The Customer Success Playbook

Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E55 - Elizabeth Harrin - Stop the Burnout

• Kevin Metzger • Season 3 • Episode 55

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Ever feel like you're juggling flaming torches while riding a unicycle? That's modern project management for you. In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook, Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon welcome Elizabeth Harrin, the mastermind behind the award-winning Rebels Guide to Project Management. With over two decades of experience helping professionals navigate the chaos of multiple projects, Elizabeth reveals her battle-tested strategies for maintaining sanity when the pressure cooker of deadlines starts whistling.


Detailed Analysis

The conversation kicks off with Elizabeth dropping a truth bomb that resonates across industries: project management isn't just for project managers anymore. Whether you're in customer success, sales, or support, you're likely juggling multiple initiatives that directly impact client satisfaction. The beauty of Elizabeth's approach lies in its simplicity – she transforms overwhelming to-do lists into manageable "buckets of work."

Her number one tip? Start with visibility. Most professionals treat their workload like an endless scroll of doom, but Elizabeth advocates for packaging work into digestible categories. Think of it as Marie Kondo-ing your project portfolio – group by client, deadline, or theme, then ruthlessly prioritize what truly sparks value.

The discussion takes a practical turn when Elizabeth introduces her "top three goals" approach. By identifying three key objectives each evening for the next day, you create a roadmap that prevents the dreaded email rabbit hole. Roman Trebon enthusiastically validates this method, sharing his own success with a similar journaling practice – proof that even the busiest professionals can benefit from this deceptively simple strategy.

What sets this episode apart is Elizabeth's emphasis on personalization. She acknowledges that traditional prioritization models (like the famous "eat the frog" approach) don't work for everyone, especially those with neurodivergence. The key is experimentation – test different systems, keep what works, and adjust what doesn't. This flexible mindset transforms project management from a rigid framework into a dynamic toolkit.

The episode concludes with a compelling reminder: effective project management isn't about doing more; it's about doing what matters. In an era where burnout lurks around every deadline, Elizabeth's approach offers a refreshing perspective on sustainable productivity.

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Kevin Metzger:

Customer success.

Roman Trebon:

Hi everyone, and welcome to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, where we bring you actionable insights for creating meaningful customer experiences and a better way of working. I'm your host, Roman Reon. Joined with me as always is my co-host Kevin Metzker. Today's guest is someone who's made project management practical and human, even when the pressure is on. Kevin, I know you have had some pressure filled projects. Are you excited to talk to our guest today?

Kevin Metzger:

I am. I am. And our guest is Elizabeth Herron. She's an author, senior project manager and founder of the award-Winning Rebels Guide to Project Ma Management. Elizabeth has has spent over two decades helping professionals juggle priorities, avoid overwhelm, and keep their projects insanity on track. Elizabeth, we're thrilled to have you here today. Uh, share a little bit more about yourself.

Elizabeth Harrin:

Oh, well thank you so much for having me on the podcast. I think all kinds of roles these days require people to manage projects. So even if you don't have the job title or project manager, then you're probably doing projects of some kind, either contributing to them or, um, leading them, whether it's, you know, all all kinds of just customer service and customer satisfaction roles, um, to help your clients be more successful are delivered through projects these days. So great to talk to you guys.

Roman Trebon:

Yeah, we're excited. Uh, you talk about customer success and, and, you know, projects lead to success or, or not success, right? Oh, no. So we're, we're excited to get into this, right? Uh, so let's get right into it. Elizabeth, what is your number one tip for handling multiple projects without hitting burnout?

Elizabeth Harrin:

Well, I could probably talk about that for a long time, but to give you a snip, a snippet of what's the, what's a good starting point? Yeah. I think if you think about your work overall, you've probably got loads of projects for clients or internal projects as well, and I. The more you can prioritize, the better you can choose how to spend your time. So the prioritization process begins for me with visibility. Most people treat their workload, including me as a lo, a long never ending to-do list. But if we can package up the work that we do, we do into sort of. Buckets. Perhaps there's a, a bucket per client or a bucket of, um, work that has to be done by December or whatever categorization works well for you, then it becomes a lot less overwhelming because you're only managing sort of five pots of work rather than 20 individual small strands. And I know that's, that sounds. Uh, quite a box standard. Easy thing to, to start off with, but if you, you've gotta download all of your work and work out exactly what it is that you're doing, and then see how you can, uh, group the work and then, and then prioritize.

Kevin Metzger:

So when you're, when you're bucketing, the, the idea is. You're kind of thinking of a project as a whole as opposed to breaking it down into the parts. I'm guessing that helps you kind of understand the prioritization a little better. Is that, is that kind of where you're going with?

Elizabeth Harrin:

Exactly, yes. So when I, um, I ended up writing a book about managing multiple projects because so many people were having this problem. And when I was talking to people about how they manage their work, a lot of people. Don't actually have a handle on exactly what it is they're doing every day because it's so reactive. Or just stuff gets piled on and then you get to the end of the week and you think, oh yeah, I'm supposed to have also made progress on this activity. And that activity and your to-do list just becomes really long. So we always start off by saying, you know, just, just spend 10 minutes, get a cup of tea, write down everything that you're working on, the project work, the client work, the stuff that you're doing that is mentoring or coaching, or organizing a team away day. All of that activity. And then you've got a real clear view of exactly what it is that you you need to do, so then you can start making choices. I. Which ones of these are priority? How are we going to prioritize? Which ones can I drop? Who can I delegate this to? And start thinking about how you're spending your time and that will really help you focus on the things that are most important for you, for your clients, for the, for the value that you want to deliver for your organization. So it's. Prioritization, I think can end up feeling like it's all about doing more just so that I can create more hours in the day to do more stuff, but we don't have more hours in the day. We all have the same amount of of time. So it's about doing what matters and not feeling guilty because you've made the right choices about what things are not being worked on this week, and maybe you are putting those off and you'll, you'll work on them next month,

Roman Trebon:

Elizabeth, for, for. Any of our audience members that may be feeling that burnout coming. Right. And they're hearing you and they're talking about, oh, I like the idea of prioritization. Is this something they should start? Like how do they start? Should they do it like at a weekly basis, daily basis, monthly basis? Like how do you, if you, if someone's is feeling that burnout, they feel overwhelmed, and the to-do list is growing and growing and growing, what would you recommend as a good starting place?

Elizabeth Harrin:

Start with, what are your top three goals for today or for tomorrow? So I, I work it out the night before, so I'll work out tomorrow and I'll write at them on a sticky note and leave it on my keyboard. What is it that I need to achieve tomorrow? And then when you come in in the morning, you've already got it written out there. These are my three things that I want to try to achieve. That is my priority activity for the day, because. I, I, I don't know if you are the same, but I was coming into work and thinking, oh, I'll just have a look at my emails, and then, oh, I need to reply to that message, and then suddenly it's lunchtime and you've not actually done anything that's super urgent or important or helped you move closer to delivering value for your clients. You've just. You know, you've done reactive stuff. It's not wasted time, but perhaps it's not spending time on the highest priority activities. So if you can just spend five minutes before you leave, before you close down your laptop and, and shut your office door for the day on the what my key activities that I must get done tomorrow. And they just keep coming back to that all throughout the day. So that's a really small tip. I'd, I'd suggest that that's where people start. If, if getting outta the, the burnout zone feels like it's too much of a challenge to do any kind of like larger, more strategic planning.

Roman Trebon:

I am a, a plug for, I use something called, I've been doing this for a couple years now, is there's an old journal, Elizabeth. And in this Oak journal, right. It asked you to do, you have a gratitude list, all this stuff, but in that list is your three most important things for the day. Right. And so kinda like you said, each night I write down my three most important things going into the next day. It's been a total game changer.'cause like you said, you can, you can, you can do a lot of work. Nothing progresses. Right? Like it, it's, you get that sense of, oh, I've done so much today. And then you look back in a week, you're like, no big things have actually moved from what I've done. So the three most important things for me, which it sounds like you recommend as well, that really changed it.'cause I, I, what's that? Eat your frog thing? Is that, what's that saying? Eat frog. Eat the frog. Yeah, you eat the frog. I'm eating my frog early. Then I can get into other stuff. But at least I've made progress on those big, those big rock initiatives, those big projects. And, and, and, and so I, I feel, I feel reaffirmed in a way,

Elizabeth Harrin:

well, I would say that the, the Eat the frog thing, um, is good. But some of these prioritization models, including that one, so I've heard, don't work so well for people. Who have neurodivergence. So I think it's really important that you try out a few different prioritization strategies. And maybe it's an urgent important grid. Maybe it's must have, must, must do, should do. Would like to do, if I've got time, whatever model it is that you use, try out a few and see or try out, you know, an app or a to-do list, journal thing or a bullet journal or whatever it was that you just said. The the note journal. The

Roman Trebon:

journal now we gotta get as a sponsor cap, I gotta reach out to the Yo journal we promoted

Elizabeth Harrin:

and just taste. And when it works, do more. And if it doesn't work, change it and do something else. There's no one size fits all that's going to work for everyone. I

Roman Trebon:

love it. This is fantastic, Elizabeth. Thank you for your one big tip. I think we always say one big tip, but I feel like we always get two or three out of our guests, so I appreciate you sharing that with us and helping our, our audience stay sane as they're managing, um, all these different priorities and projects. I. Elizabeth, I hope you'll come back and join us on Wednesday, right where we're gonna tackle our one big question show, and you're gonna talk about how you can align stakeholder expectations across multiple projects. So when, what happens, maybe when you have competing priorities. I'm excited to dive into that, Kevin. Until next time,

Kevin Metzger:

keep on playing.

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Kevin Metzger

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Roman Trebon

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