6 Essential PM Skills to Utilize in Life Away from Work

Michael R. Wood is a Business Process Improvement & IT Strategist Independent Consultant. He is creator of the business process-improvement methodology called HELIX and founder of The Natural Intelligence Group, a strategy, process improvement and technology consulting company. He is also a CPA, has served as an Adjunct Professor in Pepperdine's Management MBA program, an Associate Professor at California Lutheran University, and on the boards of numerous professional organizations. Mr. Wood is a sought after presenter of HELIX workshops and seminars in both the U.S. and Europe.

  Career Development   Leadership  

There has been much written about using project management skills to manage our personal lives. Most focus on planning, task management and the like. However, for me, the project management skills that have most helped me in my life’s journey go deeper than that. Among those skills are:

• Discipline
• Objectivity
• Emotionally detached engagement
• Clarity of purpose
• Empathy
• Focused urgency

This article will focus on these PM-related skills and how they can be utilized in our personal daily lives.

1. Discipline
If there is one thing managing projects teaches us, it is the ability to be disciplined in our efforts. Discipline helps us to control our emotions, thoughts and actions. It is crucial to staying focused and on task. Discipline empowers us to resist temptation, delay gratification and to persevere through difficult circumstances. Being a disciplined person can add much to our ability to be successful our life’s pursuits, including being able to:

• Set goals and achieve them
• Stick to budgets and save money
• Make goal-aligned choices
• Learn from mistakes
• Stay focused on the tasks at hand
• Filter out distractions

Discipline is not easy to learn, but it is worth the effort. It takes time and practice to develop self-discipline. But once you have it, you will reap the rewards for the rest of your life.

Developing discipline can …

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