We are often subject to our instincts—but our instincts don’t always work in our favour. When I began my 100 articles in 100 days project, I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish, both on the macro (with the project on the whole) and micro (with each piece) levels. I decided to experiment for a while, see what kind of articles I enjoyed writing, then reflect and establish more concrete boundaries.
Ten days into the project, one recurring challenge is the quality vs. time battle. I’m finding it difficult to finish my work within the deadline I set because I seem to always gravitate toward higher quality. These psychological gravity forces are as real as the physical one—yet not always unavoidable. More importantly, they don’t always work in our favour.
The time, quality and resources balance
Time, quality and resources are linked proportionally. More scope requires more time and more resources. If we want to ever finish the project, we need to apply restrictions to each area. With this in mind, what is the time, scope and resources balance of your project?
What external or internal restrictions do you have in any of these areas, i.e. time available for the project? And what implications will this have for the scope and resources?
Begin by defining either the amount of time you want to spend on the project or the scope of your work. One needs to fit within the other. Establish the more important of the two first and then examine what implications this has for the other.
Establishing deadlines
Time and quality are always in competition with one another. We decide to spend an hour on something, but then as the end of the hour nears, we feel we haven’t yet achieved what we wanted to achieve, so we continue working.
We face various resistance to establishing strict deadlines—fear that the amount of time we’re allocating will not allow us to create work of sufficient quality, fear that we’ll disappoint ourselves if we don’t meet the deadline.
Time vs. scope is an ongoing battle throughout any project. But work does tend to take up the amount of time we allocate to it. To mitigate the inevitable pursuit of more quality when working under a strict deadline, I find it helpful to answer the following questions:
- How will working under a restrictive deadline positively contribute to the scope/quality, resources and time than working with a more liberal deadline?
- What are the time, quality and resources benefits for both myself and my project of working with a more restrictive deadline?
- Why will a restrictive deadline make this a better project?
- Why it is important for me to not allocate more time than I’ve decided to allocate?
Defining the scope of the project, in relation to the deadline
With the time constraint in mind, define what quality standard you want to meet in the context of this project. If we don’t have our own clear definition of quality—we may tend to gravitate toward what we see out there or toward what we feel is expected.
Then over the next week or so monitor to see if you’re meeting the standard within the allocated time. If not, adjust as necessary. We have a cognitive bias to overestimate both our skills and what we can accomplish in a given amount of time—and that’s okay. We just want to make sure we’re not perpetually disappointing ourselves, so it helps to monitor and adjust expectations.
When setting quality restrictions, I find the following questions helpful:
- Why is the quality I can achieve in the limited time superior to that I could achieve in more time?
Identifying the primordial constraint (it’s neither time nor quality)
When we don’t have an end in mind, the journey dictates where we go. But who dictates what journey we embark on?
If we don’t impose any time or quality limits on our work, we’re going with the flow. But the flow is never just the flow—it’s always directed by something and often that’s our subconscious fears and constraints.
So whenever we think we’re going with the flow, in reality we’re most likely at the mercy of our fears or limiting ideas about ourselves. Find out what these are in your case, and ask yourself why they limit you—what are you afraid that they may say about you?
It also helps to look for what you instinctively prioritise. Given the freedom, do you gravitate toward higher quality or minimising the time spend on the project? Once you know, ask yourself why—is this your choice or the choice of your subconscious fears? To find out, see if it energises you more than it drains you. if on balance it brings you more energy than it takes away, it is a genuine priority—one that springs out of abundance rather than scarcity.
When we don’t have a clear definition of what we want to do, our fears and inadequacies about the opportunity costs jump in and take charge. The quality of our work always happens within the amount of time we dedicate to it. If we’re repetitively struggling to meet deadlines, it helps to examine the relationship between the scope, time and resources of our work—and to understand what our genuine priorities are: those that we would choose not because we’re expected to, but because they energise us and make us happy.