Why you can’t beat a hard deadline
For the past 3 months I’ve been doing a property refurbishment. This was to take our previously long term rented out cottage, and make it a short term holiday let. This ended up taking much longer, costing more, and being much more work than expected. I guess like most property projects!
One of the reasons it took much longer than expected, was that I was juggling this project with all my other commitments; both business and personal, so it was a case of prioritising. I did recognise this and decided that the only was to make sure this project got the priority and focus it needed was to set a hard headline. Sticking an arbitrary date in the calendar may have worked but I doubt it. I always find a hard deadline is much more of an incentive to get things done. So 2 weeks ahead of the date I’d set myself for it’s completion, I advertised the property on Airbnb with availability from that date. Within a couple of hours we had our first booking, and over the next couple of days the bookings came thick and fast.
Our first guests were set to arrive on Good Friday (30th March). Knowing there wasn’t much time to get everything done, I definitely prioritised the cottage project over over things. I blocked days out of my calendar to be there working on it, rather than trying to work as usual at Appware and then spend a couple of hours on the cottage. This worked really well, as did having a checklist of everything that needed to be done that was reviewed and updated regularly. This helped with planning of anything I needed to buy for the next stage too.
The final couple of days was pretty intense and I spent 3 full days (from 6:30am to 11pm!) doing all the final work like building furniture, hanging curtains, fitting blinds etc. The very last stage was to tidy up (as there were stacks of tools, bits, boxes etc), and then give it a thorough clean and final dressing (towels out, flowers, guest welcome pack etc) which we finished just 15 minutes before our first guest arrived!
This got me thinking about the importance of deadlines and how having a hard deadline that you simply can’t miss works so well. As I said, this ended up being a 3 month long project and we only finished just in time. I’m willing to bet that we’d have had exactly the same result and finished just in time if I’d set the project deadline at either 1 month, or 6 months. If it had been 1 month I’d have had to cancel the holidays I took mid-way, and spent much more time there than on other things. If it had been 6 months, I’d have prioritised other things over this project and then only jumped in full time in the final couple of weeks.
So I guess what I’m saying is that if you’ve got a project, then do some initial project planning and estimating of realistic effort (actual work time rather than calendar time) to see what is achievable. Then, if it really is a priority in your life, set a hard deadline and be accountable to this deadline (in our case, our first guest arriving who we simply couldn’t let down). Make it unmissable. That way, you’ll do everything you need to do to actually achieve it. Not a bad way of approaching things imo.
Thanks
Richard
P.S. If you want to see the end result of the refurb in better quality than the image above, take a look at www.westfieldcottage.co.uk
