Getting Everything Done

Do you ever feel like you are so far behind you'll never catch up?

I like to take on interesting projects and they always take way longer to complete than I expect. That's a recipe for always being behind.

Speaking of projects taking longer than expected, one major organization has become very accurate at estimating how long it will take to complete a project or task. I can't reveal the organization's name because this information was given to me in confidence. One thing I can tell you is that this is a non-profit government agency.

Here is how the system that is so accurate works. It's simple. They estimate how long the project will take and then they double the number and up the time increment.

Let me explain. If they estimate that something will take three days, they double the number to six and change from days to weeks. If they think it will take two weeks, they change it to four months. I think you can see how the system works.

Back in the days when I was an engineer designing computers, the company I worked for required us to turn in a time card every Friday showing how many hours we had spent on each of the projects we were working on. In theory that sounds like a good idea, but in practice, it was a waste of time.

Here's why. If I was designing a memory board (back then computer memory was a whole board, not just a chip) and the project was taking longer than the head of the department estimated that it would take, I was instructed to stop charging hours to that project and start charging hours to customer support, or something that had hours left in the budget.

On the next computer design project management could look at the numbers and see how long it took to design a memory board on the last project and this would help them decide how much time to allot to designing a memory board for this new computer. Accounting spent a lot of time totaling everyone's time cards, but the end results were total garbage.

That company eventually got out of the computer design business. I wonder why.

Back to projects taking longer than expected and always being behind

I'm sure I will be working until lunch time on the day of my funeral because I will have a project that I want to finish.

Warren Buffet gets a lot of projects presented to him. The way he keeps from getting bogged down is that he turns down most opportunities that are presented to him. Here's how he handles it. He said that if it's not a "Hell Yes," then it's a NO.

Bottom line: If I would adopt Warren Buffet's technique, I'm sure I would stop taking on so many projects. I think that's what I'm going to do--just as soon as I finish all of the projects I have started.

Another way to look at being behind is that since I'm retired and I'm the one setting the schedule (and I'm free to change the schedule any time I want to), I should always finish projects right on time.