Tips on Multitasking and Planning a Project Effectively

I stumble upon this post from Brian Tracy's blog while I was updating our facebook page. It is entitled How to Multitask and Effectively Plan a Project. This post is very timely because my wife and I just started our new online project with the help of Millionaire Society.  Enjoy reading!

All of life is a series of projects. A project is a complex task. It is often called a multitask job. This type of job requires the coordination of efforts of several people, each of whom is responsible for a part of the job, with every part of the job being necessary for successful completion. Your ability to handle these multitask jobs is a critical skill for success. All achievements of consequence are complex, and they involve the cooperation of many people.

The Key Management Skill

A study by Stanford University of the qualities that companies look for in promoting people into the position of chief executive officer concluded that the ability to put together a team to accomplish a task was the single most important identifiable quality of an executive who was destined for the fast track in his/her career. Your ability to put together teams to do multitask jobs, ability to complete complex projects, and visible qualities of leadership will determine the course of your career as much as any other factor. It will enable you to multiply yourself times the talents and efforts of others, and accomplish vastly more than you could do on your own.

A Learnable Skill

Project management is a learnable skill, like riding a bicycle. It can be divided into a series of steps, each of which you can master, one at a time. In managing any project, you begin by defining the ideal desired result of the project. What exactly are you trying to accomplish? What will the project look like if it is a complete success?  Start by defining a successful completion of the project, the ideal desired result.

Start at the Beginning

Once you are clear about your desired result, you then start from the beginning. Determine what you are going to have to do to get from where you are to the completion of this project, on schedule and on budget. Determine a specific deadline or target to aim at. Make sure that it is realistic and achievable.

Assemble the Team

Bring together all the people whose contributions will be necessary for the success of this project. Sometimes you need to assemble a team before you can even decide upon the ideal result and the schedule. Remember that people are everything. Take ample time to think carefully about the people who are going to be the team members.

Share the Ownership

Instill ownership of the project in the team members by sharing the job with them. There is a direct relationship between how much a person feels a sense of ownership for the job and how committed he is to making the project a success. One of the key jobs of management and leadership is to instill this feeling of ownership in each member of the team, so that each person feels personally responsible for the accomplishment of the overall project. You accomplish this by discussing every detail of the project with the people who are expected to carry it out.

Develop a Shared Vision

A shared vision is an ideal future picture of success that everyone buys into. How do you develop a shared vision? You sit down and work with the team to answer the question, “What are we trying to accomplish?” You encourage everyone to contribute, visualize, and to imagine the ideal outcome or desired result of the project. Once this vision is clear and shared by everyone, you move on to the development of “shared plans” to achieve the vision.

Set Schedules and Deadlines

Once you have a shared vision and shared plans, and everyone knows exactly what is to be done and what the ideal results will look like, the next step is for you to set a deadline for project completion based on the consensus of your team.

Create a List

Create a to-do list and write down every task, function, and activity that must be completed, right down to the smallest job. Make it easier for yourself-get the project finished on time and break the project down into individual jobs and tasks as much as you can.

Organize the Project

Organize the different parts of the project in two ways: sequential tasks and parallel tasks. You organize by sequence when you determine which jobs must be done before other jobs can be done, with each task in order. Sequential organization is necessary where a particular task requires that another task be completed before it can be started. In almost every case, before you do anything, you have to do something else first. Organize the tasks sequentially with a logical process of activities from beginning through to the end of the project.

The second way to organize the tasks is through parallel activities. Parallel activities exist when more than one task can be done at the same time. Two or more people can be working on two or three different tasks independently of each other.

I hope you enjoyed this post.  Please leave a comment and share with your friends! 

Until my next post.

Elvin

PS. By the way, I will be sharing my review for the online group Millionaire Society on my next posts. 

Get your free life lessons. Enter your email address below

New Online Projects

It’s been a while since I post an article in my blog. As you can see, my blog has changed. The old template was gone and it was replaced by a simple yet beautiful white template which I found it very professional and elegant looking. Agree?

Anyway, what happened to the old template?

For the past couple of weeks, I was creating tons of videos for a website that I’ll be launching this month. It will showcase my expertise in Microsoft Excel.

While I was creating that site, I accidentally replaced the template of this blog.

Well, I was fond of using keyboard shortcuts because it is faster and more convenient and that time, I was not paying attention to what I was doing. I was letting my fingers move around the keyboard and then accidentally it happened.

I panicked. I searched for a back up copy in my hard drive. I found one and tried it but to my surprise it was the old template and not the current template. I was losing hope. Until I realized that I needed to move on. I realized that I needed to find a new one and I needed to finish my tasks for that day.

So that’s the story.

Lesson learned?

Always have a back up ready and make sure it is the latest one.

Enough about that, let me share my latest project.

As you can see, all my days in my current job, I am exposed to a lot of data crunching, report automation and mind-boggling data analysis. It is a very challenging tasks and without any tools, I will be staying late at the office to finish all of them.

Good thing, my companion, Microsoft Excel, helped me solved those challenging tasks. We've been through a lot of challenges. I've learned how maximize its full potential.

In fact, I've known a lot of functions. I've mastered a lot of equations. I've done a lot of complicated and overwhelming tasks in a snap, and a lot more.

This knowledge enables me to solve a lot of problems and automates a lot of routine tasks. I tell you, not only my tasks but some of my office mates tasks as well. Because of this I’m their go-to-guy in terms of their questions in Microsoft Excel's functions.

I believe that I mastered Microsoft Excel and this is my gift.

That's why I'm sharing this gift not just with my office mates but to everyone else needing my help (especially those Filipinos who are stuck with their routine tasks in spreadsheets). That's the reason why I made the site: www.pinoyexcelguru.com.

I want a venue where I can share my knowledge and expertise.

Okay. So what's with the site?

I placed there two videos for you to learn and to enjoy. I will be posting regular updates on that site. Feel free to subscribe to the site. Also, if you have a facebook account, you may like the PinoyExcelGuru facebook page. The Excel site and the facebook page are free tools that can guide you to learn the various tips and tricks in using Microsoft Excel.

Until my next post!

eLviN

PS. Before I end this post, I realized that when God closes a door he opens another door and most of the time it is the best door. Before, I was planning to enroll myself to social media profit that would definitely help me with my online marketing skills. The social media profit costs around $2,000. It was so promising and convincing that I even talked to my online buddies if they wanted to share and split the price with me. They have other priorities so they declined. I declined as well due to lack of funds.

Then, I didn’t know that God was planning something better. Through my online friend, Janmck Hilado, God gave me an offer that is so cheap and so affordable and yet very promising. God introduced me to CPA instruments. It is a complete course on how to make money without selling anything. The course teaches you step by step how to do CPA or Cost per Action Marketing.

Imagine, the whole program costs $39 which includes 9 modules (3 to 6 videos per module) and tons of bonus items (such as Professional Edition of Traffic Travis which cost $99, Minisite Profits Exposed which cost $197 and 6 more promising items). The program is really, really underpriced!

I really love this product and hope you tried it as well.

Get your free life lessons. Enter your email address below