The Project and the Person: A PM’s Guide to Mental Health and Work/Life Balance

Princ-Jideofor Ikeh, PMP is an engineering PM professional with over 14 years of experience, grounded in engineering and specializing in digital business transformation delivery.

  Leadership  

As project managers, we are trained to balance cost, scope and time. But how often do we consciously balance our own lives? Drawing from my experiences in both the private and public sectors, this article explores practical ways to sustain mental health and achieve genuine work/life balance in a high-pressure project environment.

The Hidden Project: Managing Yourself

I often say that the most complex project I’ve ever managed isn’t a smart city rollout or a multimillion-pound digital transformation—it’s myself. As project managers, our calendars are filled with milestones, dependencies and risk registers, yet few of us maintain a mental health plan or an emotional baseline chart.

Working across both Huawei Technologies and the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority (LCRCA) has taught me that while industries differ, the pressures on project managers are universal: long hours, shifting priorities, demanding stakeholders, and the perpetual race against deadlines.

What changes is how we respond—and that determines whether we thrive or burn out.

Private Sector Pace: Lessons from Huawei Technologies

At Huawei, where I served as a project management team lead on the Smart City initiative, the environment was fast, global and fiercely competitive. Delivery deadlines felt like sprints strung together into a marathon.

I recall one …

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