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The Effective Project Manager

🌱Manage your projects better, in less time. šŸ„‡Live a life free to do what you love.

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Why Project Management isn’t Going Away (Sorry AI)

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 29 June 2025 Hey friend, So I was walking in the rain (I'm like a duck it seems) and I was thinking about how to learn better. Specifically with audio. The only real form of audio learning is podcasts and ebooks. On-demand learning is now easier than ever with ChatGPT and its friends. But mostly in the written word. YouTube is there for video but nothing great exists for audio. Got any suggestions? Some Thoughts The most important project management skill is...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 22 June 2025 Hey friend, I've been doing the sprint/rest work style for a few years now and I honestly cannot imagine going back to what I was doing before. Hours of slow painful grind. With little progress and constant feelings of dread. Some Thoughts Bulgarian weightlifting coach Ivan Abadjiev used to say "don't be too self-confident". I am trying to take a moment to pause before being too self confident. Too sure that I am correct in my thinking. Even on...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 15 June 2025 Hey friend, I'm feeling the effects of stretching myself too thin and focusing on too many things at once. My day job, my night job (writing articles for you), my family and friends, my health and my finances. While all of these things are necessary, it's hard to keep them all in balance. My new subscribers count is very low and I feel as if my rate of writing is lower. Oh well, I guess there's nothing to do except to keep going. Hope you have an...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 08 June 2025 Hey friend, I was away for a week and realised two things. 1. The systems and team I have around me kept things pushing while I was gone. No need to panic. 2. The human interaction needed in project management really suffers when I am not around (physically and virtually). The old truth remains true; technical details are easy, humans are tricky. Some Thoughts Non-attachment is a powerful mindset that frees you from the emotional highs and lows...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 1 June 2025 Hey friend, I spent the last week thinking about the cost/benefit of my work. Am I doing too much? Is it costing me too much in other areas of my life? Should I be proud of myself for my efforts or should I be going harder? Do you ever wonder the same thing? Some Thoughts Bulgarian weightlifting coach Ivan Abadjiev used to say "don't be too self-confident". I am trying to take a moment to pause before being too self confident. Too sure that I am...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 25 May 2025 Hey friend, How do you think about self-marketing? If at all. Do you promote yourself or wait for your annual appraisal? Are you active on LinkedIn or Substack? I do zero self promotion. Like you probably do, I feel nervous about talking about myself. Hyping myself up. It feels wrong. But I know that if I want more recognition I need to change that. Some Thoughts Non-attachment is a powerful mindset that frees you from the emotional highs and lows...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 18 May 2025 Hey friend, Finish this sentence (in your own mind): I will feel safe when... A bit of a personal question but one that quickly reveals our deepest fears and desires. Some Thoughts Non-attachment is a powerful mindset that frees you from the emotional highs and lows that can cloud judgment and hinder progress. It doesn’t mean indifference—it means staying engaged without being emotionally entangled in outcomes. Whether in work or life, success and...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 11 May 2025 Hey friend, What percentage of your frustrations are with a technical aspect of your work? And what percentage of frustration is due to people-issues? If you're like me, I'd bet it's mostly people-issues that get you irritated. This next few weeks, let's try to spend more time learning how to deal with those. The ROI is huge. Some Thoughts Non-attachment is a powerful mindset that frees you from the emotional highs and lows that can cloud judgment...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 4 May 2025 Hey friend, I wanted to share the main source of stress in my work right now. Because it's not the project. The updating of reports. The finances. It's the fear of being disliked, thought badly of, seeming incompetent or not as as A-player. It's the interpersonal relationships that are hard. As much as we focus on the technical, it's the emotional that is the true difficulty. Some Thoughts The truth is that you become passionate about things you...

Welcome to our weekly newsletter! 27 April 2025 Hey friend, How consistent are you? Do you stick at one thing for a long time or do you like to start something new often? I used to think that sticking to one thing forever was the best advice. Now I'm not so sure. Strategic quitting is a concept I got from Seth Godin's book, The Dip. (I'm actually thinking about uploading my Kindle highlights for the non-fiction books I read. But I'm not sure anyone would actually be interested.) Some Thoughts...