Product Review: Bonsai
Bonsai appeals to me both as a project manager AND as a freelancer looking for ways that I can more easily manage client and financial data. If you’re in the business of agency, freelance, or consulting work, Bonsai’s business management offerings in combination with its project management capabilities are downright impressive.
How to Earn Professional Development Units
In this post, we’ll review the requirements for earning PDUs towards your PMP and share some strategies for racking them up.
(Remote) Work Blocks
In this post, I will explain what work blocking is, my work blocking origin strategy, why work blocking may be useful for you (in certain circumstances), and strategies you can use to maximize efficiency.
Product Review: WorkBoard
Public service announcement: we’re halfway through the year (!), which means you’ve got about six months to dust off your goals and rightsize and refresh your OKRs for Q3. If you’re thinking about using a software solution for OKR management, WorkBoard is a potential option.
Remote is Work: Tips on Setting Up Your Organization for Success
In this post, I’ll share some ideas for how you can structure remote work to set up your organization for success. TLDR; communication is critical.
How to Craft a 30-60-90 Day Plan
This blog post will explain how to craft a 30-60-90 day plan as a way to align with your stakeholders on expected scope, measure outcomes, and stay accountable to your stated goals.
Product Review: Asana
Asana’s tagline is to “work on big ideas, without the busywork.” How much latent productivity could you unlock if knowledge workers spent more time on their area of expertise rather than on the mechanics of managing and reporting on their personal workloads? This is where Asana seeks to add value.
How to Take Care of Yourself So You Can Thrive at Work
I recognize there are infinity articles on the Internet about self-care and how to structure your self-care habits to maximize productivity. But, I also get a lot of questions about how I manage to stay so on top of things, so I figured there’s nothing wrong with contributing my little footnote to the genre.
When to Say No to Things at Work
For the first five to ten years of your career, you should say yes. To everything. You should say yes so much that you’ll want to throw up from saying yes. Once you achieve a certain career threshold, you need to shift from saying yes to saying no. And, if you thought saying yes was hard, it’s nothing compared with the difficulty of saying no.
How to Demystify the Promotion Process
You know you’re ready for a promotion. But, somehow you don’t have the title. Short of being the first one online in the morning and the last one offline at night, how do you demonstrate your value to the business? I’d recommend pursuing a few specific actions to help demystify the promotion process.
Product Review: Ricotta
Working with your team to measure progress against your OKRs can sometimes feel like pushing a boulder up a mountain. There’s got to be an easier way. Enter Ricotta, a Slack add-on for OKRs tracking.
Doing More of What You Love
As long as most of your job description falls into the “love” or “like” category, then you’ve got it pretty good in my book. For those parts that you dislike, there may be ways to minimize those activities and reshape your role to cater more to your strengths and interests.