Month: March 2016

Book of the Week: Living Forward

Ed Anderson Book of the Week

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On Thursdays, I will review a book I have read and found helpful in my life. In most cases, it will not be a project management book, but a book that you may find useful for your professional and/or personal life. It is important for us to learn new perspectives or even reinforce what we already know and may have lost sight of. Books can help us grow professionally and personally.

This week, I read the new book Living Forward (A Proven Plan to Stop Drifting and Get the Life You Want), by Michael Hyatt and Daniel Harkavy. I have been a fan of Michael’s blog and podcast. He has a really nice way about him and provides great advice and insight. It is presented in a way that can be easily digested and implemented.

Along with co-author and coach Daniel Harkavy, they provide a guide to creating a life plan. Many of us go through our lives reacting to what comes our way in our personal and professional lives. Before we know it, we can get off-course and heading in a direction that we do not desire. Living Forward has us take a step back and assess what we want out of our lives and then chart a course towards those goals. By seeing our destination, it becomes easier to prioritize the important things in our lives and plan our lives accordingly. It can become too easy to try and do everything and please everyone, but it can come at a great cost.

The book comes in 3 parts: Understand Your Need, Create Your Plan, and Make it Happen. Throughout the book, Hyatt and Harkavy share their own stories as well as those of other people in going through the process of creating a life plan. They also provide tools and examples to make the task easier. The book is just under 200 pages, making it a pretty easy read.

As I’ve been going through a career transition, it has been a good time to review my life plan and where I want to go moving forward. If you think you can benefit from either creating or revising your life plan, this book can be a good start.

For more information on the book, you can visit http://livingforwardbook.com/. If you do read the book, I’d love to hear what you think. Also, if there is a great book you are reading now, let me know about it.

App of the Week: Evernote

Ed Anderson App of the Week

Evernote Screen CaptureA while back, I started using Evernote, an app that can be used to create, store, and organize your notes. There are similar applications out there, but Evernote is one of the more popular and widely used apps. It is available for Windows, Macs, and most mobile devices. I had found myself with many notes sprawled all over my desk, in notebooks, and in digital documents. It was challenging at times to find information when I needed it, which became time consuming. I wanted to be better organized.

In Evernote, I set up a number of “notebooks”, which provided me places to store similar types of notes for easy retrieval. I’ve taken notes that have accumulated on the desk, in notebooks and note pads, and on sticky notes and entered them into Evernote. I’ve also tagged my notes with custom tags which make it even easier to organize my notes. As I have thought of new ideas for future blogs, I create a note in my Blog Ideas notebook with my initial thoughts for the blog and what I want to include in the blog. This has given me a starting point for creating my blogs.

Evernote will also allow you to add screenshots, audio notes, photos, reminders, and lists. A feature that I really enjoy is the Web Clipper, which allows me to save web pages to Evernote. This is an add-on you can install on your web browser.  If you have the mobile app installed, you can access the Web Clipper through the use of the Share feature. I tend to find articles, web pages, and other information on-line that I want to reference later. In the past, I would either print out the document and put it on a stack on my desk or save it as a PDF to file it in a folder. Now, when I am on a web page that I want to save, I can click on an icon in Google Chrome which will bring up a pop-up box which allows me to save it. I can select the format (article, simplified article, full web page, bookmark, or screenshot), choose which notebook I want to save it in, and add any tags that I want to associate with the article or web page. There are also special formats available if you are saving an Amazon page or a YouTube page. This makes finding the information easier.

Evernote Web Clipper Capture

The data is stored in the cloud, allowing you to access the information from multiple devices. I can access and work on my information whether I use my laptop PC, iPhone, or iPad.

Evernote comes at different levels: Basic (a free version), Plus ($2.99/month), and Premium ($5.99/month). I started with the Basic version, which allows 60MB of uploaded data. As I started to capture more information (especially saving articles), I upgraded to the Plus version, which allows me 1GB of new uploads a month, offline access to my notes, and saving e-mails into Evernote. The Premium version allows 10GB of new uploads a month and other advanced features for the power user. Evernote also supports integration with certain other applications.

Whatever your needs are, Evernote can help you to better organize your information. If you do currently use Evernote, please share your experience with it or if you use another similar app, let us know about it.

Welcome to The Personal PM

Ed Anderson Blog

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Welcome to The Personal Project Manager, a coaching and development site for the people side of project management.

My name is Ed Anderson. I have over 20 years experience managing large-scale IT projects for several companies. I have managed project teams which have been cross-organizational, cross-functional, and global.

In my experience, I have found one of the keys to delivering a successful project is effectively managing the people side of the project. This includes engaging the sponsor, the stakeholders, and the project team. Projects include many different stakeholders, who have different and sometime conflicting objectives and priorities. Project teams are often brought together for the short term and include people from different areas within and outside of the organization. This can lead to many challenges for a project manager.

The Personal Project Manager will guide project managers, other project management professionals, as well as project management organizations to build strong business relationships and leverage the talent of your project team to deliver projects which will satisfy and delight your sponsors and stakeholders.

In addition, The Personal Project Manager will help you in your personal development to become more productive and more effective in your job. Maintaining a balance in your professional and personal life will enable you to perform at your best.

Each Tuesday, I will post a new blog on topics relating to relationship management, team building, or personal development. Each week, I will provide a summary of a book that I have found helpful, which you may find beneficial for your job and career, as well as other tools and tips to help you in your personal and professional life.

I encourage you to take an active role on this site, commenting on my blogs, sharing them with your colleagues, and letting me know of some of the challenges that you face. As a community, we can help each other to be the best project managers that we can be.

Cheers,

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