How to Be a More Efficient and Effective Product Manager

6 Simple Principles for Getting Stuff Done

As someone with a full time job, a part time job, a company, a few friends, some family, and a daily gym habit, it’s become imperative for me to be as efficient and effective as possible in everything I do. This ranges from tasks that I assign to myself, to tasks that I’ve been assigned from others (including my bosses at work), and tasks that I assign to my teams who I build products with.

Over the last year of kicking off my side projects, time has become increasingly evasive, but I’ve gotten much better at using it thanks to six principles that I apply — not just at work, but during all my 24 hours of the day.

My product teams have been able to benefit from these principles as well. This has enabled us all to maintain the same lifestyle while producing top quality work and relationships. Let’s get started.

1. Focus on outcomes, not outputs

One of the most important things is a mindset shift in how we think about our tasks. My team and I find it extremely beneficial to think in terms of outcomes instead of outputs. What that means is we figure out what effect or impact will result in success and make the output a means to that. When evaluating your own life priorities — such as hobbies, relationships, and work — set macro life goals. It sounds inhuman, but it helps, and is where it makes the most sense to rationalize emotion as a weight.

When you have someone else assigning you tasks, it’s too easy, and common, for people to assign those tasks as a solution — be it a deck, a product feature, or a process.

Here’s the thing: figuring out what the true objective is (often it’s not exactly what’s being asked), will save you a lot of time making something that might over, under, or anecdotally serve that end outcome. When you shift your thinking to an outcome-oriented mindset, you can often trim the fat on the prescribed solution, and possibly end up discovering a new way to solve the problem in the first place. As long as you approach this considering the principles below, nobody will miss their solution unless there’s an ego in the way.

2. Set expectations

If you’re doing something with a team, or for your boss (or if you have a great boss, it’s one in the same), ask a lot of questions to get an idea of what your boss needs. Start to give them ideas of what the end product might look like and ask for their approval. This is no different than testing a design or an idea, you’re just doing it faster so you can get to work as soon and as efficiently as possible, minimizing back and fourth.

3. Plan

Seriously, I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t plan. As soon as a task comes onto the table, start to plan how you would get to the outcome, understand when it would need to be done by, and identify any other constraints that may be particular to this unique situation. Talk it through with your team in the meeting when it comes up or send a message after the meeting if time is limited, but don’t start any parts of the task that you’re unsure about, like a form of deliverable — use that time on your other tasks to do and start on a more abstract part like research. Getting an immediate understanding of your constraints will help you break an outcome down into tasks that you can then prioritize.

It’s also important to realize that plans change. Of course, do your absolute best to stick to your obligations; “following through” will keep you just as sane as it keeps your stakeholders. But, when plans do change, it should be because something of higher priority came up (especially if the change is self-motivated), and hopefully the plans you had are flexible. I find that the stronger you hold to commitments, the more forgiving they get over time — so stick to your plans unless you really need to change them.

4. Prioritize

I mentally consider most things on the classic Impact/Effort axis — then I write things down on my to-do list in the order that they need to be done. For balancing different unrelated initiatives, I try to weigh almost all of my separate outcomes (including sanity, relationships and career) equally. Sometimes it helps to rate them for the other party as well to give yourself some empathy. Of course there are caveats where emotion and time get in the way, but those factors come second in the task analysis–and will help for the more difficult decisions.

For my team, we use forced rankings or for simpler situations, we do plot the tasks along the axis. Having an artifact is extremely helpful when accomplishing an outcome is a group effort. If you’re only prioritizing your own tasks, you shouldn’t need to make the chart once you get good at thinking in this mindset. While it gets pretty obvious over time, it can be helpful when your plate gets full.

Once we can see the relationship of the tasks’ priority on the chart, we can re-include time as a variable and reprioritize accordingly. Some things just need to be done sooner or are critical to start something else thing. Move those things to the front. If they are low effort, but aren’t urgent, you don’t have to do them right away, but you have to move them up a bit so they get done before you run out of time.

Evaluating emotion is much more subjective. How important is something to you? This lever most often comes into play when dealing with relationships, their emotions, and plans. If you want someone to stay in your life, but you’re busy, ya gotta make time even if it’s low impact on some of your other desired outcomes. Plus de-prioritizing these things can often take more time to fix than to maintain.

5. Find the point of diminishing Returns

In many environments, this principle has a stigma against it, but it’s completely necessary, and I think that’s a fatal flaw to ignore it. That said, the reason behind the social stigma is understandable — on many tasks, it’s very difficult to recognize when you’ve actually reached the inflection point of diminishing returns. Often it’s subjective and when prolonged, led by ego.

In some work cultures, it may be up to your boss to find the point of diminishing returns, and if they have an ego, that’s often not a good sign. In organizations that truly treat their customers as their boss, frequent testing can be the solution here. Even if, for whatever circumstance, you can’t test with customers, test with peers. Ask them to poke holes in your task.

I find frequent pressure tests are the best way to determine when you’ve reached this point — and they can provide great support for stakeholders that may feel otherwise. You’ll know you’re okay to move on when people are nit picking. People will always find problems if you ask them to. Use this to your advantage. Even if they’re nit-picky, being aware of them can help you prioritize. When I write tickets, I’ll occasionally pressure test fidelity or detail with developers, especially when working with a new team.

If you’re a manager reviewing work, understand that not every idea you may have will be in the work you’re reviewing, it’s going to be from a different voice and mind. Consider if your additions are worth the additional work it will take your subordinate to implement.

6. Accept that some things won’t get done

A lot of entrepreneurs get asked how they do everything that’s on their plate. The simple answer is that they don’t. It’s okay to say “no,” especially if you do it upfront and set the expectation with your stakeholders. That’s not just an entrepreneurial thing, you can say no in an office, too.

When there’s simply too much to do, some things are going to get done poorly, in lower fidelity, or just not at all. You have to be okay with that — so does everyone who relies on you. It’s a give and take. Just make sure that you’re not continuously neglecting something important — It takes longer to fix something than to maintain it.