Bring Out The Project Manager Inside
Believe it or not there is a project manager hidden inside everyone, even your really scatty friend and your forgetful colleague. You may not realise it but you subconsciously project manage your everyday life. Why not bring these skills to the forefront and progress in your career? Project management skills are utilised in most jobs and definitely every managerial position. By harnessing skills which you already have you can quite quickly progress your career, increase your salary and grow your job satisfaction.
There are loads of ways that you can hone and perfect your project management abilities. You could volunteer to organise an event for a local charity to see how well you cope and get an understanding of the way you manage all the different elements. This could be a simple as a Church fete, just to get you started. You could do a similar thing at work, offer to organise the work Christmas party and then get started now to make sure you can organise a great Christmas do and prove yourself.
For a more formal approach there is also an array of project management training courses which you can take. These will teach you the principles of project management and how to put them into practice. They are also excellent to have on your CV as they are recognised internationally as good qualifications to have. Examples include Prince2 training, APM qualifications, Project Management Institute certifications and the Managing Successful Programmes Foundation course.
You would be surprised by how much enhancing these skills will improve your overall quality of life. It may sound ridiculous but having experienced project management skills will help you to better deal with different situations which you may find yourself in. For example, unexpected money problems, such as an expensive MOT, can cause a huge strain on personal relationships. The experience to look at the situation from an impartial perspective and then plan how you are going to deal with it will serve you far better than panic.
Here are two top tips to help you in project managing your life at the moment. Make a list of tasks which you have to do, adding things as you go along, to ensure that nothing is left out. Give yourself generous deadlines for when you need to do things by, in work and at home. Add the deadline to the list so that you can easily see when things need to be done by. For example, when you get your phone bill with a payment due by date, plan to pay it by the week before, if you forget then you will still have some leeway before the payment is late.
John McE writes articles on a number of subjects including Prince2 training, project management training, Project Management Institute qualifications and the Management of Risk certification.
