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Time management: The key skill for a modern marketer

22 Sep 20 | Written by James Ingham
In this blog, we explore why time management is now the number 1 skill modern marketers should be looking to develop.

As a marketer, or marketeer (I’ve never really known which it is) you’ll be far too used to feeling overwhelmed - inundated with demanding deadlines and competing priorities. And you’ll also be used to the feeling of relief when you regain control, only for another wave of pressure to bring you right back down to earth.

It’s the life of a modern marketer. These day’s a marketer needs to be a jack of all trades, and a master of all of them too - copywriting, strategy, social media, branding, ABM, SEO, the list goes on.

Spinning so many plates is inevitably going to bring a certain amount of pressure, and require masterful time management to make sure everything gets done - and gets done on time, without being really crap. Done is definitely better than perfect, but if something’s going to be ineffective there’s no point doing it in the first place (maybe that’s a topic for another blog).

If it sounds like I'm complaining here, I’m not. After all, the rush of the last minute campaign and the buzz of the fast-paced marketing world is what most of us are here for. And besides, it certainly beats the humdrum, keyboard crunching, mind-numbing office jobs that some of us have to endure. 

The point is though, even if you think you’re a marketing ninja, skilled in all the disciplines we talked about earlier, if you can’t manage your time effectively you won’t get anything done. So, here’s a few tips we’ve learnt over the years…

Software is a must

There’s loads of task management tools out there -  Asana, Monday.com, Trello etc. Which one is right for you though really depends on your own processes and how you like to work. We’ve been through them all at ROMI, and finally settled on the lesser known ClickUp (we’re not getting any commission for that recommendation by the way). 

You’ll need to go on your own journey of discovery to find the tool that works best for you, but when you find it, it can be a big step forward in managing your time more effectively.

Progress against individual tasks can be tracked and priorities can be identified. And with this comes focus. Focusing on what needs to be done first will help you keep those spinning plates and save you hours in jumping between competing priorities.

The golden rules

With the software in place, there’s a few golden rules you should follow:

  • Never set a task that can’t be completed in a day.

This is a big one. Not only from a productivity standpoint, but from a mindset perspective too. Creating a task for an entire project, for example, “Website redevelopment” may take months to complete, meaning it sits there in your task management tool and never gets cleared off. Not only will this eventually make your to-do list really long, you’ll never get the satisfaction of checking stuff off your list, which can be seriously demoralising.

Instead you should break up bigger tasks into smaller, more manageable subtasks that can be completed in a single day. If you can’t do it in a day, break it up further.

  • 5 tasks a day, no more, no less

Try to set yourself no more or no less than 5 of these manageable tasks a day - focusing on tasks with the highest priority and those that are going to have the biggest impact. Any more than 5 and you’re back to being overwhelmed, any less, you’re not pushing yourself. 

Trust me on this one, when you clear off all 5 of your daily to-do’s it feels great and can do wonders for your levels of motivation - and ultimately how happy you are at work.

  • Don’t focus on due dates

No doubt some of your tasks will have a fixed deadline, and that’s fine. But ordering your to-do list on these deadlines is a big no no. A due date simply tells you when something has to get done by, not how long it will take. Which means something that really needs to be done now, could be sitting at the bottom of your to-do list - out of sight, out of mind.

Instead, try to order things by level of priority - with the work that needs to be done first at the top, and less urgent tasks lower down. This will help you focus on what actually needs to be worked on to meet the deadlines you’ve been set. 

This is also one of the reasons we love ClickUp, it enables you to mark individual tasks based on urgency, as well as due date - which gives you a much better picture of what you should be doing.

James CU-1 (1)

And so, with the software in place and some golden rules to follow, you shouldn’t be too far away from really effective time-management and as a result, being a really effective marketer.

But perhaps most importantly, especially in the uncertain times we’re all facing at the minute, you’ll also be protecting your mental health. I know this may sound like a bit of a stretch, but giving your day more structure and avoiding the chaos of marketing overwhelm can have a massive impact on your wellbeing and make you a much happier person overall - and we could all do with as much happiness as we can get at the minute.

Written by
James Ingham
Marketing Operations Director
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