This is the first of three essays on my lessons, struggles, and successes in and around time management within the context of running a small construction business.
“Now that you guys are managers, you are no longer paid by the hour…” my boss was speaking to another brand new employee and myself, “…you will find a mindset shift in the way you work. You aren’t working for the end of the day; instead, as a salaried employee, you are working for the end of the project. You won’t get paid overtime rates the way you used to, and there will be days, and some weekends, when you are required to put in extra hours to keep your project on schedule. In return, just as I require you to put in the extra time when it’s needed, when you find yourself completely caught up, you are welcome to take a half or full day for yourself with no change in pay and no charge against your accrued PTO.”
I liked this distinction. Even as a conscientious worker, there were certainly days as an hourly employee that I spent watching the time way too closely. When 3:30 came, I was all too ready to drop my tools from whatever I was doing, go collect my surfboard, and hit the waves. Now as a project manager, my job was to look up from the task oriented mindset of worker, see the project in its entirety, and then, using a variety of strategies and tools, go about completing that project as efficiently and cost effectively as I could. It was a mindset that suited my strengths, and I liked the idea of going hard when it mattered so I could take vacation when it didn’t matter as much.
As I plowed my way through my first projects as a manager, I discovered the natural ebb and flow of a construction project schedule. The initial days are very time intensive - from demolition on into the rough trades. If there is any surprise problem to be discovered, this is when it reveals itself. Even if there aren’t any unholy surprises, the placement of each rough material from lumber to wire, plumbing and ducting must be placed with calculated consideration of the final design. Once the rough trades are complete, a project transitions to a bit more of an ebb in the intensity through insulation and into drywall and paint. These trades require fewer consequential choices, and they rely on materials that have dry times, sometimes long ones. According to my boss, this was the ideal time to take a vacation. But one had better be back from vacation on time, because as soon as paint is done, the job gets hot again. Cabinets, countertops, flooring, finish plumbing, electrical, and appliances follow after paint, and if you are working on a kitchen or a bathroom, it means that your customers are not using that kitchen or bathroom, so you had better hustle those trades through as fast as you can – even if you’re on or ahead of schedule, you can bet those customers are getting tired of being without the critical pieces of their home. This is also where manager gets to find out where he and his guys did their job well on the rough phase, and where they did not. The internet is littered with photos of the grotesquely creative solutions folks use to cover the mistakes they made in the rough phases.
In addition to pushing this schedule, project managers are expected to acquire the industry standard three bids for each trade represented in the project, evaluate those proposals as they come in, and request editions to the scope as things are invariably missed or intentionally left out, then ultimately write, amend, and award the subcontracts. There were also budget reports, change orders, cost-to-complete reports, daily updates, and safety meetings that all had to be maintained in the windows that opened up in the nooks and crannies of the project schedule.
In those days, the company I worked for was blessed with an abundance of work. Very soon after my promotion to project manager I was given two and three projects at a time to manage. The workload of managing the workflow and paperwork expected of me was immense, but I poured myself into it, and little by little, I figured out ways to streamline my processes - things that were difficult became easier, things that were slow, I learned to do fast, and I grew a little more efficient with each project I managed. Still, I was about two years into my project management career before I realized I had not taken a vacation since I started running jobs, and that I had never cashed in on that promise of taking a day off when the schedule slowed and the jobs weren’t too needy.
The jobs were always needy. I worked 50-60 hours a week and every day I went home with the quiet knowledge that there was more than I could have gotten done that day if I had chosen to stick around for another hour or two. I began to have trouble sleeping; I would lie awake and consider the mistakes I had made and how I might have avoided them. I found myself working on Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, Independence Day, and my birthday (but honestly, what grown man actually takes his birthday off from work?). Even on my insanely rare slow days, instead of real time off, I cleaned my truck and my desk, or organized and sharpened my tools; haunted by the fear that if I allowed myself to relax too much, I would make a mistake that would ruin a project. I did my best to protect my weekends, and I ran to the beach with my surfboard whenever I could to soak in the restorative power of the waves. But on those weekends, if my phone ever rang, dread would sweep over me like an ice bucket down the back, knowing full well that it would be some emergency drawing me from my desperate attempt at respite and back into the grind. Sunday afternoons were miserable affairs, as time marched relentlessly forward, dragging me unwillingly towards that 5AM Monday alarm.
My first breakthrough in time management was simply when I realized that there is always more to be done in the day than the day has time for. This became even more simply profound when I started my own business. There is always something broken that needs fixing, there is always a contract or an email I could be writing, or a process, a business practice, or material I could be researching. Sometimes it works out and the clock strikes 4:30 just as I pack the last tool into my truck, having already built the cabinet and swept the shop. Sometimes I stroll into the weekend with nothing but neat little bows on all of my projects, and a nice clean plan for Monday morning. But this is the exception more than the rule, and often I have force myself to set down my work and settle for a level of completion that is less than satisfactory to my symmetry-loving-brain. Sometimes I linger too long, get in trouble with my wife for leaving her at the mercy of the kids for an unacceptable amount of time, or make a mistake from fatigue because I’m stretching too hard for a clean stopping point. Other times I quit too early and leave an ugly, unfinished mess for myself to clean up the next day. I don’t always get it right, and the consequences of leaving unfinished work are very real, but I think I finally understand that convenient stopping points that perfectly align with my personal fatigue and family needs rarely (if ever) come, and the decision of when to put the tools down, call it a day, or take a vacation is ultimately up to only me if I am willing to take responsibility for the challenges that might come from the imperfect breaks that I carve out for myself. Usually, these challenges are more manageable than the longer term, far more deleterious consequences of ceaselessly trying to appease the construction beast whose appetite will always exceed the very most that I am able to offer.