Help

First Steps

Thanks for trying out Sled Team! Here's how to get started:

Select the "What do you need to do?" box at the top of the page.
Type in something you need to get done, and press return.
When you're ready to get working, click the Start button on the task.
When you're done, click the Finish button.

That's it! After you finish three tasks, we'll begin analyzing your work profile, providing advice, and forecasting your future work. The more work you finish, the more useful your forecasts will be.

👉 You can stop reading here if you like. 👈

The rest of this page is just tips and context. If you'd rather just start playing with the app, go for it! This document will be waiting for you if you need it.

Basic Principles

People get things done more quickly and more predictably when we hold to a few basic principles:

Break work into small, manageable tasks.
Finish tasks before starting new ones.
Limit multitasking.

It's good to know these principles for your own understanding, but Sled Team will also help you to stick with them.

Forecasts

While nobody can predict the future with perfect accuracy, in the work world, we're often called upon to finish things by a certain time. If you're working on a particularly large project, with a lot of tasks inside it, that can be really stressful.

Sled Team uses probability, statistics, and simulation to forecast when you're likely to finish a set of tasks, based on how long work has taken you in the past.

Specifically, we use a technique called Monte Carlo simulation to generate a range of possible completion dates, based on your past work. This range is based on the level of confidence that you need to have in your end date.

For example, if you need to be 90% sure that you'll finish by a certain date, we'll give you a date that you're 90% likely to finish by. If you only need to be 50% sure, we'll give you a date that you're 50% likely to finish by.

You can change the confidence level of your forecasts in the Settings menu.

Note that the forecasts will look much more optimistic as you reduce the confidence, but that comes at a cost. If you're only 50% sure you'll finish by a certain date, you're also 50% sure you won't finish by that date. And it's possible that you could be much later.

We recommend that you start with the default (85% confidence) and adjust from there as you get a feel for how the forecasts work, and how much risk you're comfortable with.

Breaking Work into Tasks

It's important to break work into small, manageable tasks. This helps you to keep your work moving, and to keep your forecasts accurate.

These tasks don't need to be exactly the same size, they should just be in the same general ballpark. For example, if one item on your list is "Make lunch," and the next is "Write a novel," or "Build a house," your work time could vary by a factor of a thousand, and your forecasts will be unhelpful.

One way to think about is to pick an amount of time that feels comfortable to you to finish things, whether that's a day, or a week, or a month. Then, when you write down a task, ask yourself, "does this feel like it could be done in a day or less?" If not, think about how you could break it into smaller pieces.

Finishing Tasks

It's important to finish tasks before starting new ones. This is a key principle of productivity, and it's one that Sled Team will help you to stick to.

When you finish a task, you're not just getting it off your list. You're also getting it out of the way of other tasks that are waiting to start. This helps you to keep your work moving smoothly, and to keep your forecasts accurate.

Put differently, if you start a new task before finishing an old one, you're not just delaying the old task. You're also delaying the new task, because it's going to compete for your time with the old task. It's better to just finish what you were doing before you take on something else.

Limiting Multitasking

It's a common misconception that multitasking is a good way to get more done. In fact, it's usually the opposite. When you switch between tasks, you lose time and focus. It takes time to get back into the flow of a task, and you're more likely to make mistakes.

Even worse, while you're working on a second thing, the first thing you started is just sitting there, taking longer to finish. This could disappoint whoever you're doing it for. It also means the finish date of the first task is less predictable: omething that has nothing to do with that piece of work is slowing it down.

Sometimes we can't completely avoid multitasking, but it's important to set a limit on it, or your work will become completely unpredictable. Sled Team will gently warn you when you're overdoing it, and suggest ways to get back on track.

Calendar Days, Not Working Days

We use calendar days for our forecasts, because they're a real-world measure of how long it takes to get the benefit of the work that you're doing. For example, if you're waiting for a package to arrive, you don't care if it's a weekend or a holiday: you just want it to show up.

That said, because of this, our forecasts include the fact that there are days you don't work, and provide safe forecasts based on that.

Safety in Forecasting

It's important to understand that the forecasts you see are meant to provide a safe expectation, rather than a precise one.

For example, you might find that it usually takes a day for you to finish standard tasks, but the first task on your list is always forecasted to take three days. Why is this?

That's because our statistics indicate that sometimes you start things on a Friday, take the weekend off, and don't finish until the following Monday. Our forecasting engine can't easily know what holidays you observe, how often you take time off, etc. It simply knows that you don't normally finish things on Saturday or Sunday. So it gives you a forecast that should be generally applicable and safe.

Making Good Use of Due Dates

Due dates are a powerful tool for keeping yourself on track. They're also a powerful tool for making yourself miserable.

In some work environments, due dates as used as a way to communicate urgency or priority. In others, dates indicate a real-world constraint: if something's not complete by a specific date, there will be a problem.

Examples of real-world constraints include:

Tax filing deadlines: if you miss them, you could have a financial penalty.
Renewing your passport: if you don't do it before your flight takes off, you might not be able to leave the country.
Buying a friend a birthday present.

On the other hand, most work is important, but should just be done in priority order. If one of those standard work items is given an unnecessary due date, that short-circuits your priorities. You could find yourself putting off something really valuable, in order to do something comparatively worthless.

When using Sled Team, or even when you aren't, we strongly encourage you to not set due dates unless they represent a real world constraint. Set your priorities by dragging tasks up and down, and work your list from top to bottom as much as you can.

Drag and Drop

You can use the drag handles on the left to reorder your tasks. To drag multiple items at once, hold down the Command or Control key, click the to-dos you want to move, and they will all drag together.

Work Time and Age

Sled Team helps you stay aware of two important statistics: how long things usually take you, and how long they've been on your list.

These numbers help you answer a few useful questions:

If something urgent came up today, and you dropped everything to focus on it, how long would it take to finish it?
If you put a run-of-the-mill new task into your list, how long would it probably take to finish it?
Which tasks have been sitting in your list for a long time? Do you need to do them soon? Or throw them away because they're not really that important?
Does somebody need something from you that they've been waiting for for a long time?

They also help you understand how stable your productivity is, or if you're getting quicker, or slowing down.