Mastering task management isn’t hard, but it does take an intentional effort. Here at Dock, we call it the “task management mindset.”
What is a task? We believe everything involved in caring for patients and delivering care is a task. Adding tasks to Dock ensures no balls get dropped and everyone knows who is responsible for what.
You Already Have These Task-Management Skills
If task management is a mindset, then everyone has the base-level skills to achieve it:
Planning well so you can get from start to finish with minimal disruptions and delays
Scheduling when you’ll do something requires you to understand how to segment necessary work into smaller tasks, prioritize those tasks, and schedule the right amount of time for each
Teamwork is necessary so you are sure the work you’ve done can be the foundation for future data-driven decisions
Risk assessment means being able to spot potential risks, bottlenecks, and delays before they interrupt or derail your day
Communication skills involve knowing how to communicate the information from the above skills to your teammates AND how to listen to feedback from others to avoid unnecessary confusion, wasted time or even errors
True Efficiency Lies in Prioritizing Tasks
We all know how to fill a to-do list, but are we as good at completing it? Dwight D. Eisenhower’s matrix, made popular by author Stephen Covey in his best-seller The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, is a beloved method for prioritizing tasks. It encourages effective time management and decision-making by providing a visual framework for assessing the relative importance and urgency of tasks.
Built by healthcare professionals for healthcare professionals, Dock takes a similar approach to capturing, assigning, tracking, and completing tasks – without error and delay.
A Running Start
Once you begin adding tasks to Dock, it’s easier for your teammates to have visibility into what work is their responsibility and expectations for when it’s due.
So if you used to put it here, now put it in Dock.
A few more ideas: is that task recurring? Set up a recurrence in Dock.
Does the task go to your email inbox? Automatically forward specific and recurring emails from your inbox to Dock instead.