A New School Year

One of the things I love about my job is that I gain closure when a school year ends, and enjoy anticipation of the new year in the fall.

Tom Peters has said that knowledge workers should "projectize everything." Turn all of your work into projects, i.e., temporary endeavors to create a unique product or service (www.pmi.org). Temporary means only that the work has a start and an end; it does not necessarily mean short-term. A unique product or service is the desired result.

Besides enjoying the anticipation and closure that a school year provides, I find that projectizing myself is very helpful. It keeps me interested in what I am doing, and focused on the desired results. For example, I treat each course I teach as a project, even if I've taught the course before. I find that my classes vary greatly, depending on the engagement of the students, the current events we have for discussion, time of day, etc., so each one is unique.

Another way that projectizing is helpful is to provide a warning system for OVERLOAD. I have developed a sense of how many projects I can juggle at one time: my optimum is two classes, one writing project, two volunteer projects, one home improvement project, and one self improvement project. More than that, then my relationships and home responsibilities suffer.

Since I am teaching three different courses this fall, I know I need to cut back on volunteering (but will probably just let the home project idle!). In the same way, projectizing helped me realize that having five self-improvement projects, four home improvement projects, one class, two volunteer projects and four writing projects for the summer was probably unrealistic.

Finally, I like to projectize because it helps me to avoid becoming overwhelmed. Taking each project and breaking it into work packages or tasks (i.e., creating a work breakdown structure), helps me to better gauge how long the project will take. Then I can make realistic commitments to my students, colleagues, and family. (The dogs don't get it, though -- they are all about, "What have you done for me lately?")