Several years back a colleague of mine (I'll call the colleague "Nellie") was managing a very high-visibility project. This project was high on the radar of key executives all the way up to the CEO of the company and any major mis-steps would send fireworks up the chain faster than lightning.  This was one of those "thrill-seeker" projects; definitely high risk but also of high reward if the project was successful.  Nellie was up to the challenge and willingly accepted the assignment.

Talk about your character-building experience...

I was a young hot-shot project manager on an engagement that I had sold to a client.  I had it all planned out and had delusions of completely delighting my client with an issue-free project.  It all seemed so simple, then the project started...and never finished.

I'll spare you the gory details of my harrowing experience but what I can tell you is that I put more focus on selling and planning the project than I did on its execution.  I took a naive attitude of the project being able to pretty much run itself with some junior analysts running the day-to-day aspects of the work.  It blew up in my face and I got booted from the client never to return again.  It was my inaugural visit to the project management guillotine. 

Typically, career choices are made based upon responsibilities, compensation, or prestige where a businessperson makes a change to get a higher salary, more responsibility, or greater prestige. What about the situation, though, where the driver behind a career choice isn’t any of these; where it’s the needs of a child that drive the change? My choice was precisely that.

Trevor was a happy, normal, active baby. He was able to laugh, coo, cry, and do all of the other normal things that his big sister, Briana did at that age. To my wife Patty and me, everything seemed to be just fine. At about age two, we noticed that Trevor was hardly saying any words and was very into his own world with puzzles, coloring, and videos. 

Some time back I was responsible for a portfolio of projects being done within the finance organization of my company.  One of the projects was outsourced to a large consulting firm who supplied the project management, analysis, and development resources to the project.  I would hold weekly meetings with the project manager who consistently gave me a "thumbs up" on the project up to the first key milestone being hit.  When the week of the first milestone approached, he announced that the milestone was going to have to slip by a week to ensure successful delivery.  The next week came along and again the project slipped a week.  This went on for two more weeks with the promise of "we'll for sure nail it next week."  I decided to do some crawling around the project to assess where the project was really at.  Turns out we were at least a month away from delivering to the milestone which was already a month late.

Excerpted from The Project Management Advisor - 18 Major Project Screw-Ups And How To Cut Them Off At The Pass (Prentice Hall, 2004)

So we've all been to the doctor.  We know the feeling of getting marched into a sterile examination room, given a gown that only covers the front half of your body, aked to step on a scale, prodded with a thermometer, asked to pee in a cup.  Then there's what seems like an eternity of sitting on an examination table with your hind quarters hanging out waiting for the doctor to come in the room.  Then after what seems like an eternity the door bursts open and the doctor pronounces, "Hello, I'm Dr. Goofleblat..."

With the vacation season in the rear-view mirror, many of us are going to get back to the grind of working too much, not getting enough sleep, eating poorly and not getting enough exercise.   The concept of work life balance to most is just a bunch of theoretical baloney espoused by a bunch of talking-head motivational speakers and organizational leaders.  There’s simply no way out of the imbalance, right?

BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT.  Wrong.