How to improve project management skills without improving project management skills? No, it’s not about “how do you add something to a cheese so that its weight decreases” (if you don’t know the answer, it’s in the end of the article). This is about what you can start doing from today that is not directly related to your skills yet provides a significant impact on them as well.
It’s not a joke. This does improve everything, including your project management skills and work results.
#1. Sleep about 8 hours per day
Being a “hero on the team” who can do it all with only 4 hours of sleep isn’t worth it. Sleep is essential for cognitive performance and people who are exposed to sleep loss usually experience a decline in cognitive performance. Sleep deprivation negatively affects attention and working memory, “it increases rigid thinking, perseveration errors, and difficulties in utilizing new information in complex tasks requiring innovative decision-making”. (1)
#2. Eat a well-balanced diet
Your diet is one of the lifestyle modifying factors, therefore should be taken seriously. Findings in medicine indicate that dietary patterns, as well as single nutrients, can have a significant effect on global cognition, memory performance, episodic memory, processing speed and more. (2) Define what works best for you and try to shift your habits toward your healthy diet that provides maximum benefits for you.
#3. Exercise for at least 3 hours per week
Physical exercise decreases anxiety, depression, tension, phobias, headaches, and other negative symptoms. At the same time it increases assertiveness, confidence, emotional stability, cognitive functioning, internal locus of control, positive body image and self-control. (3) Some doctors agree on the minimum effective dose of exercise being at about 3 hours per week to see the benefits, and the more the better. (4)
#4. Engage in social interactions (even if you are an introvert)
Social interaction might improve physical and psychological health and well-being. (5) When it comes to aging, older people who engage in many social interactions show better cognitive function than those who do not. (6)
Take a walk outside—daytime light exposure may improve mood by correcting circadian rhythm (7), meditate (8), sit and breathe (9), or just allow your mind to wander or zone out (10).
If summarized, these five points improve cognition, memory, mood, positively affect attention, perception, information processing speed and list goes on.
So what about “How to improve project management skills”?
If you have ever generated characters using DnD or GURPS systems, you know that there are two ways of making some selected skill higher: either by spending more points on the skill itself or by spending points on the basic level skill on which your desired skill is based, like IQ, or Strength, or Dexterity etc.
The same idea applies to these 5 points above—they simply contribute to your base. By improving your base, you improve everything that relies on it—project management skills are just a small part of it.
Have fun!
P.S. If you add a hole to the cheese, its weight will decrease. ㄟ( ▔, ▔ )ㄏ