3 Easy Steps For Product Managers To Get The Job Done

Product managers seem to have endless responsibilities and countless tasks. There are times when merely looking at your to-do list can give you a panic attack. Fortunately, there are ways that can make your task list less daunting and overwhelming.

Be more productive and efficient by following these three easy steps.

Equip Yourself with the Right Organization Tool

Every person has their own ways of staying organized. You can be as techy or as old-school as you want as long as it works for you. But if you find that your post-it notes or filo fax no longer works for you, there are various organization tools you can use to help you manage day-to-day responsibilities.

Trello is a project management tool that is designed to help team members communicate but can also be used as a personal task list. Trello also enables you to visualize your project plan in a single glance, and keeps priorities organized and updates streamlined.

Asana is a web and mobile task management app designed to enable teamwork while reducing the number of e-mails sent back and forth. It also lets you create projects and tasks within a project, delegate work, and track each team member’s progress.

If you don’t need task management software and just need a way to share documents with your team members, Google Docs is the easiest and simplest solution for you. You can also utilize Google Sheets to list down all projects and task with color codes.

Learn to Prioritize and Delegate Tasks

As a product manager, there is one thing you must remember — you are not Superman (or Superwoman).

You have to accept that you cannot do it all. It is better to prioritize the most important tasks and delegate the less pressing ones rather than doing everything half-baked because you are just too tired or burned out to perform well at every task.

You may want to equip your team with the necessary skills by enrolling them in product management courses such as those offered by Product School. This will help ensure that you are delegating to competent individuals.

Prioritizing is a very important skill for product managers to exhibit efficient time management. There is no clear cut way to prioritize tasks, but you can take urgency and importance into consideration.

Determine which ones are urgent, important, or both urgent and important. Focus on the tasks that you deem both urgent and important, and delegate what you can.

Set Aside Time for Reflection and Relaxation

Since you have already prioritized and delegated, your calendar now has some room for other things on your mind. If you find that there still is not enough time for some “you” time, then clear up your schedule by determining which meetings really require your presence. Learn to say no to meetings or conferences that can actually be done through e-mails.

Once you have this done, you can have more time to think up strategies, plans, and the product you are building. If your schedule is less cramped, then you feel less stressed. When you feel more relaxed, you are able to look at the product holistically, see the bigger picture, and make better business decisions.

Michelle Gonzalez has been writing for SMEs across the United States, Canada, Australia and the UK for the last five years. She is a highly-experienced blogger and SEO copywriter, writing business blogs for various industries such as marketing, law, health and wellness, beauty, and education, particularly on product management training such as those offered by ProductSchool.com.