Project template

Having more time I started retrospect on my previous projects and attempt to extract characteristics that lead either to success, or failure. As one might expect, these characteristic change in time. Currently, I’m doing better off dividing work into chunks and deal one at the time but a while back it was easier to just get into working and the immediate task would pop out. Going forward my habits and motivation will definitely change again so it’s difficult to impose a strict ‘successful project’ template, but, we aren’t setting things in stone and if needed we’ll change them.

Analysing notes from the last 10 years I noticed that there were a few common parts which, if defined properly allowed me to succeed in the project or fail gracefully. I use “properly” because sometimes I tried to cheat myself expecting that future me might forget and will be fooled by the writing. However, the only thing that I managed to forget was that the “forgetting” part doesn’t work. Even now I have a vivid experience of changing the expectations for each project but had to think a bit why I did that. Hopefully I wiser.

Now, whenever I’m thinking about starting a new project it goes through a few phases.

Project phases

Phase 0

Quickly write a sentence or two about the project. It's usually a sentence on what the idea is and how I came to think about it. This typically allows me to let that thought go for a while and continue on whatever I was doing before. For such quick notes I'm using Google Keep - two taps to input note - but I'm looking to escape Google. Once it's written I can let it mature for some time, typically until the next evening.

Phase 1

Note: If the project is super short or it doesn't make sense to start it in a few weeks, I'll skip over this phase or delay it.

Typically a day delay and a full night rest allow me to validate whether it makes sense to devote some time to the idea. In this phase I'll open a text editor and will try to write at least 100 words on how I see this idea to grow and what would it mean to do it. Writing out prevents me from cheating myself with the optimism of the moment. It's a bit tedious to write on something in my head sounds awesome but the logic is if I can't be bothered to spend 5 min writing out on the project it's unlikely I'm going to want to work on it.

Phase 2

Create a document to monitor the progress of the project and populate the top with the following template:

---

{Project Name}

Success:	{The definition of successfully finished project.}
The **Why** statement:	{Why am I doing this project?}
Expected length:	Coarse: {Long/mid/short term} Fine: {XX weeks/months}
Health check:	{Define period of time to check on the project.}

The goal is to check these properties every {health check} period and make sure that they're still valid. This task won't be successful unless the table is easy to read and short. The rest of the document should be devoted to progress updates. Depending on the project this can be in form of a timeline with timestamps, or living document. I've started using the http://notion.so/ for this; it's a collaborative, realtime doc with plenty of key shortcuts and markdown enabled.

Phase 3

This phase is about execution. Every {health check} review priority of the project and set aside some time for it. If it happens that for a few {health checks} you weren’t able to do anything related, go ahead and update the project. I like to keep track of ongoing projects in a special Trello board and create individual tasks to “daily” board. I could’ve used Notion for it as well, but I find Trello awesome for day-to-day tasks and it’s easy to accidentally check what’s going on when you're a click away with a constant reminder.

It's just a phase

There's no point in cheating yourself that you're going to do something when you don't want to. Almost everyone I talked to had experienced the inability to do anything caused by mental overload with things that had to be done. I'm assuming that the driver for these projects wasn't a necessity but the choice to do something awesome in spare time. If that's the case feel free to let some go. That's difficult due to the sunk cost fallacy but the goal of this template is to help rationalise the decision. Our values and motivation change, and so should our priorities. (It won't be probably long before I feel stupid for ever writing this blog post.)