Managing the mound of projects

Project management is a juggling act...

My time at the Department of Sport and Recreation has been amazing. Everyday I am there I get given new and more challenging tasks. The past week has been a highlight. Every morning the communications office undertakes media monitoring, quite an important task as they are a government organisation. I was given this task to complete, I was shown the format of how they do it, and given some examples of what type of stories are important. At first I was worried I would miss something but I soon got in the mindset and was able to identify the stories. This was a great opportunity as media monitoring is a useful skill and something that I imagine a graduate will be given to do at a new job. But I did take longer than they usually would to do which raises the issue of managing the workload.

The main topic of this blog is managing the load, I am currently only doing two days a week at work experience, as I am sure many of you are, and many tasks carry over a few weeks. This is something that I had to adjust to, keeping track of what you did last week, and remembering what you had to do this week. It sounds simple enough but after a week of uni, and work and family and friends, it is easy to forget. I learnt to keep track very early on, the second week to be exact, as I came back in I suddenly realised things I though I would remember I didn't. The other issue is that things do take me longer than the experienced employees. This means I have to juggle and prioritise the tasks I am given to ensure the more important ones are done in time and the other stories which are less important are left to last. Again I think this is a great skill I have learnt whilst completing my placement.

Overall I think I am doing well at the placement,  so far I have learnt how to speak professionally on the phone, media monitoring, project prioritisation and keeping track of what I am doing, all pretty useful skills.