Smaller Pieces, Please!

[NotAChevy]

How often have you found yourself in this situation?

Your boss has given you a big project and told you it's due in 2 weeks. No other instructions, no other help.

It's totally up to you to get it in on time. As the sweat beds roll down your temple, you feel your anxiety levels go through the roof. You know you can't go back to your boss and beg for help, so you jump in. But, where the heck do you start?

Once I get myself less anxious (by using deep breathing exercises), I start breaking down the project into smaller “bites”, or pieces, and giving myself a due date for the whole project 3 days before I have to turn it in. Then, I give me a due date for each smaller piece.

I know those with ADHD are more prone to stress out over this situation, and delay starting until the absolute last minute, then we fly through it like Superman flying through the sky to save the planet Earth. But, to or prevent this, and the ulcer coming, I've learned to break it down into smaller pieces.

Working on smaller pieces reduces my anxiety, allows me to better focus, and to do a better job on the project.

In order to keep myself organized while completing the project, I use Asana. It's a free app that gives us a lot of flexibility, and it's super easy to use. I've also seen folks successfully use the Notes app pre-installed on all iPhone & Apple products. I write down the project due date and all the smaller bites due dates, and I can even keep notes related to the project.

With Asana, it's even easy to collaborate with others. I've even seen it used for projects a husband and wife are working on together, where each person can assign things to the other, or both people can see where the other is within the project.

I use this technique for all my projects- personal and professional and have noticed my success rate, and completion rate, increase exponentially.

How you complete a big project?

[STEM_Dad]

One of my first times working on a project solo (about 3 years before my ADHD diagnosis), my boss didn't give a time table.

I was doing something I'd never done, and was trying to recreate what someone had previously done (but they'd left the organization and didn't leave any instructions), but for new equipment.

So, there were a lot of unknowns. Oh, and there was no budget to get help from the vendor that the equipment came from and whose software I had to program it into

Again, my boss gave me no timeline. (And his boss, who was the 'sponsor' of the project, gave no timeline, but added on the expectation that I create step by step documentation of the setup process...detailed enough that a non-techy like him could do it.)

It took 6 weeks. It was complicated by the fact that the first machine that I tested the process on was faulty, but I didn't figure that out until I'd spent 2 weeks checking every aspect of the process and the documentation that I was creating, and had gotten two or three assurances from the vendor that the machine checked out.

...

My boss later wrote me up for a number of things, including that the project took too long...

...the process that he never gave me a timeline for when he assigned it.

~~~~~

I learned two things from that experience:

1) Some people are just jerks...

2) If they don't tell you when they want it done by, then ask.

To do that project right, I should have had a development budget (to work with an engineer or developer from the vendor), and I should have had more clear expectations than, "make it so simple that even a Director can do it."

Let's just file that under "Unrealistic Expectations" and "Lessons Learned "...

[STEM_Dad in reply to STEM_Dad]

Oh, and some "project management" training or coaching might have been helpful. (I was the technician who had been working his way up from the bottom, not the manager with an MBA.)

[AimeeWinks]

Anybody reading this - if you have trouble figuring out HOW to break down a large task into smaller ones, or what the smaller tasks should look like, try goblin.tools - it comes in an app version and you can use it in a browser. It breaks down the task for you and you can filter how much help you think you need doing this (i.e., the more help you filter as needing, the smaller the tasks get, however the task list gets longer and can be overwhelming).