Recently, my wife asked me to make a case from walnut for an antique flute that belonged to her grandmother. I worked on it for an hour or so and had the top and bottom roughed out. The bottom needed a groove for the flute to rest in, so I set up the router table with a core box bit. As I was moving the wood across the table, I could feel something wasn't right, but I kept on. When the bit exited the wood, it was off by nearly 1/2". Instead of a nice, centered groove I had this:
Looking back, I realized I had made two mistakes, and then compounded them with a third. First, my setup was wrong. I tried to take the entire depth of the groove (about 3/4") in one pass, leading to the bit bogging down and chattering. Second, I didn't use a featherboard to keep the wood pressed tightly against the fence. It didn't help that I was looking at the wrong edge of the workpiece - the one against the table instead of the one against the fence. Finally, I when I felt "something" was wrong, I should have listened to my intuition and stopped to reevaluate.
The same mistakes (and their solutions) happen every day in the office as well as in the workshop. Use the five steps to planning projects of GTD (Purpose/Principles, Outcomes, Brainstorming, Organizing, and Next Actions) to come up with a plan of concrete, granular, physical next actions that are doable. As David Allen points out, you can't "do" a project. Take enough of these small steps, however, and you are done.
This process also leads to measurable outcomes - keep your eyes on these as you work so that your actions remain aligned with your outcomes. The project plan acts as a featherboard, keeping you on track.
Finally, if you think something is wrong, it probably is. STOP. Take 30 minutes or an hour to review and refocus. A few minutes now to make sure you are heading in the right direction will pay off ten-fold down the road.
Now, where did I put the rest of that walnut?
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