My Work-From-Home Mistakes

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Career Development  

“It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others.”
– Despair calendar quote

Today I am going to get some work done. I am because yesterday, to be honest, was not that productive. It started with the best intentions. Without a commute, I was at my computer by 7:30 a.m., earlier than my usual start time at the office. Pleased with my head start, I rewarded myself with a read through my news feeds.

I use a news aggregator to collect all my science, sports, local interest, photography and project management articles and announcements in one place. Most items I just scan in the aggregator platform, only clicking into the full articles for relevant or exciting topics.

Before I knew it, it is 8:40. There goes my early start…time to buckle down. Reading and replying to emails takes me to my first phone meeting. It is slow and lumbering, but mercifully finishes 10 minutes before the one hour allotted. I go and have a coffee with my wife.

The coffee was good, so was the toast and chocolate cookie. When I return, I have more emails, but I get through them and open up my “real” work. Having three monitors now is fantastic, but my new monitor has a higher resolution than the others so when I drag documents to it the text is too small. Maybe I should just set it to the same resolution as the other two? Thirty…

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