How Much Time Have You Committed To Your Current Projects?

So you have a dozen or so big projects on the go and as many smaller ones.  How much actual work have you got to do to get them done?


If you are anything like me you are -

a) Terrible at estimating how long things are going to take.
b) Hopeless at being realistic with yourself about how much actual time you have available.
c) Not very good at keeping lots of different projects in your head at the same time.

The net result is overcommitment.   What you need to is to keep track of what you are doing and make sure that the cheque you have written with your willingness to take stuff is backed up with enough available hours.  This is a really difficult thing to because of a) above.  And b).  And c).

I have finally got to the stage where I simply have to do something about it.  So I have created a simple project list, with all the projects I have on my books listed.  For each of them I have made an estimate of how long they will take.  I also have a time log for each of the projects.  These are on separate spreadsheets but the top line figure of how long they have taken is linked on my project sheet.

So basically when I start a project I now have an estimate of how long it will take.  As I put hours in on the project these will be knocked off, leaving me with an estimate of how many hours I have got left.  I can adjust the estimate as I go along, but I'll keep the original figure to see how well I am doing.

The crazy thing is I really don't know how many hours it is realistic to commit to. I have a feeling it is about 3 weeks worth which comes to about 75 hours in total.  (I don't count in the routine thngs I have to do in this.)  But at least now I have a way of seeing if that estimate is right.  I haven't got all my project estimated yet - but I was quite horrified to find that I had got over 20 hours with only three of them.  I am pretty sure that whatever the optimum is, I am currently working above it.

I'll see how it goes.