How I Organize my Planner as a Project Manager

hi everyone welcome to my channel for today's video i wanted to share how i organize my planner and prep for the week as an engineer project manager at a consulting firm and when i say planner i mean a physical planner like i write things down i know a lot of people have completely transferred over to the electronic world where they use their calendar as their planner however i am not one of those people i wish i was um but i need to write things down to be able to digest it and just fully you know understand what i'm going to be doing for the week i think anyone who works in the corporate world would agree with me when i say that one of the most important things to learn is how to manage your time and not let your inbox and your calendar control your schedule and so as much as we want to balance flexibility to be able to take on what we call in my office a fire drill you also want to have control over your time the way that i do this is by proactively managing my calendar and the criticals tasks that need to get done that week so that the calendar doesn't manage me so i am an engineer i work in the transportation infrastructure industry however my projects are so diverse that i would say the skills that i've acquired for time management can be applicable to anybody in any field let's get started let me show you how i plan out my week i think the first thing that i need to make clear is that my planner is not how i strategize a successful delivery for a project that's all done as its own separate thing that i do specifically for projects you know making sure that i set up a schedule a budget a strategic plan on how you're going to deliver a project anything that goes into the successful delivery or project and the strategy on how that's going to be delivered is its own separate beast this is more on the day-to-day how do i use my planner to successfully get through a week so like i've said i know my meetings i know my tasks i know delivery or submittal dates for the week so depending on the type of week that i'm going to have i have two methodologies on how i use my planner the first one is if i have one of those weeks where i have client meetings um i have to prep for exhibits or external meetings i have a submittal on a friday or several submittals throughout the week things that i really need to make sure get hit and out the door into the client's hands or into external hands whatever is needed for that week the second methodology i use when i have a much more relaxed week where i don't perhaps don't have deliverables and not as critical meetings um and i can take it on a day by day basis i'll go over both of those i'll go more in detail the first way because the second way it just really is the first way but on a day-to-day basis so it's monday morning you've got your fresh cup of coffee you just got to your desk and you're ready to go for the week actually one of my favorite things to do is to prep for the week friday night i know that sounds super nerdy and it sounds like you know the goody two shoes kind of uh advice but that is genuinely what i do you know i work half days on friday so by noon i i'm done with meetings i'm done with emails i'm done with everything and i spend the last hour or two of my evening at work prepping for the next monday that means that i list out all my projects and i list out the tasks that were not completed this week that needed to be completed and additional tasks that got added that need to get done the next week so i'm big on work life balance mental health i would call myself a recovering workaholic so i really want to keep work at work and this is one of the best ways to do it to just do a brain dump friday night write down everything that didn't get done write down everything that still needs to get done one other thing i also do is do final emails uh to everyone letting them know that hey i haven't forgotten about you i'm gonna get to it next week and that is basically the last page on my notebook for me to look at on a monday morning so monday morning i'm looking at that list from friday and i know what tasks need to get done and what didn't get completed last week therefore i know that i need to integrate those for this week so that's my first step step number two is looking at my calendar and paying attention to all the meetings that i have that week and i categorize them i have three categories critical meetings active meetings and inactive meetings critical meetings are client meetings or external coordination meetings 99 of the time it is a much more professional setting where i need to be in my pc professional mode and be on my a game second one are active meetings and those are meetings where you know there's internal coordination meetings or um i don't know specific discipline meetings where i need to come become prepared because there's a situation there's a conflict and i need to come with answers or have looked at something prior to this or i need to come with an update for the project manager um or perhaps i'm the project manager on that project and i need to come prepared to lead the meeting the third type of meeting is an inactive meeting and this could be you know a staff meeting a corporate meeting something where i'm more participating in the sense of i'm listening in and i probably won't have a speaking moment and i can probably multitask during this meeting i also like to make sure that i know which meetings i'm leading and which ones i am just an active part of the ones that i'm leading obviously need a little bit more attention because i have to come prepared with an agenda so once i know what kind of meetings i have i put them in my planner and i also allocate prep times for those meetings that i consider critical or active meetings if they need it one of my biggest tips is to make sure that anything that is big that you need to come prepared for got done way in advance of that meaning because that day i essentially only want to spend half an hour or an hour of prep meeting time i don't know if this is just me but i get very anxious when i have meetings like this where i have to present something and so throughout the day especially if i have it in the afternoon i get very distracted and i can't concentrate on everything else obviously this is a lot less as you gain experience and so one of the tools that i've implemented to help me get over this anxiety is be super prepared beforehand but on the day 30 minutes one hour we'll go over your notes talking points and this way you kind of done your best to be prepared you put it away and you concentrate on other stuff i i know i've had times where i've had meeting after meeting after meeting and all of a sudden that critical meeting pops up and i all i can do is really just flip from one um phone call to the other phone call and that's it that's just a tip i could probably do a million of those maybe that'll be its own video all right so once prep time is in my planner the next thing i do is i schedule my time through blocking i know this is very trendy and i've seen a bunch of videos on you know blocking and schedule blocking or whatever but i just straight up just think in hours and that's how i block out my time in hours if i have a task that is obviously going to take a lot longer than an hour i you know break it down into our segments um so let me give you an example let's say i have an estimate right i have a master estimate that i need to complete what are the tasks that we need to do what are the meetings what are the coordination items that i need to do in order to get this estimate done right so i know that i have to i have to get the quantity of a bid item several bid items i know that i need to find the unit prices for these bid items i know that i need to get this qced by the senior estimator and i know that it needs to have an escalation price depending on when the project's going to be constructed so i need to go do some research on that and i know that it has to be on in a specific format because of you know client standards those are all little mini tasks that can take one hour each you know obviously it depends on whether it's a huge project or smaller project so you really got to pay attention to that but most of the time you can definitely break out tasks in our blocks all of these i make sure that i prioritize again i think prioritizing it's its own is it skill on its own um understanding what needs to get prioritized and what needs to be placed at a more important level important level than others so for me as an engineer i make sure that client requests are number one contractor requests are number one those two are number one deliverable tasks are number two making sure that any tasks that make you the bottleneck and people are waiting on you are number three and so on and so forth so the second way that i plan out my week is exactly like the first except that i can go on a day-by-day basis all right so i am going to show you how i do this on my planner i guess um i think one of the most satisfying things about the way that i plan out my week is being able to check off each one of these as i go along and just at the end of the week seeing everything done or crossed out honestly i do sometimes i cross out items that didn't get done and need to get moved to the next week but it just feels so satisfying know exactly what got done that week one needs to get done next week knowing that you were actually productive and what you were productive on um before i adopted the system there were weeks where i just would look at my calendar on friday night and think what did i do this week um and it was just because i was really letting my calendar and my inbox control me versus me controlling my time so i'm going to do a little step-by-step with my calendar and my planner i'm just choosing one of the random week and i'm going to fill it out using you know titles of projects like project a b c obviously not real data but just more of an example of what i do here in the calendar you can see that i have my full schedule of the meetings that i have for the week and each of these starts with the name of the project so either project a b c d e and so on and what type of meeting that is as well as i've added whether it's an internal a client meeting or a contractor meeting whatever it is i've added that information already so it is pretty clear on what type of meetings i have for the week i kind of emulated a week in my life as an engineer from my outlook calendar so the first thing that i do is i lay out a hour-by-hour plan so if i'm going to start at seven i start at seven i'm gonna start at eight i start at eight depending on the day and i do it by hour blocks skipping over my lunch monday through wednesday i usually work more than eight hours so i add those hours in here then i add check boxes on each side to check off each time i've completed a task or a meeting it doesn't have to be perfect or at least i don't mind if it's not perfect just has to be neat and legible sometimes it's not even neat first i add my project meetings so i add the project name i know that this one is an internal check-in so i don't have to include any prep time for that this day i'm actually going on the field for a different project i'm going to be there about two hours so and i have a final meeting very late in the day and there we go there are all my meetings that i'm going to have for the day i only have to prep for the discipline coordination meeting so i'm going to add some prep time up here this is not going to be an hour probably half an hour i'm also going to include email review day prep time up here and then once i have all of that laid out i know how many hours i have left in the day to be able to complete any other tasks that i need to do for the week so like i said i have a list of things from previous weeks and then things that obviously come up during action items during meetings and those are what i'm going to fill out these um blocks of times with this really helps me understand how much time i have left available after meetings and field visits and anything that isn't me just sitting down and grinding on a deliverable or a certain task once i figure out how much time i have available i can really manage how i'm gonna use the rest of my time by prioritizing what tasks i need to do first so this is what kind of a week looks like you can see that i move things around depending on you know what how the day transpires and maybe some things didn't get done during that day so i have to move it down to the end of the day or maybe to the next day i cross things out as they get cancelled or maybe they didn't get completed i move things around in terms of priority maybe an rfi came out that needs to get done as soon as possible so i move those things around so you can kind of see how i get my day-to-day going again this is not my strategic plan on projects this is more of a day-to-day planning session so that i can kind of keep myself organized and make sure that i complete any tasks so one more thing that i really want to touch on is the whole balancing being flexible and still having control of your time i think this is one of the most difficult things being able to say hey i understand that you want that this week however as i understand that it's not due until next week i cannot prioritize it over these other things that are due this week so you will get it on tuesday on monday etc honestly the biggest thing there is communication don't just disappear don't just you know say yes i'll get it done and then not get it done until next week and they don't know where you're at communication is the biggest key and then there's flexibility hey that contractor needs that answer today because if there's no answer today laborers are on hold and time budget is spent um inadequately so that's where you go i gotta bring this in i gotta be flexible and something else needs to be either rescheduled or delegated um so that someone else can complete that task and you can review it and both tasks get completed again i think that is a separate video from this one however i do have planned a bunch of different videos on corporate soft skills project management i do really want to cater to you know anyone who's a first generation immigrant that is now trying to navigate this crazy capitalist corporate society that we live in and how to do it successfully because that's what i'm trying to do just being able to hold on to my roots and my culture while also being able to be successful so i know that maybe not all of these tips are applicable to everyone but i really hope that i can share something new or something different that maybe you can use to be more successful in your own time management that's what i want to do and i hope you stick around for the next video

Channel: Carla Aguilar Rivera

Views: 32,097

Keywords: undocumented, engineer, undocumented professional, female engineer, female boss, project manager, routine, females in tech, females in STEM, women in engineering, women in tech, planner, organizing, managing time, women project manager, planner hacks, productivity hacks

Id: Mj0PI4d0L8g

Length: 16min 57sec (1017 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 16 2021