When it snows I am the one who has to shovel us out.
My husband had a heart attack ten years ago and the doctor told him there were just two things he could never do again, shovel snow and rake leaves. Hooray for me!
This morning I went out at 6am and cleaned my car off and started clearing the driveway, (for what will be only the first time today, since it is snowing again.)
Shoveling out our two vehicles and clearing the driveway is a big task. Our house sits on top of a hill, in the woods, approximately 150-feet back from the road. The driveway looks like a giant, crooked letter ‘Y’. We can’t use a snowblower because the driveway consists mainly of dirt, gravel, and dead, wet, decaying leaves. We don’t have a snowplow, so if we want to get out at some point and time it’s all up to me.
I started by shoveling a path from the front door to my car, then around my car, a path down one side of the driveway and then back up the other. Then I randomly chose small, square patches to clear. I worked at the bottom by the street for awhile then walked to the top to clear a ten by ten square, then a path down the middle. I worked like this for a few hours until the driveway was clear.
While shoveling I realized that I approach all of my projects like this. I have worked like this for years without realizing it. I don’t need to be better organized or follow someone else’s ‘how-to’ steps. Whether it is writing an essay or remodeling the living room, I already have my own how-to steps for project management that work just great for me.
I’ve used today’s snow removal project to clarify my personal project management steps:
Sandy’s Approach to Project Management
• Name the goal (snow-free driveway)
• Identify what needs to be done (remove the snow)
• Outline the project, lay out the boundaries (shovel a path from the door to the car and down both sides of the driveway)
• Break the goal down into smaller tasks (small ten by ten squares)
• Tackle each smaller task one at a time (move around, little sections, one at a time)
• Work based on my energy level (shovel around the car before hot chocolate and the heavy snow at the bottom of the driveway after hot chocolate)
• Take breaks (hot chocolate)
• Switch between tasks that have to be done, but may not be that enjoyable and the ‘fun’ tasks (shoveling to clean the driveway and shoveling a path to the door that looks like the letter ‘S”)
• Pull it all together, clean it up (remove any little piles of snow left behind)
• And then I’m done (reward time…I get to write and play the rest of the day)
Even though I have used this steps for years, now that I have listed them in black and white I can use them more effectively to manage a multitude of projects from writing to home remodeling.
How about you? How do you work? How do you approach your to-do list, projects, goals or dreams? Have you clarified them and written them down? What projects lately have you used this method to succeed?
If you haven’t identified a process that works for you, try my steps on for size. Tweak them to your own style. Write down what works and what doesn’t. Pretty soon you will discover your own how-to steps for project management and will be surprised at just how much you can accomplish.
Share your thoughts, your story. Comment on this blog or email me at: sandy@thedreamingcafe.com
