The Project That Ate My Life: Lessons Learned From Sloppy Work Habits

This week, I took on a freelance PROJECT. Please note the use of uppercase bold, to denote that the imposing, dominating, swallowing-up the space around it nature of the beast.

Curiously, this was supposed to have been a project; small, quick, subtle, undemanding, not taking much attention.

Supposed to be, could have been, should have been, but *wasn’t*… and it *wasn’t* largely because of my own sloppy work habits.

As a result, it ate an entire week of my life.

Straight up, without any salt, pepper, or garnish.

Here’s what happened:

A friend thoughtfully offered me a sweet simple little freelance web design job that he was too busy to work on just now.

“It’s trivial,” he says. “It should take you an afternoon, tops.” Since I’m not as familiar with code as he is, I knew it would take me a bit more than an afternoon — but it seemed simple and straight forward and within my skill set. So I said yes, and dove in head first, as is my habit - no prep work, no plan, no organizing, no flow chart, no task list.

I just started work, and it took over my life.

The thing turned out to be a bit more complex and specific than I’d originally anticipated. The images I needed to find were far more specific than I’d originally understood. There was specific copy I needed to find space for. There were logos to be considered. The colors needed to be more neutral than I’d anticipated, and there needed to be far more variation between the styles than expected.

Still, none of this should have been a problem — except that my sloppy approach to it complicated matters immensely.

Since readers seem to like reading about how I screw up, I thought I’d share some of the lessons I learned by taking note of said sloppy habits, and how they affected my week.

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1. Assess the job. Is it a big or small job? Is it a task,or a project? Once the question is answered, treat thejob accordingly.

This is one of the main points in Getting Things Done. With GTD, if an actionable task takes less than 2 minutes, you do it RIGHT THEN, when it comes to your attention. If it takes more than 2 minutes, it becomes a project, with it’s own planning, time management, and so on.

At *best*, without any issues or corrections done to it… this project would have taken me a day and a half. That’s just a WEE bit over 2 minutes. Further — not a single actionable step could have been done in under 2 minutes. And yet… I approached it as if it were one of those “do it now” 2 minute tasks.

Since this was rightfully a decent sized project, I should have treated it as a plate-to-spin, rather than focusing all of my attention on it, while other projects wobbled and crashed. So… next time? Assess the job before starting it.

2. Double the time/effort estimate. That number is the minimum of time and effort the project requires. Double it again, for what the time it will LIKELY wind up taking.

I admit it… My time estimates are lousy. At my most accurate, my estimates are best-case-scenario, where I hit no unexpected problems, have no corrections, no interruptions, and my perfectionism is on vacation. I estimate time as if I had nothing else going on in my life, and can stay entirely focused on the task at hand.

That works for really small short jobs, but the longer a task runs, the more problems crop up, and the more outside interruptions demand my attention, and the more likely my brain is to short out.

In the case of this particular project, it’s taking about 3 times my original estimate.

3. Projects should fit *into* my schedule, not determine my schedule.

When you work a “real job”, your employers generally determine your hours, and you fit the rest of your life around it. The job itself provides structure. But as you move up the management ladder, or when you work for yourself, you determine the schedule you work.

Since most of my projects are of my own making.. I tend to treat any outside projects as if they were a “real job” — they take priority, and I let the rest of my life fall into place around them. The trouble is that this leads to skewed priorities. And since there is no real “away” from work time, it allows the outside projects to eat my life.

This week? I let the outside work determine my schedule. Interestingly, if I’d applied #1, #2, this wouldn’t have happened. By treating a large project as a small, immediate task, and underestimating the time it would take, there was no way to schedule appropriately, even if I had tried.

4. Productivity methods apply to outside projects, too. They’re just another Plate to Spin, another “Thing to Get Done”.

Just like outside projects should fit into my schedule, they should fit into my productivity methods, too. That’s why the structure is there …. to .. well.. structure things. Systems like GTD or 20in/80out or my own productivity plate-spinning don’t just apply to my own work. In fact, they don’t just apply to work, at all… they are methods for structuring * life.*

There’s not much point in having a productivity structure in place if I’m going to ignore it every time an outside project comes up. Projects may be “outside” in that they work doesn’t originate with me, but they should not be outside my structure.

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These aren’t the only lessons I learned, but they’re probably the most foundational. Since I promised to write shorter posts, and this is already long, I’ll stop here, and save the others for tomorrow. And for the record? The-Project-That-Ate-My-Life is NOT on tomorrow’s schedule!

MindTWEAK: “Every problem has a gift for you in its hands” Richard Bach.
“Does it come with a gift receipt?” Me.