Tag Archives: project

From Passion Projects to Stress Projects

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It will forever confuse me when a passion project is turned into a stress project.

(sidenote: shouldn’t all projects be passion projects?)

Yes, I understand that a lot of time has been poured into this project. Yes, I understand that the rest of life’s path is dictated by the outcome of this project. Yes, I know this is a passion. Yes, I also know somebody had to give birth to this baby.

I know it’s hard to let a project out of our hand, and delegate some tasks to others that have maybe more skill, knowledge, or experience in the necessary areas. But I also know that it does absolutely no good when we continue to grasp at that project like it’s a bag of falling beans.

Absolutely there are critical points in the next phase of this projects development that we should have input on, like the color scheme of a new book cover, or the photograph used in our bio or front page of new website.

However, when the we start telling the delegated (the SEO expert, the typist, the designer, the publisher, the artist, etc.) they’re not doing it right, it’s us who’s not doing it right.

Here’s an idea.

Delegate the stress.

 

Far Too Easy Doesn’t Get You Far Enough

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It is far too easy to get caught in a tunnel and keep pushing on according to the latest thing we read on best practices: 10 tips of how to get people to (insert marketing goal here).

Far too easy.

It’s far more smarter – and a little bit harder – to develop a strategy that makes sense to you, and your goals.

It’s time to project our thoughts to the long term.

Case Study Time

So we make this newsletter and send it out quarterly, and in 4 years, after we’ve sent out 16 of them, what will that look like and how do we define success? If we assume that each newsletter is carefully crafted for 3 days (24hrs) by our well paid interns at $20/hr, are we finding a return on investment for one newsletter at $480? After 4 years $7680? After the newsletter has been crafted so meticulously and sent out, where does it retire to?

It’s your answer, not mine.

It’s foolish to think that just one is all that’s necessary: just one newsletter will capture their hearts and they’ll be fans forever; if I make just one widget that sells millions, I’ll be set for life!; I’m going to buy just this one last laptop and make sure it’s the best I possibly can buy and it’ll last me a lifetime.

Sure, just 1 may be all that’s necessary about 1% of the time, but in investments, we want to do everything we can to increase that percentage.

Yes, your time is an investment, and so is the time of every person whose employ you are responsible for.

I’ve talked about this before in a personal mission statement. We define what we want life to look like in 10 years, then we define missions to live by for the next 5 years that will drive us in that direction. Then we break down each one of those missions into critical tasks to focus on day in and day out that when adhered to will find us rolling down in the direction we have planned for all along.

This is not the easy way. This is not reading an article on a cool website with Chinese symbols and following a top 10 things to do to make life count list.

This is pounding the pavement, doing the due diligence. This is planning for success.

This is being aware of the habits you’re getting into and asking yourself why?

  • Why am I doing this?
  • Why has this been integrated into my life?
  • Why do I think this is a smart investment?
  • If I do a case study from my own life, does history prove this logic correct?
  • Does this align with my goals?

The more you ask yourself this question, the quicker  you’ll get at identifying whether it does align or not. Further, it helps to remind us to consciously think about our direction in life, and encourages us to go forth with fury because we are certain it is our quest. With this confidence, it is impossible to hold back.

Perhaps you have a strategy you use to identify the why that works great for you? I’d love to hear in the comments below.

The Grading Scheme

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Challenge is a hard item to grade. After all, what’s challenging to me might be a cake walk for you. Further, if I work really hard – spend hours – on a project, especially a creative project, it might be considered a piece of junk compared to yours that you’ve put together in an hour.

Unless you ask my mother, then obviously mine is just as good as yours.

When faced with the industrial task of grading somebody, we must make a scale; there must be some sort of scheme we can use to compare quality. Past experiences, popular expectations, text book results all tell us how to scale and what to expect.

How on earth can your or I grade an inner feeling of quality? Why don’t we work in colors, giving creators a color grade on what they’ve done.

Oh, I really enjoy this, quite a bit. I like how the swirls there are evident. I’m giving this one a Purple.

The common scale, once we escape the schooling system, is a monetary scale. “I like this, I’m going to pay more for this.” Or alternatively: “This cheap thing broke on me, I wouldn’t spend a dime on it.”

It’s important to be aware of how we’re grading the world; how we’re grading people, efforts, quality, influence, habits, culture, accuracy, etc. can have drastic effects on the future development of the world, and our interactions with it.

What have you graded today?