How Unplanned Work Kills Product Managers — Part II
If you read my previous article here, about unplanned work and how it can kill product managers, this is a must-read follow-up. Here are my top techniques and tips you can use to clear your calendar and attend only necessary and efficient meetings:
- Do you need this meeting? Many times we are under the illusion we need meetings so we can share updates, get feedback, or just answer quick questions. The best approach here is to start drafting the invite and if you can’t start with an action verb (such as “decide”, “create”, “finalize”, etc.) in your subject line then, you don’t need it (“review”, “check”, etc. are not action verbs).
- If you do need the meeting, then create a purpose statement for it (not an agenda as no one will read it), what goal do you plan to achieve? For example, “In this meeting, we will decide X, Y, Z”.
- Limit your audience to only decision-makers. Jeff Bezos popularized the two-pizza rule, where the number of meeting participants should be small enough that they can be fed with two pizzas. The same goes for one of Agile Scrum fundamentals, where the number of communication channels increases exponentially as the team grows.
- Keep your meetings short, 15–30 mins if you can. Many times you will find yourself in back-to-back long meetings that you don’t even have time to take a bathroom break. If you schedule the meeting then keep it short, if you are invited then drop the moment you shared your input and you are not needed anymore. It is also recommended to set your meetings to end 5 mins before. For example at X:25 (if it’s a 30 mins call) or X:55 (in case of a 1-hour call).
- Do not accept every single meeting invite you get. If you are not sure, keep them as “Tentative” or, just reject them altogether. Many times we accept meetings out of FOMO or just ego. Ask yourself, “Is my opinion absolutely vital to the purpose of this meeting?”, “Does this meeting move my goals or my team’s goals forward?” If not, just say “NO” and talk to the organizer with total clarity and honesty, if you are needed they can ping you when the time comes.
- Audit your meetings! If a meeting is recurring, remove it and join only when they need you. If data or updates are exchanged, it can be done in writing (email or chat). If there is no agenda, then most likely there is no value. If it is a Powerpoint presentation and someone will just narrate it or read it out loud then just get that material in beforehand and go through it at your own pace (then join only if you have questions/suggestions).
Your calendar must be optimized to make you as productive as possible. Merge your To Do list with your calendar and add all those tasks with dates and times.
Have folders or tags where you can categorize your emails based on when you must take action on them: “Today”, “This Week”, “Later”, and start with “Today”.
Get into the habit of checking your inbox twice a day (maybe morning and afternoon) so you focus on progressing in your work, instead of wasting time checking every email notification you receive.
Free your calendar, get back your time, and focus on what you do best, delivering!
Set Goals & Prioritize
Set, prioritize and keep your goals visible!
Allocate time the weekend before and plan your whole week or just allocate time the night before or the same morning before you start to set your top 3 priorities and log them in your calendar with the time you need to finish them.
Use techniques like the Pareto Principle (a.k.a 20/80 rule) that says 20% of the actions are responsible for 80% of the outcomes. In other words, focus on what would bring you the biggest impact. This technique aims to help you prioritize tasks that are most effective at solving problems.
Or you can use other prioritization techniques like the Eisenhower Matrix, popularized by former US President Dwight Eisenhower which helps you organize your tasks in four separate quadrants, sorting them by most important to least important and most urgent to least urgent so you can focus mainly on the Urgent/Important quadrant:
This technique allows you to visualize your tasks backlog and educates you to immediately focus on the “Important/Urgent” area.
The only key here is to differentiate between “Important” and “Urgent”. These two words are interchangeable in most companies, hence you and your team must establish what’s important and what’s urgent:
- Urgent tasks are those that need to get done immediately to unblock our work and our team’s work.
- Important tasks are those that contribute to your long-term goals or values.
Ideally, you should only work on tasks in the top two quadrants, the other tasks, you should either delegate or just delete.
Time management is something many of us struggle with. Effective time management allows us to make the most of our day, accomplishing tasks more quickly and prioritizing those that will make the most impact.
Different people need different effective time management strategies. Be it to reduce stress, increase efficiency and productivity, deliver your work on time, or just improve work-life balance.
I will be sharing more tips in part 3 where I would focus more on productivity techniques which, combined with this Part 1 and Part 2, would put you on the right path to shine.
Brain coach Jim Kwik once said, “The most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing”.
