Burn Rubber Early
 

Let's say it is a cold, overcast Thursday morning. You get into work early, because you know the next few days are going to be very tight. You've got a major piece of work that is due on Tuesday morning, plus you have other smaller bits of work around the big one, which cannot be postponed either. On the biggie, you know it's going to take a huge effort to get it done with – just work as usual is not going to make the cut. Right this morning, just looking at all the stuff you need to get done, you know your weekend's gone. So what do you do?

I'll tell you what I do. I absolutely bust my gut on the first day, i.e. today. As soon as I realize I am in an overload situation (which we all of course try to avoid getting into, but they still happen from time to time), I set myself an insane internal target for ‘getting over the hump'. My reasoning is fairly simple and consists of two basic points:

a)The chances are that I am going to have to kick into overdrive, perhaps put in a ‘night-out' at least one night out of the next three. Why not do it today and coast later, rather than live with the tension throughout?

b) Each day that passes when you are not back into your comfort zone, your stress levels increase. If the backlog is not clear by Monday afternoon, you have a double whammy – you still have loads of work to do, and you are now close to panic – which increases the chance of errors.

I apply the same rule to longer projects – stuff on which there may not be an immediate crunch situation. The first phase of the project is where you really need to burn rubber. Once you have covered a lot of ground early, established your equation with your clients or your senior management, things become a lot easier. In the early phases of a new assignment, there is a lot of uncertainty and anxiety floating around – no-one knows exactly what to expect, how the assignment will work out etc. If you can put in those extra hours in this most difficult phase and do more than is expected, everyone settles down and lets you manage the show subsequently.

Very rarely, I sometimes go reverse – put my head down, put some effort to get all the small bits out of the way, so that I am only left with the big, bad piece. This approach clears the clutter – but carries with it the risk that you may be left short at the end on the most important deliverable. I guess you could take this approach if you are reasonably confident about what you need to do on the biggie. If it is only a question of hours and effort, you could always put those hours in later. But if it is not just hours, but complex thinking that needs to go in, where you are uncertain about whether it will all work out, then I'd say tackle it first while you are fresh.

In a way it's like chasing a target in one-day cricket. Pick your slog overs – the first 10 or the last 10.

 

Category: Personal Productivity | Author: Sriram Subramanian