Managing Your Most Important Project

When the concept of The Lifelong Project dawned on me achieving goals was the farthest thing from my mind. I was at one of the lowest points of my life and having fleeting thoughts of ending it all. I was wrestling with the life I’d created and the life I really wanted. I reasoned that if all I had was project management then I’d make project management work for me. I took what I knew on project management, created some lofty goals, and then addressed each goal like a requirement in my project. In one year I went from the misery of self-defeat to experiencing some incredible joy and momentum in my life.

I’ve presented The Lifelong Project for PMI chapters, churches, and other groups around the world. I’ve met many men and women who’ve told me, sometimes in tears, that they were considering suicide. Each promised me that what I shared convinced them to try life anew. While I don’t claim to be any guru I’m humbled and thrilled to have said something to connect with these people. I’ve also heard from readers that have shared their goals of weight loss, changing careers, returning to school, and renewing a passion for life.

Of all the people that may ever read The Lifelong Project I’m always the person who needs it the most. I wrote this book with myself in mind, but do believe that if I can do it then others can too. It’s been an incredible blessing and joyful experience to see people reading the book, to hear from participants, and to share my vision with others.

To use the Lifelong Project concept, to treat the next year of your life as a project, does require some faith in the logic of project management and the joy that’s waiting in your life. If a person willingly doubts the ability to use project management to achieve goals then they’re giving themselves permission to fail. You can’t manage a project while believing that the processes, standards, and approaches of project management won’t work and then be surprised that the project failed. Goals and joy in life work the same way – you must be committed to achieving the goal in order to achieve the goals.

It’s tempting to compartmentalize our lives; to create a work compartment, a family compartment, a career compartment, and more. The truth is, life is what it is. There are no compartments, no separation of work, family, joy, and pain. Life, like project management, is integrated by all of its components. When you have a toothache your tooth may hurt the most but the rest of your body aches too. It’s no different – when you’re miserable in your work it affects your joy, your family, your mental and spiritual well-being.

Project management is really all about changing: you’re changing the current state to some desired future state. To reach that future state you need to identify the future state in whole, create requirements, create a scope, create a WBS, and so on. In The Lifelong Project I walk readers through the same basic processes. Project management in work or in our personal lives is simply project management – it doesn’t matter if you’re managing an IT project, a construction project, or even a health care project, the principles are the same.

Having said that, what does translate poorly is the unmentioned project management component of accountability. In your career as a project manager you’re accountable to management and customers, while in life there is a looser form of accountability. No one’s going to fire you from your life because you abandon goals, shirk off tasks, or mentally beat yourself up. One characteristic I stress, and have learned by doing, is finding someone to make yourself accountable to in your Lifelong Project. Friends, family members, even a blog are all good approaches to sharing our goals and asking others to keep us accountable to the goals and requirements we’ve created. Accountability is inherent to our careers, but not so much in the choices and decisions we make in our lives.

First, I’m thrilled to be compared to Steven Covey’s book – it’s a favorite of mine. Because I’ve written so many books and have taught project management for the past decade it was a logical goal to write a book on goal setting for myself and then other project managers. The book isn’t technical to the extent as a traditional project management book, it’s brief and speaks about project management in simple terms so anyone can read it and grasp the concept. When you consider that most people, project managers or not, are working on a project it’s not a stretch for readers that aren’t project managers to apply these principles and propel their life forward.

The primary difference between The Lifelong Project and Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People is that I’m using the principles of project management to get things done. I stick to the known terms and business logic that we all use to move from concept to creation.

I’ve found joy again. There’s joy in creating and working towards goals and this book has helped me create and achieve goals and rekindle my passion for writing, teaching, and getting involved with life. Since I wrote this book I’ve dropped nearly fifty pounds of weight, ran the Chicago Marathon twice, travelled around Europe, and changed the way I think about myself and others.

You can find out more about Joe's book at http://www.lifelongproject.com