Productivity for Product Managers
As a Product Manager, at any point in time there are many items that are vying for your attention throughout the day. There could be development tickets, design reviews, customer interviews, stakeholder emails, Roadmap presentation, commercial discussions with sales/marketing teams, slack, email etc. to name a few.
And yet there is only so much time available in a day to allocate for these many tasks.
Often among such demands you might end up with very little time to do actual product work.
How then can you be productive and manage to efficiently address all of these tasks that are vying for your attention?
There are a few quick hacks that have worked well for me over the years. It involves a combination of structure, discipline and tools to bring a semblance of sanity to my everyday working.
1 Using Integrated Tools: You might find this an odd first point. But I think given the many tools that we use, it is important to have integration to minimize work and keep track efficiently.
Let me explain how with an example.
Personally, I use Aha! for idea management and Roadmapping, JIRA for development and design tickets, Slack for internal Communication, Todoist for personal task management.
Aha! and JIRA have two way sync setup so I don’t have to rework on items. I can also manually push items between the two.With JIRA and Slack integration, I can seamlessly keep track of tickets being worked on, comments on JIRA issues through slack. Also if there are JIRA comments or Slack comments that I need to address but don’t want to spend time addressing it immediately, I add them as a Todoist task with prioritization. This is possible through Slack-Todoist integration.
Aha← → JIRA ← → Slack ← → Todoist
As you can see with integration, I am able to minimize rework/effort and also am able to be informed. Slack acts as a centralized area for most of the day for me to be informed both by other apps or colleagues.
2. Choosing an efficient Task management app: While there are tools for creating a roadmap, brainstorming or setting up a meeting, a tool to remember to do these actions is a critical piece in my opinion in efficiently managing time. Not all tasks are of the same priority and not everything needs your immediate attention. Among the many available in the market like Notion, Trello, Microsoft tasks etc. what has worked well for me is Todoist. Because Todoist can be integrated with Slack, I am able to do one click task creation. Any new JIRA ticket needing my attention goes from slack to Todoist. Any new conversation that needs my attention later also goes into Todist in one click. Try it out.
3. The 80/20 rule: Pareto’s principle which states that 80% of outcome is dependent on 20% of the causes. It is applicable to our lives as well. So I chose to identify and focus on the 20% of tasks that would give that 80% value.
4. Time Box: It is possible you are needed by different people for different contexts. Switching in and out into multiple different items would be too distracting and lead you into being less productive. Also, you would be distracted from doing work that where you can focus on the actual Product Management. So in a day it would be useful to block time to focus on deep product work that you wanted to do. Blocking time ensures you are less distracted and are at your most productive as well.
5. Calendar Check: Be very aware of your calendar and finish everyday with the calendar for the next day so you know what is upcoming and be well planned around the day’s items. I have noticed that the idea of your day being too packed or less packed heavily influences how you plan and hence your productivity for the day.
5. Pomodoro? : I have heard of this technique, while I myself have not used it. But leaving it here for you to dig deep and see if this is also something you want to try as I have heard other PM’s vouch for this to be effective.
Let me know what your personal productivity hacks in the comments!
