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.
Science vs. Art
As I mentioned in my Executive Status Briefing (see You Are Here), project management is both a science and an art. Beyond the formal tools and processes, there are other habits and techniques that project managers use to achieve success. Today’s post explores one of these aspects of the art of project management.
Pulling The Plug
I have spent the past year working on a big project in my day job that has required thousands of hours of work from a team of hundreds of people. In addition to being a lot of work, this project was expensive and was high risk and failure could have been devastating.
This software replacement project required business processes to be updated, system configuration settings to be determined, and hundreds of integrations with other systems needed to be built and tested. Data needed to be converted from the old systems into the new system. Hundreds of people required training on how to use the new system. And all of this was before the system even went live.
Go-live weekend was about a month ago and was a round-the-clock event as the team executed a two thousand item go-live checklist while simultaneously addressing the many errors that arose.
In the weeks since, the team has received, triaged, and resolved nearly two thousand support tickets. There have been seven AM meetings, eight AM meetings, meetings throughout the day, three PM meetings, and significant overnight work.
Just ahead of Memorial Day weekend, the leaders of the program sent out an email to the team with a simple message. The entire team was instructed to take the whole three-day weekend off and not work at all. It was time for a much-needed break for the team.
This email was a recognition of the importance of rest time to achieving work or personal goals.
Many of us have big goals and we work very hard to achieve them. If you are spending your precious time reading this blog, I am guessing you are one of them. But, as important as hard work and persistence are to achieve your goals, you can’t do that all day every day. You need rest to recharge your batteries. This is the only way to avoid burnout.
Find some ways to unplug and take some time off. Some rest time and some focus on something other than your goals for a few days may be the best way to actually reach your goals.
Cheers and get some rest this weekend!
Are you ready to be a PM Believer?
Want to achieve your goal and bring your project to the finish line? You have to work hard and keep your eyes on the prize. But, you don’t have an endless supply of energy. Sometimes you have to pull the plug for a while if you are going to reach 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.
