“L&D Hacks” is an article series sharing tips, tricks, shortcuts and best practices that have made busy learning and development (L&D) professionals’ work a little easier.

Have you ever found yourself as a solo learning and development (L&D) professional completely task-saturated? Have you ever wondered how you were going to get all your tasks done by their due dates? If so, I have been exactly where you are.

Let’s dive into some ways that we can make our lives as L&D professionals a little bit easier and maybe save some of our sanity in the process.

The Challenges of Being a One-Person L&D Team

Before I found the task management system that worked for me, I was tracking my tasks on an Excel spreadsheet, which isn’t ideal — especially if the tasks required multiple subtasks. This form of task management became just as time-consuming as the tasks themselves. Like many in our field, I have experienced what it’s like to carry the L&D function as a team of one.

We often take on various roles simultaneously, including instructional designer, project manager, learning management system (LMS) administrator, compliance tracker and the list goes on and on.

What happens if we miss a deadline because we forgot an important step? Who is there to double-check our work? Do you have a second set of eyes? What is the cost to the learners, the company or even to you if a task is missed?

From personal experience, I know just how quickly a project can become overwhelming when we don’t have the right tools. I don’t want to risk forgetting an important part of a project simply because I couldn’t keep track of everything that needed to be done.

This is where the right task management system can come in handy. But with so many out there, where do we even begin looking? This was my challenge when I started my journey to finding the right task management system for my needs.

The Task Management Landscape

With so many task management systems on the market today, finding the right one for you can feel overwhelming. When researching the task management landscape, I quickly focused on several industry heavyweights:

• Asana
• Trello
• Notion
• ClickUp

While these platforms share a similar foundation, they each have distinct differences. On the surface, they all offer centralized team collaboration, flexible tasks and project tracking, multiple visual layouts (e.g., Kanban boards, lists and tables) and cloud-based accessibility with robust integrations (e.g., Slack, Google Drive and Zoom).

While built with enterprise teams in mind, these tools also work exceptionally well for solo users. Each platform allows an individual user to start on an independent plan and easily scale up as their team grows.

You might wonder — if they all do the same thing, what truly sets them apart? Each platform is built around a different primary focus, which ultimately determines which one will be the best fit for your specific needs.

Let’s break down the differences between these four popular task management systems:

• Asana: ideal for users who want a structured task tracking system, clear accountability, project timelines and built-in goal alignment
• Trello: geared toward users who prefer the Kanban board framework, making it ideal for the most straightforward visual with a very low learning curve
• Notion: considered an all-in-one workspace that combines several features such as rich text, documents, wikis and customizable databases
• ClickUp: a versatile, all-in-one productivity platform that centralizes project management, document collaboration, goal tracking and team communication in a single, customizable workspace

The task management platform you choose will depend on the features you need and your budget.

What to Look For in a Task Management Platform

In my current role, one pain point is money — as a team of one, I don’t have a training budget to work with. I’m at the mercy of my business unit to purchase programs that I need.

Beyond price, my experience using an Excel spreadsheet helped me identify several capabilities I needed in a system:

• Task Management: an easy-to-read task list
• Subtasks: the ability to create subtasks that appear on the main task list so nothing gets lost
• Recurring Tasks: the ability to set up daily, weekly and monthly recurring tasks
• Checklists: the ability to create checklists within a main task rather than as separate subtasks
• Customizable Dashboards: the ability to customize dashboards and export data
• Document Collaboration: collaboration capabilities to support future team growth
• Task Assignment: the ability to assign tasks as the team grows

While this is not an all-inclusive list of the features I was looking for, it was a starting point. It gave me a solid foundation to size up the many different task management tools on the market today.

I am not here to tell you which platform you should choose, but what I can tell you is that based on the above features, I ultimately decided on ClickUp as my task management system. It had everything I was looking for and more.

Final Takeaways

Choosing the right task management platform isn’t easy, but the right system can save you time and effort. It becomes your second set of eyes, your memory and your accountability partner all in one. When you are knee-deep in a project, a task management system lets you quickly scan your task list to make sure you are not overlooking a crucial piece.

Ultimately, it can help you stay organized, keep projects moving and avoid costly oversights. So, I leave you with one final question: Which task management tool will you choose?