Be kind to yourself.

Would you push your project team until they snap? Of course not, you believe in sustainable pace.

Would you expect them to consistently sacrifice family time to achieve unviable targets? Of course you wouldn't, you'd rather they delivered consistently over time while maintaining their work-life balance.

Would you have them work when they're ill? No, you're not a monster.

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point.

Unless you're an appalling relict of an aggressive 1980s management style, you protect your team. You realise they're humans with individual lives and needs outside work.

But do you apply the same standards to yourself as project manager?

There's a tendency in our roles to pick up any slack ourselves, to look after the team and the project as a priority. After all, who gets hauled over the coals if things fall behind? Whose career could be stalled (or ended in case of a contractor) by one catastrophic deployment?

The longer hours and calls with fire-breathing stakeholders is why we get a couple percent more pay than the rest of the team, right?

Sure. And we love it. It makes us feel useful.

But burned out people make mistakes. Even seemingly unstoppable beast-mode project managers.

So take your own advice. Learn to say no (politely), take your holidays (all of them), and if you're ill, recover (no logging on to check on things). The world won't fall apart and you might just enjoy life a bit more before the job inevitably takes you out in your 50s.

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