No more nagging: App for family task management helps kids and adults

Keeping track of your own life tasks is tough enough. Managing a family’s tasks can feel like a never-ending, impossible job. IGotThis, a new web-based task management for computers and mobile devices, lets parents set up and manage tasks for kids and for themselves. Currently in a Kickstarter campaign, IGotThis goes far beyond calendar reminders in the way it organizes tasks and keeps people accountable.

IGotThis is presented on Kickstarter primarily as a task management system for families who have kids with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Digital Trends interviewed founder and program designer Rich Schramm. When we mentioned the program didn’t seem limited to “ADHD families,” Schramm said, “Oh, it’s absolutely for whole families, any kind of families. The program has planning wizards for adults for ongoing tasks like car maintenance, or to set up reminders in advance of birthdays, anniversaries, and for holidays.”

There are three ways to set up tasks in IGotThis: quick tasks, advanced options, and planning wizards. Quick tasks require minimal information: the person, the task, and the due date and time. Advanced options include creating tasks for one or more family members, setting reminder events and frequencies, simple or complex recurrence schedules, permission-based task skipping and rescheduling, oversight notifications, and more.

“IGotThis is focused more on tasks than calendars,” Schramm said. “It’s particularly powerful for adults who have trouble keeping tasks organized.” You can set up projects and subtasks. For example, you can have a party project with subtasks for different people. Subtasks could include creating the menu, shopping, cooking, cleaning, and invitations, each of which could have subtasks of its own.

Planning wizards help you set up yearly plans. There are wizards for “US Holidays,” “Important People” for birthdays and anniversaries, and a “Life as We Know It” wizard for categories such as car maintenance, household maintenance, and taxes. You can also use location-based reminders for tasks associated with a specific place. If a family member happens to be near the dry cleaner, for example, even though the task was scheduled for someone else at a later time, a notification can go out in time to stop and pick up dry cleaning.

One of the most appealing features of IGotThis for families, and for couples, is that it can offer hope for an end to nagging.  A dashboard screen gives a quick view of all scheduled tasks for the day as well as their current status. Whoever is assigned to a task is responsible for entering their progress. You can also see how successful any person in the system has been in completing the day’s tasks and how they trend over time.

The ability to track kids’ chores and homework via the dashboard can take the burden off parents who feel like they’re forever having to keep after their kids. For couples who want proof of who is (or isn’t) doing her or his part around the house, IGotThis can make the point without uncomfortable confrontations. And hey, if you just want to train yourself to be more diligent at keeping up with life tasks, the dashboard gives you quick feedback.

An additional feature in IGotThis for kids both with or without ADHD is a points and rewards system and badges. Future plans for the program include integration with home assistants, hyper-local reminders to do tasks in specific locations, and smart tasks that use machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to change existing tasks or recommend new tasks. There are still 19 days in the IGotThis Kickstarter campaign. The program is scheduled for delivery in May 2017.