Task management for teams of two to five people

One owner, always

Shared ownership is how tasks die quietly. Every item should name one person, even when two will work on it. If nobody's name fits, the item is a decision or an idea — put it on the board, not the task list.

Dates only where a date means something

Putting a due date on everything trains a team to ignore due dates. Reserve them for commitments to someone outside the team, and for things that genuinely expire — a renewal, a filing, a client deadline.

Everything else is ordered by attention, not by calendar. A date-only item is a reminder, not a task.

Three states and a weekly clean-up

• To do, doing, done. Add 'waiting on' only when a real handoff exists.
• Cap 'doing': more items in progress than people means nothing is actually in progress.
• Ten minutes a week to delete, not to plan — the list you never prune is the list you stop trusting.

When a task should become a project

If an item has produced its own files, notes and follow-up reminders, it has outgrown the list. Give it a project so its context travels with it instead of scattering across the desk.

Running this on Loveley Desk

Tasks live on a notepad with a to do / doing / done status, reminders sit as dated sticky notes, and projects hold longer work with their own tasks, reminders, journal sheets and ledger. A morning Day Ahead email sends today's slice so the daily list writes itself. Solo Desk is free; the pricing page covers what a team adds.

Read next

• Task board vs to-do list: which one a small team actually needs
• A small-team workflow that doesn't need a dashboard
• Everything on the Loveley Desk — the full feature list.
• Pricing — what the free Solo Desk includes, and what a team adds.
• Loveley Desk vs Asana — a side-by-side comparison.