Turn Goals into Projects

Stop Setting Good Resolutions that fail, Start Meaningful Projects

Unlock Your Potential with Personal Project Management

Imagine if you could manage your personal projects the same way successful companies manage their big projects. What if your dreams and aspirations could be approached with the same clarity, structure, and flexibility that professionals use to achieve growth and development?

Looking Beyond Goals: Initiate Personal Projects, Commit to the Action Plan

Activate your DREAMs by Taking Action.

Stop thinking of a desired outcome, a dream, without figuring out a plan consisting of simple and doable activities to get you where you want. We know that New Year’s Resolutions fail and traditional goal setting is limiting and often frustrating. You don’t need more pressure or stress in your life. It’s time to change your approach. It is also time to recognize that shortcuts, magical pills and other hacks fail too. It’s time to take some meaningful actions.

Enable your Dream by Planning Activities

Personal Project Management shifts the focus from setting hard goals to defining a motivating project. A project is an experiment using limited time and resources. Simply focus on doing the best you can, here and now, knowing your constraints. Visualize your project to decide on your next essential step. One small action taken in the right direction is an inflection point and a step forward. You don’t need to figure everything out in detail before starting. You will review and adjust your plan as you go. At each review, question your current project plan, is it relevant, doable and sustainable?

Personal Project Management and Agile Mindset, What?

This approach takes proven methods from the science of project management to adapt them for self-development. The idea is not to work harder, but smarter. Prioritize impact. It’s not about adding more pressure on you, but rather about visualizing, simplifying and clarifying what you want, and then finding better ways to achieve meaningful change by better organising your time and your efforts.

This article introduces a simple, yet powerful, approach to help you bring more structure and purpose to your personal projects. The idea is to identify daily activities and habits that can lead you to achieve projects without having to overthink about your goals. And to move your attention away from what you want to achieve in order to focus on what you can do daily.

Personal Project Management: using and adapting principles, tools and methods of the science of Project Management to better initiate, plan and organize personal projects, endeavors, side gigs, adventures, ventures, travel dreams, sabbaticals, etc

Three Main Phases of a Project:

• Phase One: Make a Plan, Prepare and Initiate your Project. Name it.
• Phase Two: Take Action. Commit to Act and Deliver in Time.
• Phase Three: Review, Adjust the Plan. Go back to Phase One and Repeat.

Agile Mindset: infusing your personal projects with the wisdom of the KAIZEN approach, the flexibility and adaptability of Agile methods to deal with the uncertainty coming from any endeavor. Your personal projects are dynamic systems. Your progress and learning journey are going to be non linear and iterative.

Dream > Plan > Do

DREAM, Visualize your Idea, Turn a Goal into a Project.

Let’s take a simple example of a New Year’s Resolution that almost always fails : “Losing 10 pounds in a month”. Knowing that the worst is to succeed at it and gaining back more weight in the following weeks.

Reframe the Goal of “losing 10 pounds in a month” into a Fun, Dream Project:

• Question your objectives to identify what you really want. Is it to feel more energetic? To experience less brain fog? To have a more dynamic life? To become fitter?
• Visualize and Clarify your Project by answering simple questions: What? Who? What for? When? Where? How-to? How much? What’s needed? What’s doable? What’s sustainable? Where to start?
• Name your Project. Pick a fun name that resonates with you.
• Define a Project aligned with your vision. Set the scope of your project.

Once you have reframed your Goal into a Project. You can start by making a project plan. To make things happen, you have to make a DEAL with yourself to commit to a sustainable Standard. A Standard being a series of activities, done regularly, that support your project.

PLAN, Breakdown a Personal Project into Simple Activities.

Plan what you can Do in the right direction. The focus shifts from the pressure and stress of an arbitrary goal to practical daily actions. You are more willing to take small steps to become the kind of person you really want. Make your journey interestingly challenging. Work on habits that support your project. Adopt a proactive attitude simply by committing to take action. Unlike typical to-do lists, with personal project management you try to break down things to do into phases, habits, daily activities and positive behaviors that move you forward. .

Example: Turning a Weight Loss Resolution into the Project “Walk on the Wild Side”

• Phase One — Initiate the Change: next 3 weeks, add movements in daily life. Starting where you are to get to a minimum of 8K steps a day on a weekly average.
• Phase two — Consolidate the Change: the following 3 weeks, step-up your game to 12 K steps daily (based on your weekly average) that can include walking and running.

Start small, like a short experiment to see what works for you. Despite wanting to lose weight quickly, now to track your progress, you are not checking your weight on a scale every morning, but you are simply checking your steps weekly. You make sure that you’re respecting the deal with yourself of taking action on a regular basis. For this example, you can use the free “Health” app of your mobile phone to easily count your daily and weekly steps. Count your steps, not the duration of your walks, not your walking pace. Doing the right thing is enough.

Let’s stick with the example of wanting to feel better and fitter. After the initial phase, the plan might include several activities, such as a morning routine, daily walks, joining a running club or a fitness studio. The project plan goes beyond just listing what to do. You have to consider an achievable frequency (how often you’ll do these activities), a relevant duration (how long each session will be), and a sustainable intensity (starting by moderate).

So you are looking to define meaningful, doable and sustainable activities. Your progress is not perceived in terms of performance or outcome, but it is a by-product of you taking action at a given frequency for a specific duration over a significant period of time, like 3 months.

New Year’s Resolution: Register and Finish my first Half Marathon

Reframing your Dream: Quit sedentarity! Start running, hiking in nature. Become a Runner. Become physically fit enough to enter local races, do some fun challenges or set up mini adventures.

Naming Your Project: Run Forrest Run!, A Summer of Running, Run don’t Fall … Any name that motivates you and resonates with you.

Plan your Project in Phases and Set a Standard of Doable Activities:

• Phase One: Escape Sedentarity Simply by Moving More Daily. Walk, Walk and Walk: 3 weeks of 8 K daily steps of stacking steps from morning walks, lunch break short walks, weekend walks
• Phase Two — Keep Moving: 3 weeks of 12 K daily steps of walking or jogging / running
• Phase Three — Base Building: Build a robust aerobic base by running on a regular basis . Frequency: from 3 to 5 times weekly. Duration of each sessions: 20–30 minutes to start, moving up to 45 minutes. Intensity: easy peasy pace + Cross training and recovery by walking, cycling.
• Phase Four — Becoming a Runner: 3-month Transition Plan: Running / Walking / Cycling on a Daily Basis at Moderate Intensity. Running 30 to 45 minutes at least 3 times, up to 5 times a week

You can turn any goal into a personal project, whether it is related to travel projects, transitioning between work, learning to speak another language, launching a business or starting a side gig.

The important thing is to break down your activities and habits so that they fit into your life in a way that’s sustainable. This makes your plan more realistic and easier to follow. Naming the project helps mentally to reframe a goal into a fun and doable experiment.

Reframing a Goal like “Getting a Book published” into a less daunting, fun 3-week writing experiment that will lead you into becoming a writer by the practice of writing on a daily basis, as well as figuring out transition activities like a retreat, joining a reading club or writing book reviews to read more frequently.

DO, Don’t Commit to an Outcome, Commit to Get Things Done.

The magic truly happens with the DO phase. Until you take consistent action, nothing happens. This is where you implement your plan, steps by steps, day by day or week by week. Instead of overwhelming yourself with large goals, focus on a weekly plan of activities and habits that align with your desired outcomes. By keeping it simple and consistent, you’ll find it easier to make progress without burning out.

It’s Enough To Do what you planned. Nothing More, Nothing Less.

The key is not perfection, but consistency. Personal Project Management is about creating a rhythm in your life that moves you forward by stacking up on days of small, regular steps that will eventually add-up and lead to significant progress over time. Tracking your progress is as simple as writing down when you do something. Making sure that you are sticking to the scheduled activities is enough.

Reflect and Adjust: Evaluate and Adapt

Life is unpredictable, and sticking to a plan isn’t always easy. This is where the Evaluate and Adjust phases come in. Every week, take a moment to check in with yourself. Using simple questions to evaluate where you are: How are things going? What’s blocking me? What am I struggling with? Are my frequency and duration realistic? What should I adjust to stay on track? Does the plan feel right?

You can also do a monthly review or do a post-mortem review right after an important project phase.

During a Project Review, you’re checking:

• Underestimation of delays: is it taking more time than previously thought. How to adjust the initial planning? Should you keep the same timeline? What’s the cost of inaction?
• Obstacles: what’s on your way? What’s preventing you from acting? Are you making excuses to
• Alignment: Are your actions still aligned with your vision? Are the scheduled activities supporting the project? Are you still on the right track? Are you still focused and motivated?
• Lack of Consistency: Did you skip activities more than two days in a row? Are certain activities being left out? Is your schedule starting to slide? Why?
• Risk Mitigation: how to prevent issues? How to test ideas at a small scale? What’s verifiable?

When certain things aren’t working, it’s time to adjust. This is a crucial part of the process. Adjusting isn’t about failure. It’s about adapting your plan to fit your life and circumstances. Maybe you need to reduce the intensity of your workouts, or maybe you realize you need more rest. Whatever the case, adapting keeps you on track and motivated. Maybe it is finding what is sustainable. Downsizing is still better than doing nothing. A short 30 minutes of Spanish practice is way better than none. Don’t judge the duration of a session, your intensity or perceived performance, instead focus on what is doable here and now.

Don’t give up, find what you can sustain and correct your action plan accordingly. There is a cost of inaction. A small step is always better than none. Think in terms of progress rather than perfection. Perfectionism is a form of procrastination. Don’t wait to be ready, start now, make mistakes, correct them and learn by doing. Don’t wait for the perfect result, finalize to deliver in time, get feedback and adjust.

What to do when something goes seriously wrong?

You can try the 5-step ADAP Method for overcoming adversity, unplanned events, a complicated situation or when something goes wrong. A.D.A.P.T stands for Accept + Diagnose + Analyze + Plan + Take Action

• Accept that you screwed up. Now it’s done.
• Diagnose: clearly identify what went wrong. Find the root cause of the situation.
• Analyze: Figure what can be fixed, how to close it. What can you learn from this situation? What are potential takeaways? Figure out how to prevent it from happening again.
• Plan: Define an Action Plan to fix the problem or deal with the situation. Define a prevention plan.
• Take Action: act to close the damage, keep going and take actions to prevent a similar incident.

Why Can Personal Project Planning and Agile Mindset Work for You?

Personal Project Management works because it takes the pressure off achieving big goals all at once. Instead, it focuses on small doable and sustainable activities that lead to continuous growth. You’re not just working toward a finish line, you’re committed to building habits and practices that become second nature and ultimately become part of your lifestyle.

The Agile Mindset adds Flexibility and Adaptability to your action plan. By focusing on what you can do, planning realistically, acting consistently, and adjusting along the way, you can create meaningful change in your life. This approach is flexible. It grows with you and adapts to your needs, making it a powerful tool for long-term self-improvement.

So why not give it a try? Dream about who you want to become. Plan a project that supports your vision. Start by implementing small activities to transition progressively. Have fun and adjust along the way.

Who Am I?

My name is Christophe Berg. I have a Master of Science degree in Project Management (Université de La Rochelle, France) and 25 years of work experience as a Project Manager and Consultant. I am sharing ideas, tools and methods to apply Project Management principles and Agile Mindset into personal projects, challenges and adventures.

I do believe that “Everyday Heroes Deserve a Personal Project Planner”. Since not everyone can afford a Project Planner and Personal Coach, you can learn these principles by yourself. Experiment, Practice and soon enough you will apply the “Dream-Plan-Do” approach into your life.

Catch Me if you can: kristofberg.com/about-me