Only 8 seconds and in 3rd place

I haven’t been following this year’s Tour de France (http://www.letour.fr)closely, but I’m still aware enough that Lance Armstrong is in it for his potential 8th win, a huge record. As of today, he’s standing is still 3rd and ONLY 8 seconds behind the lead – this is the 10th leg of a 20+ leg race…my first reaction is ‘only 8 seconds..not bad…I’m sure he can make that up…’ and its 8 seconds out of a total of 43+ hours of racing– but in reality, if it was really that easy he would be in the lead and not 3rd place and unfortunately it could be a good indicator that the rest of the race will reflect the current standing.
Lesson learned: if you’re behind in schedule assume that unless you change something, you’ll remain the same ration behind (or worse) for the rest of the project. Don’t fall into the ‘we’ll pick up speed soon’ trap, even if you’re just a little behind schedule…if everything was going as planned or better, you wouldn’t be behind, even by a small fraction (especially since we all tend to heavily buffer the schedule).

• Don’t Hope
• Don’t Ignore
• Don’t expect good things to happen on their own…

Be alert to your own checkpoints and flags, that’s why you put them in place and react appropriately