Many people try to use their calendar as a task manager or their task manager as a calendar. Neither works well.
Your calendar is designed for time-specific commitments: meetings, appointments, deadlines, and events that must happen at a particular time. It answers the question "when."
Your task manager is designed for work items: things that need to be done, tracked, and completed. It answers the question "what."
These are different questions, and they need different tools.
The Calendar-as-Task-Manager Problem
When you put tasks on your calendar, you create rigid time commitments for flexible work. "Write proposal 2-4pm" looks organized, but what happens when the meeting at 1pm runs over? Or when you finish the proposal at 3pm? The calendar either lies (the block exists but you are doing something else) or creates stress (you feel behind because you missed your scheduled block).
Tasks belong in a system that is flexible about when you do them. Your calendar should only contain things that are genuinely time-bound.
The Task-Manager-as-Calendar Problem
When you try to track meetings and deadlines in your task manager, you lose the time-based view that makes calendars useful. Seeing that you have a meeting at 2pm and a deadline on Friday requires a temporal layout that most task managers do not provide.
The Integration
The best approach is two tools working together. Your calendar handles time-bound commitments. Your task manager handles work items. The two inform each other: your calendar tells you how much time you have available, and your task manager tells you what to fill that time with.
Nix It is designed as the task management half of this equation. It integrates with your Outlook calendar to give you visibility into your schedule while managing your work on a visual canvas. Time-specific commitments stay on your calendar. Work items live on your canvas as cards.
When you sit down to work, you check your calendar for upcoming commitments (how much time do you have?) and your canvas for available work (what should you fill that time with?). The two tools together give you a complete picture without either one trying to be something it is not.
Nix It pairs with your calendar to create a complete work management system. Learn more and try it free.
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