I manage many projects at work – they have a clear beginning, a middle and an end. An advertising campaign, a video production, a special event… The most important questions I always ask at the beginning of a project are: What is the end-product we need? How much time do I have to do this? And what’s my budget? 
Typically we want projects to be completed quickly, cheaply and of the best quality possible. And being the Type A, over-achieving person that I am, I often try to hit all three of these as hard as I can. The triple constraint model above is a project management tool that shows how these three areas need to stay in balance. You manage time lines, budget and scope of a project so you can deliver your goals on time and on budget. More often than not, project needs change, or we are forced to prioritize one of the areas, throwing the balance out of whack. For example, if you need something done faster than you expected, you will need to decrease the scope (the overall project deliverables or the quality of those items) and/or pay more. If you don’t, the project suffers. It’s okay to prioritize cost, or time, or quality… you just have to be willing to sacrifice one of the others.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how I choose my priorities at home and parenting… does the same triple constraint model apply? I think it does! Here are some examples:
I would like to always feed my children nutritious, organic meals that are quick and easy to prepare and don’t cost a lot of money. It’s okay to laugh, I just did! The fact is that the most nutritious, organic meals are the goal – what I know is best for my children and what I would love to feed them. But then there are time and money constraints… I simply cannot afford to buy entirely organic food, it’s too expensive. Have you seen how much organic meat costs? I just can’t do it. So we have organic dairy and some fruits and vegetables, and buy limited process foods but keep the ingredient lists as clean as possible. Here I’m sacrificing quality for money. Some days I am very limited on time and can’t prepare a meal – so we hit a drive thru restaurant. Here I’m prioritizing time over quality.
I would like quality time every day with my children doing educational/cultural activities that doesn’t cost much money. My biggest constraint here is time. As a working mom, I spend my days at the office and we only have about 3 hours per evening together. While I always devote time to routines each evening, such as dinner, reading books and cuddling, there are some evenings when my work comes home with me and my kiddos don’t get my full attention. We focus most of our quality time together on the weekends (well, every-other-weekend really), when the kids can have much more of my undivided attention and we can enjoy activities together. I definitely take a hit here on the money constraint – since we don’t have a lot of time together to do the activities, I’m willing to pay for activities I know we’ll all enjoy.
I would like my house to be clean with little time invested and no cost. If you know me well, you know that what I prioritize here is my time and money over a clean house. I choose not to have a super-clean house because I don’t want to spend my precious free time cleaning. It’s well lived in at all times… not gross, but definitely not pristine! If I cared about it more, I would spend more time cleaning (taking time away from my kids or doing things I love). Or I could spend the money on a housekeeper to do it for me.
Just like projects shift at work in terms of scope, time lines and budget, I make decisions every day about what is important to me in my personal life. I’m sure you do, too. Obviously, we can’t be perfect all the time in every area of our lives. We juggle. And sacrifice. And continually re-assess if we are spending our time and money and energy in the right ways. Remembering that we can choose our priorities and shift the other pieces around can be freeing.
Can you relate? Do you find the triple constraint model holds true in your personal life? How about with exercise? Diet? Parenting?
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
10 Responses to “Can project management theory apply to personal life?”
Leave a Reply
Marketing Mama® features articles on parenting as a working mom, health, family activities, cool products, my two adorable children and sometimes I even talk about marketing.
Yes yes and yes! Well done Missy! Balance is something that I think we try to achieve but it sure isn’t easy. Especially since we come with issues of working from black and white and struggling to find gray. Again, well done!
Ah, thanks Lisa, you more than anyone know about my love of black and white.
Thanks for reading and the comment.
This is awesome! I never thought of it this way, but this post really opened up my mind and made me see things in a different, more positive way. Instead of beating myself for the times when I fail to live up to the perfect models, I can now see the bigger picture where I mostly do the right thing but sometimes compromise to save time and/or money. Love, love, love this. It’s always so easy to see other things in my life as gray rather than black and white, and you just gave me a new insight that helps me see so many parenting balancing acts that way. Thank you.
Awesome, Barb, glad you got something out of it! I tend to beat myself up, too, when I feel I’m not doing everything as perfectly as I could be.
Another example is coupons. I finally decided to give myself a break and stop trying to cut coupons or use those loyalty cards everywhere. Yes, you can save money, but for me, time is money and I don’t have the time to invest looking for them, sorting them and using them. Also, they create a lot more clutter in my life I simply don’t need. Those loyalty cards were falling out of my wallet and I could never find the ones I needed anyways! After struggling with this for a long time, I finally decided to cut them out – sacrificing money for time – but now breathing a lot easier!
Thanks again for contributing to the conversation!
Yes! Exactly as you said. I wish money wasn’t such a big restraint because I feel like I could manage to balance time and quality but when you throw money in there then it gets so challenging. Exercise is impossible for me lately to stick to. I did it for 6 weeks but the results weren’t happening so it was hard to justify the time commitment away from my kids and stick to it.
Marta – money is the stickler, isn’t it? I either need a lot of money or a lot of time – and yet I often feel I don’t have enough of either! Totally feel ya on the exercise angle.
As a working mom of an 18 month old, my life is in a constant state of chaos with me prioritizing and re-prioritizing every since day! I have never thought of it like the way you mentioned and it has brought a completely new and positive perspective. Thanks a ton!!!!
Hi Bindhu – thanks for the comment, glad it was helpful. I know what you mean about chaos and prioritizing! I’m not sure if it gets any easier as they get older… except maybe when they can drive and go places on their own.
I pretty much always put quality and time ahead of money, and it gets me in trouble from time to time. I like the idea of thinking of the three as a triangle to keep then in balance.
Of course you would want them to all be in balance, Jen!
the funny thing is that I just can barely ever do that – if you figure it out, let me know!