☑Tasks, follow-ups, appointments

The separation is simple once you have settled it:

• Follow-up: attached to a contact. “Follow up with Mr Krause on 14 March.”
• Task: an activity, with or without a contact. “Write the template for the follow-up mail.”
• Appointment: an arrangement at a fixed time, usually with other people. “Meeting Thursday 10:00.”

The test: is it about a person or about an activity? Person → follow-up. Activity → task. A time with other people → appointment.

What happens if you do not separate them: everything ends up in one list that gets too long, and then nobody looks at it any more. The separation is not an end in itself — it keeps the lists short enough to be used.

The one on which you actually want to act — not the one on which you ought to think about it.

The difference is decisive: a date set too early gets postponed. A date postponed three times gets ignored. And a list full of ignored entries is worthless.

Practical rules:

• Specific rather than approximate. “In the autumn” becomes 15 September.
• Go by the occasion. Someone who says “after the annual accounts” means mid-March.
• Do not put it on a Monday. There is too much on Mondays anyway; set it for Tuesday or Wednesday.
• Build in a buffer for anything that depends on other people.

And: if you postpone a date for the third time, that is a signal. Either it is not important, or something else is in the way.

Decide — on each one. Do not ignore them, do not collect them.

For every overdue entry there are exactly three options:

1. Do it now. For most, it takes five minutes.
2. Reschedule it, with a specific new date and a note saying why.
3. Cross it off. If it is no longer important, that is the honest answer.

What does not work: leaving it. A list with twenty overdue entries is no longer opened, and then the one important item slips through as well.

Take ten minutes once a week for the overdue items. Ideally on Fridays: then you go into the weekend with a clean list.

By responsibility or topic, not by time — the time is already in the due date.

What has proved its worth:

• One list per person, if everyone has their own tasks.
• One list per larger undertaking — “Office move”, “Introducing Aurora Hive Sales”.
• One shared list for everything anyone can do.

What does not work:

• Lists by urgency (“important”, “later”). They go out of date immediately.
• Twenty lists. What you cannot keep track of, you do not use.

Three to five lists are right for most businesses. And delete lists that are finished — a list called “Christmas campaign 2024” has no business being there in March.

Assign it, and talk about it. An assigned task that nobody knows about is not a task.

What belongs in a good task:

• What exactly needs to be done, in one sentence. Not “Sort out customer Meier”.
• By when.
• How you can tell that it is finished.
• The contact or matter it concerns.

What you should not do: use tasks as a means of communication. Someone who has a question asks it — they do not create a task.

And the rule that saves trouble: assigning does not mean handing off. Whoever gives out a task should also check whether it has been done — otherwise you end up in the state where everyone thinks someone else is taking care of it.

Create them as a recurring task where possible — otherwise as a series of individual entries.

What is worth keeping as recurring:

• Data maintenance — quarterly.
• Legal review — annually.
• Checking the backup — annually.
• Testing the form — quarterly.
• Checking user accounts — annually.

The value lies not in the reminder but in the fact that it happens at all. Data maintenance for which there is no date does not happen — regardless of how convinced everyone is that it would be important.

And if you postpone a recurring task three times in a row: check whether it is still needed. Some routines outlive their purpose.

Nothing — unless you arrange it beforehand. A follow-up that falls due during your holiday lapses silently.

What you should do on your last working day, ten minutes:

1. Go through your own follow-ups that fall within your absence.
2. Decide: postpone or hand over.
3. When handing over: a note with the current status, so that your stand-in knows what it is about.
4. Check running campaigns: who answers the replies?

Point 4 is forgotten most often and does the most damage: a campaign whose replies are left for two weeks would have been better not started.

And your stand-in works with their own account — not with yours.

For appointments that belong to a matter — customer meetings, viewings, interviews.

The advantage over your usual calendar: the appointment is attached to the contact. Anyone who opens the file sees when you met.

What it does not replace: your work calendar with everything else that is coming up. Keeping two complete calendars in parallel does not work.

The division that has proved its worth:

• Appointments related to a matter here, so that they appear in the history.
• Everything else where it has always been.

And if you are unsure: an appointment you want to find again in the contact file belongs here. A dentist’s appointment does not.

Spend two minutes looking at the file — that is the difference between a prepared meeting and an arbitrary one.

What you are looking for there:

• When did you last have contact, and about what?
• What has been promised — by you and by the other side?
• Are there open points from the last conversation?
• Is a campaign running to this person?

And what you should take with you: one sentence from the last conversation. “You said the hall would be finished in the spring — how did it go?” That is the difference between a sales rep and a partner.

On a mobile phone you can do this in the car outside the door. That is exactly what mobile access is for.

Three things, ideally in the car before the next one:

1. Note — what you discussed, what you agreed, in keywords.
2. Follow-up for the next step, with a date.
3. Tasks, if you promised something — with a deadline.

The third point is where trust is built or lost. A promise made in the meeting and forgotten afterwards weighs more heavily than any discount.

What many people do instead: try to remember everything. That works until the third meeting on the same day.

And if you cannot get to it straight away: at least three keywords. You can build the full note from them in the evening; you cannot build it from nothing.

A clean cut, then a new approach — not working through it.

The cut:

1. Go through everything that has been overdue for more than three months once.
2. For each entry: do it, reschedule it or cross it off.
3. Crossing off is the most common correct answer — whatever could lie for three months was not important.

Afterwards:

• Create fewer. Not every idea is a task.
• Schedule more realistically. Not “tomorrow” if you know it will take two weeks.
• Ten minutes a week for the overdue items.

The real damage of a list that is too long is not the work in it — it is that people stop opening it. And then the one important item slips through as well.

On the overview — it shows what is on today. That is where the working day should begin.

What you see there: your follow-ups, your tasks, your appointments. Not the team’s.

What that requires: that you open the overview in the morning. A reminder nobody looks at reminds nobody of anything.

What you can also do:

• Set up notifications, if you want them.
• An icon on your phone’s home screen — then it is one tap away.

And the honest assessment: no system reminds you of something you have not entered. The reminder is the second step; the first is the habit of setting it.