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24.4 Managing Your Time

As a PM, everyone is going to want your time. The sales team will want to discuss new features that will help them close deals, the marketing team will want to ask about preparing for new launches, and your team of developers and designers will want you to answer questions about their work. And you need time to do your own work, too: exploring all those ideas you have for KPI improvements, digging into the data, talking to users, and—uh-oh, there's another email you need to answer!

There will always be more work than time to do it. How will you balance all these demands and manage the limited time you have each day? That's the topic of this checkpoint.

By the end of this checkpoint, you should be able to do the following:

  • Describe and implement several strategies for managing your time as a product manager



Why plan your day?​

As a product manager, your time is your most valuable asset. There will be lots of tasks that you need to juggle on a regular basis. In a single day, you might need to do all or most of the following tasks:

  • Test a new feature that your developers completed
  • Meet with your designer to review mockups for an upcoming feature
  • Prepare stories for a sprint planning meeting next week
  • Review the metrics from a recently launched A/B test
  • Pitch your roadmap to your executives
  • Handle a support emergency caused by a bug in your product

And even that list doesn't include all the items you'd like to work on. Maybe you've been meaning to investigate some of the strange spikes you've been seeing in your KPI tracking data from the last month, but that's going to take several hours at a minimum. Who knows when you'll have the time to do that?

The truth is that you will never have time to do all the things you want to do or need to do. That means you need to be smart about managing how you spend your day.

Productivity strategies​

You are most likely already familiar with several productivity methods, such as the popular Pomodoro technique. And if you have reached this point in this self-directed learning program, you are probably a pretty productive person already!

That said, it never hurts to give more thought to how to manage your day and maximize the use of your time. Productivity is also another common area for interview questions. Potential employers will want to know that you have a sense of how busy your life as a PM would be, and that you can handle it well. They might ask you to describe past experiences with time management or describe your approach to managing your time and balancing priorities.

Here are a few tips and strategies that many PMs have found useful.

Prioritize your next day​

At the end of your day, write down a list of the top three items that you want to get done tomorrow. This will help you prioritize your next day of work, and it will help you sleep easier, knowing that you don't need to remember those things. If you need to, schedule blocks of time in your calendar tomorrow to ensure you have time to complete those items.

In the morning, check your list. If nothing has changed, you are good to go. If any new "fires" erupted while you were away, adjust your plan accordingly. Some productivity experts call this method the 10/15 split and recommend you spend 15 minutes on the end-of-day "check-out" process (listing priorities for tomorrow) and 10 minutes on the morning "check-in."

Automation and filters​

You can automate many of the tasks that can eat away at your limited time, and reduce the number of interruptions you get through features in the tools you use. Here are some examples of ways you can improve your productivity with automation and filters:

  • Setting up email filters so that your inbox only shows high-priority messages that need your attention
  • Creating automated reports that come directly to your inbox instead of going to each analytics tool and waiting for your data to load
  • Configuring your chat software's notifications (such as Slack) to trigger only when you or certain keywords are specifically mentioned, or when you get messages from certain people

If you really want to take automating tasks to the next level, check out the book Automate the Boring Stuff with Python by Al Sweigart to learn how to use your beginner Python skills to automate work processes (there is also a YouTube version).




Managing your calendar​

There's no place where you will feel the pressures on your time more acutely than in your calendar. You will quickly fill it up and need to be proactive about managing it and making sure there's time in there for the tasks you want to prioritize. Start with these tips:

Schedule your whole day​

If you're having trouble working through your to-do list or you find yourself forgetting specific tasks, one way to handle it is to use your calendar to schedule all the tasks you need to complete. So, if you need to go over something with the designer, add a 30-minute meeting to your calendar at 2 PM so that you can use that time with her. Do that for all your tasks, whether they're solo work or group discussions.

It can also help to schedule your email checks at regular intervals like every four hours rather than checking it randomly throughout the day. By checking email this way, you can minimize distractions in between prescheduled checks and free you up to be more proactive. But be careful with this approach—some companies use email as the primary form of communication and expect you to have quick reaction times. In those cases, it's better to use filtering and notifications to ensure that only the important messages take your attention away from other tasks.

Block off time for big tasks​

It's a good idea to use your time to look for high-impact new opportunities. This requires concentrated research or conversations with colleagues. In fact, part of your job as a PM is to find these opportunities. But how will you find the time?

One way to manage this is to block off several hours each week that are dedicated to finding such opportunities. For example, you can spend every Wednesday after 2 PM until the end of the day focused on this exploration. Put the time in your calendar so that other people won't schedule meetings at that time. And since this is the kind of work that requires prolonged concentration, you'll be much more productive if you can put a single four-hour block on your calendar every week instead of squeezing in four blocks of one hour each.

Skip recurring meetings​

In the previous checkpoint, you were encouraged to set up recurring meetings with your boss and other key stakeholders. But you don't want meetings on your schedule unless they're helpful. One way you can make these meetings better is by ensuring that you have an agenda for each one. Make a habit of sending out the agenda a day before the meeting.

If you have nothing to discuss, check if the other attendees have an agenda. If there's no agenda and nothing to discuss, cancel it for this week. If you can cover the topics in a shorter amount of time through email, messages, or a quick chat in the hallway, do that instead of having a meeting. You and the other attendees will appreciate getting the time back.

Delegate​

One of the hardest skills to master as a product manager is to learn which tasks you should do yourself and which you should have other people do. If you have an option between doing work yourself and giving it to someone else, you should give due consideration to delegating it. It can feel unusual to assign tasks to someone that doesn't report to you. An easy way to make this decision is to ask whether you or the other person can complete the work faster or better. Develop your ability to effectively delegate tasks; it is an important skill that will assist you throughout your career, and often it's the best way for you and your team to complete everything you need to do in a timely manner.

Practice ✍️​

Record a short video of yourself answering the following common interview questions:

  • Tell me about a time in your current or last role when you had more work to do than time to do it in. How did you handle it?
  • What methods will you use to schedule and prioritize your tasks as a PM?