Being a Manager

At the beginning of this year, I was promoted at work to a manager. It was one of my goals when I started there and what I thought would take me two years ended up taking me about a year. So here I am in my 3rd month as a manager in a large corporation.

So how do I like it so far? Well, I currently share supervising duties with another manager and we supervise a staff of 5 people. I end up spending the majority of my time in meetings, interviewing candidates for an open position, training and helping out the staff, and finally letting all my regular work pile up on my desk as I get more projects added to my plate. For example, tomorrow I have a 9:00 meeting which should last for an hour and a half, then I have interviews at 11:00, 2:30 & 4:00. In effect, I have 6 hours tomorrow to get in 9 hours of work, which includes reviewing the staff's work and spending time answering their questions, etc.

Why talk about this? Well not long ago, I received a newsletter from My Daily Director about life being like a river and if I fight, float or navigate. While I'd love to say I navigate the waters of my life, it is clear that at work I tend to float and get bounced all over the place. One of the purposes of using My Daily Director is to help navigate my 90-day plan. I like the way the planner has a section on priorities before filling in all the time slots. It allows me to plan out what are the real priorities in my life - the things I should spend 80% of my time on. Because I have so many different things to do at work, I have to be able to prioritize my projects. I just don't have enough time in the day to get all of it done. Thank goodness for the business priorities section of the planner.

In my first post, I wrote how one of my goals for the 90-day plan was to be more productive at work. How can that be measured? There are severals ways, but one of them is how long it takes me to clear my desk of the projects I have. Another is whether I can get most of my work done without having to put in overtime. In next week's post, I'll update how well I did this week clearing the projects from my desk.

Keith