At its essence, a checklist helps a user follow the best practices for either a complex or a mundane activity by making explicit “the minimum, expected steps.”  Ativiti is attempting to build off of this same insight by helping experts distill the knowledge they’ve acquired into actionable steps.

The checklist above got us thinking - what is the ideal action to put in Ativiti? Do we expect our users to check off when they wash their hands? Probably not (though when they do, we know we’ve hit the big time!).  Jack Cheng’s post on Time on your side has a great heuristic to use: any task that will take between 5 and 60 minutes is a great candidate for tracking in your personal task list or putting in an expert guide for others to follow.  Anything shorter, and the cost of capturing it isn’t worth it; longer, and you probably haven’t done a good enough job of breaking it into actionable steps.

1. How can I get the most value out of networking?
2. How many of the 400 presentations should I try to attend?
3. Which ones?

I was a bit surprised that he was asking me.  I remember asking the same questions to a senior VP six months earlier, before my first conference.  I’d been to three more in the meantime, which apparently makes me worth asking.  So I did the only thing I felt ethically appropriate; I tried to repeat the senior VP’s answers as best I could remember them:

The SVP’s advice worked out for me.  I weaved my way through the ranks of business intelligence professionals: I met leading software developers, I was invited to join a leading B.I. influence council, and I quickly learned which sales reps were value-adding, and which were simply reps.

Next Generation Guidance

Was my ability to recount the advice nearly as effective as when I’d heard it from its original source?  It seems odd, if conventional, that in 2008 I had to seek the advice of a senior manager on how to prepare for the conference.  It was even more odd that my timid colleague thought I was the best person to ask for guidance.  Passing on advice through word-of-mouth is so passé, so unfiltered and unreliable.

Shouldn’t this kind of expertise be available with the click of a button, a 1-to-5 crowd sourced rating, and user reviews?  The Ativiti model will infuse advice with technology, vetting it by the world, and giving experts a platform to share the wisdom they have with the people who want to consume it.

They haven’t just dropped a set of features on a page and labeled each with a navigation link, the way another tool I found today has done (check out Pelotonics).  Instead, they’ve attempted to create a flexible tool that reflects how we actually work.  The primary focus of the app is on “Action Steps” - actual work products.  Beyond that, I can dump items into References, Backburners, Discussions, or Events.  They’ve also got a “Project View” that unites all of these project items together, and an Activity Feed that shows what everyone has been up to.

The collaboration is extremely smooth.  After I type in the name of a task/”Action Step”, I can just start typing in an e-mail address to assign it to someone, even if they haven’t signed up yet.  For each new task I create going forward, it attempts to auto-complete for the e-mail addresses I’ve already entered.  I can also choose to share all of the activity associated with a project with a specific contact.  Kudos to their UI designer(s) for making the whole user experience quick and easy to get started with.

Then, if you want to put a collaborative slant on things, you can take a look at all of the different project management tools: Basecamp, Goplan, QuickBase, CentralDesktop, activeCollab, and @task.

Why are so many of these applications getting built when the existing list of options is so large?

Maybe it’s because programmers are the group that most need to pay attention to a long list of detailed tasks, so they build it for themselves - because they can.  Programming about programming.

Or maybe it’s because none of these tools have captured how we actually want to work.  Developers are stuck in a world where they’re trying to port a desktop application to the web, and hoping it sticks; but all they get is a steep learning curve.  Many throw every possible feature at the user, and hope that the user can make sense of it all.

Can task management be a winner-takes-all category? Can an application generate enough value by making its users more productive than they were before - to the point where they’re willing to use it every day?  Can it reduce enough friction and become viral so that it’s not just me using it, but us?

I’m still not sure I’ve figured out the answers to these questions.  But if it is possible, then I think this space needs an entirely new approach.  The user doesn’t want to learn GTD theory or somebody else’s idea on the tools and features necessary to be productive.  He wants to learn how to accomplish his tasks.

Our approach to task management with Ativiti is similar to the way we learn our native language (through hearing it, reading it, and speaking it).  We think you should learn how to become more productive by seeing how others did it - by seeing how they effectively accomplished a project goal, and then adopting their expert approach.

Don’t get me wrong, Remember The Milk and OmniFocus are great task managers that can keep track of my daily to-dos.

And Basecamp, CentralDesktop, and JIRA do a pretty good job of enabling co-workers to collaborate by providing a structured way to interact, though they are too heavy for most of my projects.  I’m still looking for a tool that starts simple and scales with the complexity of my projects.

After talking to users of MyOffice, we realized that many of them are asking simple questions – not about the structure of their project plans – but about content. How do I get started on this project?  What steps do I follow?

For answers, they turn to how-to websites like eHow and wikiHow.  But how do you track your progress?  And if you’re working on a collaborative project, how will you track who’s done what?

We think, at the intersection of all of these tools, there’s a problem that is begging to be solved.  We need a tool that not only helps keep track of all our daily tasks and projects, but also gives assistance when we are searching out our next steps.

I am an information analyst and manager at a $250M dot com in New York.  I’m at the office 50 to 70 hours a week providing information to senior executives, training fellow analysts, and developing new technologies to make information more available to anyone who can utilize it.

In New York City, as with many other cities in the world, there are things to do 24×7x52. There’s work, there’s play, there are extra-curricular projects (mine is Ativiti)… the list of things to do seems to get longer each day.

SUNDAY:

• Go to the gym.
• Get the groceries.
• Errands with Izabella (buy potting soil, pick up repaired shoes, Paragon warehouse sale).
• Meet with Ativiti team.
• Season premier of Entourage at 10pm.

MONDAY:

• Weekly reports.
• Daily reports.
• Outline this week’s to-dos.
• Follow up on tasks colleagues own that are in critical path for my work.
• Buy flowers for Izabella (apology for coming home late).
• Add a blog post to Ativiti.

The list keeps going and growing.  That’s just the “regular” to-dos; then there are the spontaneous ones that pop into your head out of nowhere when you’re out and about or talking with friends:

• Look up tickets for the 2010 winter Olympics in BC.
• Buy Izabella a new laundry basket.
• Pick up an HDMI cord.
• Pull a new sales variance report together to demonstrate the effects of the new quality ratings system on consumer behavior.

Last week I counted the things I wanted to do: 101.  Then I counted the things I remembered to do: 79.

Things that aren’t top priority end up falling through the cracks.  Some get overlooked for weeks until they become top priority.  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I’d done that three weeks ago?

Some crack-fallers never get attended to at all.  Many people will brush this off and say “it just wasn’t important enough.”  I consider a crack-faller to be a missed opportunity, the result of an inefficiency in our ability to manage life.

• Maybe the first step to accomplishing this task wasn’t intuitive to me.  Intimidated by my lack of a starting point, I put it on the back-burner (where it stayed).
• Maybe the iPhone note to which I added this task was ignored thereafter.
• Maybe it didn’t come up in conversation for the next two weeks, so it didn’t get ingrained in my mind.

With Ativiti, you can catch these things, learn how to do them, track them, and get them all done.

Have you ever wanted to start a blog, but were intimidated by hosting options, design strategies, and what to write about?

Have you ever wanted to throw a party, start a business, or organize a study group?

Too many obstacles are getting in the way of projects before they even get off the ground. Too often dreams are deferred because:

• The guide you need is nowhere to be found; or
• There’s no way to manage your progress; or
• You simply don’t have the time to manage it.

We are developing a solution to this problem. Ativiti is an application that will help you start and manage your projects, whether by yourself or in collaboration with others.

We are adhering to the following principles as we build this tool:

• Let the experts show you how: We think the information you need to get your project off the ground is sitting somewhere in someone’s head. Ativiti will foster a community that will make the how-to’s, guides, and steps you need easily accessible.
• I/O Everywhere: We don’t want to add yet another destination to your every day life. Ativiti will go wherever you go: your browser, your desktop, your iPhone, or even your Gmail via a plugin.
• Don’t reinvent the social wheel: You already have your contacts stored somewhere. Let’s just use that.

Doing more feels good. Follow us as we build Ativiti.