Creating My Own Task List in Google Sheets

Last year, as I began to aim for a Master's degree in business analytics in the US, I got incredibly anxious about how unprepared I am, and how little time there is left until my application. I scrambled to find anything I could do to improve myself, but after months of research, I felt quite lost, to say the least. After giving it some thought, I realized that I wanted to accomplish too much at the same time, and that eventually took a toll on me, also hurting the quality of my work simultaneously. I was determined to make my life more organized, and force myself to take it one task at a time.

Drawing from my past experiences in organizing events, I figured that a task list to list my everyday goals "explicitly" was what I needed. I already had a Google Calendar worked out, but I'm a person that needs to be constantly reminded of my end goal—reaching the States in this case, so I required something else. I decided to break down my tasks into a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), and display my progress with a Gantt chart. The image below serves as a quick demonstration.

Let's go through some features that make this task list extra neat and powerful for me.

1. Task drill-down: I wrote down all of my goals, and then assigned the necessary tasks, subtasks and sub-subtasks towards reaching my respective goals. This makes the tasks small enough to feel achievable, but also helps to keep my eyes on the real prize.

2. Task completion: I played around with several functions to find an effective way to keep track of all the stuff that I've completed. I can plan the time of completion for each beforehand, but if I somehow finish the task early, my functions are also wrote perfectly to detect it. In addition, I added a small tracker at the top-left of the worksheet to remind myself of how much I've done, just to give myself a pat on the back. We all kinda need that sometimes you know.

3. Progress tracking: With a mixture of functions and conditional formatting, I was able to create a Gantt chart of my own. The cells marked in green are the scheduled time period for each task, making it real easy for me to follow my progress. I also noticed that not every task has a start date, so I tweaked the functions to make each cell run smoothly even without a start date inputted.

4. Concentration on the present: This is probably the most important feature of all in my opinion. As aforementioned, I find it hard to focus on the present tasks. Deploying this task list in Google Sheets helps to solve this predicament with its ability to "hide columns". By hiding the dates prior to today, I can see today's tasks at a glance. I've been using this task list for 5 months at the time of writing, and I'm quite satisfied with the results. Almost 50 tasks have been accomplished so far, and counting for certain. Obviously, I still have a ways to go before attaining my dreams, but I do believe I'm inching closer every single day with the help of my task list.

There are already several add-ons in Google Sheets to create Gantt charts, and naturally, everyone has different preferences and needs when it comes to schedule planning. However, if you're interested in creating a flexible task list just like mine, feel free to grab a free template here. Happy planning!