TIL: A Day In The Life Of A PM

From the desk of…
Emily Sato | Manager of Strategic Operations

TIL: A Day in the Life of a PM

These past two weeks, I traded in sandals and summer dresses for pea coats and scarves as I headed to the Midwest to spend time with our Chicago branch. Last Wednesday, a few of my teammates and I attended an event put on by Girls Get IT called “A Day in the Life of a PM,” where a panel of industry experts (all successful women) shared their experiences.

Attending meet-up groups focused on project management are a personal favorite of mine and something I highly encourage everyone to do, regardless of what your role is or even what industry you work within. The lessons you can learn from a project manager are applicable to every facet of how to be a successful and efficient member of society. What do I mean? Let me explain!

The role of a project manager can be summed up into one word: organization. This is the person who handles timelines, tasks, budgets, resources, and people for a company, a team, or a specific project, depending on size. In summation, a project manager is basically a superhuman. We (as an average person) do these tasks every day, making budgets to manage our bills or planning for vacations, managing timelines and deadlines for work or helping our kids with school projects, and managing people in our teams in the office or our personal relationships at home. There are days where things at work haven’t gone as well as you’d like, but you still have to come home with a smile to help kids with their algebra homework and listen to the high school cafeteria gossip with true interest from your teenager (“Sarah dumped John to go to Homecoming with Ryan?! No WAY!”); similarly, a PM’s budget might have gotten decreased, the project is behind schedule, and the team is obviously downtrodden, but it’s their job to be a cheerleader and motivate their group to keep fighting the good fight despite all the challenges.

What can these meet-ups teach you? A lot of these discussions challenge you to think outside the box. Different speakers show you how to approach problem solving in new ways. For me, a big take-away is how to stay motivated and how to motivate others through stormy times; I think this is something everyone deals with in both personal and professional life, so hearing multiple ways to not let difficulty sideline you is always helpful. So, run a quick search MeetUp.com, ask a project manager friend, or feel free to reach out to me personally to find out the next Project Management event in your city—I guarantee you’ll learn something that can be applied to how you run your personal life.