Crunch Time: Don't Forget the Upfront Stuff

Crunch Time:
Don’t Forget the Upfront Stuff

What time is it… if you have two minutes to go and your team is down by 10 points?

What time is it…if your presentation to the biggest possible client and sale you’ve ever had is due in two days?

What time is it… if your annual progress report for your manager is due tomorrow and you are only half finished?

It’s crunch time!
Crunch time means it’s now or never.
You have to produce.
You have to get it done.

The next time you find yourself in a panic, in a personal crunch time, try taking a deep breath. Panic usually results in shallow breathing. Have you ever done your best work in a panic? No. No one ever does.

So when you break out in a sweat from pressure, take 10 deep breaths: In -through the nose; out - through the mouth. The breathing will help you center yourself, calm your emotions, and relax your psychic. Then with confidence, you can move quickly through these steps in the upfront stuff, the planning part of execution:

1.Survey exactly what has to be done to complete the project. This will force you to move from the more emotional right brain that is afraid you won’t finish on time to the more logical left brain that will find a way.
2.List every task that is remotely connected to completion of the project. Tasks out of your head and onto your task list become less intimidating.
3.With a red marker, circle the tasks that absolutely MUST be done. Do not mark the tasks that would be window dressing. Through this process you simplify the project and weed out tasks not absolutely essential to the completion of the project.
4.Count the actual tasks that are marked in red. This is the step that brings a sigh of relief: Typically there are fewer essential tasks than you had imagined.
5.Estimate how much time it will take to do each task, then reverse schedule the tasks.
6.Plot out the tasks in time frames on your calendar.
7.Tackle one task at a time.

Paying attention to this front-end planning process will save you precious time. I was reminded of this is a dramatic way last Thursday.

I was to flying from Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia to Orlando, Florida. It was laborious getting through security as my bag got picked to be thoroughly checked. As the security man opened everything in my suitcase and my purse (even my business card holder), I knew I was a little behind schedule.

I was anxious to get to the gate, boot my computer and spend a few minutes making notes on a project before they called my zone to board.

When the security guard gave me back my luggage, as I have done hundreds of times before, I hurried down the escalator to board the train to the gate. I barely slipped into the open door of the train before the door lumbered shut, announcing all the time to stay back, the doors were closing and would not reopen.

I was optimistic though and thought there was still time to get a little work done before boarding. I reached down into my satchel, pulled out my boarding pass and glanced to see which concourse my plane was leaving from: A, B, C, D, or E. I hoped it was not E, the gate the farthest away.

To my horror, I saw that my plane was leaving from the T Concourse. I could not access the T Concourse from the train I was on.

I was working from habit…down the escalator, onto the train. The simple and obvious thing like checking the concourse – the upfront stuff – had escaped me. If I had done the upfront stuff, I would have easily made it to my concourse with several precious minutes to work.

However, for this flight, when I finally made it to my gate on the T Concourse, it was crunch time – time to board.

Avoid crunch time! Do the upfront stuff, the planning part of completing your work, and you’ll be in control of every project, presentation and game.

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