Trust a timeline that hasn't been shared with everyone involved.

I recently learned this one the hard way.

I had a timeline. A beautiful timeline. A very organized timeline that I was convinced was going to keep everything moving perfectly.

Then people started running late.

So I did what any logical event planner would do...

I started pushing the timeline back.

Five minutes here. Ten minutes there.

“Okay, we'll just move this back.”

“We'll make up the time later.”

“We still have plenty of time.”

Spoiler alert:

We did not have plenty of time.

I kept adjusting the schedule as if time was something I could simply manufacture because I had a spreadsheet.

Eventually, I realized the main activity—the part my client had been waiting for—wasn't going to happen the way I originally planned because I had spent too much of the available time trying to accommodate delays.

And that one really humbled me.

The problem wasn't that I didn't have a timeline.

The problem was that I treated the timeline like a suggestion instead of a tool that needed to be communicated and protected.

Now I understand that a timeline isn't just something the planner keeps.

The people responsible for making that timeline happen need to know it, understand it, and—most importantly—understand what happens when we're running behind.

Because sometimes you can't keep pushing everything back.

At some point, something has to give.

DEE-TAIL I learned:

Build the timeline. Communicate the timeline. Protect the timeline.

And maybe most importantly:

Stop believing you can magically create more time just because you're the event planner.