Anticipation vs Reaction

posted by ryan on May 24th, 2007

Living in reaction is a very unhealthy way to be, personally and professionally. Most people live in that mode because it makes you feel important, people are coming to you, you are always busy with your todo list adding new tasks as they roll in. You think to yourself if I only had more time I would clear off my todos, clean out my inbox, empty out my voicemail.

Living in reaction is a very unhealthy way to be, personally and professionally. Most people live in that mode because it makes you feel important, people are coming to you, you are always busy with your todo list adding new tasks as they roll in. You think to yourself if I only had more time I would clear off my todos, clean out my inbox, empty out my voicemail.

The secret truth is that acting first, anticipating what your clients or developers need and taking simple small actions will actually free up your time and make you dynamically more productive.

As people we have have instincts that guide our decision making process. Often during a project I get the feeling that I need to communicate something with a client or team member. In the past since I had so many other todo’s the issue would be placed at the bottom and inevitably the issue would get pushed back to be later at which point it was much harder to deal with because of the lag time in between.

Ex. You notice that one of your team is billed crazy hours on one day but didn’t get as much done as they probably should have in that time, since it’s at the beginning of the project and you have several things going you put off having a chat. Weeks later when you are reviewing the budget and making it to that part of your todo list you realize that they have been billing those hours for weeks and now you have a big budget problem. Now you have to call a whole whack of time and money into question rather than just one day and have a to explain to a client why a large chunk of the budget is gone.

The lesson here to anticipate and take action on issues when they are small. That can often prevent multiple large issues down the road.

• When you think that you haven’t talked to a client in a while give them a call.
• If you make an invoice that’s bigger than usual, attach a note or call to explain up front.
• Whenever you finish a feature that can be tested and used, drop your client a line. Give them lots of small tasks to try out rather than bunch them up into batches which are more time consuming to tackle.

Every billable day should have client contact; send an updated budget report, show off a feature, ask a questions, send an idea.

Clients should feel that you are all over the project, that you are thinking about it more than they are.

These kinds of small simple actions allow us to avoid contracts, specs, and the need for up front payments. When you have close connections everyone stays on the same page. When you take action first you never feel overwhelmed but instead empowered to take the kinds of actions that bring you to the next level and allow you to manage multiple projects.