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Project Managers and PMPs - It's Time to Play!

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Published: 16Apr2009
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Today's world is full of pressure, and this is no less true for Project Managers than professionals in any other area. There is always a serious problem, a fire to put out, schedule pressure, constraints, stakeholder challenges, and more that can keep us in a pretty serious state. Add to all of that the current state of the worldwide economy, and we can see a pretty dismal and serious picture! One of the best anecdotes for this pressures is free! We need to laugh and play!

Here are 5 great quotes about play and laughter:

1. "You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." - Plato

2. "Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play." - Heraclitus

3. "In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play." - Friedrich Nietzsche

4. "Play keeps us vital and alive. It gives us an enthusiasm for life that is irreplaceable. Without it, life just doesn't taste good." - Lucia Capocchione

5. "If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid." - Thomas J. Watson, Sr.

Here are a 5 ways you can use laughter to relieve stress in your life:

1. Laugh at yourself - There is nothing better to defuse a pressure-packed situation than to laugh at yourself. Often, people may think that you, as a leader, take yourself too seriously. This can be a reason for them to not follow, and can otherwise foretell dissension. That all evaporates when you laugh at yourself.

2. Buy a good joke book - Like everything, a little study about the great ideas in the field always helps to get up to speed. In a sense, this seems like a serious approach to laughter and play! However, it is a fun sort of research, and when you find those golden nuggets in your research, you can adopt and make them your own. You can even revise them to reflect certain humorous personal experiences.

3. Watch funny movies - This is fun to do any time, but if you just cannot seem to find people, places, and things where there is laughter, look here! If you don't think a particular movie is funny, try another. There are various types of laughter, and we can rediscover our own laughter preferences and style of humor. If we have not laughed for a while, this is a great exercise!

4. Join the "joke a day club" - don't let a day go by without a good joke of some sort. So, before going to bed each night, and maybe even several times during the day, just think about this. There must be a situation where you could ask "Is there a good joke in this?"

5. Stop 3 times a day and look for something humorous - The great comedians thrive on the most ridiculous connections of combinations of things. On a serious not, this generates real out-of-the-box thinking!

We were all born with the natural ability to laugh.

Some benefits:

1. More tolerance of others - Wouldn't this help on your projects and programs?

2. Gigantic stress release - We need to be aware of the stress we are under, and often do not even realize we have a buildup of stress. Regular releases work!

3. Great for the immune system - This is a medical fact! Check out some older people, as in my experience, the older a person is, the more tendency they seem to have to laugh and have a good sense of humor.

4. Produces a success-oriented mindset - When we can laugh, our minds shift to the positive. After a good laugh, we feel ready to take on our challenges again, and with zest and freshness.

5. Unites people - Nothing seems to pull together a disparate, and sometimes disagreeable, team of people than sharing a good laugh. Laughter and play, especially related to the differences among team members, is the glue that holds everyone together and make team over individual important.

Project Management, Program Management, professional certification, meeting schedule, juggling personal responsibilities, traffic, bad news...are all facts of our day to day lives. All professionals have the great power to leverage laughter and play to cope with these life pressures and enjoy greater health benefits, more fun, and more success!

John Reiling, PMP, PE, MBA is an experienced Project Manager and certified Project Management Professional. John's web site, Project Management Training Online provides online project management training for beginning managers and for PMP exam prep and PDUs. John also writes regularly in his blog, PMcrunch.com .

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