Let's be honest: You're tired of being the person who "just handles it." The purchase order that needs three signatures. The vendor who only calls you. The shop floor manager who can't find last month's production report. Again.
You didn't sign up to be a human search engine with a side of therapist. But here you are, and we see you. We know you're keeping everything together while everyone else assumes it just... happens.
Here's the truth nobody tells office managers: Your job isn't to do everything. It's to make sure everything gets done.
The Tools That Actually Work
Forget complicated enterprise software for a moment. You don't need another system that requires three training sessions and a certification. What you need are tools so simple that your most tech-resistant colleague could use them after lunch.
Start with Tango—it automatically creates visual how-to guides while you click through any process on your computer. You know that procedure you've explained 47 times? Record it once while you do it, share the link, and never explain it again. It takes the same amount of time you'd spend doing the task anyway, but now it's documented forever. Loom does a similar job.
Microsoft Bookings might be the simplest win of all, and it's already included in your Microsoft 365. You set your availability once, create a booking page, and the "when are you free?" email chains just... stop. People can see your calendar and book time directly without the back-and-forth. That alone could give you back an hour a week, and we both know you need that hour.
For organizing the chaos—vendor lists, project timelines, equipment maintenance schedules—Notion or Airtable turn soul-crushing spreadsheets into something that actually makes sense. They're visual, they're intuitive, and they don't feel like homework. You can see everything at a glance instead of scrolling through endless rows trying to remember where you put that one critical piece of information. As soon as possible, move to a more advanced CRM system, such as eWay-CRM, which works directly inside Microsoft 365.
And here's where it gets interesting: Make, Zapier or N8N connect your apps without coding. When someone fills out a form, it can automatically notify your team, create a task, and update a spreadsheet. It feels like magic, but it's just good automation doing the boring stuff so you don't have to.
Small Changes That Give You Your Life Back
You don't need to overhaul everything at once. That's exhausting, and you're already exhausted. Try these shifts instead, one at a time:
The 2-Email Rule is beautifully simple—if something takes more than two emails to resolve, pick up the phone or walk over. Five minutes of conversation beats 50 minutes of back-and-forth typing where tone gets misread and details get lost. You're not being inefficient; you're being smart about your time.
Consider setting office hours for interruptions—two 30-minute blocks each day when people can "just ask you something." It sounds rigid until you realize how much focused work you can actually accomplish when you're not context-switching every 12 minutes. Outside those times, you're heads-down on the things that matter. You can even put a friendly sign on your door or a status in Teams. People adapt faster than you'd think, and they'll respect the boundary once they see it works. (For more time management strategies that actually work in the real world, check out our Productivity Hacks for Busy Managers.)
Build yourself a template library for those questions you answer every single week. Write down your best answers once, store them in a shared document, and copy-paste with minor tweaks as needed. Even better, make the library accessible to others so they can find answers without interrupting you. This isn't about being distant—it's about preserving your energy for the problems that actually need your expertise.
Try decision documents instead of meetings. Post the question or proposal in a shared document, let people comment on their own time, and only meet if you're truly stuck. Turns out, most decisions don't need eight people in a room for an hour. This respects everyone's time, including yours, and the introverts on your team will secretly thank you.
One more thing that works surprisingly well: put a monitor in the break room showing a public dashboard with key metrics—production status, upcoming deadlines, safety milestones. Fewer people will interrupt you asking "what's happening with X?" because they can just look. It's passive communication that scales beautifully.
Learn From People Who Actually Get It
Instead of reading another productivity book written by someone with three assistants, learn from people who understand real-world operations:
Dann Berg makes Notion tutorials that don't make your brain hurt. He gets that you need systems that work on Monday morning, not theoretical frameworks.
Thomas Frank teaches productivity systems for actual humans, not productivity influencers. His stuff works in manufacturing offices, not just Silicon Valley startups.
Even GaryVee, controversial as he is, has genuinely useful time management advice for operations people who need to make every minute count.
