I’m Married to a Project Manager: A Love Story in Gantt Charts
Ever wondered what it’s like to be married to a Project Manager? Well, buckle up because it’s not all candlelight dinners and spontaneous road trips — it’s task dependencies, deadline reminders, and impromptu lessons on Agile methodologies. Let’s dive into what life looks like when your spouse is a walking, talking PMO dashboard.
📅 Every Day Is a Sprint Planning Meeting
You don’t wake up in this house — you kick off the day with a 5-minute stand-up meeting (even if you’re lying in bed half-asleep):
- “Honey, your deliverables today are: drop the kids, pick up groceries, and file the tax returns.”
- “By when?”
- “By EOD. Block your calendar.”
🛑 Risk Management – Even in the Kitchen
Burnt toast? That was a risk identified in last week’s breakfast retrospective. The toaster has now been labeled “high-priority maintenance item,” and you’ve been assigned a mitigation task in Trello or Jira.
Also, never leave a banana peel on the floor. That’s an unacceptable risk exposure. 😂
📲 Constant Reminders = Constant Love?
When your phone buzzes at 9 PM, it’s not a sweet message. It’s a calendar invite titled:
“Discuss tomorrow’s grocery backlog – Mandatory attendance required.”
And heaven forbid you forget your anniversary. There’s a recurring event for that, with 3 automated reminders and a backup SMS alert — “just in case.”
🧾 The Grocery List… With Task Owners
Shopping lists aren’t scribbled on paper. Nope. They live in shared cloud workspaces.
- Apples – Assigned to: You
- Cereal – Assigned to: Partner
- “Surprise me” item – Assigned to: Unclear stakeholder 😅
Dependencies: Cereal cannot be purchased unless milk has been restocked first. Please update status in real-time.
💬 Everything Has a Post-Mortem
Went to a dinner and didn’t like it?
“Let’s debrief. What worked well? What could we improve for the next one? Was the ketchup vendor a bottleneck?”
🤖 Robotic Precision… But With Love!
Yes, sometimes they seem robotic.
- Plans everything 3 weeks in advance
- Blocks weekend family time with formal Outlook invites or reminders via Todoist
- Schedules “Spontaneous Fun” from 4:00–4:15 PM on Saturdays
But when it’s crunch time — be it a flat tire, a sick child, or a last-minute dinner — they’re there with a risk register, a mitigation plan, and a color-coded checklist.
The Weekly Status Meeting
Every Sunday evening, we have what he calls a “sync-up.” I call it “being audited.”
“So,” he’ll say, opening his notebook. “Let’s review the action items from last week. You were tasked with sorting the mail. Status?”
“I… did it?”
“Was it completed within the allocated timeframe? I’m seeing a variance.”
“The timeframe was ‘by Sunday.’ It’s Sunday at 6 PM.”
“But the ideal timeframe was Friday EOD. This creates a dependency for the ‘Pay Bills’ task, which is now at risk. Let’s note that for next time.”
I now have a performance improvement plan for loading the dishwasher.
The Schedule is Law
Our weekends are not spontaneous bursts of freedom. They are meticulously plotted in a shared digital calendar that pings me with reminders so frequent, I’m convinced it’s judging me.
- 7:00 AM: Wake Up (Risk: Stakeholder, i.e., me, may hit snooze. Mitigation: Pre-programmed coffee maker.)
- 9:15 AM: Depart for Grocery Store (Buffer time: 15 minutes for stakeholder’s inability to find keys.)
- 9:17 AM: Ding! Reminder: “Depart for Grocery Store. Do you have the optimized shopping list?”
The list, of course, is not a scrawled note. It’s a color-coded spreadsheet, sorted by aisle for maximum efficiency. God help you if you suggest deviating from the critical path to “just see what looks good.”
❤️ The Sweetest Part
At the end of the day, being married to a Project Manager means structure, predictability, and loads of efficiency — with just a sprinkle of bossiness and a whole lot of Post-its. They may reschedule your Sunday nap, but they’ll never miss a milestone… especially if that milestone is you.
Final Words
So next time your spouse hands you a to-do list with estimated effort and expected ROI, remember: you’re not just a partner, you’re a stakeholder in their life-long project — and that’s kind of beautiful ❤️ Next one: 46 Hilarious Phrases for Project Managers to Use in Meetings – Exceediance