People: “I owe this to someone” is a useful filter
Keep the people in your life beside your work. See, for each person, what they're doing for you and what you owe them, and track tasks by person across your to-do list.
What you can do with People
- Make tasks real with an accountability partner. Fill in Deliver to with the person who's counting on a task.
- See your tasks by accountability partner. Group your to-do list by Deliver to, and every commitment sits under the person it's for: a natural connection, and a promise you can see. Or group by who's doing it.
- And who's doing it. Assigned to says who's doing the work, so what you've handed over doesn't get lost.
- Mention someone to link them. Type @Jenny when you add a task, including one made from a note or a mind map, and Jenny is linked automatically.
- Each person's page shows both sides. What they're doing for you, and what you've promised them, in one place.
- A place for your people. Add someone in a line, give them a relationship (partner, child, parent, friend, colleague, contact) and an area, and keep a note on how you know them.
Why I started tracking tasks by person
Due dates often feel like guesses, and a task can have a fuzzy scope. For me, the moment I owe someone a clear answer is what makes the work concrete. People began as a way to see who is doing something and who is counting on it. It isn't meant to guilt anyone into productivity. It's a way to make a real relationship visible when that's what gives a commitment its shape.
Rachit, founder of Xale
The ideas behind People
A promise is clearer with a person in it
Work gets concrete when it has a name attached, both of the person doing it and of the person waiting for it.
- Worth reading: Verne Harnish, Scaling Up (2014). Every priority needs one named person who owns it, so nothing belongs to everyone and therefore to no one.
- In this release: every task can say who it's Assigned to and who it should be Delivered to.
Whose task is it, really?
A lot of weight comes from carrying things that were never ours to carry.
- Worth reading: Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, The Courage to Be Disliked (2013). Their "separation of tasks": ask who ultimately lives with the result of a choice, and let that decide whose task it is.
- In this release: a person's page shows, side by side, what's theirs to do and what's yours to deliver.
Further reading
- Gail Matthews, "The Impact of Commitment, Accountability, and Written Goals on Goal Achievement" (Dominican University of California, conference presentation, 2015). People who sent a friend weekly progress reports reached their goals far more often. scholar.dominican.edu
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