I always like to plan my work, but it’s remarkably hard for me.

• How long will a task take?
• What emergencies will erupt, requiring my immediate attention?
• What tasks will get delayed by the customer?
• What tasks will be impossible because of technical issues?

But I went crazy this morning: I made a schedule included some time for all of my 10 projects.

Some new things I did:

• Included time every day for planning.
• Included some short gaps every day for extra stuff that comes up.
• Included two large (3 hour) gaps every week for stuff that has to be moved around.
• Planned work two weeks out.

When I have a scheduling problem, I’ll move things around airline-style: if I have to move a task, I’m just going to move it to some distant date in the future. I’m not going to try to push back every other item on the schedule.