Its not uncommon at all for me, you or him over there to deal with multiple projects albeit professional work projects or personal “projects” but how can we deal with these better?
Well first of all what are projects?
There are two general types of projects I will cover: Professional and Personal.
Projects are S.M.A.R.T - did you know that?
S – specific, significant
M – measurable, meaningful, motivational
A – agreed upon, attainable, achievable, acceptable, action-oriented
R – realistic, relevant, reasonable, rewarding, results-oriented
T – time-based, timely, tangible, track-able
Professional projects may consist of various things depending on your situation and career but it may involve taking on a new position in the work place, training someone, building a new web application, developing the internal systems or follow up last years enquiries.
So personal projects are similar they are things that need to be managed, kept on track and measurable these vary between maybe planning a Wedding, planning the birth of your next child, looking for a house, choosing your career path, writing a CV and cover letter to send out or whatever it is in your life that requires more than a couple of thoughts to process and achieve.
So how exactly do you manage multiple projects efficiently?
The answer – find it right here but on a serious note dealing with either multiple projects or multiple choices in which project to take on board can be difficult so here are five tips on how to manage this better:
Decide what factors will influence you in taking on a new project
Typically this would be financial influences more money or cheaper to take on, but for others the influences could be emotional satisfaction or beneficial to others that could improve their lifestyle.
Don’t be afraid to fail
Its all about progression and doing the best you can without worrying about failure too much – it is of course a concern but if you worry about failure and not achieving perfection then you will inevitably fail.
Have a trusted system and method of managing your projects
This does NOT mean using fancy web 2.0 todo lists that track your every move in the project or huge Microsoft Project files all of which take longer to keep updated than actually spending time working on the project. Use a system that could be as simple as pen and paper which works best most of the time as its physical and manageable remember its easier to strike off something on a piece of paper than it is to login to that cool web app and tick off the todo item and then change the colours of the status and then setup the blah blah blah.
Collaborate don’t shut yourself in
Working on your own can be great – shut out annoyances, remove the office noise, get more done ….. right? Well yes but often in projects no matter how small or large you will often need someone else to collaborate with that doesn’t mean they take all the glory, take over as “project leader” or even affect majorly the outcome or course of your project. But having a second mind to bounce ideas off, brainstorm, converse and use for testing or reference. They may never know they are part of a larger project but people can be very useful for no matter what project personal or work that you are developing.
Its all about the end – isn’t it?
Don’t focus on the end of your project otherwise you will never get there – even worse if you are tracking and working on multiple projects you will be so concerned with fixating dates, milestones and how perfect the end result will be that the actual project will never move forward or progress further.
“How do you manage projects either single projects or multiple at the same time either personal or professional ones?” @seanprice
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