I am a believer in the power of project management.

As a professional project manager for nearly twenty years, I have witnessed project success drive business results. I have also proven that project management can change lives and help achieve personal transformation. Now I am sharing some practical tips and techniques that you can use to help achieve your own personal goals, live your best life and become a PM Believer.

Living The Agile Life

This week I am continuing my focus on tips inspired by the “Agile” approach to project delivery. As I introduced last week, Agile is an alternative approach to delivering projects that are focused on delivering project value more quickly and more frequently with a much smaller project management process footprint. Agile is growing in popularity and includes many techniques that can help us achieve our personal goal projects.

Get Up, Stand Up

One critical ritual in an Agile project is the daily stand-up meeting. At these meetings, the team gets together and everybody gives an update on the project. While they can vary in structure, these meetings usually occur first thing in the morning and each team member answers three questions:

• What did you accomplish yesterday?
• What are your plans for today?
• What issues are blocking your progress?

The meetings are called “stand-up” meetings because the team does them standing up instead of sitting down to reinforce the need for brevity.

Stand-up meetings important because they give teams a set time where they commit to sharing relevant information about the project. These meetings are great times to celebrate accomplishments and help increase accountability in a project. They are a tool to help the team maintain focus on the goal and help to quickly identify and address problems.

We can borrow the stand-up meeting concept for our personal goal projects too. Here’s how it works.

Commit to spending about fifteen minutes per day focused on checking in on your goals. In your note-taking tool of choice, make three lists:

• What actions did you take yesterday to achieve your goals?
• What will you commit to doing today to advance your goal?
• What obstacles are impeding your progress and how you might get past those obstacles today?

That’s it, you are done. Move on with your plan for today.

Simply taking a few minutes each day to check in on your goals helps you make more progress. By committing to focusing a few minutes each day on checking in on the status of your goal, you will hold yourself more accountable for accomplishing it. This process also allows you to celebrate the progress you are making and your achievements, which is certainly motivating. It also gives you a few minutes to think about how to get past those obstacles.

One last detail to work out: when should your daily stand up meeting happen? I recommend doing it first thing each day. This is when your willpower and commitment are the strongest. By doing this first thing each day you start your day focused on your most important goals. Pro tip: your stand up would make a great addition to a journaling practice.

To borrow a bit from Bob Marley: Get up, stand up. Stand up for your goals!

Are you ready to be a PM Believer?

A daily stand-up meeting is an effective way to keep an Agile project team focused, accountable and productive. You can extend this idea to your personal goal projects by starting each day reflecting on your goals. In short, you can get up, stand up. Stand up for your goals!

How have you applied project management for your personal success? Tell me about it at OperationMelt.com and make sure to join my email list to have updates delivered to your inbox weekly.

Make sure to help your friends achieve their goals by sharing this post on your social network and by following me on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.

Want to know more about how I changed my life with project management? Pick up your copy of my book Operation Melt: How I Used Life-Changing Project Management to Lose Over 100 Pounds In Under a Year.

About Operation Melt

Operation Melt started as a blog to share my personal transformation and weight loss story. After achieving success with that goal, Operation Melt has evolved into a platform to help inspire, motivate and equip people to achieve their own personal and professional goals so they can live their best lives. My vision is to build a world where no goal ever dies of loneliness.