If you’re like me, you have expe­ri­enced the frus­tra­tion that comes from com­mit­ting to some­thing, and then miss­ing the dead­line. That “some­thing” could be fin­ish­ing a pre­sen­ta­tion, com­plet­ing a project, writ­ing an overview, or prepar­ing for meeting.

As an Exec­u­tive Coach, I have often observed suc­cess­ful lead­ers deal with the frus­tra­tion that comes from over-committing. It is usu­ally born from a fail­ure to fully assess the amount of time a project will take to complete.

The sce­nario goes some­thing like this:

You are in a meet­ing and your boss, cus­tomer, team, or board asks for you to deliver on Project X. You under­stand it and see the value, so you com­mit right there on the spot. The requestor asks if Project X can be done by the end of the month. You think 20 days should give you enough time. You leave the meet­ing feel­ing good about your abil­ity to deliver.

Then you jump back into the cri­sis or oppor­tu­nity du jour, which requires all of your men­tal abil­i­ties for the remain­der of the day. Tomor­row comes, and it’s more of the same.

Fast for­ward 19 days later, when you get a reminder email from the requestor of Project X. She is really look­ing for­ward to see­ing it tomor­row. Tomor­row! Off you go, falling back to the cram­ming pat­terns you learned on cam­pus. You skip din­ner, work into the evening, grab a few hours of fit­ful sleep, and are ready to deliver your half-baked project.

This may sound a lit­tle harsh or exag­ger­ated, but some of you might even be think­ing, YES, this is my real­ity. If this res­onates with you and you want to improve, con­sider the fol­low­ing best practices.

The next time you are asked to deliver Project X by a cer­tain date, do the following:

* Make sure you fully under­stand the Desired End Result of Project X.
* Write down every­thing you think you will need in order to deliver Project X with excel­lence.
* Assess how much time you will need to com­plete all of the required steps. You must know how many hours it will take you or oth­ers on your team.
* Sched­ule the time on your cal­en­dar as if it were an appoint­ment with your most val­ued client. If pos­si­ble, add 50% more time that you think you need.
* If you are truly unable to make the appoint­ment that you had pre­vi­ously sched­uled, resched­ule it within 24 hours.

If you are sim­ply unable to fit the required time into your cal­en­dar, then here’s an impor­tant rev­e­la­tion: you can’t com­plete this project by the due date. You will need to assess whether you need to push out the due date for this project, make room by post­pon­ing other projects, or sim­ply say no.

I am con­fi­dent that if you mas­ter this sim­ple process, it will rad­i­cally reduce your stress level and lead to more dead­lines met and improved qual­ity of work.

Good luck scheduling,

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Tags: Priority Management, Projects, Time Blocking

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