How To-Do Lists Can Increase Productivity At Work
Tags: Productivity, Time Management, To Do Lists, Brutask, Remote Work

Everyone at Brucira starts their workdays in the same way: by making a to-do list.

When India announced its Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020, Brucira shifted to an entirely remote working model. This meant that our small team of designers, developers, project managers, marketers, and content creators were now spread out across the country.

Switching to remote work was challenging in many different aspects — it was difficult to collaborate, plan meetings, and bond with team members when we couldn’t take into account what each person was currently working on.

To combat this, Brucira designed and developed Brutask, a simple task management tool, one day before the country went into lockdown.

What is Brutask?

Brutask is a digital to-do list for small teams like ours. We wanted to ensure that our team members enjoyed the same level of freedom and autonomy while working on their projects without compromising on clarity or understanding for supervisors.

At Brucira, we don’t believe in micromanaging anyone — we’ve seen our team members stay on task and perform optimally without managers nagging them at every step of the way.

Remote work challenged this. How could we let our team members work on their tasks while keeping everyone in the loop? We didn’t want to interrupt their workflow with slack updates or mid-day meetings.

That’s where we came up with the idea of a digital to-do list for everyone at Brucira. Brutask allows team members to add their daily tasks, push the important ones to the top to prioritize them, and allocate time for each task. Each team can assign managers to oversee the progress on the tasks and ensure nothing’s left out.

Why Brutask?

You know the satisfaction you get when you cross out or check off a task on your to-do list? Brutask weaves that same feeling into your workday.

More brain-space for creativity

When you have a lot of (new) items to remember to do each day, you take up valuable brain space that could be better spent in creativity. Writing a to-do list helps you note down each task you have to work on, leaving little room for error or forgetting something important. Once it’s added to your list on Brutask, you can stop being preoccupied with it.

2. Increased motivation

Adding each day’s tasks when you begin work can help you get a clear sense of what’s on your plate. But the real fun is checking them off at the end of the day. The feeling of accomplishment is incredibly motivating and makes you want to be more productive the next day, helping you work smarter and better to get through your to-do list faster.

3. Efficient workflow

Sometimes, we may not realize the amount of time we spend drafting the perfect reply to an email or redoing the design we’re working on over and over again. Brutask lets you allocate time to each of your tasks so you gain a better understanding of how well you can work within these timeboxes. This also enables you to weed out any distractions and interruptions while giving you a clearer idea of the time you need to work on your tasks.

Timeboxing also allows your supervisors to know exactly what you’re working on. This helps them to guide you and offer constructive feedback, so you don’t spend too much time on a single task and forget about the other items on your to-do list.

4. Break down bigger goals into achievable steps

Often, there’s a large project that demands most of your attention. It can be overwhelming if you aren’t able to see a start and end and don’t know how to express that to your supervisor. To-do lists help you break big goals down into smaller, more achievable steps.

For instance, if you’re working on a website redesign, it’s not likely that the entire project will commence and end within one workday. But the seeming lack of progress can dishearten you and your team members. Breaking down the project into different tasks like Information Architecture, low-fi designs, high-fi designs, wireframes, sketches, illustrations, final designs, etc. can help you check them off as you finish them, showing you the progress you’re making through the day.

5. Higher productivity, better output

A daily to-do list helps you stay on top of your tasks every day. This makes you an easy team member to rely on — both for your colleagues and your superiors. Planning for 15 minutes every day can save more than an hour during execution. In fact, setting your work goals through to-do lists can increase your income by $4000 compared to those who don’t set any goals.

Brutask’s Impact

Brutask helps you manage your workload better, so you’re able to take on tasks according to your bandwidth, reducing the possibility of overworking yourself and creating sub-par work. By allocating your time wisely, you’re increasing your productivity, the quality of your output, and sharpening your time management skills for the long term.

We’ve seen the positive impact Brutask has had on our team — increased motivation, higher productivity, effortless team projects, and a happier crowd at Brucira. That’s why we think you should try Brutask out for your team.

We pair our daily to-do lists with a team-wide call at the start of the workday where we go through our lists, prioritize and timebox tasks with our managers’ guidance. Twice a week, we have wrap-up calls to highlight our progress, ask for any assistance, or inform our managers about any successes or hiccups.

Brutask is the perfect addition to your small work family. Regular scrums & daily to-do lists can go a long way to increase the productivity, motivation, and content levels of your team.

Check out other products in the works at Brucira here .

Reach out to us at hello@brucira.com to design intelligent products for your business.

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