Are you spending your energy in the right places?

Most PMs waste time on things that don't matter. Here's how to fix it.

Let me ask you something:

Where did your energy go this week?

Status reports? Email firefighting? Chasing people for updates? Sitting in meetings that could've been a Slack message or email?

If you're like most project managers, you spent a lot of your time on reactive, administrative work.

And very little on what actually matters: strategic thinking, stakeholder alignment, problem-solving, leadership.

That's not project management. That's bureaucracy.

Here's the thing: You can't lead if you're drowning in admin.

The Principle: Intentional Leadership

Intentional Leadership is about making deliberate choices about where you focus your energy.

It's not about working harder. It's about leading smarter.

Every day, you're making choices—sometimes without realizing it:

• Which email to respond to first
• Which meeting to attend (or skip)
• Which problem to solve yourself vs. delegate
• Which conversation to have proactively vs. wait for someone else to initiate

Most PMs make those choices reactively. They let urgency dictate their calendar.

But leaders? Leaders choose intentionally.

They ask: "Is this the highest-value use of my time right now?"

And when the answer is no, they find another way.

The AI Advantage

This is where GenAI becomes a game-changer.

AI can handle the cognitive burden of the repetitive, administrative work that's eating your time:

• Drafting status updates
• Summarizing meeting notes
• Researching vendors
• Writing routine emails

When you offload those tasks to AI, you create space to lead.

Do you spend 5 hours a week on status reports? Would you rather spend 30?

That's 4.5 hours back in your week. Every week.

Multiply that across all the admin tasks you do, and suddenly you have 10-15 hours to focus on actual leadership.

This Week's Prompt

Here's a prompt to help you reclaim your time:

Copy/paste this into your LLM of choice:

WHO: Act as a project efficiency analyst

WHY: because I need to identify which tasks are consuming my time but could be automated, delegated, or eliminated

WHAT: review my typical weekly task list below and categorize each item as:
- Strategic (requires my leadership)
- Administrative (can be automated/delegated)
- Reactive (firefighting that could be prevented)

HOW: return a summary table with time estimates for each category, and specific recommendations for what I should stop doing personally

[Paste your task list or calendar items here]

What you'll discover: How much of your week is spent on work that doesn't need you.

For this to be effective, you need a solid task list.

If you have Microsoft 365 Copilot, you can run something like this directly against your emails.

This Week's Challenge

Before next week, do this:

Identify ONE administrative task you do regularly, and use AI to review it.

Maybe it's drafting emails. Maybe it's summarizing documents. Maybe it's preparing for meetings.

Pick one. Use AI. Notice the time you get back.

Then ask yourself: "What could I do with an extra hour this week?"

That's Intentional Leadership in action.

Get Intentional,

Paul

P.S. If you tried this prompt, hit reply and tell me what you discovered. I love hearing what people uncover when they actually see where their time goes.