The Task List Apocalypse: That Time Marketing Got Sent to the Warehouse

i got i got my water i got my coffee i got i got my color-coded post-its

i'm ready to complain artfully i'm gonna i'm gonna pay attention now

hi everyone welcome back to type a unhinged i'm nate i'm di we're here to talk about task lists

heck yeah it's like my favorite favorite thing we are so type a sometimes how often do you add

something you've already done so you can hear the ding when you check it out guilty um i want

to say maybe daily oh that's okay i mean i do it a lot i don't know about daily that's funny

maybe maybe all right reeling it in here die what's the weirdest thing that you have done

in the last 60 days that was absolutely not

a part of your job description 60 days that's season for our day job i would say probably

trying to figure out a faster way to seal poly bags for shipping um there is actually and things

have been ordered that's right because the heads of marketing and creative just spent our peak

season in a warehouse warehouses nate so true let's talk about it okay let's set the stage

it's mid q3 we sell halloween costumes

you

and let's just say my dashboards were sad like if this were inside out to the movie

i would literally be anxiety and you all know what i'm talking about i feel like it was the

phrase of the year economic uncertainty yep my job was to make beautiful engaging creative

that was driving engagement but without the conversion the vibe was polite panic we were

all just politely panicking i was literally running performance models on how little can

we spend and still exist and i was like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry

i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry

i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry

i was preparing gentle hello we still exist please buy a costume it's fun remember fun

we're here waiting for you sending all those emails and sms messages

but then all of a sudden something flipped a switch the last minute demand wasn't a spike

like we're used to i would say it was a wall like a vertical 90 degree cliff of people

who suddenly remembered that halloween was right around the corner and the creative

reef it totally changed like overnight it went from browser collection to buy it buy it now it's

the last one fight for it like a sample sale nate and my performance brain loves this right like the

data was beautiful and the roas was incredible until other bottlenecks appeared yeah until

the warehouse the new warehouse says cool we're buried in orders and can't find the sea turtle

costume in the sea of costumes to be located send help

and send help didn't just mean hire more temps well actually it did hire a lot more times but

it also meant how fast can you get to the airport date and die and my very type a brain immediately

went to logistics but not work logistics my first thought was can i get my kids to all of their

activities how much will my husband hate me being gone during his busiest time too on a scale of one

to ten probably nine exactly my brain also did the split screen half of me the old target logistics

and me was like heck yeah game on let's get dirty i genuinely love this stuff gsd and the other half

oh well the other half was like whoa it's one thing to help in the local warehouse you know

for a few hours here and there it's just down the street and it's something else to fly out for

literally a few days they must be buried but honestly my marketing brain was screaming don't

turn off the ads the demand is finally here like i will personally pack those boxes if i'm able to

keep this row out of the way i'm going to do it i'm going to do it i'm going to do it i'm going to do it

and that's how marketing and creative officially became shipping and inventory for a couple weeks

so let's talk about our systems this is where i feel like the task list apocalypse like really

happens di you go first how did team analog handle the warehouse analog excuse me i have a blended

system but my perfectly curated wall of post-its useless they were a thousand miles away completely

pristine and ignorant so what did you do revert to making lists on boxes and making lists on boxes

with a dull sharpie never a dull sharpie nate no it's 2025 instead i had files open on my phone

you and i were both frantically typing notes like my thumbs were cramping i'm actually quite

embarrassed to admit what i actually did i actually resorted to voice to text oh my god you

did i did i know and i always say only old people do that but you know what like we were in such

firefighting mode it was like i was like i was like i was like i was like i was like i was like

it was the only way my hands were busy and my brain was well it was just on fire well that's

the curse isn't it type a's you're in the middle of a crisis and you can't not see the 40 things

that could be fixed you have this like compulsive need to take so many notes and not like just take

notes right like you have this compulsive need to want to fix everything right now yes you're like

wait stop the line the label placement is inefficient guys

we had to get very type a about our chaos we literally had to triage our note taking we made

sure to prioritize just taking it all in and then sorting it into what can we implement now

versus what has to wait exactly and meanwhile my system back home my beautiful glass top desk

my microsoft to-do list plus my sharepoint flow basically my laptop was helpfully creating 40 plus

tasks that i was never going to do so so your automation

were just firing into the void oh completely like my system was built for optimization not

triage in a field my new system was voice to texting very inefficiently while i was literally

ab testing which style of packing tape was more efficient in my head just to feel normal god that's

so you i was just trying to remember to hydrate and the best part is my brain likes the chaos

like i love working under pressure i love hopping around so the warehouse was you know fun

but the worst part is that i was just trying to remember to hydrate and i was just trying to

work me the performance me was screaming because i knew what was waiting okay so now we're back

we're back from the warehouse we're exhausted we're running on fumes and well caffeine a lot

of caffeine and we definitely smelled like cardboard and we finally sit down at our actual

desks and it didn't take long for us to very quickly realize we swapped a mountain of orders

and boxes for a mountain of reporting and it's all that end-of-year stuff that didn't

stop just because we were in the warehouse yep it's the chaos hangover the adrenaline's gone

and now we just have the list the chaos hangover i love that let's just like i don't know die let's

list it off here quick so share the pain with our listeners okay here we go one recapping the entire

season in minute detail and not just our channels but operations since we went to the warehouses

and the season had just ended six hours ago prior to our day beginning because that's when our

flight landed okay number two planning holiday sales which are way smaller but every sale counts

so it's all this effort for a tiny blip in comparison three budgets for next year i'm

supposed to know what i need in 10 months when i'm still not sure what day it is number four

my favorite capacity goals and roadmaps how do you plan capacity for oh my god the warehouse

is on fire scenarios at least no cars were on fire this year so true five all the

this quarter's goals that we just didn't do because we were packing boxes and six identifying

and justifying next year's programming projects and my frantic voice a text file from the warehouse

floor that's not compliant that's my entire project oh god what's the project it's operation

clone the process the demand is only going to get more compressed die the real bottleneck isn't just

people it's also training how do we translate our systems and i mean literally translate them

into french and somali for our workforce so that mass hiring

doesn't become mass chaos that's project number one okay so we're talking about all this breakage

we should probably explain what our systems are when we're you know sane when we're not in crisis

mode right what's our like at peace setup you go first i i like i said have a blended system

my entire life is run on a shared family digital calendar and i have my contract work in there too

that's the holy grail but for my work i'm tactile i need color-coded

for my like to-dos this week that have to get done and then i use microsoft to do mostly for

everything else and see i'm the opposite my brain is too chaotic so i need like an aggressive

external structure my system is multi-layered level one is my desk it's a glass top whiteboard

anything that's ultra urgent or due today gets written right on the glass so it's in my face

and i can't ignore it and it's beautiful i'm so jealous i love it but what about all the other

projects oh yeah that's level two or as i like to dub it everything else it's all in microsoft i

have a master sharepoint list that's like my single source of truth for all projects and tasks

then i use microsoft to do to pull in from that list and make a daily view and that's like the

type a part of things right i have a flow setup for some of the tasks that are auto-created based

on triggers or reoccurring events uh and stuff from other teams sounds like a fine-tuned type

a dream but knowing you i'm sure you're going to make some improvements to it so i'm going to

still so what do you have in store for the upcoming year of course i'm going to call it

project red phone basically like i want a priority system that allows me to turn on or off auto-created

tasks based on available time so reflecting back on this year i'm going to the warehouse maybe i

can only handle level one tasks i flip the status let's get created but what do you have in store

this last year i got in a bad habit of just dropping all to do's into that important list

segment and guilty yeah i'm

resorted to written lists to make sure the most important stuff doesn't get lost in that sea of

to do's so i need to overhaul and go back to lists within microsoft to do's sounds like we both use

microsoft to do's why what led you there uh i actually had an employee on a team that was using

it and they told me about it and i geeked out instantly and started getting my managers and

everybody using it uh i love that it integrates into everything else microsoft since our day job

uses that it's

wonderful you get any planner tasks that are assigned to you or you create you can create

a list that's shared and assign things out to people within your system uh and it even pulls

in like flagged emails so you don't have to create a separate to do for that it just automatically

pulls it into there which is absolutely fantastic but it only works for my work system right my

daily like outside of work everything else that i have going on isn't integrated into that so

i need to find a way to kind of like blend everything yeah i hear you uh very similar here

i i feel like we possibly started embracing microsoft to do around the same time but uh

someone told me that they were using it and turns out they were using like 10 of it i geeked out when

i started looking into it realizing the same things you did the integration planner tasks

the flagged emails the the ability to like make your my day view for the important stuff etc

like love it and then i discovered power automate which is how i made my flow that auto creates

reoccurring tasks and things like that um but agreed it doesn't work in your personal life and

i would say because i have to be so organized in at work i don't have a great system for my

personal life so that's also like a side mission of mine um i've used google tasks for

my personal stuff before and it's a lot like microsoft to do's

in that you can create separate lists it's not as robust but some of my other contract work

is also within the google sphere so i'm able to have depending on my login it all kind of combines

a little bit but that only really works for the tasks not something that's more project-based one

thing that i've gotten to use recently with a with a contract is monday.com have you heard or used

monday yeah you know we're also launching second day contract but it's we've been working with the

first day of the second day of the second day of the second day of the fourth day of the second day of the

I've heard of it and a few external parties we've worked with have had projects in there that they've

shared with us externally so I've like I've been exposed to it a few times but nothing in detail

I'm curious I'm intrigued tell me more yeah what I think it's great at is you can break down

projects you have kind of a master project and then you can have to do's under that and you can

create any column that you want with different statuses dates linked files which is fantastic

when people are just files are flying around everywhere and it's like I don't have access to

that one that just got emailed to me now I can't work on it until somebody grants it to me but if

if we're able to keep it all together in google drive and just have the links in the to-do it's

a lot easier the other or in the the task within within monday the other great thing about it is

you can create all these kanban views and timeline views you can also create like workflows within

there and I've just started experimenting with that so I'm not an expert

yet but you can alert when a file gets attached or if somebody else who's also on that project

leaves a note or completes something you can also tag people on all of them and that's not

even a flow so if I have a question on a particular task I'm stuck I can tag somebody else that's in

there rather than blowing up their slack channel or their email you can just keep everything in

monday and that helps for people who are maybe they aren't like the decision maker on the task

but they need to be in the know maybe they're the project manager or the CEO that just wants to know

things are on track they can see that activity is happening and can turn those notifications on and

off so I've found it really useful so far it definitely has helped that team move a lot faster

by having everybody work in this like orchestrated system versus just in their slack in their their

Gmail sure that's interesting I might have to might have to sign up for a demo or something

and just just see how it works now they have different levels

one one really cool thing if you're working in an organization is you can connect different boards

to each other and so if you have goals within one board and you connect it to multiple other boards

that have statuses it rolls up and will tell you like 75 of all of the tasks that are related to

this individual goal are completed so like at a high level you can see the trajectory is moving

and we're behind or we're ahead that kind of thing it's nice I'm kind of a nerd and I I like to look

at a lot of open source solutions

and see if I can host it on my own server and one thing that I currently use quite a bit is called

next cloud and it's basically a Google Drive alternative and I was just realizing that there's

I guess a fairly popular task project manager program for that and so I think that was one I

was going to test out but I think you know reflecting back on our last 60 days and how

crazy it was being in operations for an extended period of time I think it's really shed light on

the fact that that is an area I can improve on and I this discussion is making me want to go out and

look at other possible solutions as well have you heard of alternatives other than Monday this is

totally such a type a topic I have heard of a lot of other ones um I haven't dug into them though

maybe that's something that we can take away and come back with like a okay we tried five of the

top rated ones here's what we think kind of thing uh give some more guidance to our listeners but

tasks in particular but still very type a and like process oriented structuring like your thoughts I

started using whiteboard in Canva and have been able to very quickly and easily create process

mapping one of my teams were like overhauling how we're doing the work because of the different

tools that we have now at our disposable at our disposal as well as what other teams are changing

in their processes and what that means for us and how we can like move a little faster because of

that so was able to just kind of get everything from my brain into a diagram that I could talk

through with the team and we could go in and tweak because we started with just like what

would we change and everyone just like stares at each other and then you write some notes down but

it doesn't really it's hard to visualize it so having that it's almost like a brain mapping option

um I've started doing that a lot more recently I would say in the last two years if I just like

start getting lost in my own thoughts doing a mind map those are some of the my favorite

exercises yep and then you can create to do's out of it right so I've I flagged with different like

shapes or symbols like these are the new things it's like okay well all of this now needs to go

into a project request so like utilizing that within your system is is really cool Miro is is

another good option for that that's free um but I really I really liked the camera interface and

we already were using it for other things so it was easy to just quick do a login and share links

yeah Miro is cool I do like Miro have you used Dell no

no no Visio it's called Visio sorry um it's so if you're if you are like us and your company uses

Microsoft it's like visio um it's a visual like whiteboard basically program that Microsoft made

but you can make mind maps or you can like create a process workflow and there's templates and stuff

I would say it's a mirror alternative I'm gonna have to check that out next time I'm gonna do

process map for sure one thing that's useful um both of us I think used this year another

Microsoft sorry guys uh that's the system we use

in our day jobs is Loop oh I love Loop I love Loop you used it more than me I mean Loop it's

like the more modern OneNote in my opinion you can create a workspace which is like a notebook

and then you can have unlimited nested pages with links it's integrated with all the other

Microsoft products so like if you link to an Excel it'll put the view right in your Loop

um but basically it's it's all built around collaboration right so I can create a workspace

that I share or a page that I share you can see where they're typing what they're doing

it works like a markdown approach so like making headings or bullet points or lists or tables is super

easy in there you know tab it does the outline structure so as you tab you can format things

really well um but you can at sign people because it's integrated with Microsoft so you can tag

people you can tag tasks you can create basically whatever you want it's a it also incorporates like

a view that's like SharePoint lists right into there I think my favorite feature though is let's

say even to a specific paragraph send it to someone in teams and it opens up a live view in

teams and then you're both typing and you can see it being added to the Loop so like it it almost

like loads a live view directly in things like teams or email and you can all collaborate so

my team we created a workspace specifically for our season recap and notes and throughout season

we were adding all of our departments had a page and adding notes and then we're finalizing it but

it's if you haven't tried out Loop I would say it's super great

um I feel like if you're a project manager you should hands down check out Loop and again has

a bunch of templates so since it's still integrated into Microsoft is there a way to create tasks

while you're within Loop yeah so you can add components like if you want you know if I want

to add a bullet point list or a table one of the options in there is a task manager and it's super

flexible you can remove or add columns for whatever you want

but it auto detects assignments and due dates and those automatically create a Microsoft to do for

those people until it's checked off I know I feel like super nice and then you can do that for all

of our like shared One Notes that we're using for L10s and stuff I agree those meetings yeah

I think it's I think it's nice I was gonna look into side note I was gonna look into how easy it

is to make a flow to create pages and we could just try to transition for 2020 I love that six

days I like it way more than one note one note feels archaic now and if you can automate your

tasks amazing yeah this podcast brought to you by Microsoft just kidding no kidding we should

get an affiliate link all right it's not about having the perfect system that never breaks

that's a fantasy it's all about having the type a skills to analyze the mess while you're still in it

and I'd say a little unhinged honesty to admit you're exhausted and your thumbs hurt but you're

still triaging and

getting it done GSD GSD so if your business just went through its own crazy season and your systems

are a smoking crater you don't need a new app you just need an audit call us we just survived our

own audit in a warehouse we can definitely handle yours yep so visit us at typeanhinge.com and until

next time stay organized and a little unhinged and we're here to talk to you about the task list

the task list Apocalypse the task list list that's a tongue twister man I was trying