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Staying Focused on the Project
Very often we begin a project with a
specific goal in mind, only to find ourselves sidetracked.
It happens every day in every way. The phone or doorbell
rings, one of the kids needs help, or your spouse hollers
something unintelligible from the basement. Anything
can and often does happen to break our concentration.
Murphy's Law is alive and kicking.
However, one can stay focused on the
current project. Focusing on the current project to
satisfactory completion will enable you to move on to
the next project, without that nagging realization that
you didn't finish this one. Returning to a previous
enterprise in order to tweak or fix something is actually
a waste of your time whereas, if you had been focused,
you wouldn't have to "do" it again. Isn't
it amazing how often it is that we have the time to
do it again, but often don't have the time to do it
right the first time?
In order to stay focused, one should
prepare an outline. Preparing a written outline is a
surefire way to stay focused on your project. You can
prepare different plans for separate projects, with
several projects ongoing at the same time. During some
projects you may encounter "waiting times",
for any number of reasons. Having different project
outlines available will ensure that "waiting time"
does not necessarily mean "wasted time".
When writing an outline, it's important
to cover each aspect of your project, from start to
finish. Always ask and answer the Who, What, Where,
When and How questions. This may sound elementary, even
redundant, but it works. And no-one can fault what consistently
works.
While preparing your outline, ideas
will pop into your head. The "what ifs", and
"could be's" will enable you to see a great
many possibilities to incorporate into your project.
Or not. Whether or not you use those ideas will determine
the completed product. Those ideas and their quality
may or may not be incorporated into the final product,
but having those ideas now is certainly better than
wishing you had planned for them, when it's too late.
You may need to revisit some aspect of your outline.
It's much easier and less costly to revise the plan,
than to revise the project after beginning. An outline
will enable you to "see around corners", so
to speak. To look ahead and foresee possible problems.
It all comes from writing it down. Most of us don't
plan to fail, but very often we fail to plan. Failing
to plan is tantamount to planning to fail.
Your outline doesn't need to be fancy.
Depending upon the intricacy of your project, a numbered
or bulleted list may serve your purposes. Of course,
the more intricate your project, the more intricate
your outline will become. You can even incorporate check
boxes, so that when those distractions come, as they
usually do, you'll know exactly where you stopped.
Your outline should flow from beginning
to end just as if you were actually working on the project.
This will help you keep the various phases in perspective.
You may need to plan the various phases in detail. These
phase plans will become part of your overall plan. For
the purposes of building your outline, pretend you're
building a house. The foundation would naturally come
first, then the walls, finally the roof. Your outline
should follow this "building code". All worthwhile
structures follow this example. The fleshing out of
your outline would be the same as the landscaping and
decorating of your house. Save them for last. In other
words, start with the basics: What, When, Where, Why
and How, (the foundation). Then move on to the tools,
resources and knowledge, (the walls). Next comes the
finish (the roof).
The "outline" stage of your
project is where you'll do most of the learning required
to reach a successful conclusion of your project. For
example: What tools do you need? Where will you find
those tools? How much do they cost? What resources can
you find to help you? What resources do you have? Where
can you go, or who can you see to gain the necessary
know-how? These questions and many more need answering
before you can expect to be successful in your project.
When you ask yourself these questions and get them answered,
often you'll find the project is within your capabilities.
When you write down and follow your plan, one step at
a time, the project becomes less daunting. The longest
journey begins with one step. When you write your outline
and re-read it a few times, your memory will be "unlocked"
and sometimes you'll be amazed at what you already knew.
Now you're ready to go back and flesh
out your outline. (The landscaping and decorating.)
This is where you can get bogged down with the details
if you lose sight of the "big picture". Take
your time with the details; after all, quality is also
part of your project. But put together the details in
such a way that they can be changed. This is an outline,
not a plan carved in stone. You can make revisions,
additions, deletions, substitutions and corrections.
It’s easier to make those changes now rather than
later.
Open ended projects have a tendency
to stay "open". So unless your project is
collecting Manchurian artifacts, or some such, it should
have an end date or time. You may need to extend the
completion date or time, but you'll be much closer to
the end if you have a completion schedule, than if you
don't.
With the outline you've created, you
can go on to create a formal plan with all the diagrams,
drawings, measurements, etc. All an outline really does
is give you a starting place. If your project is fairly
simple, maybe this is all you need to use as a guide
to finish your project. In any case, you now have that
first step.
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