How to break through the chaos of Project Management

Why do some projects feel impossible to start, no matter how motivated you are? 

In this powerful episode of The Efficiency Advantage, Juli reveals the real reason behind procrastination, overwhelm, and stalled progress—and it’s not what you think. 

The problem isn’t lack of discipline… it’s lack of clarity. Most people treat big projects like simple tasks, which leads to confusion, delays, and burnout. Juli breaks down how to identify when you’re actually dealing with a project—and shows you a proven step-by-step system to break it down into manageable, actionable steps that eliminate overwhelm instantly.

Using a simple but powerful “boulder” analogy, you’ll learn how to take even the biggest, most intimidating goals and turn them into small wins you can actually complete. Juli also walks you through her reverse planning method—a practical strategy to map out your entire project with clear start dates, deadlines, and realistic timelines so you always know exactly what to do next.

This episode isn’t just about getting organized—it’s about building momentum. When you can see your progress, your confidence grows, stress drops, and you finally move from stuck to unstoppable. You’ll also discover why aiming for perfection is keeping you from finishing—and how taking imperfect action is the real key to results.

If you’ve been putting off a project, feeling overwhelmed by your to-do list, or struggling to stay focused, this episode will give you the clarity and structure you’ve been missing.

Hit play and learn how to break through the chaos, take control of your time, and finally get things done.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Are you ready to finally break free from overwhelm, procrastination, and burnout? If you're ready to focus on what truly matters and create momentum to reach and exceed your goals in business and in life, then this podcast is for you. Welcome to the Efficiency Advantage, the podcast where clarity meets action and purpose that fuels your progress. So here's World-class Productivity Expert and your host, Coach Julie.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Hello and welcome back to the Efficiency Advantage Podcast. I'm Julie Shulam, your host, and today we're going to work on how to break through the chaos of project management. Now, many people confuse projects with tasks. Here's how you know if you're one of those people. Let's say you have something on your list that you're repeatedly procrastinating on because it just feels so big. Well, that's because it is probably not a task that's on your list, but a project. And here's how you will be able to discern if what you have on your to-do list is really biting off more than you can chew. If you're saying to yourself, oh, I can't start that until I do XYZ. So there's a few other things that have to happen before you start that task, well, that's a clue that you probably have a project and not just a task on your list. If you have to make a call, gather data, format a template, or anything before you do whatever it is that you wrote on your list, you're most likely dealing with a project. And that can be the issue as to why you are not getting things done as you wish and expect. So if you cannot check it off your list when you do the one thing that you probably wrote down, it's a project. Basically, if you have three or more tasks associated with whatever it is you need to do, it's a project. Otherwise, it's just two tasks. So here's an example. Let's say you're designing a new website, okay? And if you've just written down on your list, you know, design website, good luck. There are so many steps or tasks that you have to deal with that will need to occur before you design that website. Well, that is why it is a project. And you might have been kicking that down the road a bit because it just seems so big. Well, when you consider all the tasks that need to be done before you get to the design part that you're ultimately trying to finish, you'll see that you have more of a project on your hands, not just a one-off task. Another sign is that if you feel that you are facing a task that just seems too large to tackle, well, that's again because it's a project and you haven't treated it as a project, you've treated it as a really big task. It's very common to feel overwhelmed when looking at a significant goal without a clear path forward. So here's what we're going to talk about today: how to get that clear path forward. And this is why so many people have procrastination or avoidance behaviors or just delays, and they keep pushing it away. Sound familiar? Well, when you're experiencing these issues, it's generally not a lack of motivation or discipline, but a lack of clarity. In order to get clear, you need to break it down. And you've heard me say this before. Let me share a little analogy with you. I call it the boulder analogy. Imagine your project is a huge boulder. Now, imagine you had to pick it up and carry it. Of course, that feels impossible. But what if you broke that boulder into small pieces? Each piece becomes something you can pick up and carry. It's less daunting, more manageable, more actionable. The secret to moving forward on projects is breaking it down into smaller, doable parts. You've heard me say this before, I'm saying it again. Seriously, a practical and highly effective approach to managing large projects is quite simple. Break them down into their smaller, more manageable steps. This strategy does more than reduce overwhelm. It prevents procrastination, it creates clarity, and clarity is what allows you to begin. So I'm going to give you the step-by-step process of how to work through a project. First of all, define the outcome. Start by identifying the ultimate objective of the project and be specific. What does done actually look like? Without a clear endpoint, it's kind of difficult to map a path forward. Next, capture everything that needs to be done. List every single task required to reach that goal. Now, you can just use any piece of paper to do this or an Excel spreadsheet, a Word document. It doesn't matter what you use. Just use something to write down all the steps. And don't worry about the order. You don't need to edit that. And don't overthink this. Nothing is set in stone. Keep in mind, you know, as the project moves along, invariably there will be some extra steps that you didn't think about at the beginning. But that's fine. You will have handled most of them already by having them on the list to start with. Just get everything out of your head and onto either paper or your screen. This step alone often reduces the mental pressure and the stress and the anxiety that often is associated with a project. Next step: put some structure around this. So once everything is visible, you want to begin organizing the tasks into some logical sequence. You're going to number them sequentially, but I'm going to help you to do that. So first, you're going to want to look at the tasks and determine, okay, what needs to happen first and what may depend on something else to be completed. So you're going to assign the task number basically in terms of the sequence that it needs to go in. It's a little different from the prioritization of tasks when you have just a long to-do list, because we're not looking at which is the most important, because that's not the way a project works. It's which needs to happen in what order, which thing has to happen first in order for the next thing to be able to be done, and then the next and the next. So it's a different way of looking at a task list, if you will, because the steps are there, but they happen in an order that is dependent upon other steps. Okay? Agreed? All right. So once you've got each of the tasks numbered in the order that they need to be done in, then you're going to want to go ahead and assign a realistic time estimate to each step. This may take hours, this may take days. Be as realistic as you can, considering time for others to maybe get content to you or data to be compiled. And these are the things that you want to look at in terms of, okay, well, how long will it really take for me to get this information so that I can get to the next step? Be realistic, maybe a little generous, and go ahead and put in a time estimation as to how long you expect each of these tasks or steps to take. Now, when I train on project management, I show clients the best way to do this moving forward. Once you've got the time estimation and the list and sequential order that needs to be done in, I show clients how to actually get this done well. And in order to do that, we're now going to put together a strategic plan. And this is done backwards. Yeah, you heard me right. Here is what I mean by this. First, you're going to look at the target date that you may have noted about the project altogether. So you want to put that if you haven't already indicated the target date, when that's due, go ahead and write that down. Put that at the top of the page of what you're writing, which may be right next to the title of what the project is about. Now that is where you're going to be aiming, right? So now you're going to want to have a start date and a completion or due date for each task. Ah, this is where a lot of people kind of fall on the wayside with this because they don't actually schedule when you're going to start and when you're going to complete each of these steps. You just kind of go for it and start, and that can sometimes backfire. So I'm going to show you a process that I have been training clients on for decades that works beautifully consistently. All right. So here's what you're going to do: you're going to go to the very last task on your list. Let's say you've got 10 tasks on this list of steps that need to happen for this project. You're going to go to number 10 and you're going to put the due date when this last step has to be done one day before the project completion date that you have on the top of the page. Give yourself a little buffer time there. So that's the last date. Next, you're going to look at the time estimation that you stated that this task will take. And you're going to subtract the number of days estimated for that task. And that answer is your start date. So let's say you're going to finish this last task, number 10, by the 15th of the month, whatever that is. And it's going to take three days. Okay, great. So the start date for task number 10 is the 12th. All right, so you subtracted the three days, and now you know the start date for the last task is going to be on the 12th. Now you're going to go to the next step prior that needs to be done, which is the one right before this. So that'd be number nine. And you're now going to put that start date as the end date, the due date for task number nine. You see, we're kind of doing this reverse, kind of scheduled, kind of zipping through backwards. And then you're going to look at the time estimation for step number nine, and you're going to subtract those number of days from the 12th. Let's say it's two days. So now you're at the 10th. Your start date for task number nine is the 10th. And you're going to keep doing this in reverse. So you're going to have this wonderful list of not just the tasks associated with the project, nor how much time each is going to potentially take. But now you have a clear and concise schedule of when each task needs to begin and when it is expected to be completed. You're going to continue to do this until every single task has a start date and an end date associated with it. Now, with any luck, the start date for task number one is in the future. If not, you have a couple of options. And I have seen this happen before where I had someone do this whole process and they realized, oh my goodness, they should have started a month ago to get this project done on time. So this at least will give you some information about the really reality of whether that task or project is actually going to have any chance of getting done by the deadline. So if your start date is not in the future, it has already passed, well, then you have a couple of options. Either you adjust your due date, your target date, or you need to find a way to double up on some of these tasks, maybe get more people involved in order to get everything done when necessary. But at least you know in advance that you're kind of got an uphill climb there. So this will help you to be able to move forward on the project in a more realistic fashion. All right. Now here's what helps you overcome procrastination and overwhelm. Because as you complete each small task, something important happens. You build momentum, progress becomes visible, confidence will increase, and honestly, stress decreases with most people. So you move from I don't know where to start, this is too big, to I am already moving forward on this. This is great. It's a much healthier mindset, and it is so much easier to move forward when you have clarity and you have a step-by-step process mapped out for you. I want to remind you of a mantra that I have been sharing with clients for a very long time. It is often far better to complete something at a B level than to never finish it aiming for an A level. Perfection is one of the biggest contributors to stalled progress. Forward movement is what creates results. Why does this work? Well, many of the clients I work with find the process that I just shared transformative. Not because it's complex, but because it's practical. Breaking projects down reduces anxiety, increases clarity, supports sustained focus, creates a sense of control. And most importantly, it helps you start. You're not alone if beginning feels difficult. Many of us have issues with procrastinating on something because that project, which you may have written down as a task, and it's not a task now that you've understood that, it feels too much. It's too big, and there are too many decisions looming. Once you have eliminated the decisions, you've written down all the steps, you know what's coming up, you figured out what order they need to be done in, and you have some realistic time frames figured out. This isn't as difficult as it was before. Try it. I think you'll see this. It's very, very effective. So think about a project you've been putting off. Sit down. It won't take you long to create a detailed plan with all the steps and strategize about what it will take to make this project happen. And then start. Start with step one. Again, the decision making has been handled at this point. Now you just need to follow the steps that you created. Now, if you have some new steps that come in, you're simply going to put them on the list and determine where in the lineup of what's left does that new step or steps need to occur. You can adjust your numbering accordingly. And this way you've got a plan. And you've got a plan that's flexible. You can move it around if you need to. If something comes up unexpectedly. All right. So this is a very simple process that can be used for any kind of project you've got going on, whether it's landscaping your yard or creating a whole system for your client. All right. It it will work for every situation. I promise. It's just the bigger project, we'll have more steps. And you can note where you're delegating. So that's another column you might want to have set up is who is going to do that actual step. Where are you delegating certain parts along the way? That way you are always keeping track of what's happening and who is doing the step. Okay. I hope this works well for you. Please let me know how it does for you. And if you're still feeling stuck or overwhelmed by a project, I help professionals all the time break down the complexity of what they're working on into clear, manageable steps so they can move forward with confidence and focus. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Efficiency Advantage podcast. And keep in mind, you don't have to figure things out alone. Schedule a consultation if you want someone to partner with you to have a more productive and successful life. Share this podcast to maybe just one person today. You never know who needs to hear some of the ideas shared here. And if you haven't, of course, please subscribe. Then you'll know when the next episode will be in your inbox. Have a very productive day.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

So that's it for today's episode of The Efficiency Advantage. Head on over to Apple Podcasts iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week that posts a review on Apple Podcasts or iTunes will win a chance the grand prize drawing to win a private VIP day with Coach Julie herself. Be sure to head on over to the EfficiencyAdvantage.com and pick up a free copy of Coach Julie's gift. And join us on the next episode.