It’s Thanksgiving 2020. I’m chilling at my in-laws house for a few days while I’m off work. Here I spend 99% of my time on a sofa that I seem to be magnetically attracted to. This is the place and time where checking my Instagram doesn’t feel like a crime. The posts are the same as usual. Some wow me. Some fill me with envy. Some fill me with wanderlust. Some annoy me. Some drive me crazy. But today they hit different.
I had decided making stuff was worth it so I started. Then came the doubts. I was ready to walk away. Except I didn’t.
Here’s how I stopped my brain from freaking out and kept going.
I believe reflection is an important part of personal growth. Rather than reflect on successes and failures alone. This is a exercise in reflection structured around by personal priorities.
Project management is story telling. When I think of great authors in history, I think of big brained creatives, creatives who were more like hippies than like me (in my day-time form that I assume between 9-5 Monday to Friday). When you’re managing a project you’re the author ✍️. You’re the nexus of information that ties the multiple threads of information across dimensions of time, space and people together. The publisher may have solicited you to write a particular type of book, but when it comes to the implementation of that vision, it’s you as the project manager that has the power to make it successful or to let is crash and burn and fall out of the eyes of historians eager for an excuse to document your work.
Everyone is the protagonist in their story. If we all interacted respectfully with the NPCs in our lives, the world would be a better place.
Resolution in modern vernacular is a word tinged with guilt, failure and wishy-washiness. The dictionary says that a resolution is ‘a firm decision to do or not do something.’ No wonder so many resolutions fail. Here’s what to do about it…