Making Time for the Project

Project management is rarely a full-time role, except in large or specialized organizations. Finding time for your longer-term work is often one of the biggest challenges faced by managers of smaller projects, especially when the planning stage ends and hands-on work begins.

Recognizing your priorities

Most modern approaches to time management address our tendency to prioritize urgency over importance when deciding what to do on a day-to-day basis. While the ability to react to unforeseen problems is essential, being purely “reactive” damages productivity, reduces the quality of results, and, not least, is stressful for you.

As a project manager your focus has to be farther ahead than the immediate; hence, the emphasis on definition and planning, on proactive communication with all stakeholders, and on risk analysis.

Finding your focus

Finding time to focus on the big picture is the key to integrating your long-term role and responsibilities with the short-term demands of your project.

• Start with a plan: begin every day by spending five to ten minutes getting a handle on your agenda for that day. Identify time already allocated to meetings and other fixed tasks. Allocate time to the tasks you plan to do off your “to do” list. Plan in enough flexibility to deal with the unexpected, and at least one review point at which you can check your direction and make adjustments.

• Integrate project tasks with your day-to-day tasks and calendar. Do this by recording them on the same list and ensuring they are broken down to around the same size. If the average task size on your “to do” list is 15–30 minutes, for example, don’t have project tasks of four hours in length—they won’t get done.

• Motivate yourself to do longer-term tasks every day. Set yourself a goal of doing one longer-term task per day on each of your projects, or one task preparing for the next deliverable (i.e., not the current one) on every project.

Managing your time

• Do you allocate “interruption-free” time in your datebook, when you get away from your desk and turn off your email and phone, for tasks that require uninterrupted thought?

• Do you factor reactive time—spent responding to emails and phonecalls and attending ad-hoc meetings—into your day-to-day planning?

• Do you discourage reactive requests?

• Do you delegate work early and effectively?

• Do you ensure, where possible, that meetings begin on time and stick to the agenda?