Screwed up projects? Here's a PM Minimalist quick fix strategy!

The PM Minimalist Quick Start Checklist: Helping You Solve Your PM Puzzle!

Budget overruns, schedule delays, unsatisfied customers, low quality deliverables... Whether it's a DIY project at home or a complex new initiative for your organization these symptoms of poor project management (PM) are the same. But you don't need PMP certification or extensive training in project management to address these problems and make sure your projects run smoothly.  In fact, you can make substantial improvements with a quick and easy-to-use one page checklist! 

When I first introduced the PM Minimalist approach I developed this checklist so that PM newbies could ease themselves into taking charge of their projects. Check out the article below, from my PM Resources Archives website, for details. It will help you unscramble your project puzzles and make the pieces fit!

NOTE Regarding Updated Links

You might find a few "dead links" to the free PM Minimalist tools referenced in the archived article linked below. Some of the stuff has moved since this was first published. Not to worry! Below is an updated list of links where you can download all the documents from my PM Minimalist collection at Internet Archive as free PDFs, including the entire PM Minimalist book. 

• The PM Minimalist Quick Start Guide: The Absolute Least You Can Do -- Includes 1-page Quick Start Checklist, Quick Start Post Mortem Worksheet and other quick-references and tools.
• The Project Management Minimalist: Just Enough PM to Rock Your Projects! [2nd Edition] -- The entire book in PDF form, absolutely free! It contains 122 succinct pages of PM guidance, including 35 PM tools with PM "Minimalist Squeeze" strategies for tightening up your PM, and more! 
• ALL PM Minimalist References, Media & Tools, free at my Internet Archives "Favorites" Collection -- All the PM Minimalist stuff, including videos, audios, coaching guidelines and even a do-it-yourself PM workshop outline. 

Click the image below to go to the archived article & video overview. 

Interested in more PM tools, videos and lots of other free stuff? 

• Check out the complete inventory of resources at my PM Resources Archives website. 
• Check out this list of all my archived publications, stashed forever and downloadable, at Internet Archives.

Enjoy!

Learn to Be Optimistic, Learn to Succeed. (an audio podcast)

Focus:  “One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think…. On a mechanical level, cognitive therapy works because it changes explanatory style from pessimistic to optimistic, and the change is permanent. It gives you a set of cognitive skills for talking to yourself when you fail.” – Martin Seligman in Learned Optimism: How to Change Your Mind & Your Life.

(Use the control bar below to download or play the podcast. Or scroll down and simply read the rest of the transcript. Enjoy!)

Transcript of this audio was originally published on February 24, 2009 [some links referred to below may no longer be valid]

Martin Seligman, former APA president and one of the founders of the research-based Science of Happiness tells us that individuals and teams can learn to be optimistic (and ultimately achieve greater success) by adopting an optimistic explanatory style. In his book Seligman provides examples from sports and business in which teams that have developed optimistic explanatory styles have shown a greater ability to "bounce back" from defeat and return to their winning ways more quickly than their pessimistic competitors. This is great news! But how, exactly, can you change (or control) your explanatory style? Well for starters, you need to understand its key dimensions and how these influence your self talk.