Projects Planning

[conadav]

Hi,

I run several projects, with end of the month due date, for each one of them.

Every project contains 7 different sequential actions. I do not care when an action is done as long as it is done by the end of the month.

I prefer not to set due dates in advance for every action in every project.

How could I be sure that my projects will meet the dead lines?

Thanks,
Nadav

 

[mcogilvie]

How long does each project take? How long is each action? Are they the same set of repeating actions? Are you missing deadlines now? What do you want to be true about these projects? There’s no “one size fits all” method for projects. The one thing you must do is the weekly review. That will tell you how you are progressing and whether you are on track to finish by the end of each month.

 

[conadav]

How long does each project take? How long is each action? Are they the same set of repeating actions? Are you missing deadlines now? What do you want to be true about these projects? There’s no “one size fits all” method for projects. The one thing you must do is the weekly review. That will tell you how you are progressing and whether you are on track to finish by the end of each month.

Thank you very much for your reply.

Each project takes a month.
Each action takes 2 hours.
These are different actions.
I am not missing deadlines, but I am worried about the possibility of missing deadlines.

I am trying to find a way of getting in control over these projects, without scheduling these action in the calendar.

Thank again for your help.

Nadav

 

[dtj]

If its basically template type stuff, where the number and specific tasks are repeated every month, it might be a good idea to consider it an overall meta-project in which you "optimally" sequence tasks overall, in order to maximize overall throughput of tasks via concurrency. Example, if you parallelize the independent tasks to run concurrently, you can knock a whole bunch of stuff out at one time step. Like while you're fixing lunch, have the coffee maker going, a load of laundry in the washer AND dryer, while listening to a podcast. I love it when I can get all those balls in the air!

 

[conadav]

Actually, These actions cannot be taken simultaneously, and I am the only one who can take these actions.

 

[ivanjay205]

Is it possible to share the actual actions / project or is it something confidential in nature? Might help the context a bit more....

 

[conadav]

Is it possible to share the actual actions / project or is it something confidential in nature? Might help the context a bit more....

Hi, I am talking about writing assignments.

Every month I have to write dozens of articles, grouping into 7 articles each time, and I am expected to finish the writing until the end of the month.

It is O.K to take a day or two for a break whenever I want.

 

[cfoley]

I am not missing deadlines, but I am worried about the possibility of missing deadlines.

This seems important to me. It's obviously not procrastination or forgetting about the actions, or anything like that.

Is it a problem of confidence in your system? Things that give me confidence are:

• Making sure that all projects and next actions are defined.
• Looking at my lists most days when I am making action decisions.
• Reviewing everything regularly.

Given that your deadlines are so regular and predictable, you might not need to write them down at all, or if you have several month's worth of articles in progress at once, you might want to organise your project list by month due for those projects.

 

[mcogilvie]

Hi, I am talking about writing assignments.

Every month I have to write dozens of articles, grouping into 7 articles each time, and I am expected to finish the writing until the end of the month.

It is O.K to take a day or two for a break whenever I want.

I don’t know how long each article is, but two hours iis a bit long for a next action. I think most people prefer next actions of up to an hour. Do you ever pause in writing each article, and if so, for how long? Or do you ever work on more than one artickle/project in parallel? The ”next action as bookmark” concept might be helpful to you. The idea is that your next actions tell you where you last stopped on a project, or a part of a project, and ideally tell you as specifically as possible what to do next. So “Begin article 4/7” might better be “Begin article 4/7: health advantages of chocolate” During each weekly review, you look at each project and see where you are. Suppose you have 4 projects in a month for 28 articles total. That is about 1 article per day on average, so you can know whether you are ahead, behind, or on track at each weekly review checkpoint.

 

[ivanjay205]

Hi, I am talking about writing assignments.

Every month I have to write dozens of articles, grouping into 7 articles each time, and I am expected to finish the writing until the end of the month.

It is O.K to take a day or two for a break whenever I want.

When I struggle getting something done I find majority of the time I have not broken down my next action enough in terms of time and complexity. For example, I recently struggled on a writing task. I broke it down to outline, write first draft, review and update to second draft, send for review, finalize. I also broke the writing down by sections as this particular writing was a speech so I could separste by subject and make it flow.

 

[dtj]

Hi, I am talking about writing assignments.

Every month I have to write dozens of articles, grouping into 7 articles each time, and I am expected to finish the writing until the end of the month.

It is O.K to take a day or two for a break whenever I want.

That sounds like just a punch list.

I'd be inclined to use a technique that my son used in high school. He was a horrible procrastinator and would often hand in homework late and face the consequences.. At one point he decided to just do something different. He immediately switched to 'precrastination', in that he would get the assignment done as quickly as humanly possible, once it was assigned. If he'd get a 5 page writing assignment that he had two weeks to do, he'd hand it in the next day. He's a gifted writer, so it wasn't really a problem. Math assignments would be done before he left the classroom, or another class timeframe tops. Hit it early, hit it hard. It surprised his teachers and they'd often give him the benefit of the doubt, as sometimes the two week early assignments would get lost because the teacher wasn't anywhere ready to accept assignments. His reputation (and grades!) turned around quickly.

 

[TesTeq]

At one point he decided to just do something different. He immediately switched to 'precrastination', in that he would get the assignment done as quickly as humanly possible, once it was assigned.

@dtj Was there some kind of magic involved?

 

[dtj]

@dtj Was there some kind of magic involved?

You'd think so. I had suggested something like it, but something unexpected happened, he listened.

 

[mcogilvie]

You'd think so. I had suggested something like it, but something unexpected happened, he listened.

Come to think of it, our daughter seemed to mature rapidly when she went off to college. I remember vividly when she said that college wasn’t that hard if you went to all your classes, but a lot of students didn’t do that.

 

[Gardener]

Thoughts:

If I had this situation, then near the end of each month, I would figure out how many articles I needed to write in that coming month. I'd work out how many work days I'd be working in that month. (Subtracting vacation, holiday, etc.) I'd calculate how many articles per day I should be writing, and I'd probably round up to ensure that I'm done early, so that if I get sick or otherwise lose a day I'm not doomed.

So:

Articles due this month: 28
Work days this month: 17
Articles to write per day: 28/17=1.7
Plan: Write two articles per day until 28 is reached. (Or write six articles every Tuesday and four every Thursday, or something of the sort.)

As I wrote each article, I would note it in a tally somewhere. At each weekly review, I would check my status to make sure I'm keeping up--if the first week was a four day week, I should have eight articles written. If I've fallen behind, I would create actions to catch up.

How to get those articles written? You could have a repeating Next Action of Write Article--not with a title and specific deadline, just an action that's always in your face as something that needs doing. You could make an appointment with yourself for writing time.

Also--can you write any of these articles early, so that you can relax a little about the deadline?

 

[nabhai926]

Great post! I would just like to add that Github includes a “Projects” feature which implements the same workflow/cards system. If you use it you can have version control, cloud backup, collaboration, and workflow all in one place. What I like to do is make a repository for each personal project and then open Issues for myself, which I then complete as I pull in new code. Working solo this has been sufficient, but on a bigger project the card system would probably be handy.

 

[DKPhoto]

I don’t have anything like that in my life but I guess i would want to know what would happen if I didn’t complete one or more of the articles? What would be the consequences? That may help with identifying what you need to do. Are some more important than others?

 

[dtj]

Thoughts:

If I had this situation, then near the end of each month, I would figure out how many articles I needed to write in that coming month. I'd work out how many work days I'd be working in that month. (Subtracting vacation, holiday, etc.) I'd calculate how many articles per day I should be writing, and I'd probably round up to ensure that I'm done early, so that if I get sick or otherwise lose a day I'm not doomed.

So:

Articles due this month: 28
Work days this month: 17
Articles to write per day: 28/17=1.7
Plan: Write two articles per day until 28 is reached. (Or write six articles every Tuesday and four every Thursday, or something of the sort.)

As I wrote each article, I would note it in a tally somewhere. At each weekly review, I would check my status to make sure I'm keeping up--if the first week was a four day week, I should have eight articles written. If I've fallen behind, I would create actions to catch up.

How to get those articles written? You could have a repeating Next Action of Write Article--not with a title and specific deadline, just an action that's always in your face as something that needs doing. You could make an appointment with yourself for writing time.

Also--can you write any of these articles early, so that you can relax a little about the deadline?

Could some of the stuff be templated with like TextExpander, in order to fill in the boilerplate format, and save you a coupla steps?

 

[Matt_M]

I think another important aspect to clarify (no pun intended) is the type of article being written. Are these more scholarly with sources and citations required? Are they informal articles? Are they op-eds or responses to other articles/contents? Are they for entertainment/infotainment on hobby?

A great piece of advice I was given ages ago was that while everything someone does should be high quality, excellent work. High quality excellence is a sliding scale per each type of task or area. A well crafted research paper or resume may need exquisite grammar and spelling so as not to come off as inept. While a forum post or e-mail is not going to be winning Pulitzer prizes or having an English teacher critique it so a few incomplete sentences or fragments and the occasional spelling mistake is not the end of the world. That might be something to consider for this articles: what is the threshold for high quality? When is good enough a thing?

Hope that helps. It's a little hard to give ideas or advice without more details.