You have seen how project management can help you start your journey towards financial freedom. My earlier post talked how we can begin phase 1. Let’s recap what are the 4 phases in project management:

Four Phases of Project Management

1. Definition Phase

2. Planning Phase

3. Execution Phase

4. Closing Phase

Work Breakdown Structure

To continue on the definition phase, you need to develop 1.3 Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) or to list the activities or next actions that will help you achieve your objectives.

Using the example given in my previous post, the objectives could be to:

Objective #1: To generate $50,000 annually in passive income

Objective #2: In ten years’ time

Objective #3: Saving up investible capital of $500,000 (generating 10% per annum)

Objective #4: While still spending time with family on weekends and evenings.

How do you break-down the activities needed for you to achieve these objectives.

Let’s list what you need to do to obtain $50,000 passive income. Assuming I can get a return of 10% annually, I would need $500,000 investible capital to generate that type of passive income. How do I get $500,000? By living within my means and saving.

To save $500,000 in ten years time is to save $50,000 each year. So I could breakdown objective #1 into smaller tasks:

Objective #1: Generate $50k in passive income annually

Tasks

1.0 : Save $50,000 a year

1.1: Make additional $xx,xxx in earned income (from job)

1.2: Generate passive income of $x,xxx (from blogs, selling stuff on eBay, selling ebooks etc.)

1.3: Build necessary skills/experience for higher paying job

2.0 : Learn about living within my means

2.1 : Borrow and read library book on personal finance

2.2: Cut down consumption of soft-drinks during lunch

And so on… It is intuitive, you need to analyse what are the individual tasks that help you achieve your goals. The idea behind listing all the tasks is trying to achieve completeness. You aim to brainstorm ways that you can reach your obectives.

Applying the project management method gives you a structure in which you can take your main objectives and break them down into do-able tasks and sub-tasks. You decide how detailed you want to be. You want to be comprehensive enough to cover the steps needed for you to move forward towards your goal.

Organisation Breakdown Structure

In a typical project management approach, you would also list a organisation breakdown structure to determine the roles and responsibilities of people performing the various roles. Since this is your personal financial freedom project, you can skip this part since most of the doing is by you yourself.

Identify Resources

Projects consume resources and your personal financial freedom project is no exception. You will need to plan for what are the books, references, time effort and knowledge/skills you need for you to succeed on this project.

What resources do you think you need for your own project? How will you go around to obtain them? Share with Panzer in the comments section.

Be well and prosper.

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