As a rule, I stay away from self improvement books. I often find them not that helpful and the lessons are useless if you don’t have a plan to implement them anyway. I made an exception for “How Big Things Get Done” by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, though, since it came recommended by a colleague and seemed relevant to my work projects. I’m glad I read it. The primary author has spent his career studying and consulting for mega-projects around the world and brings fascinating data-backed insight into how to to get projects done. Here are some takeaways from the book that I hope to keep in mind when planning out my next project.

1. Think slow, act fast. Spend as much time as you can planning, simulating, and testing. Even though it can feel onerous, it is cheap and low risk compared to execution. The phrase reminded me of “slow is steady, steady is fast,” another favorite of mine.

2. Similarly, don’t commit too quickly or assume the information you have is all there is.

3. Think from right to left. Start by asking why and make sure the plan answers that question. Interestingly, my wide and I accidentally did this when planning our wedding. We made a mission statement and it was useful later on in deciding what we wanted to spend our money on vs what we could cut.

4. Planning should maximize experiments and experience. If you don’t have eitheryou may be in trouble.

5. Your project is not unique. Plan your schedule based on how long it took other teams to do something similar to avoid the planning fallacy. In this paradigm, the planning part becomes easy because you’re starting from existing data, but on the flip side, the data may be challenging to find.

6. Hire a master builder and get your teamright. I’ve generally been on good teams in my career, but I can think of at least one time where a project went with a less experienced vendor to save costs, and it ended up creating significant porblems later on.

7. Watch your downside. focus on not losing every day and address any issue that could kill your project.

8. Say no when needed. If an action does not contribute to achieving a goal, skip it.

9. Make friends and keep them friendly. Build bridges before you need them.