Chapter 1: Navigating Time Management Challenges

In the realm of product management, one significant hurdle is carving out time for long-term, impactful tasks. Without diligent control over your calendar, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by a continuous stream of urgent tasks that, while demanding attention, fail to contribute to long-term objectives.

A seasoned product manager from Google shared a straightforward time management framework that has proven invaluable. This framework is divided into three key steps:

1. Compile a Comprehensive Work Item List (Personal Backlog)
2. Identify Long-term Valuable Items: Label these as “important.”
3. Organize the Items into Specific Time Buckets: Classify them as “Today,” “This Week,” “Next Week,” and “Backlog.”

Some tips to implement this effectively include:

• Urgent “important” tasks will naturally fit into the “Today” or “This Week” categories.
• Schedule “important” tasks that are not immediately urgent in both “Today” and “This Week” to prevent procrastination on significant work that lacks immediate deadlines.
• Regularly update your list to ensure no tasks are overlooked. It’s acceptable not to make progress on certain items, provided they are consciously deprioritized.
• Conduct the prioritization—tagging items as “important” and placing them into time buckets—on a weekly basis or as needed.
• Treat tasks like “checking email” or “responding to bugs” as designated tasks and allocate specific times during the day to address them in focused bursts, rather than throughout the day.
• Avoid initiating new tasks solely based on incoming emails or meetings, except in rare cases such as critical product outages. Instead, let tasks undergo your triage process before assigning them to your time buckets.

Here is a snapshot of my personal backlog. Note that I've anonymized feature names and sensitive information.

By employing this straightforward framework, I ensure that my daily focus remains on meaningful and valuable tasks, while tactfully declining less important, urgent matters whenever feasible. This approach allows me to strike a balance between two critical aspects of my work.

First, the urgency to execute—being aware of “what’s next” in my backlog saves me from wasting time on indecision.

Second, the avoidance of burnout—by recognizing that I can only address a portion of my backlog each day or week, I steer clear of feeling overwhelmed or anxious about the need to complete everything immediately.

Wishing you success in your time management endeavors!

If you found these insights helpful, consider exploring this course: A Simple Approach to Product Management Interviews.

Chapter 2: Practical Time Management Videos

3 Time Management Tips for Product Managers

This video offers three essential time management strategies tailored for product managers, helping you prioritize tasks effectively and manage your time better.

Product Manager Time Hack 1 of 7: Block Time on Your Calendar

This video discusses the importance of blocking time in your calendar to focus on high-priority tasks, ensuring you allocate dedicated time for essential work without distractions.