Technical projects always take more time than expected and I've not seen one that actually finished in time.
The key here is to manage expectations of the rest of the team (note the word "manage").
In order to do that well you need to learn how to manage your own expectations first, think about all the times you said it will take you X hours/days and it turns out to take much longer. If you're not convinced of this you can write down all the occurrences you remember that you estimated and how long they actually took.
The reality is that you're almost always out of bounds (5 minutes takes an hour, 30 minutes takes 2 hours,...).
So one approach you can take is break down the project at all into tasks you should be able to delegate e.g. "implement create company page from mockup". Then list them up in a google spreadsheet and sort the list more or less according to stage (alpha,beta,stage) and then estimate the task length using half-days as a unit. e.g. This will take me 3 half-days to complete.
Only use fibonacci numbers when estimating to take into account that bigger tasks carry more inherent uncertainty.
The idea is that some simple tasks will be over-estimated and that other tasks will be underestimated but it will even out so you're estimate is more accurate and you can say that it will give-or-take a few days X working days to complete.
Bear in mind that you just estimated the creation of the first version and that it is impossible to know how many revisions will be needed before it is production-ready.
In summary, don't kill yourself over expectations.. take some time off to recover and then do a full project estimation to better manage their expectations (and your own). If you're going to survive working independently you need to make sure you are on a weekly schedule that your body can deal with and not working weekends works for the majority of the population.
> In summary, don't kill yourself over expectations.. take some time off to recover and then do a full project estimation to better manage their expectations (and your own).
This. Exactly this.
Note your body will probably crash for the first few days (depending on how burnt out you are). Just let it. Spend the time resting, eating quick to prepare but healthy meals and drinking plenty of water. Making decisions about re-organisation decisions can wait until you've recovered.
Oh and switch off your phone. Would recommend films and TV if you need a low-energy distraction.
I can say all this because I've burnt out before. My body just shut down, was hard to even move, luckily I was visiting friends who looked after me during this time. Don't wait until it gets that bad, explain you need a week off and take it.
Technical projects always take more time than expected and I've not seen one that actually finished in time. The key here is to manage expectations of the rest of the team (note the word "manage"). In order to do that well you need to learn how to manage your own expectations first, think about all the times you said it will take you X hours/days and it turns out to take much longer. If you're not convinced of this you can write down all the occurrences you remember that you estimated and how long they actually took.
The reality is that you're almost always out of bounds (5 minutes takes an hour, 30 minutes takes 2 hours,...).
So one approach you can take is break down the project at all into tasks you should be able to delegate e.g. "implement create company page from mockup". Then list them up in a google spreadsheet and sort the list more or less according to stage (alpha,beta,stage) and then estimate the task length using half-days as a unit. e.g. This will take me 3 half-days to complete. Only use fibonacci numbers when estimating to take into account that bigger tasks carry more inherent uncertainty.
The idea is that some simple tasks will be over-estimated and that other tasks will be underestimated but it will even out so you're estimate is more accurate and you can say that it will give-or-take a few days X working days to complete.
Bear in mind that you just estimated the creation of the first version and that it is impossible to know how many revisions will be needed before it is production-ready.
In summary, don't kill yourself over expectations.. take some time off to recover and then do a full project estimation to better manage their expectations (and your own). If you're going to survive working independently you need to make sure you are on a weekly schedule that your body can deal with and not working weekends works for the majority of the population.