There is so much more to doing science than journal publications or grant applications, but those are the parts that often get the most attention and rewards. In this talk, I would like to discuss other forces that largely shape our research and thinking, but generally stay out of the spotlight in our field – project and people management, as perceived by a computational chemist-turned-project manager-turned-nonprofit director. Project management is becoming even more important in this era of information overload and global connectivity enabling large-scale collaborations, where clarity can quickly become an elusive and scarce resource. I will share some thoughts and lessons learned from managing my own research projects to working with a distributed team on research software development, followed by an open discussion. This presentation was made in Canva. This is the direct link to my presentation in Canva, which can be used as a template or reused under CC-BY (as can the pptx file shared here).