Critical Path Planning: Three months to go!

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Have you ever felt like your doing sooo much, but you're not getting anything done at all? That to-do list of yours barely has anything checked off, but you've been working your butt off? What's going on here?

That was me a couple months ago. I was busy, I was getting stuff I needed to do done for the wedding, but my monthly to-do list stayed the same. I felt stagnant, a complete underachiever and slacker. What I didn't realize that what I needed to do to get item A finished was a dozen smaller steps that took much longer than expected. That's when I decided to take this huge overwhelming project of wedding planning into critical path planning.

Now, I do consider myself a planner, but I'm not a planner by trade nor did I study organizational or planning methods in school. What I do know about the critical planning method is this simple gist: in order to get from point A to point B, focus on the little steps in between. The project is dependant on a series of smaller steps and the length of time it takes to complete each step. For example, I couldn't just say I'm going to "Get Rehearsal Dinner Planned Out" this month, without taking into consideration all the details I need to get done to have that item checked off (i.e. develop budget, research caterers and prices, figure out who's making what, etc.)

So again, I made my To Do List in Excel, putting all my final goal items in one column and making 4 columns to the right (each column representing an item or items I need to accomplish each week to get my final goal completed).

So with just three months to go (97 days to be exact!) here is what my critical path plan (or at least some of it :) looks like. You'd probably have to click on the photo to see it more clearly:

As I get items done each week, I feel like I'm moving closer to my goal. I can also organize my time and divide each task by week instead of trying to do everything at the same time. Good news for my sanity!