How to put things in order in thoughts and deeds

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

When thousands of ideas are swarming in your head, you grab onto one or the other. As a result, you do not have time for anything. Scattered information needs to be structured and transformed into to-do lists, and routine tasks need to be delegated. The good news is that you don't need to install a ton of apps to do this. Goalton.com will help you sort everything out.

What is Goalton Productivity

The life hacker already wrote in detail about this wonderful service a year ago, and during this time a lot has changed, and for the better. The service has become overgrown with many useful functions and has become even more convenient.

Everything in Goalton is beautiful and simple in its own way: just you and a sheet of paper. But not simple, but in the form of one of seven templates, which corresponds to the type of problem being solved at the moment.

In short, it allows you to organize everything: projects, ideas, clients. This cloud service helps to significantly increase both the personal productivity of an individual and the productivity of an entire team through the use of a few simple, but at the same time super effective tools.

Mind Maps

The first tool is mind maps. Mind mapping can be a great way to unload your brain and transfer scattered and ever-jumping thoughts to paper. The essence of the mind map mode is that you set a central problem (or goal) and then, in a chaotic manner, write everything that comes to your mind and relates to the given topic.

At this stage, do not try to give some structure to your thoughts - let them jump. You simply write down all ideas, problems or tasks and, where necessary, detail them.

As you put your thoughts down on paper, they begin to take on a kind of structure. Electronic mindmaps are convenient because, looking at the resulting circuit, you gain a clearer understanding of the whole picture. You can always just take the desired element with the mouse and drag it to a more correct place, assembling tasks according to those logical signs that you need.

What's especially handy at Goalton.com is the ability to use focus mode. If your circuit becomes too cumbersome, you can always switch to working with a separate piece of it, temporarily hiding other branches. To go into focus, simply click on the triangle at the beginning of the problem.

Hierarchical task tree

In Goalton, you can change the way data is presented with one click. In other words, at any time you can turn your mental diagram into a clear nested list of tasks, and vice versa, transform your checklist into a diagram.

Such a solution can be safely called unique, since we have not seen such a solution in any other service, and this is really extremely convenient. Each of us has our own individual type of thinking: for one, a diagram looks more clearly, for another - a tabular form.

In the classic Outline mode, you can assign a responsible person for each task, a deadline, and indicate the current status of the task. List mode will be especially useful for those who solve business problems.

In this case, you can decompose any element, that is, break it down into its constituent subtasks as many times as necessary. Do this until your tasks are so simple that it’s impossible not to complete them. Fortunately, there is no limit to the number of nested levels in Goalton. And yes, don't forget to use focus mode: it really helps you concentrate and find a quick fix.

If some of the information categorically does not want to be built into the system, you can enter it into the notes of the current project. You can use this view to quickly record your spontaneous thoughts. It is convenient to copy links to sites here, insert pieces of text and even attach pictures to them for clarity. In the future, you can also see these notes in the Notes folder, from where they can be dragged to other sections, turning thoughts into concrete tasks.

Diary

Perhaps Goalton would not have been so popular if not for its famous planing mode. In the diary mode, you will see all your tasks with a specific deadline, and you will also be able to create new ones. By dragging and dropping task cards with the mouse, you can put complete order in your calendar and take control of both your tasks and the tasks assigned by you to your team members.

The diary has a conveniently implemented task filtering system: you can always mark to display only tasks from the project you need. For example, in this way you can hide office tasks and leave only personal tasks with one click, or vice versa. You can see the tasks assigned to you or by you. If a contact from the address book is attached to the task, then right here you will have access to his card from the built-in CRM system.

Well, for fans of classic to-do-lists, Goalton.com has a mode where you can see overdue cases, cases for today, tomorrow or the coming week. In general, quite simple and convenient.

Kanban board

Surprisingly, the guys from Goalton.com were able to implement such a complex tool as kanban on the basis of their platform. In fact, kanban is analogous to a board for attaching task cards that move from left to right, going through predetermined stages.

In this service, you can create an unlimited number of projects, for each of which you can set up your own stages: one for the agency, others for negotiating contracts, and third for Scrum. The number of stages in Goalton is unlimited.

What is especially convenient, you can specify for each of the stages your own limit on the number of tasks that are at this stage (Work in progress Limit). For example, you might define that there can be only three tasks in the design phase. In this case, the system signals to you that you are trying to overload this employee, giving him the fourth task.

You can also set the maximum time for a task to be at a stage. For example, for the "testing" or "approval" stage, you can set a period of two days, and the system will highlight in red the cards of those tasks that are overdue and require your attention.

Deals and mini CRM

Since Goalton is primarily designed to solve business problems, the service has not bypassed those who work in startups or small companies, in a word, everyone who keeps track of their transactions.

It is no secret that when trying to sell his product, a merchant must keep track of the stage at which a particular transaction is, especially in the case of long cycles. At Goalton.com, you can create deals and place them on the Kanban board in the same way as for simple tasks.

The only difference is that, since transactions have the amount and date of the expected closing, the user will be able to receive reports for a specific time period, and autocalculation of amounts will be added on the Kanban board itself.

It turns out that in the transaction mode, kanban turns into a full-fledged and visual sales channel. This is extremely convenient because it allows you to immediately determine where all the potential profits have accumulated with a quick glance at the board. Thus, you can organize control over sales channels or conduct an analysis of the performance of specific managers.

The system allows you to close deals in the classic "win-lose" method, and also automatically registers all information on working with a client in the built-in CRM system.

Summary

Goalton has collected all the most effective task management tools and combined them into a convenient ecosystem. Of course, we have seen the implementation of certain aspects in other services, but no one has yet managed to combine them together and make it possible to easily transform data from one view to another.

If you need a full-fledged multitool to cope with the flow of your thoughts and tasks, then Goalton.com will be your best assistant. Registration in the service is free, and for $ 1 a month you can get access to almost all functions.