To be a PM, you have to face to all kinds of various complex jobs every day, work on more than one task at the same time, such as deal with client’s enquiry, quotation preparation, file preparation, resource coordination, picking phone calls from your clients and resource, progress report and feedback processing.
All these things will not come to you one by one in order as you wish. You have to simultaneously handle with them. One thing is in progress, not finished yet, anther one is coming, even more things coming. Mails rush to you, you will really hope in your heart of hearts that the network is disconnected and there is no more mail coming to you.
However, that is only what we can image, but all still to come, and sometimes you have to handle with all kinds of emergency, for example, the file is destroyed and you have to submit in several minutes, the freelance you use make delay on delivery.
It requires the capability to make good multitasking. If all these things can be handled properly, you can successfully push a couple of things going well smoothly. This is good multitasking.
Bad multitasking is anything but smooth. It’s the dropping of work on one task before it is finished in order to start another, only to stop and begin yet another task or go back to a previous task, making all things going badly. How to make good multitasking? Here are some tips just for reference. Hope it will do some help.
To keep calm and cool, make proper arrangement and quick response.
To handle things in priority. You can base on the urgency or the importance of clients to arrange things. Give first and high priority to the most urgent things or VIP client, lower priority to the less urgent things or general client.
Writing is more reliable than memory. Put the multiple projects you have to handle at the same time into post-it note according to the priority. In such way, you will never forget anything you should do.
After one thing is done, you can tear off one post-it note, if you finish two things simultaneously, you can tear off two ones. In the end, you tear off all post-it notes and get all jobs done in time and perfectly. By this way, we can also avoid any omission.
Avail yourself Of every opportunity (waiting time).
The majority of task completion time is not used for the actual work, but is waiting or queue time. According to Parkinson’s Law, work will always take as long as the time available for it.
If the estimates are too long, during execution the actual time will grow even longer! No wonder projects consistently finish late and over budget. So we have to take full advantage of any spare time and waiting time.
For example, you are waiting for the client’s final confirmation about your quotation and delivery time, while you can make use of the waiting time to get all files prepared for next possible step or to handle other jobs. It doesn’t do any help if just waiting.