The life of a Project Manager can feel like you are doing nothing and everything at the same time…Here’s why I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

I didn’t grow up wanting to be a Project Manager. Up until a couple years ago I didn’t even know what that term meant.

How foolish I was in my halcyon days.

I have held various iterations of Project Manager for the past while and I have come to love and embrace the unique challenges it poses.

Will you have to delve deep into your left frontal cortex for that elusive creative spark? Probably not.

Will you know what it’s like to pour your heart and soul into a project only to have it slowly eroded under the guise of “feedback”? Unlikely.

Will you revel in the mundane and give life to the ordinary? You better believe it.

I am by no means an expert in the role but I am no longer daunted by it either.

Give me your Asanas, Slacks, Gantt charts, and Google sheets and watch this white board aficionado go to work.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good brainstorm as much as the next guy, but there are few things more exhilarating than a met deadline, a happy client, and a paid invoice.

The life of a PM is one of balance. You need to be the unyielding rock that refuses to crack under pressure, the voice of reason in the maelstrom of chaos, the empathetic shoulder on which to cry… as well as the occasional battering ram.

This is what excites me. 

It is a role that will test you mentally. Not in a Pythagoras’s Theorem kind of way; it is more nuanced than X’s and O’s. It will ask to keep your head when all around you are losing theirs. It will demand that you to steer the ship to calmer waters. 

Being a PM is not for everyone and on the hot and scary face of it, may seem the lowest rung on the creative ladder, but if you look between the spaces, the leading, and the rasterization, it is very much the coal that makes the creative train roll.

So shout it from the rooftops, sing it from your hymn sheet, “I am a Project Manager!”

Own your role but never stay in your lane. Remember, you set the pace and the creatives dance to the beat of your drum… not the other way ’round.