At it’s core, I’m a believer that project management is fundamentally time management. Of course, the skillset encompasses a knowledge of the management of wider resources, but the reality is that such disciplines are often managed by other members of a team. The finance department controls the fiscal, the personnel to control the people.
A project manager is a pushing orchestrator, a plate spinner, and a vector of progress. We trade time with deliverables; it’s the key skill that sets a project manager apart from an operational manager. The skill must be performed in all manner of territories – iterative repeats of tasks, as well as groundbreaking new ones also.
So, out of all the knowledge that’s accrued and honed from the practice, the marriage of the disciplines creates a few pieces of wisdom which can be shared or passed on:
Out of all the things you can be, don’t be bullshit busy – we’ve all got those people in our lives that never seem to have a spare second to do anything – or so they will market to you. It’s their personal brand, hustle culture bleeding out of them – the only thing more important to them than being productive, is telling you how productive they’re being.
Reality check: somewhere in the world, Elon Musk is juggling the parenting responsibilities for 10 children, simultaneously running three multi-billion dollar companies- pioneering breakthroughs and transcending convention. Whether you’re a fan or a skeptic of his persona, there is something quite remarkable about someone who possesses the same amount of time as you and I, and yet seems to be able to achieve incredible amounts more.
His practice is adopted by outliers; those who achieve it successfully are rare, but it’s not impossible. It’s equally true that some would argue that his priorities on what he allocates his time to are misguided, but that is also irrelevant. The remarkable lesson here, is that in the same 24 hours, he doesn’t waste any more than necessary.
Performers like this breathe the buzzword of the past few years – leverage. But this isn’t applying to an fanciful concept, but utilising the best parts of modern civilisation to squeeze every drop of what he needs from what he’s got. So, how does he do it?
The specifics doesn’t matter, as his workflow is as personal to him as much as yours is to you. But the top level attributes of this are:
- Don’t delay, but do delegate – in a world where there are too many tasks exist for the time you’ve got to do it, you’ve got to pass on those tasks to someone else. Bonus points for finding someone even more competent than you to do it. Even if the tasks may ultimately have to be done yourself, you can still delegate to get someone started on it – produce a summary, slide deck or organise meetings on your behalf. Delegation can reduce the size of the task – which means the eventual amount of time you have to personally delegate to it is lesser.
- Double up to divide and conquer – Why do one task when you can do two? The holy grail of blasting through a list is pairing tasks that can be done simultaneously. If you’ve got calls or virtual meetings to have, schedule them for a time when you’re travelling. Use the handsfree kit in the car, or the peace on a train to complete those tasks.
- Deal with the dirt first – The dirty tasks are the worst tasks, and you should always start with these. By design and your perception of them, they will be the ones which require the most investment from you and your resources. If you start with these, you can slot the easier tasks in pockets of time between them.
- Diarise – Although not a glamourous practice, there is merit in diarising everything- including breaks, family commitments and others. I will link below for the fundamentals of optimising your diary more for balance and efficiency.
The four horsemen of ultimate productivity are those four simple steps. The leverage comes from using the people around you to share your workload; allocating the right amount of time to the large tasks, and attempting to combine others where possible.