In the prior episode along this journey, I finally started to instigate some change in myself! Wooo hoooo!!!! *jazz hands*
I put my project management experience to use by figuring out the three most critical projects I was facing:
- Fix brain
- Resolve marriage
- Get out of poverty
All of which were perfectly reasonable, amirite?!?!?
…reasonable, yes. Simply and easy? Not so much!
My first task was to do some real project management on those goals. If you are wondering, here are the basic five steps of project management that I was working from:
- Ideation stage
- Planning stage
- Launch/implementation stage
- Monitoring stage
- Closure/Wrap Up
I was unaware of anyone who had ever applied project management principles to things like their unhappy marriage, so I had no real guidance there. Instead, I used the basic paradigm of project management to figure out what needed to be done, even though the outcome was uncertain. Not the ideal way to run a project, but it was all I had, and fortunately project management in its purest form can adjust for that.
I talk about that a lot more in this newsletter and on my YouTube channel, but that is the basic format. There are lots of different labels for each stage (for instance, some people call stage 3 “implementation” or “execution” or simply “starting”), but they all basically mean the same thing.
When I made “resolve marriage” its own project, I decided that “make a decision” was the project goal. Simple stuff, sure, but think about how often you need to make a decision but don’t feel like you are ready to make it. A lot? Me too. Instead of prematurely signing off on a decision I was not prepared to commit to, I made the act of deciding its own project:
- Ideation: Decide on solution to my unhappy marriage
- Planning: Set up the elements for making the decision (therapy, journaling, mind-work, relationship discussions w/ husband)
- Implementation: Kick off all of the plans!
- Follow-through: on-going therapy, discussions w/ husband, personal visioning of my future via journaling and discussions with close friends
- Resolution: Mutual decision to get a divorce
Was it fun? No. Was it necessary? Yes. But notice how it was not a “to-do” list, nor was it tied to my calendar. The “goal” itself was flexible, but by working through the stages I laid out, we got to the resolution.
If I missed a therapy session or had a fight with Mike or simply did nothing for a month, that was okay. There was no need to re-do my calendar. There were no continually-carried-over items on my to-do list. There were the steps to the project, so as long as we kept grinding those gears, no matter the interruptions, we got to the finish line. That kind of easy flexibility is the true value of Personal Projects Management over solely relying on time management.
And so it went, project after project: divorce, learning to live alone, enrolling in graduate school, writing five romance novels that were picked up by a publisher, graduating, getting a “real” professional job at FSU, writing 1 million words of fanfiction, launching one business, finally adopting the perfect dog, writing a daily blog, launching my second business (The Task Mistress!), and quitting my “real” job to work for myself.
I might not be a traditional success story, but lookie here: I have gotten A LOT done!
Which I did even after taking the profound hit of whooping cough in early 2012. The coughing jags were so bad they led to a back injury that haunted me for nearly five years (I coughed so hard I damaged a disc!). I’ll get back to that in the next issue, but just know for now that I spent every day of those years slowly ambling around with a cane in sensible shoes (shout out to Dansko!) and doing very gentle therapeutic exercises along with a lot of walking.
Then there was the year of anxiety attacks and a prescription to Lexapro, simply so I could make to to work every day. That led me back into therapy in 2015, when I decided to go all-in with intensive EMDR+CBT therapy sessions (recommended, but with the caveat that it really is challenging, exhausting, and life-changing).
I have also spent those years without a car, by choice (mostly by choice, to be honest, but it all simply worked out that way). Several times I’ve had the money to buy an older-model car, but I decided I liked not having a car payment or other associated costs. My life since 2010 has been lived on public transport and occasionally asking friends for lifts (usually for grocery shopping!).
Which is to say, I seem to always set my life to “hard mode,” yet still manage to accomplish almost everything I set out to do.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Almost everything I set out to do.
In full transparency, there were things I did not do, not matter how much I wanted to. There is an idea in the modern “productivity mythos” that you can do all the things, all the time, if you just try hard enough.
I tried so, so hard! But sometimes life has other plans. Maybe you relate?
STAY TUNED!!!!
or catch up:
Part 1!
Part 2!
Part 3!
This is the fourth part of my story, which I’m sharing in this newsletter over several updates. Next week I look at both the good and the bad of the decisions I had to make, and share how you too can make the “right” decision even if you feel like everything is against you!