In a fast-moving product team, it can often feel like there is too much to do but too little time.

I interviewed over 50 PMs last year about their workflows and processes. And here are the distilled learnings, along with advice from productivity gurus, to help you perform better.



There is No Perfect System

Talking about productivity reminds me of the topic of health and fitness — Everyone has their own opinion. And it is tempting to spend hours perusing fitness blogs to eke out every last bit of "performance gain". All the while feeling productive .

As you work on improving your productivity, don't lose sight of why you're doing it. If your system takes more work to maintain than the time savings it provides, that defeats the whole purpose.

And even if you are convinced that you have a "perfect" system, your needs will certainly evolve over time.



Beware of Splintering

By far the most common problem from the PMs I talked to was that their team's information was scattered across tools. Ad-hoc Google Docs here. A flurry of Slack messages there. Some decisions were made in-person meetings, while others as comments on Jira tickets.

To combat this, for every important topic, package all relevant context into a single document. This becomes the one place that you will maintain continually. And the one place that the team will check first for clarifications or updates, amidst the endless streams and threads.

For a given topic, this is the hub that connects (and link to) all related fragments of truth.



All-In-One Tools are a Myth

You have probably seen SaaS promising "everything in one place" or that they are the "only tool you will need for X". Well, productivity tools are rarely, if ever, the magic bullet that they like to market themselves to be.

Tools are but one part of the story. An "OK" tool that your team actually uses is much more useful than the "perfect" tool that no one else adopts.

Also, with each new tool you switch to, it comes with an onboarding cost for everyone. It takes time to adapt to a new workflow. And the migration of data often takes a non-trivial amount of work.

Before buying into the promise of a shiny new tool, keep these considerations in mind. You likely don't need more (rigid) tools. There is no panacea.



Progressively Organize

Being productive and being organized are not always the same thing. Your goal is to get more done, whereas staying organized is merely a means to an end.

When there are more important things to do, organizing information for its own sake is wasteful. Don't let organizing become an excuse not to get real work done. Instead, let the important topics emerge. And then maintain those.

This story from Derek Sivers illustrates the point. As a new college campus was getting built, one question was being debated — "Where in the grass should we put the paved walkways?" And here's the winning idea from one professor:

Don’t make any walkways this year. At the end of the year, look where the grass has worn away. That shows where the students are walking. Then just pave those paths.



Keeping Your Promises

If you say you’ll follow up, you better do it!

The first step to not dropping the ball is making sure you capture your commitments or tasks. So this part of your process should have low friction. Good old sticky notes, task management apps, and note-taking apps are a few common ways to stay on top of this.

And one common trap with sticky notes and to-dos is keeping track of them. To-do lists are meaningless if you don't remember to check them. For this reason, centralize your tasks in one place. This could mean using a single app to capture across devices, or regularly consolidating your commitments into one place after the initial capture.



The 1-3-5 Rule

The 1-3-5 Rule is a simple idea that Alexandra Cavoulacos proposed. The premise is that since you can only fit so much in a day, you should keep your to-do list each day to only:



Energy Management

"Time management" is a big topic. After all, how could you effectively manage a team's time and resources if you can't manage your own?

But what is equally important but less often talked about is managing your energy and emotional states. Sometimes you just want to be in a deep focus state for strategy work. Sometimes you just want to blast music and power through emails. Sometimes you feel ready to dive into technical details.

Each state of mind is conducive to certain types of work. It is beneficial to match the work you do with the state you are in, as opposed to just about scheduling tasks.

And in the long run, it is worth asking this question to decide what you want to work on — What gives you energy? 



Inbox Zero

Inbox Zero is the practice of keeping your email inbox empty.

Ravi, founder of Amna , advocates for establishing a process for triaging email. In particular, he uses the 4 D's in his process:

Productivity guru Tiago Forte has a similar approach. What he considers the "key to Inbox Zero" is to “touch each email only once.”



Batching

Your attention is too precious to passively let it follow the most recent thing that demands it. Engage incoming messages and tasks on your terms.

Turn off push notifications. Disable the notification badges on your desktop dock. Schedule dedicated time to check your email and DMs. And set clear communication expectations with your team.

Instead of completing tasks in the order that they come, you can often save time by grouping similar tasks together. It reduces costly context switching and interrupts by consolidating repetitive tasks that are not time-sensitive.



Don't Forget to Rest

As much as the industry and our culture like to glorify "the grind", it just isn't conducive to quality work. Nor is it sustainable. Take the time to recharge. Feed your brain with things unrelated to work. And dive back in refreshed and energized.