What are some of the task planning tools people use in academia? I have used simple excel-style Gantt Charts to create a high level plan of tasks for the academic semester, noted the end times depending on conference and grant deadlines, and then managed my time according to the deadline. I have also added details under each task as the semester proceeds. I am wondering if there are better task planning &amp; management tools that people have used, especially when they are working on multiple projects with different deadlines?
I have tried many kinds of the task planning apps/softwares for organizing reseach projects. At the end of my search, I interstingly find that ('old school') simple online spreadsheets (Google sheets or Microsoft excel etc.) are the best tools  by many standards as outlined below.


Simplicity: Just make a column for date/time and rest can be the variables such as name of the project, members of reaserch group etc. The  entries in each row can be task planned for each member.
Customizability: Every project is likely be different from each other. So rather than sticking to the pre-alloted platform, spreadsheets allow wide canvas to add all and any kinds of variables (eg. holidays etc.) into your plans. 
Sharability: Applications such Google sheets and Microsoft Excel are well developed, cross-platform tools which allow user friendly sharability and simultaneous editing by multiple users.
Quick analyses: Since it's a spreadsheet afterall, one can easily plot numerical variables such as time wasted per day, number of pages written per day etc. This allows pretty good real time progress reports of the projects.


I would therefore recommend spreadsheets!