Did you know that many common goals can be classified as projects?
Examples could be starting a new side hustle, renovating your kitchen, launching a new product,
running a marathon.
They all have a start and an ending and many interrelated tasks that must be completed
in order to create a win.
So, how can you maximize your chances of crushing your project goal?
There's two things.
First, see yourself as a project manager.
It's a simple, small mind shift change, but it'll really help you succeed.
Secondly, get your hands on a few project management tools that will help you stay organized,
manage all those moving pieces, and meet your goal on time.
Now, these tools can be very simple and you may have them lying around your office already.
So, if you want to think bigger, achieve your goals, and enjoy the process, be sure to subscribe
to this YouTube channel.
Hit the bell icon so you get notifications whenever we come out with a new video.
Hi, my name's Lucas, I work at BestSelf Co., and I'm here today to show you five very simple
project management tools that will help you stay organized and crush your project goals.
Let's dive in.
The first tool is very simple, it's a pad of paper and pen.
This might sound really simple, but it's super important that you grab a piece of paper and
pen and brain dump everything that you might need for your project.
So, when you're brain dumping, just get it all out, even the dumb ideas, even the things
that seem ridiculous.
Put it on a piece of paper.
You never know what little nuggets can come from those crazy ideas.
During your brain dump, focus your thoughts on six areas: tasks that need to be completed
for the project, ideas you have, resources you'll need, people you'll need to contact,
questions you need to answer, and problems to solve and hurdles to overcome.
After a brain dump, that is when you start to organize all the tasks that need to be
done.
That is actually why we created the Project Action Pad.
Oftentimes, projects can be overwhelming just because of how much you have to think about
all the moving parts.
That's why we created the Project Action Pad, to create an external brain, so that you can
spend time at the beginning of your project organizing everything that needs to be done,
outlining it, seeing it all in front of you on that Project Action Pad.
Now, instead of using your mental energy on thinking what's five steps ahead, the Project
Action Pad has that already.
You just need to worry about what's ahead of you right now, the one thing that you need
to accomplish, the one hurdle you need to jump, the one person you need to connect to,
instead of wasting all your energy trying to juggle all these balls.
The next super simple but effective tool for project management is having a unified filing
system, like Google Drive and Dropbox.
Having a unified filing system will make your life so much easier.
This is especially true if you have a project with multiple people in it.
There's nothing worse than trying to find something and being so frustrated because
everyone's naming everything different, there's these random folders everywhere.
You're spending all your time trying to search for things instead of working.
For me, I like Google Drive.
One, it's free, that's nice, and also, I like that multiple people can be collaborating
on a document at the same time.
Also, I like the forms where we can create unified outputs.
But here's some tools to help you with organizing your system.
You want to create a filing structure that is simple.
You don't need this elaborate, multi-tiered folder system.
You want to make it to where if you hired someone new to the team, they could easily
pick up on where things go, how they're named.
Speaking of how it's named, it's important that you're making the naming convention something
that makes sense, that's logical.
I like having the date with the year, month, and day, just to organize it in terms of when
something's been added, updated, et cetera.
Also, use the sharing functionality to be able to collaborate with people inside and
outside of the company.
Additionally, manage the permissions so that people that should have access have access,
people that shouldn't have access to certain things don't.
Lastly, it's always good just to do a little tidying up from time to time to make sure
that people are naming things correctly, the folders are being used like they should, permissions
are correct.
It's best to have a system that is uniform so that everyone can find what they need to
find where they need to find it, and you're not spending all this time and energy finding
files.
So, the next simple but effective project management tool is a calendar.
For us, we have a wall calendar that we like to use.
A calendar is simple but effective to help fend off procrastination.
You can see in one view what needs to be done, when.
So, now that you have all the tasks lined out, you can map out on your calendar what
needs to be done at what time.
Some tasks might overlap, some might have hard deadlines, others might have a range
in which they need to be completed before the next task can be done.
It's also important, on the calendar, to put other things that are unrelated to the project.
So, if you have a calendar that's just for the project, you might forget that you have
a vacation scheduled for this time or there's a holiday on this day.
You want to have it so that the calendar includes non-project based things.
Lastly, it helps visualize the countdown.
So, if you wanted to finish a project in 30 days, you can visually see the time ticking
away.
This helps motivate you in terms of not procrastinating, not pushing things off.
You can see the time that is remaining getting smaller and smaller, and that can help motivate
you to keep pushing forward.
The fifth and final simple but effective project management tool is having some kind of communication
system.
That could be Slack, Trello, Quip.
There's a bunch of things out there.
At BestSelf, we use Slack.
We communicate mostly using GIFs and memes now.
It's super important that you use a uniform communication system.
It helps cut down miscommunication, it helps communicate to a lot of people all at once.
It also helps with flagging potential issues with the project because you have more people
involved in the conversation.
Slack also has a free version which, again, is awesome.
You can have both group and direct messages, you can have private channels, group channels.
It's also very scalable if your business grows.
And I know, for me, it's also good for keeping a log of the communications.
So, say I step out for a few hours and there's a bunch of people talking on a group chat,
I can always come back and scroll to the top of the conversation and follow the thread
so that I'm up to speed on what's going on.
In terms of project management, you can also create channels specifically for your project
so that everyone that needs to know about something is in the know, they're a part of
the discussion, and you can share files that way and everything.
A little insider tip is to create a channel specifically for your project.
When your goal has multiple moving parts, you'll get better results if you tackle it
with a project management mentality.
This simply means taking in the big picture, staying ahead of the game so you don't get
caught up and overwhelmed, decision fatigue, and you don't drop the ball when the project's
rolling.
That is the beauty of simple tools.
They can help you stay organized without adding too much complexity.
So, empower yourself with the Project Action Pad.
This tool is perfect for tracking your progress of a project.
If you'd like to hear more about external brains, check out these videos on the Project
Action Pad and the Weekly Action Pad.
Thanks for watching, and we're excited to hear what projects you want to accomplish
with these five simple project management tools.
See you.
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