If someone were to ask for my best advice on project management, I wouldn’t blink.
“Plan your work and work your plan,” I’d say. “And don’t forget to anticipate what could go wrong.”
That’s what I’d say. Unfortunately, it’s not what I do, which is why it’s July and my basement is not in the clutterless state I’d envisioned.
I’m a big believer in visioning, that popular notion that half the battle is envisioning what you want in your life and then, voila!
In this spirit, back in May, I envisioned the clutterless basement. No longer would it house the castoff furniture of my late mother’s apartment. No longer would it house the bulging plastic storage drawers from my daughter’s last three campus apartments. And certainly it would not be burdened with the tax returns (with work papers) of every deceased relative over the past decade.
“Here’s the plan,” I told my daughter, knowing she’d be leaving soon for the summer in Israel. “Before I start, you need to sift through your stuff and say what stays and what goes.”
I pulled out a large monthly calendar and negotiated a mid-June date.
“No problem,” she said.
Then came a glitch between the Vision and the Voila! that I can only blame on myself. I had a plan, but I did not anticipate what could go wrong. I should have asked a few simple questions.
“Is it possible,” I should have wanted to know, “that instead of sifting through your stuff, you will actually be studying for exams? That you will be interviewing for the job of your dreams? That you will be shopping and packing for a trip?”
And most important, I should have probably asked “When you clean out your current apartment, where are you storing your stuff?”
Instead, with an amazing lack of curiosity about these issues, I continued to vision the clutterless basement. The Summer, after all, was long.
Unfortunately, the flight to Israel was also long, and so was the list of food that the traveler, recently on a gluten-free diet, had decided she needed to transport.
Rather than sifting through plastic drawers, we were now researching the question of whether gluten-free food can be transported to Israel and if so, how.
That question was quickly followed by a subset of questions: “Will they allow three dozen rice tortillas on an international flight?” “Can a homemade quinoa loaf be checked in international luggage? ” And if so, “How long will it take to make a quinoa loaf with 17 ingredients and an apricot-maple glaze?”
Unsurprisingly, no sifting occurred before she boarded the plane. The basement project has not yet begun. There are even more bulging drawers – from the last apartment – in the basement. And she will not be back for weeks.
I am tempted in the meantime to offload some furniture or dump a few boxes of tax returns. But good project management dictates that I should not. Plan your work, work your plan, it tells me. Sifting must come first. Difficult as it is, I must wait till she returns to clean the basement.
I am, of course, distressed about the clutter and looking for consolation. But not quite distraught. Nothing that a little cinematherapy and a few good books won’t cure.
Copyright 2010 Pat Snyder
