Manage Tasks and Work with Microsoft 365
“There is only one way to eat an elephant, a bite at a time.” — Desmond Tutu.
This is true of any task or outcome we need to accomplish. be it small tasks, such as making coffee, brushing our teeth, getting ready for work, or large tasks, building a house, designing a car, building a bridge, or changing the way we communicate in our company. All these things are seldom done in one large sweep of activity without any thought. These things are usually achieved through small increments.
Make Coffee – Fill the kettle, boil the water, get a coffee mug (or wash a dirty one), get a teaspoon, place a teaspoon of instant coffee into the cup, wait for the water to boil and place the boiled water into the coffee mug, add your sugar, add your milk, and then finally stir your coffee and now you have you cup of warm, comforting coffee. What a job! Seems like a huge task, doesn’t it? well we do it every day and sometimes multiple times a day, without even thinking about it.
This is how we would like to do everything that we do each day, without stress, without overcomplication and as part of moving forward towards the outcomes that we have chosen.
Why a task centric approach?
By taking any outcome that we want to accomplish and breaking it into steps to complete, we can see what is possible and not be overwhelmed by not knowing where to start. We can see what must be done before we do this task. We can decide how we can do each step. We can farm out what we can’t do ourselves and get each puzzle piece perfectly defined and then assembled to produce the result that we need.
To get technical, we can use Microsoft 365 Word online to create our project charter or outline scope of work. By using the word “our”, we mean a collaborative document. By using Word online, we can add comments and draw our colleague’s attention by using @ mentions and assigning a task within the document.
An email will be sent to the colleague, with a message from your comment and a link to the precise location in the document that the action is required.
Wow! neat hey. We should be shouting with joy for just this one new way of getting something done. One document, one place of truth, all on the same page. Thank you, Microsoft.
The old approach, mark our comment in the document, send an email to your colleague with the word document attached. Wait for a reply, combine the documents from each of the colleagues you have sent the document to, then choose the solutions you want to use, send the document out and do it all over again. Hope you have all the comments from everyone, and hope you have the latest comments.
Microsoft Word is used as an example here. This is true in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint online
Further information: Track and Manage Tasks | Microsoft 365
