Time Management App Tagging

What is time management app tagging and how can it help your productivity ?

Time management app tagging is simply a way to gather similar tasks together by tagging them with some keywords that will help you organize them. But most task management systems already have options for organizing tasks by due dates, priority levels, project names and who a task is assigned to. So why do you also need “tags?”

Each Task Can Have Many Tags

One of the main benefits of tags over other task fields is that a task can have many tags whereas a task field only has a single choice.

Here is an example. Let’s say you have a number of tasks that need to be done while you are out of the office such as:

picking up a printing order

checking for decorations for an upcoming customer event

shopping for a new laptop

All of these tasks would have different projects and due dates attached, but you can also tag them with something like “Local Shopping” or “Local Errands.” So each of the tasks is still safely listed under its respective project, but tags let you create a useful shopping and errands list for when you go out.

Tags Let You Batch Tasks

Here are some more examples of how you could use tags to batch and filter tasks.

Hiring: Perhaps you have to hire people for 5 different projects. A tag like “Hiring” can let your HR department know about ALL the positions you need people for even though the tasks are scattered across 5 different projects. Simple: You could tag simple, easy tasks as “simple” or “>3pm” or “low energy” to indicate these are good tasks to work on near the end of the day when you are running out of energy. Review: You could use a “review” tag for tasks that need to be reviewed with your supervisor for feedback to help you remove obstacles for completion Meeting: A meeting tag could indicate that this is a task that should be added to the next meeting agenda to be discussed with the group Bug: You can mark all the tasks relating to fixing product problems as bugs so you can find them all Writing: I find that Fridays are quiter with few phone calls and appointments. So I now reserve Friday for writing. I can tag tasks with a “writing” tag so I can gather together all the writing I have to do on Fridays

Time Management App Tagging in Teamwork Projects

Now, lets look at how to do tagging in a few different task management systems.

The main task management system I use is Teamwork Projects. Within Teamwork, just click on the [tag] icon next to any task.

Once you have created tags and added some tasks to them, you can filter your tasks by clicking on the [Everything] tab at the top right of your Teamwork screen and then filtering by the tag you want.

Tagging in Trello

Trello doesn’t have an option called tags, but their “labels” option works the same way. Open a task card and click on [Labels] to assign a label to the task.

You can use the [Filter Cards] command on the right side menu to filter cards by labels.

Tagging in Outlook

In Outlook, tags are called “categories.”

Other Task Management Systems

Can’t find a tagging option on your task management system? Put in a support ticket to your software provider. If they don’t offer this fuction, consider changing to Teamwork or one of the other systems that support tagging.

If you have found this task management app tagging article useful, please share it with others.

Go home on time – you deserve it!

– Garland Coulson “Captain Time”