1. Release Notes
Making time for your project
leaving time for you

2. Rachel Andrew
@rachelandrew
rachelandrew.co.uk

4. My job
4 Operations
4 Filling in baffling forms from the government
4 Marketing
4 Website copy
4 Front-end development for our sites
4 Working with accountants and bookkeepers
4 more forms from the government

5. I also …
4 research and teach emerging CSS
4 speak at 30 or so conferences a year
4 write books, regular columns, magazine articles
4 make the dinner, be a mother, try to stop the house
turning into something from an episode of Hoarders
4 train for and run half & full marathons

6. I know something about
time management

7. “Goals are dreams with
deadlines”
1
Diana Scharf Hunt

8. “One worthwhile task
carried to a successful
conclusion is worth half-a-
hundred half-finished tasks.”
1
Malcolm S. Forbes

9. Start with something small
It will show you how to ship.

10. Making time

11. “Don’t say you don’t have enough
time. You have exactly the same number
of hours per day that were given to
Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo,
Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci,
Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein”
1
Life’s Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

12. “In truth, people can generally
make time for what they
choose to do; it is not really
the time but the will that is
lacking.”
1
Sir John Lubbock

13. Make your project a first
class citizen
Don't treat it like a hobby.

14. Try to schedule a regular slot
Plan in advance the things you will be doing when you
next get to work on the project.

15. Use your down time wisely
What can you do while ...
4 waiting for a train
4 on an airplane
4 commuting to a day job
4 waiting for children to finish sport or dance practice

16. “It has been my
observation that most
people get ahead during the
time that others waste.”
1
Henry Ford

17. Always be ready to jump
into your project

18. If you are an employee
Be very careful not to mix work and your own product.
Even work done in your own time and at home can
sometimes be claimed to belong to your employer.
Check your contract.

19. Organise tasks by where they can be
completed or the state of mind you
need for them
4 at my desk
4 offline
4 to listen to (podcasts etc.)
4 needs focus
4 tired/distracted

20. Always be ready to work
offline
Store the things you need along with
the to do item

23. Optimise for your
situation
Productivity tips are often situation-
specific.

24. Optimise your environment
How quickly can you switch into your
project?

25. Say No
To things that won't help you meet
your goal.

26. Beware the entreporn
You can do a lot of reading that feels like it is work, but
is really just indulging success fantasies. Look for
reading and listening material that is ...
4 actionable
4 relevant to your stage of business
4 relevant to the type of market you are in

27. Follow people who are good filter of
information
Find people who are a step ahead of you in a relevant
type of business on Twitter, or who curate email
newsletters of information.
Use them as a filter for material.

28. Saying no to family and
friends

29. Sharing your goal
Help those you care for feel part of
your progress

30. A realistic schedule
Helps your family see there is an end in
sight
They might even help keep you accountable!

31. Schedules & Lists

32. You need a to do list
4 gives you somewhere to put things you need to
remember
4 helps you see progress
4 keeps you honest in regards to getting the most
important things done
4 means you can pick up quickly in downtime.

33. “In a nutshell, the idea is to start
with the end-goal in mind, then
divide it into smaller and smaller
increments. Plan all of the actions
in detail beforehand, then get to
work.”
1
Brian Casel,The CascadingTo Do List

34. What is needed to ship your product?
Decide on a launch date then outline everything you can
think of:
4 research
4 development
4 documentation
4 pre-launch marketing

35. Break it down into
monthly sections
If your launch date is 6 months away
create six lists

36. As you work, create two week sprints
4 What do I need to do this week, and what is coming
up next week.
4 Don't forget to plan in time for other stuff

37. Each day you are working on the
project
4 create a 24 hour to do list
4 this should contain the actionable things to do today
4 each will move you towards completing this sprint

38. I don't know how long
anything will take!
You need to accept a level of inaccuracy
in your schedule. That doesn't mean it
is pointless.

39. Why are time estimates important?
Even if you mostly work alone schedules and time
estimates are valuable, they mean you can ...
4 pre-announce a product or feature
4 work more effectively with others
4 understand what things are coming up that need
preparation in advance

40. Work more effectively with
other people.
Hire freelancers in good time, help
others on your team plan their
workload

41. Booking launch advertising
Take advantage of an industry event or
conference

42. Help your family stay on
board
Let them see that the end is nigh!

43. Keep motivated as you
progress towards an end
date
Picking away at something with no end
date is a rapid route to never launch

44. Most people are terrible at estimating
time
4 we tend to be over-optimistic
4 we want to please the person asking
4 we want to encourage ourselves that it “won’t take
long”
4 we forget to factor in everything else in our lives

45. You can improve your time
estimation skills
Even when faced with things you have
not done before

46. Find out how long things really take
4 estimate how long a task will take
4 track how long it really takes
4 compare reality against your estimate

48. Using the Pomodoro Technique to find
out how bad you really are at
estimating
1. Decide what you need to do today
2. Assign a number of “pomodoros” to each task

49. Do the work
1. Log how many pomodoros it really takes to do the
work
2. Log any time spent not on the defined tasks
3. Do this for a week
4. See the patterns that emerge.

50. This technique gives you an
understanding of where
you estimate poorly

51. Don’t allow the fact that
unexpected things happen
make you feel that there is
no point estimating time.

52. When the scope is
overwhelming

53. You have too much to do
You can:
4 extend the completion date
4 remove features, tighten the scope of the product

54. “The longer it takes to
develop, the less likely it is
to launch.”
1
Jason Fried, Basecamp

55. Ship something small
Test the water. Is this a problem people
will pay to have solved?

56. What can be pushed to
post-launch?

57. Identify the one problem
your product solves
Solve that problem in the simplest
possible way

58. The problem we solved
4 A web designer build a ‘static’ (html and css) site for
a client
4 At the last minute the client wanted to be able to edit
the site themselves
4 Perch v1 was a simple, drop-in editor for those
situations

59. We left out
4 image resizing
4 new page creation
4 a developer API
4 … and much more

60. The missing elements will
seem like a big deal to you.
If you solve the problem
you state to solve, that is
enough to start with.

62. A presentation tool where I
can’t design my own
theme?

63. Launch and Beyond
How to manage a growing product

64. “Now this is not the end. It
is not even the beginning of
the end. But it is, perhaps,
the end of the beginning.”
1
Winston Churchill

65. Our timeline for Perch
4 We launched Perch at the end of May 2009
4 At launch we were still 100% booked out on client
projects
4 Income from Perch was initially reinvested into Perch
4 January 2013 we made the decision to stop taking on
new client work

66. A product should be given
more time as it represents
a higher % of your income.

67. Never promise a specific
timeframe to customers

68. If your product is a side
project there are many
reasons you might need to
delay a feature

69. We don’t publish our roadmap
4 It allows us to be flexible and react to customer
needs and changing trends in web design.
4 It means that customers are not relying on the
launch of feature X in order to complete a project.
4 It means that we can hold back a feature until we are
absolutely sure it won’t cause anyone a problem.

70. Collect Use Cases not
Feature Requests

71. Find general solutions that
will benefit many customers
rather than adding very
specific features

72. Understanding the problem
means we can help the
customer now and optimize
the solution later.

73. Delight customers by
solving their problems and
letting them know when
you have done so

74. Make frequent, small
releases

75. Protect the Core Use Case

76. Products benefit from
clarity of purpose and
ownership
Don’t be afraid to say no

77. Don’t be led by a noisy
minority
How many people need that feature?

78. The happy majority are
often silent
Make sure you don’t bias development
towards one or two noisy people!

79. Remember to enjoy the
journey

80. “The worst days of those
who enjoy what they do are
better than the best days
of those who don’t.”
1
Jim Rohn

81. Thank you!
Slides & Links: https://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/productivity
I’m @rachelandrew
Photo credits (CreativeCommons):
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/thewestend/5045898169/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/spapax/4864045598/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/zamboniandrea/170324255/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/matt_gibson/3281131319/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/vylen/10774724274/
- https://www.flickr.com/photos/24557420@N05/7159618610/