Just struggling with projects...

[Jamie Elis]

Is there some sort of neat algorithm for project planning?

Most projects have a deadline or at least a time frame in which finishing would be desirable. Part of the desired outcome is finishing at the right time.

I have a hard time figuring out how a long a project will take. Even when I have experience with related ones.

This seems worse when I just do one action without planning the others.

Also, often, if I put a next action on my list but by the time I start it, something has changed in my thinking or awareness and it is no longer the next action. Although fortunately both actions are usually in the same context.

Once I get started, I don't want to stop until I am done or too tired to work on it anymore but I usually have to get off the project to something routine or handle some issue.

I end up not starting because I want to have a two hour block to work on most projects. I guess that looking over the requirements, proposing some possible outline of steps and a time frame might need to be the next action sometimes and maybe that just needs to be acknowledged as a two hour actions.

Thank you in advance for your reactions and suggestions.

 

[mackiest]

if I put a next action on my list but by the time I start it, something has changed in my thinking or awareness and it is no longer the next action.

I get this a lot, especially on large projects. For these I don't worry too much about capturing next actions in context lists. Rather I do a daily review of the project and jot down actions on a sheet of paper and then work from this list, crossing out, adding to, and marking up as needed.

In this case the project plan is super important. For me this is just a list of sub-projects and their relative order in time, plus some reminders about issues that need to be considered and remembered. Immediate things are planned out in more detail, with more "implementation notes" about how I'm thinking of doing it.

 

[Jamie Elis]

so simple

Yes, why didn't I think of that! just make "review project plan" the n/a with maybe enough time to get something done.