I am a believer in the power of project management.
As a professional project manager for 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.
A Pencil Versus Good Memory For Better Project Results
What did we decide in that conversation a week ago?
What are the problems we still need to solve?
What did I identify as the risks that might slow us down?
What happened last month that I needed to include in my retrospective?
Project managers are bombarded with a ton of information. One of their hardest jobs is to keep all of this information straight and to ensure nothing is forgotten. Nothing is more embarrassing for a project team than getting to the finish line only to realize that you forgot a critical project task or deliverable.
Some project managers make the mistake of trying to keep all this information organized inside their brains. This doesn’t work!
- It is just too much information to trust to memory. You are going to forget something or get something out of order.
- Keeping this information in the project manager’s head makes them into the bottleneck and single point of failure for the project. Since nobody else knows the information, all roads go through the project manager.
- Most impactful of all is mental saturation. Unnecessarily keeping all of this information just in your brain limits your ability to focus on and process new things. You consume too much of your capacity trying to be a notebook.
Successful project managers write everything down.
- They use a good calendar, so no appointments, commitments or other time-bound items fall through the cracks.
- They produce and distribute documented meeting recaps, so everybody remembers what is decided. Strong project managers keep logs of issues, risks, changes and decisions.
- They take diligent notes and memorialize everything possible on paper (usually electronically) and usually in a shared location.
As you pursue your most important life goals and personal projects, write down everything you can. This starts with writing down your goals which makes you one-third more likely to succeed with them.
Keeping track of your tasks, notes, ideas, plans, questions, and all of the other stuff in a notebook (physical or electronic) gets these items out of your brain. It makes you far less likely to forget them. Just make sure that whatever system you are using to capture this stuff is one you trust; otherwise, you will try to keep it in both places.
Finally, the masterclass level writing is journaling. By spending a few minutes each day writing in a journal, you drain your brain of the “noise.” This lets you focus on critical thinking. The practice of journaling also helps you process and make sense of the events in your life and maybe even connect some dots you would have otherwise missed.
What things are you trying to hold in your brain right now that you could put on paper to free your mind for more important activities?
Are you ready to be a PM Believer?
A key strategy for successful projects managers is to keep track of the constant stream of information you receive during a project. But beware of the pitfalls of trying to do this just with your brain.
Do you need a little help building an efficient tracking system for your constant stream of goal information? I have done it before and would love to assist you.
Click Here to learn more about my Operation Melt coaching services.
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