Staying Organized as a Band Director: Digital Task Managers That Can Help

This article about task managers was originally published in The Woman Conductor Journal, June 2026 issue. 

As a band director, if you have ever compared your job to that of an event planner, project manager, or something similar, you are not alone! If there is one thing that a band director has to be, it’s organized. Between managing instruments, music libraries, performances, fundraisers, field trips, and everything in between, there are always a lot of plates spinning.

Productivity expert David Allen is well known for talking about how our brains are not a filing cabinet. We shouldn’t try to simply remember everything we have to do. Instead, we should develop a system for keeping track of things so our brains can do the important work (in our case, teaching music!) and that’s why a digital task manager can be so valuable.

A regular to-do list is good for recording and organizing tasks. A digital task manager takes that one step further and enables you to access task lists on several devices, set notifications and reminders to complete tasks, and even add tasks directly from other applications. While sticky notes may work for some people, a digital task manager can mean the difference between buses that were ordered on time or having to cancel a  field trip due to a lack of transportation. 

When deadlines live only in our heads, important tasks can slip through the cracks. Not because we are careless, but because the job simply involves too many moving pieces. A good task management system reduces mental clutter and helps ensure that important details don’t get lost during busy seasons like marching band, concert prep, or festival travel.

Which Task Manager to Choose?

Just like most technology, digital task managers vary in features and complexity. Before diving in, it’s important to consider what features you need and what will fit naturally into your existing workflow.

• What devices do you currently use and on which would you like to access the task manager? 
• Are you willing to pay a subscription or fee for a task manager? 
• Do you have repeating projects that typically have the same tasks each time? 
• Do you need to share the tasks with anyone else? 

Thinking through these questions can help you choose a task manager that fits both your needs and your workflow.

Here is a list of popular task-managers with brief descriptions of their features: 

Simple and Built-In

• Apple Reminders – A simple, built-in task manager for Apple devices that works well for basic lists, reminders, and shared family or team tasks.
• Microsoft To Do – A clean and easy-to-use task manager that integrates well with Outlook and other Microsoft tools commonly used in schools.
• Google Tasks – A lightweight task manager that connects directly with Gmail and Google Calendar for users already working in the Google ecosystem.

Great for Individual Productivity

• Remember The Milk – A long-running task manager known for its smart lists, reminders, and organizational tools for managing large numbers of tasks. (Available for free or a yearly subscription for premium features.) 
• Todoist – A flexible and popular task manager that balances simplicity with powerful features like labels, filters, and recurring tasks. (Available for free or a yearly subscription for premium features.) 
• Things 3 – A beautifully designed Apple-only task manager focused on organization, planning, and distraction-free productivity. Easily create projects, templates, and repeated tasks. (Free trial then one-time-purchase for each device.)
• OmniFocus – An advanced task manager for Apple users that is especially popular among people who follow the Getting Things Done (GTD) productivity system. (Free trial then one-time-purchase or subscription options.)

As a personal note, I have used Remember the Milk, Todoist, and Things 3 with great success! Currently, I use Things 3 because it works best for the large number of projects I deal with, but I can still highly recommend the other two.  

Best for Team Collaboration

• Monday.com  – A highly customizable project management platform designed for teams, collaboration, and tracking large projects with multiple moving parts. (Available for free or a yearly subscription for premium features.) 
• ClickUp – A feature-rich productivity platform that combines task management, documents, calendars, and team collaboration in one place. (Available for free or a yearly subscription for premium features.)
• Asana – A collaborative project management tool that helps teams organize projects, assign responsibilities, and track progress over time. (Available for free or a monthly/yearly subscription for premium features.)

If you are completely new to digital task managers, start with the system that already matches the devices and tools you use every day.

Suggestions for Getting the Most Out of Your Task Manager

Capture tasks immediately. If you think of something during rehearsal, add it right away. Knowing the task has been captured allows you to focus more on the moment. 

Schedule tasks in advance. If you know that festival signups open on May 1st, schedule it in your task manager to appear on your list on that day. 

Repeating tasks. Are there things that you need to do weekly, monthly, or yearly? Set them up as repeating tasks. For example, if every month you need to prepare notes for the band booster meeting, and the boosters always meet on the 2nd Monday of the month, create a task that will automatically appear on your list 2 days before the meeting each month.

Break large projects into smaller steps. “Plan spring trip” becomes order buses, distribute permission slips, arrange chaperones, collect payments, create itinerary, etc. Breaking projects into smaller tasks not only makes them feel more manageable, but also helps ensure that important details don’t get overlooked during busy times of the year.

Create project templates. Every concert likely has many of the same tasks associated with it: reserve the auditorium, add the date to the school calendar, send reminders home, print programs, set up the stage, etc. To eliminate having to record every task each time you have a concert, create a concert template that you can simply copy and add the new dates.   

Review your tasks weekly. A quick Friday afternoon review can prevent surprises next week and help you identify tasks that need to be rescheduled, delegated, or broken into smaller steps before they become overwhelming.

Use tags or labels. For example: “urgent,” “email,” “5-minute task,” or “booster-related.” Tags can make it easier to quickly filter your list based on the type of work you have time and energy for in the moment.

Final Thoughts

The best task manager is not necessarily the one with the most features, it’s the one you will consistently use. A simple system you check every day is far more effective than a complicated system you abandon after two weeks.

No task manager will magically make band directing stress-free, but having a reliable system can reduce mental overload and help you spend less energy trying to remember everything. The goal is not perfect productivity, it’s creating more space to focus on students and music-making.