Why spreadsheets still run everything

There are dozens of polished task management tools. So which one did the people in our survey rely on most?

A spreadsheet.

Nine of our 10 respondents use Excel or Google Sheets to manage tasks. Jira came second at 40%, then paper, notes or chat messages (30%), Notion and Trello (20% each). Nobody picked Asana, ClickUp or Monday.

The more interesting number is this: 90% use two or more tools. Only one person ran everything in a single place, and that place was a spreadsheet. Even the Jira users kept a sheet alongside it.

What spreadsheets get right

It's easy to dismiss the spreadsheet as the tool people use before they get a real one. The data suggests the opposite. People keep sheets next to their "real" tools, which means the sheet is doing a job the others aren't.

A few reasons it survives:

• Nothing to set up. Only one person named "the tool takes too much setup or upkeep" as a frustration, and it's easy to see why: a sheet asks for nothing before you start.
• It bends to your process. Add a column, change a colour, sort by anything. One team lead told us their colour-coding made stuck tasks easy to spot, the only early catch in our whole survey.
• Everyone can open it. Clients, other departments and the manager two levels up can all read a sheet without a new login.
• It's the summary layer. When the detailed work lives in Jira or a chat, the sheet is often where someone pulls it together for a report.

Where spreadsheets break

The weakness is the same as the strength: a sheet does exactly what you tell it, and nothing else. It doesn't know what day it is. It doesn't notice a row that hasn't changed in two weeks. It doesn't remind anyone.

One respondent's slip story says it all: the spreadsheet wasn't updated, a deadline was missed, and they found out only after it had passed, by checking the spreadsheet.

The sheet was accurate the whole time. It simply waited for a human to update it and another human to look.

And because most people pair the sheet with something else, they pay for it in switching: 20% named "switching between too many tools" a top-three frustration, and every extra tool is another place where status can drift.

What this means for anyone building a task tool

If your competitor is a spreadsheet, more features won't win. Three things matter more:

1. Be as quick to start as a sheet. If the first ten minutes feel like configuration, people go back to the grid.
2. Do the one thing a sheet can't: pay attention. Notice time, notice stillness, notice when a plan and reality drift apart.
3. Don't become one more tab. Fit into where people already work, or replace a tool rather than adding to the pile.

That's the bar we've set for Progask. It should feel as light as the sheet people already trust, while doing the one thing a sheet never will: knowing what day it is. Give a task an end date and Progask sorts it into Slipped, Now or Ahead by itself. It never changes a date unless you do. And because so much planning now happens in AI chat, Progask meets people there instead of asking them to come to yet another app.

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About the survey. In October 2026 we asked 10 people who work with at least two others how they manage tasks. Respondents came from a paid research panel (Opionate) and answered 17 questions, including a short story about the last task that slipped. Ten people is a small group, so read these numbers as early signals, not industry statistics. We plan to run a larger round.