Succeeding with long-term projects

I believe in the truth about life, that there isn't a person that has unlimited time. Except those with unlimited surplus of cash to spend on others time ;)
If you have found this blog and this post, you are hopefully aware, that an obscene amount of time we put into innovative projects, is put into research. The menial, conceptual, educational work, where only a small time percentage goes into making actual progress.
So, as I have been seeking that amazingly satisfying point of completing a project & getting at least a prototype of expected product. I have found that keeping the following checklist in-mind, does wonders for my productivity.

Find Balance

It seems simple enough, but there is a bit of an art to this. If you get into the project and work an extra hour or two past your body-clock’s bed time, you’ll be fine for the next day… maaaybe one more. But if the weekend is a ways off, you’ve got to make up the hours of sleep you missed, so take one real early night and catch up on sleep! Body-clock becomes simple math, in the end, something you can work with. Push hard a few nights, and then make the sleep hours up and your body will normalize. That way your day job won’t suffer and you’ll get more done when you return home to work on your project completely powered up.

Embrace the weekend

Alot of times you’ll think, “oh weekend is coming, I’ll get so much done and I can visit all these friends, do all these errands and still have a solid 10 hours Saturday and Sunday to work on the project”. Quickly you’ll find, when the weekend arrives your friends and family start trying to include you in the weekend fun. Suddenly the weekend will disappear with no time set for your project!

Make sure to schedule your project as importantly as your main dayjob! You deserve to give your own work credit. So find one morning/afternoon on a Saturday/Sunday, or a Friday night to really catch up with friends, family and any errands to run, and clear the rest of the weekend (for real!) so that those friends messaging you to come to the park, can wait to see you next weekend. You’ll be amazed how much time you really can make out of the weekend, and you’ll feel great being able to have a complete day to work on your project, compared to after a workday during the week.

BTW, don’t forget to actually take a weekend off every once in a while! If you’ve been going great on your project a few weekends, it will be totally guilt free and all the more enjoyable!

Iterate over priorities

This point works its way into all the others, yet is important in itself. Your brain is quite adept at keeping things efficient, sometimes too good! Rather than trying to force the project to be a priority (but push it as high as it feels reasonable), let’s look at why your brain may disregard something as important, even though you *know* it excites you and IT IS IMPORTANT.

Procrastination

In essence, being lazy is a quite good trait to have. It triggers when you realize what you are doing is valiant effort and some other tasks can be taken care of to improve current work. Just like a task-scheduler in an operating system. The downside is, when you think you can wait, the answer might be right there, in front of you!

A good example how to handle these situations, might be with a certain technique. You hit a road block, your brain is answering with ‘well we’re stuck, we should wait for more favorable circumstances’. It is going to become the time to go do something else. WAIT! This is where the core of priorities lies. Instead of switching to passive mode right away, try to iterate over your current priorities. Get up from your workstation. Take a walk around. Do some tiny chore, but try to come back to your tools for one more, small push. It might be a good time to investigate somewhere else, see if the hidden information isn't right there, waiting to be found.

I find a daily TODO list and a constantly running Minimalist Pomodoro Timer by Adrian Cotfas, to be a blessing. After I feel like things are complete, or I don't want to progress anymore, using an additional 25 minute window gives me space to clean-up & either be better prepared for the next session, or find another small task I can get sucked in to push the work forward.

How many hours, days, weeks… months? Could go by, when you are waiting for the answer, that special moment. While subconsciously knowing, there are so many small things laying around, unorganized & interesting sources of research material to reference and reverse engineer.

Feed the motivation

Now, you may have heard some basic points, on how to keep motivated on your project. But listen here. I’m going to bring the absolute principles which matter to me, no matter whether something seemingly becomes not worth fighting through the challenging parts. This is really the most important part that balances all the others above. I can’t stress this enough. It is not just about simple motivational mantras and fighting with stubborn laziness, it just won’t work in the long run.

At its core:
IF YOU ARE NOT GETTING PAID ( OR ENOUGH TO MAKE IT THE PRIME MOTIVATION ), YOU MUST WORK ON CREATING OTHER INCENTIVES, REWARDS & CHALLENGES. THINGS THAT EXCITE YOU MORE THAN THE CASH.

Past the wonderful feeling of igniting and incepting an idea, there are ways you can remind yourself, just how great, the thing you are making, really is. Feel that satisfaction, imagine it complete, where will you be? What is it going to be like in detail? What does it achieve for you personally and for others.

Then dissect this thing. REALLY CUT IT UP! Into tiny little pieces. You will feel that buzz when you storyboard, write/imagine the sequences, create outlines of all the pieces. Make that thing into a tree of tasks to complete. Turn it into a KANBAN. Start crossing out individual pieces. Find out how smaller pieces can become useful before the final product is complete and reach these points as fast as you can. In the months ahead, you will need a constant energy booster, a reminder you are progressing and things are changing. To know you’ve picked the right project and not back down. This is where the drive comes from. To reach higher, you need to know you have grown. To improve and create something with those new skills is where true fulfilment can be found.

Adjust course if there is an iceberg

If you find yourself in a serious rut, a hard point in your life, not the project, there is nothing else to do than consider a re-evaluation. Take a big step back, see if you really did progress towards something complete. If your projections match the achievements. Many times, we have lined up too much work for just one person, or not had the foresight of how much life might change in general. There is always an up-side to having a break from hustle. Even "giving up" eventually has it's place. But this is not failure, at least we can not let it become a time passed without reflection. Should you really feel, you have backed yourself into a corner (as we have all done, many times, this is what we call learning). Here are things I consider first, in the post-mortem:

• If you get some serious, paid work or a related career down the track, the stakes are going to become much higher. You’ll have to know, how to navigate to avoid the the dead ends and over blowing time and set budget. Learning these limits, with low risk tests is going to help you get acquainted with the problem and grow.
• You have learned new skills! And there are more things to learn going forward! Some of my personal projects, that came with a grand vision, were unlikely to be finished. But, at the same time, were where I really was able to push the envelope of my abilities. Maintaining even level of motivation towards achieving great things, I was able to catapult past tons of challenging experiences and become much better in my field.
• There is no shame in heading back to the drawing board, especially with newly acquired powers within you. No matter what you work on, the things that pushed you to learn, are going to stay with you forever.
• Make sure you are leaving with something to show. Alot of my early work, especially that done during early teens, might have been tiny, unfinished & seem not worth a show. But, do sometimes wish to see how much I have progressed through the years? Ofcourse!
  I even recall some projects which at the time seemed like absolute hot garbage and were promptly trashed. How I wish I still had them as reference for my current goals...
  Resources, materials and knowledge can always be salvaged from what seems like trash, combined with the skills you have taken with you, these might eventually grow into being a quick search away from completion. Finally!
  Here and there, is always time to make a project you can really complete. The idea you finish, is the one people are going remember. But rome wasn't built in a day.
• Maybe it is time to use that holiday time for something else. Use this chance to work on something you haven't thought about in a long time ( like the family 🤡 ), for a month or two. Set a deadline. One you can’t move for anything. And see how quickly you are going to be glowing with new ideas! You’ll be surprised how much good can come from relaxing your mind and trying to feel happy with the place you are in right now.

Invest in your health

Working and worrying all the time, achieving success is going to require energy, which has to come from somewhere. You can not have a car pushing forward, without taking a small fortune from your income. The same goes for your body and brain. There is no fire without fuel.
Cooking and seeing how much better I felt with a complete diet, was one of those things that helped me a lot to push through the times of weakness.
Exercise of whole body, the parts that don't get to experience the whole range of motion in your daily tasks, is also going to come with surprisingly big mental rewards.