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The Project Management of Life

Can Project Management be applied in real life? 

The quick answer is obviously a "Yes". But the more important  and likely the more difficult question to answer is "How?" 

In my previous posts, I mentioned that that project management is where we intentially plan for what lies ahead, and is the exact opposite of allowing "nature to take its course". More often than not, most of us live our lives as though we are out at sea, drifting in a tiny boat that gets tossed by the wind, where the waves push us up, down, and sideways and there is not a lot we can do about it, except to hope for the best that somehow we will find land and survive. 

But what if we make a conscious effort to harness the wind to our advantage? Just like the windsurfer who uses the board and sail to move forward, we too can plan ahead so that our lives can move towards the direction that we want it. If we make a conscious effort of what this is, we can say at the end of our journey on Earth, that life is a fruitful and fulfilling one....that we can echo the words "it is good" or even "it is very good". 



In his final letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffet says that we should remember the story of Alfred Nobel, the one who invented dynamite and yes, of Nobel Prize fame. His brother had just died, and newspaper got mixed up and wrote his (Alfred's) obituary instead. Alfred was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behaviour.  Warren adviced that we should "Decide what you would like your obituary to say, and live the life to deserve it".


Steve Jobs (Apple founder and CEO) have this to say in his final days before succumbing to cancer,  "I have reached the pinnacles of success in business...However, apart from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is just a fact of life to which I am accustomed. At this moment, lying in my sickbed and looking back at my entire life, I realized all the praises and riches I was so proud of have vanished and become insignificant in the face of impending death". Not exactly what we wanted to hear from one of our great business heroes. 


In the book "Living Forward", the authors (Daniel Harkavy and Michael S. Hyatt) wrote that we should end the "drift" and prepare ahead what will be said at our funeral and our epitaph. For those who did not know how to start living, the book then introduced a chart of "life accounts" for the complete you.



One of the key best practice of Project Management is to create a work breakdown structure that consist of the many parts that make up the whole. We condense these into bite-size action items and if we do well, these will then contribute to a successful life. 

  • The inner circle talks about the most important you...consisting of the body (physical), soul (intellectual) and spirit.
  • The middle circle is all about relationships ...with our spouse, our children and friends 
  • The outer circle talks about the output...our career, our finances and our hobbies.


The issue that most of us have is that we treat the items in the outer circle as the first - Steve Jobs is an example. We place career and finance to be the most important, and neglected taking care of our own body and our family. In the end, nobody wins.  

Think about it, if we lose money or our career, we can still go about making more money, or find another job. If we lose our relationships (spouse, friends or children), it gets harder to get our act back together. If we lose our physical (health issues, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, etc.) / mental (stress, addiction, anxiety, depression, etc.) or spiritual self, it is often disastrous. 


We need to really sit and evaluate our life choices and hopefully the next few website posts can allow you an overview where you are and then chart your life moving forward.


The inner circle: 

The middle circle

The outer circle 

  • Financial (work in progress)
  • Vocational (work in progress)
  • Hobbies (work in progress)


If you wish learn more about Project Management and how to plan your life forward in a definite way, do check out my post here for "Simple Project Managemnet: for Noobs to Pros". The book is available in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo or directly from the publisher - Partridge.



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