The Tools and Strategies I Use to Organize my PR Projects

Amongst the chaos of PR, it’s very easy to be swamped with multiple projects, deadlines, meetings and unexpected client or administrative requests. It's important to stay organized, be on top of your game, and manage your time wisely. However, the PR madness can easily pile up more to-dos on your already filled list. Being able to prioritize your tasks and know how to organize them accordingly is crucial for efficiently providing stellar outcomes for clients.  

To help you perform to the best of your abilities on behalf of your team and clients, here are a few tools and strategies to help manage your days.  

Prioritize on Trello

Whenever I’m given a new task or deadline, I always add it to my Trello board. Trello is an online project management platform that allows you to set goals, create deadlines and visually see your project management progress. The platform utilizes the Kanban planning board, which is an organization technique created by Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, to improve manufacturing efficiency. Even though the board was intended for manufacturing purposes, it’s found its way into office spaces and those who need to manage multiple projects with multiple deadlines.  

My Trello Board

Trello allows me to add deadlines, check lists, colors, categories, photos and videos to enhance the visual experience. When using Trello, the linear model helps me to focus on what needs to get done and when, and better understand how to prioritize my projects.  

Trello is not the only online Kanban board platform. Others include Asana, Kanban Tool, workstreams.ai, TaskWorld, and much more.  

Chrome Tab Organizer

We’ve all been through the jungle of tabs that we leave open on our computers. Finding that one, single page you need to complete a task becomes nearly impossible with the infestation that creeps up on our screens. Rohan Narayana Murty, Sandeep Dadlani, and Rajath B. Das of the Harvard Business Review conducted a study to see how long employees spend in a workday sorting through their tabs.  

“We found that, on average, the cost of a switch is little over two seconds and the average user in the dataset toggled between different apps and websites nearly 1,200 times each day. That means that people in these jobs spent just under four hours a week reorienting themselves after toggling to a new application. Over the course of a year, that adds up to five working weeks, or 9% of their annual time at work.”

— Harvard Business Review 

My Work Tabs

To help reduce wasted time and maximize productivity, Google Chrome recently added a feature that allows you to categorize your tabs into sections, making it much easier to find the one you need. Think of a file drawer, but on your Chrome window! 

The feature even allows you to color code each group (or folder), making the search clearer. Since I’ve used this feature, it’s changed my work and organizational habits, making it much easier for me to sort through all my projects, research, and documents. Say goodbye to overwhelming searches!  

Microsoft Office

Another organizational tool that I simply can’t live without is Microsoft’s Outlook Calendar, reminders and OneNote. Working in a remote PR agency means there will be back-to-back Zoom calls and tasks in a day. Sometimes, it’s easy to mush ideas for different projects or clients in your head and struggle with remembering what materials are needed to have ready ahead of time for the next call.  

Having meeting reminders helps with punctuality while color coding each task and meeting on my calendar helps me mentally prepare and shift gears. Categorizing each meeting and task per client helps me remember what I need to prepare and what was discussed in previous meetings.  

Another app from Microsoft that helps me organize my thoughts is OneNote. Again, color coding and categorizing each client and project helps me differentiate each priority and organize my materials. The app also allows you to add sections and pages within each section, breaking down each idea even further. OneNote is a great way to organize and collect notes, information, and ideas that are ‘jotted’ down, without needing to flip through pages of a notebook.  

Conclusion

Using these few digital, organizational tools is a lifesaver when working in a fast-paced environment with hard deadlines and many priorities. Finding the right organizational tools can help you become mentally clear to work more calmly and efficiently. When prioritizing tasks, it’s important to think of deadlines, importance, and what’s a shorter or longer assignment. These considerations help maximize the use of the Kanban board, note-taking, setting reminders, and organizing a calendar, which helps improve overall work performance and quality.