It used to be, when you were in school, that if you had a big project and you did an all nighter because you procrastinated the worst that could happen was that you’d get a bad grade. But if you’re a business owner working on a big project you can’t afford to do all nighters at the last minute, at least not if you want to succeed at business. Most business owners I know aren’t chronic procrastinators, but its still easy to get behind on a big project, especially when you have a variety of other tasks to do.
I find it effective to break big projects into chunks. I’ll write the next step of a big project on my white board and I won’t worry about the rest of it, until that chunk is completed. By focusing on chunks, I’m able to get the project done without stressing about how much I have to do. Additionally, I always feel accomplished when I wipe an item off my whiteboard.
You can apply this approach to smaller projects as well. You may not need to chunk them down, but approaching them as tasks that you have outlined on your whiteboard can make it much easier to get them out of the way, so you can focus on your bigger projects without distraction. You can put dates by the items if that helps you accomplish them. I find that dates can be more of a distraction and stresser, but some people find them useful.
I find management of projects easier when I can see the list of things I need to do, and when that list isn’t in a virtual medium such as email. It’s easier to ignore email than to ignore the whiteboard which has a physical presence that can’t easily be ignored.
