Meeting your goals

I have just pushed back a milestone for a project. This project is one I am developing in my own time, by myself. You may find it funny that I even have a milestone for such a project. Like most people, my pet projects are usually more exploratory and therefore do not include any project management. I wanted to try out the 37 signals Basecamp application and figured why not use a this project. So I signed up for my own project site on Basecamp. I called it code party. The project I am tracking here had already been going for a month (maybe a bit longer) before I started using Basecamp.

So the project I am working just missed a milestone. I said this past Saturday would be the milestone for a dogfood version of my application. Of course my life made sure that this milestone did not happen. Beyond the increase in workload at my place of employment, I have also had family obligations including a vacation up to Seattle for the weekend. Basecamp made sure to email me and let me know that the milestone loomed in my current future. I knew a week before that I would not be hitting this target. So what do I do? Relax. No point in freaking out. Beside the fact that this is a pet project, the best thing you can do in approaching the milestone is plan more.

I looked at what I had done, which was quite impressive ;) I figured I would not make it to where I wanted to be, so I examined what the missing piece of work was. By examining this missing work I could focus down on exactly what will be needed to be done in the next phase. This is work that should be accomplished before moving on to other work. I narrowed down my ideas so that I could accomplish this as quickly as possible. Other milestones will be moved forward a bit.

So in summary stay focused and relaxed. Live to fight another day, rather than throwing yourself into the fire. Make sure to not move into another part of the project (unless necessary) until you finish piece you are working on. These are some outlooks that have helped me work through some difficult projects.