, urgent emails that need your approval before your team members can move to the next phase of the project.

6. Add Time Zones

Remote work has opened the doors to working with people in different time zones. So, use a calendar platform like Google Calendar that allows adding time zones to remove any confusion.

Even better, you can change the time zone for a calendar to indicate personal or executive calendars. It’s very useful whenever you travel abroad, and you need to check back on your work and family at home.

7. Set Calendar Event Reminders

Most calendar management platforms allow you to set reminders for scheduled appointments. So take advantage of this feature that sends you a digital nudge whenever you need to do a task.

Creating reminders is as simple as clicking an empty time slot in your digital calendar, inputting a new calendar event, and ticking the reminder box. You (and other participants for a certain event) will receive a reminder at your selected time so you can do the task.

The reminder feature ensures that you do even the smallest tasks, minimizing blockers on your to-do list. Don’t forget to mark each task as you complete it so you know that you’re done with it.

8. Use Calendar Apps for Task Management

With a lot of meetings and appointments to set and attend, calendar management is challenging. Plus, you still have other tasks to accomplish. To make it easier for you, choose calendar management tools like Fantastical, Trello, and Woven to manage your daily agenda.

With these tools, you can plan your day-to-day priorities and block the times that you have meetings and appointments to avoid overlaps. Plus, they allow you to sync calendars with your team for better collaboration.

There is also comprehensive software like Google Workspace with all the productivity and collaboration tools you need. Tools such as Google Calendar, Meet, Gmail, Drive, and more allow you to get things done seamlessly, especially in a remote work setup.

calendar management

9. Check for CMS Integration

You can get help with scheduling meetings by integrating other platforms, such as a content management system (CMS). This integration keeps you up to date with appointments and ensures that you don’t book two client meetings at the same time. Plus, you can track your content operations while keeping your commitments organized.

10. Take Advantage of Artificial Intelligence

Use artificial intelligence (AI) to help you with basic calendar planning and meeting preparation.

AI tools like ChatGPT can automate and enhance various aspects of your calendar management. Let’s say you receive an email with event details. AI can parse the details and generate a calendar entry with the event title, date, time, location, and any notes.

It can also help find the best available time slots by assessing your calendar and finding convenient options. Plus, it can analyze historical data and usage patterns to provide predictive insights, such as how long certain tasks or events usually take and appropriate time allocations.

11. Audit Past Calendars

For executive calendar management, past calendars should reviewed regularly. This is to see if you made mistakes that you can correct and improve your calendar management skills. If you have a virtual assistant to do this task, auditing calendars allows you to evaluate your wins and losses as an executive to optimize your core priorities.

12. Get Rid of Frictions in Your Calendar

After doing all of what’s listed above, you can take a step back and have a better look at your calendar. This allows you to see bottlenecks and roadblocks you can resolve.

For instance, you can delegate your administrative tasks to a virtual assistant so you can focus on your high-impact duties. Or, opt out of unnecessary meetings that could just be done via email or chat. Other possible frictions include streamlining business processes.

Calendar Management Best Practices

Top 5 Calendar Management Tools in 2024

Calendar management tools are software applications or platforms designed to help you efficiently handle schedules, appointments, and events. They provide a centralized and organized system for creating, editing, and viewing calendar tasks and entries.

These tools provide a structured approach to managing schedules and appointments. They can help you and your team stay organized, meet deadlines, improve goal achievement, and make the most of your workdays.

Here are five of the most popular tools, especially for executive calendar management, are:

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is a widely used and free calendar tool that seamlessly integrates with other Google apps like Gmail, Meet, and Drive. Plus, you can sync it with different third-party apps.

This tool provides an intuitive user interface and synchronization across devices. You can also customize views for day, week, month, and year, as well as shared calendars for collaboration. Another great feature is the Time Insights to better understand how you spend your time.

Google Calendar

The free service requires a Google account and may have limited options for more complex scheduling needs. However, you can upgrade with Business Starter for Google Workspace, which starts at $6/month for every user.

Calendly is an automated meeting scheduling tool known for its personalized booking links and integration with popular video conferencing platforms.

Calendly

It streamlines the scheduling process, reducing the need for back-and-forth emails. This tool also offers customizable event types and availability options. While it has a free plan, more advanced features are available through premium subscriptions.

Microsoft Outlook Calendar

Microsoft Outlook stands out for its robust integration with the Microsoft ecosystem, particularly with Microsoft 365. It offers shared calendars, a scheduling assistant, task management, and integration with Skype for Business and Teams. All you need is a Microsoft 365 subscription.

Microsoft Outlook Calendar

Apple Calendar

Apple Calendar is an elegant and user-friendly calendar tool that seamlessly integrates with macOS, iOS, and iCloud. It offers features like multiple calendar support, natural language event creation, and iCloud sharing for collaboration.

Apple Calendar

This tool comes pre-installed on Apple devices, so you can take advantage of its Siri integration. You can also sync it with Google Calendar, Yahoo, Microsoft Exchange, and any calendar platform that uses CalDAV.

Fantastical

Fantastical is a feature-rich calendar app known for its intuitive interface and powerful scheduling capabilities. It’s known for natural language event creation that translates events typed in plain language into structured calendar events.

Fantastical

In terms of calendar management for executive assistants, its DayTicker view offers a unique visual representation of events, making it easy to see a snapshot of your day’s schedule. You can also integrate it with services like iCloud, Google Calendar, and Office 365.

Get Magic for Successful Calendar Management

With today’s calendar management best practices and tools, you can streamline schedules, meet deadlines, and enhance collaboration in your business. All of these can be time-consuming and overwhelming, especially for busy executives.

Be that as it may, effective calendar management is a key ingredient in achieving your goals. So, why not outsource this responsibility to a virtual calendar manager and embark on a journey toward better productivity and fulfillment at your work?

A virtual assistant can handle the day-to-day tasks of scheduling, coordinating appointments, setting reminders, and many more. They are skilled remote workers trained and equipped with the necessary tools, such as Magic AI.

Take control of your time and achieve your goals with greater efficiency and ease by starting with successful calendar management. Book a call with us to learn how Magic can help!

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Written by Jacqueline Florida

Jacc is a writer at Magic eager to create content that informs and educates. She brings a decade of experience to her current role aiming to inspire readers to become more appreciative of life in general. She loves being a remote worker and a Magician because it allows her to cherish two of her most precious treasures – her family and writing.

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25 Best Task Management Software Tools for Work in 2024

Erica Chappell

Managing Editor

February 6, 2024

Is your team’s workload getting too heavy for you to handle?

If you need to find the best task management software for you and your team, you’ve come to the right place.

In this article, we’ll go over the 25 best task management solutions available today. You can use these tools to manage tasks, to-do lists , and projects to get the best out of your team and your business.

By the end of the article, you’ll have all the information you need to pick a task management tool that’s right for you!

What Is Task Management Software?

2. proofhub, 6. hubspot task management, 11. proprofs project, 15. clockify, 17. infinity, 19. taskworld, 21. basecamp, 22. monday.com, 24. taskade, understand your needs, consider your team’s size and complexity, evaluate user-friendliness, consider integrations, determine your budget, task management software faqs.

Task management is more than just a task manager checking off items on a to-do list!

It’s an organized system for identifying, monitoring, and managing the work you and your team. Task management involves:

  • Tracking task progress
  • Delegating work to team members
  • Setting deadlines
  • Adjusting work schedules
  • And so much more!

Effective task management helps individuals or groups achieve goals, and it also takes into consideration task planning, task priorities, task automations, as well as dependencies and budgeting. Task management is usually one of the essential features of good project management software .

25 Best Task Management Software in 2024

Here are the 25 best task management tools for organizing individual and team tasks efficiently:

Manage your workload in ClickUp

If you need a platform to scale both task management and project management, ClickUp delivers what teams need within reach to manage personal to-do lists, complex projects, and everything in between. Its extensive customization options and integration capabilities contribute to its versatility and widespread adoption among professionals across various industries.

ClickUp includes over 15 ways to view your work. Whether you’re a manager overseeing a team or an individual contributor trying to stay organized, views let you flex your workspace to fit your needs. Here’s a closer look at some of the features and functionalities of this free task management software:

A) Templates and Recurring Tasks

Why waste time creating project plans and new tasks or task lists every time you start a new project? With ClickUp, you can save any task list as a Template to instantly add it to future projects. 

You can even set up Recurring Tasks for your projects. You can also edit the time interval between each Recurring Task to customize how often they appear.

B) Priorities

Priorities help you prioritize tasks when completing projects. With a simple color-coded system, your team will have no difficulty identifying which tasks to prioritize and which to de-emphasize. 

Check out these prioritization tools !

C) Reminders

Our project management software comes with powerful Reminders to help you always keep track of your deliverables . You can customize where and when you receive these reminders for added ease. Whether it’s your email inbox, your desktop, or mobile, ClickUp will inform you of everything at the right time.

D) Notifications

ClickUp has tons of notifications to keep you updated on your task developments. You can also customize how often you receive them and on what platforms they appear. 

E) ClickUp AI

ClickUp AI is a revolutionary tool that helps prioritize tasks and make sure you’re never overwhelmed. Use ClickUp AI to summarize tasks, and generate action items from Docs and Tasks.

Instead of adapting to a tool’s interface, let the management tool adapt to you! 

ClickUp gives you Multiple views for managing tasks the way you’d like to: 

  • Board view : view your tasks in a handy Kanban board
  • List view : view your tasks in a GTD-style list app
  • Box view : check what everyone’s working on and delegate tasks
  • Calendar view : quickly manage your task schedules
  • Table view : create flexible spreadsheets 
  • Timeline view : visualize and organize your work over time
  • Whiteboard view : ideate new tasks and visualize workflows flexibly

G) Assigned Comments

Sure, your typical project management software allows you to add comments to tasks.

But ClickUp does way more!

ClickUp lets you instantly convert comments into individual tasks for quick task management. All it takes is a couple of clicks to assign a comment to someone and have it pop up in their Task Tray. Once they finish the task, they can even mark it as resolved!

H) Targets and Goals

A task manager can use ClickUp to set Goals to track what they’re working towards. You can even break down your goals into smaller Targets to make them more achievable.

I) Dashboards

Manage your business, resources, and develop Sprints, all from Dashboards. You can also choose what Widgets to include in your Dashboards, such as a Burn Up, Burndown Velocity chart, etc.

Note down important tasks and ideas, create checklists, and even convert your notes into tasks with our Notepad.

K) Integrations

ClickUp integrates with 1,000+ cool apps and collaboration tools, including Slack, Gmail, Zoom, Outlook, Google Drive, HubSpot, and more. This integration ecosystem streamlines workflows, eliminating the need for constant switching between tools and ensuring all relevant information is easily accessible within ClickUp.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. ClickUp also offers you a built-in Gantt Chart , Task Dependencies , Permissions , Native Time Tracking , Mind Maps , and much more! 

Need a full picture of our project management tool? Take a look at the ClickUp Features page.

  • Free Forever
  • Unlimited:  $7/month per user
  • Business:  $12/month per user
  • Enterprise:  Contact for pricing
  • ClickUp AI : Available on all paid plans for $5/Workspace member/month

What people think about task management with ClickUp

“I honestly wouldn’t last two minutes in my job without ClickUp holding all my tasks and being the brain that remembers what I need to work on, when my deadlines are, where to reference information, all the little details individual to each area of work and a thousand other things.” — G2Crowd

“I liked that every one of us (we were a 10-men dev team featuring 2x QA, SCM, PO and DEVS) was able to create as many customized views and lists and what-not. Aggregation worked amazing – especially when grouping things together for exports and reporting subtasks – we used that a lot for “task-scoping” (basically task breakdown) and on the business plan it also allowed us to assign hour estimates.” — GetApp

Ready to try ClickUp?   Get it for free here.

ProofHub Task Management

ProofHub is an all-in-one project management app and collaborative work management tool. It comes with all the features you require to stay in ultimate control of your teams, tasks, projects, and communications.

There are powerful team collaboration features to keep your distributed team members connected. You can share company-wide announcements with ease. ProofHub also integrates with third-party apps like Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, and Box to give you a central place to access all your files and data.

However, it may not suit larger teams, and you may be bothered by a ton of notifications since they lack custom notifications.

ProofHub Key Features

  • To-do lists
  • Custom workflows and kanban boards
  • Gantt charts
  • Online proofing tool
  • In-built chat app
  • Dedicated space for real-time collaboration
  • Timer and timesheets
  • Custom reports
  • File sharing
  • Mobile app (both iOS and Android)

Price : $89 per month (unlimited users)

creating tasks in todoist

Todoist, as a task management solution, is a breeze for many. 

Like the Swift to-do list app , it has a simple, no-frills interface built around a classic design. This task-tracking software is great for individuals, though they’ve recently expanded into teams and adapted to small business needs.

However, they still fall short when it comes to team management , as you can’t assign multiple people to a single task. 

Guess they want you to-do things all on your own!

Check out the best Todoist alternatives .

Todoist Key Features

  • Recurring due dates
  • Mobile apps available for iPhone, iPad, and Android devices
  • Task labels and reminders
  • Email notifications
  • Automatic backups
  • Collaborate on tasks via email

Pricing : Free to $5/month per user.

creating tasks in anydo

This is an interesting to-do list app and task management app. Any.do labels items as today, tomorrow, and upcoming, giving you a quick overview of the tasks that you need to complete. 

Unlike other task or project management software, Any.do also has an intuitive calendar to help you see how your events and tasks fit together. This task management solution can also organize tasks and filter your workflow by due date or category.

There is one drawback, though:

Looking for a powerful free version?

We’re sorry, but Any.do’s going to have to respond with a: no-can-do !

Any.do Key Features

  • Time tracking add-ons
  • To-do list reminders
  • Daily planner to organize and prioritize to-dos
  • Android and iOS mobile apps
  • Unlimited attachments
  • Location-based reminders
  • Task color-coding to organize your work 
  • Customized recurring tasks

Price : Free to $2.99/month per user.

Chanty for Task Management

Chanty is a team collaboration platform employing a chat-first model to create an effective task management system. With chat organization, users get to convert any message into an assignment, allocate it to the appropriate person, and set due dates for it.

Moreover, switching to a Kanban board can also help you improve your workflow by providing an easy way to manage all of your tasks in one location from a bird eye view.

You can also use Chanty to do more than just communicate by integrating several apps and eliminating the inconvenience of navigating between all of them.

Chanty Key Features

  • Individual and group audio or video calls
  • Built-in task management
  • Screen sharing
  • Community support
  • Unlimited searchable chat history
  • Roles and permissions
  • A dedicated support line
  • Unlimited members on the team
  • Unlimited individual and group audio or video calls

Price: Free up to 10 users after which it is $3/user/month.

HubSpot task management software helps teams

HubSpot took task management and decided to up the game for everyone. The software is included in its customer relationship management (CRM) suite, and it’s aimed at helping you move along the sales funnel. 

You can create workflows to automatically schedule new tasks after you complete ongoing tasks. Set up reminders, compare your performance to past data, and keep track of everything in one place.

HubSpot has a strong focus on integrations, so if there’s an app you love, chances are HubSpot works with it.

Check out ClickUp’s integration with HubSpot .

HubSpot is a comprehensive tool, and even at the free level, it can be a lot. While they offer different ways to learn the software, it has more of a learning curve than some other options on this list.

HubSpot Key Features

  • Automatically synced data 
  • Integrations with hundreds of apps
  • Easy task creation
  • Progress tracking
  • Task queues

Price: HubSpot starts free, with premium CRM plans starting from $45/month.

managing tasks in taskqueue

Taskque is one of the best task managers that’s a step up over a regular to-do list app. It’s a great tool for resource management and can assign tasks to the next available team member. 

It works well for teams that are working on the same functions, with similar skills. Instead of being a broad management tool with no focus, Taskque can quickly assign tasks to zero down on your work.

Unfortunately, it’s going to be a tough tasque working with its limited integrations and no time tracking.

Taskque Key Features

  • Automatic task assignment
  • Discussions
  • A powerful to-do list app
  • Workflow management
  • Exclusive permissions
  • Expanded workspaces

Price : Free to $5/user per month.

task and calendar management

If you’re a project manager who likes using a Gantt chart, Flow could be the best task tracking software for you. Most of the projects are color-coded to help you quickly navigate between individual tasks and projects in your workflow. 

Additionally, templates and repeat projects help users when they need to do a project repeatedly or stage another event. 

The one drawback of this management app? 

Don’t use it if you’re looking for a free task management tool. There’s no free plan!

Flow Key Features

  • A list of tasks with card views
  • Drag and drop timeline
  • Workflow management features
  • Public and private projects

Price : $4.79/user/month and up

hitask

Tasks and projects are front and center in this management solution. The central dashboard features all of your tasks and can be arranged by the due date, project, or team. 

Your teammates are listed on the right side, and you can automatically drag tasks from the central task area to your team members. Once this is done, each teammate is assigned the task, and it becomes part of their workflow.

Speaking of your workflow, any good task management software should be able to offer you easy task planning and scheduling features to streamlines your workflow.

Does Hitask offer them?

They have no Gantt chart . 

No Kanban board.

So no workflows. Ugh.

Hitask Key Features

  • Task management
  • File storage
  • Time tracking
  • Email task creation
  • Mobile apps for iOS and Android
  • Selective permissions on tasks
  • Calendar sync
  • Unlimited storage

Pricing : Free to $20/user per month

board view in trello app

Trello is one of the largest Kanban task management tools. It’s no surprise that their Kanban boards are their main calling card. This customizable Kanban interface allows users to set up cards for different projects like they were post-it notes.

To make Trello efficient for complex projects, you’ll have to upgrade for features like project timeline templates or priorities. 

Why do that when there are tools that offer that in their free plans?

Take a look at the best Trello alternatives , and don’t forget to compare Trello with ClickUp !

Trello Key Features

  • Attachments
  • Unlimited integrations
  • Collections for teams
  • Public/private boards
  • More onboarding support

Price : Free to $17.50/user per month

ProProfs Help Desk

ProProfs Project is a feature-rich task management solution. It’s built to handle multiple projects across cross-functional teams on a single platform.

Create a project schedule and streamline your processes to deliver your projects on time and within budget. Also, you can prioritize tasks and track them using multiple project views such as Gantt charts, Kanban board, and more.

One of the best things about ProProfs Project is its customizable dashboard. It lets you schedule tasks with a simple drag and drop and provides all your project information at a glance.

What’s missing? A user-friendly mobile application that allows seamless team collaboration anywhere, anytime.

ProProfs Key Features

  • Centralized dashboard
  • Real-time alerts & notifications
  • Instant messaging, task comments, & file sharing
  • Customizable workflows
  • Gantt charts, Kanban board, Calendar view
  • Task prioritization
  • AI-powered reports
  • Automatic invoicing
  • Task dependencies

Price : $2/user per month and up

managing tasks in quire

Quire breaks down online task management into its smallest components, giving you the most critical tasks to focus on first. Unlike other management tools, the way it does this is with “nesting” and Kanban boards.

Quire nests tasks within cards in a Kanban board to unfurl your next steps within each card. 

This online task management software also has powerful filtering options to help you pick out the tasks that need to be completed first.

As perfect as it sounds, it has a-Quire-d its share of flaws. The most striking one is its lack of a built-in chat feature!

Quire Key Features

  • Tasks and subtasks
  • Progress reports
  • Recurring tasks
  • Apps for iOS and Android
  • Kanban boards

Price : Free

managing tasks in asana

This management software aims to help you meet your task deadlines quickly. You can even integrate it with time-management software to add time tracking to your tasks. 

Asana is a good option for online task management in that smaller teams can use it effectively. But it may not scale as well across the whole organization.

Don’t forget to check out the best Asana alternatives and our Asana and ClickUp comparison !

Asana Key Features

  • Basic dashboard
  • Basic search

Price : Free to $24.99/user/month and up

managing tasks in things

The Things app is another great task management software.

The key differentiator for this task-tracking software is that you can select a core focus for each day. Things lay on a small layer of project management that has sections on comments, tasks, and subtasks.

Do remember, every web-based task management feature is premium because there’s no free task plan for your desktop, iPhone, and iPad.

Any other concerns about this task management system ?

Things is only available on Mac and iOS.

Things Key Features

  • Calendar events
  • Morning, afternoon, evening slots
  • Section headings
  • Mac OS shortcuts

Price : One-time charge of $49.99

Clockify Schedule feature for projects

Although widely known for its time tracking capabilities, Clockify can be a solution to your task management problems, too.

You can use Clockify to manage all your tasks, to-dos, and projects. Additionally, it’s suitable for individuals, such as freelancers and independent consultants, and companies and teams of all sizes. 

The app offers a free task timer that you can use to track the hours you and your team spend working on tasks — and then uses that data to calculate billable hours.

The only drawback is that Clockify covers a wide range of time tracking and invoicing features which can be overwhelming if your idea is to use it solely as a task management app. 

Clockify Key Features

  • Categorize your time entries into specific tasks. 
  • Assign tasks to people and set time estimates for each task. 
  • Manage your tasks — edit them, mark them as done, or delete them. 
  • Visually track all your tasks and time logs in a Calendar view. 
  • Integrate the app with 80+ other project management and productivity tools. 

Premium: 

  • Define hourly rates for each task and decide which ones are billable.
  • Visualize all your projects, see who’s available for their next task, and make schedules accordingly. 
  • Ensure maximum security and privacy of your tasks by hosting Clockify on your own servers. 
  • Automate your projects by setting up Project templates and using them for every new project, if applicable. 

Price: 

You can use most of Clockify’s features for free; the cheapest paid plan starts at $3.99 user/month

Plutio task management software

Plutio is an all-in-one business management app designed for freelancers, small businesses, and large enterprises alike. It comes with everything you need to efficiently manage tasks and projects for teams and individuals.

Plutio comes with tons of great collaborative features that give you a cutting-edge, like time-tracking, team chat, dynamic proposals, contracts and e-signing, appointments and bookings, and more.

It’s a fantastic solution for anyone looking to streamline and automate their processes while cutting their monthly software costs.

The downside? Because Plutio comes with so many features, it can take a while to learn them all. However, they have excellent customer support to help get their users up to speed.

Plutio Key Features

  • Timeline/Gantt view, Kanban view, list view, and calendar view
  • Dashboards, projects, and knowledge-base
  • Team Chat, time-tracking and timesheets, built-in documents
  • Proposals, contracts, and invoicing

Pricing : 7-Day Free Trial, Pricing Starts at $19/month.

task and calendar management

Infinity is a flexible and fully customizable task management software that features a colorful and engaging interface. This software can be used by both freelancers juggling multiple clients and tasks, as well as corporations with thousands of employees around the world.

Built to help you organize yourself easier and take the stress out of your workdays, Infinity gives you endless ways to customize your workflows. The key to this is in Infinity’s great structure, advanced productivity and automations features, and unmatched versatility.

Using Infinity, you’ll be able to put all of your tasks straight, eliminate clutter, collaborate with teams and stakeholders, spot and resolve bottlenecks, and get tasks done with less effort and in less time.

Infinity Key Features

  • 6 different views to display data: Kanban, List, Gantt, Calendar, Form, and Table
  • 20+ attributes, including labels, dates, formulas, and progress bar, to name a few
  • Over 50 templates for various use cases
  • API & automations to help you complete projects faster
  • Multiple integrations, including ones with Google Drive, iCalendar, and Zapier
  • Dedicated desktop and mobile apps

Price: Infinity is currently running one-time payment deals that give users access to all Infinity features.

project management in accelo

This management software has a task board that will automatically show you overdue tasks for today, tomorrow, and beyond. 

Another great feature of this management app is the number of integrations. These include Google Drive, Office 365, Outlook, internet safety software; you name it. Accelo also helps you monitor estimates, invoicing, scheduling, and billing more so than any other task management app.

Accelo is capable of so much, but it accel-erates your company at a cost.

It doesn’t have a free plan. And $39 per user per month, you’ll be spending a small fortune each month!

Accelo Key Features

  • Team scheduling templates
  • Time tracking templates
  • Automated timesheet

Price : $39 to $79/user per month

task management in taskworld

To be quick and to the point, this management app looks a lot like Trello (or maybe Trello looks a lot like Taskworld?)

The point is…if you enjoy the layout of Trello but need a few more features, then Taskworld is probably worth a look. Their reporting, task points, and activity log look stronger than Trello’s for sure.

Sounds great until you realize their list of integrations is so small you could note it down on one of their virtual post-its and still have space left on it! 

Taskworld Key Features

  • Task points
  • Task assignments delivered by email
  • Activity log
  • Repeating tasks
  • Direct messaging

Price : $10/user per month to $22/user per month

managing tasks in wimi

If you’re a jack-of-all-trades, then Wimi may be the task management app for you. It has online task management in one pane, docs in another, and even a messaging system for your work as well. 

Like other management apps, you can use Wimi to track task project statuses and add deadlines where needed. It also has a great project timeline feature to manage task dependencies and key performance indicators.

On the downside, Wimi’s pricing can go through the roof for larger teams!

Wimi Key Features

  • Gantt chart timeline for lean visual management
  • Task assignments organized as post-it notes
  • Critical path calculations
  • Task filters
  • Task history
  • Unlimited projects
  • Up to 500GB of storage
  • User training and onboarding

Price : Free plan + paid plans up to $18/per user/month

basecamp product example

Basecamp is a quality task management software who’s core really focuses on efficient team collaboration and communication.  

What isn’t core to the software is making itself feel like it’s made for you. For example, you can’t customize each specific task status.

What’s been approved? What’s in progress? Guess you’ll never know!

Check out these 7 Basecamp alternatives and our comprehensive Basecamp review .

Basecamp Key Features

  • Real-time communication (campfires & pings)
  • Simple task management
  • Auto check-in questions
  • Project progress tracking (Hillcharts)

Pricing : Free to $99/month

monday platform example

Monday.com is another great and simple task management software to consider. It has multiple task management features that let you create task assignments and assign them with ease.

And while we’re not saying that it’s as disappointing as most Mondays, there’s no free plan.

Check out how ClickUp compares to Monday.com & how Monday compares to Asana !

Monday.com Key Features

  • Calendar view
  • Automations
  • Unlimited boards

Pricing : $8/seat per month to $16/seat per month

Compare Monday Vs ClickUp !

Wrike Spreadsheet Example

Last on this list of project management software is Wrike. It’s a popular free task manager and project management system with built-in time tracking features.

Whether you’re a small team or an enterprise-level user , Wrike will serve you well.

However, if you’re a creative thinker, you’re going to feel stifled.

They don’t have mind maps or a notepad to jot down ideas. 

Not sure about Wrike anymore? 

Take a look at these Wrike alternatives or Compare ClickUp vs. Wrike for a clear idea.

Wrike Key Features

  • Task tool for progress tracking
  • Workflow statuses

Pricing : Free to $24.80/user per month

Taskade

Taskade straddles the line between a personal task management app and a team project management app—with features that fall somewhere between the two. 🤸‍♂️

It’s a good choice for individual super users or for small teams. But big teams might find that the features aren’t quite robust enough.

If you’re someone who mostly consults your task list from your mobile device, then you’ll love Taskade’s native app design. It runs quickly and has options for widgets that can help you visualize your to-dos and project progress.

The mobile app is available for iOS or Android. There are also desktop apps for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and browser extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.

Taskade Key Features

  • Both your professional and personal to-dos in one app with separate areas for each part of your life
  • Collaboration features that include not only the ability to assign tasks to teammates but also an in-app video call feature that allows you to have a face-to-face chat
  • Strong note-taking features for brainstorming and documentation
  • Outlining capabilities to manage tasks
  • Starter: $4 per month
  • Plus: $8 per month
  • Pro: $19 per month
  • Business: $49 per month
  • Ultimate: $99 per month

Workflow management in Pipefy

Pipefy is a task management tool that simplifies the process of creating, assigning, and organizing tasks. With its automation features, Pipefy helps save time and minimize errors in task management. It offers a comprehensive platform where users can easily connect and integrate with other existing software, such as ERP , HRIS, and CRM systems.

Pipefy Key Features

  • Process templates
  • Secure company database for actions
  • Conditional logic
  • Native Integrations with Slack, GitHub, BitBucket, and Google Hangouts

Pipefy pricing  

Pipefy offers a free plan for individual users and small teams, with paid plans starting at $30/user per month.

Why Do You Need Task Management Software?

1. task management software helps you organize work.

We know you and your team work on multiple tasks every day!

Project tasks, HR activities , social media posts, invoicing, the list goes on.

Now try and imagine handling all of that with a pen and paper, or even an Excel sheet .

Unfortunately, this is all too common.

According to a recent study by ClickUp , 42% of employed Americans feel that they do not have all the technology and tools, such as task management apps, to succeed at work! Nearly half (45%) would give up 10% of their salary for an easier work life.

There’s no way you can keep track of every project task, meet your deadlines, track progress, and manage your team without a dedicated tool . 

Luckily, task management tools are designed for this, acting as a safeguard against going crazy! 

It’s a dedicated space to monitor your task progress, assign tasks, and manage schedules. It ensures that you’re able to efficiently track tasks and subtasks so that you meet your deadlines.

2. Task management software helps your team collaborate effectively

Your task management tool will improve not only your in-office and/or virtual team’s tasks but also your team collaboration capabilities.

As each task has a dedicated space, it’s easier for your team to consolidate information and work on things together. Also, as every assignee has access to this task space, nobody will be left out of the loop. 

Your team can easily share files, ideas, and feedback to collaborate over tasks and get things done quickly.  

3. Task management software helps you prioritize tasks

All tasks were not created equal.

While every task needs to be addressed, some are more important than others. 

So what do you do?

You start prioritizing tasks.

For example, finishing a client’s project is probably more important than deciding what your office party’s theme is, right?

Your task management tool will help you prioritize tasks to work on what’s most important immediately.

How to Choose the Best Task Management Software

Choosing the best task management tool for your organization can be a daunting task, especially with the plethora of options available in the market. By considering a few key factors, you can narrow down your choices and find the perfect fit for your team or company.

Before diving into any specific task management software, it’s important to understand what your team or company needs from a task management tool. Make a list of the features and functionalities that are essential for your team’s workflow. Do you need a simple to-do list? Or do you require advanced project tracking and collaboration capabilities?

Knowing your needs will help you eliminate options that do not meet your requirements.

Task management software can vary greatly in terms of complexity and scalability. If you have a smaller team with simpler tasks, a basic task management tool may suffice. However, if you have a larger team with more complex projects, you may need a more robust solution with features such as time tracking, resource allocation, and reporting.

The last thing you want is for your team to struggle with using the task management software. To avoid this, look for intuitive interfaces, simple navigation, and easy-to-use features. You may also want to check if the software offers training or customer support to help your team get up to speed quickly.

Having all your tools integrated can improve efficiency and streamline your workflow. Look for options that offer integrations with your existing tools or have an open API that allows for easy integration.

Task management software can range from free to expensive, so it is important to determine your budget before starting your search. Keep in mind that some software may offer a free trial or have a freemium model with limited features. Consider the long-term costs as well, including any additional fees for extra users or advanced features.

Bonus: Learn how to implement a work management system !

1. What Are The 8 Managerial Tasks?

The eight managerial tasks, often referred to as the functions of management, were first proposed by Henri Fayol, a French management theorist. The 8 managerial tasks are, planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting, budgeting, and controlling.

2. What are the Benefits of Task Management Software for Teams?

Task management software improves task organization, prioritization, project management, collaboration , real-time tracking, improved communication, enhanced productivity, automated reminders, and streamlined workflow for effective task management.

Which Task Management Software is Best for Your Team?

You don’t need us to tell you that there are lots of task management tools available. That’s apparent from any Google search or a glance at the productivity section of the app store. 

So here are some suggestions for deciding which task management software is right for you :

  • Try a free plan before you buy it . You shouldn’t have to lay down your hard-earned cash on task management apps before knowing how they work. Test out some of the best free task management software to help you decide what you like and don’t like. Some online project and task management tools offer free trials. Be wary of those tools because you know a sales pitch will be coming at the end!
  • Read the reviews of task management apps . Unless you love trying out new software as a hobby, you’ll probably want to see how others have used them. They may even show you a new way of using the software. You’ll also learn of any problems in that online task management software too.
  • Check out the roadmap . Just because an online task management software doesn’t have the features you want doesn’t mean it won’t be there tomorrow. The best software companies are constantly iterating and releasing new features regularly.

First on the list? Get ClickUp for free today to discover how to manage task assignments, streamline your workflow, and boost everything else in your Workspace!

Questions? Comments? Visit our Help Center for support.

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10 Best Planner Apps To Organize Work Better (2022)

Jitesh Patil

Looking for the best planner apps to organize your schedule? This article compares the top apps for planning your day, week, month, or more.

But why do you need a planning app?

Juggling priorities, both on the personal and work front, can be tough.

Thankfully, today you have a number of software options to set a schedule and get work done. Plus, these applications are available for a variety of platforms — web, desktop, and mobile. 

How do you find the best scheduling and work management app?

That’s what this article is about. We look at the best apps for planning your work and life. Each app in this article serves specific planning needs. So by the end of this article, you’ll find one that meets your requirements.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Ready to dive in? Let’s start.

What are the best planner apps in 2022?

1. toggl plan.

Toggl Plan is the overall best planner app for businesses and teams .

With Toggl Plan, you can plan and track your team’s schedule using simple drag-and-drop timelines. But if you prefer Kanban boards to manage your tasks, Toggl Plan has them too.

Toggl Plan's drag and drop timelines make it the best planner app for individual projects and team.

You can also set color-coded milestones on the Project timeline . Optionally, you can share important milestones across other plans. 

You’ll also be able to collaborate with your team by attaching files and checklists and adding comments to your tasks.

Best of all, managers can see their entire team’s plan in one place. This helps them identify scheduling bottlenecks and balance team workloads thus preventing overwork and burnout.

Rebalance your team's workloads with simple drag and drop.

Key features

  • Plan project or work schedules (including time off) using simple drag-and-drop timelines.
  • Get a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual overview of the timeline
  • Share a read-only view of Project timelines with external users
  • Visualize your entire team’s schedule in one place to avoid overwork and burnout.
  • Track tasks visually on Kanban task boards.
  • Add color-coded milestones which are optionally visible across timelines.
  • In-app and email notifications when something changes in your schedule.
  • Integrates with Apple, Google, and Outlook calendars.

Online, iOS, and Android

Price plans

  • Forever free plan for solo users
  • Team plan at $9 per user per month: Comes with Team timelines and integration with Toggl Track for time tracking
  • Business plan at $15 per user per month: Comes with SSO, guest users, and data export for reporting

Try Toggl Plan for free .

If you’re looking for a free task planner app with a calendar view , Trello should be number one on your list.

Everything in Trello revolves around its Kanban board. You can drag and drop a task across columns to change its status and trigger automation workflows.

Trello boards make it simple to manage your tasks

You can attach files, labels, and checklists to tasks and collaborate with your teammates using comments. But that’s not all. Trello’s task functionality is easily extended to suit your workflows using add-ons (aka powerups).

One such add-on is the calendar view with which you can visualize your plans and scheduled tasks on a calendar.

Trello's calendar view makes it the best planning app scheduling tasks.

  • Plan and track tasks with simple to-do, in-progress, done, or a custom workflow
  • Visualize task schedules on a calendar view
  • Visualize tasks on timelines and maps (premium feature)
  • Integrates with thousands of other productivity apps
  • Automate task works with if/then logic

Online, Windows, iOS, and Android

Trello price plans

  • Forever free plan with unlimited tasks and up to 10 task boards
  • Standard plan : comes at $5 per user per month with custom task fields and guests on single boards.
  • Premium plan : comes at $10 per user per month with dashboard, timeline, and workspace calendar views
  • Enterprise plan : comes at $17.50 per user per month with multi-board guests, single sign-on, and unlimited workspaces

If you were to build a list of personal daily planner apps , Any.do would be at the top.

Any.do is the best daily planner app across devices

With Any.do, you can visualize your daily plans as a simple to-do list. You’ll see your to-do items segmented by when they are due — today, tomorrow, or someday later.

For each planned task, you can set reminders too.

A planner app isn’t complete without a calendar or a timeline view. Any.do comes with a simple calendar view with which you can filter tasks for a specific date.

In addition to to-do lists, you can also capture notes and file documents.

  • Capture and organize to-do items into lists
  • Set one-time, repeating, or location-based reminders for to-do items
  • Visualize daily plans using the calendar widgets on your phone
  • Add grocery items to automatically add them to relevant category lists
  • Re-schedule tasks for the day or week with a single tap

iOS, and Android

Any.do price plans

  • Forever free plan with unlimited to-do items and lists
  • Premium plan : $5.99 per month with advanced reminders, recurring tasks, and customizable color themes

4. TickTick

TickTick is the most versatile work planning app for capturing tasks .

TickTick is a versatile work planning app with location-based reminders

You can capture tasks using voice commands, by sending emails to TickTick as well as via Apple’s Siri app. While capturing tasks, TickTicks natural language processing automatically schedules tasks and creates reminders for a specific time or location.

  • Capture tasks via email or voice input
  • Organize tasks into lists and folders
  • Prioritize and labels tasks
  • Visualize tasks on a daily, weekly, or monthly calendar
  • Pomodoro timer and white noise for distraction-free work (premium feature)
  • Online, Linux, macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android
  • Extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Gmail, and Outlook

Pricing options

  • Free version : limited calendar functionality
  • Premium version : $27.99 per year with full calendar features, progress tracker, Pomodoro timer, and white noise

Todoist is a work organizer and planning app for teams .

Todoist is a work planning app for individuals and teams

With Todoist, you can capture tasks for your personal and professional commitments. Once added, you can organize tasks into projects and subtasks.

You can also prioritize tasks, add projects as favorites for quick access, and set reminders for critical tasks.

Todoist also allows you to delegate tasks to your team and visualize everyone’s work on a Kanban board.

  • Quickly capture and schedule tasks using natural language processing
  • Organize tasks into projects and subtasks
  • Share files and discuss tasks with your team
  • See your team’s activity by project or team member
  • Visualize the productivity of your team over time

Online, macOS, iOS, Android, and Windows

  • Free forever : for 5 projects with up to 5 collaborators per project
  • Pro plan : $4 per user per month for 300 projects, up to 25 collaborators per project, and reminders
  • Business plan : $6 per user per month for 500 projects, 50 team members per project, and team billing 

Twobird turns your email inbox into a work planning tool .

Twobird turns your email inbox into a work planning tool

It works with Google and Microsoft email apps including Gmail, Google Workspace, and Outlook. 

Twobird smartly categorizes your emails by priority. Plus, it sets reminders for emails that can be tackled later. In addition, you also get smart notifications to avoid distractions.

  • Integrate with Google and Microsoft email
  • Prioritize emails and set reminders automatically
  • Get smart notifications for distraction-free work
  • Unsubscribe from unwanted emails quickly
  • Add notes to email conversations

Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android

Twobird is free to use for now and plans to offer premium plans in the future. 

7. Google Calendar

Google Calendar is one of the best online calendar apps out there. It provides one of the best overviews of your work, meetings, and daily agenda. 

Google Calendar is one of the best online calendar apps

Scheduling remote meetings with Google Calendar is a breeze. It automatically takes care of the participant’s time zones. Plus, with integrations for Zoom or Google Meet, you can hop into the meeting right from the notification.

  • Create events with smart suggestions for titles, people, and places
  • Automatically add events to calendars from flight or hotel booking emails in Gmail
  • Day, week, and month views to visualize your schedule
  • Free for personal use
  • Google Workspace subscription for business at $6 per user per month

8. Things 3

If you’re looking for a daily planner app for iPhone or iPad, look no further.

Things is the best planner app for iOS and iPad

Things 3 is an award-winning daily task planning app built specifically for iOS. It also works on desktop Mac devices.

To-do items in Things are organized into projects and areas. Areas represent each sphere in your life such as work, family, finance, etc.

  • Organize to-do items into projects and areas
  • Plan and visualize your daily and upcoming schedules
  • Set reminders 
  • Repeat tasks automatically on a set schedule
  • Integrates with Apple calendar and shows your events alongside tasks
  • Create to-do items via email

All iOS devices including Mac, iPhone, iPad, and iWatch

  • iPhone and iWatch version : $9.99
  • iPad version : $19.99
  • Mac version : $49.99

9. Day by Day Organizer

Day by Day is one of the popular planning apps for Android devices.

It integrates Google Calendar and Google Tasks in one Android app. That way you get the best of both worlds — a powerful calendar with simple task management.  

DaybyDay Organizer is a planner app for Android

Day by Day keeps your Calendar and Tasks in sync. You can see all your events and tasks in one simple list. Also, you can plan and track tasks for a specific day, week, or month.

  • See events and tasks in one list
  • Keep your Google Calendar and Google Tasks in sync
  • Birthday reminder
  • Capture tasks and events with voice input
  • Agenda planner view
  • Free version with Google Calendar and Tasks synchronization
  • Premium version at $4.99 with recurring tasks, subtasks, and task priorities

10. Habitica

Habitica is one of the best daily routine planner apps that helps you form habits

Habitica is a gamified daily habit tracker app for individuals.

It gamifies your daily routine and encourages you to form habits and become more productive. Every time you perform a routine task on time, you get in-game rewards as well as praise from the community.

Habitica is useful as a student planner app to form study habits. Or as a fitness planner to stay healthy with daily exercise habits.

Best features

  • Track and manage habits, to-do lists, and daily goals
  • Get in-game rewards as you check off your tasks and goals
  • Battle with your online friends using these rewards to earn real-world rewards

Habitica pricing options

  • Free version to track your goals and habits publicly
  • Premium version at $9 per month + $3 per user per month for private group plans

What is the best planner app for your needs?

There are a lot of options when it comes to planning apps. You get apps for personal and professional use as well as individual and team use. 

So how do you choose the best planner for your needs? Think about it from these angles:

  • Does the app meet your/your team’s needs?
  • Does it make you more productive when planning your work?
  • Do you like working with the app?
  • Does it fit your budget?
  • Can it integrate with your existing work management system?

These questions will help you decide on the best planning app for your needs.

Most online tools, including Toggl Plan, have a free trial or a forever free plan. Use this opportunity to try out the planning software, along with your team before you decide on the tool of your choice. 

FAQs about planning apps

A planner app is a work management tool that combines scheduling and task management. It captures, organizes, and schedules work tasks using a timeline or a calendar.

A planner helps you and your team get work done by bringing clarity, accountability, and transparency to work. In addition, planners like Toggl Plan help you avoid scheduling conflicts as well as prevent your team from getting overworked and burned out. In addition, here are nine planner ideas to organize your work

There are many types of planner apps depending on the end-users — personal and professional work planners, paper and digital planners, team project planners, etc. In addition, certain types of planners are designed for specific use cases. For example, financial planners, student planners, health and fitness planners, etc.

First, identify the work you need to get done in a specific period. For example, a month, a week, or a day. Second, schedule tasks and projects using a timeline or a calendar while avoiding scheduling conflicts with other work plans, team members, and time off. And third, ensure that everyone’s workload is reasonable.

Google does not have a daily planner app. However, you can combine Google Calendar and Google Tasks to plan your daily work items. In addition, you also get Google Keep which helps you organize your notes and to-do lists as well as get location-based reminders.

Jitesh Patil

Jitesh is an SEO and content specialist. He manages content projects at Toggl and loves sharing actionable tips to deliver projects profitably.

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Best calendar app of 2024

Keep organized in the office or on the go

Best overall

Best simple, best for windows, best for business, best for productivity, best for apple, best for tasks, best third-party, best for meetings, best for linux, best free apple.

  • How we test

The best calendar apps make it simple and easy for you to set reminders, schedule events, and overall better organize your time.

1. Best overall 2. Best simple 3. Best for Windows 4. Best for business 5. Best for productivity 6. Best for Apple 7. Best for tasks 8. Best third-party 9. Best for meetings 10. Best for Linux 11. Best free Apple 12. FAQs 13. How we test

Whether you're running your own business or an employee, chances are there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything you want done completed. Having a normal calendar app is great if you want to simply make note of big individual events such as business meetings or even time off, but there's more to calendar apps than this. The best go beyond creating basic timeblocked entries by making reminders, scheduling meetings, and planning out your days, weeks, and months to ensure you're using your time as efficiently as possible. 

At the same time, the best calendar apps will allow you to plan seamlessly across all of your devices with cloud syncing. This means you can add an entry to your calendar on your smartphone and then later review or edit it on your desktop computer or laptop when you’re back at work. While this requires an active Internet connection, viewing and even editing a calendar can usually be done offline, with the app then handling the sync when it reconnects later on.

Additionally, the best calendar apps allow you to see your work calendar, personal calendar, and even your shared calendars all in the same place. The ability to switch between these can help with productivity because when you're working you probably don't want to be distracted with personal events, and conversely when you're at home and trying to relax you don't want to work to intrude on that.

Overall, the best calendar apps are more than just calendars, but more like a simple form of virtual assistant that makes it simple and easy to organize your busy life.

Below we've listed what we think are the best calendar apps currently available.

We've also listed the best time management app .

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1. Google Calendar

Our expert review:

Reasons to buy

Reasons to avoid.

If you have a Gmail account, then you already have access to and are likely familiar with Google Calendar. This calendar app is available on the web and the company’s own operating systems : Android and ChromeOS. Given the company’s strong foothold, plenty of other apps are available for all of the major operating systems including iPhone users. Just like with Gmail, Google Docs, and the rest of Google’s products, Google Calendar is completely free to use making it one of the most attractive propositions, though you do get access to a few more features when you sign up for a business-focused Google Workspace subscription.

Unlike other calendar apps that try to cram in as much as possible, Google Calendar relies on a simple and professional design to keep your calendar tidy. It’s certainly aesthetically pleasing, but some power users may find it hard to find all the settings and options they may require. You can view one day, four days, a week, a month, or even a whole year at one time.

It’s designed to work with the rest of Google’s services, which are becoming increasingly integrated in an era where the company is focusing on saving users time with artificial intelligence, like its chatbot Bard. There are colorful cards for each month, and events like flights from your Gmail automatically show up in your calendar as well as video calling entries from the company’s own platform, Meet . Events can also be organized by sorting them into separate calendars or color-coded by their category.

The biggest strength of Google Calendar is that it’s a cloud-based app that syncs across all of your devices. This means that whether you’re at your computer or on your smartphone, as long as you’re signed into your Google account, you’ll have access to your calendar with notifications as well. Like many of its rivals from leading tech companies, it has some unique limitations that require you to have a Google account to get the most out of it, so while you can certainly sync a Google Calendar with most other clients and apps, it’ll be at its best on its own.

Read our full Google Calendar review .

  • ^ Back to the top

2. Calendar.com

After testing out every other calendar app on the market and discovering that most users weren’t happy with the solutions available, the developers of Calendar.com first released their own calendar on the web, Android, and iOS back in 2009. 

Calendar.com includes all of the features you’d expect from one of the best calendar apps. You can view your schedule by day, week, month, or year and easily share your calendar with others. It clearly has business customers in mind with handy additions like analytics (breakdowns of how you spend your time), easy scheduling and syncing with colleagues, and even some small AI boosts to make scheduling slicker.

However, it also includes the ability to embed calendars in web pages and has integrations with both Zapier and Zoom . Free users also have the ability to set up meetings with five other people. Similarly, it can sync with Google Calendar and Microsoft Calendar, however iCal and Yahoo Calendar are currently off the cards. While the company promises to be working on those, it’s advised that you don’t base your decision on potential future additions because technical hitches can cause significant slowdowns and even cancellations of projects.

The Calendar.com app has a minimalist design where UI elements that aren’t frequently used are hidden from view to avoid unnecessary clutter. Color coding allows you to keep your personal and work events separate though there is also a unified calendar feature that allows you to view multiple calendars at once. In fact, you can connect up to 10 different calendars which you can view from the app’s dashboard.

Calendar.com offers three separate plans in the form of Basic, Standard, and Pro, and while some additions and improvements have been made, the pricing has significantly increased presenting a higher barrier to entry for SMBs in particular. Basic, which is free, comes with all the essentials and lower limits. Standard and Pro improve limits but expect to pay $25 and $30 per user per month unless you’re willing to pay annually for a 20% discount. 

Read our full Calendar.com review .

3. Outlook Calendar

Although Outlook Calendar was initially designed for corporate users and large organizations, Microsoft has revised this calendar app over the years to make it an excellent product for both personal and professional users. The best part about Outlook Calendar is that it’s completely free and you only need to create a Microsoft Outlook account to get started. In addition to email and a calendar, if you’re a paying user you also get access to Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, and OneNote.

Outlook Calendar may seem a bit limited in terms of features but the app supports all of the standard view modes including day, week, month, and schedule. It’s great for people with busy calendars because it allows you to view multiple accounts at once. It’s also a neat tool for organization freaks, with plenty of folders and sharing options.

Scheduling is one of the things Outlook Calendar does really well. Using the app, you can easily preview scheduling conflicts and view suggestions for alternative time slots. What makes it such a powerful tool is that people you share events and calendars with don’t need to have Outlook Calendar themselves, so they can continue to use their favorite calendar app.

Outlook Calendar forms part of the wider Outlook email client for desktop users including a fairly new version specifically designed for oft-forgotten macOS users. There’s also a web app and mobile apps for both iOS and Android. Microsoft also keeps all of these apps updated regularly and all versions share the same features so you’ll be right at home regardless of which platform you’re using.

It’s worth noting that you will miss out on some features if your email account doesn’t use an Exchange Server, like color-coded tags, so even though the service will work with third-party accounts it has a unique way of forcing its own services upon you.

Read our full Outlook Calendar review .

4. Business Calendar 2

Business Calendar 2 from Appgenix Software is primarily aimed at business users that need access to loads of advanced features and customization options. In fact, some users might feel a bit intimidated by the sheer number of options available and just how complex it looks compared to its minimalist rivals. Fortunately, Appgenix provides professional customer support and a knowledge base with a lot of information on a wide variety of topics.

Unlike some of the other options on this list that offer web apps and support multiple platforms, Business Calendar 2 is an Android app that can be downloaded from either the Google Play Store or the Huawei App Gallery for Huawei smartphones . Great for on-the-go organizing, but not so good for companies whose workers are running a variety of operating systems.

Still though, Business Calendar 2 offers more than enough in terms of features and customization. The app allows you to view your calendar in a day view, a week view, and a month view. Multiple events can be moved, copied, or deleted at once using its agenda feature. There are also 22 themes available and seven beautiful widgets that can be customized down to the last detail.

Business Calendar 2 is available in both a free and premium version. The main difference between the two comes down to the features available as premium users can simultaneously manage multiple events and also get access to media attachments, private event invites, priorities, templates and other advanced customization options. Instead of being a monthly subscription, the premium upgrade for Business Calendar 2 is just a one-time payment that costs less than $10.

Read our full Business Calendar 2 review .

Any.do is known for providing several productivity tools which in addition to a calendar include a daily planner, a to-do list, a grocery list, and reminders. The company’s calendar app also integrates with Google Calendar, iCloud , Outlook, and more and is available on Android, iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS, Wear OS and even on smart home devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home.

While Any.do is free by default, upgrading to a premium subscription gives you access to advanced recurring reminders, customized themes, WhatsApp reminders, color tags, location reminders, and an unlimited daily planner which costs the equivalent of $3 per month billed annually.

Any.do features a smooth, award-winning interface that works as expected. Switching between different tasks and views is also easy just as it is to edit events. Speaking of tasks, the app also lets you create sub-tasks and configure them with options like a reminder, linked tasks, labels, and more. The company hopes that combining all of the tedious day-to-day organization tasks in one place helps users to focus and ultimately, get more done.

It’s not just a family organizing tool, though, because integrations with video conferencing services like Teams, Zoom, and Google Meet; project tracking software like Monday.com, Trello, Asana, and plenty of others, make it a powerful hub.

If you’re looking for a calendar app that works seamlessly across all of your devices, browsers, and even your smart home, Any.do just might be for you.

Read our full Any.do review .

6. Timepage

Timepage is a unique-looking, standout calendar app developed by notebook and calendar maker Moleskine, which takes some familiar styling cues that can make navigating the app a little challenging at first. That said, it looks slick and there are plenty of view options ranging from a daily schedule to the full month or a six-week period.

Expect the usual list of features, like color coding and event sharing. Locations, people, and other media can be added to calendar entries to help provide smart insights, and the weather integration (which is by no means unique to Timepage) is another handy tool.

Great news for Apple users is that Timepage is optimized for iOS, iPadOS, and even watchOS for on-the-go event monitoring. There’s also a dedicated macOS desktop app which is more conventional-looking than the mobile versions, however Windows and Android users are uncatered for.

While there’s no free version, the subscription isn’t as expensive as some rivals at $1.99 per month or $11.99 per year. There’s also a more expensive Moleskine Studio bundle that combines Timepage with the company’s reminders and to-do lists app, Actions, and sketching and mind-mapping tool, Flow.

Read our full Timepage review .

7. Monday Work Management

Using the well-known work management tool Monday.com, teams can schedule, monitor, and control their workload, and keep track of the project over time. It gives users access to a workspace that comprises boards on which groups of people can arrange tasks, projects, and workflows. It is all done to promote a culture of “Work ownership and accountability.”

Boards can be customized by adding columns that list the relevant information, such as task names, deadlines, owners, statuses, and priorities. Encourage team members to interact with one another by using Monday.com's collaborative features, such as comments, mentions, and attachments. Teamwork on a project is facilitated by the ability to view a task more clearly, judge tasks more accurately, and work more efficiently as a result of pre-built automations. The project can then be tracked via a dashboard that compiles data from several boards, which all contributes to a collaborative and efficient workflow.

We like that there are five different plan tiers available, including at the bottom a free one, which gets limited to two seats and three boards. The Basic Plan, which has a minimum of 3 seats, is the starting point for the paid plans. When purchased annually as a discount, each seat costs $8 per month. Access to automations, which are available for $10 per seat per month with a cap of 250 automations per month, requires moving up a tier to the Standard Plan. The completely configurable Enterprise Plan is at the top of this tier structure.

There are multiple ways that support can be accessed: through chat, email (which is actually a support portal that supports sharing files such as an annotated screenshot), or by requesting a callback via phone.

Along with mobile apps for iOS and Android, we appreciate that there is a free trial available.

Read our full Monday Work Management review .

8. Fantastical

Fantastical is a calendar app that is designed to bring all of your events, tasks, and meetings together in one place. The app is primarily geared towards Apple users and is available on macOS, iPadOS, iOS, and even watchOS so you can quickly check your calendar using your Apple Watch . 

While there is a free version available, you’ll need a Flexibits Premium Subscription to take full advantage of Fantastical’s features. There are two premium plans available with one designed for individuals and the other for families. The individual plan pricing also applies to business users, on a per-user basis. For the price though, you also get access to Flexbits’ Cardhop which integrates with your device’s contacts and serves as a digital rolodex you can use across all of your Apple devices.

In addition to helping you keep track of your personal and work calendars,  Fantastical also has an innovative feature called Interesting Calendars that syncs external calendars based on your interests. This way you can stay up to date on your favorite shows, sports, and more automatically.

Fantastical is well known for its beautiful design and interface. Everything inside the app is laid out logically and there are also plenty of customization options to make your calendars your own. Fantastical also provides three themes to choose from so you can have the standard Fantastical theme, a light one, or a dark one that provides you with a consistent view of your calendar across both desktop and mobile.

While calendar sharing works to alleviate some of the compatibility issues, there is one clear drawback and that is that there are no Android or Windows versions, so unless you have an entire Apple ecosystem then you’ll want to find an alternative.

Read our full Fantastical review .

9. Calendly

Calendly is a calendar app with the aim of making scheduling a breeze for both your professional and personal life. It does this by first having you fill in your availability from which it creates simple rules so that it can do the work for you. From here, you can send guests your Calendly link or even embed it directly on your website for easy appointment scheduling. Calendly could be the perfect tool for hybrid workers as it lets you create and schedule meetings over Zoom or in person.

Events can be categorized by type, meetings can be set up as either recurring or one-off with specific options for both, and there is a great deal of automation available to make scheduling very hands-off. Premium subscribers also get access to integrated metrics that can provide a comprehensive overview of how you’ve been using your calendar as well as changes you could make to your schedule to improve your daily life.

Although Calendly has a relatively simple user interface, its developers have put a lot of thought and attention into making the app both streamlined and accessible. The only downside is that there aren’t a lot of customization options though you can tweak how the app looks.

There’s a free tier, however three additional paid plans at $10, $15, and $20 per user per month offer many more features for business users. 

Read our full Calendly review .

10. Lightning Calendar

Lightning Calendar is the only open source option on this list and it’s offered as part of Mozilla’s email client , Thunderbird. In addition to working on Windows and macOS devices, Lightning Calendar is one of the best calendar apps for Linux.

Just like Mozilla Firefox, Lightning Calendar is completely free to download and use. But like Outlook Calendar, it isn’t available as a standalone app which means you’ll have to install Mozilla Thunderbird to use it. This calendar app’s source code is also completely open and anyone can get involved and help contribute to it. While you can’t pay for Lightning Calendar, you can make a donation on Mozilla’s website to support its continued development.

Lightning Calendar allows you to create events, set up reminders and invite people but you can also take advantage of public calendars and add them to the app. In fact, on its website , Mozilla provides a full list of holiday calendars for countries around the world in case you want to know when your remote co-workers will or won’t be available, which is handy for organizations who work with workers, freelancers, and contractors from different parts of the globe. You can also create tasks with detailed configuration options like progress tracking and advanced postponing.

The biggest downside to Lightning Calendar is that it features an older, dated user interface which lags far behind some of the more minimalist approaches employed by most of Lightning’s competitor apps. This could be perfect for those that like to keep things simple or for those with older machines that can’t be bogged down running multiple modern applications.

Read our full Lightning Calendar review .

11. Apple Calendar

Just like Outlook Calendar and Google Calendar come pre-installed on Windows and ChromeOS devices, Apple Calendar is installed on iOS, iPadOS and macOS devices by default and is free to use. This means that if you have a MacBook or iPhone, you already have this calendar app installed on your device and ready to go.

Apple Calendar allows you to create and edit events with standard settings like time/date, location and recurrence though you can also invite others to your events if you have them as a contact first. Events support additional notes and links as well as file attachments, and the company also recently launched new FaceTime links for video call scheduling (along with URL support for other video call joining links).

Apple Calendar lets you view your schedule in day, week, month, and year view, and color coding makes it easy to keep your calendars and events organized. That said, there are few customization options available which is typical of Apple’s other software.

Apple Calendar offers more than enough to handle the basics but if you want more customization or find yourself working on Windows or Linux devices in addition to your Mac, you might want to look elsewhere. There’s an online version that’s laid out similar to the desktop version, however the desktop version has some differences to the mobile and tablet versions, especially in terms of scheduling which takes a smarter but less customizable approach on Mac.

Read our full Apple Calendar review .

We've also featured the best time management apps .

Calendar app FAQs

Which calendar app is best for you.

When deciding which calendar apps to download and use, first consider what your actual needs are. A number of general software platforms already include a basic calendar, but can often lack the necessary tools for a dedicated diary. Additionally, free and budget calendar apps can provide a lot of the tools you need, but higher-end software can really cater for the specialist, so do ensure you have a good idea of which features you think you may need to save on the pain of changing to a different software platform later on.

Should I pay for a calendar app?

Typically, paying for a service will give you the best results with many of the premium features locked behind a paywall. That’s not necessarily the case with calendar apps, depending on who you are. For personal use, there’s often very little need to fork out when plenty of free options have everything you need. The same can be said for some businesses, though there are some cases when paid-for features like appointment scheduling may be called for.

Can I use more than one calendar app?

Most calendar apps will be able to sync with most service providers, though it’s worth checking the small print before committing, especially if you intend on paying. While you may want to use Google Calendar for your Google account on an Android device, and Outlook Calendar for your work’s Exchange-based calendar, it’s possible to have them both showing under one app. For others, though, keeping them totally separate can help compartmentalize work and personal. It’s entirely a preference thing, and both ways are usually possible.

How we tested the best calendar apps

To test for the best calendar apps we first set up an account with the relevant software platform, whether as a download or as an online service. We then tested the service to see how the software could be used for different purposes and in different situations, such as keeping a diary and scheduling conferences. The aim was to push each software platform to see how useful its basic tools were and also how easy it was to get to grips with any more advanced tools.

Read how we test, rate, and review products on TechRadar .  

Build your own calendar application with WebCalendar .

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Matt Hanson

Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Core Tech, looking after computing and mobile technology. Having written for a number of publications such as PC Plus, PC Format, T3 and Linux Format, there's no aspect of technology that Matt isn't passionate about, especially computing and PC gaming. Ever since he got an Amiga A500+ for Christmas in 1991, he's loved using (and playing on) computers, and will talk endlessly about how The Secret of Monkey Island is the best game ever made.

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Calendar

  • Calendar Management for Business Owners

Calendar Management Table of Contents

Introduction — the problem of efficient time keeping.

  • 1. Your Calendar Is Public Now

2. The Smart Way To Schedule Time

  • 3. Using A Calendar To Improve Productivity
  • 4. Towards An Intelligent Calendar
  • 5. Conclusion

Everyone is selling the same thing. It doesn’t matter whether your business offers Web design, wedding calligraphy or window cleaning for skyscrapers, the invoice you deliver at the end of the job will, in the end, contain just one item…

Every business owner is focused on turning time into revenue. The more efficiently you work throughout the day, the faster you’ll turn time into income. Nothing you do is more important than your ability to streamline your work, remove the obstacles, and make each minute count .

However, there are only 24 hours in a day. You’ll spend a third of them asleep (if you’re lucky). You should be able to count on spending a third of them working five days out of every week. The remaining hours are yours to spend on activities that give you pleasure alone. They’re time for you, family, and personal development.

Try to increase your productivity by allowing your work to leak into your downtime, and you’ll be paying a heavy price for those extra earnings. You can do it, but it’s an expensive way to make more money.

But there’s another way: effective time — and calendar management. Here’s how to improve both in 2020:

Productivity, management and efficiency.

The solution is to squeeze more out of your time, especially now that business is moving even faster in 2020. This means making each minute count. The more effectively you can monetize your working minutes, the more you’ll earn and the faster you’ll grow without losing time.

There are all sorts of tools that can help you to do that. App stores are overflowing with productivity apps that promise to help you work better and save time. Experts like David Allen and Tim Ferriss have built entire industries out of their ideas for list organization and outsourcing. They all promise a more efficient workflow.

When you’re trying to improve efficiency, yet struggling, you want the solution to be as simple and natural as possible. The 43 folders involved in David Allen’s Getting Things Done system is great for the people who find it works for them. However, most people aren’t that systematic. They don’t want to categorize every task and every goal, and accord each one a priority.

Other time management strategies.

While delegating some tasks is one good way to work more effectively, not everyone wants to reduce the amount of time they spend doing the work they love. Instead, they spend more time managing outsourced workers who are having a much better time than they are. A four-hour workweek is a great idea… if you don’t love the work you do every week.

When you do love your work, you don’t want to do less of it. You just want to get more out of it.

Productivity programs can help. From Slack to the simplest to-do list app, they can all bring focus, outline the work that needs to be completed, and provide a sense of satisfaction as you cross out each task you complete. They also bring frustration when you realize you didn’t come close to completing your list. Not to mention you’ll feel horror at the sight of the tasks that are left. Then, there’s the despondency each time you realize you have to add something new to it

And, they also require you to use them. You have to go out of your way to fire up the program. This requires spending time figuring out how to use it. If it’s a complex program or one that encourages interaction with others (like Slack), then there’s a good chance that you either won’t be optimizing it.

Why calendars?

To really make the most of your workday and streamline your efforts, you need a tool that you’ll use anyway, that you know and understand, and that can fit into your work life instead of forcing you to adjust to it.

A calendar can do that. It’s a way to make sure that meetings aren’t missed and that hours aren’t double-booked. It provides a way to list tasks and grant them periods of time. A calendar is a basic piece of organizational equipment. From hair stylists to CEOs, everyone uses a calendar.

It’s also underrated.

Calendar management in modern times equates to a lot more than simply marking birthdays and listing appointments. While few of us noticed, technology companies have been quietly turning them into entire hubs of productivity, slipping in tools and features that can have a profound effect on the way we all work. From notifications to record-keeping and scheduling, calendars are doing a lot more than filling dates… and they’re about to do even more.

Learn from others productivity

In this guide, we’re going to explore ways to manage your calendar and make the most out of this timeless productivity tool. You’ll discover smart ways to schedule your time and see what can happen when an independent scheduling function works with shared calendars. We’ll also look at the effect that that a simple change can have on meetings, workplace, and customer relationships.

From there, you’ll learn how a calendar can improve productivity, especially in meetings. Often a business’s biggest time-suck, meetings can always be made more efficient and more effective, reaching decisions faster, and freeing participants to return to their desks.

Finally, as technology related to artificial intelligence continues to develop, we’ll look at what’s likely to happen as calendars become smart and collate data. It’s a change that’s coming, and it’s going to change everything.

Your calendar is public now

Your Calendar Is Public Now

When the iPad launched, there was one aspect of the tablet’s design that came in for a great deal of criticism. The apps, critics said, were skeuomorphic. They attempted to replicate in digital form tools that needed a very different appearance in the real world. So early version of iOS’s notes app looked like a yellow notepad, complete with lines, margins, a torn sheet at the top of the page and even faux leather stitching. The company that brought us the album carousel designed its digital bookstore as a literal bookstore, complete with wooden shelves.

Those elements are gone now but some of the effects of bringing real world tools into a digital environment remain, not least in the way that we think of our calendars.

Paper calendars were always personal things. We’d scrawl our appointments and make little notes about who we were going to meet and what we were planning to do. Like a diary, they didn’t just list the events; they were an insight into a private world, a window that only the calendar’s owner could look through. A paper calendar remained in a pocket or a purse and had an audience of one. They were confidential and remained confidential.

Digital calendars arrive.

Today’s digital calendars might be used on tools as personal as mobile phones and personal computers but they also come with a function that users of paper calendars would have regarded with horror. They can be shared — adding a whole another dimension to calendar management.

quick reminders

You can invite people to look at your calendar . You can let your boss, your colleagues, your business partners, your family, your friends, see where you and what you’re doing each day. They can see your plans and your activities, who you’re meeting and where you’re planning to meet them. It sounds like a gross invasion of privacy.

When everyone involved in an event can see each other’s schedules , setting times and dates becomes much simpler. Instead of asking when someone is available, then trying to find matching times among all the other participants, it’s possible to look at everyone’s schedules and identify the gaps.

It’s a function that’s valuable and useful. However, it also marks a huge difference between the traditional use of a calendar and its modern use. Although we’ve been using paper calendars longer, most people are starting to switch to digital calendars.

Balance between sharing and personal privacy.

We also take a great deal of effort to keep our personal information private on our devices. We use secret squiggles to open our phones, scan our thumbs to turn on our computers, create passwords that combine uppercase, lowercase and non-sequential numbers. When every aspect of our lives is now embedded in our digital devices, we make sure that all the doors and windows into those devices are kept secure.

Security guard at the gate

It’s no wonder then that so many people still shy away from that share button on their calendar. A Pew survey in 2014 found that just 11 percent of couples shared an online calendar — and those couples were usually aged from their mid-twenties to mid-forties, a time when lives and activities are at their busiest and the convenience of sharing is at its highest.

For everyone else, letting other people, even their partners, see where they are and what they’re doing all the time is a public step too far. If someone really wants to know, they can ask.

Digital calendars have recognized the problem. They allow users to create more than one calendar, and even to install ready-made calendars onto the calendar platform they’re using.

Sports fans can install their favorite team’s schedule and see where and when they’re playing overlaid on their own schedules. Schools can give parents a prepared list of breaks, performances and parent meetings so that they’re automatically added to their digital calendars.

iCalshare.com, a directory of specialist calendars, covers schedules for events ranging from Finnish holidays to the birthdays of anime characters. They claim to offer over 3,000 schedules suitable for any calendar that accepts the iCalendar standard.

New challenges with digital calendars.

For all their apparent convenience, only a small number of people ever bother to add an iCalendar to their digital calendars, and those that do are unlikely to go much further than layering religious and national holidays. 2020 is set to bring even more challenges with digital calendars.

That 11% of couples who allow their partners to peer into their daily events can see when their partner has a work dinner or that their spouse has scheduled the PTA meeting for both of them. None of that is helpful when the partner organizing the work dinner is trying to find a time when most of the office can attend. No one wants to share their calendar with everyone they know. Plus, no one wants to go to each attendee in turn and ask when they’d like the event to take place.

Social media sites have tried alternative solutions for calendar management. Facebook pages can create events and invite people to attend. It’s a top-down approach that requires attendees to make space in their schedules. Also, it works when enough people might attend anyway to make the event worthwhile even if lots of people can’t turn up. However, it’s not a solution for small events with people who know each other, and it doesn’t sync the event automatically with the calendar you might be using.

For all the advances in digital calendars, there are two distinct problems. First, users don’t want to share every aspect of their lives with everyone they know. Second, they want an easy to way to find time slots that work for every participant. Fortunately, a solution is now emerging, and it’s one that takes an entirely new approach to schedules, events and time slots.

The smartest way to schedule time

There are few scheduling challenges greater than allocating the slots at a school parents’ evening. The teacher will need to meet with more than 30 sets of parents, spread over a few hours, on one or two evenings set aside at the beginning of the year.

For the parents, it’s a highlight of the year, but it’s also a scheduling nightmare. They might have more than one child at the same school, and need to make sure that the meetings aren’t set at the same time. They also want to be sure that one meeting isn’t at the start of the event and the other at the end. Otherwise, they would have to wait around for hours. They also have to consider when they’re able to leave work, when they need to be home (bearing in mind their experience of these meetings overrunning)—and of course, they also have to bear in mind that the 30-odd other sets of parents in the class have exactly the same considerations.

It’s a familiar problem, and it’s one that does have a set of solutions. Teachers can share a calendar. They can assign slots themselves then leave it to parents to sort it out between them. They can upload an Excel or Google Docs file to the cloud with time slots, share it with the class and invite the parents to enter their names in the corresponding places.

However, none of those methods are entirely effective. Not all parents will use the same format of digital calendar. Teachers don’t want to force parents to take an hour they can’t use. And, cloud services have a habit of failing, leaving some parents unable to write in their names while others take the best slots.

A new approach to time scheduling.

There is a better approach. Instead of exposing entire calendars or hoping that this time the cloud will work for everyone, teachers—and anyone else for that matter—can mark a period of time in their own calendars that indicate when they’re available. They can then create time slots and send an invitation to participants to choose a slot that suits them. The invitation includes a link so as long as the recipients have a connection to the internet they can pick a time they want.

The entire approach would be linked to the invitee’s calendar so the participants could continue using any format of digital calendar they want. They wouldn’t even see the invitee’s calendar, only the available time slots on the invitation platform. They could choose their hour, and both sides would receive an emailed confirmation. It’s very simple, and very easy to use.

It also allows for a great deal of flexibility and personalization—and this is where things get really interesting. Once you separate the scheduling function from the calendar itself, when you have a new point of interaction between the meeting organizer and attendees, you can do all sorts of things that calendar apps have struggled to do alone.

Creating Unique Scheduling Experiences For Different Meetings

A teacher trying to organize a parents’ evening might have to contend with more than 30 time slots but all the meetings will be with one teacher, all will be the same length, and all will have the same purpose (even if the content will differ.)

For businesses, meetings are much more complex.

A car showroom, for example, might need to hold a range of different kinds of meetings with its customers. It might want customers to schedule initial conversations with customer service staff to find out what kind of vehicle they’re looking for. It might then want the customer to come in and meet with a rep to look at the options and take a test-drive. Customers might also need to set up meetings with the company’s finance officer to arrange a loan and with a different employee to arrange the sale of their own car if they’re making a trade-in.

And those are only the different kinds of meetings that a car showroom’s staff might hold with its customers. It will also need to arrange plenty of meetings inside the company itself. There will be sales meetings and staff meetings, staff reviews and recruitment interviews. All of those events need to be scheduled into a calendar, but all of them will have different participants, require different amounts of time, and require a different kind of relationship with recipients. The showroom can afford to be as flexible as possible when it schedules meetings with customers; job interviewees can adjust themselves to the company’s needs.

New approaches to meetings.

A system that separates the scheduling from the calendar itself lets participants choose the kind of meeting they need to hold, the people they need to hold it with, and the time that they can hold it.

A customer reaching a car showroom’s website for example could reach a contact page. Instead of seeing a single phone number, then working their way through a connection tree to reach the person they need to speak to and make the appropriate appointment, they could choose the kind of meeting they need to make and set up a time for the person to call them back. They would be able to see when the person they need to speak to is available, and choose a time from that list that suits them.

The customer service person could then send them an invitation to a meeting with a sales rep, offering a time slot but allowing the customer to choose a range of different hours if they need to. Because those times would be drawn from the rep’s calendar, there’d be no need to negotiate the schedule or hunt for a suitable time. It would all be updated automatically. For both sides the process of finding a suitable time becomes much smoother and more efficient.

Sales reps could even arrange the meetings from inside their sales software or whatever work management software they’re using. Users of platforms like Salesforce and Zapier could view the customer data on their platform of choice and schedule their calls and meetings without ever breaking their natural workflow. Life becomes so much simpler.

Bringing Branding And Marketing to Scheduling

Once you’ve separated the scheduling function from the calendar itself, you can go even further than optimization. You might start by offering customers more possible time slots than you make available to job interviewees, but every interaction with a customer is a customer service experience.

Every conversation, whether it’s a pitch or a chance to pick an appointment, leaves an impression on the customer. It can increase the chances of the company making a sale, and it can reduce those chances. The scheduling act is an opportunity to both deepen the brand experience and to pull a customer further through the sales funnel .

Start with that contact page. Embed the calendar schedule function into a page on your website, and it can carry your company’s brand and reflect your company’s values. It can include pictures of the employees who will be holding the meetings or show product images that further incentivize the lead to complete the action. This page can show how every interaction will be as smooth, easy, and effective. Even more importantly, it can build trust.

Contacts and scheduling strategies.

The scheduling tool is effectively a form, and forms can be used to request all sorts of information. There is always a trade-off: the more information you request from a lead, the more likely they are to refuse or turn away. That likelihood increases if the information you demand isn’t directly related to the interaction that the lead is arranging. But scheduling a meeting provides an opportunity to extract relevant information that can also be used to turn a potential customer into a long-term, loyal customer.

You’ll clearly need contact information so that you can inform the lead of any changes to the meeting or to remind them that they’ve scheduled one. Those contact details though can also be used to push special offers, to deliver free gifts or provide information that keeps a customer coming back.

You can also ask the lead questions about their preferences for the product and the particular problems they’re trying to solve. The car showroom, for example, could ask how many miles the lead drives each year or whether they’re looking for a sedan, an SUV or a sports car. A tax advisor could ask about the size of the business and its industry. A wedding planner could ask about the number of guests and the ages of the bride and groom.

Customization and connections.

All of that information wouldn’t just make the meeting more efficient. It would also allow the business to target its future marketing material. Something as simple as scheduling a meeting has become for the business a transaction in which trust is won then turned into a valuable resource. Even if the meeting doesn’t result in a sale, even if it’s cancelled, the company has built a path to future sales.

And the customization of the schedule experience doesn’t stop when the customer chooses a date and a time. Once they’ve made a selection, they’ll receive an email confirming the time and place of the meeting, with variables such as the lead’s name and the event description added automatically. You can also send them a friendly reminder a day or two before the event.

Each of those interactions is another opportunity for you to build a connection. The messages might be entirely functional, part of the process of arranging a meeting and making sure that it takes place, but every time a lead or a customer engages with your business, you’re on trial. That experience will either build trust and positivity or lose it.

You can make sure that those communications carry your brand’s image and voice. It also demonstrate your willingness to help the customer by allowing them to change the date, time, or venue. Also, you can provide a way for them to add the date to their own digital calendars automatically.

From the need for two or more participants to find and agree a date in the calendar, businesses are able to build a complete brand experience. In a competitive environment, that’s essential.

Arranging Team Meetings

A car buyer is likely to have a short series of one-to-one meetings. They’ll meet with the rep. They might meet with the finance expert. They might also have to meet with another rep to agree a price for their trade-in.

Separating the scheduling from the calendar allows each of those meetings to be arranged separately. The customer can do it themselves or each member of staff can arrange the meeting on the customer’s behalf, checking the calendar to make sure the next link in the chain is available and sending an invitation to confirm the arrangement.

Sometimes though, meetings have to be scheduled between multiple people at the same time . A job interview, for example, might include two or more interviewers as well as the interviewee. A team meeting might need to draw staff from different departments, all of whom have their own full schedules. The more people you need to get into a room together, the harder it becomes to arrange the meeting.

The automation removes a huge headache. Instead of hunting around for times, the meeting organizer will be able to pick a time and know that everyone will be able to attend. Organizers would even be able to look at a list of staff members and pick the ones they want to meet.

Make An Automatic Invitation For Any Event

The flexibility that a smart calendar can bring doesn’t end with being able to easily find time slots or organize team meetings. The calendar also makes it simple to bring any number of people together for any purpose. They can come together outside the company and they can come together offline for any kind of event.

A corporate trainer could begin by creating a new event. After entering a name for the event they could enter a location or even only choose to show the location after confirmation. This is ideal if they’re not sure yet where the workshop will be held.

They would then write a short description of the class to tell participants what they’ll learn and what they need to bring. Limiting the number of attendees at the workshop will also make sure that it’s not oversubscribed and for paid workshops will create a sense of urgency that encourages people to sign up quickly.

The benefits of automatic invitations.

Nothing in that process takes more than a few minutes, and all of it can be easily adapted for any number of different kinds of events. The instructions for a tour could tell people where to meet and what they’re going to see. The description for a party invitation could include a link to a registry page or information about the party’s theme. The location for an event taking place online could include a link to a GoToMeeting page or some other online meeting tool.

Suddenly, organizing any kind of event becomes very simple, and can be performed using the kind of tool that everyone uses every day.

Meetings are moments when the lives of different people come together. Scheduling them is always a struggle. But when you can use a platform that sits above multiple calendars and can spot the gaps in everyone’s calendars, that scheduling doesn’t just become easier. It also becomes an opportunity to deepen your marketing and improve your branding.

And it can do even more than that. A platform that can see can also “think.” No business ever has a goal of arranging a meeting. It holds meetings to reach a goal. That goal might be to finalize a plan, to seal a deal, or to move a customer closer to a sale. The faster the meeting can reach that goal, the less time it will waste, the more productive the company will be, and the more money it will make.

In the next chapter, we’ll look at just what a calendar can do for your business’s productivity, once that calendar starts to become “smart.”

Using a Calendar to improve productivity

3. Using Calendar Management To Improve Productivity

If you’ve ever found yourself daydreaming during a meeting, you’re not alone. A white paper published by Verizon once found that 91% of attendees admitted to letting their minds wander during a meeting. More than a third of respondents said that they had actually fallen asleep during a business meeting.

Combining a scheduling tool with a digital calendar takes the pain and time out of meeting arrangements. However, it won’t solve the biggest waste of time of all: what happens during the meetings themselves. Bring people together and, inevitably, time starts to stretch.

Meetings are easy. They’re even enjoyable. Leaders get a chance to feel important as they tell a silent room about their goals and achievements. Attendees get to show off their great ideas to their superiors and stand out from their peers. When the meetings become boring, attendees can zone out or have a quiet nap. Meetings feel like work, and they’re necessary for work, but they’re easier than work. As a result, they suck up the company’s time that would be better spent actually doing work.

Picking The Right Moment

While time is always valuable, not every hour has the same value. Research into ultradian rhythms suggests that we all go through cycles of between 90 minutes and two hours in which productivity rises , peaks and falls again. In an AMA on Reddit in 2014, psychologist Dan Ariely argued that the most productive hours in the day are the two hours that follow becoming most awake. It’s immediately after you’ve had your coffee and taken your shower that you’re at your most focused. Those are also the hours that are likely to be wasted on things like answering emails and checking Facebook and Twitter.

“One of the saddest mistakes in time management is the propensity of people to spend the two most productive hours of their day on things that don’t require high cognitive capacity (like social media),” he said. “If we could salvage those precious hours, most of us would be much more successful in accomplishing what we truly want.”

For example, company meetings often take place first thing in the morning.  If the meeting runs through the most productive hours of the day, then it might be best to hold those meetings at the end of that day when staff are less focused. Instead of starting the week with a meeting, a better strategy might be to schedule the meeting on a Friday afternoon.

Making Improvements to Meeting Timing

While those morning periods of intensive work might sound familiar, everyone is different. We aren’t all at our best first thing in the morning.. Some people may find that they focus better in the early evening or after they’ve eaten lunch. Some are night owls who prefer to take things easy during the day. Without knowing the best times to tackle challenges there’s always the danger of wasting those hours on tasks that require relatively little effort. Thee include setting the staff rota or planning the following week’s tasks.

Chris Bailey, author of The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy , has suggested monitoring levels of focus, energy and motivation at the same times each day for about three weeks. Score each of those characteristics for each portion of the day. You’ll start to see which hours are likely to let you get the most done. You’ll then be able to block out those times on your calendar. There you are unavailable for meetings during hours that might be better spent crunching code or writing copy.

Clearly, it’s not always going to work. We don’t always have control over meeting times. Where you do have control, blocking out the most productive hours will help to ensure that you get the right tasks done at the right time.

The Calendar As A Meeting Preparation Tool

Walk into a meeting at Amazon ten minutes late and, if you survive the withering look delivered by Jeff Bezos, you might assume that that statistic about the number of people who doze during business meetings is an understatement. The room would be silent. No one would be speaking. There’d be no fiddling with a projector and no one pointing at a graph that’s supposed to mean something. Meetings at Amazon are said to start with quiet reading. At the start of every meeting, attendees are given a six-page memo describing the issue at hand.

business event

Instead of Powerpoint presentations, which Bezos has described as easy for speakers to use but tough for attendees to follow, numbers and data are placed in the memo and kept to a minimum. The person who prepares the memo has to use full sentences and explain the story behind the event they’re describing. For up to half an hour at the start of the meeting, everyone reads. Only when they’ve all finished reading does the discussion begin.

Best Practices for Using Calendar Meeting Tools

Other businesses use similar methods. The dissemination of an agenda before the meeting takes place always has the same goal. It makes sure that everyone knows what the meeting is about. Also, it helps them to frame their thinking in the hours before the meeting. Attendees can walk into the conference room with a good idea of what other people are going to say and their responses. Something as simple as distributing the agenda beforehand can save thinking time during the meeting itself. This reduces the chances that ideas will only bubble up after the meeting has ended when it’s too late to share.

Therefore, business should have an easy way to distribute those agendas. Ideally, it should be included with the meeting invitations. The meeting organizer should be able to look at the scheduler connected to everyone’s calendars, find a time that everyone has in common, and include in the invitation the agenda. Attendees will be expected to have read that agenda when they confirm their attendance.

The meeting planner could paste the agenda text into the invitation, upload it so that it’s sent out together with the invitation, or place it on the cloud and include a link. As long as it’s read before the meeting takes place, they can be confident that attendees will arrive prepared.

Benchmarking Meeting Agendas

Whether you use a brief, bullet-pointed agenda or an Amazon-style six-page memo, the material distributed before the meeting should be short and to the point. The aim isn’t to include every possible piece of information about the subject there is to know; it’s not a replacement for the meeting. Its task is to frame the meeting. You want everyone to know what’s going to be discussed (so that they can think about it), and you want them to know how much there is to discuss so that they keep their arguments short and to the point.

Roger Schwarz, an organizational psychologist and leadership team consultant, has described in the Harvard Business Review a number of items that a good meeting agenda should contain. His advice also shows the challenge of keeping a meeting focused and on track.

Team participation.

Team members, he should be consulted when preparing the agenda so that their concerns have a forum that can be addressed. While that’s sensible and helpful, it’s also a recipe for conflict. Meetings are not the place to address issues that only affect individuals. These subjects are better discussed in private. Instead, a meeting has to focus only on the issues that will affect the team as a whole. Asking team members for input will also require explanations about why someone’s priority won’t be included.

About our team

A better option might be to sound out team members informally about the topics that will be discussed. Include any issues that would be helpful. If the team member isn’t involved in the discussion, then tell them later about the effect of their input. Instead of feeling that they’re being excluded, team members will feel that they have a channel to make a difference.

Meeting agenda formats.

One good piece of advice that Schwarz offers though is to frame entries in the agenda as questions instead of statements. Asking what to do about the customer service issue is more likely to get people thinking about solutions than simply telling people that the meeting will discuss the customer service issue.

A question demands participation from attendees. In contrast, a statement suggests information will come down from managers. Schwarz suggests that it also enables the meeting organizer to stop the meeting moving off-focus by pointing out when a discussion is leading away from the answer. When the question has been answered, everyone can recognize that it’s time to move on to the next point on the agenda.

Schwarz even goes so far as to offer a three-column format for a printed agenda that should be prepared beforehand. The first column describes the topic in question form. It notes how much time will be allocated to the point, who leads it, and whether the aim is to share information, gather input, or reach a decision. The second column describes any preparation that should be made before the meeting And, the third column explains the process the discussion should undergo to reach its goal.

Things to remember.

It’s all very worthy and organized.  In practice, few meetings are ever that structured or can ever be that structured. Participants’ desire to say what’s on their mind and impress other people will always pull it in different directions.

Good points that have little to do with the topic under discussion can create entirely new conversations. It takes a great deal of courage to cut off a senior executive in mid-flow. Creating an agenda that frames the discussion, prepares for the meeting, and enables everyone to arrive armed with ideas and solutions will keep the meeting on time. Yet, more is needed.

Limiting The Time Of The Meeting

All sorts of ideas have been thrown out to force attendees to keep their meetings short. Some businesses have been known to take the chairs out of the meeting room. If everyone has to talk standing up, they’re not going to make themselves too comfortable. They’ll end the meeting as soon as their legs get tired.

Caterina Fake, the co-founder of Flickr, used to go even further.

She told Inc. Live that after seeing how inefficient and ineffective her company’s team meetings had become she implemented a new rule. Fake noticed that attendees would sit in front of a sixteen-ounce glass of water so at the start of the meeting she had everyone drink the entire glass. The meeting ended when the first person needed to go to the bathroom. “I think a 32-ounce Slurpee would do the job even better,” she said.

Although certainly effective at keeping meetings short, Fake’s solution also imposes an arbitrary limit on the gatherings. In practice, meetings tend to have natural lengths. After a certain period, participants start to feel that they’ve said what they needed.  Keep track of the amount of time spent in meetings and a pattern will emerge — thereby making calendar management just a bit easier.

Planning and recording the meeting time.

The person planning the meeting can use the scheduler to fix a time for the meeting. When it ends, they can enter the time that it ended and calculate the amount of time used. Once they’ve gathered enough data, they are able to produce an average length of time for meetings.

When they come to schedule the weekly planning meeting, instead of estimating that the meeting will need an hour (and risk conversation filling the time available), they could leave their calendar to automatically assign 50 minutes. As such, they can see that that’s the amount of time participants have actually needed.

The meeting planner could then start to shave minutes from that scheduled time. Therefore, meetings become more efficient and shorter.  When attendees know that time is limited, they’ll be less inclined to waste it with irrelevant anecdotes, chit-chat, and pointless ideas. Instead of forcing participants to change meeting style, the calendar would improve participant efficiency.

From Meetings To More

What works for meetings can also work for other activities. A smart calendar that can be used to track the start and end times of company discussions, workshops, and other gatherings can also be used to track and limit the time available for anything.

We all have various tasks that have to be accomplished throughout the day. Some of those tasks we find enjoyable and meaningful, such as pitching to leads, writing code or creating a product. Other task are essential but are less enjoyable and often less lucrative. These includes answering emails, paying bills, and doing paperwork.

To-do lists.

The most common way to work through those tasks is to create a to-do list and cross off each item. While useful, that process doesn’t connect time to each task. Each activity takes as long as it takes. This means that you might get the satisfaction that comes from crossing out a task you’ve completed. However, you’ll also end many days with lots of tasks uncompleted.

how to organize events

Your calendar can help ensure that those tasks are completed. It can also help wit the time spent in reaching the finishing line.

Instead of simply writing a short of list of things that you need to do, enter them into the calendar. Give each task a start time. When you finish it, record the end time. You’ll find a record of the time your tasks take. In addition to entering a start time for the tasks on your to-do list, you’ll then be able to enter a finish time.

Goals and timing.

Having a goal to work towards will help to keep you focused, and like the meetings, you’ll be able to reduce the amount of time you give yourself for each task, forcing you to work faster and giving you more time to work on higher value tasks.

You do have to be careful when restricting time. Shaving off five or ten minutes can help you to fill your day with more activities. Remove too much time, and you’ll fail to make your deadline and make them feel irrelevant. Your day should feel full and challenging rather than stuffed and impossible.

Reminders are one calendar tool that will help meet those self-imposed deadlines. When you set the start of a new task, you’ll be able to fix a reminder for a set period before the next task starts. The arrival of that notification will be a little like the warning examiners give students when the exam is due to end. And, it can have the same effect. For the remaining half an hour or so, you’ll be able to work with renewed focus.

Of course, exams are never fun. No one wants to do one all day every day. Therefore, it’s worth using a calendar to assign time to tasks sparingly. Schedule your breaks, too. Leave spaces to catch up on tasks that you failed to finish in the time. Also, don’t force every task to be completed in a tiny amount of time. A little stress can lead to greater productivity. However, a lot of frustration is more likely to lead to a lost job. Record the time it take to complete the tasks. Then, use those records to schedule a more productive day.

A little smart thinking can turn a calendar into a productivity tool as well as a scheduling tool. But what would happen if the calendar could think about your time-keeping for you, and offer suggestions one ways to use your time better? That’s the intriguing idea that we’ll explore in the next chapter.

Towards an intelligent calendar

4. Towards Intelligent Calendar Management

A calendar is a tool. It’s usually a tool used to schedule events so that they’re not forgotten or to prevent time slots being double-booked but we’ve seen so far in this book that they can do so much more. Allow multiple calendars to be read by a smart digital scheduler and setting times for meetings and other events becomes so much easier.

Clients can save time trying to figure out when a lead can talk to a sales rep. Businesses become more productive when they’re able to easily spot time slots that work for everyone and set meetings at the right time of the day, when staff are free to talk and aren’t needed at their desks.

It’s even possible to use a calendar to complete tasks faster. Once you know how long a task should take, you can use your calendar to give you gentle nudges at set times to keep your fingers on the keyboard instead of your eyes out of the window.

Artificial intelligence for calendars.

All of those calendar-based productivity hacks require each of us to figure out what to do. We have to measure the time a task takes. Plus, it invokes ensuring meetings stay on track. Then, we have to look for what wasted time and lowered productivity. From there, it means figuring out solutions.

What if your calendar could do that thinking for you? O, instead of just recording the data you input manually, what if it could analyze that data and draw conclusions about your scheduling and produce a list of recommendations?

What if it even had the artificial intelligence to watch what you were doing or listen to what you were saying and then generate productivity tips based on your activities?

The future holds more promise.

We’re not there yet. No calendar yet has the intelligence to act as a kind of business consultant, reviewing your hours and helping you to fill them better. But we’re getting closer.

The technology that runs AI programs is getting smarter and we can expect it soon to filter into the digital productivity tool that we use more than any other. This is what it will look like when it arrives.

When Your Calendar Runs Your Meetings

At the start of every business meeting, attendees currently turn off the tool that might soon allow them to be much more productive. They switch off their phones.

Or rather, they turn off their phone’s ringers so that they can talk and listen without interruption. Even with those ringtones turned to silent, the phone’s microphones still work. That would provide a way for smart calendar software to listen in on the meeting and analyze contents.

It wouldn’t have to record the meeting, although it could if the firm preferred a recording to a set of minutes. It would be able to identify words and sounds and then use that to draw conclusions about what happened during the meeting.

The calendar as timer.

The easiest calculation would be the amount of time the meeting took. If an event listed in the calendar as a “Sales Meeting” dragged on for a couple of hours or more, once the meeting had ended, the calendar could offer a list of suggestions for more succinct sales meetings.

That would be simple enough, the most basic form of calendar-based AI. It wouldn’t require any more than a record of the start and end-times of the meetings and some pre-planned suggestions for different kinds of meetings.

The calendar recognizes you.

The next step up though would be to personalize those suggestions. The calendar should be able to pick out the words spoken during the meeting. It could also understand where the meetings went off track and identify areas of improvement.

One option would be for the calendar’s audio analysis function to differentiate between the voices of speakers and record the time each participant spoke. The graph produced from that analysis would indicate which participants aren’t contributing enough and which are dominating the meeting.

The calendar could suggest how much each participant should increase or decrease their speaking time. it could even offer tips that could produce more balanced meetings with greater contributions from more team members.

The calendar as analytics tool.

Like the duration of the meeting as a whole, that sort of analysis would be relatively simple to implement. Yet, deepening the calendar’s ability to understand language would make it even more useful. A smart calendar that could recognize question words could understand how often the meeting’s leader asked questions that provoked a response from other participants.

Again, if the calendar assigns the meeting’s recording a low “question score,” then it could suggest ways to encourage participation. Also, it could highlight particular statements that could have been rephrased as a question to encourage ideas.

The calendar becomes smarter over time.

And, if the calendar were to become even smarter, then it might even be able to tell when a meeting had gone off-subject. Initially, such an analysis could be based on keywords. If the percentage of keywords related to sales in a sales meeting fell below a certain level, the calendar could note that. It could also reveal the amount of time spent discussing keywords with no business relevance, such as the sports scores or last night’s television show.

Those notifications could come during the meeting or be provided in a post-meeting analysis. The calendar could even use that analysis to produce a more accurate suggested duration for the next sales meeting.

Automated Intelligent Agendas

Making meetings more efficient has little value if the company has to spend more time on the preparation for the meeting. A smart calendar, reinforced with AI, could help there too. To create an agenda for the meeting, for example, the organizer might have to sound out the participants and anyone else the meeting affects, and ask for their input. They’d then have to decide which suggestions to include, which to leave out and which to only include if there’s enough time

Instead of the meeting organizer sitting with staff and asking for their opinions, anyone could write comments in an area of the firm’s calendar app. The meeting organizer could then categorize and score those suggestions. From there, the calendar could insert them into a pre-formatted agenda.

It’s a move that would still give the company’s employees a channel for their views to be heard. Yet, it would save time and centralize suggestions. The agenda would be written and distributed automatically with contributions from everyone selected by the meeting organizer.

Big Data Analysis

Where things could get really interesting though is when a calendar tool is used across multiple companies. Google is able to generate automated email reply suggestions based on its ability to “read” email content and the replies. Similarly, a smart calendar tool with access to data from millions of meetings and calendars could produce similarly smart suggestions.

To develop an optimal amount of time for a sales meeting at a car showroom, the calendar would have to analyze the contents and duration of multiple meetings. That would take time. Plus, the analysis would be based on a small sample.

If the calendar were used by thousands of car showrooms, it could collate and crunch the data from each of those meetings. This includes the amount of time they took, amount of participants, number of questions asked, and quantify of decisions made. Then, the calendar tool could make conclusions about what defines the most effective sales meetings at car showrooms, when to hold them, and how many participants to include. Therefore companies benefit from personalized suggestions by improving their meetings.

A return to privacy concerns.

There would be an issue of privacy with this type of intelligent calendar management. A tool that listens to companies’ confidential meetings would face an issue of trust. But it’s a challenge that tech companies are already meeting and overcoming. Google reads millions of confidential emails every day. It knows the contents of millions of group calendars and, like Apple, has access to the telephone data of millions of people. Yet, people trust both companies.

When data is anonymized and untraceable, companies can overcome privacy concerns, respect their users’ confidentiality, and transform calendars into valuable time-saving tools.

Among the thousands of productivity apps, no tool has turned out to be more effective or popular than the calendar. It holds an entire year of information. The calends is also undergoing a quiet revolution.

Tech company takes on the calendar.

Some companies like Slack have made the calendar part of a new way of organizing time and communications. For large, distributed companies willing to make large adjustments, they can fill a demand. However, they still haven’t replaced the basic need to organize a schedule.

At the same time, other technology companies have taken a different approach. Instead of trying to replace the calendar, they’ve added functions to make them more useful.

So much more than just a calendar.

They can become automated assistants. This includes distributing meeting agendas, collecting ideas, reducing unproductive time and suggesting the best moments to bring people together. They can even build meeting agendas, removing one painful task. As they get smarter, they can even become fully-fledged business consultants.

Then, they can recommend ways to improve discussions and compare data across companies and industries. As technology companies turn their attention to the world’s most used productivity tool, expect new ways of helping businesses.

We will always be in the business of selling minutes and turning hours into income . Smart calendars, powered by artificial intelligence and armed with big data, are about to make time even more valuable throughout 2020 and beyond.

The Benefits of a Sophisticated Calendar

Organization is half the battle, and you’ll find that the better organized your calendar is, the more effective you’ll be. You’ll find improved productivity as well as time management, and get done with work earlier or produce higher quality work. With that, you will be able to have a better work-life balance and get back to things that are most important in life.

A sophisticated calendar can also reduce the stress you feel at work, as everything that you would need is right in front of you. Calendar offers a sophisticated, easy-to-use calendar for businesses as well as individuals. With it you’ll find you can get more done in less time.

Updated February 3, 2023

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John Rampton

John’s goal in life is to make people’s lives much more productive. Upping productivity allows us to spend more time doing the things we enjoy most. John was recently recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as being one of the top marketers in the World. John is co-founder and CEO of Calendar.

task and calendar management

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Best free task management software in 2024

Mehdi Punjwani

Sierra Campbell

Sierra Campbell

“Verified by an expert” means that this article has been thoroughly reviewed and evaluated for accuracy.

Published 7:24 a.m. UTC Feb. 15, 2024

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A good task management software will give you the tools you need to organize projects for your business and help individuals, teams and businesses stay organized and productive. They offer a range of features and capabilities depending on the complexities of your business and projects, allowing you to set deadlines, assign tasks to team members, allocate resources and track and report on progress.

Finding the best task management software for your business means considering a range of factors, like the core features on offer, the customer service you’ll get and the ability to scale up according to your needs. We’ve tried and tested some of the biggest platforms available to give you our list of best task management software in 2024.

Best free task management software

  • Notion : Best for flexibility.
  • ClickUp : Best for customization.
  • Trello : Best for automation.
  • Hive : Best for collaboration.
  • Zoho Projects : Best for startups using Zoho.
  • Teamwork : Best for client task management.
  • Monday : Best for individuals and freelancers.
  • Asana : Best for complex tasks.
  • Podio : Best for app building.
  • GoodDay : Best for scaling up.

Why trust our small business experts

Our team of experts evaluates hundreds of business products and analyzes thousands of data points to help you find the best product for your situation. We use a data-driven methodology to determine each rating. Advertisers do not influence our editorial content. You can read more about our methodology below.

  • 62 companies reviewed.
  • 164 products reviewed.
  • 2,028 data points analyzed.

Best for flexibility

Notion

Cheapest paid plan (billed monthly)

Number of users, number of projects/tasks, what you should know.

Notion is a versatile task management platform that gives you a high degree of control and customization even on its free plan. With an abundance of views and formats, including Kanban boards, Gantt charts, calendar views and to-do lists, it offers users multiple ways to track and organize projects. You can also make use of thousands of templates built by Notion and its users, catering to an array of health and fitness, work and office and day-to-day home management needs.

You won’t need to pay anything to get unlimited pages and workflows as an individual, but you’ll need to upgrade to give multiple users full functionality. While you can upload unlimited files on the free plan, you’ll be limited to 5 MB per file, as well as a seven-day history and one synced database.

We’d recommend it if you want to use one platform to manage a variety of project and task types with flexible views and displays; it’s particularly good for content creators.

Pros and cons

  • Multiple views, including Kanban boards, Gantt charts and to-do lists.
  • Thousands of versatile templates for things like health and fitness, work and home.
  • Free version offers individuals unlimited pages and workflows.
  • Custom automation features only available on paid plans.
  • Maximum file upload of 5 MB on free plan.
  • Limited admin and security features on free plan.

Best for customization

ClickUp

ClickUp’s free platform gives you a highly capable and customizable task management platform with an unlimited number of tasks and members. It also offers 24/7 customer service on all plans. You’ll be able to view tasks in unlimited lists, boards and calendars, but you’ll only get 60 uses of Gantt charts, timelines and workloads.

The free plan also allows custom statuses and up to 20 custom task types, as well as other useful features like multiple assignees, checklists, dependencies and a basic custom field manager. However, you’ll only be able to create five “spaces” as part of the free plan — unlimited spaces are only available on paid plans. There are also no time-tracking features and very limited other reporting capabilities.

  • Free version offers unlimited free plan members and tasks.
  • A range of views, including Kanban boards and Gantt charts.
  • 24/7 customer support on all plans.
  • Limits on how many views, custom fields and workloads you can use.
  • No time tracking features.
  • Only five ‘spaces’ on free plan.

Best for automation

Trello

While Trello’s free platform only offers its Kanban-style board view, its two main highlights are its automation services and unlimited power-ups. With its Butler automation, you’ll be able to create rules, buttons and commands, and repetitive actions are recognized with suggested automations that help increase productivity. Third-party apps you can integrate include Slack, Jira, Gmail, Microsoft Teams and Google Drive.

You’ll be limited to 10 MB file uploads and only 10 boards per workspace, though with unlimited storage and workspaces for all plans, this isn’t too restrictive. It’s not ideal if you want to see projects and tasks in calendar or timeline views, but as a basic task manager with smart automation tools, it can be a useful platform for individuals and small businesses.

  • Very straightforward and easy to use.
  • Built-in automation features, including an automation bot called Butler.
  • Unlimited power-up feature lets you integrate third-party apps.
  • File uploads are limited to 10 MB per file.
  • You only get up to 10 boards per workspace.
  • Limited view options.

Best for collaboration

Hive

Hive comes with its own native communication tools, allowing for straightforward collaboration with up to 10 workspace members on its free plan. As a task manager, it’s fairly capable, offering unlimited tasks and subtasks as well as multiple views such as Kanban, Gantt, calendars and tables. However, you’ll only get two pages and 100 workflows, and while Kanban views are unlimited, the free plan only offers 100 uses of Gantt, calendar and table views.

Your ability to customize projects and tasks will also be fairly restricted with no custom fields or labels, and your storage limit on the free plan will be 200 MB overall. Its free plan also comes without a few other features, such as AI assists, custom dashboards and analytics. We’d recommend it as a simple free task manager for small teams working together that will benefit from its native collaborative tools.

  • Native collaboration and communication tools.
  • Multiple views and layouts.
  • Unlimited tasks and sub-tasks.
  • 200 MB storage limit.
  • 10 projects and two pages on free plan.
  • No custom project fields or task labels.

Best for startups using Zoho

Zoho projects.

Zoho Projects

Zoho offers a project manager as part of its larger suite of tools and products, offering a free version for up to three users as well as a 10-day free trial on its paid plans. You’ll be able to manage two projects, create feeds, share documents and custom statuses and set up task dependencies within projects. It’s particularly useful for startups already making use of other Zoho products like CRM, Meeting and Sprints, all of which integrate into the free platform.

You can also use third-party app integrations for Microsoft Teams and Office 365, Slack, Dropbox, Zendesk and Zapier. However, there are some significant limitations to the free version, including limited customization — you can’t create custom fields or views, and there are only basic reporting capabilities.

  • Integrates with Zoho CRM, Meeting and Sprints.
  • Straightforward and easy to use.
  • Offers useful core features, including document sharing, subtasks and custom statuses.
  • Only three users and two projects on free plan.
  • No Gantt charts, custom views, time tracking or custom fields.

Best for client task management

Teamwork

Teamwork will be particularly useful for agencies needing to manage client tasks, as it comes with built-in billable time-tracking features and estimated time management. It also offers client-level insights and client-company management, though you’ll only get client users with premium paid plans. With Teamwork, you’ll also get a range of automation features, including automatic Slack updates, HubSpot deals and Microsoft Teams messages.

It does have drawbacks in the shape of limited reporting capabilities — while all plans come with a dashboard, only premium paid plans offer reports on status, portfolio health, time, utilization and profitability. You also won’t have any phone, live chat or email support options on its free plan.

  • Billable time-tracking and invoicing features useful for agencies.
  • Client views and management features.
  • Wide range of automation features.
  • No phone, live chat or email support.
  • Limited reporting and customization options.
  • No client users on free plan.

Best for individuals and freelancers

Monday

Monday is a popular task management platform with businesses worldwide, but we’d recommend its free plan specifically for individuals and freelancers managing their businesses. It offers a straightforward Kanban interface only, with over 200 templates available, so you’ll be able to create up to three boards with two users and unlimited documents.

However, Monday’s free plan is missing a number of wider features like timeline, Gantt and calendar views, as well as offering no integrations or automations. It’s a relatively simplistic platform compared to others, so we’d recommend it more for individuals than teams that will need more advanced collaboration and reporting capabilities.

  • Over 200 templates available.
  • Apps for iOS and Android.
  • Intuitive and easy to use interface.
  • No integrations on free version.
  • Only offers Kanban view.

Best for complex tasks

Asana

We’d recommend Asana’s powerful platform as an ideal choice for small businesses managing complex tasks or projects with plenty of moving parts. With unlimited tasks, projects, file storage, assignees and messages alongside multiple views such as boards, calendars and lists all included on its free plan, it’s a capable piece of software. You’ll also have access to over 100 free third-party integrations such as Microsoft Teams, Adobe Creative Cloud, Okta and Tableau.

However, you won’t be able to use timelines, Gantt views, goals or portfolios with the free plan, nor time-tracking, workflows or various automation features. The free plan is also fairly limited when it comes to reporting, with only status updates and CSV and PDF exports available.

  • Unlimited project management essential features.
  • Multiple views available.
  • Over 100 free integrations.
  • Limited reporting features.
  • No 24/7 support.

Best for app building

Podio

Podio offers a unique solution for businesses that will benefit from building their own customized project management apps to suit their specific needs. As well as the ability to design a bespoke task manager for your team, you’ll have access to hundreds of user-created apps online. It allows you to keep all important aspects of your business and projects in one central place, depending on the requirements of you and your team.

However, its free version is limited in the other features it offers — including the number of items and client users you can support. It also doesn’t offer automated workflows or visual reports, so keep this in mind if you’re considering Podio.

  • You can build your own customizable apps for project management.
  • You’ll also have access to hundreds of pre-made apps.
  • Live chat support available.
  • Limited features on the free plan.
  • Takes a while to set up and customize to your exact specifications.

Best for scaling up

GoodDay

With a robust set of features and capabilities as well as relatively affordable price plans for upgrading, we’d recommend GoodDay for businesses looking to scale up their operations. Its free version is already quite powerful, offering unlimited projects and tasks for up to 15 users, with views including lists, boards, tables, calendars, event summaries and portfolios. You can customize views, priorities, workflows and statuses, as well as set up dependencies, reminders and to-do lists.

Other customization options are only available on paid plans, such as task, project and user fields, as well as task types and IDs. Additionally, many security features and all CRM features are only available when you upgrade, but with the next price plan up only costing $6 per month, it’s an affordable choice for scaling up.

  • Unlimited projects and tasks.
  • Unlimited views, with most available on free plan.
  • Powerful features for big businesses with affordable plans for scaling up.
  • Many customization options unavailable on free plan.
  • No finance, time tracking, chats or automation.

Best task management software comparison

Methodology

We extensively research the key competitors within an industry to determine the best products and services for your business. Our experts identify the factors that matter most to business owners, including pricing, features and customer support, to ensure that our recommendations offer well-rounded products that will meet the needs of various small businesses.

We collect extensive data to narrow our best list to reputable, easy-to-use products with stand-out features at a reasonable price point. And we look at user reviews to ensure that business owners like you are satisfied with our top picks’ services. We use the same rubric to assess companies within a particular space so you can confidently follow our blueprint to the best free task management software.

The best task management software has positive user reviews on customer review sites and app stores. Task management software companies should provide customers with fast and reliable support. Using a combination of phone support, live chat and knowledge bases, customers should be able to quickly resolve issues 24/7.

Task management software should have role assignment features, timelines and dependencies. It should also allow businesses to use customizable templates, track expenses and track milestones.

And the best task management software should offer client access, billing and invoice capabilities and budgeting features.

What is task management software and how does it work?

Task management software is a digital tool you can use as an individual or a business to manage, organize and prioritize tasks. While levels of features and capabilities will vary between platforms, many also offer the ability to communicate between team members, share files and updates and track progress toward objectives. 

You’ll be able to use task management software to create and assign tasks, set deadlines, allocate resources and allow for collaboration between colleagues. These tools can help you and your business increase productivity and efficiency. However, it’s important to be aware of how complex your needs are. 

Some task management programs can be complex and could end up reducing your productivity and organization, which is why it’s so important to find the right platform for your needs.

Benefits of free task management software

Using task management software can offer a number of benefits for individuals and businesses, including:

  • Free forever: A good free task management software will offer unlimited projects or workflows without any extra costs — not just a free trial before you have to pay.
  • Productivity: Task management platforms can increase your team’s productivity through automation, progress tracking and reporting, saving time on repetitive tasks.
  • Centralized workflow: You can use task management software to keep all workflows centralized, allowing easy access for all team members and collaborators to stay updated and informed.
  • Collaboration: You’ll be able to clearly assign roles and allocate resources on projects and tasks to different team members, and many platforms also allow team members to work together and communicate. 
  • Manage big projects: Complex and lengthy projects can be broken down into separate tasks and workflows with multiple teams and team members. 
  • Remote workers: If you rely on remote workers or freelancers, many task management platforms allow all team members to collaborate online from any location.

Who needs task management software?

Task management software can prove useful for a variety of individuals and businesses. You might be a freelancer with a number of client tasks to manage or a hobbyist running a side hustle — in which case, a free task manager will be ideal. 

Likewise, small teams and businesses can also benefit from using task management software to organize and track workflow progress for team projects. A free plan or trial period offers a great way to try out different platforms and products so you can find one that suits your needs best before committing to a paid plan with more features and capabilities required by your business.

How to choose the best task management software

Choosing the best free task management software for your business means considering a range of factors and how each of these will best suit your needs. You will need to think about the core features offered by each platform, as well as whether it plugs into any existing software you have and how easy and intuitive it is to use. 

Additionally, you should look into the customer support options each platform offers, as this will be crucial in case things go wrong and your work is at risk.

Key features to look for

Levels of complexity and customization will vary between platforms, but in general, you should look out for the following features as part of your task management software:

  • Sub-tasks: Key to keeping big projects organized, task managers should allow you to split tasks and assign different deadlines and workers to each sub-task.
  • Views and visualizations: You should also be able to see your tasks and projects in different views, like Kanban dashboards or Gantt charts. You may find these to be limited in free versions of some platforms, so check price plans to ensure you’re getting what you need.
  • Integration: If you have any existing software or hardware in use for your business, such as finance and accounting apps, design tools or communication platforms, it’s worth seeing if these will plug into the task management software you want. It helps keep everything synchronized and centralized.
  • Tracking and reporting: Your task manager should also allow you to track task and project progress against deadlines and objectives, as well as generate reports. 
  • Automation: Some platforms will even offer automation services that let you set up automatic tracking and reporting.
  • Collaboration: Lastly, if you’re managing a team’s workload, it’s vital they can work together, so look for task management software that allows for communication and role delegation.

Ease of use

Some task management tools will be relatively simple and easy to use, with intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces that allow for straightforward organization. However, others offer more complex capabilities, including multiple views like Gantt charts, calendars, lists and galleries, automated reporting and collaboration between multiple team members. 

Consider what you’ll need the software for, how many people and tasks you’ll be managing and what kind of insights you’ll want when making your choice.

Security 

You should also factor in any security requirements you might have, especially if you’re a big organization or you use third-party apps, providers or even freelancers. Being able to control access on multiple levels may be particularly important. Additionally, consider things like two-factor authentication, secure sharing and data protection when choosing platforms.

Customer service

If something goes wrong with your task manager, it can affect your business’s ability to complete projects and assure stakeholders of progress. Customer service is a key part of being able to resolve issues, so look for providers that offer both round-the-clock availability and instant contact by phone or live chat as a priority.

How much does task management software cost?

When looking for free task management software, consider whether it’s truly free forever — meaning you’ll have access to all the features on the free plan forever without having to pay. 

While this might mean many advanced features are hidden behind paywalls, you’ll at least be able to rely on the software for your basic needs without restriction. This is in contrast to free trials that often give you access to the entire platform for a limited time, after which you won’t be able to use it without paying.

If you’re looking to try a free plan in order to get a feel for a specific task management software before committing to a paid plan, you’ll likely be more on the lookout for usability as well as scalability. Consider which paid plans offer the most bang for your buck to narrow down your options, but focus on which free software feels the most natural to use for your business. 

You may find that some software platforms offer prices on a per-user basis while others offer a set number of users for each plan. Others may even have a minimum-user requirement, so if they charge a set price per user and require at least three users, you’ll need to pay three times the price you see given as a minimum.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

The best free task management software will depend entirely on your needs and requirements as an individual or business. ClickUp and Notion both offer great customization features, with Notion especially good for content creators.

Paid task management software plans offer a range of extra benefits, including more users or projects, additional features and advanced integrations and security. These will often be more useful for bigger teams and companies managing complex projects with multiple moving parts and stakeholders that need to be kept informed. 

When prioritizing tasks in project management, you should consider the resources available, any dependencies on the task being completed and the urgency of the request. 

Task management software lets you manage multiple tasks at work by allowing you to create, organize and assign tasks, set deadlines, track progress and, if required, add sub-tasks. All tasks are kept in one place and accessible for anyone who needs to see them, often in digestible formats like calendars, boards and timelines.

Improving task management skills will require you to be disciplined and attentive to detail in order to get the best from task management software and boost your productivity. You should: 

  • Focus on prioritizing tasks on your to-do list.
  • Create a manageable schedule for delivery with realistic deadlines. 
  • Ensure you’re communicating with stakeholders to keep everyone on the same page.

The best software will make this easy and help you manage your workload efficiently and effectively — but it’s made even easier when you know you’ve picked the right task management software for your requirements.

Blueprint is an independent publisher and comparison service, not an investment advisor. The information provided is for educational purposes only and we encourage you to seek personalized advice from qualified professionals regarding specific financial decisions. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

Blueprint has an advertiser disclosure policy . The opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the Blueprint editorial staff alone. Blueprint adheres to strict editorial integrity standards. The information is accurate as of the publish date, but always check the provider’s website for the most current information.

Mehdi Punjwani

Mehdi is a writer and editor with many years of personal finance expertise under his belt. He's a spirited money-saver, with a passion for making personal finance accessible and manageable. When he isn't writing, Mehdi likes to read about history and travel, hike along coastlines and in forests, and watch his beloved team Manchester United underperform.

Sierra Campbell is a small business editor for USA Today Blueprint. She specializes in writing, editing and fact-checking content centered around helping businesses. She has worked as a digital content and show producer for several local TV stations, an editor for U.S. News & World Report and a freelance writer and editor for many companies. Sierra prides herself in delivering accurate and up-to-date information to readers. Her expertise includes credit card processing companies, e-commerce platforms, payroll software, accounting software and virtual private networks (VPNs). She also owns Editing by Sierra, where she offers editing services to writers of all backgrounds, including self-published and traditionally published authors.

How to start a small business: A step-by-step guide

How to start a small business: A step-by-step guide

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Create & manage tasks in Google Calendar

In Google Calendar, you can create, view, and change tasks.

Important: Only you can view your tasks in Google Calendar.

Create a task

Create a task in calendar.

  • On your computer, open Google Calendar .
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  • Click Task .
  • Enter your task details.
  • Click Save .

Tip: You can find a list of all “Pending tasks” from the last 365 days in the current day.

Create a task from Tasks in Calendar

  • Open Tasks in Calendar .

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  • Click Create .
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  • Make sure the “Tasks” box is checked.

Important: You can find a list of all “Pending tasks” from the last 365 days in the current day.

and then

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  • You can hide completed tasks that show in your calendar. Learn how to hide completed tasks .

To hide completed tasks crossed out in your calendar, you can adjust your settings.

  • On the right of “Settings,” click the dropdown .
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In your settings

  • On your computer, go to Google Calendar .
  • At the top right, click Settings .
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There are now 13 months in a year .

Motion increases productivity by 137%

With automation and AI that intelligently plan your day, schedule meetings,

And build the perfect to-do list.

task and calendar management

Endless to-do lists. Never check everything off.

Manual prioritization. Worry priorities are wrong.

Constant replanning. Interruptions wreck your plans.

Overambitious deadlines. Work weekends to meet them.

Forgotten tasks. Things slips through the cracks.

Too many meetings. It’s hard to get anything done.

Context switching. No time to focus.

Too many tools. Calendars, to-do lists, and spreadsheets.

Stress and overwhelm. Life feels out of control.

No personal life. What is a weekend, anyway?

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Complete everything. Motion builds a schedule for you.

Stop prioritizing. Motion automatically prioritizes work.

No replanning. Motion reschedules undone work.

Finish early. Motion ensures you meet deadlines.

Forget nothing. Motion tracks all your priorities.

Meet less. Motion limits meetings.

Focus. Motion guards time for uninterrupted work.

One tool. Everything in 1 place.

Relax. Motion’s got your back.

Enjoy life. Motion protects your weekends.

Over 1 million customers manage their busy schedules with Motion.

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Like a calendar. Unlike any calendar you’ve ever seen.

See your daily schedule in a click..

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Know exactly what to do next.

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Keep track of deadlines.

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Don’t let interruptions ruin your day.

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The to-do list is dead.

View and create tasks in 10 seconds..

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Stop creating to-do lists.

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Schedule recurring tasks.

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Add tasks from your phone.

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Project planning? Expected. A tool that creates individual plans for your team to get it all done? Unheard of.

Stay on top of large, complex projects..

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Automate task and project scheduling.

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See where your time goes.

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Run your meetings. Don't let them run you.

Easily share your availability..

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Control when meetings happen.

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Create meeting templates.

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Get more focus time.

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Motion’s AI uses 3 proven productivity strategies. The result? A 13-month year .

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Without a plan, efficiency and productivity plunge. So why don’t more people plan? It takes a lot of work. And plans constantly change. Motion fixes this problem by algorithmically planning the perfect schedule — in seconds.

A Deep work block scheduled in a calendar.

Deep work is focused, uninterrupted work. Studies show you can get tasks done 3x faster when you’re not interrupted. Motion protects chunks of time on your calendar. So you can work deeply.

A calendar with time blocked events and tasks.

Motion blocks time for tasks on your calendar. Just like a meeting. And it dramatically increases how much work you complete. Why? Because it gives you a minute by minute plan of what to do throughout the day. No more wondering, “What next?”

Dream team.

Organize complex team projects..

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Share your progress.

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Prioritize the most important work — automatically.

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See everyone’s schedules in seconds.

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The only algorithm of its kind . Focused entirely on your happiness.

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The algorithm prioritizes work that’s most important to you.

Complete the challenging, meaningful work you’ve been putting off with an algorithm that doesn’t let you avoid the tough stuff.

Feel confident Motion’s tracking everything for you. The algorithm ensures nothing slips through the cracks.

Everything you do. Everywhere you go. All in one place .

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5 minutes. That’s all it takes .

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  • Motion automatically syncs all of your calendars, meetings, and events.
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  • Easily do anything in Motion with the click of a keyboard shortcut.

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The 7 best AI scheduling assistants

Find an ai scheduler to do the heavy lifting for you..

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Productivity starts with your calendar—but sometimes it ends there too. No one wants to reprioritize an entire week after an emergency, or play calendar Tetris to land a meeting with that busy lead sometime in the next two days. This is where an AI scheduling assistant can help: instead of working on your schedule, you can let AI calendar apps do it for you.

I've been playing around with all sorts of AI tools recently. For this article, I considered a couple dozen AI calendars and did in-depth research and testing to find the best AI scheduling assistants that can sort out the tricky bits for you.

Ready? Block a few minutes on your calendar, and let's dive in.

The best AI scheduling assistants

Clockwise for syncing team calendars

Motion for AI-assisted project management

Clara for having a human-like AI virtual assistant

Trevor for a simple, free AI solution for task management

Kronologic for following up with more leads

Scheduler AI for managing meetings for busy teams

Smart calendars vs. AI calendars

The best AI scheduling assistants help place your tasks on your calendar, reschedule conflicts, schedule 1:1s with ease, and group most of it into time blocks , so you do less context-switching. But should you move to a new app if you're already using a smart calendar or smart meeting scheduler? Here's a brief comparison to help you distinguish one from the other.

Smart calendars use deterministic algorithms—fixed rules built by developers—to make suggestions and optimize your calendar. It will always bring up the same results if you input similar data. For example: a developer may add a rule that says whenever a user adds a task called "jogging," schedule that task at that same time on every following day.

Calendar AI is more powerful : it can recognize patterns, make decisions, and learn from experience. When it starts processing the data on your calendar, it'll be able to adapt and make more relevant changes over time. For example, it may figure out how long you take to tackle a specific task and adjust the estimated time to complete it in the future. It can discover at which time in the day you're more productive and slot higher priority tasks there. It's dynamic, and it provides a more personalized result to each user.

AI for scheduling: What to look for

How we evaluate and test apps.

Our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. Unless explicitly stated, we spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as it's intended to be used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer authentic evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the full rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog .

Ready to go from smart to AI-powered? Here's what I looked for in every AI scheduling assistant I tested:

Great user interface. You'll be looking at your schedule assistant app throughout the day—it's your calendar, after all—so it needs to be functional, intuitive, and easy to use.

Easy to set up and offers a good set of integrations. It should take you less than five minutes to go through onboarding, which includes connecting your calendar of choice. I also prioritized apps that have integrations with other popular apps, so you can save time generating those Zoom meeting links, for example.

More than a smart calendar. As I tested each scheduling assistant app, I was looking for true AI features. Where it was unclear if there was actual AI at work, I reached out to the support team to ask what kind of technology was running behind the scenes and learn more about the AI scheduling algorithms.

Insights and tips. Each AI scheduler app listed here has tooltips, articles, and videos outlining how they work, so you can understand what's going on when your calendar is suddenly reorganized.

Extras. I was looking for any innovative AI appointment scheduling features that could be game changers for the way you schedule and work through your day.

To test, I first made sure it was actually AI at work. After that, I signed up for each AI scheduling app and added my schedule, making some changes to see how the platform adapted as I did. I set up meetings with myself (via a bunch of separate calendar accounts) and rearranged events over the course of a week. I explored the settings, tried out all the available features, and watched the robots create my schedule for me. Based on all that experience researching and testing these tools, here are the best AI calendar apps.

The best AI scheduling assistants at a glance

Best ai scheduler for protecting your habits, reclaim (web).

Reclaim, our pick for the best AI scheduler for protecting your habits

Reclaim pros:

Manages recurring events well

Quickly reschedules and adjusts your calendar when conflict is detected

Reclaim cons:

Native task management is clunky

Strengthening habits is all about consistency, and Reclaim.ai is a great AI calendar assistant to help you build that consistency. It looks good, works even better, and it has the right balance between power and complexity.

During onboarding, you set up your work hours, weave in your habits, and choose the way the AI engine should prioritize your to-dos. It does a great job explaining what's going on behind the scenes, so you'll never wake up to a completely different calendar and wonder what happened (that confusion was pretty common with a lot of other apps I tested).

All the action is on the Planner screen. It has a calendar view in the center with three lists on the right side: priority habits, open tasks, and low-priority habits. You can keep track of what's left to do with just a glance, great to keep your focus as you work.

I also loved the customization options available for each habit: in addition to the start and end times, you can pick an ideal time and set how defensive the AI engine should be when rescheduling. If you set it to Always free, it'll let Fred from accounting grab those 30 minutes easily; if you set it to Busy , it won't let even the president in.

You can enter all the tasks you have to tackle manually, and Reclaim will start dropping them on your schedule on its own. Better yet, you can integrate a wide range of task management apps and turn on sync, automating the whole process. As it populates your near future, it'll keep an eye out for deadlines, defending the time needed to complete critical tasks from an out-of-the-blue 1:1. Speaking of 1:1s, Reclaim empowers your weekly catch-ups by rescheduling any recurring meetings if someone has to cancel, finding the best time slot for both and sending the appropriate notifications.

If you're having a hard time sticking to your morning meditation or that brisk afternoon walk, Reclaim will get you back on track easily, without scheduling headaches.

Reclaim.ai price : Free plan available for 2 calendars, 3 habits, and limited integrations and features; paid plans start at $8/user/month for unlimited calendars, unlimited habits, more integrations, and more advanced features.

Best scheduling AI tool for syncing team calendars

Clockwise (web, chrome and firefox extensions).

Clockwise, our pick for the best scheduling AI tool for syncing team calendars

Clockwise pros:

Thorough onboarding experience

Plenty of in-app context and explanation

Clockwise cons:

Can only be used with a Google Workspace account

Clockwise 's #1 objective is to create time for you by putting together more focused blocks, reducing conflicts when scheduling meetings with others, and providing stats to help you see how you're doing.

Clockwise has lots of knobs and levers—it's definitely the most customizable engine on this list. The onboarding experience lets you fine-tune the balance between meetings and focused work. When I finished setting up my account, Clockwise blocked three hours of continuous focus work every day and two hours of fragmented work time. My 45-minute lunch break hovers somewhere between noon and 3 p.m., depending on meetings and deadlines. Where will it land? Who knows. And there's one special treat you get your first week with the app: Clockwise organizes your time better, freeing up a 30-minute break you can use to have a cup of coffee.

If you want to revisit these settings at any time, click Your ideal day on the dashboard, and set everything from when you should have lunch to how much travel time to reserve for a meeting away from the office.

While Clockwise feels strong for a solo player, it's meant for teams. When you connect it to Slack, it updates your status based on what's on your calendar and prevents non-urgent messages from pinging you. And the Asana integration lets you assign tasks to your calendar, so you can go there to fill up your plate and come back to Clockwise to bite it bit by bit.

Unsure if it's actually doing anything for your productivity? Visit the Analytics dashboard, with a count of all schedule assists, meeting conflicts resolved, and a breakdown of focus hours created. If you want to implement a no-meeting day , there's a specific setting you can tick on to try that out.

One big drawback: you can't join with a regular Google email address—you need a Google Workspace account. Microsoft 365 users will have to sit tight too: the integration is "coming soon," but you can hop on the waitlist and see if you're lucky.

Clockwise price: Free plan available for basic features; paid plans start at $6.75/user/month for advanced features, team productivity tools, and more security and support.

Best AI schedule assistant for project management

Motion (web, ios, android).

Motion, our pick for the best AI schedule assistant for project management

Motion pros:

High visibility for tasks

Great task priority controls

Motion cons:

A bit too complex

Motion is an AI calendar that crashed into a solid project management app. The result? A great scheduling engine coupled with advanced task tracking, making sure you never miss a deadline.

The user experience suits productivity lovers, keeping all the critical information accessible. On the left, you have a list of all your upcoming tasks, scrollable deep into the future. The bulk of the screen contains the calendar with day and week views. Need to schedule something quick? Click and drag anywhere on the calendar to slot that emergency. If it lands on top of any event, Motion will shuffle your to-dos to make everything fit neatly, but be patient: once you're done with the major changes, you'll have to wait a minute to let the engine sort everything out.

Clicking on the Projects & Tasks tab lets you create your workspace. With that done, be sure to invite your team over, add your projects, and start assigning tasks. You can see everything in a list or in a Kanban view. Anything you add here ends up on your calendar automatically, as expected. If you're not a manager, this dashboard will look simpler: click on My Tasks , and lose yourself in deep work.

What surprised me here was the settings you can pick for each task. You can assign four types of priorities, from ASAP to Low , which will determine how early the task will appear on your calendar. You can also set if the task has a soft or hard deadline, letting the engine be more strict or lenient as the date approaches. If you ever lose your rhythm, the dashboard will display a warning showing the number of tasks at risk of missing their due dates, prompting you to change the task details or to pick up the pace—whatever makes the most sense.

The project management features extend a bit further into task notes, sub-tasks, task labels, and an activity feed where you can leave comments for your team to pick up. Another thing I liked was the possibility of adding project and task templates—which, considering how many controls there are for both, really helps speed things up.

While Motion campaigns for fewer meetings on the app's marketing pages, it still lets you create meeting templates and assign a priority for each type of meeting, with the more urgent ones having more power to displace everything. This makes it a pretty complete scheduling assistant.

You can do even more with Motion by connecting it to Zapier . Automatically create new Motion tasks from Slack messages, emails, and any other tool you use at work. Here are a few examples to get you started.

Create Motion tasks from new saved Slack messages

Slack logo

Create Motion tasks from new emails

Email by Zapier logo

Create Motion tasks from new Salesforce records

Salesforce logo

Motion price: Individual plan for $34/month; Team plan for $20/user/month (with steep discounts for paying annually).

Best AI scheduling tool for having a human-like virtual scheduling assistant

Clara (web, your inbox).

Clara, our pick for the best AI scheduling tool for having a human-like virtual scheduling assistant

Clara pros:

Very flexible

Really seems like a human assistant

Clara cons:

Clara is unlike any other tool on this list. After you finish setting it up with your email account and calendar, you land on the dashboard and… it seems there's nothing else to do. That's because the real magic happens elsewhere: when you want to meet someone, head to your inbox, compose a new email, and add Clara's email as a CC. Say something like:

"Hey Clara, I want to find time for me and John this week."

Somewhere between five and 20 minutes later, Clara will take a look at your schedule and respond with something like this:

"Hi Miguel,

Happy to help find a time for you and John to talk.

Does speaking at one or more of the following work for you:

Thursday (Jan 26) at 11am GMT

Thursday (Jan 26) at 2pm GMT

Friday (Jan 27) starting between 9am and 10:30am GMT

Friday (Jan 27) starting between 1pm and 2:30pm GMT

If these don't work, feel free to suggest other times.

Clara"

You may think it breaks with a few curveballs, but no, Clara's on top of it. Endless rescheduling? Cancellations? No one replied? Clara's got it. Just keep it CC'd and the event will land on your calendar eventually.

It's not just AI at work here. Most of the heavy lifting is artificial, but there's also human intelligence at play with what Clara Labs calls human-in-the-middle: at some point, one of your emails will end up in the eyes of one of Clara Labs' experts in case Clara is having a hard time divining the meaning of the content. Shortly after, seamlessly, the appropriate email will fire, and your elusive industry contact will definitely come out for that promised cup of coffee.

The paid plan lets you name Clara whatever you wish, with an email address ending with your domain name. Your invitees won't know if they're talking to a flesh-and-bone or silicon-and-chrome assistant. Way to run an impromptu Turing test, right?

Clara price: Plans start at $99/month

Best AI calendar for a simple, free solution for task management

Trevor (web).

Trevor, our pick for the best AI calendar for a simple, free solution for task management

Trevor pros:

Very intuitive

Simple controls to help you schedule and manage tasks

Trevor cons:

Requires a bit too much interaction

Trevor is simple. It won't reshuffle your entire day for emergencies, and it doesn't have advanced controls, but it does have a streamlined user experience that makes a lot of sense and a set of AI features that help you put your tasks in the best calendar slots.

Start by connecting your calendar. Trevor picks up the events you already have scheduled, but it won't mess with those. Instead, it creates a separate calendar where it adds your tasks separately. You can tick it on or off when accessing it from within Google Calendar. This means that it won't reorganize all your events, so you can keep a degree of control over your scheduling but still leverage the benefits of AI.

Next, it's time to add your tasks to the list on the left. They get categorized with the hashtag #inbox, but you can create other categories by clicking on the three-dot menu. When you have all your tasks ready, click and drag each task to the calendar. Trevor will suggest the best times to schedule each activity by outlining the place in time where you should drop that task. It learns as you use it to build your schedule, getting a little better every time.

There's a bit of a zen experience here. It has to do with the soft colors and the way you add all your tasks first, drag them to your schedule, turn on the day view, and forget about everything else that's not there. I used it for an entire day and time got a little lighter, helping me reach the end of my day with a feeling that I spent less energy.

This is my subjective opinion, of course, so try it out and see if it fits your workflow. The free plan is quite generous, and if you want Trevor to learn faster and be more accurate, there's an inexpensive paid plan for that. If you value simplicity and losing yourself in your tasks, Trevor will put you on the path to deep work, minus the monumental effort.

Trevor price: Free plan available ; paid plan is $3.99/month.

Best AI scheduling assistant for following up with leads

Kronologic (web).

Kronologic, our pick for the best AI scheduling assistant for following up with leads

Kronologic pros:

Automated meeting scheduling

Can replace Calendly

Kronologic cons:

Parts of the UI could be better

Kronologic is on a different plane when compared with the rest of the tools on this list. It's built to help sales teams schedule more calls with interested leads, increasing conversion rates across your sales pipeline. To fully explain what it does, I'll walk you through a few situations.

I've been testing software for a while. Most of it involves self-service registration, leading to a free trial or a free plan. But every now and then, there are a few apps that require filling out a form and waiting for a phone call to schedule a demo. And that's the beginning of the touchpoint roulette: Will they call me in five minutes? Two days from now? Will it take one phone call? Three? It's impossible to know.

After having a sales team from a CRM app call me at 2 a.m. in the cold British morning, I wish these apps would use Kronologic. Instead of filling the form and putting that lead on a queue, so a sales rep can pick it up whenever they can, the app automatically schedules a date and time when both parties are likely to be available. If the lead objects via email, Kronologic's natural language processing features will detect if there's a rescheduling intent and, if so, will update the invite to match. Sales team involvement during this process? If you want, zero.

This is the beginning of what Kronologic's AI engine can do. Let's imagine you've put together a list of 200 interested leads. It'd be great to schedule a call with them as soon as possible, right? But do you want to get your sales team in a frenzy trying to get hold of everyone?

Within the app, you can create the meeting type with the email template, and set the AI behavior to High-density scheduling. Emails will start going out to these leads, inviting them to a meeting at a specific time and date within a time period. Most of these meetings will overlap, but since the app keeps track of conversion rates over time, it knows your specific percentage. So even though you sent out 200 invites for 200 meetings in three days, not all of them are actually interested, so you can identify and get to talk to all the leads that are.

While Kronologic is a great fit for sales teams and larger companies, it now offers pricing tiers and features for both individuals and small businesses, along with a Calendly-style scheduling flow if your leads prefer to block a slot in your calendar.

Kronologic price : Subscriptions start at $6 per month.

Best AI scheduling assistant for managing meetings for busy teams

Scheduler ai (web).

Scheduler AI, our pick for the best AI scheduling assistant for managing meetings for busy teams

Scheduler AI pros:

Great for all kinds of meetings

Includes meeting troubleshooting for group meeting scheduling

Scheduler AI cons:

Not a lot of controls available on the dashboard yet

Scheduler AI is another app where the action happens in your emails and messages, not so much on the dashboard. With it, you'll be able to schedule 1-on-1s or group meetings, and quickly book demos and discovery calls sourced from your website or landing page. It works great both at an individual level and also to deal out meetings to a sales team, helping busy organizations focus on running meetings, not scheduling them.

Scheduler will take a look at your calendar and fire a reply to you and your contact suggesting the best time, pre-reserving that slot until the meeting is confirmed, so you don't get double-booked. If the other half of the 1-on-1 has to reschedule, Scheduler can handle the email interaction until it finds a new slot.

If your sales process involves group meetings to get the buy-in of all the decision makers, finding the time to make it happen can be terrible. Like when handling 1-on-1s, Scheduler will take care of suggesting times based on the data it finds on your calendar. Better yet, when your leads connect their own calendar, Scheduler can read both and find the best option. If it doesn't, it'll notify you of the conflict, so you can start troubleshooting the meeting manually.

One cool feature here is how you can create meeting types and attach them to keywords. For example, if you frequently have coffee and chat with people, you can set up that meeting type in the dashboard, set the typical duration and whether you need to have some buffer time before and after. Then, all you have to do is mention coffee during the scheduling process: "Scheduler, find us a time to have coffee next week." You can add as many as you'd like and set up whichever keywords make sense for the event type.

This flexibility to interpret intent and convert it into scheduling actions sets Scheduler AI apart from the competition. You can use it with your Gmail account, on Slack, integrate it into your website or web forms, and even use it in text messages.

Scheduler AI price: Basic plan starts at $25/user/month.

How to find the best AI meeting scheduler

AI calendar management is the future —and I'm not sad about it. As I was researching each AI scheduling app, I started paying attention to how much time I spend on scheduling every day: it added up to about 45 minutes. That's 10% of my day (and maybe yours) spent on scheduling. 

If you're in the same boat—or in rougher waters—pick up the AI calendar app that speaks to your pain the most. Try it out for a few weeks and see if it helps you spend your time more productively. I'd be surprised if you didn't notice the difference after even a few days.

Related reading:

The best AI productivity tools

3 ways to streamline your appointment scheduling

How to automatically manage your meetings with Zapier

How to use Scheduling Assistant in Outlook

The best AI email assistants

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Miguel Rebelo

Miguel Rebelo is a freelance writer based in London, UK. He loves technology, video games, and huge forests. Track him down at mirebelo.com.

  • Scheduling & booking
  • Artificial intelligence (AI)

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Small Business

5 Best Task Management Software of February 2024

Christina Levandowski

Christina Levandowski

Contributor

Christina is a freelance editor and contributor with Newsweek’s small business team. With a passion for small business optimization and strategy, Christina has successfully launched her own business and now works to help others do the same. She has studied extensively at Arizona State University on the pre-medical track, and is now an entrepreneur, author, strategist and editor. She is based out of Los Angeles, CA.

Shannon Ullman

Shannon Ullman

Shannon is a freelance editor for Newsweek Vault. She has previously worked as an editor in the B2B space, primarily focusing on cryptocurrency and finance tools for small businesses. She does freelance review writing in the health space as a hobby. Some of her bylines can be found on sites like Business Insider and Shape.

Updated February 14, 2024 at 12:25 pm

Editorial Note: Opinions expressed here are author’s alone, not those of any bank, credit card issuer, hotel, airline or other entity. This content has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of the entities included within the post.

Recent data shows that organizations that use project management tools (like task trackers) have a 92% overall success rate. The question? What are the best task management software options for the job?

If you’ve been on the hunt, you’re in the right place. We’ve rounded up the best task managers and software options for small- and mid-sized businesses (SMBs)—and our experts are summarizing the perks and considerations of each. Here’s what you need to know.

Our research is designed to provide you with a comprehensive understanding of personal finance services and products that best suit your needs. To help you in the decision-making process, our expert contributors compare common preferences and potential pain points, such as affordability, accessibility, and credibility.

  • Best Free Task Management Tool: Monday.com
  • Best for Comprehensive Task Management: Todoist
  • Best for Centralization: Basecamp
  • Best for Small Business Task Management: ClickUp
  • Best for Rapidly-Growing Teams: Asana

Best Task Management Tools of 2024

Finding the best task management software just got a lot easier. Read on to learn more about the best task management software of 2024.

Best Free Task Management Tool

task and calendar management

$0-$20+ per seat, per month

Integration Options

Free membership tier

Mobile App Management

Customer Support

Monday.com is the best free task management tool, offering a comprehensive tool suite at no cost to you. Teams can track tasks and work using Monday.com’s main boards and in-platform communication options. There are also multiple view options available, as well as Workdocs for you to brainstorm and plan future tasks with. Free users can also leverage apps offered in the Monday.com marketplace.

  • Mobile app management allows for productivity on the go: Monday.com offers both Android and iOS apps for mobile task management, offering a higher-quality interface compared to other similar task trackers.
  • 24/7 customer support options keep users as productive as possible: Unlike other task management tools, Monday.com offers 24/7 customer support—stepping in whenever you need an extra hand.
  • Tailored task management options for all areas of mastery: Whether you run a creative design firm or you’re working on your latest marketing rollout, Monday.com offers tailored templates and options to keep you in your highest working capacity.
  • Custom workflows shave hours off of your work week: At the time of this publication, Monday.com Workflows is available on a trial basis. They’re designed off of action-based automation and triggers, moving each task smoothly between phases of completion.
  • 14-day free trial options available for Monday.com’s Pro tier
  • 30-day money-back guarantee offers additional peace of mind for more tentative users
  • Simple-to-navigate interface offers little-to-no learning curve
  • Only two members per account on Monday.com’s Free membership tier
  • Dashboards allow for 1 board connection on the site’s Free membership tier
  • Limited automation and integration options on the site’s Free membership tier.

Best for Comprehensive Task Management

task and calendar management

$0-$8 per seat, per month

Todoist started over 17 years ago as a passion project and has since helped users complete 2 billion+ tasks to date using its comprehensive tool suite. Users can begin by picking a membership tier and choosing a number of Todoist templates to organize their headspace. After everything’s centralized, users can add collaborators, prioritize tasks, leverage automation and set up reminders to keep everything running smoothly.

  • Extensive template libraries give you everything you need to succeed: Todoist’s task management template library has a range of options, including to-do master lists, annual reviews, meeting prep templates, and options for marketers, developers and business owners.
  • Seamlessly integrate your necessary productivity tools: Users in the Free tier and beyond can integrate with their calendar and email of choice, centralizing your personal or professional task management operations.
  • Inexpensive membership tiers offer few cost barriers: Accessibility is one of the platform’s claims to fame, as it remains committed to comprehensive task management at affordable prices. Members paying month to month can expect to pay $8 per seat.
  • AI assistance is available from the Pro tier onward: Todoist is one of few task management software options to offer an AI assistant—working actively to keep your goals attainable and effective for your current season of business or life. They can be used to help you complete the task and to break the task down at the time of this publication.
  • Template suggestion tool allows for active collaboration from Todoist’s client base
  • Native productivity methods quiz helps users break through preset barriers
  • Maximize your value with unlimited team members, guests and project folders in the Business tier
  • Limited customer support options, restricting users to a ticket-based system
  • Users report intermittent sync issues with no known root cause
  • Users report limited documentation compared to other similar task trackers

Best for Centralization

task and calendar management

$15 per user, per month for regular Basecamp, or $349 per month via Basecamp Pro Unlimited

Basecamp’s core focus is centralization—specifically of your business communication, apps, operation and more. The platform is easy to use, visually appealing and well-organized, appealing to all task management styles. Enjoy built-in scheduling tools, link sharing and doc storage, workflows and integrations to get your most important tasks off the ground quickly.

  • Unique single page-per-project structure helps work get done quickly: The entire goal of Basecamp is to address those who are sick of sifting through tool options. That’s why projects are managed on a single, exclusive page.
  • Advanced productivity tools keep you at your highest level of focus: While many apps offer customizable pings and reporting options, Basecamp goes the extra mile with tools like notification protection measures to keep you from getting distracted (as well as other platform-specific perks!)
  • Customer service that leads the task management software industry: Basecamp promises to reply to all inquiries within an hour—as well as 99.99% uptime, a direct line to their CEO and ongoing learning library modules to help you maximize the value gained from Basecamp.
  • Extensive integration and tool libraries help you perfect your workflow in-platform: Basecamp connects to a range of top mobile and desktop apps , including Can do! Field Trip, Retool and Zapier are a few examples. The best part? These options go above and beyond the most common you see, allowing you a truly personalized task management experience.
  • Uniquely transparent business practices across all areas of Basecamp’s management
  • 30-day free trial options are available for both membership tiers; no credit card necessary
  • Monthly updates keep Basecamp competitive for all user types
  • Limited membership tiers and steep price jumps may present a barrier to entry for some readers
  • Users report that the interface is confusing and not “clean” in appearance
  • Users report irregular message sync issues

Best for Small Business Task Management

task and calendar management

$0-$19+ per member, per month

Free Forever membership tier

ClickUp markets itself as the “one app to replace them all”—and we can confidently say that this is true for small businesses. The platform offers the comprehensive suite of tools that Basecamp has at a fraction of the price, remaining accessible to businesses in all growth stages. Enjoy in-platform collaboration, advanced automation options and AI assistance for less than $20 per user per month via ClickUp’s most expensive tier.

  • Enjoy 15+ task views for maximum efficiency: Allow your teammates to work how they do best, whether that’s in list view, board setups or Gantt charts.
  • One-click customization options keep your workflow simple: ClickUp was designed to be effortlessly customizable, offering one-click configurations to optimize and personalize your workflow.
  • Integrate or allow ClickUp to dominate and streamline your work steps: ClickUp is unique in its offering to integrate with your current tech stack or to replace it—offering you comparable capabilities for their monthly price alone.
  • Stay secure as you grow your small business: ClickUp is suitable for small businesses across industries and is one of the most secure options on the market. The site offers HIPAA compliance for medical professionals, AICPA SOC-2 compliance and compliance with GDPR and ISO27001 standards.
  • 24/7 support options keep you as productive as possible
  • Extensive Free Forever tier offers unlimited tasks, members, views, support and in-app video recording, among other features
  • Custom fields available in Free Forever plan onward for advanced customization options
  • Users report varying levels of success with an inbuilt time tracker
  • Users report intermittent sync issues
  • Some users report difficulty navigating between views in ClickUp

Best for Rapidly-Growing Teams

$10.99-$24.99+ per seat, per month*

Asana is one of the best task manager tools out there, offering scalable support for rapidly growing teams. Enjoy features like a whiteboard-style workflow builder, rules and task dependencies, private projects and advanced reporting as your team grows. Asana membership tiers are designed to scale with your business’s current season, offering you sustainable growth support tools you can count on.

  • Workload management features promote healthy staffing patterns: Asana allows you to rebalance and manage work at a glance, offering live visualization support and projection tools for simple staffing management.
  • Advanced task management tools (such as effort calculations) set Asana apart: Asana is considered an industry leader and a favorite among SMBs, partially due to innovative tools like the effort calculator. This option allows you to assign tasks smartly based on your team’s bandwidth and the task’s priority.
  • Asana Intelligence offers AI-based support to save you more time and money: This new feature is available across all tiers of membership, using workspace-generated content to optimize your work and assignment flows. The best part? You remain the owner of your data, offering you the capability without the privacy breach.
  • Dashboards and charts keep key information at a glance: All users can customize Asana dashboards and charts, keeping key information top of mind. This, coupled with timeline visualization tools, makes Asana a fantastic choice for larger, fast-moving teams.
  • Higher-level tiers offer top integration options—such as Adobe Creative Cloud, Salesforce and more
  • Custom enterprise options are available for larger businesses, offering size-specific perks (like custom branding, service accounts, 24/7 support and admin announcements).
  • 30-day free trial available for Asana Advanced at the time of this publication
  • Some users report limited functionality in the Asana mobile app
  • Some users claim the platform is not as intuitive as marketing states
  • Asana offers a more limited integration suite compared to other tools

Vault’s Viewpoint: Compare the Best Task Management Services of 2024

Learn more about task management software.

The global task management market is expected to exceed $7 billion dollars by 2032, and with good reason—it’s the catalyst and foundation for sustainable task completion, business growth and profitability. Here’s what you need to know.

What Is Task Management Software?

Task management software is a tool that works to streamline, centralize and prioritize tasks. It can be used across industries, supporting teams, enterprises, and individuals with both personal and professional organizational needs.

How Do Task Management Tools Work?

Task management tools work differently, depending on which format or software option you end up going with. Generally speaking, your tool will harvest all inputted tasks and lay them out for you to categorize—offering options such as categorization by deadline, priority or segment. After the tasks have been organized, you are typically able to delegate them to yourself or another team member.

Who Are Task Management Services Best For?

The best task management services can be used by individuals and businesses alike, offering a single, centralized hub for all things productivity. There is technically no “wrong” way to use a task tracker, so long as the organizational method aligns with your current needs and goals.

How To Choose a Task Management System

Looking for the best task management software for your needs? Consider sitting with yourself or your team to determine your scope of need first. After you figure out what you need in a tool, evaluate your options, including the ones on this list. You can then move forward with whichever option is the most sustainable for your current stage of business growth.

Here are a few features to watch for as you find the best task manager for your needs.

Integrations

If you already have a few other services in your tech stack, you’ll typically want to look for tools that integrate well with them. These integrations can save you both time and money, streamlining your workflow and allowing you to direct your attention to other higher-level tasks.

Ease of Use

Few people will actually stick with a tool that’s difficult to use or understand. You can proactively get ahead of this by choosing a simple tool with no learning curve or a tool that is backed by 24/7 live customer support. We have quite a few suitable options on our list above.

Collaboration Tools

Your team is what drives your business growth. Choosing task manager software with inbuilt collaboration tools is one of the best ways to harness this resource. Keep an eye out for features like in-app chats or threads, live-time task monitoring and other perks that can be made possible with your integration suite.

Additional task manager software features to watch for vary depending on your individual or business needs.

That’s why evaluating your current areas of need is so important; allowing you to tailor the platform of choice to your gaps. If you haven’t already, make a list of these blocks or gaps before you continue your search. Then, speak with sales representatives and ask them how they can meet those needs specifically. Some task trackers may have bonus features available upon request.

Other Task Management Software Alternatives

Trello is the best task manager for visually-driven team members, offering an intuitive interface, quality graphic organization options and multiple view styles to appeal to all types of workflow preferences.

The site also offers a templated “playbook” that allows team members to start with an advantage rather than having to customize and build on their own. This is a strong choice for those who prefer to jump in and refine as they go.

Google Keep

Google Keep is the best task management tool for personal management tasks. There’s little to the tool, making it an exceptionally lightweight option for those who want a minimalist interface. It flows seamlessly with Google Suite and can be referenced at any point in your inbox or calendar tasks, giving you the benefit of an omnipresent, centralized solution for your needs.

Teamwork is an ideal task management for those looking to stay on track and on budget. The tool offers native resource allocation tools that are designed to preserve your team’s utility and maximize profitability, keeping everyone at their highest level of sustainable performance. The service is free for teams of up to five people and scales sustainably per user per month—offering you advanced features for a ceiling price of $25.99 per seat on a monthly basis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Asana is one of the best task management software for teams, offering data to back their productivity claims , native automation to keep work moving across all members of the team and visualization of priorities—leaving nothing up to question as you move toward your next business goal.

Asana also offers streamlined in-platform communications and messages, keeping your team working in a single, centralized place. Once at work, your team can use tags and flags to note work that’s high-priority, blocked or otherwise needs review.

Task management software can range between $0-$35 per month, on average. Pricing may vary depending on the membership tier that you use for your business,

Monday.com is one of the best task management tools to use on an individual basis. It’s free to start, incredibly versatile and can be a sustainable way to manage over time. Its membership tiers are also fairly affordable compared to competing tools, and it offers advanced capabilities for management—such as automations, integrations and inbuilt Monday.com app connections.

Task management software has a primary purpose of enhancing productivity, whether you’re using it on a team or individual basis. It does this by keeping larger-scale projects on track. It can also promote efficiency when it’s used to plan, strategize and collaborate to hit larger organizational goals.

If you’re using task management software for individual management purposes, you might also use it to visualize where your time is spent each week, automate certain tasks or schedule future tasks for a higher level of productivity.

The answer to this question is subjective. The best task management software is sustainably affordable for your current stage of life or business, should integrate well with other tools in your tech stack and should offer collaboration opportunities with other members of your team.

If you’re using it on an individual basis or believe that your team might need extra help getting through the onboarding steps, consider checking for 24/7 customer support options as well.

Related Articles

  • 10 Best HR Management Software of February 2024
  • 5 Best Free Tax Software of February 2024
  • Best Tax Software for Small Businesses of February 2024 

SnackNation

Calendar Management Tips, Tools, & Best Practices For Executive Assistants [Save Time & Stress]

Calendar Management Best Practices, Tips, & Tools For Executive Assistants

We hear you, and we know you’re way too busy actually managing calendars to research ways you might be able to save time on managing calendars. Plus, it seems like good old organization skills can only get you so far when you’re taking on the modern calendar, whether it’s for an executive, a conference room, or an entire team.

When you manage an executive’s calendar, you become the master timekeeper , the champion responsible for not only pristinely organizing calendars and schedules, but also for optimizing the use of time. We found that u sing a calendar management tool like Office Otter can save an average of 10 hours/week on redundant scheduling tasks.

You make sure the valuable commodity of time goes into the most efficient, most productive, and most mission-oriented activities.

That’s why we came up with a list to make calendar management for executive assistants a breeze. These best practices, tips, tools and strategies supplement your innate skills, save you time and stress, and make creating calendar magic seem effortless.

Page Contents (Click To Jump)

What is Calendar Management?

Calendar management is the systematic process of organizing meetings, events, and tasks with the ultimate goal of maximizing the return on investment you can get from the precious limited resource we call time.

Calendar_Management_Icons

The process incorporates busy but essential work, such as fielding meeting requests and scheduling meetings, and also more strategic long-term work, such as setting an executive’s day-to-day priorities and implementing time management best practices.

A key reason calendar management is important can be found in the question posed by Chip and Dan Heath in Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work :

“If forensic analysts confiscated your calendar and e-mail records and Web browsing history for the past six months, what would they conclude are your core priorities?”

A well-managed calendar should reflect and enable core priorities. It has the power to impact an executive’s daily success as well as their big-picture success. That’s why calendar management is one of the most important skills for an executive assistant to develop.

The Benefits of Effectively Managing a Calendar

A well-managed calendar ensures a strategic, efficient, and effective allocation of time. Getting this right lays the foundation for capturing many other business benefits, namely achievement, efficiency, organization, collaboration, and insight.

Calendar_Management_Icons

Some of the key benefits include:

  • Achievement – Calendar management ensures you can properly prioritize key goals (including both your executive assistant goals and also your boss’s goals) while still covering everything else.
  • Efficiency – Establishing a systematic process for calendar management opens up doors for finding automations and tools that unlock time-saving possibilities.
  • Organization – Centrally managing calendars gives administrative and executive assistants the control they need to best “keep the ship running.”
  • Collaboration – Sound calendar management helps executives allocate time to maintain strong business relationships without missing meetings, double booking, or overlooking opportunities to build key partnerships.
  • Business Insight – Well-managed calendars aren’t just about today and tomorrow. They provide a well-documented record of where time went and for what purpose.

Get all the benefits calendar management has to offer with all the tips, tricks, and tools below. They’ll supplement your innate skills, save you time and stress, and make creating calendar magic seem effortless.

General Best Practices for Calendar Management

Calendar_Management_Icons

Best Practice #1: Prioritize with a Handy Matrix

Strategically pursue priorities by filtering your exec’s time through an Action Priority Matrix . This helps you establish the “ROI” of your exec’s time and pinpoint opportunities to balance the time portfolio. Advise against any activities that don’t deliver output commensurate with time input.

Best Practice #2: Use Calendars for More Than Just Meetings and Events

Fill the calendar with reminders, deadlines, time off, and blocks of time for brainstorming, exercise, and other wellness and visioning activities necessary for your executive’s success.

“An exec’s calendar should act as their master diary . . . and centralized place for all major activities and milestones.” – Candace (Executive Assistant)

Best Practice #3: Design Your Perfect Coding System

Use labels, folders, or color coding (or all) to create an organizational schematic for the calendars you manage. This makes all calendars easier for both you, and everyone else, to skim for key takeaways. For example, you might create and color code folders for these categories: internal, client, personal, recurring, reminder, and travel.)

“Color code your exec’s calendars and create categories to quickly visualize subjects of meetings.” – Jennifer (Executive Assistant)

Best Practice #4: Document Your Exec’s Priorities

Executives can do their best work when they have EAs ensuring they spend their time on the most important things. (That’s why calendaring is a key executive assistant responsibility .) Work with your executive to document and define key priorities. Make sure the calendar reflects those priorities, and even use your documentation as justification for rejecting invitations that do not align.

“Regularly check in with VIPs regarding their schedule to see if any appointments need to be changed or if there are any appointments that may not yet be added to their schedule.” – Rachael (Executive Assistant)

Best Practice #5: Set Up Multiple Times Zones

If your exec or key clients spend time in multiple time zones, setting up your Outlook or other calendar with all the relevant times zones will make it easier for you to quickly schedule events without making embarrassing mistakes.

Best Practice #6: Clarify Calendar Roles and Permissions

We’ve all heard the saying: Too many cooks in the kitchen spoil the broth.  It can also be detrimental to have too many people managing one calendar. Having calendar control and oversight makes managing calendars streamlined and strategic. Make your life easier by establishing and documenting exactly who can accept meetings and add events on your executive’s behalf.

If you want everything to go through you, then simply make sure you have a clear process everyone can use to submit requests. You learned how to do this right during all those training courses ; make sure nothing stops you from treating calendar management as the formalized process it is.

“If anyone puts anything on the calendar without checking with me first I send them a note letting them know that in the future they need to check with me first and I’ll provide available times/dates.” – Bijou (Executive Assistant)

Best Practice #7: Allocate Time Just for Calendar Management

Managing time takes time. Give calendar management the time it deserves by planning your to-do lists, daily planner , schedules, and days with blocks of time to take care of scheduling and follow-ups as well as long-term planning.

Best Practice #8: Make Your Life Easier with Tech Tools and Integrations

Do some homework to pick and try out the tech tools, like the options below, that promise to make calendar management easier. Once you’ve established your tech suite, take a little time to learn about all the features, including integrations with your other work tools. Take some time up front and you’ll likely save lots of time down the road.

⭐️ Pro-Tip: Want to stay informed about all the tech tools that can streamline your EA work? Get The Assist , a free weekly newsletter packed with tech tips, inspiration, and priceless knowledge from EAs like you. Sign up here !

Calendar Management Tools, Software & Apps

1) monday.com.

This online collaboration tool also provides you with a big-picture view of how all the work, meetings, and events fit together.

monday.com

How monday.com helps with calendar management: It gives you visibility into key dates and tasks for all the calendars you manage. Stay on top of everything while also reducing the amount of time you spend on phone calls or scouring emails for information.

Notable Features:

  • View and relay schedule changes in real time
  • Use helpful calendar templates
  • Take advantage of multiple views (including kanban, timeline, and Gantt) to view workloads all the ways you need to.

Pricing: Starts at $8 per seat per month. Free trial available .

The ultimate scheduling tool designed for Executive Assistants and Admins.

Cabinet IMAGE

How Cabinet helps with calendar management: Cabinet seamlessly integrates with Outlook and G-Suite calendars and supercharges your productivity. Offer times quickly in multiple time-zones and keep track of all the time you’re giving out. It’s truly magical.

  • One calendar to rule them all allows you to easily toggle between execs, calendars, and time zones.
  • Copy and paste specific availability into emails and texts, block out (and keep track of) time slots for specific people, and get live updates when proposed meetings are accepted.
  • Keep things running smoothly, with no platform change or additional action necessary from your executive.

Pricing: $50/month ( Free month trial )

Clearing out clouded calendars like a ray of sunshine.

task and calendar management

How ASAP helps with calendar management: With so many different calendar management platforms it’s often difficult to figure out what works best for you and your team. ASAP has loads of articles, downloads, and webinars to help. From all the hidden features of Google Calendar to specific trainings on maximizing your Outlook Calendar .

  • Focused trainings for Google and Outlook
  • Lots of free content around calendar management
  • Virtual and in person events throughout the year

Pricing: Free and paid options .

4) Office Otter

Office Otter helps you seamlessly turn to-dos that come up during text, email, and Slack conversations into tasks and calendar items.

How Office Otter helps with calendar management: Never miss a detail but also save time. You won’t have to search through text threads or emails to find that one sentence that gave you the info you need to create a clear calendar alert.

  • Prioritize painlessly with built-in features
  • Turn your “done” list into a detailed report
  • Integrate with text, email, Slack, and Siri

Pricing: Free basic plan .

5) Calendly

Calendly is a priceless executive assistant tool that will help you streamline scheduling so you can have more time to actually spend doing strategic work.

How Calendly helps with calendar management: It helps you quickly and easily find the best times to meet. You can schedule meetings and then get on with your day. (Calendly even has a handy guide for Google calendar tips .)

  • Grab links to send in emails or embed right on your website
  • Add buffer times between staff meetings for necessary breaks
  • Use the time zone detector to avoid confusion
“Calendly is great if you don’t want a preference for what meetings happen when. It’s like automated tetris so your slots will get full without breathing room unless dns time is scheduled well in advance.” – EA Lusely

It is a project collaboration tool that helps teams to get work done on time and enabling team members to get a better overview of their work.

nTask

How nTask helps with calendar management: This app lets you to planned and actual dates for the tasks, give priorities, and set status (from not started to task done). Get an overview of all the tasks assigned to you and your team, and manage schedule for your meetings. Stop switching apps to manage calendar for your projects now.

  • Easy drag and drop to set schedule
  • Use in-app calendar or sync calendar with Gmail or Outlook
  • Integrate with Slack, Zoom and Zapier

Pricing: Free basic plan

Let meeting guests reserve free time on your executive’s schedule with the same ease of making an online dinner reservation.

Doodle_Dash

How Doodle helps with calendar management: You no longer have to feel like the Gatekeeper of your boss’s schedule. Doodle can be the gatekeeper for you. People can select open times that work for them, and you can skip sending tons of emails.

  • Add availability for a month or more to ensure a match
  • Share availability while keeping calendars private
  • Guests can reserve times without signing in

Calendar Management Tips & Tricks

Automating calendar tasks, tip 1: set up a zapier automation to get text reminders for events.

Specify a time and a phone number to send out event reminders via text. This is especially helpful for super-busy executives who get so many email reminders that the default is to ignore.

Learn more here: Get reminders for upcoming Google calendar events via clicksend SMS 

Tip 2: Automate Follow-Ups

Set up automatic email follow-ups so you don’t have to spend all your time nudging people to respond so you can lock down dates and move on with your life. Best of all, with ReBump’s automation services, the follow-ups seem more friendly than robotic.

Learn more here: Rebump

Tip 3: Collect Bulk Info

Create forms (such as Google Forms) you can send en masse and that will funnel information into a neat little spreadsheet. (You spend less time emailing co-workers

and sorting through responses.)

Learn more here: Google sheets

Tip 4: Use Automations to Connect Unrelated Apps

Use IFTTT to connect apps that usually don’t talk to each other. For example, you can send Outlook calendar items to Google calendar or iOS calendar to Google calendar and more.

Learn more here: IFTTT

Tip 5: Turn Emails into Conversations

Spike will transform the way you read and respond to emails. This service funnels emails into a text-like application with a more conversational style. Ultimately, it helps you write clear, friendly, and to-the-point emails that get results and reduce your traffic.

Learn more here: Spikenow

Outlook Calendar Management Tips

Tip 1: get granular with sharing and permissions.

Naturally, you’ll want to push for full sharing access of every calendar you manage. Take it a step further by really diving into permissions for everyone else with access. For example, if you want to be the only calendar editor, you can update everyone else’s access to “view only.”

Learn more here: Outlook tips and tricks you should know

Tip 2: Print Out and Learn All the Keyboard Shortcuts

Every minute is worth saving. When you have every Outlook Calendar shortcut stored in your brain, you can save a minute here and a few minutes there doing simple things like running searches and adding new items.

Learn more here: Top Microsoft calendar tips and tricks

Tip 2 ½: Get More Sh*t Done

Get The Assist to discover even more ways to save time and get more done. This weekly newsletter features new tech, productivity tips, and EA insider secrets every week. Sign up here !

Tip 3: Get Physical

Print out filled-in calendars and distribute to stakeholders each week or even each day to cultivate that extra tactile awareness that helps some people keep track of their schedules.

Learn more here: Print a calendar showing appointments and meetings

Tip 4: Let Contextual Bots Help You Out

Update your settings so Outlook can crawl emails and automatically add things like events, bookings, and reservations. Every automatically added event gives you back some precious time.

“Scheduling straight from email is the best and saves you the work of adding all the folks on an email thread.” – EA Lusely

Learn more here: Automatically add events from your email to your calendar

Tip 5: Play by Outlook’s Search Rules

Searching within Outlook using the same language you might use to ask another human a question doesn’t always get the result you’re hoping for. Understand some common expressions (using “mo” for months, for example) to get relevant results for your searches.

Learn more here: Eight quick tips for working efficiently in Outlook’s Calendar window (#4 and #5) 

Gmail Calendar Management Tips

Tip 1: let google brief you on the daily agenda.

Set up a feature that will send you (and the owners of all your managed calendars) via Gmail a daily agenda aggregated from Google Calendar. It’s like having a dedicated schedule manager greet you each morning.

Learn more here: Get your daily agenda in your inbox

Tip 2: Work Your Notifications

Don’t let default notifications rule your life. Update all your settings to design a notification system that works best for you and your executive.

“Talk about what’s coming up on a weekly 1:1. Find out if any of those meetings require any prep time and build that into their schedule. I only look at 3-4 weeks out at a time with them.” – EA Bijou

Learn more here: Google calendar tips and tricks

Tip 3: Make Guests Editors

Save time sending emails and updating events over and over again by letting guests edit events themselves. This saves everyone time and also ensures all event guests are always on the same page.

Learn more here: 20 Indispensable Google Calendar Hacks

Tip 4: Find Time-Savers by Syncing with a Time Tracker

Marry your Google Calendar to trackers such as Toggl, RescueTime, and other Google Tables alternatives to quickly understand where time goes and find possible efficiencies.

Learn more here: The Ultimate Google Calendar Guide (#75)

Tip 5: Create Events from Search

When you’re logged into Chrome, you can pop event details into your Google search bar to get the option to create an event without leaving your browser or opening more tabs.

Learn more here: Google Calendar hacks

Tips for Managing Multiple Calendars

Tip 1: create a master calendar.

Share all the calendars you manage with one master account, so you have the option of viewing everything from one central location.

“I show 5 exec calendars and mine side by side on my desktop throughout the day. Helps me answer questions about availability, know locations for emergency communication and support them with lunch if back today back meetings.” – EA Anne

Learn more here: Shared Calendar Apps Create Efficiency For Everyone

Tip 2: Do Similar Tasks for Different Calendars in the Same Time Blocks

Manage all the different calendars at the same time each day by using time blocking for your own schedule. For example, you can block time to handle all the scheduling for all the calendars at once. This helps your brain treat the work of managing multiple calendars as one big to-do.

“I love Outlook and use focus time to block time so that I’m not constantly in meetings.” – EA Morgane

Learn more here: Time blocking 101

Tip 3: Verify Everything is Syncing Correctly

When you manage multiple calendars, that last thing you need is a syncing snafu that creates more work you don’t have time to do. Regularly verify that all the calendars you manage are syncing appropriately to save stress.

Learn more here: 12 Tips to Manage Your Executive’s Calendar like a “Rock Star”

Tip 4: Make Checklists

Managing multiple calendars means you have to repeat the same steps over and over again. Make sure nothing slips through the cracks by formatting your daily and weekly tasks into checklists. You’ll avoid missing something important, and you’ll always know what you’ve finished and what you still need to do.

Learn more here: How to Use Simple Checklists to Boost Efficiency and Reduce Mistakes

Tip 5: Include Attachments with Events

When you set up events, attach related documents and information (meeting agendas, background documents, contracts, etc.), even if you think it might not be relevant. When questions come up, you can refer straight to the calendar event to get the info you need instead of scouring an inbox filled with messages about all your calendar.

“Add as much detail as possible to prevent any unnecessary questions that may arise from others. It’s better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. Id rather have more details with calendar items and not need them, than to need them and not have the info at hand and have to waste time searching for it.” – EA Lauren

Learn more here: How to Manage Multiple Calendars Efficiently

Tips for Effectively Managing an Executive’s Calendar

Tip 1: set above-and-beyond reminder.

A reminder 15 minutes before an event is cool and all, but you can better set your executive up for success by putting some thought into each event and coming up with helpful reminders. (For example, you might add a reminder to pack 4 days before a flight or a reminder to prepare a week in advance for a major pitch.)

“Put big commitments in first and protect some time for your Exec to think each week.” – EA Amanda

Learn more here:   25 brilliant calendar and schedule management tips

Tip 2: Do Time Audits

During a time audit, you specify a period of time to get serious about tracking your executive’s time. When that period is up, you analyze your findings and deliver concrete recommendations with the ultimate goal of process improvement.

Learn more here: Effective calendar management for executive assistants

Tip 3: Check In Frequently

The best way to know you’re doing something according to someone else’s preferences is to ask. Just asking creates a moment for feedback and improvement that might not exist in the day-to-day hustle. You can check in frequently and efficiently using surveys. Simply start with a customer satisfaction survey template and then update it for your needs.

“Being aligned with executive on their priorities in order to make informed decisions. Communication with exec is key — make sure there are no surprises for them!”  – EA Teresa

Learn more here: Top 15 Customer Satisfaction Survey Templates And Sample Questionnaires

Tip 4: Follow Up After Meetings

Use a simple Likert scale survey to get your executive to rate the usefulness and effectiveness of the meetings they attend each day or each week. Take action according to the data. For example, you might recommend your executive skip the meetings they rate as “not useful at all” or ask other team members to attend and take meetings minutes .

“Communication is key to manage someone else’s time.  Only you should touch appointments.  You need to know when they work,  when they like mtgs,  who they need to avoid,  the time wasters.” – EA Caroline

Learn more here: How To Effectively Manage An Executive Calendar

Tip 5: Do Weekly Briefings

Set aside a few minutes each week to sit down with your executive and go over the calendar for the next week. Address any questions and concerns so you can both start the next week feeling organized and prepared.

“Review the next day’s schedule for everyone whose calendar you manage so that you’re well informed and prepared, and regularly look a few weeks ahead so you can be proactive in rescheduling any meetings due to conflicts or changes in priority.”  – EA Rachael

Learn more here: The Secrets Of Effective Calendar Management

Calendar Management Tips from Real Executive Assistants Via The Assist

Calendar_Management_Icons

A million thanks and shout outs to all the EAs who shared these tried-and-true calendar management tips with The Assist .

Hold For Tentative Meetings

Marisa offers one of her best practices for scheduling meetings:

“If I offer a time for a meeting, I hold the spot by putting a tentative meeting on the calendar with the title “HOLD: Meeting with Joe Schmoe.” I also like to categorize out of office or travel. For weekly one on ones I pay attention to who tends to go over their time and try to leave a 15 min buffer. For sensitive meetings, I am cautious about names listed in the title. If it’s an important topic of conversation, I’ll put it in the title like this: “Meet with Jane Doe re: contract.” Always have the calendar open! If you can have a second monitor, that’s super helpful.”

Look Ahead At What Is Coming Up 

The Assist subscriber Beth not only color codes her calendar but also recommends to:

“Preview the next 2 weeks every Friday.”

Harness The Power Of Deadlines

Anita believes in the power of deadlines by suggesting to:

“Set deadlines for calendaring requests.”

Create A System

It also might be a good idea to set up processes for tasks that repeat:

“Create a cadence for recurring meetings. (All 1:1s have Monday and Tuesday for example.)”

Utilize Tools

Reader, Teresa, uses another platform to aid her scheduling:

“I have a separate excel document where I track recurring meetings. It’s a good tool to see how much time is dedicated to categories of meetings (1:1’s, projects, etc.). We use this as an ongoing tool to help with ensuring the executive is spending their time wisely.”

Allow For Breathing Room Between Meetings

Another useful tip from The Assist group:

“I have implemented 25 and 50 minute defaults for meetings, which is helpful.”

Factor In Travel

Traveling can also be an important facet of an executive assistant’s duties . Tammy notes,

“Block travel time when the boss has an off site meeting. If she’s been away on travel, I usually block time in the morning for her first day back in office for any planning, follow up or other that she needs/may want to do.”

Have A Backup EA

In case of your unavailability if something does come up, Rachael suggests:

“Give trusted admins access/permission to edit your calendar (or any of the calendars you manage, if appropriate), so that they can make changes on your behalf if you’re busy or out of office.”

Manage Follow – Ups

For following-up with your executive:

“When scheduling a recurring meeting, I note the last day of the recurrence in parenthesis in the subject line of the calendar invite to remind me to follow-up with the appropriate executive in continuing the recurring meeting and/or create a new series; I attach/copy and past any material associated to the meeting for easy referencing and tracking purposes.”

Understand The Reason For The Meeting

Prioritizing meetings can be a lot easier if you take the time to understand the context. Rachael also notes,

“Read all emails to better understand the context of meetings, urgency priority and type of meeting so you can properly outline the agenda on invite.”

Communicate With Your Executive

Phyllis praises the importance of communication your your executive:

“You have to create a system with your exec. My ceo puts everything I need to know in the correspondence. Usually its an email to a client that says “lets have a quick (meaning 30 mins) Zoom call to discuss the proposal next week. I’ve copied our CCO too so that she can join us.” I know when, why “the title” for the invite, for how long and who should be on the invite. I usually don’t have to ask my CEO any questions to get the invite out.”

Account For Holiday Schedules

And lastly, Bijou understands that the end of the year can be a busy time to navigate scheduling with a holiday schedule by stating:

“I add a note for myself in December about all the calendar invites I need to send out for the new year. For instance, I want a meeting with Susan before our leadership meeting 1 week prior and those meetings are not set up for the year yet. Helps me keep track of items like that.”

Like these tips?

Tap into a treasure trove of knowledge from successful EAs by joining The Assist community. Sign up to get a new batch of EA tips like the ones above in your inbox each week.

People Also Ask These Questions About Calendar Management

Q: how can i improve my calendar management.

  • A: You can improve calendar management by designing optimal event coding systems, leveraging tech tools and integrations, and considering many other best practices for calendar management .

Q: How do you manage an executive calendar?

  • A: Manage an executive calendar well by setting smart reminders, conducting time audits, and following up and checking in frequently to make sure calendar activities are aligning with key goals.

Q: What is the most effective way to manage multiple calendars?

  • A: The most effective way to manage multiple calendars is to share them all with one master calendar to create a central location for viewing and management. Find additional tips in this guide to calendar management .

Q: What is the importance of calendar management?

  • A: Calendar management is important because the strategic allocation of time allows teams to reap numerous business benefits, including goal achievement, organizational efficiency, and improved collaboration.

Q: What are examples of calendar management?

  • A: Examples of calendar management include automating tasks, creating strategic reminders, and optimizing sharing and permission settings.

Q: Is scheduling a skill?

  • A: Yes, scheduling is a skill, one of the most important calendar management skills sound scheduling can bring goals within reach, make work more strategic, and best of all, save lots of people lots of time.

Q: What are calendar management tools?

  • A: Calendar management tools are programs and applications that streamline the numerous steps that go into managing a calendar. For example, a calendar management tool like monday.com helps managers collaborate on master schedules while a tool like Doodle can streamline the scheduling process.

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15 Free Project Calendar Templates

By Kate Eby | July 23, 2019

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In this article, you’ll find a wide range of pre-built project calendar and timeline templates — available in Excel, Word, Google Sheets, and PowerPoint formats — to help you schedule and manage your next project. For additional project management templates, check out this article . 

Included on this page, you will find a project timeline template , a project calendar template , a basic Gantt chart template , and many more helpful calendar and timeline templates for your next project.

Project Timeline Template

task and calendar management

Download Project Timeline Template

Excel | Google Sheets | PPT | Smartsheet

This template is intended for the project planner who needs something more dynamic than a traditional, static project calendar. The simple, easy-to-use format displays key project tasks, start and end dates, task duration, and corresponding task bars that update with inevitable project changes. Customize taskbar colors to differentiate between roles, teams, or other categories in a visually organized way.

4-Week Project Timeline Template

4 Week Project Timeline Template

Download 4-Week Project Timeline Template

Excel | Word

Save time when building out your next project plan (in either weekly or monthly increments) with this 4-week project timeline template. Add project tasks and due dates, assign roles, and track activity progress to promote team accountability and ensure your next project stays on schedule.

Project Schedule Template

Project Schedule Calendar Template

Download Project Schedule Template

Excel | Google Sheets | Smartsheet

This customizable project scheduling template offers a multi-phase approach to help you develop a simple or advanced project plan. Add essential project notes, including information on scheduling, budgeting, resources, and project risks, to provide the visibility necessary to make critical and timely decisions.

Project Calendar Template

Project Calendar Template

Download Project Calendar Template

Excel | Word | PDF

This project calendar template caters to the project manager who needs to see delegated project tasks, milestones, and key deadlines at a glance. Utilize the color-coded key at the bottom of the template to easily locate designated activities according to stakeholders. This template helps you track progress from start to finish.

Basic Gantt Chart Template

task and calendar management

Download Basic Gantt Chart Template

Google Sheets | Smartsheet

Plan out each phase of your next project using this pre-built Gantt chart template. Schedule out project tasks, subtasks, activity ownership, deadlines, completion status, and more. This Gantt chart provides a visual overview of both granular and high-level activity progress, which allows you to easily communicate critical project details to your team and stakeholders. 

Advanced Gantt Chart Template

task and calendar management

Download Advanced Gantt Chart Template - Google Sheets

This advanced Gantt chart template captures all main project tasks and subtasks, due dates, actual completion dates, and deadline variances. There is also space to denote task ownership, progress status, task dependencies, and key project milestone details, and the task bars will update automatically as you make modifications.

IT Project Gantt Chart Template

task and calendar management

Download IT Project Gantt Chart Template - Google Sheets

This template is intended for the IT project manager who oversees the planning, role assigning, and scheduling of a company’s IT initiatives. Simply add project tasks, milestones, and key dates, and then color-code task bars according to task ownership. Task duration and corresponding task bars will update automatically according to the dates you input, providing a visual display of team progress and the project’s overall status.

Construction Project Timeline Template

Construction Project Timeline Template

Download Construction Project Timeline Template - Google Sheets

This construction project timeline template comes pre-built with standard construction tasks, from demo prep to wrap-up. Easily modify project activities according to your needs, and then add start dates and end dates and watch as task duration and corresponding task bars populate automatically. This template provides project visibility at both high-level and task-level views.

Scrum Project Management Gantt Chart Template

task and calendar management

Download Scrum Project Management Gantt Chart Template - Google Sheets

This customizable template is intended for project managers and Scrum masters and comes with a built-in burndown chart to ensure your next project stays on schedule. Use this template to help facilitate sprint planning, progress monitoring, and task ownership at both the main task and subtask levels. Duration and color-coded task bars will auto-populate as you enter key dates.

Agile Project Plan Template

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Download Agile Project Plan Template

Excel | Smartsheet

Specify the project deliverable, include a scope statement, and track overall progress with this Agile project plan template. This feature-based template allows your team to determine the priority of functionalities for development in current and upcoming iterations. This template also allows you to select role assignments, choose deadlines, and track activity status to ensure that your Agile project stays organized and delivers value to key stakeholders.

Annual Project Timeline Template

2024-2025 Annual Project Timeline Template

Download 2024-2025 Annual Project Timeline Template - Excel

This annual timeline template provides a high-level view of key project events, activities, and milestones over the course of a year. Simply add activity dates and details to easily view upcoming events at a glance, prioritize tasks, and ensure timely completion of project deliverables.

Project Deadline Calendar Template

Project Deadline Calendar Template

Download Project Deadline Calendar Template

This customizable project deadline calendar template is designed for the project planning professional in charge of delegating, scheduling, and tracking the overall progress of a basic or complex project. This template allows you to add project tasks, role assignments, and deadlines, and also make time-sensitive decisions at each phase of a project.

Monthly Marketing Calendar Template

2024 Monthly Marketing Calendar Template

Download 2024 Monthly Marketing Calendar Template — Excel

Use this marketing calendar template to plan out multiple event-specific tasks on a month-by-month basis. This template enables you to assign activity roles and important dates, and also includes plenty of space for comments. Use the template to keep each marketing event organized and successful, from planning to completion.

Yearly Project Planning Calendar with Notes

2024 Yearly Project Planning Calendar with Notes

Download 2024 Yearly Project Planning Calendar with Notes — Excel

This yearly calendar template enables you to plan out multiple projects and events in a calendar format that is easy to scan and modify. With holidays already included, this calendar is ready for you to schedule out crucial project tasks, events, and due dates, and also includes additional space for notes. To see more monthly and yearly calendar options for download, check out these 15 free monthly calendar templates .

Weekly Project Planner Template with Notes

2024 Weekly Project Planner Template with Notes

Download 2024 Weekly Project Planner Template with Notes — Excel

This weekly project planner makes it easy for you to plan out project activities on a daily and weekly basis throughout the year. Simply add the planner start date at the top of the template; then add important tasks and notes to ensure that your team starts and completes project activities on schedule.

For more options, check out our collection of free weekly schedule templates .

Upgrade Your Project Calendar with Smartsheet for Project Management

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What is calendar management definition.

Calendar management is the process of creating and maintaining a schedule of events, appointments, and tasks. The goal of calendar management is to maximize efficiency and minimize conflicts between events. Many people use some form of calendar management , whether they realize it or not. For example, most people have a daily or weekly routine that they follow. This routine may include taking the kids to school, going to work, working out, etc. While a daily routine is one form of calendar management, there are other ways to manage your time more effectively . In this blog post, we will explore what calendar management is and how you can use it to your advantage .

What is Calendar Management?

Calendar management is the process of scheduling and organizing events, appointments, and other commitments in a way that optimizes efficiency and productivity. An effective calendar management system can help individuals and businesses keep track of deadlines, reduce conflicts, and make the most of their time.

There are a number of different approaches to calendar management, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. The most popular methods include time blocking, task batching , and the Pomodoro Technique.

Time blocking is a strategy in which you divide your day into blocks of time dedicated to specific activities. For example, you might block off an hour for work tasks, 30 minutes for email, and 15 minutes for breaks. This approach can help you stay focused on individual tasks and avoid distractions.

Task batching is another common approach to calendar management . This method involves grouping together similar tasks and completing them in a single sitting. For instance, if you need to write three reports, you would set aside two hours to complete all three at once instead ofworking on them one at a time throughout the day. Task batching can be an effective way to increase efficiency by eliminating breaks between similar tasks.

The Pomodoro Technique is a time management method that involves working on a task for 25 minutes followed by a five-minute break. This cycle is repeated four times before taking a longer break of 20-30 minutes. The Pomodoro Technique can help boost focus and motivation by breaking down

The Different Types of Calendar Management Systems

There are several different types of calendar management systems available to businesses and organizations. The most popular type of system is the Microsoft Exchange Server, which is a server-based system that helps organizations manage their calendars and email.

Pros and Cons of Calendar Management

There are several benefits of using a calendar to manage your time . A calendar can help you become more organized and can make it easier to keep track of your commitments . Additionally, a calendar can help you prioritize your time and can make it easier to find time for important tasks.

However, there are also some drawbacks to using a calendar to manage your time . One potential downside is that relying on a calendar can make it easy to become too rigid with your schedule. Additionally, if you lose your calendar or it malfunctions, it can be difficult to recover the information that was contained within it.

What are the Best Practices for Calendar Management?

Calendar management is the process of organizing and scheduling events and activities. The best practices for calendar management include:

-Using a shared calendar: A shared calendar can help you coordinate with others, avoid double-booking, and keep track of events and deadlines.

-Color coding: Color coding can help you visually organize your calendar and make it easier to find what you’re looking for.

-Setting reminders: Reminders can help ensure that you don’t forget important events or deadlines.

-Keeping a master list: A master list of all your events and activities can help you stay organized and on top of your schedule.

How to Implement a Calendar Management System

Calendar management is the process of organizing and scheduling events, appointments, and other commitments in order to maximize efficiency and productivity . There are a variety of calendar management systems available, each with its own set of features and benefits. To select the system that best fits your needs, consider the following factors:

-Ease of use: The system should be easy to use and understand. -Flexibility: The system should allow you to easily add, remove, or edit events and appointments. -Integration: The system should integrate with your email, task list, and other productivity tools. -Sharing: The system should allow you to share your calendar with others as needed.

Once you’ve selected a calendar management system , follow these steps to implement it:

1) Set up your account: Follow the instructions provided by the calendar management system to create an account. Be sure to include all relevant information such as your name, contact information, time zone, etc.

2) Add events and appointments: Begin adding events and appointments to your calendar. Be sure to include all relevant details such as time, location, participants, etc.

3) Set reminders: Configure the reminder settings for each event or appointment so you receive timely reminders before they occur.

4) Share your calendar: If desired, share your calendar with others so they can see your schedule and upcoming commitments.

Calendar management is a process that helps you to optimize your time and achieve your goals by creating a system to track, organize, and manage your appointments, commitments, and tasks. By taking the time to calendarize your life, you can free up mental space and energy to focus on the things that matter most to you. If you find yourself feeling scattered or stressed about all the things you have going on, consider implementing some sort of calendar management into your routine.

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Outlook: Time Management with Calendar and Tasks

Outlook: Time Management with Calendar and Tasks

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Instructor: Gini von Courter

Learn how to use Outlook’s robust calendar and task management features to better organize your work. Outlook expert Gini von Courter explains how to break down your to-do list and prioritize work—valuable time-management techniques that can serve you in any application—and then use different Outlook features to handle each type of task. She shows how to use the Outlook calendar to handle both business and personal schedules, from making appointments for yourself to creating meetings with others. She discusses the difference between Outlook tasks and to-do lists and explains how to create, delegate, and track tasks, as well as send status updates to task owners. Along the way, she explains how to use flags to provide visual reminders and add due dates to high-priority emails and tasks. By the end of this course, you’ll also be ready to start leveraging the functionalities of Microsoft Copilot, the new AI-powered tool built into the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day.

Note: This course was recorded in Microsoft 365, but anyone using a recent version of Outlook—including Office 365, 2019, 2016, and some earlier versions—will be able to follow along.

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Project milestone template

A project milestone template simplifies project management by clearly mapping out crucial dates and deliverables. It acts as a roadmap, identifying important milestones and the tasks required to complete each phase. Not only does this template organize the project timeline but it also provides clarity on what is expected at each stage, ensuring all team members are focused on the key checkpoints.

What is a project milestone template?

A project milestone template is a structured document that offers a visual roadmap of key milestones, task dependencies, and project timelines. It tracks progress, organizes tasks, and ensures team members stay aligned with the project plan .

Benefits of using a project milestone template

Clear roadmap.

The project milestone template is a project management tool that shows the project's critical path and key milestones. It enables team members to visually track due dates for the completion of deliverables and manage task dependencies.

This template helps teams create a project plan and strengthens project collaboration for effective team meetings . Presenting the project schedule, tasks, and important events in chronological order is essential for any project management milestone template.

Improved project planning

The project milestone template aids in project planning and resource allocation. Splitting the project into smaller, manageable phases ensures that all efforts stay on track toward the project goal. This template includes several features:

  • Pages offer flexible documentation, including text, images, code, tables, and more. This makes it easier to capture complex project details.
  • Guides make it easy to get started and manage a project because they simplify complex processes.

Spaces organize project documents into a single location within Confluence. They simplify permission management, document consolidation, and team collaboration.

Enhanced collaboration

A project milestone template enhances workplace productivity . Its simultaneous editing feature with comment threads, @mentions, and emoji compatibility boosts openness and team collaboration . It also brings stakeholders together to ensure efficient project timelines and milestone charts.

Progress monitoring

The project milestone plan template offers a strong framework for monitoring project progress. This ensures that all project activities reach their milestones and respective project timelines. The page history feature helps track changes and revisions, which provides proper control of the project and keeps stakeholders informed.

Team motivation

The project milestone template is a tool for both the company and the project team. Recognition or rewards for reaching key milestones boosts morale, provides encouragement, and asserts the team’s commitment to the project's goals. This fosters a sense of accomplishment, which further drives progress.

Informed decision-making

The project milestone template helps project managers make informed decisions. It shows how a project compares to established milestones and helps project managers change strategies accordingly. This ensures that evidence-based decision-making occurs and aligns with the project's aim.

Featured product: Confluence

Confluence brings your teams into one united digital space and helps them meet project goals. This platform allows team members to create, revise, and communicate project plans collaboratively. Try Confluence and experience a new, seamless approach to project management.

How to use a project milestone template

Identify project goals.

Start by defining clear project goals and deliverables and list the necessary objectives. Then, develop a comprehensive list of goals. This ensures all team members understand the timeline and milestones, enhancing team morale and project success.

Create a task list

Break down these goals into individual tasks. Some tasks may directly contribute to achieving a specific goal, while others might be subtasks. 

Project managers must ensure no loose ends remain. Assign tasks to the relevant team members to drive the project forward and keep all team members aligned and accountable.

Define milestones

Defining milestones in a project milestone template is pivotal in the decision-making process . Identify significant milestones throughout the project. Consider using a milestone Gantt chart view to create and name these milestones, either on the Roadmap or the Tasks screen. 

Assign a duration to each milestone. This feature makes daily, weekly, or monthly views possible. Milestones with linked tasks automatically reflect project progress based on task completion. Consider color coding to indicate status.

Input details

Add detailed information about each task to the template, assign team members, and set dependencies. Setting clear deadlines for tasks and milestones is essential. 

The template shows the completion percentage in real time, ensuring that all stakeholders are up to date on the project's progress. It also quickly identifies delays and risks to keep team members focused and aligned toward product delivery.

Establish a timeline

Assign realistic dates to each milestone. This structures the project's movement and accommodates knowledge sharing among team members. This way, everyone knows the key dates and stages of the project.

Review and update

Regularly review and update the project milestone template to accurately reflect the current project status. This ensures that all the information remains relevant as the team adapts to new developments or changes.

Related templates and resources

All hands meeting.

This template facilitates a productive and comprehensive all-hands meeting, fostering company culture through transparency and team engagement.

Retrospective

The retrospective template helps evaluate project outcomes, reflect on successes, and pinpoint areas for improvement.

Team poster

A team poster template outlines roles, current projects, and objectives, enhancing collaboration.

Ready to use this template?

6 Easy Wins for a Project Manager Using Our No-Code Integration Platform

ACC Connect - No-Code Integration Platform

Traditionally, one of the biggest challenges of getting technology to work in your favor, particularly if you need a custom configuration for your processes, is the fact that you have to build it. With developer resources almost always running tight in construction, folks either grab something off the shelf or do without. 

With rapid innovation across all industries around integrations, there’s been a rise in no-code platforms that you can use to build custom workflows. This is also why we’ve invested into delivering Autodesk Construction Cloud Connect for you. ACC Connect is a no-code platform that allows project engineers, project managers and VDC managers to connect hundreds of common SaaS applications to Autodesk Construction Cloud.

See ACC Connect in action

task and calendar management

When working with common business applications like cloud storage or back-office tools, most construction teams have unique ways they want their file structures organized, information flowing, or analytics databases arranged. With ACC Connect, a project manager can configure integrations that work around their business needs, not the other way around.  

It allows you to sync key data across several tools with a convenient, self-service approach. In other words, ACC Connect enables construction teams to configure integrations to common business apps without having to rely on developer support for custom code. This, of course, saves a tremendous amount of time and resources, while empowering teams to automate repetitive tasks or inefficient workflows. 

“Transferring data between the applications we use and those used by our clients and subcontractor partners can often be a complex, expensive, and error-prone process,” said Blaine Crawford, Director of Information Technology at C.W. Driver. “ACC Connect lets us easily build custom integrations between the solutions used across each of our project teams and workflows so we can streamline our data management, spend more time on project-critical tasks and ultimately drive more productivity.” 

Here are 6 ways ACC Connect can easily integrate with common tools in your tech stack and accelerate the value of your Autodesk Construction Cloud deployment:

1. Collaborate with non-Autodesk users via cloud storage

From turnover processes to archival requirements from owners , ACC Connect allows easy collaboration between construction teams and non-Autodesk stakeholders.

Project managers oversee facilitating collaboration and alignment of project stakeholders . Not every company has access to Autodesk Construction Cloud. Even if they do, they might want to archive or retain information somewhere else. ACC Connect allows you to intelligently sync information with your project and their cloud storage solution of choice.

The biggest benefit here is that ACC Connect allows you to create smart workflows using simple computer logic to route files from Autodesk Construction Cloud to specific subfolders or sections of a cloud storage application. That way the information is stored exactly where someone needs it, rather than just doing a data dump. External collaborators like this because the integration works around their business processes and not the other way around. 

For example, by using ACC Connect to create your own Sharepoint workflows , you can watch for new or updated documents or drawings uploaded to Sharepoint. Those can automatically be sent to relevant projects and folders in Autodesk Construction Cloud, BIM 360 or PlanGrid. Then they can be accessed and marked up by project or field teams. You can also collaborate on documents and project files via other cloud storage solutions like Box, Dropbox, and Egnyte. Each solution offers its own set of workflow automations.

2. Improve processes by connecting online spreadsheets

No matter if you’re a small business or enterprise, companies of all sizes use spreadsheets in their day-to-day operations to track, manage and improve processes. You can sync all your most important project data from Autodesk Construction Cloud with Google Sheets, Excel Online, and Smartsheet, among others. Smartsheet, for example, makes it easy to automate creation and updating of Gantt charts when your project data gets updated in Autodesk Construction Cloud.

Benefits of connecting your spreadsheets:

  • Use pivot tables to easily analyze data 
  • You can create Gantt charts for tracking timelines on submittals, RFI’s, and issues 
  • You can export Takeoff or Forms data for aggregate tracking
  • Analyze spreadsheets using queries and advanced formulas  

No more chasing people or spreadsheets down to get the info you need. Instead, you make it available where it’s easiest for stakeholders to access it, and accessible right when they need it. Data analysis and project management just got a whole lot easier. 

3. Automate reminders with notifications and calendar tools 

How many times have you missed a simple task that set off a costly ripple effect of new tasks just to course correct? By automating reminders with notifications and calendar tools, you can skip that whole round trip. Within ACC Connect, you can set up customized email notifications in applications like Microsoft Outlook or Google Calendar for triggered events.  For example, you may have a workflow which notifies a team of users on a project when a new drawing or file has been posted into an Autodesk Construction Cloud project. You can just as easily trigger notifications in Slack or Microsoft Teams as tasks created or due dates get closer.

You’ll not only help yourself by setting up these automatic reminders, but the whole team will thank you for pinging them with mission-critical tasks . It’s an easy way to avoid costly mistakes and can be done without any code in ACC Connect.

Use cases for automating reminders:

  • Automatically create events in your calendar to track deadlines and due dates in Outlook Online or Google Calendar
  • Use reminder features in calendars
  • Ping Slack, Microsoft Teams or Webex channels with a notification when a new submittal or issue is created
  • Create intelligent workflows so calendars and messaging apps communicate updates with each other 

4. Keep projects on track with popular task management tools

Arguably the toughest part of project management is not just keeping everyone moving forward, but keeping everyone focused on the tasks that have the most impact on project progress.

With ACC Connect, you can copy your project data to JIRA, Asana, and Trello for agile project management. This is another way to create Gantt charts with your project data. You’ll be able to tag and group objects for analysis, which allows you to identify trends for common issues, RFI’s, or submittals.

5. Make office-to-field collaboration seamless with cost, accounting and CRM integrations

Every company is going to have a system for managing their customers and managing their budgets and balance sheets. Connect the office to the field by pushing relevant data from Autodesk Construction Cloud into back-office applications like QuickBooks Online and Xero. You’ll also be able to integrate with Acumatica, SFDC, and Dynamics, among others. 

With ACC Connect, you can build a link between back-office and field activities. This allows you to eliminate duplicate data entry–saving time and minimizing errors–while guaranteeing teams on both sides have access to the key data they need when they need it.

By opening up the flow of data between the office and the real-world impact in the field, it becomes easier to execute jobs on budget and on time .

This is a big win for project managers looking to make life easier for their entire team.

6. Make better decisions with advanced analytics tools

Advanced business intelligence (BI) tools, like Power BI and Microsoft Analytics Platform (APS) collect and process large amounts of unstructured data from other systems, like Autodesk Construction Cloud. You can actually copy all sorts of data from your project – whether it’s cost data, timeline data, issues, RFI’s, form data, takeoff data, and more – and pull that into a data lake as unstructured data to be analyzed and run BI dashboards on top of. You can aggregate information across other applications in your tech stack and run custom analytics to identify and understand deeper business insights.

If you’d like to learn more about these project management tools and more, please check out all our integrations here .

Construction trends, tips, and news – delivered straight to your inbox

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  1. The 9 best calendar apps to stay organized

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  13. 10 Best Planner Apps To Organize Work Better (2022)

    1. Toggl Plan Toggl Plan is the overall best planner app for businesses and teams. With Toggl Plan, you can plan and track your team's schedule using simple drag-and-drop timelines. But if you prefer Kanban boards to manage your tasks, Toggl Plan has them too. You can also set color-coded milestones on the Project timeline.

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    1. Establish a routine. Creating a routine keeps you on-track. After all, without a routine you're rushing around and wasting time deciding on what to do next. Establishing a routine that works best for you may take some trial and error, but here's some suggestions on getting started: Make a list of all of your daily tasks.

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  25. What is Calendar Management? Definition

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  26. Outlook: Time Management with Calendar and Tasks

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  27. Project Milestone Template

    The project milestone template is a project management tool that shows the project's critical path and key milestones. It enables team members to visually track due dates for the completion of deliverables and manage task dependencies. This template helps teams create a project plan and strengthens project collaboration for effective team meetings.

  28. 6 Easy Wins for a Project Manager Using Our No-Code ...

    Create intelligent workflows so calendars and messaging apps communicate updates with each other 4. Keep projects on track with popular task management tools. Arguably the toughest part of project management is not just keeping everyone moving forward, but keeping everyone focused on the tasks that have the most impact on project progress.

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