Dealing with Delays

It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” In my line of work, I would like to add a third “Certainty”, and that would be “Delays.” Delays in projects happen all the time. I know that in both my personal and professional life I have tried to get specific tasks done, and have been stymied by one (or more) of the five following reason that delays projects. This is why I felt it was essential to include it in one of my 7 steps to Organizing your Digital Life. It’s critical to know that delays happen and it shouldn’t prevent you from achieving your goals.

1) Time – This is the number 1 reason why projects get delayed. Whether it’s people run out of time or the project is scheduled with too short of a time frame, time is usually a finite resource that every project lead has to be able to use as efficiently as possible. This ever depleting resource could be used up by any of the following four reasons why delays happen, but the trick is knowing how to plan your time.

Time management can be relatively painless when working in a Digital space, and it’s undoubtedly customizable. One thing that I do is use a digital to do list which allows me not only to input due dates for each of my tasks, but I’m also able to put in reminders which keep me on track. When you first start doing this practice, there will be some guesswork on how long some tasks might take you, but when you get the hang of it, you will quickly be able to look at a task and assess how long you think you need to complete it. After that, you can see your time constraints and decide if you need to move it up your timetable or take more time to a particular task.

2) Other People – if there are more people than just you relying on the outcome of your project then it’s entirely likely they will want to know what’s going on. If they also can have input, you will need to be able to accommodate that. This will mean that you will have to take the time to go through their suggestions.

The best way to deal with this is to try your best to schedule meetings around their schedule. People have their jobs to do and their priorities, so one strategy which has worked for me is to plan to work around other people’s schedules. This can be tricky as you might not know what their schedules are or can be pulled into meetings randomly.

3) Money – For most professionals, one of the significant factors that cause delays is the one thing that is needed to continue a project, money. If you don’t have the funds to complete a project, then it gets far more difficult to finish it.

In either a personal or professional capacity, the way to figure out your money situation is to make up a budget, and then do your best to stick to it. I know from personal experience (in a personal capacity) that sticking to a budget can be difficult and there can be unexpected expenses that come up which delay your projects. In cases like this, the only way to try and prevent this is to build yourself a budget that will hopefully guide you through your project. If you know exactly how much money you have to work with, that will make your budgeting process much more straightforward. If, however, you don’t know then the best thing you can do is estimate how much money you will be spending/making and have to go from there.

I am currently in preparations for creating my budget for this blog. Everything from using Evernote and using WordPress to host my site is expenses I can predict because I’ve had them before. The ones I can’t (currently) predict are other things like advertising and education programs of which I have just started working with. At the moment I have to guess how much money I can spend on those. I will have to see how that works out next year and come back and let you all know.

There can be nothing more detrimental to the progression of a project than having to suffer through Delays. The trick about being able to deal with them is knowing that they are (or will be) coming and planning for them. One of the best things that you can do to prevent delays it to make sure that you are both A) able to anticipate them as much as possible and B) not deterred from your goals. When you are dealing with delays, it’s crucial that you remember the Destination you set for yourself when you keep that in mind you will be able to achieve your goal of Organizing your Digital Life.

What do you do when you’re stuck?

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