I Want to Live My Days, Not Just Survive Them
When every week feels like “made it to Friday, somehow”
As an IT project manager, it’s common to reach Friday with a sense of “we survived” rather than “we lived well.” Your calendar is full, your tools are busy, your backlog moves – yet when you zoom out, the week feels like a blur of meetings, escalations, and status updates.
Living, not just surviving, doesn’t mean quitting your job or ignoring deadlines. It means designing your weeks so that your time goes not only into what is urgent, but also into what is meaningful: deep work, learning, health, relationships, and rest. Perplexity can help you step back, analyze your time, and redesign your schedule based on intent, not just inertia.
Step‑by‑step example – Weekly “intent review” with Perplexity
Goal:
Once a week, look honestly at how you actually spent your time, then redesign next week so it contains more living and less just coping.
You’ll:
Capture a rough picture of your last week.
Let Perplexity categorize your time into value buckets.
Ask it to help you see patterns.
Co‑design a more intentional version of next week.
Step 1 – Capture last week’s time usage (15–20 minutes)
You don’t need perfect tracking. Use what you have:
Your calendar (screenshots or export).
A quick scan of your task list / done items.
Your memory of “what actually happened”.
Write a short textual summary like:
Key types of meetings you attended (status, decision, firefighting, 1:1s, workshops).
When you did deep work (if at all).
When you had personal / family / recovery time.
Any late‑night or weekend working.
You might end up with a semi‑structured bullet list for each weekday.
Step 2 – Ask Perplexity to classify your time into four buckets
Prompt suggestion:
I am an IT project manager. Below is a rough description of how I spent my time last week (meetings, deep work, admin, personal time, etc.). Please:
1) Categorise my time into 4 buckets:
- High-value work (real progress, decisions, value-creating activities)
- Low-value work (unnecessary or bloated meetings, repetitive admin)
- Restorative personal time (family, sport, sleep, hobbies, real rest)
- Noise (doom-scrolling, aimless browsing, exhausted multitasking)
2) Give a rough percentage estimate of how my week was split across those categories.
3) Write a short interpretation (5–7 bullets) of what this says about how I am currently "living" vs "just surviving".
Here is the description of my week: [YOUR WEEK SUMMARY HERE] You’ll get:
Four clear categories.
Approximate percentages.
An interpretation of where your energy and attention actually went.
Step 3 – Ask for pattern insights
Once you’ve seen the breakdown, go one level deeper:
Based on your analysis of my week:
1) What patterns do you see in when and how I slip into "survival mode"? (e.g. certain days, times, meeting types, people, or contexts)
2) Where do you see signs of "living" – moments that look more intentional, energizing, or meaningful?
3) List 5 observations that could help me understand the gap between how I live now and how I might want to live.
Be honest but constructive. This gives you language for what you may have felt but not articulated.
Step 4 – Co‑design a more intentional version of next week
Now, ask Perplexity to help you redesign, not just analyse:
Using the patterns and percentages you identified, help me redesign next week. Please:
1) Suggest 5–7 concrete changes I can make next week to:
- reduce low-value work and noise,
- protect more time for high-value work,
- add or protect restorative personal time.
2) Propose 2–3 example weekly "rules" I can try (e.g. no-meeting blocks, fixed shutdown times, protected hobby/family slots).
3) Turn this into a 10-point action list that I can realistically apply for just one week as an experiment.
Assume I work full time in a typical corporate IT/project environment. You now have a doable, time‑bound experiment, not a vague “I should live better” wish.
Step 5 – Turn actions into calendar reality
Take the 10‑point action list and:
Block time in your calendar for at least 2–3 of the restorative or high‑value items.
Mark which meetings could be:
shortened,
moved to async,
declined with a polite alternative (e.g. written update).
Add at least one small “life” element each day next week (walk, coffee with a friend, 30 minutes reading, etc.).
The difference between surviving and living often starts with tiny non‑negotiables.
Cookbook – A 2‑hour weekend mini‑retreat
Recipe name: “Live, Don’t Just Survive – A 2‑Hour Weekend Reflection Practice for IT PMs”
The idea: once a month (or even just once a quarter), you give yourself 2 quiet hours to look at your life with the same seriousness you apply to projects – but with more compassion.
Total time: ~2 hours, split into four 30‑minute blocks.
Block 1 (30 minutes) – Identify your “alive moments”
You’ll start by finding moments from the last 2–4 weeks when you actually felt alive, not just busy.
Prompt:
Help me create a reflection guide to identify the moments in the last 2–4 weeks when I truly felt "alive" rather than just "productive" or "busy". Please:
1) Give me 10–15 self-reflection questions that help me recall:
- times I felt energised or joyful,
- situations where I felt present and engaged,
- interactions that felt meaningful,
- activities after which I felt MORE energy, not less.
2) Make the questions practical and down-to-earth, not too abstract.
I'll then pick the questions that resonate and write my own answers. Pick 5–10 questions from the list and answer them honestly in your journal or notes.
Block 2 (30 minutes) – Identify your survival days
Now look at the flip side: when were you just grinding?
Prompt:
Now help me explore the "survival mode" days from the last 2–4 weeks. Please: 1) Give me 10–15 questions to identify: - days when I felt like I was just coping or firefighting, - situations where I was constantly reactive, - times after which I felt completely drained or numb, - patterns of overwork, overcommitting, or people-pleasing. 2) Again, keep the questions concrete and relatable for an IT project manager. I'll answer a subset of these in writing. Again, choose several questions and answer them. Don’t overthink; honesty beats elegance.
Block 3 (30 minutes) – Ask Perplexity to surface patterns and design principles
Now give Perplexity a condensed version of your reflections (not the full private details, just the key bullets), and ask:
Based on the following reflections about my recent "alive" days and "survival" days, please:
1) Identify patterns in what makes a day feel alive vs. just survived.
2) Summarise the common characteristics of:
- days that leave me energised,
- days that leave me drained.
3) From this, propose 5 "design principles" for the next month of my life.
These should be short, memorable rules of thumb like:
- "No more than X hours of meetings per day"
- "Something for my body, something for my mind every day", etc.
Here are my notes: [PASTE YOUR KEY POINTS HERE] You now have design principles – simple rules you can test in real life.
Block 4 (30 minutes) – Create a 30‑day “Live, don’t just survive” experiment
Turn principles into experiment.
Prompt:
Using the design principles you just created, design a 30-day experiment called "Live, Don't Just Survive" for me as an IT project manager. Please include:
1) 3 simple daily habits that support living, not just surviving (each should take 5–30 minutes, max).
2) 3 weekly rituals (e.g. planning, check-ins, connection, rest) that are realistic in a busy PM schedule.
3) 1 monthly mini-celebration or check-in to review how it went.
For each habit and ritual, explain:
- what it is,
- when in the day/week to do it,
- how to keep it small enough that I won't abandon it. You’ll end up with a 30‑day living experiment that is:
Concrete.
Time‑bounded.
Designed around your real PM life, not against it.
Call to action
If this idea of using AI not just to ship more work, but to design a more livable life resonates with you:
Buy me a coffee 👉 https://buymeacoffee.com/p4pms
Your support helps turn the messy reality of IT project work into honest, practical Perplexity‑powered workflows that care about the human running the project, not just the project itself.