Managing Tasks across the Work–Life Boundary: Opportunities, Challenges, and Directions

Abstract

Task management tools allow people to record, track, and manage task-related information across their work and personal contexts. As work contexts have shifted amid the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become important to understand how these tools are continuing or failing to support peoples’ work-related and personal needs. In this article, we examine and probe practices for managing task-related information across the work–life boundary. We report findings from an online survey deployed to 150 information workers during Summer 2019 (i.e., pre-pandemic) and 70 information workers at the same organization during Summer 2020 (i.e., mid-pandemic). Across both survey cohorts, we characterize these cross-boundary task management practices, exploring the central role that physical and digital tools play in managing task-related information that arises at inopportune times. We conclude with a discussion of the opportunities and challenges for future productivity tools that aid people in managing task-related information across their personal and work contexts.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 16 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.