Taming the chaos: How digital task management reduces mental load for property managers

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November 08, 2024 | 6 min read time Written By: Kathryn Casna

Respond to resident requests. Review rentals. Check email. Meet with owners. Prioritize maintenance. Check email (again). Plan for moving season. Coordinate community events.

Sound familiar? Community managers juggle dozens of tasks and make thousands of decisions daily. Each one draws on three critical executive function skills: working memory, inhibition control and cognitive flexibility.

• Working memory helps you combine new information with existing knowledge. When you're overloaded with information, this skill suffers.

• Inhibition control lets you manage thoughts and emotions to stay focused. You'll need this to prioritize your daily tasks.

• Cognitive flexibility helps you switch between different tasks and situations. Too much switching can drain this mental resource.

Like an athlete's physical conditioning, these executive functions grow stronger with exercise. But just as athletes risk injury from overtraining, trying to maintain peak mental performance without the right support can lead to burnout. That's where smart digital task management comes in.

Working memory and the burden of information overload

Information overload isn't just about quantity-it's about your brain's processing power being pushed to its limits. When this happens, decision-making slows, anxiety rises and the quality of your choices can suffer. Over time, this cognitive strain can lead to burnout.

Three key factors contribute to information overload:

1. Data deluge: When you're swimming in metrics about resident behavior and asset performance, extracting actionable insights becomes increasingly challenging.

2. Information integrity: Unreliable or incorrect data can make even experienced managers second-guess their decisions.

3. Time pressure: When emergencies strike-like a burst pipe or an urgent resident issue - you need to make informed decisions quickly.

The impacts of information overload ripple through your entire workflow. You might find yourself frozen on routine decisions, struggling with resident interactions, or defaulting to others' suggestions instead of applying your expertise. But here's the good news: the right technology can help.

How technology can help

Information overload is one of the top stressors in daily life, and it affects more than 22% of people. It's more common now that our lives are full of digital technology. And that makes it hard to believe that task management technology can help solve the problem. But a PMS and work management solution can help in three ways:

1. Free up headspace by tracking and delegating tasks: When you don't have to keep lots of information in your head, you can focus on more complex tasks. And when your work management solution can automatically assign tasks based on skill level and efficiency, you'll have even more mental energy.

2. Automating tasks like collecting rent, fielding maintenance requests and scheduling proactive maintenance: Knowing certain tasks will take care of themselves is an even better way to reduce information overload.

3. Give you more reliable data: These digital solutions continuously track things like resident behavior, maintenance history and leasing performance so you can make better decisions more quickly.

Inhibition control and the power of prioritization

Every community manager knows the importance of prioritization, but choosing what comes first isn't always straightforward. Effective prioritization requires you to forecast outcomes, weigh options and plan resource allocation - all mentally demanding tasks.

Enter the Eisenhower matrix, a powerful tool for managing your mental energy. Here's how to use it:

1. Urgent and important: These tasks top your list-tackle them first

2. Urgent but less important: Perfect candidates for delegation to team members or automation

3. Important but not urgent: Schedule these strategically

4. Neither urgent nor important: Consider eliminating these or letting technology handle them

How technology can help

PMS and work management solutions typically come with scheduling tools to help you prioritize and delegate tasks. Some can even plan your work for you. For instance, our work management solution automatically assigns work orders based on urgency, technician skill and location to ensure efficient maintenance.

Cognitive flexibility and battling frequent context-switching

When your to-do list is long, it's tempting to multitask to get more done. But studies show the human brain can't really multitask. You're actually just rapidly switching between tasks over and over-and that's a great way to slow yourself down and make mistakes you'll need to fix later.

Each time you switch, you strain your cognitive flexibility. It might throw you off your groove by only a fraction of a second, but those fractions add up. Task switching, or context switching, can cost you up to 40% productivity. The more complex your tasks, the harder it is to context switch efficiently. And if even one of the tasks you're switching between is unfamiliar, it'll take more time to adjust to the familiar tasks on your list, too.

Instead of giving in to the temptation to check email while planning a resident event or fielding maintenance requests, take a few minutes to plan your day. Use a calendar to block off time for large tasks, then group small tasks together and slot them into 15-minute intervals between appointments.

How technology can help

A few key pieces of technology can help you minimize distractions and keep you focused on the task at hand to avoid task switching as much as possible.

• A work management solution and asset tracking technology can help you predict when assets like HVACs and faucets will fail-so technicians can replace them before they become emergencies that pull you away from other work.

• Automated answering technology can help residents resolve issues themselves or route them to other teammates so you avoid constant interruptions.

Putting it all together

The right technology can help you tame the chaos of property management and reduce your mental load throughout the day. But as we've seen, it can also add to information overload if you're not careful.

The key to ensuring task management technology reduces information overload instead of slowing you down is deep integrations. When your PMS, work management, and other solutions talk to each other, you don't have to double-up on data entry or check its work. You can just let it take care of repetitive tasks so you can focus on the things that truly need your attention.

Ready to reduce your mental load? Start by assessing your current work management system to see if better technology can help you manage those tasks. Look for solutions that offer deep connections with your other tools and automate routine tasks effectively. Your mind-and your residents-will thank you.

Photo from Freepik.com.