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There are two things that have changed my personal daily work organisation most positively in recent years:

  1. The consistent use of cloud services for email, calendar, documents and many other services. In other words, the now almost complete abandonment of local files. This makes me independent of my office PC. The motto here is: "Give me any PC with internet and I have my personal individual workplace."
  2. A small and very simple cloud tool at www.workflowy.com that has actually revolutionised my work. I would like to tell you about it today. Even though it actually has nothing to do with wine marketing; I am so excited about Workflowy that I don't want to withhold it from my readers.

What do I organise with Workflowy?

  • To-do lists. For a long time I have been searching in vain for suitable tools to maintain todo lists. The ones I found so far were too complicated, too powerful, too inflexible or not integrated well enough into other tools
  • Delegation control. Delegating tasks is sometimes not easy to organise. A task is delegated, its completion at a certain time has to be checked, other staff members are involved.
  • Prioritisation. Tasks have priorities. There are priorities because the task is important or because it is urgent or both. How do I distinguish between the two and how do I ensure that I use my time budget correctly?
  • Idea management. Every day I think of many things that could be done, or should be thought about further, or should be discussed with one or the other member of staff. Where do I leave it all?
  • Creative techniques. Many projects and ideas need to be thought through for a long time. There are many aspects and ideas that need to be considered. Mindmapping, brainstorming and other techniques are useful for this and require appropriate documentation and visualisation. Sometimes you don't work alone, but develop ideas in a team. This must also be possible.
  • Lists. Many things need to be collected in lists. Whether options for action, contact persons in a project, important customers and much more. Many of these lists are hierarchical, so a list sub-item is a list again, etc.
  • Meeting organisation. What else did I want to discuss with this employee or contact person? What was agreed? What was discussed?

What makes it particularly difficult is that the boundaries between these items are fluid and dynamic. An idea can quickly turn into a creative project, which then turns into individual delegation items, etc. Priorities become meeting items, delegation items, priorities again. And everything can have deadlines and/or priorities. So ideally you manage all these organisational requirements in one tool.

This sounds like a very powerful and complicated tool. The opposite is true.

Workflowy is a very smart, simple and fast tool that you can actually use to process not much more than hierarchical mirror point lists. So something like:

  • Overpoint1
    • Subitem
      • Details
      • another detail
    • another subitem
  • superpoint2

This simple function is complemented by a few very simple tools. For example, one can collapse and expand individual sub-points on each level. Or you can view a particular level individually. Then there is the idea of the tags known from Twitter, for example. By prefixing each word with #, it becomes a tag that you can easily search for later. But you can also search very effectively in other ways. For example, by entering "Peter" in the search field, I can restrict the entire hierarchical list to the lines in which the word "Peter" occurs. And I can mark each individual line or entire hierarchical levels as "Completed" and thus hide them in the standard view. Oh, and of course all this is in the cloud, so it can be used in any browser from anywhere (including smartphone or tablet) at any time.

That's really all there is to it. This smart tool only becomes really intelligent and practical when it is used. The creators of Workflowy do not prescribe how to use it, but everyone can and must find their own method.

How I work with Workflowy

  1. As a first level, I use subject areas such as "Marketing", "Wine Guide", "Private", etc.
  2. I enter every concept idea, todos, projects, meeting points underneath and, of course, use hierarchical structures again
  3. Every staff member has a tag such as #Peter, #Hans. If I want to discuss something with Peter, I use his tag
    • Meeting in Dortmund with client X
      • Find a room for the meeting in Dortmund
      • Set appointment
        • Talk to #Hans when he has time
      • Book train

    The next time I talk to Hans, I select my entire Workflowy by the tag #Hans and get all the meeting items with him. It's not for nothing that many appointments with employees are now just called "Workflowy meeting"

  4. I give my own todos stars for priority, i.e. *, ** or ***. The advantage is that I can select the list by *** at any time and find all the top-priority items or select by ** and see all the mid- to top-priority items
    • Meeting in Dortmund with customer X
      • Find a room for a meeting in Dortmund **
      • Set appointment
        • Talk to #Hans when he has time
      • Book train *
  5. When certain topics are put back in time, I use a tag for the respective calendar week:
    • Meeting in Dortmund with customer X
      • Find room for meeting in Dortmund, only after summer break #KW40
      • Set appointment
        • Talk to #Hans, when he has time
      • Book train
  6. I do delegation control by using the #KW tag in connection with staff days, so like this:
    • Meeting in Dortmund with customer X
      • Find a room for a meeting in Dortmund, only after the summer break #KW40
      • Set appointment
        • Talk to #Hans when he has time. Can't make it at the moment, but will let me know in #KW34
      • Book train

    Now it comes to my aid that you can search not only for tags but also for the exclusion of tags. So if I search for: "#Hans -#KW" then I see all meeting items with Hans that are not put on hold.

  7. At the beginning of each week, the #KW tags of the respective weeks are searched for and replaced. By marking the item as done or making a separate todo out of it, or by leaving the employee's day and thus putting the item back on the discussion list with the employee.
  8. I also use the #KW tags when I want to keep track of whether, for example, an external person has replied to a mail that was important to me:
    • Meeting in Dortmund with customer X
      • Find room for meeting in Dortmund, only after summer break #KW40
      • Set appointment
        • Talk to #Hans when he has time. He can't say at the moment, but will let me know in #KW34
        • Sent Mr. Müller an email about when he has time. Answered? #KW38
      • Book train
  9. Finally, an example of creative lists:
    • Meeting in Dortmund with customer X
      • Find room for meeting in Dortmund, only after summer break #KW40
      • Set appointment
        • Talk to #Hans when he has time. Can't make it at the moment, but will let me know in #KW34
        • Mr. Müller mail, when he has time. Answered? #KW38
      • Book train
        • or go by car?
          • faster
          • but I am not rested for the appointment
          • maybe combine with another appointment?
        • or fly?
          • too much work, because the airport is too far away

I hope I was able to convey my way of working with Workflowy. Of course, this can be supplemented or modified at will. Workflowy itself is completely flexible.

Just try it out

I would also like to mention that you can share your Workflowy with others at any level. With read and/or write rights. This also supports teamwork well.

Just give it a try. Up to 1000 lines, Workflowy is free. Above that, it costs 5 euros per month.

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