Last time I wrote that there is no such thing as a perfect process to manage projects that is universally applicable.

Let’s extend that 20,000 feet project management guide to a 50,000 feet life management lesson.

Situations we face in life everyday demand applying various tools, techniques or processes – whether to handle a particular conversation delicately or forcefully; whether to make a huge short-term investment or a smaller long-term one; which person to hire for a key executive position – going with the interview assessments or with your gut feeling; which mathematical formula to apply to solve a particularly nagging problem; which financial model to use for budgeting the next year; which process to apply for a complex new project.

All of these situations require making a decision about selecting a tool, technique, quirk or a systematic process for a situation. There is no-one-size-fits-all approach – different situations require different solutions.

Equally, if not more important, is the realization that you need to have more than one tool in your toolbox to be able to successfully handle whatever life throws at you. No handyman can work with just a single tool. He is continuously diving in and out of his toolbox (that is a fascination to observe). A skilled handyman with his toolbox is a perfect model for how we can handle different situations in life everyday.

I could have spared you all the above read if I had simply quoted the following (but then I would not have been able to call it a blog post!)

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail”