(Note: This article was originally published to JamieMcSloy.co.uk on March 13th, 2019. I’m going through an old backup of the site, which has hundreds of posts that aren’t currently uploaded. As I’m working hard on updating the site – and releasing The Vault, letting these old posts be the daily posts for a while.)
Are Unfinished Projects Occupying Your Mental Space?
Recently, a bunch of factors have collided together, I’ve been doing the introspection thing and
A big take away is that I have a ton of projects that have perpetually been “on the list” of things to get done, and whilst none of them get any closer to completion, they’re constantly weighing down the back of my mind.
Add in a growing awareness that as an entrepreneur you can fall into the pit of, “my business is my life,” and I’ve started to zoom out to see the forest made of the trees I’ve been focusing on.
This article is a warning about that, and a solution to the problem.
Modular Approach To Business Projects
Any business requires some compartmentalisation lest it swallow your life.
Take for instance this little blog project. I say “little blog project” because at this point, the daily blog challenge started back in 2016 has turned into a leviathan website from which all my operations seem to flow from, for better or worse.
What I have treated as a hobby and part-time affair now nags at the back of my mind; “Jamie… you need to develop this.”
And yet, the call of other interesting things pulls me, and in general I need to be smarter about the blog things, as opposed to chasing one random thing after another.
So the blog project needs to come full-circle and complete itself.
The SEO needs sorting. The site design needs overhauling. And the whole “Daily emails” thing which I don’t do needs to exist in some form.
Moreover, I’ve needed to focus on a couple of things more pressingly:
- Building actual offers for the visitors of this site
- Working out how I can best help the audience
Where the latter obviously comes before the former.
For most of you who are starting projects, this is where you start. Find an audience, find out what they need and then give them what they need in the form of a core offer. Then, as you scale, you answer their secondary problems as and when you’re called to do so.
Then, this becomes a system that feeds itself.
Naturally, I’ve done the whole thing backwards and procrastinated on that point. This has caused much mental guru-power to drain from my mind.
Commit To Them One At A Time
If the above seems somewhat relatable to you, then chances are you’ve committed the same mistake I have: created a potential project list that gets bigger every time you think of something new and shiny.
Understand, in this instance, multi-tasking simply isn’t real.
You aren’t going to finish five projects all at once having committed to them equally; an hour on project one, an hour on project two.
You’ll simply get stuck in the mud and resentful.
Instead, you need to commit to clearing your project list. One thing at a time.
How best to do that?
Fast-Paced Challenges
Again, this might not apply if you’re totally different in temperament to me.
Many freelancers and self-employed folks struggle with the problem I’m about to bring up though. That problem is that, once you’re the boss and in control of your business – and assuming your business is a going concern (i.e. you’re not starving to death,) the fact that you’re in charge can be incredibly overwhelming.
There’s no time factor. No boss is going to fire you.
As such, projects can sit on the backburner for weeks, months and even years.
Fundamentally, the only way I’ve found to approach this is to put your own deadlines in.
Moreover, you need to make those projects a challenge. Anyone, and I mean anyone, can write a book in a year. But few people who say, “I’m going to write a book this year” do. Why? Because they have a year.
Could you do it in a month? Sure. 2,000 words a day. A couple of hours is what it’ll take. But there’s pressure. You can’t goof off, taking days away from the seat. That’s a challenge.
As always, to make a challenge more effective, you make it more difficult.
Can you write a book in a week?
That’s 6,000-8,000 words a day.
Hard work, bordering on the impossible. But if you’re self-employed, you have no boss, no other commitments and 16 hours a day – and the figures become clear.
That’s how you make a challenge that’ll clear your project list quickly.
Save Your Brain
I haven’t looked into the science of this, but I know that there are countless people out there who are filled with regret that they didn’t finish some project big or small.
And there are more people who would be filled with regret if they realised that the projects they think they’ll complete are never going to happen.
These things lead me to believe that there’s a stress factor that’s probably harmful to your brain should you have a dozen projects on the go but none that ever get finished.
As such, I recommend that you follow my lead here and commit to finishing whatever holdover projects you have to do, pronto.
I have been struggling to write one part of a short story each week, every tuesday, on my substack. Why am I struggling with it? Because I have a week to do it. It is not hard, and as I procrastinate until the night before, it then becomes discouraging.
“to make a challenge more effective, you make it more difficult”
So I should not bother thinking “oh, it only have to be done until tuesday”. This leads to chaos. The harder would be to write it until the weekend, such as fridays, make it all set and only hit publish in tuesday. Between a publication and the next deadline I would have only 3 days. And now it becomes a challenge.