Ep 13 Mastering the Art of Project Planning: How to Go from Guesswork to Game Plan
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[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Productivity Genius Podcast, where we go from overwhelmed to overachieving. I'm your host, Kelly Fifield, and I help you achieve more while working less. Now, today's episode isn't maybe the sexiest topic, project planning. Ooh, how am I going to get you to be excited about this? Well, let's think about a project that would be amazing to get done.
So think of something that punting. You're like, oh, I just don't have time for this, even if you still think I don't have time. in my life right now to get this done. It will still be an amazing exercise to go through so that you actually know how long it would take if you changed your mind and decided to jump in.
Now, the reason you want to get great at this skill is you can then plan to achieve anything you want. So if you want to reach some sort of goal, you have some sort of goal, you can step it out, figure out exactly what it's going to take, at least with the pieces that you are responsible for, the things [00:01:00] you have control over, and you will know exactly how long it's going to take.
Instead of that, project or goal being something that's just kind of amorphous and like kind of questionable in your mind, you actually will have the step by step process to get that thing done. Makes it a lot easier on your brain to actually jump into the project if it knows what the specifics of the project are.
And a lot of people don't do this because they're not sure of the steps. They don't know how long the steps are going to take. They think things like, well, I don't have any extra time, so what's the point? But as a side note, if you invested just 15 minutes a day, every day for one year. You would accumulate that would be enough minutes to fill eleven full eight hour days on a project So think about that project that you really really want to get done Do you think you could get it done or do you think you can make dramatic process progress on it?
If you were to invest eleven full eight hour days on that project?[00:02:00]
So the excuse that we often give ourselves that I don't have any extra time Probably not as true as we're believing. Okay, if you have a project in mind great If you don't have a project in mind, I would love for you to just pause this for a moment Think of something that would be so cool to get done
Like what have you been wishing you could get done, but just haven't had the time for
Now before we go into the project planning system Just take a stab in the dark guess how long do you think it would take for you to complete the whole thing? You could do it in minutes hours days. I would suggest keeping it maybe at hours How many hours do you think it would take you to get this project from start to finished?
We tend to be terrible at estimating time, so this is a really good thing to do before you plan any project, is just take a wild guess. Takes you less than three seconds just to guess. Just take a guess and you can start to gather data on how good or bad you are at estimating time.
I find that I'm really terrible at estimating time, [00:03:00] just like off the top of my head. But when I do the system that I'm about to describe to you, I can absolutely tell exactly how long something's going to take me. so I think you may find it really encouraging each time you do this process to see wow I thought it was gonna take this long.
I scheduled it out. It took me this long Wow, look at how different those numbers are and it will encourage you to keep doing this system So that you really know exactly how long things will take.
okay, so now you've got your guess. Let's say that that's the first part of the process, just to encourage you to do that each time.
Now, after we've guessed on how long we think it's gonna take, think about the end result. What does done actually look like? Like how would you know the project is done? Sometimes we don't define this and then the project never ends. Like maybe the project is creating your website. And so, if we don't define what that means, that could take the rest of your life. Because you could get a whole website up [00:04:00] and functioning and then say, Oh, but the images aren't good. Or I want to change the colors.
Or I want to change the fonts. Or I want to add pages. So define what is done. If it's the website, I want, the main page, I want a page with my offers, and I want an about me page. That would be done for now. If I decide to add other pages or I decide to go back and edit it or something like that, that's a new project.
So decide what does done look like.
okay, now that you've defined what done looks like, now just think about how amazing it's going. going to feel to have it done. You really kind of want to get excited when you can about completing these projects, even if the project itself isn't exciting. Like maybe it's a project that you really don't want to do, but would still feel great to be able to put it behind you.
So imagine. How great it's going to feel when it's done.
now the next step is to write out all of the steps. I know you do not want to do this, right? My brain offers me probably all the same thoughts you're having. Oh, let me just get started, I don't have time to write out all the steps, [00:05:00] that's gonna take forever, I'm not even sure what all the steps are, this is a waste of time, I just need to get going, I'll figure it out as I go.
Do not listen to your brain on this. Maybe note it. Say, oh, I see you freaking out. I understand where you're coming from. I know you don't want to do this. We're going to do it anyway, and you're going to see this is going to be fantastic.
There's a bunch of reasons why you actually do want to write out all of the steps. Some of those reasons being one when you have all the steps written out. It's much more motivating There's a lot less resistance to doing each of the steps when you know what they are So rather than every single time you go to work on the project thinking, okay, where did I leave off?
What's next? How do I do that? All of those decisions are made ahead of time, so you know everything that's going to be done. So when you've created space to work on the project, there's no like wondering and thinking and considering, it's just let me get to work.
Now, when you go to [00:06:00] write out all of these steps, and my guess is that there's going to be a lot of them, more than you even initially think of,
you're going to get to some steps and you're going to be like, I don't know what the next step would be here. So you have a couple options there. I'm sure you have an infinite number of options, but some options I want to offer you there are one, just take a guess. What do you think you're going to do at that point?
Or you might say the next step after I do this is to research this. Give yourself an amount of time to do that. Don't just like leave it as research. you might want to think about how you're going to research it. Are you going to go to Google? Are you going to call someone? Give yourself an amount of time to research it
and a deadline to have that decision made.
Your brain is going to love to tell you, I don't know, what's the next step? I don't know. Don't let it off the hook. That is a cop out. You are brilliant. Make your best guess. You can always do something different in the future, but just take a guess so we can get this plan done.
so now that you've got all the steps written [00:07:00] down, this may take a while depending on what the project is. That's okay. in the long term. It's going to save you so much time. Now decide how long you're going to give yourself for each task. If you get to some of those and again your brain says, I don't know how long that's gonna take, then break it down into smaller steps.
So for example, let's keep the website example. Maybe One of the steps of my plan are to
create the about me page, right? And I don't really know what's supposed to go on an about me page. So My steps for that might be one Research five about me pages or Google what should go on an about me page or even better ask chat GPT what information I should put on my about me page Step two, write out a draft of each of those sections in a Google Doc. Step three, transfer them to my website. Step four, add images.
And then I can go to each of those steps and give, and estimate how much [00:08:00] time I want to give myself for each of those and that will give me a better idea of how long I should allot for my About Me page.
Worst case scenario, if you have some things you're like, I have no idea, just pick an amount of time. You should've... Broken the project down into small enough steps that even if you're slightly off on one little step. It's not gonna Mess everything up. There are gonna be steps most likely that maybe take you a little less time Maybe take you a little more but we're gonna be so close that those should all even out
Okay, next step, add up all the times. What do you think? Is it way longer than you expected? This can actually be a great thing to realize. Sometimes this happens for me. I start planning things out and I'm like, Oh, I'm going to do this thing. And then I write out the whole project. I add up all the time and I'm like, what?
That is a stupid amount of time. I am so not investing that many hours on this result. So not worth it.
And that's so good to see ahead of time before I'm hours and hours and hours [00:09:00] into this project. so this helps me avoid all the annoyance and frustration I would have in the middle of that project.
And it might also help me from getting annoyed at myself, because if I thought I was going to get this whole project done quicker, then I might start beating myself up saying, Oh, I'm working so slow. I'm so inefficient or something like that. Knowing. In advance, this is going to be a really long project, gives me lots of freedom to either decide to change it or to stick with it, but know it's going to take a long time.
now if you notice, wow, this is going to take a lot longer than I was hoping, you have multiple options to
do is go back to that project then. And decide if there are any pieces that I could speed up or I ask myself great questions like, how could I do this in half the time? What's the creative solution here? What steps can I skip? If I had to do this in one fourth of the time, how could I get it done?
once you've got the whole plan written out, you've got the times for each step. [00:10:00] Take a moment to be proud of yourself or writing all of that out. That is really hard to get yourself to do. If you really super duper struggle on that, this is the type of thing you really could bring to your coach.
When someone else is asking you questions to get you through it, it is, there's just so much less resistance. So this is a really great exercise to do with a coach.
Okay, before we get on to the calendar though, I suggest you review the steps and notice if any of the steps feel hard or heavy or you know it's going to stress you out or something like that. And make a plan for this. So you can like maybe break those steps into tinier steps. To make easy little mini steps or you can get someone else's help.
You can build in rewards You can think of how to make it more enjoyable. You can delegate parts of it You can pay someone else to do it. There's just so many options If you notice ooh when I get to this this is gonna be really hard You might want to try to make it easier on yourself Or you might just want to recognize that [00:11:00] part's going to be hard.
So I'm going to really take care of myself when I have to show up for this particular part. I'm going to put it at a great part of my day where I have lots of energy or I'm not going to be interrupted and I'm going to knock that piece out.
Also before you put it on the calendar, anticipate other obstacles. What else might get in your way and plan for these things? What do you want to do if you get off track? How do you want to support yourself? One thing for sure, I definitely want to suggest you don't beat yourself up if that happens. Be your own best friend.
Treat yourself at least as nice as you would treat anybody else in the same situation.
And then finally, the last step is so satisfying. Take all of those steps, put them at the times when you want to get them done on your calendar and throw away your plan. This becomes easier to do when you become the person who always does what they say they're gonna do when it's on their calendar. so if that feels like a really scary thing to do, You can answer that [00:12:00] scariness by acknowledging it's on the calendar, it's not gone, we haven't like lost track of it.
We can always move those things around until we become the type of person who can always follow through. And you also might want to be kind to yourself as you're learning these skills to leave some buffer time on your calendar. Initially you're going to make errors with this. You're not going to be perfect at it.
Some errors I see commonly, you might not leave any room for any flexibility, and yet you want some flexibility, like if the school nurse calls and says your kid is sick, you probably want to have some time in your schedule so that you can go and to handle things like that and, not completely blow up the entire week.
You might realize you're not leaving time for transitioning between tasks or maybe you learn, Oh, when I did this the first time, I forgot a bunch of steps. It's all a learning process. You're going to get really good at this if you just stay curious and compassionate.
Don't look at scheduling errors as failures, but as Opportunities to learn [00:13:00] what doesn't work and where you can improve If you just keep learning Improving and don't give up. You'll be amazing at planning any project
if you haven't already, I'd so appreciate it if you would rate or review the show. the more ratings the show receives, the more people that get to see it in their search. All right, now next week, I do think next week's episode is kind of sexy and exciting. So, next week... I am going to show you how to at least double your scheduling expertise.
There is a part of you that you are most likely not accessing when you are scheduling your time and I'm so excited to share it with you. But until then, have an amazing week.
