As a product manager, how can you better manage your time?
As the adage says, “You cannot do everything” makes perfect sense when you are in product management. Taking on multiple projects simultaneously is something product managers take pride in. Have you noticed that most of the brilliant ideas you envision don’t end up being executed? You are delayed on most of the tasks you are trying to complete, which negatively impacts your productivity. Here are a few simple steps you can take to improve your execution skills.
1.Put an end to multitasking
Managing a product entails dealing with different things every day. We believe that we can solve most of these problems by improving our multitasking skills. During multitasking, context switching affects our ability to produce quality work. Additionally, it creates an additional mental load on our brains, which must track everything simultaneously. Sometimes we miss out on essential tasks that end up being delayed since we are so focused on everything else. There were high impact items which we missed out on, items which could have had substantial impacts on the product.
2. Use technology to your advantage
As product managers, we strive to build things that solve the problems of our customers. This time deficit we face is not new and has been solved in some form by others before us. A number of tools or apps already exist in the market and are just waiting to be discovered. Todoist, for example, makes it easy to keep track of the top ideas. Focus and Centered are desktop apps that help users focus on one task at a time. Occasionally, even if we are focused, we get distracted by notifications from social networks. The allure of the internet is difficult to resist, and it can severely impact our productivity. With tools like Freedom and Stay focused, we can reduce these distractions. Alternatively, you can turn off notifications for all non-essential apps on your phone. Trust me, it works like a charm
3. Use Eisenhower decision Matrix
We believe that a product manager must step in when any crisis occurs with the product. Nevertheless, you should take a step back and ask yourself whether you really need to get involved in this crisis right now. There are teams in your organisation which will be able to respond to the situation without much context. This is where a decision matrix framework comes in. All of your tasks can be assigned to one of these four buckets and your next steps can be planned accordingly. To us, it’s all about prioritisation. If we can do that for our product, we can do that for our lives as well.
4. Watch out for Sayre’s and Parkinson’s laws in your daily work flow
I am sure you have noticed that during the product input or feedback sessions, inconsequential topics dominate the discussion. That’s Sayre’s law at work, which states, simply put, that things with less value provoke more feedback or comments than those that matter most. Let’s imagine there is a meeting related to a long-term goal of the company, plus an issue regarding the canteen food. People are more likely to voice their opinions about canteen food than about long term company goals.
“In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.”
Additionally, when we are working on a feature, it is quite usual for us to allocate a longer time depending on its complexity. However, most of these features end up being built and tested in the last few days before the scheduled launch. It is caused by Parkinson’s law which states that “Work expands to fill in the allocated time”. For this situation to be handled, it is essential to divide all features into short deadlines.
As all projects are judged on execution, not ideation, these steps would help you manage the time more effectively.
