From To Do Lists to Managing Projects – The Path From Personal to Professional Management

Personal life is a good place to start testing the managing skills and also to improve them. Once someone gets to the point when he thinks he is the master of his day by day life he can start extending his skills on his professional life.

No one was born an expert. We all start from low and through study, hard work and exercise will eventually get there. But in time and with patience… This process should start in childhood with the help of parents and continuously evolve in time. Being an organized person will always help in any working domain. Personal life is the right place to practice on. And the best part is that it can be done for free, without constraints and with minimum failure risks.

Know what to do and when

In order to reach the final outcome for any type of work it is important to know what needs to be done and when. Once it is established a to do list it is a good practice to prioritize it. A logical pattern should be followed to reach a goal. One must decide what is going to have the biggest impact either in good or in bad on the final deliverable.

Prepare for battle

Knowing what to do is not enough to be efficient. Nowadays people tend to have so much things to accomplish that they just get distracted from one objective to another. Meditation and exercise are some of the tools that should be used to refocus, that will help anyone to move from one day to another and to stay on track.

A well done plan is the key to efficiency. One solution to achieve it is to do part of the work in the evening – organizational stuff – that will set you up in no time for the next morning. Dead simple: prepare it and then just jump in to get it done.

To mix or not to mix – that is the question

OK, suppose one has what it needs to manage both his life and his job. But is it a good thing to mix them? For simple tasks this may not be a problem but if things get more complicated at work it is a good idea to separate them. Failure in personal life has a smaller impact and will influence only the close people. However not meeting a deadline within a project can be a major risk with a large impact over many people and with high costs…

When things get serious it is recommended to get focused as much as possible and remove any distractions. A good idea would be to limit the access to social media and other distracting factors.

Go Pro

Being successful in organizing the personal life is not a hard thing to achieve. But to become a successful project manager takes time, patience, experience and a lot of hard work. As a project manager the study never stops. And this is not all. To be recognized and to obtain a higher reputation it is recommended to follow project management related courses, exams and to add the obtained degrees to the CV.

The most important thing for anyone in no matter what domain is to do what he really likes, what offers satisfaction. A pleasant job is a successful and rewarding one.

Use less tools or software and think more

Technology is present everywhere in our lives both at home and at work. It gives us a helping hand in everything we do. However a project manager must first decide what needs he has that a tool might help with. Whenever something must be done the priority should be to first plan and then to execute. Domain knowledge might also be a plus in certain cases. Once things are clear then it is perfect feasible to start working with a project management tool to develop and manage the projects.