The Rule of Scope
How to plan your 2021 better.
June 30th: The last day of the first half of 2021.
The day before the memes begin and people are either thankful for their friends and family or sharpening their scissors to cut out fake friends.
The day before gratitude; businesses who have achieved their half-year goals, smashed the second quarter, people who’ve developed new skills, gotten married or achieved some other major goal/milestone in their life.
If you're anything like me, you're simply grateful that the people you love are alive and well in this small world, and you're just happy to see another day with them.
Because the thing is, no matter how much we try to twist and turn it, this life isn’t worth living, those goals aren’t worth achieving if we don’t have people in our corner who love us and whom we love in return.
Or for you, this may be the day before panic; the day you wake up and ask yourself over and over:
What the fuck have I been doing for the past six months?
Let’s say that maybe you made some plans, but you planned too much and the months crept up on you.
Maybe you did start out on your plans but they were taking too much time so you stopped halfway.
Maybe it was more difficult than advertised.
Or maybe it’s none of these.
Maybe you planned, worked and finished but the results you’re getting aren’t as amazing as you thought they’d be.
In today’s letter I’ll do my best to address all of these problems.
It’s the new half, and most of you want to try again; you want to start working out again, or learning some new skill.
Whatever it is, you want to have a solid plan that will guide you through the rest of the next six months.
To achieve this high standard result though, you’ll need scope.
What is Scope?
Scope is all the details that describe what it takes to achieve a certain goal or complete a project; it includes specifically the time it will take to finish said project and the amount of work/effort you're expected to put into it.
It’s a term used in project management to define what it will take to complete a project.
Why is this Important?
I’ll tell you.
Most people want good things and good results but don’t even know what it takes to achieve those results.
For example:
In a letter to his shareholders in 2017, Jeff Bezos told the story of a woman who thought it would take 2 weeks to learn how to do a complete and perfect handstand; the kind you could do without wall support and for long periods.
She practiced for a few weeks, but didn’t see results. So she decided to hire a coach.
Her coach told her that it actually takes 6 months of daily progressive practice to achieve a complete handstand.
To bring this home, most of you think it will take 4-6 weeks of consistent work out to achieve your body goals.
It may be true that your body starts to show physical changes after about 4 weeks.
But it takes about 12 weeks for your body to actually adapt to the changes of a complete work out.
And when I say adapt,
I mean that if for some reason you stop working out for a week or two you won’t suddenly become fat again and lose all the strength you just built up.
What does this have to do with anything?
Not knowing the amount of effort and time it takes, and what the results should look like is the reason why most people fail or give up.
So if you're wondering how to curb this,
I’ll tell you.
Project managers use what’s called scope management.
But I have a simpler solution that still ties with the principles of scope management.
The first thing you need to do is:
Define the Scope
The scope is defined by understanding the project requirements and the results you want to achieve.
The easiest way to do that is with a list.
In this list ask yourself the following questions:
What do I want to achieve with this project?
What does a good result look like?
How much time will it generally take to achieve the overall result?
How much time will each step take?
How much effort will be required of me to achieve each step?
How much effort will be required of me generally?
Can I handle it alone or do I need professional help?
And this one isn’t always necessary but I think it is
What are the chances of success? Do I have a chance at succeeding at this at my current level?
In your list, it’s important that your answers be as specific as possible.
Any ambiguity breeds room for failure or the same problems that defining your scope is meant to help you avoid.
After you’ve defined your scope, what next?
Avoid Scope Creep
When defining the scope it is important that you list the things that fall within the scope and outside the scope.
Scope creep are those things that derail you from achieving your results.
These are the things that are outside the scope.
They make you go over budget, spend more time than intended or invest more effort than you prepared for.
The best way to avoid scope creep is to plan for scope creep.
Ask yourself this simple question:
What are the things that could stop me from achieving this goal?
Write them all down.
Writing them down mentally prepares you to avoid them,
And if you catch yourself in the act of doing them, it reminds you to stop.
It’s also good to note that not every distraction will appear like a bad thing.
There are good distractions
Like cleaning your room when you should be studying
Or learning a new skill when you should be focused on improving company sales
When you catch yourself doing things that make you consume more time than you allotted to achieve your goal, ask yourself,
Is this thing I'm doing helping me achieve my goal?
If you say the answer is no, then you should probably stop it.
The Benefits of Working with Scope
When you adopt the rule of scope, the way you work and live will change for the better.
You’ll be better motivated, less stressed, less anxious and generally happier because you can track your progress.
You know what stage you are in the process. You know that this is how much time it takes, and how much work that goes into it. You aren’t worried. You aren’t confused.
You can also apply this to the work you do with people.
Maybe you're leading a team and you want to make plans.
This is what you do:
Make it clear what everyone’s role is,
Make it clear how everyone is going to achieve said goal.
When things are done like this there will be less fights because everyone knows what they signed up for. Your team will be united.
Remember
The point of adopting the rule of scope is to change your attitude towards planning.
You have to be more realistic in your approach; all the imaginary processes in your head are probably different from how it is in real life.
This is how Jeff Bezos does it and he’s the richest man in the world, so he clearly has a point.
This is how you can do it too; this is how you can achieve some of your dreams realistically by December.
Hope this helped.
If it did, why not subscribe to my newsletter where every week or two, I’ll teach you something from what I’ve learned.
I’ll talk to you soon
Till then,
Stay easy,
Dave.
P.S: it took me two weeks and some more to write this letter. If it looks easy to read, then my work is done because it was not easy to assemble. I’ll not bore you with the details but this letter proved that some things take more time than others.
I will say though, that I had to spend a full week away from this topic to be fully able to arrange my thoughts and drafts in ways that made sense.
P.P.S: exams have started, so these letters will be coming once every two weeks till I'm settled. This may not happen all the time, but it may happen most times.
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