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Assignment and Task Completion

8 Manage Long-Term Projects with Mega-efficiency

Susan is a top-notch consultant in her field. She is sought after by companies and agencies all over the world to bring in her expertise. She is always calm and collected, and her feathers never appear to be ruffled. Her advice is spot-on, whether she delivers it through individual consulting or trainings or workshops.

Behind the scenes, however, she is a hot mess. She struggles to balance work tasks with personal time. She is constantly working. She says yes to every project and every proposed date that is put in front of her. She’ll book anywhere from one week to one year out, yet she’ll work until 2 AM the night before a presentation or client meeting to prepare.

She says there’s not enough time to do everything she needs to get done.

GOAL

Schedule time for every step of a project into your calendar as soon as you know this project has become yours to complete.

TACTICS

1. Get out a piece of paper and pencil or open up a fresh digital document.

2. At the bottom of the page, list the due date and the finished task for an upcoming project you have. Example:

June 25 Presentation

3. Working your way backward, list out the steps it will take to complete the request.

4. Next to each step, note how much time each step will take.

5. Pad in extra hours or days for each step to allow for people who don’t hit their deadlines, as well as Murphy’s Law hitting you with mishaps.

6. Starting at the bottom and working your way backward, assign due dates to each of these steps, based on the time you need.

7. Use this timeline to schedule time for these tasks in your calendar. Now.

8. Communicate this timeline to everyone involved.

STRATEGY

Do you know when Christmas is?

Even if you don’t celebrate the holiday, you know that Christmas is on December 25. Every year. Since about the fourth century. So why do people exclaim the week before Christmas, “Holy cow! Christmas is next week! I’ve got so much left to do!”?

It’s because they know in the back of their minds that Christmas is rolling around, but they haven’t taken the time to map out what all needs to get done and by when. So their holiday cheer turns into mad, mad steamrolling, and they end up in disillusionment and nonjoy to the world.

A lot of folks just dive into a big project in the same manner — without giving it much thought — so they soon find themselves a bit lost. After they’ve spun a little while longer and felt like they weren’t getting anywhere, overwhelm sets in. Once good ol’ overwhelm starts infiltrating, the brain begins to shut down, decisions can’t be made, and soon the towel is thrown in.

Instead of just diving in blindly, it’s important to take the time to plan what you’re doing.

• What are your goals for the project?

• What steps will you need to take to get there?

• What materials and resources will you need for each step?

• Who all will need to be involved with each step?

• How much time will each of these steps take?

When a big project is broken down into smaller pieces, it becomes much more manageable. For example, let’s look at what the San Antonio Sports Foundation did with their “ING Kids Rock” program back in 2012. A marathon is 26.2 miles. That’s a heck of a long distance to run. If you’re only five years old, it will seem like forrrrrrrrever, and you may not want to do it. Instead of having little kids — kindergartners through second-graders — attempt to run a marathon in one day, they broke down the task into manageable chunks. The kiddos ran a little each day at school until they hit 25.2 miles. The grand hurrah of their last mile took place during the San Antonio Rock ’n’ Roll Marathon weekend events.

The children were able to say they’d run 26.2 miles. It wasn’t all at once, but they still got the job done. And that’s what mattered.

You might be saying to yourself, “That’s all fine and dandy for little kids, but what about for adults like me?” Okey-dokey. Let’s use an adult project, a presentation, as an example:

Your presentation will be given June 25. You’ll write that at the bottom of your page.

Will you have to submit your presentation slides or handouts ahead of time for distribution? If so, when are those due?

Whether or not you have to submit early, make your due date the day before the work is due to allow for technical difficulties.

In order for you to submit your presentation and/or handouts, you will have needed to rehearse to make sure that this is what you want to present.

Before that, you need to finish the PowerPoint (or Prezi or Keynote or whatever software you use) slides.

Before you can finish the slides, you need to have graphics and a format/layout/design chosen.

Before you can pretty things up, you need to have content.

Before you have content, you need to decide what you want to teach or what point you want to get across.

Before you can decide that, you need to know the objective.

Before you can pinpoint the objective, you need to communicate with a representative from the group you’re presenting to in order to determine what your purpose is.

Phew! That’s a lot of planning! Yes, it sure is. It takes this much planning to make a project happen. We haven’t even included figuring out how long each one of those steps will take, or what materials, resources, or people we’ll need to be involved.

So, when you do think about everything that’s involved with your project and invest the time in planning, and assuming that you’ll have other tasks to work on or clients to meet with during the same time period, your task list for your project might look like this:

May 24: Confirm scheduled presentation, plan timeline, and inform parties involved what your timeline is, as well as due dates for which they have responsibilities — 30 minutes.

May 25–27: Discuss objectives with group, and finalize desired outcome — 3 hours.

May 28–June 3: Plan content for the slides — 1 hour per day.

June 4–11: Put together the slides — 1 hour per day.

June 12–14: Acquire and drop in graphics, finalize format — 1 hour per day.

June 14–15: Rehearse one-hour presentation, at least three times — 3 hours.

June 16: Make final changes on handouts and slides — 2 hours.

June 17: Finish handouts and slides — 1 hour.

June 18: Handouts and slides due; send electronically — 30 minutes (it should take only five minutes, but allow for technical glitches — file doesn’t load, server is down, internet is out, etc.).

June 18–24: Rehearse one-hour presentation, at least seven times — 7 hours.

June 24: Travel — 4 hours.

June 25: Presentation (network before and after) — all day.

June 25: Travel — arrive home late.

June 26: Debrief; any to-do’s from presentation? Plus catch up on phone calls, emails, mail — 3 hours.

W.O.W. That’s a full month of prep time, if you’re not working on it all at once. (FYI, you might now understand why consultants and speakers charge “so much” for “just” a one-hour presentation.) If you don’t want to work seven days per week, you’ll need to take that into account for your timeline.

This is why just putting “Work on XYZ project” on your calendar doesn’t cut it. That’s too broad. You look at it and think, “Yeah, I’ll do that later,” because your brain doesn’t know what part of that project it needs to work on. Suddenly, the day before it’s due, you think, “Oh, crud! I need to finish XYZ project!” Then you stress, drop everything else for this “emergency,” and probably end up burning the midnight oil and becoming sleep-deprived — and maybe gaining weight from stress eating or grabbing fast food because there’s no time to cook. And getting into a tiff with a loved one because you snap, since you’re in a foul mood. Mmmm. That’s not a joyful way to live.

If you don’t create presentations as a part of your work, no worries. You can apply this same thinking to developing the company budget, writing a book, rolling out your company’s marketing plan, gearing up for the holidays if you’re in retail…It doesn’t matter what industry you’re in; developing a timeline will save you. And if you have similar projects throughout the year, you can reuse your timeline template.

You’re reading this book because you’re tired of operating in hurry-up frenzied mode. So, if you want to lower your stress levels, you’ll need to change how you operate. This means investing time in your health and mental well-being by planning out your projects. Taking 15 to 30 minutes of your time to map out the steps for a project will save you hours of wheel-spinning and gosh-awful stress down the road.

It’s crucial for you to schedule time blocks for every step of a project into your calendar as soon as you know that this project has become yours to complete. By operating in time blocks, you’ll be able to shift work times around as necessary, but you’ll still allow yourself enough time to complete each stage of the project without working yourself into a frenzy.

NEXT STEPS

Susan implemented a great deal of change. It wasn’t all at once, but it was a concerted effort over a six-week period.

She applied the strategies and tactics from the C in CIA — Create Clarity.

Next, she worked on the I in CIA — Implement Structure and Flow.

In particular, she focused on the A and T in AGENT. She began to create timelines for what was being asked of her, so that she could either accept or decline offers. For the offers she did accept, she scheduled the steps from the timeline into her calendar. If other requests arrived or opportunities arose, she’d check her calendar before adding to it.

Generating revenue should not come at a cost to your well-being.

— Helene Segura

She realized that her fear of losing out on income was driving her to say yes to an unrealistic schedule and an impossible list of tasks. This crush of to-do’s was actually costing her income because of the physical, mental, and marriage side effects that forced her to seek — and pay for and lose time to — medical assistance.

It soon became clear that she could obtain the same or better profit level by slowing down.

You have to take your time to save time.

Implement Structure and Flow.

PLOT YOUR NEXT STEPS

• How has not using a detailed timeline affected you?

• How will creating a timeline for your long-term projects help you?

• You probably already have deadlines set for various projects. Have you already completed task timelines for each one and scheduled time blocks into your calendar? If not, which project will you start with in creating a timeline?