Have I become paranoid about project & time management?

Question

How do you manage your projects (and your personal life) ? I tend to become psychotic because nothing seems to work. To specify the requirements & information better (as a developer's way of thinking...):

1. There are several client projects, that can be :

   • Web site development
   • Web site design
   • Graphics
   • a mixture of them

2. There are several personal projects that can be the same as client ones plus:

   • Cleaning junk from the house
   • organise my music library
   • fix my bike etc.

3. All projects will have:

   • Documents like :
     • accounts information (web services like ftp, ssh etc.)
     • invoices
     • client information (history of purchases, personal information etc.)
   • Project files
   • Exports, drafts, etc.

4. I am using a MAC and an iPhone (and a lot of web !)

5. I desperately NEED to have:

   • Projects and tasks organised
   • An estimate that every project & task needs and can change through time until completion

The problem is that there is an overload of tasks, work and information and reduces my productivity and motivation to complete goals. At the time of speaking I manage 4 personal projects, 3 personal professional projects and several corporate projects. I simply can't find a way to deal with all this stuff in a place.

Even though I am trying very hard, it seems that I need some guidance from experts. I am not very strict with dates (I definitely do not want to manage projects by time but as an estimate) and I have read a lot of GTD and pm methodologies as Scrum. At the end there is so much to organise that I feel devastated and stressed. Finally it ends where I do nothing and feel depressed.

The question that will change my way of thinking is: Am I started to become paranoid about organisation, or am I lacking somewhere that I can't see ?

Answer 1

Your writing suggests that you are driving to a set of results or a level of perfection that does not really exist, as if you are trying to predict the future with 100% accuracy and have no variance in your plans. Neither is possible except for the very lucky exception that happens every now and again.

It is not a tool or proven time management methods or estimating methods that will help you. Instead, I think you need to reset your expectations. When you understand that decisions are made without all the information--especially the outcome since it has not happened yet--and that all plans WILL have variances, you would not experience shutting down and getting depressed. Don't look outside, look inside.

Answer 2

This sounds more like a personal time management issue rather than a project management issue, though I'll admit that the two overlap. If you can better manage your time you should be able to reduce your overall levels of stress. Some things that can help:

• Prioritize your work. If something is a nice-to-have put it at the end of your to-do list and only deal with it when the must-haves are complete.
• Delegate your work. If you are running something like 10-12 projects you are almost certainly going to get behind the curve on all of them. Are there any projects that you can delegate to someone else, or delegate some of the project work to?
• Streamline your work. Base the amount of documentation etc supporting each project based on criticality and complexity.
• Focus your work. An inordinate amount of time is wasted switching between tasks. Try to focus on one project per day so that you can avoid losing time as you "switch gears" between projects.
• Limit your work. If the amount of work associated with your projects is too much, admit it and move to reduce the number of projects you have.

Answer 3

Imho, GTD is the answer (or, at least, one of the answers):

I think that GTD might have started to become obsolete... Who keeps notes in paper? The world is changing and time & project management changes too - new tools and methods of organisation appear.

GTD lacks also in multiple projects organisation

1) there is nothing wrong with electronic records; forget about paper; the key is to deal with one piece from your inbox at any given time (this will help you to stay focused during weekly review; when you don't see the rest of your inbox, it's much easier to deal with)

2) multiple projects should not be problem at all - just assign an extra tag pointing to a project; quite often actions, belonging to different projects, could be done within the same context (phone calls); this will allow you to keep track of your projects and keep your productivity level high at the same time