5. Shorten early tasks. Early tasks in a project are sometimes shortened before later tasks because they are usually more precise than later ones. There is greater uncertainty in a schedule for activities set to occur at some point in the future. Many project managers see that there is likely to be little risk in shortening early tasks, because any lags in the schedule can be made up downstream. Again, however, any time we purposely shorten project activities we need to be aware of possible ripple effects through the network as these adjustments are felt later.