The phrase "a staggering task" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe a task that is overwhelming or difficult to accomplish.
Example: "Completing the project within a week felt like a staggering task, given the amount of research required."
Alternatives: "an enormous challenge" or "a daunting undertaking."
The new government faces a staggering task.
"But solving all the biological problems is a staggering task, too, and it is a task that has been largely assigned, by politics and happenstance, to a handful of underfinanced, understaffed and scientifically overwhelmed boutique biotech companies".
Because of the scope of the problem, fixing it was also a staggering task.
Even with a very good measure, finding relevant patterns among millions of correlations is a staggering task, especially when done in a completely unsupervised fashion.
Confronted with a 50% college admissions rate for graduating seniors, he initiated an integrative curriculum and accomplished the staggering task of raising the college admission rate at his institution from 50%to100%0%.
Mr. Chernow also took on the staggering task of sifting the writings of a man who "must have produced the maximum number of words that a human being can scratch out in 49 years".
The truly staggering task of dealing with the tremendous amount of plant material in the annual leaf fall belongs to some of the small insects of the soil and the forest floor.
Healtheon's challenges go well beyond the staggering task of integrating all of these different technologies.
Obviously, the conversion of the South into a democracy in the sense that the mass of people vote and have a hand in their governance poses one of the most staggering tasks for statesmanship in the western world.
Readers who sign on will acquire a staggering list of tasks to perform, some of which may be just as tiring and tear-producing as chopping onions.
