Research: project scheduling

I don't like to schedule things.  As in, I don't feel that I estimate dates well.  Telling someone that I will finish that in 1 hour or 1 week feels... strange to me.  And yet, very necessary in my day-to-day world.  I am much better at estimating dates than I used to be, now that I have seen how long project take in the 'real world' with my work environment taken into account. 

However, I often just give a general guideline - I will be done with the entire thing in 2 weeks.  Breaking a project down into it's component parts is a level of difficulty that I dislike even further.  What do you mean I need to know how much time it takes to segment vs. retopo vs. texture vs. animate vs....  Give me two weeks and I'll give you the finished product.

But!  That's not life.

And breaking my research project into manageable chunks will work out.  I do like the feeling that something has been finished.  Even if it's something like finishing the first coat of paint or one bone segmented from a skull.  Little blue check marks next to an item that I needed to complete gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.

So, despite the fact that I wanted to write this:

Even this has more detail than usual...

 I gritted my teeth, put on my thinking cap, and wrote this:

What?  That looks... almost official.  Like a project schedule, even.

So, I have made my project schedule drawn up and submitted it to my committee and even blogged about it.  I think it is high time to paint.