Split your week into one day of planning and six of delivery.

Assume that the planning day will be chaotic and full of change as you adjust to all of the new factors that have arrived in the last week.

Lock in the six days to deliver just what you’ve planned on in your planning day, or less.

On your planning day, create a detailed list of things that you will be able to accomplish in the next six days, like completely finish. These could be sub-tasks. Be realistic, don’t push, be sane. Prioritize your list.

Create a ‘demo’ goal for your week’s work and schedule time to show people who are important to you. Make sure they know what you’re going to be showing.

During the week, track how you’re doing. If you’re behind, remove items from the bottom of the list.

At the end of the week, get up in front of your group and give a ‘demo’ – show off what you’ve accomplished.

On your next planning day, take into account what got done and adjust your expectations, also adjust your plan, you may end up doing something very different.

There’s a lot more to it, but it’s a great way of creating a realistic schedule and stabilizing a project. The short window (usually 30 days in software) lets you realistically plan, the demo puts pressure on you, the 1 day chaos, 6 days heads-down helps keep things from spinning off into the ether.

The goal for the planning day is to have specific, bite-sized, actionable items. “Get everything for the new set.” is too big, “Pick out backdrop.” “Call 5 backdrop companies and get quotes.” “Order backdrop.” are all good items. Then when you’re feeling anxiety, just pop three off the top and finish them.

If you wanted to add another layer to this, when you make your plan, predict the number of 15-minute segments each task will take and write it next to the task, then keep a little chart of the total amount of work left in the week and update it every night. (Update the estimates each night too if they’ve changed.)

Another thought – if you finish the week’s work early reward yourself with time off until the next planning day and then schedule more aggressively next time. I find that if I have a reward for good productivity (aside from more work) I work better and more cleverly…

Just some thoughts.