Recently I am working diligently on improving my planning skills, which includes me inventing a giant 6-page excel file dedicated for short-term planning for daily task. Through experimenting & improving I got tons of insights into my own working habit as well as a lot of pit falls that I encountered in the past when I did not-so-extensive plans. Here I am going to write down one particularly important insight about planning big or multi-step projects.
I always procrastinate at the face of a bulky large project, because it just seems to be very time consuming and happiness-draining. The habitual way of thinking is that I need to spend a whole day or a whole week finishing doing this project, and at this day or this week I will do nothing else but this project, and then I will get it completely done and out of my mind.
This habitually assumed way is not very effective or realistic in real life because:
1. Naturally there will be other tasks to be finished at the same time, it's hard to find whole empty day/week to focus on one project.
2. Keeping focus on one project is very boring/emotionally draining/mentally exhausting
3. Very importantly, some parts of the project will need you to wait, for example, you might need external help/input, you might wait for the purchase of some item, or you need to wait for the response of an email, etc. So it's not realistic to expect to finish a project continuously in a lump some. This is especially true when you are cooperating with other people and there will always be schedule conflicts and so on.
4. At most times, a project will need revisions and modifications even after it's finished, actually how good the project will largely depend on how many revisions there are. There are very few occasions of "getting it done and out of the mind".
As obviously wrong as my habitual thinking seems to be, I spent so much time in the past either agonizing/panicking over the impossibility of a large project or procrastinating until the last minute and ending up with a crud & not-so-satisfying result.
The way to solve this problem is to just shift the perspective of looking at the project as whole & un-breakable, instead to break the project down into small cumulative steps (some times different levels of steps), and disperse these steps into daily activities depending on my daily schedule.
A very vivid example: I need to finish my thesis before next Monday. My previous plan would be put "Thesis" to my daily task and don't know what to do with it when I come to this item. This time, at the first day I spent about 30 minutes to just plan. I break the task to:
0. Prep: locate the draft and the paper associated with the thesis, as well as all the data and figures.
1. edit the text of the draft
1a, edit the text of the draft by incorporating the paper that my boss wrote
1b, edit the grammar and fluency of the draft
2. edit the figure
2a, incorporating figures from the paper
2b, incorporating figures not from the paper
2c, write/update figure legends
3. edit the format
3a, citation of reference and figure
3b, font, space etc.
I added this breakdown plan to an extra sheet of my giant planning table as a reference, and then I put Thesis 0& 1a to the date of today. So today I will only focus on working on the preparation and editing the text of thesis based on the paper.
Then it much reasonably easier than just a lump big "Thesis" in my task.
But when it comes to work on Theis-1a I still find it very challenging because just editing the text of a whole thesis draft seems a big project. Then I decided to break it down even more:
Theis 1a:
1.1) Read thesis draft Abstract
1.2) Read the papers abstract
1.3) Make a final abstract by combination
2.1) Read thesis draft introduction
2.2) read the papers introduction
2.3) Make the combined introduction
3) same thing on "materials and methods"
4) same thing on "results and discussion"
5) same thing on "conclusion"
And I delve into it and finished 1.1-1.3 in 15 minutes. and then finished 2.1-2.3 in another 40 minutes. At this stage the task is infinitely less stressful. And the wonderful thing is, at this stage I can work really quickly because I don't have to worry about grammar or format because that's scheduled to be corrected later.
By doing the breakdown, essentially I take away the stress and get to focus on one particular task at one time thus much more efficient. (instead of keep changing the format and sentence positioning and grammar repetitively).
Even more importantly, there are times when I over-schedule for one day, if it is before I would just panic and become really guilty for not finishing my task, (and because of stress brought by the guilt, I have a larger tendency to procrastinate ). In this case, I would just finish the task to maybe just 3.1, and then keep on the next day from 3.2, since wrong estimation of time needed for a particular task is very common and there is no reason to feel bad about it.
This way could work for any multi-step task. Any daunting big project could be break down to infinitely easy and small steps, and could be achieved with persistence and patience over a period of time. I believe this is a much more efficient way in the long run, and it take away a lot of the anxiety and pain that I always feel about a big project.
The philosophy behind this skill is also very thought provoking, like in the old Chinese idiom of "水滴石穿" which means drips of water can penetrate a rock over time. Despite the common cultural emphasis on talent, enthusiasm and interest, persistency and tenacity are equally if not more important trait to have. Plus this is a really cool way of facing big challenges as well.
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