This one is a bit of a departure from my typical article topics.
Recently I wrote a book about what I call “good-enough contentment.” It’s an allegory about a forty-something man who is unhappy with his life. After a magical train ride, he learns to define what contentment means in nine areas of his life: career, family, health, friendships, finances, leisure, spirituality, giving, and legacy. Writing the story caused me to look back at my own life--the things I did well and the many mistakes I made. It inspired me to write about nine nuggets that I wish I could go back in time to tell my younger self. Some I would have done the same all over again, others radically different. All, however, are worth putting down in writing to spur your thinking about things you need to start, stop, or continue. Here they are:
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 The Sustainable PM series focuses on four drivers for a holistic, long-term career:
In my first article of this series, I shared three essential pillars of career sustainability. This article focuses on the second driver: a sustainable lifestyle. In 4 Ways Your PM Career Sustainability Can Go Wrong, Trish is a hard-charging project manager who seems to always be working. She believes she has balance because she takes time to eat and go to the gym. She works hard and plays hard. She has opportunities to dial it back a bit and not run so hard, but when she collapses while leading a Zoom meeting, the decision to dial it back is made for her. Read more at ProjectManagement.com.  Some time back I wrote about 4 Ways Your PM Career Sustainability Can Go Wrong. In the article, I introduce the concept of career sustainability and the importance of running as if you were in a marathon versus a sprint. The article focused on four fictional but realistic characters:
Each of the characters had some successes, but also had some blind spots that impacted their sustainability in their respective jobs:
I’m a strong advocate of career sustainability. I believe that skills, lifestyle, relationships, and stewardship are key drivers to help you as a professional be more consistently effective and content in your work and play lives. To that end, what follows is a four-part series focused on each driver:
Let’s kick things off with the first driver. Read more at ProjectManagement.com.  In December 2015 our son Trevor, who was diagnosed with autism at age 5, graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in Film and Media Studies. Despite the challenges and all of the change Trevor endured in his college experience, he graduated with a 3.5 GPA with very little assistance. He also experienced living by himself, living with nice and not-so-nice roommates, internships, and a summer job as a photographer at a boys camp in North Carolina. He gained a tremendous amount of life experience and learned a ton about himself as a person. His graduation in December put an exclamation point on a very rich college experience. But college is only one race in the marathon called life; his next race - employment - was yet to start. Read more
Make Better Life Decisions Using the Nine Crucial Elements to Achieve Good-Enough Contentment7/21/2025 
In Behind Gold Doors-Nine Crucial Elements to Achieve Good-Enough Contentment I discuss how to achieve what I term "good-enough" contentment in your life. The book is a story about Ty, who seemed to have it all, then one day it all changed. At the end of his rope, Ty had a chance encounter with a quirky old woman who brought him on a journey to discover the nine crucial elements of good-enough contentment and helped him put a plan in place to fill his contentment gaps. His outlook on life changed forever as a result of him thinking through each of the contentment areas, re-aligning his expectations to think in terms of good-enough, and creating a prioritized plan to work towards good-enough contentment. If you haven't read the book yet I recommend you pick it up :-).
 In my article How to Flex Your Quadrant II Muscle, I discuss Stephen Covey’s four quadrants of time management which categorizes your tasks:
The model, also known as the Eisenhower Matrix (thanks to some readers for pointing that out!), was foundational in helping me minimize time-wasting activities and not get distracted by non-important tasks. More importantly, it helped me to allocate time to focus on things that are important but not necessarily urgent. It was groundbreaking for me and has helped me immensely ever since I implemented it over 30 years ago. Because I feel this is so important in how we all manage not just our careers but our lives, I want to share with you my quadrant II (Q2) list and give you a boost on how to think about your own Q2 items. Read more at ProjectManagement.com. 
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.  In my blog post In-Person Jekyll, Social Media Hyde, I discuss some takeaways to consider when posting to social media. I wrote it in 2021, spurred on by an onslaught of surprisingly divisive social media posts from people who, when face to face, appeared nothing like how their posts represented them.
I am connected with many business colleagues on social media, including LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and X. Many are relatively reserved in their commentary and use business platforms for business topics, and personal platforms for things like vacation pics and family updates. I really enjoy seeing both sides of colleagues, as it helps me get a more rounded view of them and discover their interests. For example, one of my colleagues is well-established in the tech industry, but also a lead singer for a cover band. It’s really fun to see him live his Sammy Hagar alter ego on the weekends. (Sammy Hagar over David Lee Roth any day!) Whenever I see one of his posts, I know I’ll be lightheartedly entertained and can celebrate his fun side. My focus, though, is not on those like my lead-singer buddy. It’s on the finger-wagger. Read more at ProjectManagement.com.  Glenn, a junior project manager, worked on a mission-critical 18-month program led by Sara, the senior PM. Glenn was very ambitious, worked long hours, and constantly strived to take on more and more work.
About six months into the program, Glenn was feeling exhausted. He became less focused and easily distracted. He always looked tired. He put on weight. His team recognized the change in him and began to lose faith in his ability to execute. Glenn had always been a proud PM who had never seen the need to get counsel from others on how hard he worked. But as he observed how Sara seemed so focused and intentional in her work, he decided to ask her about it in their next 1:1. “Sara, I’m barely able to keep up and am exhausted. My team can see it in me, my wife and kids see it. You seem to have it all together. How are you doing it?” Sara smiled. “Ah, sometimes I put on a good face. There are many nights where I’m driving home yelling at myself in the car. I’ll bet other drivers get a real charge out of seeing me so animated.” Glenn grinned at her humble response. “I’ll bet you have those moments, but we only see the focused Sara.” Sara turned more serious. “Glenn, there is something I learned a long time ago that I needed to focus on. I was a lot like you--very ambitious, burning the midnight oil, always wanting more. A senior PM I was working for saw me at the end of my rope and gave me some great advice which I’m going to give you. She said that if I was going to scale, I couldn’t rely on brute force to get things done; I had to build my stamina muscle.” Read more at ProjectManagement.com.  I had a discussion with a young man who, three years after graduating college, still did not have a job. I asked him what he wanted to do for his career. “I want to be a Renaissance Man,” he said.
Now, aside from the fact that it’s been a while since I’ve heard someone refer to themselves as a Renaissance Man, I envisioned someone much older and wiser, not a twenty-something young man. So I did some digging on the definition of “Renaissance Man/Woman” and stumbled across a word I’d never heard before: Polymath. Dictionary.com defines Polymath as a person of great learning in several fields of study. The word originates from the Greek polymathḗs, which translates to “having learned much.” This got me thinking about how I, as a PM and leader, strive to be a person of great learning in several fields of study. The interesting word here is learning. It’s not about being a final authority, knowing all there is to know. Instead, it’s about being a student who develops expertise but continues to learn about both existing and new fields of study. For the project management discipline, I call that person the Polymath PM. Read more at ProjectManagement.com. |
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