Thursday, June 24, 2010

The perils of waiting till the last minute

A week ago, my two daughters were studying for their highschool final exams. Well, sort of. One of them was locked in her room studying ten hours a day. She had been studying well in advance of finals for more than two weeks. The other one spent most of last weekend visiting with friends, going to the park, watching TV and procrastinating. She figured that she had plenty of time to begin studying for her finals later.

Well, later turned into Sunday morning, which turned into Sunday afternoon which turned into Sunday evening at 7pm – which is when shefinally decided to read the teacher’s instructions to help prepare for the test. In order to review the teacher’s instructions about what the exam would be on, students had to visit a web site and download a document. The teacher had given out this set of instructions five days prior. But my younger daughter waited until 7pm on the Sunday night before the examination to check out the teacher’s web site. Just one small problem. My daughter has a MAC computer and this document could only be downloaded using Internet Explorer, not the Apple browser, Safari. She was stuck. So she started to panic and abusively insisted we drop everything and help her. She did not ask – she demanded – quite rudely, I might add.

We told her that we would not help her because 1) she had failed to ask for help politely and 2) she waited until the last minute to review this critically important set of instructions to prepare her finals.  Needless to say, this infuriated her – that her own mom and dad would not help her in her time of crisis. She muddled through the final exam but did not do nearly as well as she might have, had she planned in advance. Her grade went down a half-letter grade as a result.

It is of course all too human to wait until the last minute to start working on key projects. I have a saying about this. It goes:  “If all lights are green, I can get there on time.” Well, guess what? Life doesn’t usually work that way. Usually not all the lights are green. You get stuck at a few red ones. And there may be construction along your route. Or an accident, or a malfunctioning street light, or a car that has broken down. Or the weather may be bad, or it might be rush hour and traffic congestion is at its peak. Yet we plan our lives as if none of these intervening factors will happen – even though they always do.

My daughter waited until the last minute. By the time she realized there was a problem, she could not contact the teacher.  She could not get access to another computer. She was stuck.  (And lest you think we chose not to help her because we are simply lazy or uncaring parents, our reasons were to teach her a lesson about planning ahead and showing courtesy when asking for help.)

How many times at work – or in other aspects of your life – do you plan your schedule as if  “all lights will be green?" Do you allow for meetings to run longer than expected? For a key member of the team to possibly be out sick the day you need their help? For the possibility that someone on the team might run into some other momentary crisis– at work or at home – diverting them from your project? Or countless other unforeseen events which upset your time-table…

It happens all the time. We make plans without allowing for enough cushion or margin for error and as a result, instead of thoughtfully and carefully laying out a plan, we slap things together at the last minute in a panic, often times producing a result that is not what it could have been had we built in more time. Waiting until the last minute is a recipe for taking short cuts and  missing some important detail that comes back to bite us.

So the next time you have an important, time-consuming project, don’t wait to the last minute to start work. Don’t assume all lights will be green. Plan for things to take longer than you think. Plan for unforeseen factors to intervene and for you to be forced to take a detour here or there. If you do, you will be less stressed and far more likely to have a successful project and one that’s completed on time.

Posted by Tim Jones at 11:29 am

Labels: time management