experiments

Nothing beats project anxiety like a plan. -- me :-)

You know me - I love experimenting on myself almost as much as on you. Or my clients. Kidding aside, I've studied many, many techniques to manage ourselves as we work, and a classic on is time blocking, AKA time mapping (see [1] for more). It's a simple idea: Schedule regular chunks of time with yourself for important tasks. The experiment I've tried for the last few weeks is applying it to three largish projects coming up (higher education workshops) with a relatively short timeline (less than a month). The advantage is it forced me to make steady progress on projects to prevent last minute scrambling, stress, and failure. The result: Worked great! Following are the details, along with a few rules and caveats when time blocking. (Updated 2009-06-08 to remove confusing project plan image.)

Planning and estimating

The true method of knowledge is experiment. -- William Blake [1]

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Update: The title should more accurately read "Induced personality disorder, or: I tried it, but I'm not proud of it I didn't like it.") As part of my continuing development of the power of treating everything in life as a personal experiment [1], I applied recently the idea to marketing my consulting business. In spite of Richard Koch's admonition in The 80/20 Principle to be "unconventional and eccentric in your use of time," I decided (with tracking [2], of course) to try conventional (and reasonable) approaches including:

• Visualizing my ideal client,
• Creating a clear value proposition,