How To Set Boundaries & Establish Balance For Success As A Project Manager

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Galen Low: Hey folks, thanks for tuning in. My name is Galen Low with the Digital Project Manager. We are a community of digital professionals on a mission to help each other get skilled, get confident, and get connected so that we can amplify the value of project management in a digital world. If you want to hear more about that, head on over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership.

Okay, today we are talking about the risks and rewards of overcommitting as a project manager, and specifically we're gonna be talking about some strategies for how project leaders can set the right boundaries without limiting their career opportunities. And with me today is Ken Stewart, a change management and delivery leader in the tech space, and also the author of Burn That Project Down, A Salty Project Manager's Guide to Stand Out Without Burnout.

Ken, thanks for joining me today. 

Ken Stewart: Thanks, Galen. It's great to be here. Appreciate that. And appreciate the opportunity to spend some time with your community. 

Galen Low: Honestly, I'm excited because in our previous conversations, this topic just resonates so hard. And I hear about it so much, not even just the long tail of it, right?

Like the burnout side, but even just like the expectations of a project manager and trying to gauge and assess them and also assess them in the context of the life that you want to live, your general livelihood, life outside of work or even life within it, and not getting to a point where you look back and you're like, wow, I've overextended myself and this is not going in a good direction.

Maybe I could just start off with just one hot question, just to cue it all up the big question. And the question is, most organizations, they want a project leader that is going to pour their heart and soul into a project to ensure that it delivers results. And in your opinion, is that the wrong thing to want? What are the risks and rewards of having a project manager that just gives too much?

Ken Stewart: Oh, man, that's a great question. And the one that plagues in like my career, I'll say that for all my career. Ross Perot had a great saying. He said that war has rules. "Wrestling has rules, but politics doesn't." So what I get into, and I talk about this a lot with folks is you got to know the game that you're playing and you also need to know the rules to win.

So I don't know about you, but I've worked at a lot of companies that want me to tattoo their name on my arm and probably a few other places along the way. So, that kind of gives a whole new meaning to the word brand, right? I think once you understand the game and once you understand the rules and how to play it, how to win, then you can actually get into whether or not you want to play or not.

So that's what actually allowed me throughout the years to be able to make a hasty exit if I needed to, because there were some moral complications in a particular project or company I was working with. It also can help me understand how to play the game from a standpoint of staying through some emotional turmoil that I was having and navigate all that.

So what I'm saying a long way around here is that whatever you choose, you have to remember that you're the one choosing. So don't be passive-aggressive and gripe about things and be a crybaby. At the end of the day, you can't play the victim. You have to make a choice, but make a choice knowing the game that you're playing and make a choice knowing what you are about and your objectives.

That's it. 

Galen Low: I love that. I really like the perspective on like rules of warfare, rules of sports, rules of all these things. And right to your earlier point about getting your company name tattooed on you, right? I think the party line is often, it's win at all costs, do whatever it takes, right?

All these things. And we don't talk about what the rules are, but they do exist. 

Ken Stewart: They're often not written down, right? 

Galen Low: Exactly. Yes. Exactly what I was going to say, which is that sometimes you have to find out the rules by playing the game, right? You're teaching yourself chess just by getting it wrong a bunch.

But even just that sort of understanding from both sides, right? As an organization, right? If you are an owner or a leader within an organization, the do whatever it takes, overcommit, tattoo this thing on your body, those aren't the rules. The rules are separate. There are rules. And then even as someone working within that framework, that finding out the rules as best you can in whatever way you can, even if they aren't written down, gives you parameters to say, yes, I want to play this game or no, I don't.

And I think, honestly, like personally, that's why I ended up over committing a lot in my career, because I was like, I don't know what the rules are. I'm just going to play as hard as I can to like, win more than I lose at whatever cost. And I took it so literally, and it, did me harm. It did me harm.

Ken Stewart: It does, man. That's the thing is a lot of folks don't understand that the risks are pretty obvious, but I don't think they understand the long tail cost on that. So one of the things I've learned in my career is that there is this regret cost that's there. And then there's also lost time and I don't know that younger project managers really understand this until they age a little bit until they've been around the block a few times, right?

And then you start understanding. Now, maybe that's not true universally, but I think in general that, what's the saying about folly is the treasure of the young. So wisdom is something that's gained over time, right? So, and that's the goal that we talk about a lot of times is not regretting your decisions.

Can you live with this decision longterm, right? 

Galen Low: It is that human perception of time, right? Where it's maybe not universally true, but when I was early in my career, I felt like I had all the time in the world to like, experiment, I had as much time as possible to invest into a thing. And now, even though, fundamentally, I don't think it's changed, but my perception has changed, which is that my time feels more scarce. Because there's other things I want to do with it, and there's less time that I want to spend figuring stuff out, when actually it should be written down or easily learned and assessed.

I wonder if we can rewind a bit, a little. Because you are someone who obviously feels very passionately about helping project managers not over invest themselves into their work. You wrote a book about it. That's a really good signal that you care about it. Tell me that story, the story of what made this notion of standing out without burning out matter so much to you.

Ken Stewart: Yeah, man, that is a really interesting question, and it's probably a multi-part answer. But I think shortly it's this idea that I spent my entire life building a toolbox at how to be really excellent at what I do, right? And I really tried to understand the business. I tried to understand the technicals.

I tried to understand the psychology and all of the things that go into being a great leader. So, all of the disciplines I tried to bring to the table as I leveled up throughout my career. I realized looking back, it just didn't have to be that hard. If I could have shortcut some of the things that I didn't have to learn the hard way, or maybe the stupid way, I guess this way of saying it, right?

I don't know. I think that would have been worth a lot to me. Now, I'm at a place in my life where I want to give back. And so I think this idea hit me when I was working with a young project manager in a matrix organization. So he didn't report to me. But I had to help manage him because I had to help him understand the organization and how the organization worked.

And I saw so many, I was in part of these meetings with all of these executives and the social skills just weren't there. And it was just this crone fest behind the scenes. All the backroom chatter just was shredding this project manager. And so I felt really bad for him to that extent. And, there was this loss of trust, this perception that he just really had a hard time delivering.

He couldn't really communicate what he needed to. He was checking all the boxes out of the PMBOK, but he wasn't really delivering what he needed to in terms of actual stakeholder value, right? And so I thought to myself, if I could help this individual, what, how would I help this individual?

And I thought to myself, well, there's a couple of things I started writing. And one blog post turned into a chapter and one chapter turned into three. And by the time I had, I've had a table of contents of notes of things that I wanted to talk about. And I just said, you know what, I'm just going to start writing.

And more importantly, more personally, it really helped me get through some very dark times in my life. I call writing my ministry. And it helped me get through because, gave me something to look forward to that I could share with other people. And I think a lot of project managers are like that.

They want to share best practices and help each other out and try to give back to each other in wherever they can. They try to help the organization grow because what is a project manager? You're responsible for everything, but you have no real authority most times. And so, unless you're running the PMO, that might be a little bit different, but you're facilitating business objectives or organizational objectives.

And so, all of these things I guess, highlight the project manager's true persona of really being gift-minded towards others, right? That's the long, short story of it. 

Galen Low: It's so interesting tying it back to the rules thing, right? You mentioned this backroom chatter, this project manager getting shredded behind the scenes, not constructive feedback to their face, but this reinforced version of we can't tell them the rules, that would be silly.

They have to learn the stupid way, just like we did. And we're not going to give any guidance. Let's just see if they figure it out. And if they don't figure it out, then they're out. And that's the game. And then even just that notion of giving back. The project manager role can be very lonely, for all the points that you mentioned.

And that's why we're compelled to share with one another. We're also, haven't got the time usually, or we're scattered. We're out and about we're doing all these things. We're running a mile an hour. Is it mile an hour even a fast speed? Anyways, we're a hundred miles an hour trying to do everything.

And we're like, Oh, I haven't got time to take a course or do training. Or like the training I did do is a textbook. And there's all these things that I ought to do, but no one's really sharing with me or teaching me or walking me through the politics where there's no rules and how I can like, not just throw spaghetti at a wall until it sticks.

Maybe just tell me which is the sticky wall. 

Ken Stewart: Yeah, totally. Yeah. And that's what really helped me in the organization that I've worked in is when you have a strong mentor in the organization and when you don't and your leadership structure reinforces the same bad behavior, or maybe it's not bad behavior, maybe it's just not supportive behavior.

Maybe it's passive-aggressive, I guess is the way to say it. But I think that becomes an us versus the them conversation, and it doesn't deliver value to the stakeholders when you have an us versus them. And it actually creates friction towards delivery, which nobody wants that. You have enough already trying to deal with all of the other things in a project that you have going on.

So it's a whole thing. It's organizational leadership. That's the reason I spent so much time with it is because it's so part and parcel to making sure the organization is well aligned to helping the organization. Not have these backroom chatter set where you're shredding a project manager for what they didn't do right.

You're actually spending time saying, here's how you get ahead of that. Here's what you can offer some feedback. These are things that coaching opportunities that we can do, yeah.

Galen Low: The culture thing is really interesting. 

I think let's go there because from a certain perspective, sometimes it's hard, let's say, as a project manager or as any kind of employee to understand if it's a culture problem or a me problem or a combination of the two.

And I think, probably folks listening a lot of the stories you're sharing, they're nodding their heads along. They're like, yeah, I've been there. I've seen that. Yeah, that's been me. What are some ways that they can start identifying some of the causality for some of the way that they're feeling and then establish healthy boundaries without limiting their career opportunities and without negatively impacting their personal brand?

And at time of recording, the job market is super volatile, and it might not be easy to say, you know what, the culture here is bad, I can't fix it, I'm out. Yeah. What are some strategies that you've accrued along the way with your sort of writing ministry to make decisions and set boundaries here without limiting one's career?

Ken Stewart: That is a really tough place to be. And I still struggle with it today. It's something that, part of the joy of writing these things down is that you can refer back to them. And, in every reading, I remind myself, Oh, yeah, that's right. I should have done this. Oh, what went wrong? Okay.

This is what I didn't do. And so, part of it is you have to understand it's always going to be a mix. I think that's the idea is, when you think about oil and water, what do you do? You shake it up. That's how you get it to mix together, right? And it still really doesn't. And so it could be that you have an organization like that, where you have an individual that just doesn't mix with the organization.

We always talk, in leadership, we talk about can do, will do, and team fit. That's your sacred triangle. If you talk about the iron triangle and PM, you talk about this sacred triangle and leadership and those are super important. But what are some things you can do? First off, I think you mentioned brand is super important.

I really spent a lot of time talking about that. It's the one thing that people miss is that there's a concept that Maccoby talks about with this trust bank where, you really want to operate at the speed of trust. I think that's the idea here is that your brand becomes what you're known for.

And that's one thing you could ask is if you were to ask one question of your organization in conversation and passing to those people that you trust and even those that you don't, you could ask, what am I known for? And it could be a bad thing and brace yourself for that. But that's really what your brand is.

That's what you're building into. So the first thing is keep yourself separate. Your identity is separate from your company or your organization that you work for. And I think I'm really proud of my daughter's generation who really understands that a lot more than probably I did growing up, but I think they miss a few things in terms of really aligning towards value delivery, because that's what people are paying for is that widget, that outcome.

So, and I think the first thing that you just six things that I talk about is you got to know what you're about, you have to be grounded in you. You have to practice setting and maintaining clear boundaries, right? And that's really challenging. So one of the ways I talk about that is sometimes 'instead' can be more powerful to know.

A good example is when I'm talking to somebody about as a product manager, talking about roadmap, I might say, Tom, I really know you want this on this date, but instead, could I do this or can we trade this for this? And you start playing that game. And as a project manager, it's a very similar skill set when you're talking about that.

And you also may think that it's hard to set boundaries, but really it's not hard to set the boundary. I want to caution the PMs listening that it's actually really about maintaining the boundary consistently over time. My daughter and I have this age old thing about doing dishes where it's been really hard for me to get her to do dishes over the years and the punishment aspect of things has fallen off quite a bit.

So what do you expect is going to happen? That boundary continues to be blown through every single time. The other things I like to say is look, say what you're going to do and do it. That's a key piece. Don't overcommit. You also want to communicate for connection. This is something that if you don't have a lot of emotional intelligence, you're not going to understand this intuitively.

And I had to grow into this. I had to observe this from people who had higher emotional intelligence than me. And what you're looking for here is when you communicate for connection, you're trying to help understand motivations the other person has. And you're really trying to help them understand how to work with you as well, too.

And that leads into the next piece of which you have to educate others on how to win with you. So part of that coaching is you're coaching the organization how you do business, and you're learning how they do business. And it's that oil and water, you got to shake it up and get it to merge a little bit, right?

And the last thing I'll say is speaking back to the original point that I made about having separation is just get a hobby. It's anticlimactic, but like I found that when I started martial arts, that really started becoming more of my identity than my job did. And that created, being a husband, a father, a martial artist, an author, those became my identity, and not to say that's encompassing all of my identity. 

But a lot of times we sink a lot of our early career and later careers when it becomes harder, we sink a lot of that identity into our job, our JOB, our career, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves out at work wondering, who are we? What have we wasted the last 30 years of our life doing? 

Galen Low: In the green room, we were talking about the gratification of work, especially like early in one's career. It's instant. You either feel great about it or something sucks, but you feel it right away.

It's not this sort of like long game. We frame it as a long game, right? Work your career, get the gold pen, retire. That's now a myth. It raised this question for me about the perspective. And we're talking about, your daughter's generation, us folks who are whatever age we are, but it's this classic, like I'm wise, you should be doing this.

But when we were that age, we wouldn't be able to see it. It was like the fourth dimension for me, right? Like you could tell me all you want that I should have something going on other than my work. And I would still invest 60 to 80 hours in my work because I just couldn't see it. Is it practical for someone who is early in the career and of a younger generation right now to be able to understand the advice that they're being given from the older generation?

Or is there just this innate disconnect where it's sure, I get it. You walked up the hill, both ways to school in the snow with no shoes. I don't see it. I don't get it. It doesn't apply to me because I can't see that yet. How do you guide younger folks across that quandary of being like going from just trust me to test it and see how it's going to work for you?

Ken Stewart: Goodness. I think that it's true that we are experiential beings and that to truly understand something, we have to experience. I looked at that when I would start mentoring programs and they are far more successful than I think there was the statistic I read at the time was when you go to class and you listen to an instructor talk and you read the materials they're putting up on the screen. 

You're going to retain about 3% of that for about 6 months. Whereas if you put it to work and experience it yourself, applied knowledge, you're going to have something closer to a 90 something percent retention ratio. And it's really true for us too. And so I have to really temper advice that I give to folks because I find that it's just, the old codgers sitting in his armchair yelling across the screen and nobody really appreciates that. So you're being talked to. And I started really getting into this place where, for me, what really woke me up was a series of events that occurred in my own life that brought things really home.

It started early in the Marine Corps, where the Marine Corps actually invested in career coaches to help us transition out into the civilian sector so that we wouldn't be a complete failure when we moved from a very structured life into a very unstructured life. And so that really helped me understand, and he really asked me a very interesting question.

He said, so what's most important to you? And at the time I was young and looking to exit and make a lot of money in the tech sector. This was probably 2000-2001 timeframe when it was hot. And for me, there's just no equivalent to the money that I could make at the time. Right? And when he asked me a second question and he said, okay, you're offered a contract to go overseas to the Middle East and they're going to pay you half a million dollars for an annual salary.

And, which to me at the time was pretty good because I was maybe a sergeant at the time. And so that went great pay. And he said, so the trick is you get all that money, but you can't see your family for a year. And that immediately triggered me. And I said, oh, well, I don't want that. That's not worth it to me.

And the same thing happened to me later in my career where I was offered an executive level career with vesting options and the whole nine yards that would have set me up. And it would have meant that I wouldn't have had time with my family to see my daughter graduate. It was a career changing move for me.

But it didn't feel right because I was away from my wife. I was away from my family. And so I've continued to choose the road less traveled in most cases because of the fact that what I figured out early in the Marine Corps days was that. So what I would encourage after that long story was that Christensen says something in his book, How Will You Measure Your Life?

He says, "Intimate, loving, and enduring relationships with our family and close friends will be among the sources of our deepest joy in our lives." And it's something that a lot of people don't recognize until later in life. And so I would say, prioritize your relationships first. And the second thing is work through exercises that help you understand what's important to you.

Is it working at one of the big fang companies? Is that important to you? Okay, well, what does that get you? What is the outcome? Salespeople are classic about understanding how to maximize their comp plan. Project managers can take a lesson from that and really understand what is the outcome that you're desiring.

By doing what you're doing, investing the time you're investing, and maxing out your burnout fuel gauge, right? What is the outcome you hope to get from that? Is it a lot of gray hairs? Okay, fantastic. 

Galen Low: The flip side of that, in your story, which is like, what are you willing to give up? What are you willing to sacrifice?

And, when you're talking earlier about know what you're about, do what you'll say you'll do, and work with the organization to understand how they can get value out of you. Are all things that are, yeah, probably complex to figure out, but don't rely on having 10 years of experience to yourself.

And when you were saying that I'm like, know what you're about. And my inflection was know what you're about at any given time, because that might change. 

Ken Stewart: Absolutely. You should be doing those regular reviews with your check ins with your life to see how your priorities have adjusted based on your current life.

Sure. Yeah. Fantastic point. 

Galen Low: What I love about it is, we're talking, I framed it around like your professional/personal brand. And I was thinking of it as and I think a lot of folks think of it like, what is your brand at work? Oh yeah. I'm like this kind of person. Here's the value you're going to get out of me.

It sounds like an elevator pitch and that's fine, but that same exercise should be discovering what you're about and standing behind that. It's but I'm not willing to not see my family for several years just to, get a half million dollar a year paycheck is maybe not on your resume, but is part of that exercise of building your professional or personal brand in general.

I think that's really cool. 

Ken Stewart: If I could offer one more thing, one of the things that really sank in later in my life is I read this early in my career, which was this deathbed exercise. And so you imagine yourself on your deathbed, you look back on your life and what are your regrets, right? That all sounded great.

I went through that exercise in several leadership courses and career courses and yada. What really made a difference was when I actually sat down with a coach, and I actually, now you don't have to have a coach to do this, but what he did was he took me through some mindfulness exercises to get grounded in my body first, and then he actually took me through the exercise so that I could feel it.

And this really reinforced that his people were experiential and not intellectuals, really. It's a really interesting stat about the fact that 93% of your decision making capacity is emotional. 7% is actually the logic behind that, justifying that, right? We are emotional beings and we are experiential beings.

So when I felt what the end of my life was going to be, and the priorities that I had, and I looked back and the only two people that were with me were my wife and my daughter. I had no regrets. I didn't have any regrets about the countries that I'm missing because I had already seen a lot of what I wanted to see.

I didn't have any regrets about my career. I didn't have any regrets about anything. It was, I had lived a full life because I focused where I wanted to focus. Now, it may not be family for some people. They may want to focus elsewhere, but do the exercise and drop into the feeling first, that's my advice.

Galen Low: Actually, it's a really interesting one. I actually, I stepped in it the other day on LinkedIn where I was Oh, we, this should be safe practice. We shouldn't have to learn by putting our hand on the stove. And someone had a really good point. They're like, yeah, I think that's just how humans learn, like it's part of it.

And I'm like, okay, yes, we are experiential, right? Like we do need to feel it. I love that notion. And I think this theme that's coming back up for me is like this, like sort of mentorship, right? The value of mentorship. And I know this is not like the topic of the podcast, but what I noticed about it is that, sure, like you could do safe scenario practice as a group and, do team building and what have you, all those things are fine.

But sometimes you might just need that sort of one-on-one to have that conversation, have someone really zero in on you and what your focus is and help you answer the very specific questions about yourself to get to that next step. And I think that's a really neat notion of where mentorship fits into a larger picture of like professional development and learning.

Ken Stewart: Yeah, that's huge. 

Galen Low: It gets me thinking about, privilege probably isn't the right word, but what I mean to say is some folks will find themselves in a role at an organization where they are oil to the vinegar, or vinegar to the oil, but do not have the luxury to make a change. Ken, that's all fine.

I can do these things. I can know what I'm about and I can make the decision to leave. If only I didn't have to eat, pay rent, feed the family, take care of my parents. I'm stuck. Like I'm stuck in something toxic. They're asking me to tattoo the company name on my body. What can they do then?

I don't know if it's like a coping or, maneuver or, like, where does that go? Someone feels stuck. I guess, what are some avenues they can walk towards? 

Ken Stewart: That's actually a more common occurrence. And I've experienced that in my own life. I don't know the circumstances that lead you there.

But a lot of people that I've talked with express similar concerns for various reasons. And so I think that I can share with you after dealing with Helene, Maslow's hierarchy is real, man. It's for that amount of time that we were without power and water, and we were stranded behind trees and floodwaters, it was about eating water, that kind of stuff, that was it, and taking care of each other.

So it was basic survival. And so the drive to survive is really primal for us. And I don't want to let that go because, and project managers often find themselves in a role. They, when they work very hard for the status that they attain and the levels they grow, and they're very privileged, I think, in the sense that they get to work in an environment that allows them to be a knowledge worker.

And so I think that to have that appreciation, we see a lot of press around toxic workplaces and things like that. And it's my experience that having gone through leadership training and official human resources, regular leadership training about what a toxic workplace actually legally is. It's a big difference from what we talk about.

Now, does that mean that it takes away from the diminishing aspect of companies? Again, it goes back to knowing what you're about, know what your company's about and deciding whether you're willing to sign up. Realize that when you come in every day and you're sending an email, you're going to a meeting, you're choosing to be there.

So take that power, right? That's important. And you also, I go back to Dave Ramsey, who's a big fan of, if you want to start your own company, do it on the side after hours. And that gets me to a point which says that if you want to change your career trajectory, the common method that I have always advocated for is self study after hours on the weekends on your dime.

This last year alone, I have invested thousands of dollars, my own dollars, in artificial intelligence training. It is something that I believe is the way we're going to be moving. I did that because that opportunity was available to me based on what I chose to go after, not what my employer wanted me to do.

It's where I saw the market going. And so I would challenge folks to, even with the most challenging circumstances, aside from basic survival, real survival situations where you don't have access to certain things. Most corporate professionals will have the opportunity to do self study after hours. Are you going to grind past the burnout and spend your nights and weekends leveling up?

Galen Low: I think that comes back to the question. What do you want and what are you willing to give up to get there? And what are you not willing to give up? And if you can, and I agree with you in that, like you can get into survival mode in the face of a lot of adversity, I guess, in your work and yeah, hurricanes, that might just be it, but it doesn't mean you have to be stuck. If you are, for example, willing to say, you know what, I can sacrifice a bit of my evening and weekend to like, start building a path towards something that might not be instant, and I might have to bear it for a little bit, but at least I'm not standing still.

Because what I want is to not work in a toxic place where I'm asked to tattoo something on my body. Maybe you do, that's fine. 

Ken Stewart: That's totally up to you, yeah, if you want to. 

Galen Low: But if you feel stuck, staying stuck is probably not the answer. 

Ken Stewart: I can tell you. That's that you're right on target with that.

It occurs to me that I have had cases where I can look back and think to myself, I would wake up on a Saturday and I would sit there and I would watch movies all day and I had to take stock of that and say, what am I doing? I wasn't getting anything done around the house. I wasn't investing in my family.

I wasn't doing anything professionally, I was literally just consuming media and I figured out it was a coping mechanism. Part of that was I needed to get healthier with exercise and diet and things like that. But the other side of it was that I realized that I was, let me just say this candidly, I had to recognize that I had become the victim.

I had to step back out of that mindset. It was a passive. I wasn't sitting there complaining about it. I was just disconnecting. And so I had to recognize. And by stepping back into my authenticity, I was able to accomplish much more. And I found that created, we talked about this in Jim Collins with good to great, where he talks about the flywheel effect of a company, but it also has to do with a person too. Momentum will work in your favor or against you, depending on which direction the wheel is turning.

So I would offer that as well, too, is you have to really think about the fact that getting up to exercise is challenging when you first do it. Once you do it for a while, you start to recognize some of the benefits, and it's the same thing with burnout. You have to get past it, you have to grind through it, but then you start to realize the creativity begins to start flowing, and you can feel reconnected to who, not just your current self, but your future identity as well, too.

Galen Low: I love that. Coming into this, I was like, I don't want to there's so much conversation about burnout and still a varying definition of burnout because it's this gradient. And I was like, I should stay outside of the burnout side of this conversation. But in reality, it is a slope and you can find yourself towards whatever your definition of burnout is.

Burnout doesn't necessarily have to be, I can't get out of bed anymore. There's a lot of steps along the way. And I think what you're saying is like being self aware, having that moment in time to just revisit what you're about. If you notice that some of your behaviors are, or your momentum is going backwards and you want it to go forwards, there's some things that can be done.

There is some agency to be had. 

Ken Stewart: That's hope theory 101 right there. 

Galen Low: I thought maybe I'd land out with the flip side of that. This is my devil's advocate question, but to play the devil's advocate, we've been talking about, okay, if it's toxic, here's how you can get out, or here's how you can set boundaries, or here's how you can make sure that you don't sink your life into this job that might not be gratifying instantly for you right now, might actually feel very damaging and maybe abusive.

But playing the devil's advocate, isn't it a worthwhile investment to be a passionate, competitive, overachiever who advances, rather than just remain as another cog in the machine? Shouldn't PMs care a lot about the project that they're delivering? Isn't it okay to invest your energy wherever you're at in your career?

Maybe you're young, maybe early in your career, maybe you're in the middle of it, maybe you're near the end of it, but you're like, I want to spend this time feeling not necessarily gratified, because that's what I'm willing to sacrifice in order to get to what I want. Is that still okay? 

Ken Stewart: I think it's totally okay.

Again, I think it goes back to knowing what you're about, right? So if you're well grounded in yourself, you're gonna have this guiding light, this north star that will set you on the right path, I believe. And I think each, it's gonna be different for each person. Some folks are gonna be very career minded.

Some folks are gonna not be as career minded. But everybody, I believe, has a set of goals and priorities, they might not necessarily be explicit, but they're going to be things that they have in mind. And so I think that's really important, right? So you have to really think about what's most important to you at the end of the day.

And I think that overachiever, the question I would probably ask is to sanity test, what are you trying to prove in this case, right? What is it that's driving you and how does that make you feel? And if you can get connected with that, it sounds a little mushy, but if you can get connected with that, I think that you can really discern whether or not you're overachieving is something that is providing for you and your family.

And for instance, maybe overachieving has to do with an exit for a company. If you really burn it for two years and you're invested in a company and that exit is going to pay for your next house or set you up to do whatever, be able to travel for a year, whatever your goal is, then I think that's worthwhile.

And they get into that millionaire fast lane a lot where they have the slow lane and the fast lane, right? This, most of us are slow laners where we're going to chip away at a life and we're going to have a retirement account, all those kinds of fun things. The people that really accelerate are the ones that disconnect their time for money and they pour into their goal with zeal.

So overachieving in that case accelerates them to a point where they can set the rest of their life up to be very successful, wealthy, whatever that metric is. Yeah, overachieving is not bad in and of itself. Motivation is the key.

Galen Low: Fair enough. I think it's really interesting too to we were talking earlier about perspective, and usually when we're overachieving and we're being ambitious and we're trying to be in the fast lane, the mindset from the people I connect with is I've got fuel in the tank.

I can drive this fast and burn all my fuel and I'll still get to my destination faster and it'll be fine. Then you'll be out of fuel. And I was like, there's a sort of consequence of overinvesting, I guess, to tie it all back, what I'm really picking up from you is it's a calculated risk.

You really do have to know what you're about. You do have to know how you will do the things that you'll say you'll do. You do have to understand how you fit within the fabric and how you're finding that balance with the things that you weren't willing to sacrifice now and in the future. 

Ken Stewart: Yeah, that's exactly right.

That's going to change. It's like a lot like a quilt to me. It's a patchwork, right? Where today is going to be different than five years from now. And if you work in any kind of technology field or in this day and age, I'm hard pressed to imagine a field that's not impacted by technology. The pace and rate of change, I think everybody could feel it. 

It feels tighter, more frenetic. And so individuals are gonna have to really do that. And I think our society at large with social media and things like that really pour on this idea. There was an interesting topic. I think it was in a book called, there's an expletive in the words.

I won't use it, but it's how not to give an F about everything. And so, it's a fantastic read and I thought it was going to be, tongue in cheek, but it's actually really good advice. And one of the things he said, when did it become unglamorous to be a middle aged father or mother that came home and take care of their family?

When did that become a failure? And it really was an insightful statement to me that you don't have to be an overachiever to be successful. You can be. Going back to knowing the game that you're playing and the politics involved and all that. Don't be surprised if your employer accepts all of your gratuity and working all of the extra hours.

They will absolutely lovingly most of the time. Some will not. Some have good boundaries, and this is typically a very classical American thing to do. Although I do work with, I have worked with lots of global organizations that have a similar concept, it strikes me that it's a personal decision.

And so we have to really root ourselves in understanding and grounding ourselves in who we are. I don't know, man, it's a really tough topic. You got really passionate about it, but there's not a cookie cutter answer of here's how you should do it. I go out of my way to not prescribe because I've had several medical professionals remind me that I'm not a doctor. 

So I take that very seriously. I'm not prescribing. I'm offering guidance based on my experience and mileage may vary. It's going to be up to the individual to assess and I encourage everybody assess what I offer. And if you don't like it, throw it out in the trash and let the vultures eat it. No big deal. That's it. 

Galen Low: Honestly though, that's what I've loved about this conversation so much is that at every step it's been about almost like a stimulus, right? Not a solution, but a stimulation that makes you think about these things, right?

Even the books you've mentioned, right? Where it's you could read it as prescriptive, but really it's about thought provocation, right? And that introspection, and you might need someone to help you get to that understanding of yourself and understanding of your situation and what you can or cannot do.

But the agency is still yours. 

Ken Stewart: Yes, exactly. 

Galen Low: The culpability is still yours. 

Ken Stewart: Exactly. There's a dissonance, really, in today's corporate culture, especially, but perhaps in just American culture in general. There's a disconnect between agency and ability, I think, and that's a really interesting and telling thing of our times that I'm a bit older.

And my father even used to tell me that this would be something we would experience in our lifetime. And I didn't understand what did back your point. I didn't understand what he was talking about at the time. I didn't have the eyes to see what he was talking about. But now looking back, I'm like, Oh, yeah.

Okay. I get what's happening. The challenge that we have of where we're at. And so I would encourage everybody to not accept that they don't have agency. You've used that word a few times, and I think it's really important. I really want to underscore that, that agency is absolutely critical, not just to ego and power, but to hope itself, right?

And what are we without hope? Just shells and husks. 

Galen Low: Boom. Love that. 

Ken, for our listeners, where can they find more about the book, Burn that Project Down?

Ken Stewart: Great. So obviously you can find it on Amazon and you can also find it on my blog changeforge.com. So feel free to check me out there if you'd like to also feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

I love having great conversations with individuals that don't have to be like-minded. I enjoy challenging conversations because the adage goes iron sharpens iron. So, I welcome any conversation. 

Galen Low: Awesome. Love that. I will include links to your site and your profile in the show notes. 

Ken, thank you so much for spending the time with me today. It's been so much fun. Very insightful. 

Ken Stewart: Thank you, Galen. Appreciate it. 

Galen Low: Alright folks, there you have it. As always, if you'd like to join the conversation with over a thousand like-minded project management champions, come join our collective. Head over to thedigitalprojectmanager.com/membership to learn more. And if you like what you heard today, please subscribe and stay in touch on thedigitalprojectmanager.com. Until next time, thanks for listening.