Transcript: New Years Goals with Project Management – DS598

Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug Show. My name’s Doug Cunnington, and this is the first episode of 2026, and we’re gonna cover setting New Year’s goals with project management ideas.

I guess it’s resolutions. I really don’t do resolutions. I’ve talked about this in the past. A lot of times, I don’t know, I just start doing something.

If I get it in my head, I start moving in that direction regardless of the time of year. And I don’t know, maybe I’m a little stubborn in that I’m, I’m thinking. Well, I don’t need the new year to motivate me to do something, but that’s just in my head and I mean, I’m not better than anybody else. I just feel good about, uh, ignoring what everyone else does or something like that.

Again, it’s all in my head, but I realize other people do like to view a delineation point. Specifically the new year to like get some shit on track.

So we’re gonna talk about it, and I’m not gonna do the normal like resolution, uh, approach because I have my PMP, the project management professional certification.

So I may as well lean into that. So I’m gonna use some jargon a little bit here and there. I’ll break it down. I’ll end up talking about some things that I’m just interested in. I’m sure I’ll have some sort of guitar analogy coming up, but I know for one I’m gonna talk a little bit about brisket and smoking meats, so get ready for that.

Um, and it’s probably some other stuff that are, or just more general. This will be like a broad overview. I’m gonna skip a lot of stuff and actually I’ll break down something very simple at the, at the beginning. Especially for that YouTube body in south there that has a short attention span.

One of the best things you could do, get yourself a little notebook.

I like the little field notes. Uh, they’re little small notebooks. Those are totally fine. Write down a couple things that you want to accomplish. Break it down into smaller steps, maybe. Things that you would do, uh, quarterly or the amount that you would want to get done quarterly, and then break it down into monthly and then weekly.

And then each Sunday, review what you’ve done, review what you have coming up and take a little. A little time to think about how well you did, how things turned out, if it was like less impressive than you expected it to be, or more impressive, or you got more done, but just reflect on what you did and then adjust the schedule moving forward.

If you just do that, I don’t know, say 15 minutes each week, you’ll probably do a much better job than if you just think, ah, I want to. Get better at playing the guitar. It didn’t take long to get to the guitar stuff, but basically if you, if you do write this stuff down and you think about it on a frequent interval of your choosing, then you’ll make progress on it, almost guaranteed.

Right. Four. Yeah. Uh, I’ll, I’ll refund your money, um, if you, if you don’t reach your goals on this free podcast. So anyway, we will have a, a couple, few broad areas. What I did realize is there are some bigger pieces that I can take and do a whole episode just on that topic. So I’m gonna. Somewhat rushed through.

I have a few pages of notes and I haven’t done notes like this, uh, this detailed in a while, so we’ll see how it goes. I may, uh, abandon them and just hit the main points and kind of blast through it. But I mean, the thing is, if you just. Listen to what I said earlier, that 92nd summary of making progress by writing shit down and then revisiting it on a periodic basis, you’ll do amazing.

It, it’ll blow your fucking mind if you just do those small things

and let’s get to it.

So I’ll, I’ll give you a quick summary so you’ll start the project again. This is all in, uh, project, uh, nomenclature and essentially. It’s like getting some goals done this year. Uh, so you’ll have like the, the, the launch and when you identify what the project is gonna be and maybe the people that are gonna be involved or impacted and how much time that you have.

So we’ll get into some of the details. We will talk about planning, and this is where. You think about the work breakdown structure, the WBS, and that’s just breaking things, uh, breaking down the big goal into smaller pieces that you can divide up, and I’ll give some examples for that as well. One of the critical things is around scheduling and understanding dependencies and the actual critical path of the things that you have to do to actually accomplish that goal.

We will talk about the work, which is where all of the real work is done, when you actually do the shit that you’re thinking about. We will talk about one of the biggest pieces, I think, and one of the big advantages that is the monitoring and controlling, and that’s the project management term, but this is where you reflect on what you’ve gotten done, what you need to do in the future, and making adjustments along the way.

Because one thing I could tell you, whatever plan you make, you are wrong. You’re gonna be wrong about your plan. You need the plan, but your plan is gonna be inaccurate because you don’t have enough information and things in the real world. Uh, take a different amount of time that you think there’s external factors and a number of other issues you may run into.

And, and that’s all fine. You will run into issues. It’s just being. Realistic about what will happen when you are off schedule, because you will be off schedule. Finally, closing the project, finishing up, and we’ll talk about a couple things around that. And as I mentioned, I think I’ll try to blow through this fairly quickly because you can go down in the weeds.

There’s a hole. Uh, body of Knowledge, project Management. Uh, body of Knowledge. Is that right Or is it Book of Knowledge? Book of knowledge Sounds too biblical, but PMBOK is what people refer to it as, and that is, uh, yeah, project management, body of Knowledge. It must be Body of Knowledge. I didn’t look that up, but PMBOK is what everyone refers to.

It’s a big, huge book with. The full body of knowledge, and that is what you’re tested on when you take the project management professional certification. Which is fairly, I mean, fairly difficult to get. I think it’s way more common. I got mine in back in 2008, so it’s been a really long time, but it was more, uh, unique back then.

It was, there weren’t as many people. Now there’s way more project managers and you know, it’s still a thing. Anyway, moving on. So.

With a project, often it’s referred to as the project charter, and really it’s like what you’re trying to do and why you’re doing it. So it could be like a little mission statement, but it can be powerful when you’re looking at your, your own like personal goals that you want to accomplish.

So if it’s. Uh, to create a side hustle income of a thousand dollars per month, uh, that could be a good starting point and you could put in some bullet points on why. And as much as I go back and forth on the use of ai, AI is really good at understanding a. PMBOK style, huge fucking amount of information and methodologies and all that kind of stuff.

So you could probably ask your AI chat of choice to become the embodiment of the PMBOK and guide you to do it that way. Now that said, I don’t actually think that’s a really great way to do it because there’s a lot of jargon and a lot of other BS kind of. Fill up the, the PMBOK for, for personal use, right?

You don’t need to do all of these things, um, that are in the pmbok. So anyway, you could use the PMBOK to say, Hey, help me write a, a project charter for this personal goal that I have. Okay. Moving on stakeholders. So who’s on your team? When you’re thinking about personal goals, you probably need to think about people that might be working with you.

These could be contractors or it could be folks that you like, hire full-time, depending on the scope of what you’re trying to do. It could also be, again, if it’s a personal project, it could be like your family members. So if I’m thinking, Hey, I really wanna play guitar a lot more, it actually will have some impact on my family because maybe I don’t have as much time.

To spend with them because I’m practicing guitar a few hours a day or something like that. Or maybe it’s very noisy while I’m practicing guitar, so other people may not wanna be in the house. That makes sense. Even if it’s beautiful music, it could be pretty fucking loud. So that’s something you have to think about.

And it, it could be neighbors right in, in the thinking about the loud guitar playing, but. It’s something you need to think about. So stakeholders who’s impacted there might be people that are directly, um, helping out. So those folks, uh. Play a role as well. Next we’re thinking about bandwidth and your resource capacity.

This expands, uh, not just resources that might do work, like human folks that may be contractors helping out, but it’s also your specific time, like how much time do you have when you’re thinking about, um. You know, I’m expanding it a little bit, but you also have financial constraints and time constraints of your own time.

But the financial constraints could dictate, like, if I wanna get guitar lessons, well how much can I pay? A few months ago I did a video on the Sonora guitar Intensive, and that’s basically in competition with a guitar school, like a full-time guitar school where people would pay. Uh, whatever, 10,000, tens of thousands of dollars for a semester of tuition.

So it’s priced higher than what I signed up for, which is pick up music. And that is more for like, uh, a casual, um, a casual budget for someone like me. So I think it’s like 30 bucks a month versus like 300 or 1000 or $1,500 per month. So huge, uh, like difference in the. Capital resources that we’re able to invest.

So it’s very important to figure out like what constraints you’re dealing with and that’s kind of all at the beginning. I wanna emphasize you’re thinking about the, the start of this project, and we know that your initial assumptions are going to be incorrect. That is totally okay. Again, we know they’re gonna be incorrect.

We hope that as we’re doing more projects in our life, we get better at making the predictions, but it’s something that you can adjust and you’re expected to adjust. In fact, there’s a whole, uh, section where it’s all about adjustment, like figuring out where you’re at and adjusting from there.

Next phase in this, uh, situation for New Year’s goals is planning.

So. I mentioned it before, you’re looking at the, the overall big goal and you need to break that down into specific steps. We’ll do a, a very standard, Hey, I wanna lose some weight. I wanna lose weight. So it helps to make it specific, number one. And you could say, I wanna lose 20 pounds. Or you know, we could turn it around and say, I wanna lose some weight.

But more important is the, uh, body fat percentage. I wanna lower that to make sure I have plenty of muscle on my body, but I wanna make sure that I’m recomposing and I wanna make sure that I get more muscle, less fat, or we’ll just keep it simple. Lose 20 pounds, whatever. So you may have a few different um.

Like phase is one way to look at it, which might not be correct, but it could be an okay way to assume to break it down. If you have the full year to lose the 20 pounds, you would just, uh, divide it into the, you know, 12 months of the year and then you would lose, you know, a little, a little more than, uh, one pound per month, right?

So you could say, Hey, I’m gonna lose a pound and a half. Just as a little assumption. That should get us in the ballpark. Again, we know we’re gonna be wrong, so that could be like a very reasonable thing to do. So you could break it down into each week as well. And then again, this is a poor way to do it because your body can fluctuate the weight, um, a lot from week to week based on, you know.

Uh, the food that you’re eating, the, uh, water retention, other things, how much salt is in your diet, blah, blah, blah. So poor example there. But if you’re looking at it as um, maybe like a step count, if you’re approaching it in that way, you can look and divide it up and be like, I need to get X number more steps per week and then go from there.

So again, the main idea is breaking it down. One other, um, little example, we’ll make it much smaller. So I talked about, uh, brisket and maybe your work breakdown structure. In this case, the WBS is around smoking a brisket for a picnic or whatever, dinner at your house. And there’s a few steps. So number one, you may, you have to get the meat.

Next you’ll have to trim and season. I just do salt and pepper myself. You know when I put a little garlic powder on there too, I don’t think you could really taste it much, but it’s just a little something extra. You have to light the smoker. You have to get that, uh, sort of stabilized. The actual cook takes a long time longer than you think.

Whenever, whenever you’re thinking, oh yeah, it’s just gonna be done in, uh, 10 hours, it’s not, it’s gonna take way longer. That’s the biggest thing I learned from smoking brisket. And the longer you cook it, um, you know, it seems to do better. Next you have to rest it. And that’s a key part of the cook. Next couple, you know, basic things you may have to do.

You’ll have some sides that you need to cook. You’ll set the table, um, along the way, you know, part of the rest you would get like, maybe a cooler ready. I like to put the meat in a cooler. You know, you wrap it up, uh, with foil, really? Well wrap it in a towel, put it in a cooler. It stays hot. Amazingly, it’ll stay hot for.

Six hours or something like that, especially if you preheat the cooler. So as we’re thinking about that, this is a project, but we broke it down into smaller pieces. Part of this, and I listed it in order, part of this stuff is, um, your schedule and for making something like a brisket, this is really important because what happens and the smokers out there know what I’m talking about.

You’re like, I’m gonna make a brisket. I watched all these YouTube videos I used to listen to, um. Like barbecue pit, masters style, uh, competition barbecue podcast, which is crazy. This was like in 2009, 2008, something like that. And, uh, I was like, oh yeah, I’m, I’m into barbecue and stuff. I wanna learn more.

So I was listening to this subculture of barbecue, pit master competition barbecue. I mean, it’s a whole lifestyle. Very, very interesting. But, but anyway, the point. The point is you think, Hey, I’m gonna make a brisket. And then you tell your family, Hey, I’ll be ready at six. Then it’s not ready at six. And then you keep saying, ah, I think like 30 more minutes or whatever.

And then it ends up being midnight before you’re eating. Everyone’s cranky ’cause and they had a snack earlier, but you didn’t want ’em to eat too much. And it’s just all. Way too late because it takes longer to cook than you think. Either that or you pull the brisket a little too early and you rush it and then you end up with a kind of a tougher, uh, meat than you hoped for.

’cause you didn’t cook it long enough, you only got it up to 1 75 instead of 2 0 3 or whatever you’re aiming for. So. Understanding the schedule is very important, and when I’m looking at the, the steps here, you know, sourcing the meat, I go to the store, I could pick it up, it takes a few minutes or whatever, and then it’s in a Cryovac, uh, bag, so I could just put it in the fridge whenever I’m ready.

I can, um, take it out. So that’s not really, um, as critical ’cause I could pick it up ahead of time. However, obviously I have to, I have to trim and season the brisket and I have to preheat the smoker. So lighting the smoker may take an hour for it to stabilize. So one thing I like to do, ’cause you could do some things in parallel, which is very helpful and you could.

Think about your own projects, right? So I’m giving the example of brisket ’cause uh, I’m hungry, I guess. Basically I can get the smoker going, put the charcoal out there, get it all lined up. I’ll cleaned up, ready to go, I’ll light it and it’ll probably take an hour or so for it to, um, reach the temperature and stabilize.

And for the. Entire smoker to ha be like a uniform temperature or at least, uh, stable. So while that’s lit and that is, uh, stabilizing and heating up and all the things I described, I can go inside. Open up the brisket, trim it down, cut the fat off of there, get it the right size that I want it to be in shape so it’s sleek and aerodynamic, and the smoke will just, you know, flow over it in a really nice way.

And then I can season it up. So good to go. I could do those in parallel. I can, uh, throw in the smoker and there’s a couple other steps with a cook, but one, uh, one thing I usually do. Is I plan on like a 24 hour situation. ’cause I know I can keep the, the brisket hot. So this is a little, this is deep in the weeds and there’s only like three people that give a shit about this.

But because you can keep the brisket hot. I’ll throw in the cooler. Good to go. You could even put it in like a warm oven that is, uh, at 170 degrees and it will keep it at the right temperature that you want. You can goose it up to 200 every now and then if you, if you’re really into it all wrapped up, by the way, it’s in its own, uh, delicious juices there.

So with the cook, I typically will smoke for like 16 to 20 hours. Part of the reason I’m using a Weber Smoky Mountain Charcoal with some wood chunks in there, I typically don’t wake up through the night. So I’ll get it set before I go to bed, and then I’ll, you know, make the vents so it will stay hot through the night.

The temperature will drop by the time I get up. It’s probably in need of more charcoal and I have to go out there and check it out, but I get to sleep through the whole night, even though it cooked a little bit slower. So typically when I get up, it might be at like one 50 or one 60 Fahrenheit, right in the middle of the the wall.

So. From there, I’ll heat it back up, put more charcoal, open up the vents, and then I’ll get it where it needs to be over the next, say, six hours, eight hours or so. And that way if it takes much longer for it to smoke for some reason or another, then I have plenty of time, and then no one’s hungry at the end.

Remember, the issue that I was telling you about is like people will smoke a brisket and it’s not done until midnight, which is just a. It’s like torture. It’s like, oh, it’s gonna be so good once I get it out, but you have to wait six hours. Something like that. And then, um, the thing is, if you have all that time for it to smoke, then you’re not in a rush and you, and basically you just start cooking it like one day ahead of time.

So. Going back to the project management idea. Thanks for indulging me on that. Basically, while it’s cooking, you can do a bunch of other stuff. You can like get the table ready. One of the steps that I mentioned, you can get all the side dishes ready because you could do things in parallel and largely the cook time of 16 to 20 hours or whatever I mentioned.

You could do something else the whole time. I’m sleeping for most of the cook. You know, light it up, get it on the, on the smoker, go to sleep, and it’s, um, you know, it’s cooking while you’re resting. Alright. One, one of the things that I kind of implicitly mentioned here was the critical path. So these are.

These are tasks that have to get done. So these are things that have to get done or else the whole, um, project will not take place. And that sort of dictates the total amount of time that it takes for a project to get done because you have to do those and those that like that path. That has the critical items that must be completed, that sort of dictates the schedule because the, that is, um, required.

And like I mentioned, the uh, side dishes, the side dishes, those are not in the critical path. Those could be done at a different time. Other people can do those, those are not dictating the schedule. And, you know, you could purchase those, in this case that’s like outsourcing. You could buy the sides and that sort of thing.

So if you figure out the critical path, the things that must be done, you could figure out how long something is gonna take. So scheduling is something that people fuck up, uh, very often, especially when they’re working on personal projects because they didn’t figure out the personal or the, uh, they didn’t figure out the critical path.

They just didn’t realize that a certain thing was gonna take so long. And then that trashes the schedule. And you’ll see this a lot in, you know, the corporate world. If, um, a team, like a big, large overall team hasn’t identified a critical path, then. The schedule could get impacted in an unexpected way.

And that’s where, you know, major issues happen. And the thing is like even if you know what the critical path is and you know the things that are again critical, then you can still be managing them and try to avoid the issues and you still run into the issues. So. Let’s move on. Otherwise, I’ll just keep talking about brisket and I’m gonna be so hungry.

So let’s talk about the work actually getting done, getting things done. And we were talking all about the, the planning before we were talking all about brisket and smoking and my secret recipe, which is just sa, salt and pepper. And then, uh, 20 hours of smoking. At around two 50 Fahrenheit, something like that, 2 25.

You know, when you have such a long smoke, you could be a little bit more flexible with it, and I know it’s gonna drift. So anyway, the work, you’ve heard me mention it before in previous episodes, but we have what’s called the triple constraint, and this applies all over the place. In almost anything.

There’s probably some other areas where there’s like four constraints that may pop in. It’s like a, the fourth dimension. But in this case, we’re talking about the scope, we’re talking about time and cost. And generally it’s accepted that, um, you can’t really have all three, you can’t have like a huge amount of scope in a very short amount of time.

For cheap, you could usually pick two. If you’re lucky, you could pick two, but. You always have this constraint and you know, time and cost are inversely related. If you want it really fast, it’s probably gonna be expensive. Imagine, you know, having a house built or maybe having some work done. You can tell the general contractor, Hey, I want you to finish my basement in three weeks.

And they’re like, ah, that’s, that’s way too fast. We don’t have enough people. And you can potentially say, Hey, well I will. You have an unlimited budget. You could hire as many people as you want, and you could throw more resources at it if you can get it done faster. So to get it done really fast, it will be very expensive.

Or if you have one person working on it and it’s just a single handy. Uh, handyman coming in and they’re getting all the materials. It might take, uh, whatever, six months, but it could be much cheaper because it’s just a person and they’re not working on a accelerated schedule. So you have this triple constraint and always think about it again.

If I’m like, Hey, I want, uh, I want this basement done in three weeks, maybe someone says, yes, I could do it, but I could only do this, uh, very small area. And, uh, the scope of what I’m doing is much easier so I can get it done faster on your budget. But. There’s not gonna be any walls, for example, or we’re not gonna wire any electricity.

So that could be the change in scope that allows you to get it for cheaper and faster. So triple constraint, it always comes into play. You could see that as you’re looking at, you know, just different. Pieces of work, like through your life, whether it’s, like I said, the contracting thing or maybe it’s, um, lawn and care and how much you’re being charged and that sort of thing.

Or it could be, um, just observations in your corporate job, for example. Alright. The other part of the work is, uh, doing the work so. You have to reference your work breakdown structure and your plan and schedule where you have outlined like, Hey, here’s what I want to get done. I’ve broken it down into small steps, and then you could divide it up in place.

You know, different pieces of work per the schedule into your annual calendar or your quarterly planning, or however you’re doing it. Again, referencing the first. Couple minutes of the show if you, uh, have a periodic time where you review what you have been working on. Weekly is great. You know, a lot of people do view like what is coming up on a weekly basis.

So weekly, monthly, quarterly is a great, great way to review it and just stay on top of it so nothing gets too far outta whack. Alright, so you’re doing the work, you’re executing based on the the plan, you are understanding the schedule, you’re doing your best to stick to it.

And the big part, one of the biggest things of project management is monitoring and controlling, which is a very corporate way to say the check-in, the intervals of check-in.

And it could be fairly straightforward and fairly simple. But you could also be a lot more complicated. Simple is usually best. You can make it complicated later. So essentially what you’re doing is looking at your, your plan and what you have actually got done, and you’re looking at the discrepancy between the two.

So I planned on getting this. Thing done, these four things done in the first week, but I only got two done. Again, we know that your plan and your schedule is going to be wrong. That is okay. So what you end up doing is on a weekly basis, and, and by the way, it could be the other way. You could think, Hey, I’m gonna get four things done, and you got seven things done.

So you could adjust the schedule from there. And what you end up doing is. Improving on your predictions on what you’re gonna get done, but it’s important for you to revisit your plan and schedule as you’re figuring out how much you’re getting done compared to what you thought you were going to get done.

So maybe you don’t want to redo the whole schedule every week, but maybe once a month it makes sense for you to true it up. Now you should be monitoring each week. Based on how much you’re getting done versus the plan, but that is essentially how project management, um, works. From a scheduling standpoint, what did you get done?

What did you think you were gonna get done based on the plan, and adjust from there. Again, we know, I’m gonna say it a million fucking times, right? Like, we know the plan is going to be wrong and your schedule is going to be wrong. It’s totally okay. It just means you need to adjust, and that is part of the whole process.

You end up shifting things around and your schedule will get better over time because if you are doing this on a periodic basis, you will understand how much you’re getting done and maybe the complexities of certain pieces of work, and then you can improve on the schedule and your predictions get better.

That’s one of the big reasons when a company. Has a methodology around project management and they use templates and they do this whole process. Their projects often, not always, but often, they’ll get better at execution because the team is better at identifying the issues are gonna run into the scheduling assumptions that they fucked up on early on.

They get better on that as they go. So this is the most important part and that’s why. In the beginning I mentioned, Hey, if you just think about what you have been getting done each week and what you’re going to do, you’re probably gonna do much better than you think. For something so simple, it’s the monitoring and controlling.

Finally, you finish, you finish your project, and there’s a couple things that tie back to what I just mentioned, so you. Often, or I do this, you finish whatever it is you’re gonna do, and then you’re like, oh, great, I’m done with that. And then you just move on to the next thing fairly quickly. Maybe catch your breath, go on vacation, reward yourself a little bit.

That’s great. Reward yourself. Do your thing within reason. Right? And then. You move on to the next, but one of the biggest, most important things that you can do is the monitoring and controlling that same kind of idea, but all over the whole project, right? So you look at what went well, what didn’t go well, what turned out different than you expected, what turned out way better than you expected, that that sort of line of thinking and the goal is to.

Figure out how to do a better job the next time. So it’s the idea of continuous improvement and thinking about how you could take what you learned good and bad, right? We probably learn a little bit more from the, you know, bad things that we had issues with. So it’s pretty important to go and revisit those ideas.

So. You can do this in a more formal way where you have, um, you know, a set of questions that you’re going through. Again, you can keep it more casual, but it’s pretty important when you finish working on something to have some really thoughtful takeaways so that the next time that you’re doing a similar project, you remember what you learned and you do better than you did the last time.

One thing that I skipped over is risk management, and I wanna do a whole other show on this. It’s really thinking about what might go wrong and depending on your personality. You might live in that place where you’re always thinking what might go wrong and it can go in a negative direction where you’re like ruminating on all the things that could go wrong.

So we, we don’t want to go that route, but this is a formal risk management sort of approach. So in the next few weeks I will cover that. I think it’ll be, um, useful for taking that sort of. Energy if you have it. Not everyone’s like that. Some people are, um, just they live in the optimism like, Hey, nothing’s gonna go wrong.

Everything’s gonna go right. So there’s the, the two polar opposites. Uh, both parties probably can benefit from a more formal approach that takes that energy and moves it into a, a positive direction. And then if you’re living in the middle, I guess I kinda live in the middle. Slash on the, Hey, what can go wrong side?

If you have a formal way to go through this, it’s much more approachable. And again, you could have a periodic way that you review this stuff. So pretty cool, pretty cool way, pretty cool way to not spiral out of control.

If you have any questions, let me know. Uh, you could shoot me an email feedback at Doug show, or you could leave a comment on, uh, YouTube.

I, since I am doing a couple other episodes related to goals and project management, kind of, uh, risk management, all that kind of stuff, I should be able to answer those questions. In those upcoming episodes. So please do let me know what you think or if you use a similar method for your goals. And what I could do, I think I could set this up, if you want to get like a one pager cheat sheet, I will ask, uh, one of the AI tools to put together a little cheat sheet, a one pager for tracking and going through this sort of process.

So if you want that. I’m pretty sure, like I said, I could set it up, send it for the email list. I’ll put a link in the description and I’ll be more specific about what it is. What a great call to action. I don’t even know what it is yet, but it’ll be great and you’re gonna love it. So we’ll catch you on the next episode.

Thanks a lot.