Mid-Year Project Audit
If you are of the crazy scientist variety when it comes to entrepreneurship, then you definitely need to audit your ideas, projects and pipelines for the future every so often.
I tend to do this every half year, with special attention paid at the end of the year because it’s easy to remember and forecast if you use the year. I also do these things in May, hence I’m writing this article.
What am I talking about?
Let’s find out.
Idea Auditing
The crazy scientist approach involves coming up with a ton of ideas knowing that a lot of them will fail. I have had many different business projects over the years, many different websites, and I have released many books that don’t sell so well.
That said, I still come up with more every day. If you do experiments regularly, then you will. The issue is that you only have enough time to devote to a few core projects and then some hobby projects at most.
For the young guys out there, this might seem like old man talk. When you become an old man, like I am becoming at the same rate as the rest of the world, you realize that you will only ever have enough time for certain projects and you don’t have limitless energy.
So you have to audit your ideas. A new project practice that I have taken up of late is to write all my ideas down in a notebook. I then leave it until a few months later before I decide whether I want to actually take some new projects on, and whether those ideas are good.
Some ideas stick with you for years. There is one project I have been doing planning for for several years. I have always been a bit reticent because it’s a big project, but at this point realize I’m not going to let it go until I try. It is much better to have something like this than try every single idea you think of immediately.
So, the first step to do a miniature audit is to start a list of ideas, let them sit and percolate a while, and then come back to them at a later date to pick the ones which still seem appealing.
Project Auditing
The big part of what I have been doing today is looking at projects that I have now, projects that are on their way to completion, and project which have stalled.
A big problem with my approach is that I get excited about new stuff, get bored, and then move on. This is fine if you have working funnels, processes and finished products in your production line. With web-based businesses, you can leave websites for many months without attention if they are earning and that’s passive.
The problem comes when you get bored before you get these things set up. So, whilst I want to start new projects in the near future, I want to look at the businesses and websites I own, and make sure that those are working efficiently and so that they have got to the point where they make money before I leave them.
This is part of a wider goal of being able to take yourself out of the business process, which is another thing you want to do at some point when you are sick of 14 hour days.
So the second part of our audit is to look at projects, see what needs completing, and concentrate on that until it is done.
Final Thoughts
This is quite a short article today. That’s because it’s better that I tell you to go and audit your projects now and you spend that time doing so, rather than me waffling on when I’ve already made the point that I need to.
Go and sort out your projects, and I will be doing the same this evening. Then, come Monday morning, we will all be ready to get productive.