17
votes
How do you persistently work on an idea or project?
I often try and work on projects and ideas, although I find it difficult to continue a project that takes longer than a day or two. I'm surely not the only person that experiences this. Does anyone know why this happens? How do you deal with and overcome this in your own life?
Project management my dude. Set a plan, break the plan down into phases, tasks, etc. When it's just a looming "accomplish this monumental task" it's easy to get caught up overthinking the "how".
Are there any tools that you recommend, or do you suggest just plain ole' stick-it notes and pen?
Todoist is a simple way to make check lists, break down tasks by project, and rank tasks by priority. Sometimes I worry that I spend too much time organizing my projects and not enough time actually doing them though. So I definitely recommend trying a few different things and going with the simplest method that is effective for you.
EDIT: If you're more into paper and pen, check out the Bullet Journal. It's a fun way to stay organized.
+1 for Todoist! Keep in mind that a lot of their best features are behind a ~$30/year subscription, though.
I'm a huge fan of index cards.
3x5 is the classic, but 4x6 gives enough space to fill out an idea. Multiple colors helps organise thoughts (I tend to use those for title cards / topic cards).
The can be spread, stacked, sorted, torned at right angles, tipped up, pinned, boxed, taped, torn up.
(They can also be windblown, tea-soaked, scattered, ....)
There's a long and interesting history, to Carl Linneaus, especially of anyone trying to organise complex information without an initial hieraarchy or ordering. This is where almost any digital information-capture system fails. John McFee, a favourite author, is an inveterate user of them.
There's a ton of free project management apps available on the internet. I've mostly dealt with the paid tools, but I've used asana before and it was pretty good. I've also heard good things about trello.
As a developer, I love Taskwarrior. However, it's a CLI tool, so not for everyone.
Ok thank you, I know project management is somewhat large subject with a lot of concepts. Do you think I should spend some time learning about that or just focus on breaking down the project in a way that makes sense to me?
Honestly I think just about anyone can benefit from some basic project management knowledge. What you need to get going can probably be taught in a condensed matter over the course of about a week (including self-study). Depending on the size of the projects you're dealing with, some of it may be unnecessarily complicated and "breaking downt he project in a way that makes sense to me" may be what works best. However, I'd still recommend reading up on the basics, as the templates, examples, terminology, and skills that you will learn will likely help to ensure you actually succeed at your project.
If you're looking for a resource, there's a billion different project management certifications out there (PMP is considered the gold standard, but likely well above and beyond what you need), I'm sure it won't be difficult to google project management essentials or buy a sparknotes or other such book on project management basics.
Try and make SMART goals:
Yep. Like the adage says: "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
To add, make a schedule. If this is a project you're working in in your free time, set aside 5-30 min every day at a specific time. Then, force yourself to spend at least 5 minutes working on the project. You'll generally find yourself working much longer than that, but not always.
I find that a decent method to keep motivation while preventing burnout.
I like the "trying to get somebody else involved" advice. Having a teammate, co-worker, mentor, or just a friend that's helping you or at least in the loop about a project can be a good source of outside help and accountability.
I suppose in a way it depends on the project, but, basically... break it down into parts. Lots of parts. And then be like "today, I'm going to work on small, manageable part blah of this large but totally do-able thing."
Like, just as a kind of simple example, say you want to improve your handwriting. Where the hell do you even start, right? It's going to take forever. Well, depending on the hand you (want to) write and the language you speak, there are probably about 65 characters. (26 lowercase, 26 uppercase, 10 digits, plus perhaps ampersands, question marks, etc. Don't think you need to practice a question mark? Quick, go write five at Spencerian's uniform 52-degree slant...) Now, today, your project isn't to learn Palmer handwriting (or whatever). It's to learn to write a lowercase i, uniformly and consistently and correctly. Next is lowercase a. And so on. And keep at it, and suddenly five or six weeks have passed, and other people can actually read your handwriting.
The same basic idea applies to coding a website, searching for a job, writing a romance novel, reaching Platinum in PUBGM.... Lots of steps, one step at a time.
To add on to the helpful advice already given, if you have a mentor/boss for the projects you're working on, set up regular meetings. (This could also work with an accountability partner.) Regular meetings are a good source of extrinsic motivation and can be a good opportunity to go over what is and what isn't working. Even if you have nothing new, it's good to meet and talk about what went wrong and how things could improve.
I get frustrated if I don't meet set down goals; this happens in such a way that it will make it difficult for me to continue working to achieve said goal.
For example, I'm trying to cut back on my drinking (it's not bad, just more than I want it to be for basic health since I'm getting older now). I started with rules saying "only 1 glass of wine with dinner and no more for the night" for example - but if I broke the rule then I'd get mad at myself about that and subsequently give up on trying to achieve that goal because I failed already anyways time to poor a 3rd glass of wine or maybe have some of that pineapple rum. So, instead, I try to set guidelines instead of rules. It's the opposite of Yoda's requirements ... I'm going to try because if I do and fail it makes it worse for me. So now the drinking requirement is to consciously try to be better at it and while some days are better than others, overall the number of drinks are going down. And I'm not additionally pissed at myself for perceived failures.
That process typically applies only to things I'm trying to change permanently - life changes. When it comes to projects that have a definite beginning and end, then "measurable and attainable" steps and scheduling is what works for me. It's not a failure to miss those - just a mistake in calculation that I can adjust.
I don't know if this will apply directly to what you were looking for in relation to motivation, but for me and my fiancé this "failed so why try" thing is something that threw up roadblocks to our successes.