How to buy back your time (and that of your team too)

Have you ever felt like there’s not enough time in your day?

If so, you’re not alone.

You’re wearing many different hats as a project manager, and it often feels like there’s just too much to do.

As a result, many of us try to cram more in a day. We skip lunch, work crazy hours, or try the latest productivity hack. As a result, we’re multitasking all day long and spinning our wheels without getting anywhere.

You need to stop this, before it stops you.

Recurring tasks are a silent killer

I’m a sucker for old James Bond movies, and a sucker for teams that run like clockwork.

Over the years, I’ve applied James’ famous quote from the Goldfinger movie to how I streamline project tasks, and you should do the same.

Spot the patterns

As Bond said, something that happens 3x (or more) is a pattern.

Make a habit of spotting them. Look through your calendar, in your PM tool, in your notes, and listen in your meetings. Everything recurring is suspicious.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

• Expense filing

• Stakeholder report

• Task or sprint retrospective

• Meeting agenda and pre-read

Odds are, you or someone on your team does these things multiple times per week. And every time, you’re starting from scratch.

This recurring work is using not just valuable time, but is costing you mental energy and it gets you different results each time.

Let’s see what we can do about it:

Just stop doing it

Before you spend time optimizing a recurring task, I have a challenge for you.

Stop doing it.

See what breaks.

Listen to who screams.

Odds are, nothing happens.

From reports that don’t get read to form attachments that are never opened, you’ll be amazed.

Do it with the least amount of friction

You’re right.

Many recurring things are necessary. That means we have to do them often, do them well, and use the least amount of brainpower.

Use these 6 strategies to buy back your time:

• SOPs

• Systems

• Delegate

• Checklists

• Templates

• Automation

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

SOPs are a powerful tool for project management. Instead of reinventing the wheel each time, you standardize how you do it.

This can be a simple work description, a Loom video, or something more advanced and interactive.

Making SOPs is a skill, and one every PM should learn. If enough of you are interested, I’ll do a deep dive into this soon!

For the best result, combine SOPs with templates.

Templates

Imagine if every time you clicked “new meeting” in your calendar, the invite would open with a pre-filled agenda.

It’s an agenda that everyone knows, it gives you the prompts for the right preparation, and you don’t have to think about it.

Sounds great, right? The power of templates!

Apply this wherever you can, and enjoy a long list of less obvious benefits like increased consistency, less rework, and repeating elements that reinforce your team’s culture.

Checklists

Pilots use a pre-flight checklist.

Surgeons use a pre-incision checklist.

Why? The stakes are high, and the list of things to remember is long.

Get it out of your head, and lower the chances of failure in recurring tasks.

Remember that newsletter with a broken link I sent out a few weeks ago? Guess who now has a pre-publishing checklist 😉

Systems

You’re hopefully using a project management system, which helps you and your team stay organized.

Your tasks in one place, your documents organized - everything linked and transparent.

What most forget is that PM systems have loads of features for recurring tasks, where you can store the templates & SOPs we mentioned earlier.

Now you don’t have to remember when to do your reporting, nor how to do it!

Automation

This is the closest you can get to not doing something, but without it backfiring.

Automation is a trap though.

Many project managers spend hours (or more) on automating tasks that should not be done in the first place. Or on tasks where they don’t know (yet) how they should be done.

Go through the steps above before you automate.

Understand a task thoroughly before spending hours & budget on automating something sub-optimal.

Once automated, it’s out of sight, and updating it becomes more complex. This means that in reality, you’ll end up accepting the error to occur every week.

Delegation

Delegating something means you don’t have to do it anymore, but someone else does. They might do it faster or cheaper, but it still has to be done.

Think from the perspective of the team here.

Can you apply any of the things discussed above to make someone else’s job easier, faster, and more consistent?

If you’re struggling with delegation, I strongly urge you to give this article from my friend Dave Kline a read. It’s a masterclass in delegation from the perspective of an experienced team leader.

There are many small nuances between delegating in a project team versus in a functional team like Dave’s, but that’s for another day.

Putting it all together

I hear you thinking. Won’t all this standardization make the team feel like cogs in a machine?

Change your perspective: you free up their calendars and minds for creative work. It shows them what kind of work you value.

Use your head to come up with ideas, not to store them.

On top of that, setting up all of the above is a huge development opportunity for you and everyone on the team.

Someone fresh on the team will appreciate the guidance and the feeling that this team has their act together. They’ll be less overwhelmed and learn faster.

For someone with more experience, making an SOP or template is a great opportunity to hone their craft and learn how to share their knowledge.

And the seniors? They’ll be happy that you’re saving them time and bandwidth, and that they don’t have to answer the same question every day.

Think about your own development as a leader too. You’re providing your team with clarity, saving time, increasing quality, and helping people develop.

Well done!

Before we sign off:

1. You’ll love reading Dave’s newsletter each week, and I highly recommend it to develop your leadership skills. Sign up with 1 click here!

2. You as a reader deserve control over what we cover each week. What would be most valuable to you?

   1. Project reporting - never get asked “What’s the status"?” again

   2. Agile vs Waterfall - when do you choose which method?

   3. Program management - juggling multiple projects in a portfolio

Vote for next week’s topic by replying with “1”, “2”, or “3”, or feel free to drop any other suggestions!

That’ll do for this week - until next Tuesday!

Cheers,

Jasper