Are you feeling down today?

Have you heard the news once again or taken a cold shoulder from your best buddy? Your boss doesn’t like you anymore and you are at the receiving end of all wraths from your team members?

Stop. Breathe. Calm down.

We all have our downtime, whether we talk about it or not. Life in the world of project management or otherwise is not sans emotions infact it’s loaded with it.

Learn to tackle negativity-

  • Let go- stop criticizing yourself because someone said you are not good enough
  • Quit- not your job, but the forces that drag you behind
  • Laugh- with your friends over pop corn and a funny movie
  • Identify- the problem and see if you can tackle it better
  • Evolve- to a positive person
  • Read- happiness blogs
  • Create- a positive environment
  • Never- give up
  • Awaken- to your life’s purpose and go ahead and do it
  • Realize- downtime will come and how you handle is what your future will be
I'll be taking a break to smell the flowers and enjoy life and will be back with more to blog from June. Till then stay happy and happy project management everyone!

(Picture: google images)

Change

May 4, 2009 | | 2 comments |

April has been a month of change for me.

Things are always crazy, however I decided to take it on- all challenges, my shortcomings, plans and the enthusiasm to do something more.

I decided to incorporate a lot of new things in my life. With so much in my plan platter, I decided to let everything stop for a day.

I think the hardest job is to prioritize and get things done one after the other. I enjoy doing them all but keeping a tab of the list is time consuming.

I’ll be focused on my venture for the next few days and be active in dumping my brain elsewhere and start afresh. As they say, to learn something new you have to unlearn first.

My schedule has to be something that I enjoy doing. So while I work around it, I’m trying to pick up on the vibes. I have given up on processed food and meat in the last month (includes bread). So, it takes time to get my meals ready, however am glad I did it. It’s something I have done for me!

I’m working on getting my 40 minutes of exercise (cardio, yoga, light weights) everyday, the treadmill looks dusty and I need to get back at it. I’m trying out the time and getting in at least 10 minutes of meditation into the regular schedule. I want to be more calm when I handle pressure and deadlines.

It’s hard to keep promises and maintain the level of energy in a stressed out ambience that we are so becoming used to. I have my flaws and fall off the wagon but I do get up and get on it easily.

A paper clipping in my purse from Les Brown says- "When life knocks you down, try to land up on your back. If you can look up, you can get up."

Instead of trying to check off my done chores and treat them as one, all I want is to enjoy what I am doing- be conscious of it. This is the life I wanted- to be super busy and now when I have it- I haven’t smelled a rose in the last one month. Everything has become a job, a to-do that needs to be get over with.

I want fresh flowers this summer, peace, happiness and gratefulness that I'm doing what I wanted to do.

(Picture: Google Images)

Interview with Jonathan Mead

RECLAIM YOUR DREAMS is a wonderful read, inspiring and thoughtful that will change your life.

Jonathan Mead ( follow him on twitter) draws from his life and brings a book that outlines why you should you be in touch with your dreams. He talks here about his inspiration in the book and how everyone can implement them. 

Hi Jonathan, thanks very much for the interview. Your book “reclaim your dreams” is a straight cut invitation to dream- what do you mean by it?
By dreams I mean the idea we have in our minds of the way our lives could be, before we stopped believing. We have a lot of unnecessary shoulds and musts that we place on ourselves that are really optional. We see them as requirements, but they're really agreements. To reclaim your dreams, you simply need to stop agreeing with a view of life that isn't what you want to create.

You talk about taking risk, taking the plunge- how applicable do you think it is in today’s economy? 
I think it's more applicable than ever. The downturn in the economy is just showing us that mediocrity cannot be tolerated. The downturn is basically distilling the market down to a level of excellence. Only the truly excellent, truly passionate and driven individuals will survive.

Now is a better time than ever to devote yourself to doing something you're really passionate about. When you focus that passion into something that fills a need or a gap in the market, that's when you create truly remarkable interactions. And remarkable, amazing value is what is always going to be safe, no matter how great the downturn.

Personally what keeps you going? I mean you talk about out of the template style living, how did it work for you? 
What keeps me going to is my drive to create a social revolution of people liberating themselves, through living on their own terms. It's so ridiculously exciting to me to do this stuff, sometimes its hard to contain.

As for the template life, it didn't really work. My cog has been malfunctioning for quite some time. I think it's now broken beyond repair.

Times are hard and sometimes it’s not so easy to take the risk, to do things out of the norm even when the person really wants it. What do you suggest- what should they do? Are they doing wrong by taking the much traveled path?

Taking risks is a big deal, especially when you have a family or people depending on you. In that case, don't kill your dreams. What you'll have to do is carve out some time every day that you'll use to work on your dreams. In the beginning in might be 20 minutes, then after a while you find a way to turn it into an hour. You have to ruthlessly remove all of the things from your schedule that aren't adding value, to make time to work on your dreams.

Then once you're making a decent amount of income doing it, your "dream time" starts to snowball. That's when you can really use the momentum to cut back on your day job hours and keep the snowball going.

I personally believe in what you are suggesting like “inspirational desktop” or “poster board” to keep quotation or pictures that inspire me. In fact, my purse has 3 quotations in them- do you think visualizing is in a big way an aid to get closer to your dreams?
I think it is a big aid. It's something to keep you inspired and reminded about why you're doing what you're doing. It helps you keep plugging away when it seems like the culmination of your dreams is far off in the distance. And it doesn't have to be visual. It could be an audio recording, or a "dream movie" with your favorite music. It sounds kind of cheesy, but I've found this incredibly powerful.


I’m big fan of your writings and this book is fascinating and a must read I think for everyone, so where can the readers get a copy for themselves?
They can head on over to my blog or go straight here to the book description page

Jonathan Mead is a revolutionary, raw foodist, dream coach, and prolific blogger. He is interested in unconventional paths to personal growth and advocates strange things like killing your goals. In his spare time he studies Jeet Kune Do and other ass-kicking strategies. His mission is to create a social revolution of people liberating themselves through living on their own terms.

Looking into the brain of a Project Manager

I get mails from my blog readers- all interesting questions and thank you for taking the time to do it.

This one was however different, the reader emailed me saying that as a "software developer" he wants to know how Project Managers do the trick and sends me a list of questions.
I decided to post it here to make sure he has more help than I can give him alone- plunging into the minds of Project Managers.

Reader asks:
  • How do you select/choose the best possible candidate of your technical team? Do you have some sort of criteria / selection process which you may want to share?
  • How do you ensure that each person on your project team is highly motivated?
  • How do you cope when one (or some) of your project(s) is/are
    getting way behind schedules and upper management is pinching you on
    the matter?
  • How do you decide on the methodology with which to apply on your project?
  • Best advice (or something learned) ever from a person on your project team?
Helping someone learn is great and he seems sincere in his efforts at least. Take your pick Project Managers and please help him out!

(Picture: Google Images)

Earning PDU through your blog


You are into project management and you blog, how cool would it be if you can get some PDU's from your blog?

Do you think it will bring your blog some additional recognition, make it more fun to write now that you are getting something measurable from your blog?

I saw a tweet from Dina and thought "wow", this couldn't be better. Read on, if this interests you and be sure to let your opinion out there in the comment section.

Steppingintopm: I read through Twitter that you are thinking of getting PDU's in exchange of project management blogs - can you please elaborate on the idea and how you thought of it?

Dina: Well, I can't really take credit for the idea. I think the first record of the idea on twitter came from Vincent Birlouez who asked the question "does publishing a blog bring PDUs?" And then, Kelvin Zhao replied: According to this I think blogging can earn PDUs. So, that's when I got in on the conversation. I'm always looking for cost effective ways to earn PDU's, I mean I'd love to go to interesting classes and seminars, boot-camp like training, etc. But, that all costs money and that's not always easy to come by. There's a whole category of Self Directed Learning in the PMI handbook that lists the ways a PMP can earn credits independently or working with a group. So, blogging about project management is not specifically stated in the list of activities that can qualify for PDUs, but it just seems to make sense that being an active participant in PM blogging (and even other PM networking sites, PMs on twitter group, etc) should qualify for PDUs in the same way. I think it's really about changing for the times, these modes of communicating and information sharing didn't exist 10 years ago or whenever the last time the rules of earning a PDU were discussed. We can all benefit from joining in on the project management discussions in the social media world, so why not earn PDUs at the same time?

Steppingintopm: What do you think should be the basics of a project management blog to be able to earn the PDU?
Dina: I think if the blog post discusses any relevant topic in project management and shows some thought and research was done in preparation of the post, this should qualify. I don't know if a minimum word count is necessary, but in the same way that any article written is submitted to PMI for approval, maybe the blog post(s) could also be submitted. I would love to see some type of peer review board for blog posts rather than having PMI make the decision. Maybe a little survey at the bottom of the post asking if the post should qualify for a PDU (or two).

Steppingintopm: How did you get into the project management?
Dina: I was a web programmer for 5-6 years before I got into project management. In the fall of 2003 I interviewed at an interactive agency for a programmer position and got turned down. I got called back a few months later when a project management role opened up. I figured, why not? Give it a try and see how it goes. I learned a lot from my almost 5 years there, a lot of trial and error. Right when I got my PMP in the beginning of 2008, I started doing a lot of 'pleasure' reading about web & software project management and just got hooked! I felt that I had a good deal of experience and now I wanted to learn from the 'experts' about how to make myself a better project manager. Now I'm the lead project manager of the interactive services department of a tech PR firm and one of my main responsibilities is improving the processes and implementing new ones. It's a great challenge to have.

Steppingintopm: Three tips that you would like to share with aspiring project manager's?
Dina:
1. Find a good mentor - It was a few years before I was able to find mentors, and ultimately the books and PM social networks I've found have served in that role. But, the earlier you can find a mentor, the better.

2. Read...a lot - The PMP is a nice title and all, but what I really got out of the process was introduction to many very interesting project management topics which I then did my own independent research & reading on after my PMP boot camp was over. Had I only started reading years earlier, I would have had real knowledge and lessons learned to apply to all the questions and challenges I had while I was learning through trial & error.

3. Don't get discouraged- Project management is an ongoing challenge, there's always something new coming out of left field. The short, simple and straightforward projects can almost get boring after a while. It's better to have something more complex that takes serious focus to keep going and complete successfully. So, don't get frustrated if things don't always go right in those complicated projects, there's always a lesson to be learned from it.

Steppingintopm: Thanks Dina

Dina Garfinkel is a Web / Interactive Project Manager who lives in Brooklyn, New York with her husband and two daughters. She enjoys writing about the parallels between project management and parenting, on her blog The Critical Chain and can also be found on twitter .

You can see more on earning PDU here as well.

(Picture Courtesy: google Images)