24 Practical Tips to be More Effective at Work (What Would A Program Manager Do?)

Are you constantly juggling multiple tasks, feeling overwhelmed by incoming requests, or finding it hard to keep everything straight?

Staying effective and managing stress at work can feel like an uphill battle given all the competing demands on our time and attention. It’s easy for things to fall through the cracks or for you to spend your time reacting to urgent requests rather than proactively focusing on your priorities.

Before I developed rock solid approaches to manage my workload, I would often wake up in the middle of the night and think with a start: “I forgot to do X!” or Y, or Z.

I’ve been a professional program manager for more than two decades now and during this time, I’ve honed my project management intuition into some simple and practical strategies that can help you be more effective and less stressed at work.

If you are a program manager yourself, great! I’m sure you’ll be nodding along with what I have to say. However, I think these tips are particularly valuable for non-program managers. In fact, these program management hacks have been really well-received by the hundreds of engineers at Google who I’ve presented them to.

By exploring these tips through the lens of “What Would A Program Manager Do?”, I hope you can pick up a few pointers for getting things done more reliably and efficiently.

In this post, I’ll walk you through 24 actionable tips to maximize your productivity and efficiency at work, organized across five key dimensions:

Getting Organized
Time Management
Planning
Trust, Credibility and Influence
Communication

Let’s dive in.

A split-screen digital illustration contrasts a cluttered workspace on the left with an organized one on the right. Left Side (Disorganized): A dark teal and maroon color scheme dominates. A laptop displays a line graph with upward trends. Stacks of books with sticky notes, scattered papers with illegible writing, a glass jar containing tangled lines, and a yellow sticky note are on a maroon desk. A chaotic scribble of dark red lines fills the upper left background. Right Side (Organized): A warm beige and brown color scheme prevails. A laptop shows bar graphs and pie charts. A pen holder with various writing instruments, stacks of books with sticky notes, and neatly arranged papers with simple diagrams are on a light brown desk. A wooden bookshelf filled with books and binders stands against a light beige wall. An orange desk lamp hangs above, and a few papers are pinned to the wall. The floor is visible with scattered papers and sticky notes. The illustration visually represents the difference between a disorganized and an organized work environment, suggesting the benefits of tidiness and structure for productivity. — AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace representing “Getting Organized”

Table of Contents

Getting Organized

Effective work starts with a solid foundation of organization. Brains are great for thinking creatively and solving problems, but I’ve learned that your brain is a horrible storage system for ‘to dos’ (as you may have gathered from my story above about waking up in a sweat in the middle of the night because something had fallen through the cracks).

I am a huge fan and follower of David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. Allen describes a state of “mind like water” which is crucial for upgrading your productivity game.

Trying to keep everything in your head is a recipe for damming up your mind which leads to forgotten tasks and increased stress. To draw an engineering analogy: storing things in RAM is more expensive than storing things to disk.

Getting organized is a crucial first step for having a clear view of your commitments and enabling better prioritization.

Here are four practical tips to help you get organized.

1. Write stuff down.

Don’t rely solely on your memory for tasks, ideas, or things you need to remember. I personally send myself “to dos” by email where the title is a quick overview of what I need to do and the body of the message containing any links or supporting context that will help me get that particular thing done.

2. Put all your ‘to dos’ in 1 place.

Having a single, trusted system where you capture everything you need to do gives you a full view and makes prioritization much easier. I use my Gmail inbox as my command center for managing my personal organizational workflow.

3. Don’t forget to capture things you’re waiting for from others.

Your colleagues may not be as organized or reliable as you are. Tasks where you are blocked or waiting for input from colleagues can easily fall through the cracks. Make sure to track these items so you know who owes you what and can follow up as needed, helping them to be more reliable themselves.

4. Set reminders for yourself.

I use a dedicated “Reminders Calendar” set-up in Google Calendar to ensure that nothing important is forgotten. I find that this builds confidence in my organizational framework.

Reminders can be things like “send weekly snippets!” triggered to land a reminder in your email inbox every Friday afternoon or meta-reminders like “check TODO list!” or “nudge people I’m waiting on!” so the things you need to take care of don’t fall off the radar.

Three hourglasses stand side-by-side against a light beige background. The hourglass on the left has a red frame and contains red sand, with the top bulb nearly empty and the bottom bulb filling. The central hourglass has a gray frame and contains blue sand, with a significant amount remaining in the top bulb. The hourglass on the right has a warm yellow frame and contains yellow sand, with the sand equally distributed between the top and bottom bulbs. The style is illustrative, with clear outlines and shading to define the glass and sand. — AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace representing “Time Management”

Time Management

Once you have an approach for capturing and organizing work items, the next step is managing your time effectively to tackle them. This is where you move from figuring out what you need to do (triage), to actually doing it efficiently (execution).

Here are nine practical tips for better time management.

5. Avoid multi-tasking.

Switching between very different tasks incurs a switching cost in your brain, making you less efficient. Focus on one task at a time where possible.

6. Set aside time for heads-down work.

Block out focused time in your calendar for tasks requiring deep concentration. You can mark these blocks as private or set your calendar to auto-decline meetings during these periods you’ve carved out to focus.

7. Hide out.

Find a place where you can be alone and uninterrupted to get work done. If this isn’t possible in your office (or home office!) put your headphones on as a signal to others that you don’t want to be disturbed. Take steps to avoid and mitigate interrupts.

8. Defrag your calendar.

Just like defragging a hard drive consolidates files and frees up space, review your calendar to consolidate meetings and create longer, uninterrupted blocks of time.

If a meeting breaks up a potentially productive block, ask if it can be moved. If it can’t be moved think about if you really need to be there. Productive work, especially software engineering work, requires longer, uninterrupted blocks of at least a few hours.

9. Separate your ‘to dos’ from the ‘new and shiny’

Avoid distraction. Keep your prioritized task list distinct from the constant stream of new incoming items (emails, messages, etc.) that can sap your attention.

This helps you focus on what matters most without getting distracted by things that aren’t a priority right now. When you are in “work mode” make sure your inbox is closed or that incoming messages are “below the fold” so that you aren’t tempted to see what new and shiny thing is waiting for you.

A long, straight dirt road stretches from the foreground into the distance, flanked by green grassy fields with scattered yellow flowers under a light blue sky. On the left side of the road, various tools and documents are piled, including wrenches, screwdrivers, papers with diagrams, and a notebook. Above these items, icons of gears, charts, and tools float, suggesting tasks or work processes. On the right side of the road, several wrapped gifts in orange, blue, and purple are stacked, with light bulbs, stars, and a medal icon floating above them, symbolizing new ideas, rewards, or achievements. The road itself has visible tire tracks, indicating a journey or path leading from tasks towards potential success or innovation. The overall style is illustrative and conveys a comparison between tangible tasks and the allure of new, perhaps more appealing, ventures. — AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace representing “Separating TODOs and the New and Shiny”

10. Filter mailing lists heavily.

Proactively manage the flow of information hitting your inbox by setting up filters for things like mailing lists you don’t need to read immediately. It’s impossible to read everything, and to me, a cluttered inbox is highly distracting.

I use Gmail and I find that setting up various filters (along with a reminder to check the repository of things that skipped the inbox once a day; a prompt to “check lists!”) is an inbox game-changer.

11. Batch process similar things.

Group similar tasks together and do them in batches. I have found that this is more efficient than switching between different types of tactical tasks one after the other. Examples include processing emails, reviewing bugs, scheduling meetings, or doing code reviews.

I also ‘park’ and batch process repetitive tasks like reviewing resumes (if my team is hiring) or responding to LinkedIn invitations.

12. Prioritize ruthlessly.

Not everything is equally important. Be clear with yourself and your manager about what your top priorities are. One way that I signal what I’m prioritizing and planning to work on next is to star 3-5 things on my to do list and then not look at my inbox or the rest of my to-do list until those are done.

My Google colleague, Laura Mae Martin, in her book Uptime, describes the importance of setting your top 3 priorities and then ensuring that you are allocating the majority of your time to progressing on these 3 highest priority things. You won’t change what you don’t evaluate and measure.

13. Gracefully decline.

Say ‘no’, redirect where possible or set expectations that you’ll do it later. Protect your time and focus by politely declining, delegating/redirecting, or deferring requests that don’t align with your current priorities.

“Your poor planning is not my emergency.”

⬆️ I often think this ⬆️ but find it’s important to say it more tactfully. In her book Wild Courage, my colleague Jenny Wood provides some scripts you can use to say ‘no’ with grace (and without poisoning your relationships with your coworkers.

Planning

Planning is a fundamental skill for being effective at work, and it’s absolutely central to my role as a program manager who must define and drive progress on complex projects. A lack of clear planning can lead to wasted effort and missed goals.

Here are three practical tips for better planning.

14. Set clear objectives with success criteria before you begin.

Before starting a project, define precisely what you aim to achieve and how you will objectively measure success. This clarity helps align effort with priorities.

Program managers are expert at writing SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Time bound). For example, in one customer service operations project that I led, we hypothesized that opening the phone lines for an extra hour each day would improve customer satisfaction by X percentage points.

By making our objective clear from the start, we were able to decide whether to continue (success!) or stop (not meeting our objectives). If you don’t do this upfront, it’s too easy to convince yourself to keep going even though you know in your gut the program isn’t working.

15. Define Requirements.

Get agreement on what you’re trying to solve. Stakeholder management is a critical skill not just for program managers, but for anyone working in a corporate setting. Identify all relevant stakeholders.

Who are Stakeholders? Take a broad view. They are people you are working with, people who care about the thing you’re working on, and people who may be impacted in some way by the thing you’re working on.

Ensure everyone agrees on the specific problem you are trying to address. This prevents building the wrong solution and surfaces disagreement for resolution early on.

16. Document and agree on the design.

Plan and document how you are going to solve the problem. Getting agreement on the design from key stakeholders before implementation saves time and prevents rework down the line.

It can be tempting to jump right to execution (which is definitely more fun than planning!), but if you don’t plan the work, you can’t work the plan and you may end up building something or delivering a solution that misses the mark.

Trust, Credibility and Influence

Effectiveness at work often requires collaborating with and influencing others. For me, operating through influence rather than direct authority is particularly crucial as a program manager.

My hot take is that trust and credibility (aka being reliable) is a program manager’s most important currency. Building trust and credibility is absolutely essential for being effective and productive at work. More often than not, we need to get things done using influence rather than direct authority and trust is the key to influence.

Here are five practical tips for building trust, credibility, and influence.

17. Define “What’s in it for them”

When you need something from someone, think about their motivations and priorities. Frame your request in a way that highlights the benefit or relevance to them, rather than just focusing on your own goals. Put yourself in their shoes to tailor your approach and get their support.

18. Under-promise and Over-deliver.

Consistently delivering better than expected builds a strong reputation for reliability and competence. This simple act of doing what you say you will when you say you will builds credibility over time. In contrast, overpromising and under-delivering erodes trust. This tip applies at both the individual task and project level.

On the left, a small green sprout with two leaves emerges from the soil. On the right, a mature tree with green and yellow leaves stands under a blue sky with a shining sun. — AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace representing “Under-promise and Over-deliver”

19. Actively manage expectations.

Communicate proactively, especially if circumstances change. If you realize you cannot meet a commitment by the original date you promised for a valid reason, update relevant stakeholders with the new timeline before the deadline passes. Clear communication also applies when delegating tasks; make sure others understand what you expect of them and by when.

20. Follow through on everything.

This is a granular but essential tip. Consistently meeting your commitments, no matter how small, reinforces your reputation as a reliable colleague and builds trust. If you help other people, they will be more likely to want to help you.

21. Show appreciation.

Acknowledge and thank others who help you or contribute to your projects. I have found that this fosters positive relationships and encourages future collaboration. If people feel genuinely appreciated, they will want to work with you again. Showing appreciation can be as simple as sending an email cc’ing someone’s manager or sending someone a peer bonus.

A digital illustration shows a cluster of eight colorful balloons - red, purple, light green, orange-red, light blue, dark blue, and yellow. The balloons are surrounded by an explosion of colorful confetti and curling ribbons in various shades, suggesting a celebratory or festive occasion. The background is a textured light beige or off-white. The style is reminiscent of colored pencil or crayon drawing with visible shading. — AI-Generated Image by Gemini in Google Workspace representing “Show Appreciation”

Communication

Communication is king. Clear, timely, and well-documented communication is vital for ensuring everyone is on the same page and for preventing misunderstandings or missed actions.

As an experienced program manager, I rely heavily on effective oral and written communication to keep stakeholders up-to-date and projects on track.

Here are three practical tips for improving your communication.

22. Get it in writing.

Document important decisions and agreements, especially those made in meetings, and share them with relevant parties. This provides a clear record and avoids confusion later. I like to send out meeting notes by email with a clear record of what was decided.

I always end with “please let me know if there is anything I’ve missed or misunderstood” to give people a chance to correct the record. If they don’t, I can always point back to this paper trail later if a disagreement arises.

23. Overcommunicate.

Provide regular updates. Keep stakeholders informed of progress, challenges, and changes. Regular communication helps manage expectations and can prompt others to make progress on their dependent tasks.

If people don’t hear from you, they might assume nothing is happening.

This is even more important when communicating with your manager. You definitely don’t want them to worry that nothing is happening when you are actually on track to deliver on what you committed to.

24. Get an explicit ACK to confirm ownership.

When assigning tasks or confirming agreements, ensure the other person explicitly acknowledges (ACKs) their understanding and acceptance of responsibility.

Including relevant parties (like a manager or other stakeholders) in this communication can reinforce ownership. When there are witnesses to the commitment, people are more likely to follow through.

Conclusion

I am the The Reliable PgM™ because of my experience working at the intersection of Program Management and Site Reliability Engineering. Driving continuous improvement is a key tenet of a high performing SRE practice.

Becoming more effective at work in general is an ongoing process. If you internalize and implement even a few of these practical tips, you can significantly improve your organization, time management, planning, ability to influence others, and communication leading to better productivity, fewer things falling into a proverbial black hole, and lower stress.

By adopting and adapting these techniques to your own work, you’re adding powerful tools from the program manager’s playbook to your professional toolkit, helping you get more done with greater ease and lower stress.

Consider trying out a few of these tips this week and see what difference they make in your daily work!