Wade Armstrong

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Lazy Productivity: Don't Get Ahead of Schedule

Posted Monday January 29, 2007 in Productivity

A friend cancelled our plans to grab a drink the other day. “I have too much to do,” she explained. “Behind on all your projects, huh?” I asked her, and that’s when I got a productivity-related shock: “I’m not behind, but I’m not ahead either, and I need to be ahead.” Yes, we’re all tightly-scheduled. No, being ahead in all your projects is not the answer. In fact, the first step to becoming more productive is to stop trying to get ahead of schedule.

Now, it feels nice to be ahead of schedule. For many people, being ahead removes worry, because they don’t need to worry about future schedule slips — they have slack in the system. But this kind of relief is false.

• If it’s easy to get ahead of schedule, then your schedule could be tighter, or you could be doing more. In this case, you’re paying for getting ahead by being less productive overall.
• If it’s hard to get ahead of schedule, then you’re sacrificing something — going out, working on another project — to get ahead. If it’s an easy decision to sacrifice these things, then why didn’t you plan to sacrifice these things when you were making the initial schedule? By not incorporating these sacrifices into your initial schedule, you planned to be less productive than you could be; the activities you sacrificed could have been replaced with other, more worthwhile projects, or you could have shortened your project’s planned length and gotten on to the next thing more quickly.

A lot of people also work to get ahead of schedule because they know they’ll fall behind schedule in the future. If you know you’ll be behind, you’re just planning poorly. What will cause you to fall behind? Is some part of your schedule unrealistic? Working to get ahead here also provides false relief:

• If, during the planning phase, you know that you’ll fall behind at some point in your project, you’ve found a flaw in your plan. Either give yourself more time or find some trade-offs that’ll let you get your project done in the time allotted. These trade-offs could include working longer hours or accepting that your end product won’t include some desired features, but at least you’ll be actively deciding what to do and not just casually letting things slip.
• If, during the planning phase you know you have excess slack in some part of your schedule and can spend that elsewhere, you need to actively decide where to spend that slack, not reflexively decide to spend it on the project at hand. Is there another project that needs more time? Is there a value to getting the project done faster? Do you need more fun with your friends to preserve your sanity? Weigh these things and build a decision into your plan.
• If, during project execution, you find that you’re ahead of or behind schedule, that’s natural — just actively revisit the trade-offs you’re making and see if you can pull time from, or give time to, another project. Then build those changes into an updated calendar and know what your schedule is.

None of this is to say that plans shouldn’t have slack — it’s important to build in an allowance for everyday blahs and normal delays. But, once you’ve planned for what should be expected, give yourself a break. Stay on schedule, and you’ll get things done. Don’t abandon potentially useful projects just to get ahead of schedule on something that’s top-of-mind, the payoff’s not there.