3 time management methods for Product Managers

As a product manager, you might find yourself with limited time to do as much product work as you would like to. There is no magic formula that solves this paradox, but there are some great productivity hacks you can easily set up ! 💪

When I joined Doctolib in December 2020, I used the following methods to free up as much time as I could to ramp up quicker in an ever evolving and fast-paced environment. Each person is different, but I will describe the methods that worked well for me, and I believe could work well for others.

Let’s aggregate our time in 3 categories:

• Having an impact on a monthly basis 🌓
• Having an impact on a weekly basis 📅
• Having an impact on a daily basis ⏰

1/ Having an impact on a monthly basis 🌓

Building your agenda

Problem:

• It’s hard to control what your agenda will look like for the coming month, and to know if you’ve correctly prioritized your time relative to its allocated category.

Potential solution:

• In my case, blocking work alone slots in my agenda allows me to better assess what meetings I should go to, and make sure I control the speed with which we deliver to our stakeholders. It also allows me to mix delivery tasks with continuous discovery ones (talking to users on a regular basis for instance).
• By logging every action in my agenda, I leverage it on a monthly basis to check if time allocations are aligned with my objectives (currently decreasing the % of operational vs. the % of strategy topics). To do so, I use a GSheet that calculates what we call our “Time Matrix” at Doctolib. It takes as input targets of time allocation by category and color.

• Then at an agenda level, I can attribute one of the category colours to each task on which I spend time (even reading emails). A week would look like this:

• Finally, the script provides as output what my current time allocations are for a given month or quarter. That makes it easier to take concrete actions to correct these allocations (spend more time talking to users, decrease the number of interviews, etc.).

Automating manual tasks:

Problem:

• We might be doing too many manual tasks on a regular basis (and we might even have gotten used to it 😱 ).

Potential solution:

• Whether these tasks are meant to be done by you or by someone else (your stakeholders for instance), a rough estimation of how long these would take to automate vs continue doing them manually on a monthly basis, is usually a good call.
• It’s especially easy today with the broad panels of no-code tools available in the market (product builders, base blocks, or enablers). It can be as simple as implementing a Slack Bot using Zapier to celebrate your team’s birthdays 🥳..

2/ Having an impact on a weekly basis 📅

Picking the right to-do tool(s)

Problem:

• We all handle our weekly to-dos in different ways, but we might at some point feel that we are not as efficient as we could be.

Solution:

• This might seem obvious, but spending time to identify why you do your tasks, how long they take, what the current timeframes are, etc. can help a lot with picking the most suitable tool to achieve your end goals 💎
• For instance, I use Todoist for my personal life, and a combination of Apple notes and Google Calendar events at Doctolib. There are dozens of others available, you only need to find a method that works for you, set some ground rules, and abide by them!

Being a product reference:

Problem:

• In specific workflows you will encounter some edge cases you’re not aware of. Or, you will be asked unexpected product questions by your stakeholders, for which you might not have the answer.

Potential solution:

• Spend the maximum time you can on learning how your product works inside and out. Try out every functional workflow there is, even edge cases. If you’re lucky enough to be given some documentation, read it as soon as you can 👀
• If your company is getting bigger, find means to stay up-to-date on latest product releases and how they will be integrated into the current features (meeting PM colleagues in other teams is a good place to start). For instance at Doctolib, we share all specifications documents between tech & product teams, and we also have dedicated weekly slots to discover what other teams are currently working on.
• Spend time deep diving into your tech stack with your engineering peers.

Taking ownership

Problem:

• You can never be transparent enough about how your product discoveries and deliveries are currently doing.

Potential solution:

• Be proactive in communicating good or bad news to your stakeholders as you move forward, and make them aware of the complexities you encounter. This will create a climate of trust, and will make it easier to say no when it’s necessary. That way you’ll be able to buffer unexpected weekly demands more easily 👌
• Always keep your sprint planning and broader roadmap up to date when you start shifting.

3/ Having an impact on a daily basis ⏰

Applying the 4D framework

Problem:

• Having our focus interrupted and our attention required in various places is especially true for product managers. Indeed the multiplicity of stakeholders makes spending our time wisely challenging 🤯

Solution:

• When we get down to prioritizing product features, we know how to use frameworks such as RICE or MoSCoW. For personal efficiency, I apply the 4D framework to make sure I’m doing the right task at the right time.
• In a nutshell, it states that for each task you can: Do it (either right now if it requires less than 2 minutes, or plan a work alone session), Delete it (if it has no impact on your objective / is not in your scope), Defer it (if it is not time sensitive), or Delegate it (if someone else can be the right person for it)

Getting to inbox 0

Problem:

• Emails are still taking up a significant amount of our time, and it’s easy to get lost in your mailbox if you don’t structure how you deal with it.

Potential solution:

• You should see your inbox as a temporary place, where emails come and go, and only those you need to take care of remain 📥
• The 4D rule works well here: each email can either be dealt with immediately(2 min answer or read) / postponed (for an answer that can wait a few days) / delegated to someone else / deleted (an alert with no action required)
• You can book dedicated slots every day to clean it (I try to do it twice: every morning before starting the day, and after my last meeting). When you close your computer this is what you should aim to see:

Side note: this method works fine with instant messaging using solutions such as Slack or Mattermost

Mastering your daily tools:

Problem:

• We generally don’t spend enough time learning how to efficiently operate our tools.

Potential solution:

• When you start using a new software on a regular basis, learning its main tricks is definitely worth the time it takes (at least I feel it is for me)
• As an example, when I first started to use a Mac a few months ago, I spent the first hours trying to learn every keyboard shortcut there is, so I would be as efficient as I was when working on Windows.
• I’m quite convinced that never using your trackpad / mouse can only make you more efficient on a daily basis, and is a good investment of your time 🚀

If you managed to get to the bottom of this page, thanks for reading 👌 ! This list is by no means complete, however I wanted to share what I put in place when I joined Doctolib, as these tools helped me ramp up faster.

Do not hesitate to reach out if you have any comments or want to discuss these time management methods. And stay tuned for new articles on PM skills from Doctolib (the next one will be on the collaborative mindset) 🙂