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Welcome back to Beyond Deadlines newsletter—a free perk for people looking to improve in Planning and Scheduling. Each week, we provide tactics, prompts, jobs and food for thought. We want you to succeed today, tomorrow and throughout the rest of your career.
Our brain is wired to resist what it perceives as hard and welcome what it perceives as easy. This bias is sometimes called the cognitive ease principle, or the principle of least effort. It’s our tendency to take the path of least resistance to achieve what we want.
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Make the hard stuff feel easy
Hard tasks don’t get done because our brains crave shortcuts. That’s the “cognitive ease” principle: we welcome easy steps and resist hard ones. For schedulers, that’s a daily trap. The trick isn’t just pushing through the tough work it’s redesigning it so the hard things feel easy.
Progress updates are the perfect example. Collecting field data, checking percent complete, tying it back into the schedule… it’s tedious. That’s why updates often get delayed, or worse, done sloppily.
Make it easier:
Pre-build field sheets so supers just tick boxes
Automate updates with layouts that flag missing data
Use filters that instantly show slipped activities
What felt like chasing scraps of paper across the site becomes a clean, repeatable workflow.
Now think about the people you rely on for info. Every scheduler has that subcontractor who only replies after three follow-ups, or a superintendent who sends progress notes in texts and voicemails. Fighting that behavior is a losing battle. Work with it instead:
If a foreman forgets percentages, only ask for start/finish status—fill in the rest yourself
If a super prefers texting photos, give them a shared folder and let them drop updates there
If a PM only looks at dashboards, send a one-pager with late activities instead of a 20-page report
These small shifts make it more likely you’ll actually get what you need, when you need it. You’re not lowering the bar—you’re removing the friction that keeps good data from flowing.
Like laying plywood sheets across muddy ground, you’re not changing the path, you’re just making it easier for people to walk it.
What’s one behavior from your project team that slows your updates and how could you redesign the process to work with it instead of against it?
Schedule Team Newsletter
Act as a skilled Senior Scheduler and professional communicator who excels at turning unstructured input into polished updates. Your task is to transform a raw brain dump of notes into a clear, engaging, and professional email newsletter that highlights the scheduling team’s efforts to improve planning and scheduling operations, without including individual project updates.
The context is that this newsletter is an internal communication tool designed to showcase the team’s value, foster transparency, and build engagement across the organization. For example, in the past, newsletters have successfully emphasized process improvements such as better forecasting methods, streamlined reporting tools, or new scheduling practices that reduced bottlenecks, all framed in a way that draws readers in.
The format should include a compelling subject line, an opening summary that captures attention, key highlights written in a concise and readable style, and a closing that reinforces the importance of the work. The tone should be professional yet approachable, with a sense of pride and positivity that makes readers feel informed and connected to the team’s progress. Before you begin ask me 3 questions to help improve your answer.
Company - bp
Location - Blaine, WA
Company - McCarthy
Location - Houston, TX
Company - The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey
Location - New York, NY
We have no connection to these jobs or companies. Our goal is simply to help you land the job of your dreams.
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This week’s episode we dive into how to accelerate proejcts. Watch or Listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Youtube.
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