Work Hard to Work Smarter to Make Easy Happen.
You must have encountered a situation when someone walks up to you and asks, “How’s it going?” immediate reply “Busy”? You’ve done it, I do it, and we all do it.
What resonates in the working culture these days is nothing but obsession with hard work. Because, like many people, I struggle with what happens in between being busy. “Managing a Project Schedule ” is a key aspect in the life of a Project Manager to the point that I have schedule [issue's to fix] to not scheduling anything[no issues]. And, like any addiction, I know it’s unhealthy. But I seek out more work wherever I can find it.
If you’re a Project Manager or a Project Lead yourself, you can likely relate to the pursuit of constantly doing more and always trying to get ahead when you know damn well you can never actually, truly, officially, be “done” with work.
What I’ve learned over the years working for the client National Australia Bank (Nab) is that you can’t really fight the fact that you’re going to work…a lot. It comes with the Release Management territory where you are surrounded by series of project deliveries and possible issues along the way. But successful Project Management truly is about working smarter and better on the things you’re best served to do rather than working hard on something which you are not good enough but you got to do because of a resource/time/billing constraint.
For example, I know that to help my client grow, I’m NOT best served to code for projects day to day or design projects —we’ve got specialists to handle each of these.
I’m much better served at managing real-time production support activities and implementations. Fixing high severity production issues. Giving feedback and editing rather than developing the code from scratch. Each of us here at Nab is constantly working toward those things that we’re best served to do. The work that we’re called and compelled to do. We are "Always On".
By discovering what that thing is and what those things are that you’re best at, you’re able to evolve from an unhealthy workaholic constantly trying to fill your schedule with stuff for the sake of being busy, to a motivated, focused, pursuer of your passion and craft.
Work hard, sure. But work hard on what you should be working on which makes you even Smarter !!
What resonates in the working culture these days is nothing but obsession with hard work. Because, like many people, I struggle with what happens in between being busy. “Managing a Project Schedule ” is a key aspect in the life of a Project Manager to the point that I have schedule [issue's to fix] to not scheduling anything[no issues]. And, like any addiction, I know it’s unhealthy. But I seek out more work wherever I can find it.
If you’re a Project Manager or a Project Lead yourself, you can likely relate to the pursuit of constantly doing more and always trying to get ahead when you know damn well you can never actually, truly, officially, be “done” with work.
What I’ve learned over the years working for the client National Australia Bank (Nab) is that you can’t really fight the fact that you’re going to work…a lot. It comes with the Release Management territory where you are surrounded by series of project deliveries and possible issues along the way. But successful Project Management truly is about working smarter and better on the things you’re best served to do rather than working hard on something which you are not good enough but you got to do because of a resource/time/billing constraint.
For example, I know that to help my client grow, I’m NOT best served to code for projects day to day or design projects —we’ve got specialists to handle each of these.
I’m much better served at managing real-time production support activities and implementations. Fixing high severity production issues. Giving feedback and editing rather than developing the code from scratch. Each of us here at Nab is constantly working toward those things that we’re best served to do. The work that we’re called and compelled to do. We are "Always On".
By discovering what that thing is and what those things are that you’re best at, you’re able to evolve from an unhealthy workaholic constantly trying to fill your schedule with stuff for the sake of being busy, to a motivated, focused, pursuer of your passion and craft.
Work hard, sure. But work hard on what you should be working on which makes you even Smarter !!
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