The Joy of C Projects

One of the great things about a project list is that it lets you keep a
hold of little, less important projects (C priority on the ABC priority
system), and be just as persistent (if you want) about those as about the
big ones. Without ever putting these front and center and using up my
attention or high quality thinking time, just by doing one little next
action after another - pick up this thing at the store, take this thing to
the office, write this person an email, brainstorm about this - all of a
sudden I find it's done, even if it took *many* of those steps. This gives
me a neat little sense of efficacy, frees up a slot for a new
always-wanted-to project, and can have unexpected and nifty consequences.
Here are a few examples of things I've made happen, seemingly without
trying, and t hese are just the nonacademic ones:

* Found some awesome podcasts
* Built two new shelves to repair a bookshelf
* Learned tree identification at the local arboretum
* Bought a nice overcoat
* Developed a routine for cleaning my apartment
* Organized a bowling night and a Vincent Price film marathon
* Made a present for a clinical psychology PhD friend that was two stamps,
one that said SANE and one that said INSANE
* Started a garden
* Memorized all 10 verses of Desolation Row

Many of these may sound trivial, but they brought me pleasure and really
required very little extra time or attentino, basically just extra clock
cycles I wasn't using anyway. (it's amazing how often something will just
show up that will suddenly help you with one of the projects that have
been on the list for a while) And committing to projects and finishing
them can lead to many great consequences, even if at times you don't
really know why you're doing them (besides "it's on the list" - again like
the memento guy) For instance making the bookshelves taught me about all
the resources that are available at home depot, which could be useful
later on. And there was a call for submissions at a community art center
for a show on the theme of bob dylan, and having memorized and thought a
lot about Desolation Row I put together a performance about it which went
over really well. Which just goes to confirm my belief, which is also the
theme of a favourite book Son of Interflux by Gordon Korman, that the most
satisfying and fruitful way to spend leisure time and money is not on
simply amusing yourself, but on projects - especially ones that enlist the
help of other people.

The Project List: How to Be Like the Memento Guy

At the heart of my life as a productive person is my list of projects. I
define what goes on the list pretty strictly, after David Allen's Getting
Things Done: a project is any kind of change in the world that I want to
make happen, that takes more than one simple step, and the list are the
projects that I am currently *committed* to making steady progress on. So
I draw a line between those active projects and ones that I might want to
do somewhere down the line - which go in a list called Someday/Maybe.
Those ones I don't have to worry about at all, unless I want to move it
over to the project list. In my conception projects should take between 20
minutes and 3 months to finish, and between 3 steps and like 200.

I store projects as memos in a special category on my palm pilot. I like
this because each memo can then hold my thoughts or info about the project
(project support), like if I do a little web research I can paste it in.
Most importantly is when deciding on what the next action is for a
project, I put that in there (as well as on a todo list) One of the
biggest mistakes people make with a todo list is to put things on there
that are really projects: that require not one physical, easily defined
action, but a complicated chain of actions, or a series of tricky
decisions.

My friend in psychology has designed a scale to test people on how
persistent they are and how much they resist giving up, and the amazing
thing to me watching my own behaviour is how using a project list has
drastically increased my persistence, such that I would probably score
higher on her scale now. I can avoid a project for a while, but unless I
take it off the list it's going to be there staring me in the face - it's
not going to be swept under the rug. It's like being the guy in Memento -
rather than keeping all the projects in your head at once, which is
stress-inducing, you can count on those words (like the tattoos) to prompt
you about what you could be/should be working on. I have about 40 projects
that are currently active (though only a handful of "A" projects, see the
ABC prioritizing system) - there's no way I could keep those in my head.
Like the Memento guy it makes me feel relentless and driven: I *will* keep
calling until I reach someone who can fix the problem; I *will* keep
thinking about this issue until I make a breakthrough. No more pushing it
to the back of my mind and hoping the issue will go away (which in the
case of positive opportunities, it is certain to do). Well less anyway.

For a project list to stay useful it has to be constantly pruned and
updated so that it continues to match that definition. I make myself do
that at least once a week, during the weekly review. There's a few tools I
use to make sure things on the list still match that definition. For
instance if I notice I havent moved on a project for a long time, that
might be a sign that I should simplify it - making it more immediate and
concrete - or break it into smaller projects. Or maybe I can't make
progress on it now, in which case it goes on the Projects - Suspended
list, and I put something before it that says when it's on ice til ("Til
April", "Til x gets back to me"). Or maybe I realize I just don't want to
commit to it now, in which case it goes to Someday/Maybe. Finished or no
longer relevant projects get taken off the list.

I now think of tons of things as a project, from revising a paper to
furnishing my apartment to teachinig myself a statistic to deciding where
to go for salsa lessons. It's an enormous help for planning my time, seems
to genuinely make me more effective, and also gives me a great feeling of
satisfaction when I can finish one off.

See also 5 things to do when starting a project