These are the days when you wish your bed was already made
A million years ago, when I'd just left university, I was chatting to someone who told me she was a project manager. Oh yes, I said, what does that involve?
It means making sure the project is completed in time, she said.
I suspect at that point, for me, the word "project" still conjured up ring binders and lots of carefully cut-out pictures and geography field trips. I asked what she actually did on a day to day basis.
Oh, anything and everything, she said. Whatever it takes. Anything necessary to bring the project in.
Eventually I gave up, none the wiser.
These days, I have a little more grasp of project management. I understand the principles, though I'm still a little hazy about what a project manager actually does from one minute to the next.
If someone tells me they're a doctor, or a teacher, or a supermarket shelf-stacker then I understand (more or less) what they do. If they tell me they're a business systems analyst, or a health information technician then... well, to be honest, no idea. Someone who describes themselves as a manager or a civil servant could do pretty much anything.
But even for comprehensible jobs like dentist, or full-time parent, I don't really know how the day pans out. Is it wall to wall tooth-drilling/child-wrangling? Are there gaps of time where other, unexpected, stuff has to be fitted in? When someone says they're preparing a marketing campaign, how is their time spent? What does preparing samples in a lab actually involve? What do accountants really do?
So, tomorrow, I invite you to blog about your working day. On Monday February 4th - specifically - what did you do with your day? I'm more interested in the minutiae than the overarching goals - did you spend all your time writing emails? Were the mails answering questions or demanding answers? Maybe you were sitting in meetings, or travelling from A to B, or operating machinery, or selling things to other companies. Was it a normal, predictable Monday?
Tag it "mundane monday", and invite your friends to do the same...
It means making sure the project is completed in time, she said.
I suspect at that point, for me, the word "project" still conjured up ring binders and lots of carefully cut-out pictures and geography field trips. I asked what she actually did on a day to day basis.
Oh, anything and everything, she said. Whatever it takes. Anything necessary to bring the project in.
Eventually I gave up, none the wiser.
These days, I have a little more grasp of project management. I understand the principles, though I'm still a little hazy about what a project manager actually does from one minute to the next.
If someone tells me they're a doctor, or a teacher, or a supermarket shelf-stacker then I understand (more or less) what they do. If they tell me they're a business systems analyst, or a health information technician then... well, to be honest, no idea. Someone who describes themselves as a manager or a civil servant could do pretty much anything.
But even for comprehensible jobs like dentist, or full-time parent, I don't really know how the day pans out. Is it wall to wall tooth-drilling/child-wrangling? Are there gaps of time where other, unexpected, stuff has to be fitted in? When someone says they're preparing a marketing campaign, how is their time spent? What does preparing samples in a lab actually involve? What do accountants really do?
So, tomorrow, I invite you to blog about your working day. On Monday February 4th - specifically - what did you do with your day? I'm more interested in the minutiae than the overarching goals - did you spend all your time writing emails? Were the mails answering questions or demanding answers? Maybe you were sitting in meetings, or travelling from A to B, or operating machinery, or selling things to other companies. Was it a normal, predictable Monday?
Tag it "mundane monday", and invite your friends to do the same...