After many years as a practising project manager and educator, I am fundamentally convinced that project management must become a critical life skill. Our lives today are lived at roughly the speed of sound. From the time we get up in the morning until the time we go to bed, we move from one thing to another in a rather frantic attempt to get everything done to some level of perfection which is often set by someone else. I was pondering how much more organized I would be if I had learned these ‘organizational and planning’ skills starting in Kindergarten. Think about it. Your teacher giving you one instruction at a time so that you could complete one thing before starting the next. I remember Mrs. Preece giving us not two or three instructions at a time but about 500 like she was competing with a machine gun to make a point. We were always in trouble because inevitably we never completed everything she wanted and to her exacting standards. Lessons come from trying and habits come through repetition. I think we would all have been a lot less frustrated if she had been able to give us one thing to do with appropriate feedback. It is a way to learn to manage needs versus expectations when we don’t have so many. It can be as simple as pick up the blocks with feedback, when that is done make your bed with feedback (a little help here would go a long way), and when that is done pick up your laundry and put it in the hamper. Somehow, just clean your room is often too big a task to even start never mind getting started.
So, it is never to early to learn basic project management skills.
