Tips for Staying Organized and Prioritizing Key Work as a Product Manager

Product managers juggle multiple responsibilities, from discovery and delivery work to managing stakeholders and collecting feedback from across the organization. This balancing act can make it challenging to keep track of tasks while also planning for the product's future. Here are some effective strategies to remain organized, ensure no tasks slip through the cracks, and focus on the most important work.

1. Create a Reliable Collection System

The first step to effective task management is setting up a dependable system for collecting tasks. This system should consist of a few designated collection points—common ones include your email inbox, messaging platforms like Slack, or even physical options like a notebook. The key is that these collection points must permanently store tasks until you can address them.

Avoid using your mind as a collection point since it's unreliable for holding tasks long-term. Whenever you think of something you need to do, write it down immediately in one of your approved collection points.

2. Triage and Organize Tasks

Once tasks have been collected, it’s important to regularly review and sort them—a process known as triaging. Essentially, this means reviewing your emails and messages to process each task into a unified task list or your calendar. This way, you only need to look at one place to see what you need to do. Time-bound tasks should go on your calendar, while everything else belongs on your task list.

A key rule when triaging is to touch each item only once. When you encounter a new task, you should either discard it, act on it immediately, or move it to your task list or calendar for later. Tasks that can be done in a couple of minutes should be completed on the spot, while bigger ones can be added to your task list for prioritization.

Avoid using features like “snoozing” emails or setting reminders in Slack, as these can make future triaging more complicated by hiding tasks and adding unnecessary steps. It’s helpful to triage at the start of each day and periodically throughout the day to stay on top of incoming items while maintaining productivity.

3. Weekly Review and Planning

Even with tasks organized, product managers often have more work than they can realistically complete. This makes regular planning and prioritization essential. A weekly review can help you set the top 3-5 priorities for the coming week.

When identifying these priorities, consider the next milestones for your ongoing projects or broader strategic goals. Weekly planning also allows you to review your calendar and ensure it aligns with your priorities. Since product managers often have a mix of meetings and focused work, see if any meetings can be rescheduled or consolidated to give you larger blocks of uninterrupted time for deep work.

One strategy for improving time management is blocking out time on your calendar for deep work or specific tasks identified during weekly planning.

4. Daily Task Prioritization

Once you have your weekly priorities set, the next step is to ensure you’re making steady progress on them each day. Try focusing on making significant progress on at least one priority per day rather than spreading yourself too thin across multiple tasks.

A guiding principle for daily work is to prioritize your own projects before helping others. While it’s great to support your team, your success is ultimately measured by your contribution to your objectives. Afterward, prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance using frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix:

• Urgent and important tasks: Do immediately
• Important but not urgent tasks: Schedule for later
• Urgent but less important tasks: Delegate if possible
• Neither urgent nor important tasks: Eliminate or deprioritize

Consider your own strengths and energy levels as well. Tasks that give you energy or align with your expertise may be worth prioritizing even if they aren’t the most pressing. However, be careful not to let this approach prevent you from tackling crucial but draining tasks.

5. Additional Tools for Prioritizing Tasks

Several other frameworks can be helpful when deciding which tasks to focus on. One such approach is to consider the cost of delay—what will happen if a task is delayed? Will it cause project delays or extra work down the line?

Similarly, think about the critical path of your projects. These are the tasks that directly impact the overall timeline of the project. Prioritizing critical path tasks ensures that the project doesn’t get delayed.

The LNO framework is another useful tool for categorizing tasks:

• Leverage tasks: These tasks multiply your impact (e.g., strategic work), and should be done when you have the most energy.
• Neutral tasks: These have an incremental impact (e.g., writing detailed specs) and should be handled during your average energy periods.
• Overhead tasks: These are low-impact tasks (e.g., status updates) and should be completed as quickly as possible with minimal effort.

6. Enhancing Your Task Management System

To improve your task management system, consider adding a few useful lists:

• A “Done” list helps you track what you’ve accomplished and review your progress at the end of the week.
• A “Follow-up” list is for tasks where you're waiting for someone else’s input or response, keeping these items separate from your main list.
• A “Backlog” contains tasks you’d like to eventually complete but aren’t a priority right now. You can review this list periodically to see if anything should be moved to your current task list.

Putting It All Into Practice

For practical implementation, I use Trello to manage my tasks, with five lists: Backlog, Weekly Priorities, This Week, Follow-up, and Done. The Weekly Priorities list holds cards with my top 3-5 priorities for the week, while the Done list allows me to track what I’ve achieved.

With deliberate practice, you’ll find your organizational system becomes more efficient, helping you stay on top of tasks and meet your goals. Happy managing!