[sganesh]

You should manage perceptions. You should give them "preemptive updates" - Tell them everything and anything, before it happens. Here's a sample template :)

Things I plan on doing today (Send it the same every day, as early as possible): (i) Homework - Required by school (ii) Reading 'X' chapters of a book, or Reading blog, code etc - Knowledge Acquisition To Help With The Project Or Personal Improvement (iii) Chores - Things that need to get done to live your life (iv) Thinking About The Project - This is how most "Features" get done. (v) Coding - Like 'Planning on adding approximately 100 lines of code'. To be clear, this is a fake measurement that is of no use to any developer, but for non-technical people, this is worth a lot.

And just before ending your day..

"FYI - I added 120 lines of code. This makes it 400 lines of code for this feature :)"

P.S: "e1ven" idea is much better :)