Help

Quick Start

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

  1. Select the "What do you need to do?" box at the top of the page.
  2. Type in something you need to get done, and press return.
  3. When you're ready to get working, click the Start button on the task.
  4. 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 goes deeper on a bunch of topics, but 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

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

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

Breaking Work into Tasks

Small tasks are easier to finish, and will make your forecasts more reliable.

You decide what "small" means. We at Sled Team say it's anything under a day. Other folks might say it's 1 week or less; it really depends on your work, but smaller is better. Your tasks don't need to be the same size, either; just put a cap on how big they can get.

If a task seems bigger than that, break it into smaller chunks. You'll get momentum from finishing more often, and your forecasts will be more helpful.

Focus on Finishing

It's important to finish tasks before starting new ones. When you finish a task, you're getting it out of the way of other tasks that are waiting to start. This helps you keep your work moving smoothly and your forecasts accurate.

Multitasking slows everything down. When you switch between tasks, you lose time and focus. Even worse, while you're working on a second thing, the first thing you started is just sitting there, taking longer to finish and becoming less predictable.

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

Organizing Work with Projects

Projects help you organize related tasks into a single container. To create one, add a task, expand it, and press the "Convert to Project" button. Then add child tasks inside. Projects work much like regular tasks—you can start them, finish them, and see forecasts—but their forecast dates are based on the number of child tasks they contain.

Keep projects focused. They work best when they represent a cohesive piece of work with related tasks. If a project is getting too large, consider breaking it into smaller projects.

Safety in Forecasting

Forecasts provide safe expectations rather than precise ones. They account for weekends and time off, which is why tasks may be forecasted to take longer than your typical task speed. The system uses calendar days, not business days, because they represent real-world time—the actual wait for work to be completed.

Making Good Use of Due Dates

Due dates work best when they represent real-world constraints—situations where missing the date creates a genuine problem. Examples include tax filing deadlines, or birthday presents.

Most work is important but should just be done in priority order. If standard work items get unnecessary due dates, that short-circuits your priorities. You could find yourself putting off something really valuable to do something less important.

We strongly encourage you to only set due dates when they represent a real-world constraint. Set your priorities by dragging tasks up and down, and work your list from top to bottom.

How Do Forecasts Work?

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, using the control in the Insights/Charts section.

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.