Project Manage Your Life
Chances are, you are not a Project Manager by trade. But that doesn’t mean you are not a project manager! Have you ever hosted a party in your home? You invited guests, made dinner, served cocktails and mocktails, played great music, and entertained your friends? Did you plan the whole party and execute it too? Well, you go Glen Coco! You project managed your dinner party. You made a list of tasks, made a plan to execute those tasks, and successfully wined and dined your friends. Maybe you had some mishaps along the way, but you made your way through it and got it done.
So what is project management really? Project Management is the way in which you organize and manage all resources associated with a project. With project management, you set a goal, outline how you plan to achieve that goal, identify the resources (including people) that you need to reach that goal, and set the plan in motion. And this may be news to you, but your life consists of several! projects. I know that your to-do lists of laundry, buy birthday present for Tucker’s birthday party, call Mom, buy a new coffeemaker, and get haircut don’t feel like they roll up into any sort of project. Getting your laundry done is part of your home maintenance project, which consists of laundry, garbage, and cleaning. Getting a haircut might fall under your health & wellness project, which consists of tasks like moisturizing daily, exercising 5 days a week, and meditating. And buying a new coffeemaker could be part of your home upgrade project, where you focus on any small renovations or tweaks to your space to optimize your living situation.
Your life consists of a series of different projects, but it doesn’t feel that way as you stare at a never-ending to-do list that you keep on your fridge, post-it notes with reminders all over your home, or a google doc that you share with your housemates of everything that needs to get done.
You can project manage your life.
You can take those post-its and make a system for yourself to get everything done more efficiently and more effectively. You can take that chaos and inject a bit of order.
Benefits to adding a bit of project management to your life include:
Work your life like a job and clock out at the end of the day
Systematize recurring or similar tasks so you don’t reinvent the wheel
Understand the scope of work that you need to do outside of your day-job
Prioritize your life! If you have distinct projects, you can determine what’s most important and work on those first
Get sh*t done more efficiently and more effectively
Make actual progress towards finishing something exciting, like running a 10K
Delegate or outsource certain tasks that you don’t have time for or have zero interest in doing
Focus instead of running around like a chicken with your head cut off
By having a better system for getting stuff done, you’ll actually free up time to do whatever the heck you want to do with your free time!
More planned time unlocks more unplanned time.
Let’s get to it.
