As we are living through a challenging period, and while some work may be limited, it’s still good to know proper skills like project planning in uncertain circumstances. In this week’s episode, the ProductivityCast team discusses the challenges we face when project planning in uncertain circumstances and ways to push through, along with tools to help.
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In this Cast | Project Planning...
Ray Sidney-Smith
Augusto Pinaud
Art Gelwicks
Francis Wade
Show Notes | Project Planning in Uncertain Circumstances
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Voiceover Artist 0:00 Are you ready to manage your work and personal world better to live a fulfilling productive life, then you've come to the right place productivity cast, the weekly show about all things productivity. Here, your host Ray Sidney-Smith and Augusto Pinaud with Francis Wade and Art Gelwicks.
Raymond Sidney-Smith 0:17
And Welcome back, everybody to productivity cast, the weekly show about all things personal productivity, I'm Ray Sidney Smith.
Augusto Pinaud 0:24 I am Augusto Pinaud.
Francis Wade 0:26I'm Francis Wade.
Art Gelwicks 0:27 And I'm Art Gelwicks.
Ray Sidney-Smith 0:26Welcome, gentlemen, and welcome to our listeners to this episode of Productivity Cast. We are going to be talking today about project planning. And this is a topic near and dear to my heart. But it's a topic that actually Augusto brought up in the context of where we currently are in these uncertain times. And so I'm going to turn this over to you, Augusto, to kind of tell our listeners what we're going to talk about today.
Augusto Pinaud 0:49You know, with all these changes on the everyday reality that we have we one of the things that come really tied up with the principles in the Getting Things Done book is the Weekly Review and really tied up with the Weekly Review comes project planning, one of the things that are interesting with those two things is you get into a certain routine on what you're required to make that project planning happen to really get yourself into that deep thinking mode, same as wisdom, weekly review. And with all this disruption, people don't be able to go to the office or connect to the big, you know, screen on the on the conference room to do this deep thinking, all these things has been disrupted. So what I was thinking was, let's bring this concept back and let's remind people or help people into re envision how to change that in this condition to improve what you were having before or at least in the worst case scenario to be able to give you tools that will allows you to get back to that place where you were doing before. Project Planning, though, we said numbers were saying and the length we think this is going to be, there is no margin to say, well, that's fine. If it's a week, we can say, let's not do project planning. But as this is going to be a lot more longer than a week, we need to have all that we need that to happen. We need all that to to be a reality. So I hope that what we can do is to get all this done and get really all is working
Art Gelwicks 2:30when we talk about this whole project planning part of it. I mean, you look at systems like getting things done. You look at many of the other systems, they talk about establishing a fixed time each week to do this, whether it's your daily planning, your weekly planning, whatever. And I think one of the challenges that Agusta is bringing up is the fact that we start to count on that as part of a habit I had prior to all of this chaos going on. I had a very clear habit established, I would go into work I would sit down and at 745 in the morning, I would actually be sitting down with my notebooks, and doing my daily review with my coffee and my banana. So that process became an integral step in my workflow and my project planning. Well, this all changed shifting to a home base. Now I don't have the commute, which sets up the timeline that puts me in the right spot to start doing my daily review at 745. So I had to rethink that. And I'm still actually struggling with that a little bit, my morning doesn't start quite the same way. I'm still trying to find that right spot for that to fit in. So when we look at these types of project planning challenges, and we look at our system, we have to look at not only how our system becomes our point of constancy when it comes to being able to get the work done, but how do we integrate with that system in a changed environment? I could use a similar situation If it wasn't something that is not so Earth shaking, if you're just traveling, maybe you're on vacation for a week. Well, does that mean your your process unravels? Because you're in a different location? Your timing is different, your materials are different, the surroundings are different, or can you adapt what you're doing to that new location in that new environment at something we really have to take into consideration because our I know I speak for myself in this but I'm sure I speak for other people to our processes can fall apart, if we don't have that consistent, repetitive habitual motion of making them work so that we can actually get work done.
Ray Sidney-Smith 4:40Yeah, one of my central theses in and arguments in the productivity world is that our worlds are the sum of our routines. And when those routines are upset, that really does fundamentally degrade your productivity. And I'm always interested in seeing how people people operate in the face of being flexible with those routines and how flexible routines can be. And there's only so much they can bend until they break. And, and so I'm I think this is a really timely discussion. And the goal here is to figure out what some of the challenges people are facing that you're hearing people are facing. And let's have a discussion on those I hear from you Art, that the change of environment and the environmental cues that that our routine provides is is one major thing how about you will Augusto what are some of the challenges that you're hearing from others?
Augusto Pinaud 5:41You know, the the last of of that? I agree on the routine, obviously, but also the last of the tools. You know, I've been dealing this week with a lot of clients who have been calling and I can stand having one screen and some of us are, you know, really geeky. I have more screens that I'm willing to count on. In front of me right now but for most people they're coming from work they're having a laptop so they move from having one screen or two or external monitoring to the laptop screen or more and now they're dealing with a laptop and because this was not planned there is no backup plan for many people and or they are used to connect to go to the conference room connect to the massive thing and get that time or even got silent you know, Seams as as we were discussing last week, you know, being able to get silence to do this thinking process. And all that is you know, for many people all those routines hold those tools are out so do you need to get back and slow down for a second and get back to the basics. What do Did you know how to connect maybe to the TV in the living room? Can you do it in the living room? What what what are the things that you think are going to make a difference or you use to use that you can now get creative? So you can do it at home. And you can get somehow that same quality of review or project planning.
Francis Wade 7:08I noticed the same or a similar drop in productivity that Ray mentioned, when I whenever I've moved, I think Ray could probably share and Augusto so you guys can share your latest experience, the habits and the routines and the practices that were automatic or somewhat baked into the environment. And when the environment changes, such as in a move, all of a sudden, they need to be recreated all over again. And there is a I think for me, it takes about three months for me to figure out which ones have fallen through the cracks and like one of the ones that always causes a problem in the beginning is taking out the garbage. So taking out the garbage for me is is not my favorite chore. It's one my wife likes to remind me to do and it's easier when I've lived in the same place for a while and it's no become a part of some kind of routine. Either might go to bed routine, you know, my wake up in the morning and exercise routine, but when it's baked into some other some other activity, it's it's easy. And then I move and then that link gets broken and all of a sudden, the garbage hasn't been taken out any longer. They have been around for two years now. And it's that's still it's not that I haven't gotten back into a routine. But the problem is that we don't know which routines are going to be broken necessarily. It's more a matter of, hey, what's that smell. So after the fact then after the problem has been caused, then it's the defect tells us that there's something that's missing.
