Termites and Tornadoes
Which is more destructive: the Tornado or the Termite? Tornadoes are epic. They leaving a wake of destruction like the finger of God. Each year tornadoes cause $1.1 billion of property damage in the United States. The termite, an unimpressive common insect, is something you step on. The damage caused by Tornadoes is far more impressive and dramatic. When a termite takes a bite out of some wood, it is small, quiet and never makes news headlines. However, termites take lots of bites… they cause $30 billion dollars of damage to crops and structures every year.
Average people are strange in their thinking. When thinking of a small job, they think it requires a small effort. Logically then, a medium job requires a medium effort and a large job requires loads of effort. And a massive project… means massive effort. It is a logical way to look at things, but it isn’t true. All jobs, from small to colossal are small efforts… just more of them depending on size. If you measure damage per second, then a Tornado definitely would be far more destructive than Termites. But if you measure damage over a whole year, then Termites are 3000% more effective than Tornados. So how do you measure your accomplishments… in minutes or over a year?
Writing a book is a massive undertaking. Many of the teachers I work with were impressed that I was working on such a large project, yet they also thought it was too big for them to try. It would take too much work, and they didn’t have the time for it. This is unfortunate, as many teachers have highly developed skill sets, excellent ways of explaining, and a love for people; they could easily produce high quality instructional books if they wished. But it was not a job that could be done in one night. Thinking of a massive job in one step, like you have to be a tornado, leads to the conclusion that you are inadequate for the job. You lose heart and never even try.
To be honest, writing a book wasn’t just intimidating for other teachers, it intimidated me. Who can write a book? Only very great, intelligent people, people who are experts in their field. People with the patience and persistence of a demigod. So successful writers were placed on a pedestal (in my mind) akin to rock stars, celebrities and super heroes.
But…
Who can write a sentence? Anyone. So write a sentence, then another, then another. In my mind, it isn’t about writing a book; it is about writing a sentence. Sentences become paragraphs, paragraphs become chapters, and chapters become a book. Within a few months, I had 100 thousand words and never felt like I was pushing myself very hard. Little bites are not intimidating; after all, they are only little bites; but they do add up. It is an absolute fact that Termites are far more effective at property damage than tornadoes. It is an absolute fact you can do anything if you take it in small bites.
The Second Part of the Equation: Planned Action
Wow! Awesome! Great! Just small bites! I better get chewing then.
Well, no. There are lots of “go getters” who love action because they think that is all there is to being productive. Action is an essential ingredient, but without a plan, it leads to lots of activity with little productivity. A hyper motivated “go getter” may move a mountain, but afterwards they may find they moved it to the wrong spot. A well vetted plan can solve many production problems before they happen.
Case in point: In my country, our government wished to connect two major cities with a new sky train route. After spending hundreds of millions, constructing miles of tunnels and pillars and laying down all the tracks, someone noticed the tracks were the wrong size… Yeah… Whoops! None of the existing fleet of train cars could run on the new tracks. This was a million dollar Boo-Boo. It delayed use of the system for an additional 2 years as they had to design and build a new fleet of cars to be able to use the new line. In addition to being fantastically over budget, it also prevented any integration of the new and old system at any point in the future. And the government’s response to this colossal blunder amounted to, “Oops, sorry.”
How much effort would it have taken to contract an independent engineer to go over the design and look for flaws before dumping hundreds of millions of tax payer’s money on construction? Even if no errors were found the expense of a couple thousand dollars in contractor fees could have prevented the loss of tens of millions.
You may think I am critical with the benefit of hindsight, yet this isn’t the first time our government has shelled out billions simply by not doing an independent check of the contract (the fast ferries were another 3 billion dollar Boo-Boo which was essentially the same problem).
The error was so expensive and so easily avoidable, it left many citizens wondering if it was done on purpose. Many believe the error was allowed to run, knowing the government would be backed into a corner and forced to fix it… after all who cares… it’s only tax payer money. Naturally, because they were so far over budget all fares, on all transit (bus, train and sea bus) took a significant hike upward, allowing end users to pay for their mistakes over the next couple of decades. Either the government was scammed, or they were in collusion with the developers… or they were just as ignorant as they claim to be. In any case the government stewards of our taxes were not acting in the interests of our citizens, which was their primary civic duty. To my knowledge, no one was ever held accountable.
Zoom into You
Your plans or lack of plans may not cost you millions of dollars, however when we are talking about your time and your money, it gets a little more personal.
There is no such thing as a perfect plan. No plan can account for all the problems that can happen (unpredictable shit happens all the time). However, walking through all the steps of your plan can solve many problems before they happen.
Before teaching a new grammar point, I would go through a text book and try to find badly worded questions, confusing vocabulary or other things that would hang up the class from the learning objective. Sometimes things I thought would be problems weren’t, sometimes the students surprised me. Overall, my classes ran smoother when I had a chance to do some pre-emptive problem solving, as opposed to situations where I was tossed into a class with little to no prep (as a substitute).
Action is essential to get things done. But planning out the right actions, avoiding problems rather than running blindly into them, can save you loads of time, money, and effort.
10 Minutes Saves 10 Hours
There is no consensus about how much time planning saves you. Some say ten minutes spent planning saves an hour of effort, some say it saves ten. There are situations where lack of planning can ruin months of effort, requiring a complete restart. Lack of a well thought out plan is one of the most common causes of failure for start-up businesses. Planning takes time and effort, and it feels like you aren’t moving forward on the actual work. Except I haven’t seen any project which doesn’t benefit from thinking before doing. All stupid mistakes are the result of stupidity… someone was not thinking about what they are doing.
If you are a hard core go-getter, consider planning to be the first step of doing your project.
Planning vs. Spontaneous Action
Artists often feel they require inspiration to work on creative projects. Imposing a regimented, formal “plan of action” feels artificial, cramps their creative style. Some artists produce beautiful work this way. Does it mean you should take their advice and toss out plans?
Masters (in any discipline) seem to operate in ‘the zone’. Their skill has progressed to a stage where they no longer need to focus on techniques of “how to do something.” They focus entirely on their creative vision. If you observe a master as they work, you may notice they are following a specific, well-practiced procedure. Their actions are precise and with purpose. Despite what they say, they are working to a plan, but they have done it so many times, it has become an unconscious process.
Black belt martial artists never plan how a competitive match is going to go down. If you asked them what they are planning to do in the ring, they will give you a very short answer like, “I plan to win.” Conscious planning is a killer in competitive fights. Yet, at the same time, training for the competition is the creation and internalization of thousands of mini-plans. If his arms are here, if his momentum is in this direction then I do a shove and a triple strike combo. Masters create and executed plans so fast they never reach conscious awareness. From the perspective of a novice, a master looks fluid, graceful, effortless and spontaneous. Yet when a novice tries to operate without a plan, they fumble around, looking nothing like a master. Effective action is never random. A master in anything spends years to hone their “plans” to the point where their body seems to reacts without effort.
Plans and Goals
Plans are not an inflexible list of procedures that must be follow as if you were a robot. Plans are a way to coordinate action, they keep you on track to your goals. When a plan isn’t working, change it. I find it bizarre how often people change their goals when they realize their plans won’t get them there. A goal is a destination, a plan is a vehicle to get there. A goal may be like getting to the top of a mountain, the plan is using a boat to get there. Sure for the first part, crossing an ocean the plan is working great. Gets harder when you start using the boat to go up the river. Eventually the plan starts failing and you realize a boat can’t take you all the way. People get so stuck on using the boat, the vehicle, the plan, that they think there is a fault with the goal… so they decide they never really wanted to go to the top of the mountain in the first place. This is back-assed thinking; plans are always subordinate to goals.
Having a plan, but no goal is like a hunter firing blindly into a dark forest. He will make lots of noise, look very busy, waste a lot of ammunition. He might even hit something, but it is hardly an efficient way of hunting.
Having a goal, with no plan is like a hunter finding a perfect fat goose for dinner. He takes careful aim, but realizes he didn’t assemble his gun. After putting the gun together he finds he didn’t pack ammo. So he rushes back to camp, gets the gun assembled and checks his ammo. By the time he finds his way back to where the goose was, he finds his dinner has long since flown away.
How to Use Milestones
There are many ways to develop plans. The Milestone method is used in corporate planning sessions as it allows realistic deadlines, overcome problems before they happen, and can streamline organization with many workers. This method works even better for individual projects, as you don’t have to negotiate time lines with anyone else.
Material Requirements
You will need a pencil and a paper calendar. I recommend doing planning on a paper calendar rather than a digital one as your mind will be freer to scratch it up, change it, and make a general mess as your plan evolves. Digital recording mediums (computer programs and apps) impose a sense of order too early in the process which restricts your flow of ideas.
Plan on making a total mess of your first paper version of your plan. Chalk it up as much as you want, because you want to get all the common problems and hang ups out as soon as possible. The first two versions of your plan is just to get a feel for how the project should go. When you type it out on your favourite management software, you will already be in the third or fourth iteration and the work flow, imposed by the software, will have less influence on your strategies. As odd as it sounds, doing a two-step approach (of a scrap paper draft, then typing it out on your computer) is much faster than staring at a blank screen for several hours.
Step 1) Know Your Target
Write your goal in clear positive language. This goal may or may not follow the S.M.A.R.T format, however it is important that you have a clear vision of what you want to achieve. Your goal guides all actions that lead to that goal. One of the most inefficient use of time is to engage in action without knowing your end result. It is surprising how often people get busy working hard, and they discovered they were going in the wrong direction all the time. Dr. Stephen Covey called it beginning with the end in mind.
Step 2) Write Down the Dead Line (version 1.0)
With your goal defined, make a guess when it would become realized. If you have experience doing this type of project, you can use that as a frame of reference. If you lack direct experience, do some browsing on YouTube, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn to see if you connect with people who have done similar projects. Within 5 minutes, you should be able to find lots of useful data and get some good time frames. You may even discover the common pitfalls others fell into, and can account for them as you design your plan (saving you even more time).
Let’s say you have determined the project will take a year to complete. Pull out the calendar and circle your current date. Then go to the specific day one year ahead of the date that you are on and mark down: PROJECT COMPLETED.
You may notice a strange feeling the first time you try this. As soon as you mark down a specific date where your goal becomes a reality, it transforms from being an idle, free floating dream into a scheduled event. It is no longer a fuzzy something that may happen someday. The act of writing it down on a specific date is an affirmation that this dream is scheduled to become a reality at a specific point in the future. You are telling your entire unconscious mind, you mean business. Whenever I write down one of these dates I’m left with the feeling, “Wow, this shit just got real!”
Even if you cannot make an accurate guess, forcing yourself to set a realistic date of completion is an important first step. You are shifting mental gears from a passive “let’s wait and see” to an active “let’s get shit done” attitude. Setting a deadline for yourself means you are serious about taking the project seriously.
Step 3) Back Tracking
Let’s call the final stage of your project #10. This is the point where you jump for joy and say, “YEAH! PROJECT DONE!” #10 is the same as the date of your deadline set in step 2. What were you doing right before #10? Probably doing last minute spit and polish to make your result really shine. Let’s call this task #9. How long does #9 take to do? On your calendar, subtract the number of days you anticipate #9 (spit and polish) to take from #10 (project completion). Let’s say it’s a week, record that on your calendar as #9: starting touch ups.
Before you can start #9: touch ups there is something else that needed to be done. We will call this task #8. Again ask all the same questions: What needs to happen before I can start #9? How long does it take to do #8? What do we need to start #8? Like before, subtract the time it takes to do task #8 from the date set when #9 starts and record that on your calendar. Keep repeating this process till you get all the way back to where you are now.
This is like doing a maze in reverse, starting at the end and going back to the entrance. Sometimes it is easier to do this and sometimes it is harder. It is a non-standard way of thinking out plans and usually requires more mental effort to sift through; and therein lies its value.
By forcing yourself to think in a non-standard way, you are more likely to notice problems and hang ups that may have been missed when you think about your plan in a familiar front-to-back approach. Speedy thinking, is often not careful thinking.
The second benefit is that you are setting way points on your journey. Rather than only celebrating at the end, you can enjoy yourself with every small achievement as you pass the mile stones you set out.
Author’s Note:
For this example I started with “Ten” because I thought my project could be broken into 10 steps. You could just as easily break it into 5 to 20 steps depending on the scale of your project. If you really have no clue, then start with ten. If it takes more steps than 10 simply go into negative numbers on your first draft. Once finished, change the labels of all the numbers after you know how many steps are involved.
Step 4) Adjustments
After step three, you may need to make a few adjustments. Some to consider are:
1) Final Deadline Adjustments
You may discover that you need to have start the project 3 months ago or there is more work than you realized. This simply means that you have underestimated the time frame it would take to do the project in step 2. No biggie, if the project guess was 6 months and you discovered it takes 9 months then just adjust all the dates of your deadline forward 3 months.
The same is true if you overestimated your time frames. If you guessed it was only going to be a year, and your plan says it should only take 8 months… then adjust the project to be complete in 8 months. There is no point screwing around for 4 months before you get started. We have been taught that we have to work to deadlines set by others, but it is important to remember that your deadlines are there to serve you and they are not fixed in stone. If, after doing stage 3, you discover that you need more or less time, then adjust them. It will be a bit of work, but you want your plan to reflect realistic time frames.
2) New Subtasks
There are two types of subordinate jobs in your project. Ones that can be done anytime and depend on no previous input, and tasks that have requirements. These are the sorts of jobs that can only be started after something else has been completed. For example setting up an incorporated entity will require you to source out a good lawyer first.
By tracing them backwards you may uncover parts of the project that you didn’t know you would be working on. You should also place a star on any “anytime” job. These can be great time savers as they can be done out of turn, particularly when you are blocked on one front or another.
3) Over Sized Subtasks
Sometimes a sub-task can be so large they are like a project in its own right. They may require a great amount of effort, resources, time or skills. When you have identified a sub-task that has a great deal of complexity you should consider it as a “stage” of the project and break it down into smaller tasks. The size of the job isn’t an inherent feature of the job, rather it is how you perceive the job. How you break up a job is up to you and has a dramatic effect on your motivation.
Personally, I like to keep my tasks something I can finish in a day. It makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something every day and that keeps me interested and motivated. Motivation is a feeling that primes your body and mind for action, and it is important to reward that feeling with a sense of accomplishment every day. Feelings can be cultivated and practiced, the more you have it the more you can access it.
People who are depressed cultivate a feeling of sadness, people who are upbeat do so often, people who are angry at being caught in a traffic jam get angrier every time they are stuck behind someone. If you want to cultivate a feeling of confidence in your ability and enjoy more motivation without really trying, then feel good about your efforts every day by finishing small tasks. Far better than starving your need for accomplishment for months and months waiting for the big result.
Step 5) Plan Grace Periods
One of the benefits of creating time estimates for each sub-task is to gain a realistic sense of how long the whole project will take. It is like a reality check against your original estimate. Time is a valuable resource and the work you did in steps one to four ensure that you use your time well. Except, time estimates only show how long you think a task would normally take to do… under ideal circumstances. Life is rarely ideal. The longer your project is, the more you can count on monkey wrenches getting tossed in. Either your initial estimations are off, taking more or less time to do a task, or unforeseen problems happen. And no one can account for unforeseen problems; which is why we call them unforeseen.
Or can we?
You are setting up the calendar, you are in control of time. So why not sprinkle “temporal safety nets” throughout your project? You can place a buffer of time between the end of one task and the start of the next. The exact size of the buffer depends on your industry, the nature of the project, the number of steps, and how many other people are involved. It could be a day, a few days or a week.
Note this is not a holiday, nor free time. It is “catch up time” to be used to get back on track if (when) the schedule gets derailed. If everything goes as planned, you shouldn’t need to use the buffer and can bank it moving on to the next task. Banked time becomes your “get out of jail free” cards; by the time a serious problem rears its ugly head you may have several of these buffers saved up. It may not be enough to save your schedule, but it builds flexibility into your plan and can drastically change how far behind you get. After all it is better if you are only a few days off your target rather than being a few months or years off target. And if you don’t use any for the whole project? Well getting a massive project done ahead of time only makes you look like a genius to the people who depended on your project.
I have seen many people try to add buffers in their initial estimation of the task. This is a bad idea as it confuses how much time the task actually should take and how much time is being budgeted as a safety net. When people mix the two, thinking becomes fuzzy as they don’t have a clear sense of what they are doing from task beginning to task end. Time that could be used as a safety net is squandered because people change their work speed to use up the time they are budgeted. They work slower because they think they have more time.
Then when a problem happens, people go into a mad panic to catch up. Work flow should always be done at a consistent rate, and the schedule should reflect a consistent reasonable rate of production along with buffers.
A “safety net” can also serve you as a warning system. When you are dipping into your banked time, you should be aware that something has gone wrong and you are using more time than anticipated. What happened? What is going on? Time to deal with a problem while it is still little.
Discovering and dealing with little issues before they become major emergencies, not only can save your schedule and keep you on track, but it can also save a whole project from catastrophic failure.
Step 6) Evaluation
Put the plan away for a minimum of one day, though a week is more ideal. Leave it alone, clear your head, do something else.
Many go-getters want to skip this step as they hate waiting. This is a mistake as the plan is too fresh; what they wrote is what they meant. They may correct a few spelling mistakes, or formatting errors but no real evaluation of the ideas is not possible. Psychologically, you need to create some distance between the thinking you used to create the plan and the thinking you use to evaluate it.
My edit process is often done several months after I finish a chapter. When I read it a second time, I am surprised at how many problems I uncover: errors in logic, better ways to express concepts, poorly sourced facts that need to be double checked, etc. I am not a super human and I can’t account for all my problems, but giving myself space between the first draft and the second really aids in evaluation. The same trick can help you when evaluating your plans. So give yourself a little temporal distance before evaluating your project.
If your personality is so driven, or your plans are so time sensitive, that you can’t waste a moment. Then immediately start on the first task and set a reminder to come back and continue plan development a week later. Even if your plan shifts around, the first task will probably still be at the front end of the project and you will have to do it sooner or later. In this way you can balance a need to get going with a need to create some distance between designing and evaluation of the plan.
After you have given yourself some space, read the plan in regular chronological order, from where you are now to the end of the project.
While reading, consider the following questions:
- Am I missing any essential steps? Are there any big gaps between one step and the next logical step? Is it a realistic buffer or an excuse for procrastination?
- What are the weak points of this plan? Where is it most likely to have problems?
- Where are the bottlenecks, where are the slow down points?
- Which steps are flexible? Make a note of tasks that are not dependent on previous activity. Circling them with a blue highlighter.
- Which steps are inflexible? These are tasks that cannot be started until a requirement is met? They are less able to be moved around. Circle these in red.
- Assuming no problems, are the time frames for each of these sub tasks reasonable?
- Do the dates that these project fall on clash with other projects or life commitments (example; a family vacation)? How will I account for them?
Get Input from Others
If the plan involves a significant financial expense, you may want to have more people vet the plan. Experts, people with direct experience doing what you are trying to do, can be useful because they will see the problems you missed right away. Nasty learning experiences that stung them can be the ones you avoid. They can also give you a more realistic input on time frames for sub assignments and mention if there are any obvious holes in the plan.
Talking to non-experts can also be useful too. They have no preconceived limitations of how something is to be done because to them it’s all new. They are less inhibited about asking stupid questions because they just don’t know. Sometimes those “stupid questions” can lead to very interesting ideas that people who are more familiar with established methods would never ask. Talk to lots of people, listen to lots of different opinions and make your own decisions about how to proceed.
Step 7) Forget About It (Engage in the Doing)
Once you have done all the work of creating a plan, editing a plan, working out all the details… you can safely forget it.
“WTF??? Why did we do all this #^(&!/@ work if we’re going to forget it?”
Knowing the solution before you start makes a maze far easier than going in blind. The effort of working out all the twist and turns in a complex project creates a cheat sheet for your mind. Large scale coordination becomes an unconscious process, leaving your conscious mind only to focus on the immediate task at hand. Having your plan sitting in your unconscious mind means there will be fewer dead moments when you are sitting around thinking what your next move should be. Your unconscious mind smoothly transitions from the end of one task into the next with little thought and no effort.
Check In Dates
Many people become so obsessive with checking their plans, it gets in the way of focusing on real work. You may find it useful to schedule check-in dates. At this stage you should have a reasonable estimate how long the project should take. Using that time you can determine the 25%, 50%, and 75% completion marks. Determine what those dates are and set reminders to pop up in your smart devices. On those 3 days you will spend time checking your plan against your actual progress. By having agreed to do this in advance and allowing your device to tell you when you need to check, you further free your conscious mind from worrying about your overall progress. Your unconscious mind can do that far better than your conscious mind. What you need to work on is the task at hand, everything else is a distraction.
A Balance between Planning and Doing
A plan is a tool that serves you, it is not your master. If things happen which change the plan, then the plan changes… too bad Mr. Plan. That being said, you don’t want to get stuck at the planning stage, fixing and perfecting plans, forever. Some people are excellent planners and get stuck trying to craft a ‘perfect plan’ which accounts for everything. This obsession is a form of perfection procrastination covered in later chapters.
Time spent writing, rethinking, and rewriting the plan over and over again, is not time spent on moving the project forward. Once your plan is done to the best of your ability, move on to the next stage and get started in the action.
Then there are other people who engage in the action right away. They ignore the need to create any detailed plans, and often spend a great deal of time working on the wrong things, or have even more work because they didn’t account for something. Hard core worker types also rarely stop to consider what they are doing, so they don’t innovate new strategies for production which a detailed planner may notice. High productivity is finding a balance between effective planning and effective doing.
So how do you strike a balance? Do Step 7. Really. After you have developed your plan and worked out all the details, forget about it. Consciously forget about it, but allow your unconscious mind to take care of the details. Relax and forget about schedules, deadlines, what comes next, or what you didn’t do in a past step. It’s all clutter which distracts you from the important thing. What is that? The only thing that is important is the step that you are doing in the present. Do it well, enjoy the activity, take pride in doing it right.
A plan has nothing to do with motivation, it only has to do with efficient and effortless action. Known all your steps means you no longer have to think about it, you no longer have to worry about what comes next. Knowing that your project does have a time line means you know it will happen in the future. Dreams are not coming by chance, they are coming because you designed it that way. Who cares if those dreams come a month early or late? As long as you take action every day to make your dreams happen, they will. The effect of task accumulation (covered in chapter 7) will ensure that those dreams happen.
A snail is not known for speed or rushing. But any gardener will tell you these little critters are hard to stop.
Summary: Benefits of Making a Plan
1) LOCKED IN ON TO WHAT MATTERS
Many people don’t plan because they believe it too much work. They think it easier to “play it by ear” or “make it up as they go along.” They are off the starting pad while planners are still lacing up their shoes, but they get swamped in a maze of trial and error to blindly figure out what works and what doesn’t. When they get to the hurdles they trip and stumble becoming angry that some idiot left these things on the track.
Those with plans also have to find their way, but their trials and errors are more focused; they spend far less time searching because they have a rough idea of what they are looking for and a basic method to get there. Hurdles come as no great surprise, they knew they were coming, so they were planning to jump. When you have a plan you’re like a missile locked on target. You proceed with deadly accuracy. No plan is like no lock, you might hit something, but it is anyone’s guess as to what. So what is the truly lazy option, to work with a plan or to work without one?
2) AWARENESS OF FLAWS
Knowing your flaws before you start is a major advantage in the planning stage. You can budget time and resources to deal with anticipated problems. You may find that part of the journey involves research as a sub task, you may need to take on partners, or hire help. Being aware of the weak points at the beginning is better than finding out after you are well into it.
Thousands of small businesses die every year because owners didn’t account for something and they didn’t have the extra finances to deal with it. Anticipating problems and determining solutions is a wonderful mental exercise which both minimizes risk and increases chances for success. If you are very lucky, you may discover a fatal flaw which could have killed your whole project. An early pivot (changing your goal) at the planning stage could save you millions.
3) TRANSFORMING FANTASY INTO REALITY
By setting your mile stones from the end to the beginning you are using deductive reasoning to double check if your original time frame for completion was a realistic one. Your initial guess (in Step 1) was a guess, however after you wrote out all the sub-tasks, you may discover that you needed to start the project 3 months ago to finish on time. You may also discovered that you have can start the project 6 months from now and still be on time. In these cases you have over or underestimated the time for the whole project and reset the project completion date to reflect your new understanding of all the sub tasks involved.
The importance is in details. The more detailed your plan is the more real the outcome stands out in your mind. Do you want to find your soul mate? Do you want your company to become a multimillion dollar leader in your industry? Do you want to change the world? You can have anything you wish for. Your mind is that powerful.
The difference between a fuzzy dream that makes you feel good, and a concrete plan of action are in the details. The more detailed your plan becomes, the more your mind accepts your dream as a plausible reality… it comes to expect it as an event coming in the future. Your plan is your tool; it is a realistic map of the actions required to get the project done.
