When you have only one project to work on, maintaining focus is a lot easier than when you are juggling several. However, doing just one project at a time is a luxury for most people. In this chapter you’ll find out how to manage adroitly several projects at the same time. You’ll also learn the best techniques for making sure you meet your deadlines.

How to set deadlines by working backwards

There’s an old question that is sometimes asked regarding deadlines: “Do you want it good, or do you want it fast?” In today’s marketplace the answer is “Both!” If you put into action the strategies we’ve already covered, you’ll be most of the way there to delivering both. The first step is to be sure that the deadline to which you agree is reasonable.

The best way to set deadlines is to work backwards from the goal. Begin with the final step and then indicate the step you need to take just before that one, then the one just before that one, and so on. Let’s say that you are going to organise and present a one-day workshop scheduled for 15 July. Here’s part of the working-backwards list:

• 15 July: The workshop itself.
• 14 July: Final email to all participants confirming times, location, etc. Final check that audio-visual equipment will be in place. Final confirmation with catering department for coffee and biscuits for breaks.
• 12 July: Photocopy all the handouts needed for the workshop.
• 10 July: Double-check that requested audio-visual equipment has been ordered.
• 8 July: Place order for refreshments with catering department.

Just about any kind of project can be broken down into these kinds of steps. With a long-term project that involves people not under your direct control you may not be able to attach exact dates to every step. Even so, it’s useful to attach target dates to help you track your progress. Be sure to build in some extra time in every phase of the project. Too many people schedule a project on the assumption that everything will go to plan, regardless of the fact that every day proves the opposite. Somewhere along the line, someone will get the flu and be out for a week, a supplier will go out of business and leave you in the lurch, and a print job will come back with a big mistake and need to be redone. Build in time for human and technological error. If, by some miracle, nothing goes wrong and you reach the goal early – congratulations!

A working-backwards visualisation

A visualisation can help you work backwards from your goal. For an example, let’s use the goal of having a national talk show (a fairly common goal these days, it seems . . .). When you do the visualisation, naturally you’ll substitute a goal that is meaningful for you.

Allocate about 15 minutes for this exercise. Close your eyes, relax, take the first minute or two to breathe slowly and deeply. Then see, hear and feel what things will be like when you have achieved the goal. This is really another version of the Alter Ego strategy – in this case, you are assuming the identity of the version of you that has already reached the goal.

Take your time and enjoy it. Here are the kinds of things to attend to:

• What are people saying to you? What kinds of questions are they asking?
• What are your surroundings? Who is there with you?
• How does it make you feel?

Staying in that reverie, now imagine yourself being interviewed for a magazine article. The interviewer is interested in how you got where you are today. In your imagination, hear their questions and your answers. Don’t force the answers, just let them come up.

Let the interviewer be probing but not threatening. For example, if they ask, “How did you get to be the host of this national talk show?” maybe your answer is, “Well, I did a local talk show first, and that was so successful that I was asked to do this one”. Perhaps next they ask, “What made that local show so special?” and then “How did that local show come to be?”

Give yourself time – the advantage of imaginary interviews is that you can take all the time you want to let an answer emerge. Don’t judge your answers, just play along.

When the interview is finished, come back out of the daydream, out of that Alter Ego, and jot down everything you remember. Some people prefer to have a recorder going while they’re daydreaming and describe what’s happening as they go along.

Put the notes away and come back to them another day. Underline all those things that refer to the steps you saw leading up to your goal. Use a clean sheet of paper to put them in rough chronological order, from now to the achievement of your goal. If for some you don’t know what the order should be, guess.

Pick a step that strikes you as possibly being halfway to your goal. In our example, it might be the point at which you’re just starting your local TV show. Repeat the process: take 20 minutes to daydream about how that looks, sounds and feels. Assume the Alter Ego of the you that has reached that point. Then take part in another interview. Jot down your findings, pick out steps, and put them in order. Each time you do this, you will get a greater level of detail.

Depending on how ambitious a goal you’ve chosen, you may need to do this another time or two (each time cutting the remaining distance in half), before you realise that you’ve come up with a series of steps that are quite comfortable for you to start on right now. In our example, that might be joining a class in public speaking or it might be getting a video camera and taping yourself so you can begin to master the various skills required by a talk show host.

All the information can be used for creating your goal maps which will guide you through all the steps. One of the challenges of implementation is allocating the correct amount of time for the tasks you have to accomplish along the way.

Use your time-estimating history

Based on your experience with other projects, which of these is most accurate regarding how well you estimate how long things will take?

• I usually underestimate by 50% or more.
• I usually underestimate by about 25% to 50%.
• I usually underestimate by about 10% to 25%.
• I usually estimate very close to the actual time it takes.
• I usually overestimate by about 10% to 25%.
• I usually overestimate by 25% or more.

How you answer this question will give you a rough guide to how to adjust your estimates of how much time to allocate for completion of your next project. If you routinely underestimate by 25%, next time add at least 25% more time to your estimate. If you want to be more certain of coming in on time, add another 10% on top of that. It’s much better to surprise clients by completing a project early than to surprise them by missing the declared deadline.

Remember the three Ds

At every step of the way, decide which of three Ds apply: delete, delegate, or do. If you can safely skip a step, do so. If someone else can do it faster, better, or more cheaply than you, if it’s not in the 20% of your 80/20 analysis, delegate it. Otherwise, do it. The most successful people automatically review these options every step of the way.

Your visualisation, as well as any previous experience you’ve had with similar projects, will have alerted you to potential obstacles. Spend some extra time planning how to overcome them. Ideally you will pre-identify two or more options for how to handle potential trouble spots.

Monitor your progress

It will be easy to monitor your own progress using your goal maps. If you are depending on others to deliver elements of the project you will have to monitor their progress as well. If their tasks are long term or substantial, agree upon milestones that you can check so that there are no unpleasant surprises when they reach their deadlines.

Let me tell you a story about how this can go wrong. I once hired a freelance writer to prepare a series of case studies that would be integrated with a major report that my company was preparing for the government. Every week I checked in with her and she assured me that she was making good progress. When it was time for her to submit her work, not only did she not show up, she stopped answering her phone. Finally I reached her husband, who informed me that she was suffering from mental strain and had only imagined doing the work. Why he didn’t think this might be something to share with me earlier in the process is another question, but the upshot was that a week before the report was due, there were no case studies. It took me a week of 18-hour days to create them. That was how I learned to observe the maxim, “Don’t expect – inspect!”

What are three ways you can begin to apply the “Don’t expect – inspect!” principle in your work?

Be alert to implications and opportunities

When one part of the plan goes wrong, it can have implications for steps further down the line. Review each goal map frequently and revise it as necessary. If you have built in sufficient time for hitches, they should not affect your overall timeline very much. If something big comes up, work out what other elements of your plan will be affected and what you need to do about it. It may be that you have to bring in extra help, trim some of the deliverables, or otherwise modify the original to stay on schedule. If you do need to adjust the delivery date, notify anybody else who is affected as early as possible.

It’s equally possible that along the way you will find ways to shortcut a part of the process, perhaps by using new technology or deciding to delegate more than you originally thought possible. All too often, people get so attached to their plans that they don’t recognise such opportunities. While your goal may not change, the best way to get there should remain open to change at all times.

Keep your outdated project maps and review them periodically to see whether the adjustments you’ve made suggest anything to do differently during the rest of the project or lessons you can apply to future projects.

Isolate the problems

If you find yourself falling behind, don’t just try to do everything a bit faster. Isolate the problem: what is causing you to miss your targets? Is it someone else who is not delivering? If that’s the case, here are the most important questions to consider:

• Do they understand what you expect of them? If not, how will you alter the way you communicate with them to make this clearer? One option is to give them a copy of the goal map so they can understand fully how their work affects the rest of the tasks.
• Have they agreed to deliver what you expect of them, when you expect it?
• Have you established milestones to make sure that they progress at the agreed upon pace? Do you have an inspection method in place?
• If they are not delivering, what is the problem? What do you and they need to do to make sure the problem is solved?
• What backup do you have in place in case this solution doesn’t work?

If you are the source of the problem, ask yourself these questions:

• What’s the specific reason that you’re falling behind?
• What can you do immediately to remedy the situation? This may require you to take a step back from the situation and see it from a different perspective. As Einstein pointed out, you can’t solve a problem at the same level at which it was created. By looking at it from the viewpoint of several Alter Egos, the technique described in Chapter 7, you will gain a lot more information about what’s really happening.
• If you are still having a hard time working out the problem or the solution, who can help? Ideally this is someone who can take a fresh, unbiased look at the situation and give you constructive feedback. Just hearing someone else’s view can be enough to prompt new ideas for solutions.
• Can you implement the solution without negatively affecting your other obligations? Stealing time or other resources from one project to serve another will only shift the problem, not solve it.

Build momentum with a MAD

In most projects there are points where progress has slowed down, or delays or other hiccups have caused a loss not only of momentum but perhaps also of morale. These are the perfect times for an ultra-focusing technique I refer to as a MAD: Massive Action Day. This is a day when you put aside everything else and give your total focus to achieving as much in those 8 or 10 or 12 hours as you might ordinarily expect to accomplish in a week. Naturally this is not a pace you would expect to keep up all the time; it’s the equivalent of a long-distance runner putting on a sprint at some point to pass a competitor. It can inject new energy into a project and revive your and other people’s enthusiasm and confidence. Here’s how to conduct a MAD:

• Get all necessary supplies and documents together the day before. On your MAD you don’t want to waste a single moment looking for files or staples or anything else.
• Set out clear goals for that day right at the beginning. Work out an hour-by-hour schedule to aim for. Check off all tasks as you finish them, to keep up the feeling of a flow of accomplishment.
• Schedule short breaks every 90 minutes. Research suggests that 90 minutes is the period in which we have a cycle of attention, so taking a 10-minute break every hour and a half will be more productive than working through.
• Do something physical during your breaks: a quick walk around the building or up and down the stairs, stretches, even running in place are all fine. Anything that gets the blood flowing.
• Have lots of water and healthy snacks available. If you use coffee or tea to stay alert, have it in small quantities throughout the day, not in big servings at only a few points.
• Do something to celebrate and reward yourself at the end of a MAD – have a good dinner, or watch a film, or whatever works for you.

Is there a task or project in your life now that is stalled and would benefit from a MAD? If so, describe it here and indicate when you will have a MAD to get it rolling again:

Another secret weapon for focus: the Time Capsule

It’s not practical to have a MAD too often, but you can use another technique to get optimal results within a much shorter time period. I call this one the Time Capsule, and I suggest you apply it to 90-minute chunks of time. Here’s how it works:

• Get a sheet of paper. At the top, write what you will achieve in the next 90 minutes. Be ambitious.
• Below that, write down everything you will need in order to reach the goal, such as certain files, office supplies, books, etc.
• Assemble everything you listed as necessary.
• Turn off your phone, put a “Do not disturb” sign on your desk, and do whatever else is necessary to ensure you will not be interrupted. If necessary, go to a different location.
• Set a timer (such as a kitchen timer, or one that appears on your computer desktop, or even an alarm clock) to go off in 90 minutes.
• Go to work. Don’t interrupt yourself by checking for emails or phone messages, or anything else. Just do it.
• If you finish before the alarm goes off, go on to the next step. Otherwise, stop when the alarm rings.
• At the bottom of the sheet, jot down anything useful you’ve learned about what you achieved (or didn’t) in this Time Capsule. For instance, if you found you were distracted by the noise coming from the next cubicle, that may be a good indicator that for your next Time Capsule you need to relocate.

If you didn’t achieve everything you hoped to in that 90 minutes, you have the option of moving the undone portion into another Time Capsule. But first take a short break, do anything necessary that might otherwise distract you, and then repeat the process. It’s very important that you actually do the writing-down part of the process. That’s what helps you to really focus and to learn from what works and doesn’t work so that you become more skilful each time you use a Time Capsule. You can download a PDF of a Time Capsule form from the www.focusquick.com website and photocopy it.

How to panic

If you use all these methods you should never find it necessary to panic. But if a project does go off the rails despite your best efforts and requires a major effort for you to make the deadline, there are some constructive ways to shape your panic so it works for you instead of against you. As you’ll see, some of these are an extension of the methods you use in a MAD:

• Be ruthless in eliminating everything within the project that is not absolutely necessary. This is the time to trim any elements that may be considered extras. Now your goal is to deliver only the things you absolutely promised. If you have any vestiges of perfectionism, lose them. Until you get back on track, your new target is “good enough”.
• Be equally ruthless in eliminating everything outside the project that is not absolutely necessary. If this project hinges on you putting in more time, cancel all social occasions and defer other projects if you can do so without fatal consequences for them. Get only enough exercise and sleep to keep you alert and working well.
• Get help. Delegating even a few basic elements, such as proofreading, fact-checking, and even going out to keep your coffee supply constant can help. If the project is a team effort, create an “all hands on deck” atmosphere. Pizza, music and even some brief goofy games to keep everybody alert can help. Promise some rewards to those who are willing to make the same sacrifices you are. For example, if you’re asking people to work late, let them know that they’ll get generous compensatory time off when the panic is over.

These are extraordinary measures and should be reserved for exceptional times. If every project you do ends up in this kind of panic, you’re failing to plan. When the panic is over, take some time to analyse what you could have done differently to avoid the panic and how you will do those things next time around.

How to manage multiple projects

Few people have the luxury of working on only one project at a time. Indeed, many creative people get bored if they do. Whether by choice or by demand, it’s likely you have to juggle several projects at the same time. More often than you might think, it’s possible to leverage this to your advantage. To make that work, there are a few things you need to do:

• As mentioned previously, make a goal map for each of the projects, with indications of when you hope to achieve each step. That way you can align them to see the collection of tasks you need to do in a given week and on a given day.
• Bunch together similar activities and schedule yourself by activity rather than by project. If for two projects you need to do some research on the internet and to make some phone calls, you’ll work more efficiently if you do all the research and then make all the phone calls, rather than researching Project A, making the phone calls for Project A, then switching back to researching for Project B and then calls for Project B.
• Whatever you are learning or experiencing for one project, actively look for ways that you can apply it to your other projects. This doesn’t require that the projects be similar; in fact, often the most creative solutions come about when someone takes something that works in one context and applies it in another. For instance, the lessons of uniformity of processes that were developed by McDonald’s have now been applied to lots of other businesses.
• Use your down-time on one project to make progress on another one. When you reach a point where you can’t advance a project, perhaps because you’re waiting for input from someone else, it’s tempting to switch to some of your 80% low-value activity. If it’s time for a break, by all means take one, but otherwise this is a great time to look at your other goal maps and see what you can accomplish while waiting. Notice that this is not multitasking, which has been widely discredited. It turns out, maybe not too surprisingly, that when we try to do two things at once, we don’t do either of them as well as when we give our full attention to each.

How to time multiple projects

If you have a choice in the matter, it’s ideal to stagger projects so that they don’t have deadlines too close to each other. Despite your planning, you may find that the week or two before the deadline requires additional effort on your part. If that happens with two or more projects simultaneously, it’s a prescription for stress. Also, many people find that they prefer to have projects in different stages of activity, so that in a given week they may be in the planning phase of Project A, the early implementation of Project B and finishing up Project C.

Another way to align projects is to arrange them so that the times when you will be delegating much of your work on one are the times that require your intensive involvement in another.

What’s next

With these tools for reaching deadlines on target and applying your skills to multiple projects, you now have a complete suite of success techniques. Of course true success comes when all parts of your life are in balance, and that is the topic of the next chapter.

Website chapter bonus

At www.focusquick.com you will find downloadable PDF forms to use for Time Capsules. You may photocopy as many of these as you like.