The Life of a Manager

When people imagine an ideal boss, they see a successful leader gracefully pacing around the office or workplace with a stern sense of purpose. They don't picture the constant stream of meetings, last-minute readjustments, compromises, and chasing deadlines. However, when you're a manager of a product, business, or any team… these challenges are a part of life.

Even the most talented and experienced managers can become overwhelmed if they don’t have a system to keep their mind and tasks in order. Your team needs your energy, powerful leadership, and tried-and-true experience to excel. It makes a difference for you to stay focused, organized, and motivated.

Building your Momentum dashboard into a command center for your responsibilities can streamline your focus and organize your day. Beat overwhelm, distraction, and procrastination with the perfect Management Momentum Dash. We’ll show you how to build your dashboard in this post.

Beat Distractions with Focus Tools

The key to being a great manager is the ability to effectively prioritize tasks for yourself and for those you’re managing. Keep everyone on task with Momentum’s focus tools to improve performance and prevent scope creep.

Front and Center Focus

What’s the number one goal your team needs to accomplish? Write it front and center on your Momentum Dash to avoid letting any distractions take over your next meeting. Remind your team daily what the #1 focus is to keep them on track and accountable.

Pomodoro Timer

Managers may have administrative responsibilities such as performance reports and task oversight. For this kind of work, you can set your Pomodoro timer and create a ‘do not disturb’ zone. You’ll be able to focus for 25 minutes to get tasks done, and your team will know to save their questions until after your 5-minute break.

The idea of the timer is to set yourself a bracket of time so that you can only work on one thing, with no distractions, until the timer is up. It effectively gamifies your deep work sessions and admin time by challenging your brain to stay focused until the timer runs out.

When your break rolls around, do your brain a favor, get off your screen and away from your phone. Take deep breaths, meditate, or head outside for a moment of respite before your next deep work session.

Soundscapes

Play focusing background tracks for yourself or your whole office to signify deep work time. Choose soothing tracks from nature, or white noise to keep the sounds of traffic or other meetings from disrupting your team. When you need to signal ‘do not disturb’ mode in your office, pop on your noise-canceling headphones and start your Pomodoro timer. The only way to get tasks done is to give them your full attention, jot down any distractions or requests to be addressed later.

Beat Overwhelm with Organization

A manager’s job is to take the team’s overwhelming amount of tasks and organize them. What happens when the manager gets overwhelmed?

Overwhelm doesn’t have to hold up your performance when you have a place to organize everything that's going on.

Notes and To-Dos

With customizable, color-coded notes you can create a note tab for each project or team member. Get rid of all those sticky notes, text requests, and various slack messages by consolidating everything into one note section that you can put into your to-do list.

Notes are also handy for meeting preparation and jotting meeting minutes. Notate how certain conversations with team members went and even take notes about their performance. All of these notes will be handy to show to your executive team or boss when they ask for a status update.

You can help organize and delegate tasks between team members with individual to-do lists. Track your own to-dos in a personal to-do list. Prioritize by dragging and organizing your to-do list items by priority. If you need to keep track of conversations or follow up on task progress, you can list those tasks in the appropriate list as well.

Links 

Links are a great way to save time. Store your project management hubs, training links, and reporting tools all in one place. You can group links for new projects to open all at once from the handy Links tool. 

Be ready for every team meeting with links to meeting notes, templates, and agendas. Add links to items that need to be reviewed for quick access during your next Pomodoro session.

When you hear the same question from team members over and over, you can compile a group of links that answer common questions or lead to common resources. Your links section can become a playbook for your team or department as well as make training a breeze.

Metrics 

Measure your team’s performance and intervene where it counts the most. Keep an eye on all the moving parts by tracking sales, training sessions held, or team member performances on a scale of 1-10.

Countdowns

Countdowns are a great way to track upcoming deadlines for the team or each member. You can also manage team culture with countdowns. Make sure there are regular check-ins, social functions, or celebrations of your team’s accomplishments. Let everyone know how many days until your next fun event, and keep track of birthdays too.

Beat Procrastination with Motivation

Quotes

How do you want to support your team as a leader? Quotes can be a great way to remind yourself of the keys to success. Add your own quotes or save the ones that inspire you to encourage your team and keep them accountable. When you want to embody a leadership trait to pass on to your team, you can load up the top quotes to keep it top of mind.

Mantras

When everyone needs you at the same time, how do you stay centered? Mantras can help you keep your head above the stress. Add phrases like “deep breath” or “choose kindness” to pause your stress and bring you back to your core values.

If you have a set of values or a driving tagline for your company’s impact, you can write that in as a mantra as well. 

Photos

What places inspire you? Choose calming scenes from Momentum’s reel for your photo backgrounds, or upload your own photos of your family and pets. Add destinations to remember the vacations you’d like to take once you reach certain milestones or upload a photo of your team. Photos help you set the mood for the day and visualize what’s important.

Conclusion

Managing a team or project can be demanding, but it can also develop you into a more capable leader. Customize your Momentum Dash to stay focused, organized, and inspired as you lead your team to success.

We want to see how you manage your team with your inspiring dashboard. Send a screenshot of your dash to marketing@momentumdash.com for an opportunity to be featured. Your dashboard could help other managers with their focus, organization, and inspiration.