Yesterday, based on my enduring belief that an effective, efficient morning routine is critical to the rest of the day’s success, I pulled the curtain back on the three things I do at the start of each workday.
Now, I do believe those things are critical but I also work eight hours a day, ya know? So the first 15 minutes are a great example of the necessary but not sufficient category: we need them to structure the rest of the day, but I haven’t done my job as a project management blogger if I leave you hanging there.
So… what happens the rest of the day?
My schedule as a project manager
Here’s a look at what my schedule ACTUALLY looks like on a busy day:
8:30-9am: Morning routine (you knew this was coming)
9am-10am: Finish a retrospective report on a project I wrapped for a team a few weeks ago. I’m reporting here on things like: budget (did we go over or under), timeline (same questions), impact (measured by surveys), and general learnings. I write this report in consultation with others but I’m ultimately the one responsible for getting it approved and filed, and disseminating any learning-based followups.
10am-10:20am: Zoom meeting with one individual person about some inputs to a project we’re currently scoping.
10:20am-10:45am: Revise previous scope estimate and email off to project sponsor.
10:45am-11am: Prep for upcoming meeting – this looks like reviewing a project dashboard, looking for red flags. I’m pretty close to this particular project (it’s a long-term implementation project), otherwise I’d give myself more time to prep.
11am-12pm: Weekly status meeting for a “flagship” project – I lead these by sharing my screen and reporting out on a dashboard that a number of people keep updated throughout the week.
12pm-12:15pm: Follow-ups & documentation from previous meeting
12:15pm-12:45pm: Lunch
1pm-1:30pm: Working meeting to touch base on a grant I’m writing in collaboration with two other PMs. We revised one section and then assigned out the next chunk of work.
1:30pm-2pm: Review completed deliverables from a graphic designer for another project. This involves comparing to the original brief and then sending written feedback.
2pm-3pm: Strategy check-in for a small team I support. This is a standing (monthly) meeting between the CEO, the board, and an external strategic consultant. I typically don’t contribute anything in advance of these meetings, and I’m not responsible for note-taking while I’m in them, but it’s helpful to have me in the room for them as I’m the one best-suited to understand what our resource capacity (designers, etc) looks like throughout the year.
3pm-3:30pm: Follow-up conversation with CEO.
3:30pm-4pm: a BREAK which I spend answering questions by email about the revised scope I sent over earlier in the morning. I have to look up some work from the previous year in order to contextualize my answer to one of their questions.
4pm-4:30pm: Standing 1:1 with a junior team member. It’s not super common for me to have 1:1s with people junior to me (at this point I’m not managing people directly, just projects and processes) but the project sponsor has asked me to help mentor them. This is technically scope creep BUT I am hourly and have asked (& received approval) for the hours I spend with this person to be billable. You’re susceptible to these sorts of asks if you’re coming from a helping profession, BUT I think as long as it fits into your calendar and your pocketbook it’s worthwhile.
4:30pm-5pm: Answer emails that have come in throughout the day. I don’t love when my day only allows for a batch of emails sent at the end because it typically results in waking up to an inbox full of replies the next morning, but it is what it is.
I hope this has been helpful! Most importantly, I hope it has helped to understand that if you are coming from a role like a program coordinator, you may already be doing project management work – and if you’re not, it’s not very mysterious.
This is not to say that it’s simple or easy – it involves keeping a LOT of balls in the air (hence the morning pre-work), but your job might already involve that! And systems help – more on that later 🙂
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