ACK!  I opened  a huge hole into my working schedule to accommodate a large project that was supposed to come in two weeks ago. Guess what? It didn’t. It came in late yesterday.

I wasn’t able to completely fill in the gap that I opened up; I did a few odd jobs but they didn’t add up to nearly what I need to stay on an even keel on a weekly basis. So now I’m in a bind.

It isn’t easy to predict what to do sometimes. The smarter thing would have been to make the big job a half-day-per-day job and let the client wait longer for delivery so I could fill the other half of the day with income-producing projects. I didn’t do that.

So…another lesson learned…the hard way. I’m sharing this experience with you just so you know how to handle a  large project that is coming your way. DON’T ASSUME IT’S GOING TO LAND ON THE DAY YOU BELIEVE IT WILL and certainly don’t block out huge blocks of time before you know the project has landed.

Of course, I was told I’d have the project during that time frame, so I was operating under that belief. My intentions were good: “Finish the project as quickly as possible for the client by dedicating yourself solely  to it until it’s done.”  A great work ethic. Makes clients happy!

You just cannot assume. So try not to!