Attention: this is my first attempt on a not-so-pragmatic blog-post.
There are short periods of time in life when all the projects we’re currently working on seem to overwhelm us. For me at least, my projects which seem to turn out well are those where no sacrifices need to be made in order for them to be completed. With some of my activities, things seem to be sorting out just fine, without a lot of effort from my side to steer them correctly. As for the others, while I can still manage to turn them upwards somehow, the multitude of problems they created would rarely render their outcome as “satisfactory”. Even though the project would be “complete”, there’s a clear loss in quality towards the others, which might do a lot of harm to my business partners.
There’s also another thing I’ve learned recently, but I’m always going to remember. For each project you’re working on there’s a certain threshold level. Putting more effort above this threshold level will constraint you into putting even more effort on this project to complete it, even though you don’t actually have the physical/mental strength or time to go over it (at least at this load). This complication could make the problem you’re having even harder to solve!
I recently found myself in such a deadlock situation. Wanting to do to much stuff at the same time (exams, project A and project B), I ended up being too stressed to divide quality time to all of them. Luckily, there’s a very simple and fast solution. Shed the load a little bit! I immediately felt the relief and, after a short break, I was able to quickly come back to speed and tackle everything correctly and back to highest-quality standards. Secondly, under-promise and over-deliver! This are solutions which rarely fail since less work but high quality is always more appreciated than a lot of work of low quality. I certainly feel I’m doing a much better job with all my projects and also have a bit more time for myself.
