124: Drowning in Tasks: How Successful PMs Organize the Chaos

If your to-do list is 47 items long, your Slack won't shut up, and you ended the day thinking, "Cool… but what did I actually accomplish?"—welcome. You're among friends.

In this episode, Kim and Kate take on the very real, very unsexy side of project management: figuring out how to manage your own work when everything (and everyone) is demanding your attention.

This isn't about finding the perfect tool or building a prettier dashboard. It's about surviving—and actually functioning—in an interrupt-driven world where emails breed overnight, notifications multiply, and every task somehow feels urgent.

They get into what actually works: setting a North Star for your week (yes, only a few priorities), getting tasks out of your brain before they haunt you at 10 PM, and why some tasks are secretly just traps that create even more work (looking at you, boomerang tasks).

Also: a gentle reality check—you're not supposed to do everything.

Grab a drink, ignore your inbox for a bit, and let's figure out how to organize the chaos without losing your mind.

🎙️ Spicy Quotes from the Episode

On chaos: "If you have no North Star point, the rest of your week is going to feel like chaos." — Kate

On overwhelm: "The human brain can't really process all of that. We can process having three priorities." — Kate

On modern work life: "Notifications trying to notify you about notifications." — Kim

On control: "Manage your tasks—don't let your tasks manage you." — Kim

On reality: "There has to be things you can stop doing." — Kate