Hi all, and welcome to our Impactful Projects

and Planning Microtraining Series.

I'm Jami Yazdani.

In today's session, we'll talk about strategies

for managing our own time as project managers.

So when I'm working with folks who are managing

projects and mission driven organizations,

I often hear about the challenges they face

and juggling multiple projects.

Along with all of their other responsibilities,

it absolutely can feel like we are performing

a balancing act with plates that are already

quite full.

The key to managing multiple projects comes

down to careful time management, managing

not just the projects time, but also your

own.

And so I have three tips to share that I think

might help.

So my first tip is to schedule project management

tasks.

So for each of our project schedules, we've

probably set an overall project deadline,

and deadlines for completing each of our outcomes

or deliverables.

And we've hopefully, assigned concrete due

dates for our project team to complete tasks

and activities.

We may even have set milestones within these

deadlines, or between due dates as points

to monitor our progress and celebrate success.

We can use these deadlines, due dates and

milestones to help us schedule tasks for ourselves.

So you might set a progress review task for

yourself, on or closely after a deadline or

due date.

Your task might be to confirm that deadlines

are due dates have been met, that the outcomes

that were created meet quality standards,

or that progress be added to a report or communication.

For any project or task milestones, you might

set a task to check in with stakeholders or

your project team to make sure that they have

what they need to complete their work and

that everything is on track.

You might also want to create tasks for yourself

for all of the other project management activities

that we often have to do like creating reports

conducting iteration or project retrospectives,

setting up stakeholder meetings, drafting,

communications, etc.

All of those things that are part of the project

managers role, but that aren't part of creating

a project outcomes or deliverables.

How you manage this project management schedule

will depend a lot on your own approach to

managing your time and your projects context.

So you may want to add these tasks to your

own project to your own personal to do list

or calendar so that they integrate easily

with your other non project tasks and responsibilities.

Or you may add them into the project schedule

so that they are visible to the project team.

I sometimes created a project management deliverable

within a project so that I can add tasks and

deadlines for things like reports and retrospectives

and team meetings.

Or I've added project management tasks to

the project schedule, but labeled them clearly

as project management to really separate them

from the other project tasks.

Now the value of incorporating project management

tasks into your overall project schedule is

that you are able to see these management

tasks alongside project tasks.

And you can also more easily share these tasks

with other team members and perhaps even delegate

some of the project management tasks to those

team members.

So many project management tools do allow

you to restrict or filter access to certain

labels or certain deliverables so that not

everyone can see them.

And so this might be useful if a client or

a stakeholder can see your project schedule,

they have access to your project management

tool, and you don't want them to also see

all of those little pieces that you're doing

that are your project management tasks.

Sometimes though, adding your project management

tasks into the project tool or project schedule

would mean that you are making them transparent

to stakeholders or clients or leadership.

And if you really don't want these folks to

see those tasks, but you do want them to be

accessible maybe to a project team, your internal

project team.

It might help to create almost a shadow project

that only has your project management tasks,

I sometimes do this with my clients, I may

have a project and my project management tool

that the client can access.

And then a separate project where I'm managing

all of the client work.

I'm really doing the project management that

only myself and maybe other members of an

internal project team can see.

Regardless of how you manage your schedules,

you want to make sure you are scheduling project

management tasks, so that you can stay on

top of all of the things that need to be done

to manage your projects.

With multiple projects, you may also find

it helpful to block time each day or each

week to focus on each of your projects.

So setting aside 30 minutes or an hour each

week for each project would allow you to focus

on and complete some of your project management

tasks.

So you could use this time to assess progress,

review quality or budgets, check in with team

members, and create reports or accomplish

other project management tasks.

This dedicated time I think, is especially

important when we are juggling all of these

projects on top of all of our other duties,

because if we only set aside time in our schedule,

for the meetings and the tasks that are related

to completing the work of the project, and

we're not setting aside time for managing

the project, it is very easy to get overwhelmed.

Another tip for juggling multiple projects

is to focus on creating efficiencies.

And so we can save time and be more efficient

by not reinventing the wheel with each new

project.

I've talked about templates and another microtraining.

So I'm not going to belabor the point here.

But across projects, creating and using templates

for common activities, and communications

can really save you a lot of time, there are

a few communication templates that I find

work across most projects.

So reminder emails, these tend to be pretty

similar across projects.

So a simple reminder template where I can

pop in a task and a due date and maybe the

project name and the subject is going to allow

me to follow up with team members pretty quickly.

progress report templates or report slide

decks also often work really well across projects,

particularly if you're leading projects within

the same organization.

And so your leadership your clients, your

funders, likely want to know similar information

about project progress.

So creating a template for reporting can save

you a lot of time.

A standard project team meeting agenda can

also likely serve you across multiple projects.

If you meet with your project team or key

stakeholders pretty regularly create a standard

agenda and make minor tweaks for each project

as needed.

Most project management tools also allow you

to create templates.

So consider using a recent or more typical

project as the basis for a template and spend

some time setting up a standard template that

you can work from.

For each project.

Many tools come with templates that might

also work really well for you.

And some actually have AI Artificial intelligence

features that can suggest tasks or help you

build a template that's going to work for

you.

Our goal here is to create efficiencies and

how we are managing our projects so that we

don't have to spend as much time on standard

project management tasks.

If there are things you do again and again

and again, across projects, create or use

a template so that you can do it the same

way for each project.

For a list of our recommended project templates,

you can check out our project templates list.

This is a free download that might help you

consider which templates to create and use

to help you develop some of your own project

efficiencies.

And that's available at yazdaniconsulting.com/resources.

There are also a lot of other templates on

our website at that same link,

from planning checklists and role guides to

meeting agendas project retrospective worksheet,

that you can also start using right away across

projects.

So those are a few tips for juggling multiple

projects.

So make sure you are setting tasks and deadlines

for all of the tasks related to managing your

projects, not just tasks for the things that

you need to do to build your project outcomes.

You also should consider regularly blocking

time to work on each project and on project

management tasks, and then finding ways to

create some efficiencies across your projects,

such as using templates might really help.

And what I would say is that juggling multiple

projects well, really boils down to project

managing yourself, and your time as you manage

all of your other projects.

So great, I'm happy to take any questions

you have, please add them in the comments.

If I'm not able to answer your question live.

I'll try to respond later in the comments

or to you directly.

Also, you can find all of the ways to reach

me at yazdaniconsulting.com/contact.

Feel free to schedule a time to talk with

me about managing multiple projects.

Okay, so one question is how do I prioritize

project management tasks alongside all of

my other tasks.

So when you have too much on your plate already,

it can be really hard to prioritize, and there

are only so many hours in the day.

And so it's hard for me to say whether you

should prioritize project work over your regular

responsibilities, as that's going to depends

a lot on what those responsibilities are in

the impact of your project or projects.

But in terms of the project management work

and your project work, generally, I would

say that tasks related to moving a project

forward should take priority.

And so what this might mean might mean that

you're going to spend time working on a key

deliverable that has an upcoming due date,

or you're going to spend time communicating

with a concerned stakeholder or team member

who might delay the project over you know,

prepping the weekly project team meeting agenda,

but many of our project management's has are

really critical to moving the project forward.

So that meeting agenda might actually be really

important at any given time, especially if

you need to have important conversations as

a team are reached consensus.

So it may help to determine whether something

needs to be done now could be rescheduled

for a later time without having much impact

on the project or your team.

Or if it could be delegated.

There are also maybe project management tasks

you are doing that aren't as valuable as you

thought they might be when you started the

project.

So in a current project, I was sending out

weekly emails to team members with reminders

about tasks, due dates.

Even with a template, the reminder still took

a little bit of my time, because I pretty

regularly would ask team members what was

working well for them, we discovered that

the emails weren't that helpful, so I stopped

doing them.

My point being that it might be worthwhile

to consider whether you need to be doing everything

you were doing, I think we have a tendency

to want to practice project management based

on best practice.

And we want to use all of those fancy bells

and whistles and features of our project management

collaboration tools.

But often those things aren't necessary for

a particular project.

Conducting more regular retrospectives with

your project team and stakeholders can really

help you determine what is working and what

isn't.

So that you can change course if needed.

So there may be project management tasks on

your plate right now that aren't adding value

to the project or to your team or to your

leadership that you can stop doing.

And I think that might be the first step to

really helping you prioritize.

Okay, again, thanks.

And feel free to comment, or reach out and

message me with additional questions.

So thank you for participating in our Impactful

Projects and Planning Microtraining Series.

If you need support leading projects and teams,

including project coaching to help you manage

your own projects and juggle those projects,

visit our project solutions page at yazdaniconsulting.com/

projects to learn more and visit yazdaniconsulting.com/ipp

to view all of the sessions in the series

and learn about upcoming micro trainings.

Thank you!