Do you ever feel like you hold your project schedule hostage because you just can’t get your arms around your workload? It happens. Even when we have our well-ordered processes, we sometimes fall off the organizational wagon. Instead of letting the tsunami of project planning take you down, practice these simple tips to make order of your work. Ready?

1. 9 Project Management Tips to
Make Order out of Chaos

2. Collect all related work items.
Ask yourself these sorting questions:
• Which tasks have the most
immediate hard deadlines?
• Which task will make the most
positive impact when it’s finished?
• What are the dependencies?
• Is there a task that you just have to
get off your plate to clear your mind
and move forward?

3. Identify urgent vs. important.
Use a prioritization method
to identifies work that, if not
completed by the end of the
day, will have serious
negative consequences.
Put those items at the tippy-
top of your list.

4. Give yourself 3 key items to
accomplish.
Don’t spread yourself so thin that
you get nothing significant
accomplished (except for
spreading more chaos).
By having a focused—and
realistic—approach to your
workload, you increase your
chance of completing important
work sooner.

5. Develop a process that works
for the way you think.
Right brainers focus on the big
picture and tend to be more
ad-hoc in their approach to life.
Left brainers are the list
makers; they like advanced
planning and have a more
linear approach to solving
problems.

6. Get organized—give everything
a place.

7. Focus on your core competencies.
Efficient people know when
to give it their all and when
to do a good enough job to
move forward.
Prioritizing your skills
organizes the day,
increases productivity and
ROI.

8. Know when you’re most
productive—and use it wisely!

9. Regularly review your work
items.
Stay on top of the moving
life force of your projects.
Looking at the big picture
and reviewing your
workload gives you fresh
insight on what needs to get
done, reprioritized or
reorganized.

10. Do it!
At some point you have to deliver the final
product. Here are four things to consider
for the doing part, based on David Allen’s
GTD methodology:
1. Context: What can you do right now?
2. Time available: What do you have time
to do right now?
3. Energy available: What are you able to
accomplish right now?
4. Priority: After you answer steps 1-3,
start working on the highest priority
item.