What To Do When You Are Stuck On Your Project With A Looming Deadline

There’s a trick I have learnt when working on projects of varying sizes, that is so simple, I always feel ashamed to use it. And I keep forgetting about it, until I am halfway through planning and agonising over a project, petrified I will miss the deadline and kicking myself for not getting my act together earlier. This trick always works, and yet each time I have to remind myself of it.

What is the trick? Low-hanging fruit (LHF). Doing the easy stuff first.

Let me explain.

If you are one of those people who get assigned a task - a report, a presentation, planning for an event - and immediately start working on it, and get it done efficiently, without stress, ahead of time, well then I am not sure I like you very much (just kidding!), and you are definitely within the minority. Most of us, being human, get a project, feel slightly overwhelmed either by the fact that its new and outside our comfort zone, or that the deadline is an impossible one, or both. We then panic, get a cup of coffee, panic a bit more, and then set aside time for doing the work, and maybe if we are feeling optimistic, maybe even dash off a quick plan or outline or to-do list for what needs to be done. Then, either reverting to earlier-mentioned panic mode looking at what needs to be done, or feeling overly optimistic looking at your neatly written-out plan, you put off actually starting on the project.

Does this sound familiar?

Well this is definitely the process I go through for every project, even ones that I take on voluntarily. I then keep putting off working on it, until my stress level is through the roof, and then when I finally sit down to work, I find that some part of that wasn’t so bad. The easy parts. Not all of it, but some. And I ask myself - why didn’t I do this portion earlier? It would have reduced how much I needed to cram into a late night session, or complete between 5-6pm on Friday because its due at the end of the week, and I hadn’t gotten around to it earlier.

I am sure everyone has heard of the concept of low-hanging fruit - in fact, you’re probably telling yourself right now, duh. Heard that one before. But just because it’s simple doesn’t mean it’s not effective.

Case Study 1

I was going with a colleague to attend a seminar in Hong Kong, and I only found out two days before my trip that we were both supposed to present. My topic was one I had no experience or knowledge of, and understandably I was freaking out. Together with my boss, we came up with an outline for the presentation, and I was supposed to work on it that afternoon / evening, and send it to him for review. He would make any needed changes the next morning, hours before our flight.

I had an outline, but I was still panicky, as I had to do research and learn enough about a brand new topic to make a coherent presentation. I sat down on my desk and looked realistically at how much time I had, and knew that it would be a long night. I decided to tackle the outline in order from easy to hard, and not chronologically. For the slides I knew needed more research and thinking, I simply created placeholders.

Simply deciding to first create a structure (with placeholders), and tackling the easy slides first, gave me a burst of momentum that carried me through to the medium-level ones. Before I knew it, I was done with about 70% of the presentation. Granted the remaining 30% was difficult, and I needed some input from another colleague - and thus the last 2-3 slides took me almost as long as the first 10. But, because I had decided to jump past the tough stuff in the beginning, I was able to save myself at least an hour or so of fretting and procrastinating, which usually accompanies any difficult project. Well, depending on the length of the project, that could be several hours.

Result: I was done with the presentation ahead of the deadline, and I received effusive praise from my boss. I also positioned myself as an expert in an entirely new subject, which helped me with subsequent projects.

What made the difference: saving one or more hours diving straight in and completing the easy parts, saved me from staying up half the night, which would have ensured lower quality work and missing my deadline.

Case Study 2

In 2012, I worked on a research project that stretched to many months, in which my role expanded and shifted over time. Due to various factors, I was roped in at the last minute to write a report that would be part of the project, and given 3 weeks to do the research and write a draft, when the other reports for the project had been written over a period of many months. The overall project deadline was looming, and I had to do the research and write at least a first draft pretty quickly.

Although when I was first assigned the task I was optimistic, as I analysed truly how much there was to do, I reverted to my usual scenario of panic and procrastination.

Luckily, the report followed a standard format, and I had to plug in my work in a pre-existing outline. Again given the lack of time, I decided to apply the LHF strategy. The report required answering 11 questions, some of which were short, and some of which had multiple parts. Moreover, not all the information was readily available, and due to the time-crunch, I didn’t have the time to send enquiries for information.

I decided to go over the questions and mentally note which ones were the easiest to answer - i.e. with existing information, or which needed only short answers. I also noted which ones would be difficult due to complexity or lack of information, and decided to table those for now.

I made a simple table - listing the questions and my level of progress - partial, done, or not done. Using my LHF tactic, I managed to get a lot of partials and some dones within a few days. At each stage, I re-applied the tactic - as I was done with one section, I would ask myself, what’s the next easiest one? And work on that one.

Sure, ‘easy’ here is relative, since none of them were truly easy, but by giving myself permission to skip around and just add snippets here and there to the report, I ended up with a 60-page report. That turned out to be only a first draft, as I was given more time to add more information, but using the LHF tactic I accomplished far more than if I had plodded through one section at a time, getting increasingly frustrated with my lack of progress and wanting to give up.

As both these case studies reveal, the LHF tactic doesn’t reduce the workload or make it happen magically. But it does do a few crucial things:

1.     A place to start - since sometimes starting is the most difficult part, the part we put off, this is crucial. Telling yourself you will only write the title page and create placeholders for the other slides helps to start - and before you know it, you have finished writing half the presentation.

2.     Provides progress - even if all you have done is the easy stuff, by making significant progress, your stress level goes down just looking at how much you have done, and makes it that much easier to accomplish the rest.

3.     Changes your attitude - knowing that you only have to do the ‘easy stuff’, you can feel the tension dissipating, and can sit down at your desk without trepidation, maybe even feeling optimistic and looking forward to it.

I hope you can apply this strategy to all your tasks and projects, and let me know how it goes in the comments.

28 Life Lessons I Learned In 28 Years

It’s my last hour of being 28 years old, and I decided to write down 28 lessons I learnt in the last 28 years.

1. It’s very important to be kind - you can always be kinder than someone and it can't hurt.

2. Happiness bought from things can be fleeting and doesn’t last.

3. That doesn’t mean that happiness can't be found in a tub of really good ice-cream - even if it lasts only a short while.

4. Your family is the most important possession you have, and you should treat them as such.

5. Friends can be family too, sometimes even better.

6. Having a mentor in life, and choosing this mentor, is one of the most important decisions you can make, so do it wisely and while you’re young, if possible.

7. It’s important to respect the beliefs of others.

8. It’s also important to be true to your own beliefs, and be able to talk about them openly.

9. Know yourself, as well as you can. That’s your best chance at happiness, and success.

10. Accept yourself completely, and know that’s the secret to getting others to accept you.

11. Cultivate compassion for others, even if and especially, if their suffering is something that you can't relate to, or if you think, they should stop whining already. You never know what it’s really like to be them / have their problems.

12. It’s far more important to complete one thing than to start many things.

13. Failure is another term for learning, so fail often, and fail fast. Make it a habit to fail as much as possible, and success won't be too far away.

14. When you help someone else, often you’re helped as well.

15. One of the greatest joys in life is persevering at a difficult goal and accomplishing it by yourself.

16. Having integrity in all your dealings helps you sleep better at night.

17. You must find an answer to the question of god and religion for yourself, and be happy in your answer, without feeling the need to judge everyone else for theirs.

18. Money and success is worth pursuing for many reasons, but becomes hollow as an end in itself.

19. It’s great to find work that you are passionate about, but equally important to find a way to create value everyday, in any small way.

20. It is easy to point fingers and see where others are to blame; not so easy to see our own faults. Making a study of our faults and working to improve ourselves is one of the biggest investments in our long-term happiness.

21. When something bothers us about someone, chances are it’s a habit or problem we are facing ourselves and are simply in denial.

22.  It’s easier to do what is fun than what is right, but often success and the ability to hold one’s head high lies in doing what’s right.

23.  There is always someone in every field who hasn’t had to work for it, for whom everything can come easy. Don’t dwell on their life, or complain about how unfair life is. Instead, focus on what steps you can take on your own path to success.

24. The stronger you are, the easier it is to be gentle.

25. Teaching someone else only helps you to learn better. This is true of school and of life.

26. Time passes by in a flash, and we only remember some of it. Thus, you won't remember the excruciating pain of working hard towards your goals, only the moments of success. Amnesia is on your side.

27. It’s important to save, but life is also too short not to have some treats.

28. Life is a serious business. And that’s why it’s important to make time for the little things - reading a great book, listening to soulful music, admiring a beautiful sunset. Live like you have all the time in the world, and like you have no time to waste. Yes that’s a paradox, but isn’t that what life’s really about?

An Ode To Evernote: 5 Ways Evernote Has Changed My Life

I mentioned Evernote as one of my favourite apps in this post in December. I have since started to become even more organised and thought I would write a post on my favourite ways to use Evernote, some of which have evolved in the past months.

1. Makes Research A Cinch

I do a lot of research projects, usually in collaboration with others, and they require writing reports that need a variety of sources. I used to prefer journal articles and books as sources (the hangover from college), but many of the topics I research now are either too niche or too new to have many journal articles, and usually have no books at all. Much of my material is now sourced from the internet, either in the form of reports and government brochures (usually pdf documents) and web pages.

I always create a folder in Dropbox for each project, and in it save all pdfs I come across. But web pages are difficult because you never know if you will need it later, it’s hard to save the information in a way that’s easy to cite and find the page again if necessary. I have to admit that throughout college I simply ignored web pages in my research or lost anything useful I found because I had no reliable way to deal with them (my bookmarks usually was a mess and I gave up using it years ago).

Then I recently decided to use Evernote for this. I always used Evernote for a while, and it occurred to me it would be perfect for my research. Here’s what I do: I create a new notebook in Evernote for the project, and each web page that is vaguely helpful, I save as a new note. You can even use the web clipper to clip pages directly in, although I don’t use that much, because of issues with Internet Explorer. Even so, I find this extremely convenient, and Evernote automatically saves the url of the web page, to make it easy to cite or go back to the original page. Since I created a new notebook for the project, I don’t usually bother to tag pages unless I know they are useful for a specific section of my report. However, since you can tag each note, you don’t need to create a separate notebook for this, I simply prefer to.

This way I don’t waste time during the research process, and if I later find some of the pages I saved weren’t that useful, I can simply delete the note.

2. Keep Recipes Handy

My other favourite way to use Evernote is for recipes. I love to find recipes online, and sometimes I get newsletters on ‘healthified’ recipes - healthier versions of foods I like.

Initially I created several different notebooks, one for healthy recipes, one for everyday cooking; but now I have simply consolidated them into one notebook named Recipes, and used tags to differentiate. For example, I have tags for main dish, sides, salads; so if I want to make a salad, I can simply sort by tag.

Since Evernote is completely searchable however, this is less useful, because if I search for salad, all recipes for salad will come up. What I find more useful for tagging is things that the search won’t bring up - such as tags for ‘healthy’ indicating that it’s a healthier version, or if I think it’s perfect for weekday dinners, I will tag it ‘daily cooking’. This makes it customisable to my own requirements.

3. Keep My Inbox Uncluttered

I am nowhere close to maintaining Inbox Zero, but I have been trying quite hard to keep my inbox manageable. This is another area where Evernote comes to the rescue.

Often you need an address or web link or other small piece of information that you keep in your inbox like a holding pen, but often just when you’re looking for that particular email, it’s impossible to find. In the meantime, all these bits are cluttering up your inbox. Evernote is great at holding little bits of info - you don’t even need a designated notebook - you can just dump all this in your default notebook.

I also get a lot of newsletters in my email, and some of them are articles I would like to save, which I previously did by creating an appropriate folder. But I never seemed to remember that I had these articles, and even if I did want one, I couldn’t find it in the mess of folders. Now I simply put them in Evernote and tag it, and even if I can't remember the tag, I can just search for it. My inbox is much less cluttered with someday-I-might-need-it items.

4. Track My Progress On Goals

I use Evernote to create tables that track my goals. Sure I can use an Excel spreadsheet, and do for the more complicated goals that need formulae. But just to keep a running tally of how many blog posts I have written or how many hours I have put in my latest book project, it’s easier to use Evernote - because it’s the one program I have open every day, and I can easily access it.

I also use it to save screenshots of my blog stats page, and my reports from Rescue Time (which I have just started to use). I can imagine there are lots of other ways you can customise this - save your weekly to-do lists, or keep a food diary. The possibilities are limitless.

5. Inspiration At My Fingertips

I use my iPad for a lot of my reading, and I am a fan of Feedly and Pocket for catching up with myriad reading. But if I'm looking for inspiration on writing advice, or to find an interview with a writer that really moved me, I would prefer not to search Google or my Pocket archive - because it would be far too easy to fall into the rabbit-hole of one article after another, and before you know it 2 hours are gone, and I still haven’t read the original article I was looking for.

Instead, I save articles that I know I want to refer to again, especially ones relating to writing and productivity, to dedicated folders in Evernote. That way I simply search within the folder, and in seconds I have what I want - an article on how to write a marathon number of words over a weekend, or an interview with Neil Gaiman that’s really inspiring. If you want, you can also email articles directly to your Evernote account by sending it to your dedicated Evernote email address (you can find that by logging into your Evernote account through your web browser). I use this also to send notes directly to my account from my inbox.

Another way I save articles is when I am browsing online and I find something I want to save, I just use Evernote Clearly through my Firefox add-on to display the page without the annoying formatting, and then with the click of a button, add it directly to my Evernote account. Clearly is also smart enough to put it in the correct notebook, although because my system of notebooks is a bit messy, sometimes it goes into the wrong notebook. But it’s still incredibly convenient.

So there you have it, 5 ways that Evernote can make finding and organising things online incredibly easy. The internet is wonderful in all that it has to offer, but sometimes it can all be a bit much, and you can feel like you’re swimming in a sea of information, trying desperately to hold onto the pretty shell you found, when you see something else, and swim towards that, dropping the first shell, and losing it in the tide. Evernote is a bit like a service that picks up the shell and stores it for you, leaving you more time to browse for shells.