AppFlowy Basics – How to Include Standard Operating Procedures in Your Task Management

I love SOPs, or for those unfamiliar with this abbreviation, Standard Operating Procedures. In my daily work, I am known for my love of writing everything down and trying to centralize and distribute that information so that others can also benefit from it. It is wise to write a Standard Operating Procedure for all the knowledge that you already have that is procedure-based and that you or someone else will use several times in the future. I create SOPs in my daily work to keep knowledge safe, for knowledge sharing, and repeatability. Also in my private life, I use SOPs for repeatability and reuse of knowledge, references, etc. In addition to recording recurring knowledge in SOPs, it is also important to try to record recurring activities in reusable standard To Do items with sub-activities. In this article, I will explain the value of reusable To Do items and how to include Standard Operating Procedures in your task management. Although the information is valuable for every To Do app, in this article, I focus on AppFlowy.

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Content of the article

• What is AppFlowy
• What is an SOP
• Why is an SOP important in task management
• Why is a standard repeatable To Do item important?
• How do you integrate your SOP into your standard repeatable To Do item

What is AppFlowy

Before SOPs in AppFlowy, for some of you, it is good to explain what AppFlowy is and why it is such a nice platform to build different kinds of productivity solutions. In my article “AppFlowy is a good Notion alternative for Open Source and data privacy enthusiasts”, I already gave a detailed introduction to what AppFlowy is and what it can do, so I will not go in too much detail here. In short, AppFlowy is a kind of LEGO box for everyone who does not want to use separate apps to manage all their different tasks and activities, but who wants to determine for themselves how their app looks and how it behaves for all their tasks, lists, summaries, texts, journals, administrations, etc. AppFlowy is a solution that allows you to create functionalities based on a large number of standard building blocks. You are able to add, edit, move, convert, or delete blocks. Think of blocks that help you to set up tables, boards, timelines, calendars, lists, galleries, headings, quotes, dividers, links, callouts, image placeholders, videos, audio, code, files, views, and databases.

What is an SOP

In my career as a developer, business analyst, and IT solution engineer, I have often spoken to people about their processes and procedures in order to translate these into IT solutions. It often surprised me that many people do not really know what a process or procedure is. I have sometimes had quite exhausting discussions with people who felt that the work they did could not be standardized in clear process steps, since they felt that their work is different every day. But after deeper conversations, it became clear that there were a lot of activities that recurred time and time again and also had to be performed in a specific order. And here the concept of Standard Operating Procedure emerged to ensure that these standard recurring activities could also be easily understood and performed by future employees, but also improved and optimized by refining them time and time again.

A standard operating procedure (SOP) is a set of steps and corresponding descriptions that explain exactly what you have to do from a starting point to a final result. Think of a recipe to make pasta or a manual to assemble a LEGO castle, or an IKEA product. These kinds of descriptions can be executed repeatedly and result in the same end product with the same quality. An SOP has the advantage that everyone performs actions in the same way, and errors are therefore reduced. In addition, after the SOP has been created and made available, you no longer have to think in advance about how To Do something. That has already been done.

Why is an SOP important in task management

In my opinion, an SOP is strongly connected to task management. Looking at myself, I like to write articles for my website reallinuxuser.com, and I also like to write articles for magazines, and I enjoyed writing my first book “Linux for the rest of us“. Also, my next book is underway, so I need the same kind of approach again. One of the characteristics of this type of activity is its recurrent character. For my book, I wrote 30 chapters, and for each chapter, I went through the same standard steps every time. So my SOP for writing each chapter looked something like this:

1. Decide on the main topic for the chapter
2. Record outline for the chapter
3. Write a draft chapter
4. Collect and place supporting images
5. Run the chapter through Grammarly
6. Review the draft chapter
7. Rewrite the chapter
8. Have test readers read the chapter
9. Process feedback from test readers
10. Store the final version chapter safely

I did not perform these steps only once, but applied them to the writing process of all 30 chapters I wrote. To make sure that all these steps were completed for every chapter before finishing my book, I made sure that these steps were part of my book-writing SOP. This way, I don’t forget which steps I have to repeat, I have a better idea of the time required to finish my book, and the quality at the end of the process is better and more predictable.

Why is a standard repeatable To Do item important?

Based on another example of one of my SOPs, which is writing blog posts, I want to clarify why a standard repeatable To Do template is important. Topics for blog posts can pop into my head at any time of the day and in any situation. In order not to forget these ideas, I save them directly in AppFlowy and use a standard reusable To Do template with predetermined sub-activities for all steps that need to be done. And the steps even have a thickbox, so I can monitor my progress. This looks like the standard form below:

This is where you directly start to see the benefit of these self-made standard reusable Task templates with predefined sub-tasks. If I need to recreate a new main task over and over again and have to come up with and add the above 18 sub-tasks every time, then I lose a lot of valuable time and make sure I don’t forget something. By making a reusable standard form for the type of tasks I expect will come back later in time, I can create new action cards by creating a duplicate of the template in a few seconds, and I can spend my time and thoughts on the work itself. And of course, what if these standard approaches were meant for a colleague? 

Standard operating procedures enable proper understanding and communication between people and make sure that everyone follows the same guidelines, resulting in consistent progress and results. You don’t have to explain procedures again and again to existing or new colleagues. Just open the menu for this standard template and select Duplicate to create a new item with the same clearly defined sub-tasks.

How do you integrate your SOP into your standard reusable To Do item

Although the previous section already gave some insight into how to integrate your SOP into your standard To Do template, below I want to give you a standard approach on how to integrate your own SOP.

1. Determine types of tasks that you predict will not be one-offs and could benefit from standard registration in the future because of their repeatable character.
2. Determine which fixed recurring sub-activities are necessary to successfully complete these tasks and to meet the minimum quality requirements.
3. Now that you have defined a generic main task and it is also clear which steps are required to complete this task, you will create a standard task template with subtasks in your preferred To Do or Kanban application that will serve as a template for future tasks.
4. Now that you have a generic task with associated subtasks available as a default template, every time you want to commit a new task of this type, duplicate this standard template and rename the title to the subject you want to commit the task to.
5. Now that you have defined tasks in your task management app based on a standard template, you can do the actual work by simply executing and crossing out the subtasks step by step.
6. When you use these standard tasks with subtasks based on your SOPs more often, you will notice that some subtasks need improvement, need to be removed, or need to be extended with extra subtasks. Adjust them so that your default template keeps getting better and better suited to your own use cases or others.

When you create this type of template for yourself, you probably remember what your expectations are for the main task and each subtask. But what if you create these SOP-like standard templates for others to follow and use in a collaborative environment? In that case, it is wise to also give some explanation on the main task, the goal, the expected end result, the responsibilities, and, of course, an explanation of each subtask, like background, reason, and expectation. In your standard template, you can, for example, add a Description section that provides some explanation of the defined subtasks.

Final words

As mentioned before, I love writing and using Standard Operating Procedures. They help immensely in simplifying your productive life and the life of those in your team. Repeatability ensures that you have to think much less about recurring activities. Create once, use many.

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them

David Allen

I hope you will enjoy creating your own SOPs and integrating these SOPs into your task management tool, like AppFlowy.   

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