An article on CNN last week, before less trivial matters occupied our attention, discussed the perils and pitfalls of managing the US's constitutionally mandated decennial census this year. What must have seemed like a fairly straightforward proposition 220 years ago has ballooned into a monumental, and monumentally political, undertaking. The objections, concerns, and lobbies swirling around this $14 billion dollar project would probably amaze the Constitutional Convention. Where should displaced Gulf Coast residents be counted? Where should inmates be counted? Should illegal residents be counted at all? Questions that may appear to have clear answers under the law become much fuzzier viewed under the prism of politics and considering what's at stake: federal money, accurate population data, and of course Congressional representation.

I swear I don't run around looking for project management parallels, but this one leapt out at me when I read Audrey Singer's summary of the difficulties, early in the article:

... [Responding to the Census] is viewed as a burdensome task by some because they see the questions as too personal or the process too intrusive. Others distrust what the government will do with the information or fear that it may be used against them. Some are hampered by language barriers. Still others have more than one residence.

All this over just ten questions per household member. But clearly, immense weight can be attached to any question (let alone ten or more) when it comes from someone in authority. Maybe it's because of the number of projects I'm juggling these days, but my mind went immediately to the portfolio censuses conducted by many organizations as they begin or monitor their portfolio management processes. It happens on a departmental level too; I know I get asked semi-regularly about what's on my desk. That's just good management.

But I wonder if others tend to sandbag the response, as I sometimes find myself doing. "Oh, Project X and Project Y. I just have a few little operational things to take care of first. Project X stuff is next, I promise ..." Meanwhile, Z, A, B, C, D, and M are languishing in my in-box, occupying my background attention, if not my actual time. Yes, it's an honest answer, but is it a completely honest answer?

What projects have you stashed in your mental in-box without officially counting them, because you were skirting the political or personal impacts of owning up to your project load? Maybe you're "80% done" with a pet project you'd rather not put on the back burner. If you owned up to those new reports that will make things so much easier/clearer or the whitepaper you're working on that's bound to be a sensational hit with Marketing, you might have to stick them in a cold, dark corner until Project X and Project Y are completely done. Well, after all, the reports are really bug fixes; we should have had them all along. And the whitepaper is really just ... administrative work, right? Yeah. "Oh, just X and Y. Project X stuff is next, I promise ..."

Maybe I'm the only crazy person out there who hides legitimate work, but judging by the number of hours everyone's working these days, I doubt it. It's not that we are ashamed of the data, it's just that sometimes we worry the question is too accusatory, or too intrusive. We distrust what management will do with the knowledge, or fear it may be used against us or our favorite projects. We may be hampered by (or allow ourselves to misconstrue) semantics. Or we may just have so much going on that we flat out lose track of what goes in which column. And I think that more than once we think, after all, thus-and-such isn't that important and it won't take that long to do, so it's not worth adding to the list. (The trouble with that is that we are, generally speaking, truly terrible at estimating how long "not that long" actually is.)

Whatever the reasons we have for stashing things that we want to protect or don't want to admit to, we owe it to ourselves, our projects, and our organization at large to provide an accurate count of the projects—large and small, official and unofficial—occupying our time, our attention, and our resources. There's only so much of us to go around, so it makes sense to make a census, completely and honestly.

Even if formal portfolio management isn't part of the general mindset yet, a personal or departmental census of projects in the works could go miles toward better allocation of our increasingly limited resources. It can be as formal as getting everyone to fill out a form, or as simple as a GTD-like list of "projects"—anything you're working on (or sitting on, or thinking about regularly and loudly) that will take more than one action to complete.

Then scan the list as you would an organization-wide portfolio and make an honest assessment of the demographics. Has your project population changed dramatically? Are you suddenly looking at lots of small projects you hadn't really counted before, or pieces of larger projects that are co-opting resources without your conscious knowledge or any official executive support? (Taxation without representation!) And are the Big, Obvious Projects really getting the attention they deserve?

Once you know what you're up against, take a page from the PMO's book: prioritize those projects and the associated workload. Sure, the result of that mini-project you've been sheltering is going to be awesome, but maybe it's not necessary to do it now; put it aside until you've got more slack in your schedule. If there really is a deadline—real or imagined—talk to your manager; they might surprise you by setting aside something else so you can complete it, especially if you make a good case for it. Even if they don't, maybe you can get it on the official schedule for later this year.

Whatever the result, make sure you're really allocating your effort fairly, based on the projects that are going to provide the most value toward achieving your overall goals. I find some of David Seah's Printable CEO forms helpful in this kind of personal management, but I've also concocted several variations of my own over the years, and you'll have your own workflow preferences too.

When an authority figure comes knocking and asking prying questions about what's really going on, it's understandable that some of us would be guarded. History has taught us that information is power, and we shouldn't give it up too easily. But taking the risk and sharing complete information also has the potential to make our lives easier, by identifying the real workload, shining a light on resource allocation issues, and ensuring that every effort supporting the organization has official representation. Information is power. Let's spread it around.

Related Links
A Scored and Ranked Project List can work at almost any level to help you assess what's really important to your overall goals. You might be surprised at the results. If you need to find out what's really going on, our Portfolio Data Collection Letter provides an example of a cover letter and form used to explain the process and collect the information. (You might be surprised at the results of this one, too.) If you're juggling lots of little balls instead of 2-3 big ones, our guidelines and tools for Planning and Managing Multiple Small Projects can help you keep it more orderly ... or at least less chaotic.