How The Big Tasks Table Rescued My Sanity and Deadlines
An Homage to the movie “The Girl That Saved Me”, that I never watched and found out about him 5 minutes ago.
You know that feeling when your brain just can’t hold all your to-dos? In the tech industry, that feeling goes into overdrive. We juggle countless meetings, intricate details, ongoing projects, and so many other obligations that demand serious organization, whether you’re working solo or collaborating with a team.
While countless resources offer task management solutions, I want to introduce my personal method: “The Big Tasks Table.” It’s far from perfect, incredibly simple, but surprisingly effective.
In this post, I’ll walk you through the method, share how I started using it, discuss its pros and cons compared to other approaches, and explain why discovering a personal system that genuinely suits your needs is so vital.
The Task Management Tightrope
Before I found my footing, task management felt like walking a tightrope. As a junior software engineer, my initial role was manageable with basic organization, mostly relying on OneNote. But my second role? That’s where things spiraled. Our team operated with tight Scrum sprints and GitLab issues, and for me, it was a nightmare. I spent almost half my time organizing and describing tasks instead of actually doing the work. I’m not saying these methods are inherently wrong; it was just my personal experience then, but it left me feeling traumatized by complex systems.
When I transitioned to being a course instructor for a technology course, the chaos continued. We had a demanding one to two months to organize the curriculum, followed by an intense course period. The sheer volume of tasks meant we had to be incredibly organized. One day, my own instructor from when I took the course came to help. They mentioned a common way to categorize tasks: “Must Have,” “Really Want,” and “Nice To Have.” Something immediately clicked.
Introducing: The Big Tasks Table
That simple idea sparked “The Big Tasks Table.” I took those three categories and organized them into a structured table, which quickly became full of tasks, hence the name! It took some time to refine and adjust it, even experimenting with colors for collaborative work at one point. I’ve been using it consistently ever since.
The method itself is incredibly straightforward: You create a table with three columns and three rows.
Columns: This Week, This Month, Ongoing
Rows: Must Have, Really Want, Nice to Have
It should look like that!
Each week, you fill the blocks with your tasks, marking them off as you complete them. At the end of the week, you simply copy the table as is, remove any finished tasks, reset any “ongoing” marks, and keep going. I primarily use OneNote for this, but it works just as well in other platforms like Obsidian or any note-taking app.
When deciding which tasks to tackle, I recommend starting with the “Must Have” items for “This Week” (the upper-left block) and then moving across or down. If a task requires more detail or has sub-tasks, you can add them directly within that block. For tasks where you’re waiting on someone else, you can mark them in any way you prefer — I personally use highlighting to indicate a dependency.
Handy OneNote Shortcuts
OneNote is one of the best products of Microsoft in my opinion, here are some shortcuts you must know:
Ctrl+1 — Apply, select, or clear the To Do tag.
Ctrl+2 — Apply or clear the Important tag.
Ctrl+K — Insert a hyperlink.
Ctrl+Alt+H — Highlight the selected text.
Alt+Shift+D — Insert the current date.
Alt+Shift+T — Insert the current time.
Ctrl + f — search current page
Ctrl + e — search all notebooks.
If you want to learn more, check out Keyboard shortcuts in OneNote.
Why It Works (And When It Might Not)
The beauty of the Big Tasks Table lies in its simplicity.
The Good:
Super Simple: It takes only a few minutes to fill with all your tasks. If it takes longer, you’re probably overthinking it.
Always Visible: You can see all your tasks at a glance, ensuring nothing gets lost or forgotten.
Highly Adaptable: It’s easy to adjust to your specific needs. For example, a friend I shared this method with had so many tasks that he adapted it to a daily and weekly view!
The Challenges:
Minimal Detail: Its simplicity means there isn’t much space for comprehensive task descriptions or detailed notes.
No Analytics: You can’t run analytics or generate reports from it.
Solo Focus: It’s primarily designed for individual work and doesn’t seamlessly integrate with complex collaborative systems.
However, these challenges are manageable. For the past two years, I’ve successfully used the Big Tasks Table alongside team-based systems like Jira. It takes almost no extra time to manage my personal tasks in OneNote, even when collaborating within more complex platforms. While I still don’t particularly enjoy intricate systems like Jira, I understand their necessity when working with a team.
Find Your Own System
So, do you already have a method to manage your tasks? If yes, I’d love to hear what it is. Share your insights in the comments below, including what works well for you and any unique adaptations you’ve made. Your experiences could inspire others!
And if you don’t yet have a system, I truly recommend you start with one. The specific tools or methodologies matter less than the act of taking control. Whether it’s my Big Tasks Table, a simple to-do list app, or a complex project management software, any system is infinitely better than no system at all.
Experiment, adapt, and find what resonates with your personal workflow. The goal is to free up your mental energy from remembering tasks so you can focus on actually completing them, leading to less stress and more accomplished goals.
Originally published on AI Superhero
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