Why aren’t task management apps as popular as Pokemon Go? If it’s true that every single functioning adult on the planet manages their tasks using a method of some kind, why hasn’t at least one app achieved the popularity of a game which recently hit 25 million users per day?

After all, completing tasks is far more important than catching Pokémon, visiting Pokéstops, and doing gym battles. We all hate it when we don’t get stuff done, even if the task is only a fun one, like catching Pikachu.

The easy answer would be to blame users’ superficial need for fun.

But how can designers of task management apps make their programs more engaging? Are there practical answers to this question that would make a difference?

In this article, we start by stepping away from bits, bytes, and interface designs in order to focus on behaviors. Doing so helps us clearly distinguish the games people play as they take the journey from novice to expert in task execution. Armed with this deeper understanding, perhaps there is a way designers could enhance the user experience. Maybe they could make it more game-like, engaging and fun.

If that were to happen, perhaps fewer newbies would abandon task management apps such as Todoist, Wunderlist and Google Tasks because they fail to have a meaningful “Ah-Ha” moment — a clear experience of the product’s benefit.

To answer these questions we’ll tap into two impulses each person has with respect to apps they download: 1) an intention for it to make a material difference and 2) a hope that the experience might be interesting and even fun. To reach these twin goals, we’ll bring together two schools of thought: one developed at Harvard Business School (HBS) and the other originating in computer gaming.

Two Schools: Innovation Meets Gamification

The first school of thought originates from HBS Professor Clay Christiansen. He’s an expert in disruptive innovation and helped create the idea that a customer needs to be seen as “someone who is trying to get a job done.” He discourages companies from focusing too much on features and benefits of their software, products, and services.

Instead, they should help users improve the way they try to do their core jobs. See them as “hiring” solutions for short-term purposes, he says. John Dubbin explains the principle in an article entitled: “For what job would you hire a milkshake?” We rephrase the question to suit our purpose and ask: “For what job would you hire a task management app?”

The second school of thought is that the best solutions to customer problems are, by definition, gamified. In other words, they offer a deeply engaging , entertaining experience in which customers’ actions are clearly linked to obvious feedback. This response encourages more actions, setting up a compelling cycle which is hard to break.

A properly gamified system has the following core attributes which support this cycle:

- Objective goals

- Easy to comprehend score-sheets

- Feedback mechanisms

- Autonomy to make choices

- Coaching

Most effectively gamified systems start by strengthening and building the individual’s intrinsic motivation, rather than rushing into the popular game elements which have been so popularized: Points, Badges and Leader-boards (PBL’s.) These boost extrinsic motivators: helpful, but they are not essential.

As we merge the ideas from HBS and gamification into one, we can imagine that users who are trying to get a particular job done start by hiring a task management method or app. They continue to use it if they have an engaging experience. But that’s not all.

Unlike board or computer games, task management apps serve a higher purpose than mere entertainment. They exist in a context where the stakes are high. Poor task management is a precursor to failure in all practical aspects of life, bar none, acting as a powerful antidote to life’s randomness. Pay attention to this skill and the door swings open to a fulfilling job, well-being, beneficial relationships, and career.

So task management is a job and a game at the same time. People who use them are users and players. We know from the design of engaging video games that they also include a Players’ Journey — the movement from one level of skill to another. If task management also happens to include a journey, what are its stages and when does it start and end?

The User/Player Journey

Most online gamers are familiar with the idea of the Player’s Journey. This growth from lower to higher levels is marked by measurable shows of achievement, the addition of special powers and a capacity to learn and execute new skills. Well-designed games keep players hooked by making this journey clear, along with the milestones needed to get to the next level.

My research at 2Time Labs shows that there is actually an organic journey that all customers of task management apps embark on when they are children. The journey’s job and game-like nature remain hidden from most: as we illuminate the pathway in this article, keep this in mind. Today, neither user/players nor designers are aware of its existence. With that in mind, let’s look at the genesis of this journey starting when we are children.

As kids, we learn the concept of time from other people at around the age of eight or nine. It sets the stage for an event which happens a few years later: the creation of our first “time demand”, one of the psychological objects we bring into being as we mature. Each time demand is defined as an “internal, individual commitment to complete an action in the future”. It’s the kind of task we assign to ourselves for completion — a self-made promise.

Given the absolute importance of time demands to a successful life, we continue to create them as long as we retain the mental capacity to do so. Furthermore, from the moment we realize their value, we engage in a relentless drive to generate more.

This sets up a lifetime struggle. As the number of time demands we create continues to increase, we look for new ways to accomplish them. We come to see this increased capacity as crucial to the accomplishment of bigger goals.

The experience of creating more personal capacity in order to get more done may be a familiar experience. Anyone who has played computer online games like Diner Dash may recognize a similarity. (Ironically, it belongs to a genre of entertaining apps called “time management games”.)

In this particular game you play the role of the manager of a diner. The simulation feeds your customers in a continuous, increasing flow. Your job is to keep up with higher volumes by changing your tactics for assigning them to tables, taking orders, serving meals and collecting payment. With each round, and level, the task becomes more difficult.

It’s a very popular genre, with lots of similarities to real life, with just a few exceptions. One is that these games have a clear end — you can “win” by serving the last customer at the highest level. In real-life, there is no end-point… you can play the game of managing time demands until you arrive at death’s door.

Another difference is that the game is the sole source of customers and tasks. In a given round, it decides how many to send you. In real life, however, you are the source of your time demands. Plus, your mind isn’t as considerate… it doesn’t naturally stop creating more time demands than you can handle. This reality pushes many into feelings of overwhelm.

The final difference is that there is no “final level” other than the end of the game in Diner Dash. That’s the very opposite of real life. My research shows there are people who are happy and productive at all levels of the player’s journey involved in managing time demands. (It’s backed up by research showing that approximately half of all employees report that they have enough time to get everything done.)

They don’t have a problem because they resist the urge to create more time demands, striking up a perfect balance in which little changes. As a result, there’s no need to up-level. In fact, some actually down-level when they reach retirement, a fact I point out in my book, Perfect Time-Based Productivity.

But one key similarity with Diner Dash is that in the beginning, improvements come easily. In the six levels I will now describe, the gains also become progressively more difficult to accomplish.

Level 1 — Memory

In the beginning, as young adolescents, we teach ourselves to remember time demands. After all, each one originates in the mind so it’s only natural that we would store them for later retrieval in our internal memory bank which psychologists call “prospective memory.”

This works well when there are only a few things to remember. However, as our goals grow in size and number, they call for the creation, management and completion of more time demands. Then, we have a problem. Some of them start slipping through the cracks… to our consternation. This is the first time we face this problem, but it’s one that features at every level. It can be distressing, especially if we believe that it’s a problem we had already dealt with a long time ago.

I have met a few adults who never confront the problem, attempting to rely on memory for the rest of their lives. If they are illiterate or have a disability, it might be the only method they ever use. More often than not, they simply lack role models.

However, most professionals teach themselves a new technique and progress to Level 2 or 3.

Level 2 — Paper

Most of us who are Baby Boomers, Gen X and Gen Y’ers migrated from the memory usage of Level 1 to the use of written To-Do Lists (i.e. paper) of the next level. However, many of today’s adolescents probably skip the use of paper altogether and go straight to the next level, which involves the use of a digital task manager.

Level 3 — Simple Task App

Often, the first tool we pick up to replace a paper To-Do List is just a digital version of the same tool we have been using. It offers a few more conveniences but essentially bears the same basic features.

If we add more time demands, our lists become too long to manage in this way. We look for a substitute. Noticing the power of more complex apps, we make a switch. (Examples of both Simple and Complex Apps can be found in this article https://zapier.com/blog/best-todo-list-apps/.)

Level 4 — Complex Task App

At this level, complex task apps enable us to manage long lists by allowing us to add important information to each task. There are many choices, but the typical user only chooses one or two attributes.

Some prefer location-based information (i.e. contexts) like @home or @computer, as promoted by the popular book, Getting Things Done. Others prefer to use the Eisenhower/Covey Matrix in which we use two attributes — priority and urgency. A third much smaller group employs temporal information such as a due date or duration.

Apps in this category provide varying degrees of flexibility in their choice of attribute, but the underlying fact is that a time demand is an intricate creation with a long list of potential attributes.

Today, we have a few hundred apps to choose from. They are ubiquitous and inexpensive, often sharing the same core features. On many tablets, laptops, smartphones and watches, either a simple or complex task app comes pre-installed. Most are available in some form for free.

However, sometimes these apps are just not enough. Many of us who show Type A behavior continue the game of creating more time demands and bump into a predictable limit: we run out of time.

Even if a Complex App allows us the ability to place tasks on a calendar, that technique eventually falls short. The problem isn’t one of placement. The fact is that each day, week, month and year is limited in duration and anyone who attempts to schedule tasks in a calendar must account for their available time. It’s the only way to avoid obvious errors of over-commitment and coordination.

For a while, most of us who approach this point compensate by trying hard to manage a mental calendar of tasks and appointments. Doing so helps us say “No” when we need to, plus make realistic promises and set reliable due dates. When an unexpected disruption occurs, we mentally re-juggle this calendar, but this task becomes harder to accomplish as more time demands are added.

Actually, truth be told, this mental calendar has been our companion all along, at all three lower levels. It just didn’t come into the foreground because, up until now, we had enough spare time to recover from errors. Now, the high volume of time demands takes away this buffer. We have less free time, and the shortcomings of this particular practice become obvious. We become stressed.

We start to wonder… what would it be like to replace this mental calendar with its digital counterpart? What if we used Outlook, Google or a smartphone to schedule more than just appointments? These questions push us to consider an upgrade.

Level 5 — Calendar of All Tasks

Once we tell ourselves that there should be a way to successfully manage all of our time demands in a calendar system, we are contemplating “Total Task Scheduling.” In its purest form, this skill eschews the use of a To-Do List, only relying on a calendar of tasks. (In fact, a calendar is just an enhanced To-Do List, but for the purposes of this article, let’s keep them separate.)

Those of us who actually attempt this technique experience a rude surprise.

We discover that it takes a monumental effort to convert all our commitments into a feasible schedule. It’s a manual, tedious process that involves a large number of variables. Putting it together for the first time can be exhausting.

However, there is a comfort that comes from observing our first complete result. It represents an optimal plan — one that takes into account everything that needs to be done in a single, visually clear place. There are no overlaps. Or conflicts. Nothing is left out. It’s much easier to juggle tasks and appointments. Its very existence is more likely to produce a better outcome than a mental calendar ever did.

Unfortunately, that happy feeling is often short-lived. Depending on our work environment, the first disruption occurs within hours or even minutes, rendering our carefully crafted schedule obsolete. Now, we must react.

Should we immediately update the entire calendar? Or wait until the following day? Or week? After all, changing a single due-date or appointment can produce a multi-day ripple effect that can take a long time to re-juggle... the better part of a day, in fact.

Even if there are no disruptions, the following morning brings inevitable decay: the whole calendar must be updated with tasks which are new, completed or deleted. All this overhead adds up so that many of us quit Total Task Scheduling after only a few days. A large number correctly foresee the difficult nature of the challenge and don’t even try.

However, there are a tiny few who figure out the intricate habits required. They reap the benefits but must make a considerable investment in perfecting new behaviors.

When I published my book, I thought that this was the end of the journey and so may you. Fortunately, I was wrong. Like others, I found Total Task Scheduling to be a huge challenge and even though I had implemented it to some degree, I was ecstatic when a new level emerged.

Level 6 — Auto-Scheduler of All Tasks

Apps such as SkedPal Beta (which I use daily and also do work for), Timeful (which was acquired by Google in 2015) and others are some of the tools used to reach this level. They are all designed to automatically juggle your schedule using Narrow Artificial Intelligence. With robot-like precision, they produce an optimized schedule within seconds.

Since making the switch about a year ago, I have been able to handle far more time demands than ever before. It’s a new experience — so new that the third article in this series will focus exclusively on Level 6 games.