PRINCE2 ProjectsMany project managers find that their work takes over too much of their lives at some point. It can seem impossible to find the right balance between your project work and your personal life.

Long hours in the office and worries about upcoming milestones can make it extremely difficult to switch off from the project. So, how can you enjoy life more without sacrificing any of the quality in your work?

Keep a Clear Division Between Work and Home Life

It is easy for the line between work and home life to become blurred over time. You may be tempted to work from home or go to the office during the weekend, for example. This is fine in exceptional circumstances but it shouldn’t be your normal routine.

Try to keep your home life completely separate from your project. Working from home can be a good idea at times. But you will still want to avoid working on the plan during a family lunch, holding a meeting while playing with the kids and so on.

Your home should be somewhere you go to get away from the stress of your work. This is a place where you will want to able to relax and forget about what is going on in the project for a few hours.

Don’t Try and Do It All Alone

Another way that your work can affect your home life is if you try and do it all alone. This could lead to the situation in which you need to work long hours in order to try and stay on schedule.

You will be able to cope more easily if you have a team that you can trust to help you along the way. This will also give you people to talk to about your successes and challenges at work, meaning that you probably won’t feel the need to take it home.

A good PRINCE2 team can help you to bring any project to life. This is particularly true if you have someone who has taken their PRINCE2 Bristol and is now fully prepared to play a leading role in the work.

Give Yourself Some Breathing Space

Do you often find yourself under pressure as soon as a new project kicks off? If this is the case, it could be that poor planning is to blame. This will lead to the need to work longer days and can affect your lifestyle.

Since professional planning is so highly regarded in the PRINCE2 methodology, there is no excuse for doing this poorly. You need to set aside enough time to plan the tasks rigorously and then create a workable plan.

You should always look to give yourself breathing space in here too. Don’t cram in everything as tightly as humanly possible. Give yourself some contingency time to cover for illness, system downtime an anything else that might crop up over time.

Enjoy Both Work and Home Life Whenever You Can

Lastly, the most important point of all is that you need to enjoy both home and work. These are huge parts of your life and you won’t find true happiness if you don’t manage to balance them successfully.

On the other hand, it is enormously satisfying to work on a successful PRINCE2 project and then go home to relax in whatever way suits you best. This gives you the best of both worlds and a chance to build a sustainable career.

The rewards you will obtain for doing this well make it well worth the relatively small amount of effort that you need to put into it.