Looking back on my first six months in the PR industry, one of the most important skills I’ve learned is how to manage everything on my plate. Working at a PR agency requires exceptional time management and precise organization to stay on top of every client’s needs, and it only took dropping the ball on a project once for me to realize I needed a better strategy.
I turned to the master of organizational productivity, David Allen, to help get myself organized. His book “Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity,” offers applicable advice about how to manage everything on your to-do list and is definitely worth a read if you’re a young professional or simply seeking a more organized life.
Following are the tips from David that I found most helpful and how I applied them to PR.
Categorize your work into phases
At the heart of David’s productivity system is a flow chart for categorizing mental work. When a new task arises he recommends asking yourself a series of questions to determine the appropriate next step. I’ve found it very helpful for managing my mental workload.
Get everything out of your head
Our brains are designed for fast decision-making, not storage. Trying to mentally track too many things at once is a major source of stress and you’ll inevitably forget something. Find a system that works for you to track every little task you need to get done. The key is creating a system that is always at your fingertips so you’ll check it constantly throughout the day.
For some, putting pen to paper every morning is the best way to track their to-do list. Personally, I think PR has too many moving parts, deadlines and follow-ups to simply use a hand-written to-do list. For example, if I need to follow up with a reporter a week from now, I don’t want to continue writing “Follow up with Tom on June 2” on my list every day, but if I let it fall off the list I might forget.
Instead I use an app called Wunderlist. It allows me to quickly add action items to my list and then sort them by due date. That way the things I need to do first are always at the top. If my list becomes too long I can narrow the view so I only see my daily tasks. I can also set reminders for certain tasks and make a task repeat on a regular basis. To top it all off, it’s accessible on my smartphone and desktop so my list is always on hand.
If Wunderlist isn’t your style there are plenty of other productivity apps out there. Forbes published a list of the best to-do list apps for 2014 that provides some fantastic alternatives.
Break down projects into tasks
Many projects are too big to accomplish in one sitting and including giant, looming projects on your to-do list will become incredibly overwhelming. For example, if your client has a big announcement coming up, writing “plan funding announcement” on your to-do list won’t be helpful, it will be overwhelming. It’s more effective to treat it as a project and break it into smaller tasks like “develop a timeline,” “identify media targets,” “draft a press release.”
Employ the two-minute rule
If a task will take less than two minutes, do it now! It’s much more efficient to simply get it done so you don’t have to think about it. Adding a multitude of small tasks to your to-do list will increase your stress and make it appear as though you have more work than you actually have. If you need to send a quick email to a client, just do it.
Developing a system to manage your workload takes time and experimentation. What other tricks have you found to be helpful for managing productivity in PR?