Manifest Newsletter 5: Personal Project Management
How Intentional Project Management Can Be Transformative
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Thanks so much for downloading a Manifest Notion template; this newsletter shares links and resources on minimalist productivity. It’s great to have you here!
🔎 We Are All Project Managers
Project Planning is focusing in on a single endeavor, situation, or person and fleshing out whatever ideas, details, priorities, and sequences of events may be required for you to handle it.
David Allen, Getting Things Done
Shortly after our last Notion Live Session on Weekly Planning, one thing became clear: The 'Project' is perhaps the most important pillar of any productivity system.
Project management can seem boring – especially if you're in the tech/startup space – however healthy project management strategies can be transformative for our work, side-projects, experiments, relationships, and personal growth.
Furthermore, getting to speak to Manifest OS early adopters also made clear that, whether or not we're building or maintaining a holistic productivity system, projects must be managed, and there are usually project types where similar tasks are executed.
There are five key areas where strengthening project management can be transformative:
❶ System-Building
Taking a project management approach to work forces us to create systems that reflect our current and ideal workflow. Deciding whether or not to track properties like due dates, priority levels, or relationships to objectives, removes the potential burden of over-quantifying work, and ensuring your system stays manageable. check out “Build a Notion Project Management Board in 5 Minutes” for an MVP version of a PM system.
❷ Visualize Energy Allocation
Diligently tracking projects can highlight if & when we’re spending a disproportionate amount of energy on projects that don't align with goals or objectives.
Remember: the value in completing projects comes from their moving you closer to reaching specific goals.
❸ Templatize Project Types
This is where tools like Notion can be transformative. By managing projects and associated tasks in a singular system, overlaps, project types, and repetitive tasks become crystal clear. Even the most polymathic among us will recognize patterns in project types. Creating project templates significantly decreases the cognitive load that comes with starting a new project.
Expend less energy on planning. Focus more energy on the project itself.
❹ Avoid Reactive Work
If you can plan project tasks with 100% accuracy, I'll pay you for your secrets.
It's incredibly rare to foresee every task needed to complete a project, but that's beside the point. Project management is a skill that's being perpetually improved with each new project. We may not be able to plan every task needed, but the more we can visualize in advance, the better equipped we are to manage our time and energy, adapting to unforeseen work when needed.
❺ Completing Projects is Motivating
Changing a project's status to "Done" is rewarding, but it pales in comparison to the power of reflecting on the past month, quarter, or year. It's fascinating how often we forget our accomplishments, and how little we celebrate them.
Every project – as long as it's undertaken with larger goals in mind – represents a moment of transformation. Collectively, completed projects make up a chronology of our growth, and that can be incredibly motivating.
“Goals are about the results you want to achieve. Systems are about the processes that lead to those results.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits
A Few Questions
Here are some questions to conduct a mini “audit” of your current project management system:
Do your current projects work toward a larger objective?
Which projects are consuming too much time and energy?
Which projects are being neglected?
Which project types recur enough to templatize?
Lastly, If you're interested in discussing PPM in greater detail, I hope you'll consider joining us Friday, April 30th for Personal Project Management in Notion. We’ll be deep-diving into PPM strategies, styles, and mental models to optimize your work.
News
🎥 Next Notion Live Session: Personal Project Management
April 30th (Fri) at 3:00pm EDT
This will be our fourth(!) Zoom session on applying actionable steps to increase mindful productivity using Notion. In this session, we take a look at Personal Project Management (PPM). With all of the buzz around productivity, efficiency, and complex Notion dashboards, it's easy to forget how understanding the fundamentals of project management can transform our time and energy.
We'll break down the "need-to-knows" of project management, and walk through how to create a PPM System in Notion.
🏞 Join Manifest Community, Our New Private Facebook Group
It's been amazing to connect with people around the world via email. Now, I'd like to work on building connections through our new Facebook page. There will also be exclusive content, and leveraging of our collective expertise to answer questions, get feedback, and celebrate our wins!
🎉 Manifest OS is Live!
Manifest OS is a Minimalist Notion Productivity System, leveraging aspects of GTD, PARA, Atomic Habits, and The 12-Week Year.
I tried over and over to implement other systems, that were far too complex, and tracked way more than I needed. In order to ensure users get the most out of Manifest, the template includes 15 Tutorial Videos, walking through each facet of the system.
Questions? Feedback?
Reach out to manifestproductivity@gmail.com if you have any questions whatsoever!
With gratitude,
David de Céspedes