Activity administration apps was easy: digital to-do lists the place you’d write down what wanted doing and tick packing containers when it was carried out. However stroll into any trendy office and also you’ll discover one thing fairly totally different. These platforms have develop into the spine of how groups get work carried out, notably for leaders juggling distributed groups, infrastructure initiatives, and vendor relationships.
The problem isn’t discovering a activity administration app—there are dozens of stable choices. The problem is utilizing one successfully. As a result of whereas these instruments promise to make groups extra productive, loads of organizations discover themselves drowning in notifications, buried beneath standing updates, and in some way busier than earlier than they began.
So what’s modified? And extra importantly, how do you truly use these apps to enhance crew productiveness slightly than simply including one other layer of digital noise?
The Actual Downside: Too Many Instruments
The common information employee now juggles as much as 11 totally different functions day by day, and each swap between these instruments prices time and psychological vitality.
As Zeb Evans, CEO of ClickUp, put it throughout the December 2025 launch of ClickUp 4.0:
“Work sprawl is the silent killer of productiveness. Groups are drowning in disconnected instruments and workflows.”
The numbers again this up. Context switching between functions prices groups roughly 2.1 hours per day—over 10 hours per week misplaced simply navigating between platforms. For UC&C groups managing the whole lot from infrastructure upgrades to vendor contracts, this fragmentation is pricey.
Find out how to Truly Enhance Group Productiveness with Activity Administration Apps
Cease Managing Work, Begin Automating It
In 2025 activity administration apps largely stopped being passive and have become lively individuals in getting work carried out.
“We’re in an ideal spot for purchasers to vary how they work and really do work for them as an alternative of simply managing it,” Casey George, Chief Income Officer at Monday.com, defined throughout the firm’s Q3 2025 earnings name.
However what does this appear to be in observe? As an alternative of manually updating challenge statuses, configure workflows that do it mechanically when duties are marked full. Slightly than writing assembly summaries, let the system generate them out of your video conferences.
Put The whole lot in One Place
This sounds apparent, however most groups nonetheless don’t do it. They use one app for chat, one other for duties, a 3rd for documentation, and marvel why data will get misplaced.
Zeb Evans argues the period of specialised instruments is ending: “We imagine the way forward for work is convergence—the place you purchase all software program and AI from one platform.”
Conduct a device audit. Map the place your crew shops data, tracks duties, and communicates. If you happen to’re utilizing separate platforms for various features, you’re creating friction. Contemplate consolidating them.
That is notably essential for UC&C groups managing rollouts throughout a number of time zones. When vendor contracts, deployment schedules, and technical specs all reside in a single place, cross-functional collaboration will get considerably simpler.
Defend Time for Precise Work
Activity administration apps are alleged to make you extra productive, however they usually simply make you busier. Dustin Moskovitz, CEO of Asana, addressed this in an October 2025 interview with Stratechery, arguing as an alternative for “structured workflows the place AI acts as a filter”.
“The construction makes you extra profitable,” Moskovitz defined. Properly-designed workflows imply you’re not always responding to notifications—the system handles routine issues and solely surfaces what genuinely wants your consideration.
Measure What Truly Issues
Most groups measure productiveness incorrect. They depend duties accomplished, hours logged, tickets closed. However these metrics simply encourage individuals to look busy.
At Atlassian’s Group ’25 convention in April 2025, co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes challenged organizations to rethink their strategy.
“We should kill the concepts and processes that now not serve us to unencumber vitality for what’s subsequent.”
As an alternative of counting what number of duties people full, monitor how lengthy work takes to maneuver via your system and use your platform’s reporting options to establish these bottlenecks.
Getting Implementation Proper
Begin with targets: Earlier than rolling out a platform, outline what productiveness truly means in your group. Is it sooner challenge supply? Higher useful resource utilization? Improved visibility? Your reply will decide which options matter.
Maintain it easy: Extreme customization creates confusion. Set up customary workflows first and let groups customise later as soon as they perceive the fundamentals.
Repair your notifications: Default settings are nearly all the time too aggressive. Most groups want far fewer notifications than they suppose, so configure yours to respect focus time.
Combine correctly: Fashionable platforms join with Microsoft Groups, Zoom, and Slack. Use these integrations so activity updates move naturally into your crew’s present communication patterns slightly than creating yet one more place to examine.
What Good Seems Like
Monday.com reported clients are “saving 1.5 billion minutes yearly by automating 380 million duties.” Your crew seemingly gained’t function at that scale, however the precept holds: efficient activity administration ought to demonstrably scale back time spent on administrative work.
The organizations succeeding in 2026 aren’t essentially utilizing the fanciest instruments. They’re utilizing their instruments strategically: consolidating platforms to scale back friction, automating administrative work to reclaim time, defending focus intervals for deep work, and measuring system efficiency slightly than particular person busyness.
Activity administration apps can ship important productiveness enhancements, however solely when deployed thoughtfully. The shift required is from doing extra to doing what issues. For leaders managing the complexity of contemporary communications infrastructure, that distinction makes all of the distinction.
