Organization+Strategy – Page 3

Ever have too many projects and don’t know what to do?

Friday was a bit of a panic. I’ve got 8 projects overwhelming me right now. I honestly thought I’d drop all 8 balls and let them come smashing to the floor in a bit of Awesome Failure Glory. Panicked. You know, the “I’m going to be an exceptional failure and never do anything right” kind of day.

So I sent a long letter to the president of my company asking for advice on one of the biggest projects that’s currently on my plate. It was a hard question: I asked if we should pull the plug on a project I’ve been working on for over a year.

He said, take the weekend off. Don’t do anything related to the project and don’t touch a screen, folder, email, idea, notebook, or pen related to this project.

So I took the weekend off. And of course, while not thinking about it, the (metaphorical) table full of projects in my mind seemed to start to organize themselves. And I asked three really smart people around me for advice. Here’s what the advice came down to, in a nutshell:

Finish or punt.

Pick up one project at a time, give yourself a time limit (for example, a week or a month), and then finish it or get rid of it. Don’t let it sit there.

Unfinished projects sit in your mind, in your space and fester and grow, invading your space, your creativeity, and your time.

Get rid of projects that aren’t working. Finish the other ones and call them done. Make space to work on new things.

Projects without deadlines expand to fill all of your remaining energy. Fix a deadline. Make a decision. Finish it. Learn from it. Go on and build something else next. More importantly, have the guts to punt when it’s not good enough to finish. Be okay with getting rid of the project. Or finish it.

Just don’t let it sit there.

Oh Heyyyy yeah.

I was chatting via email with a family friend of mine who reads my writing from time to time. I lamented the non-publication of this book I’m “trying” to work on. At the end of her reply, she wrote:

“Don’t bother writing me back; just get to writing on your book!”

Her words hit me like a sledgehammer. She was right.

Everything I’m doing that’s not writing – that’s not getting my book published, that’s not building up a writing set — whether it’s sending an email, watching TV, working late, even writing on this blog, at times — is effectively taking time away from the writing that I want to do.

As it stands, I’m all talk when it comes to a book. I haven’t done it yet. And until then, everything I choose to do is effectively choosing that over something that I keep saying (longing,wanting) to do.

My coach told me to stop thinking about it and just do it.

“What’s the easiest way to get started writing, and nothing else?”

What are you not doing?

What are you doing in place of what you should be doing? What is your life purpose, your question, your raison d’être, your meaning? And if you don’t know that, are you spending time figuring it out?

Because if we’re not doing that — if we’re twittering and emailing and filling up space with things, things that don’t matter so much in the long run, things that just expand to fill the time you give them — then what’s the point?

What’s the cumulative effect of what we are doing?

And what, by doing what we’re doing right now – are you not doing?

Category: Organization+Strategy

Finish or Punt.

The Most Important Thing That You’re Not Doing