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Hey, Creative LJ Peoples!

Maybe this is only an issue for those of us who are all ADD, maybe not, but:

When you're thinking about/planning/even vaguely considering a Big Project, one which can't possibly be done in a week or less...how do you get started on something Big? How do you know where/at what point to dive in -- how much planning or prep work is enough? How do you measure your progress? Or maintain your enthusiasm for the project and not let it just all...drift away?

I'm very curious here. I want to do something Big but can't seem to keep my focus on any one project long enough, so I wonder if I'm just Doin It Wrong. Help?

ETA: So I successfully completed National Novel Writing Month -- I did just over 53,000 words in 30 days. That was Big, right? But it also had a very small window attached to it, and an external deadline (of a sort). So I can sprint toward Big, but I think the kinds of Big Projects I'm vaguely thinking of here aren't so much sprints as marathons. I clearly need marathon planning/training. :)

ETA 2: As I was responding to various comments below, a link to this post about discipline on Zen Habits popped up for me in Twitter. Thanks, Universe!

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External accountability. :/ It helps me a lot if someone else is expecting me to finish, and it also helps me a lot to NOT plan too much ahead of time. If it's something I can refine as I go along, I prefer to set out a skeleton of what I intend to do and then just start in the hopes that enthusiasm will carry me through.

But... nothing really works even most of the time. I have the same problem.

I think External Accountability could work, in theory, though to date it hasn't so much for me. Also, I don't want to leave it up to my friends to motivate me...that doesn't seem Right. I want to want to work on whatever project it is.

If I find any solutions here, I'll be sure to let you know, fellow sufferer. :)

That really, really depends on what kind of project. But one thing has been helpful to me pretty much regardless. I make an outline of the Big Steps in the project (move house; have a baby; kick ass in my profession; retire; dire), and then I make an outline of what needs to happen for the first Big Step to happen. (Move house = find house; arrange for moving; pack; move; unpack; settle.) Then break down just the first substep, if necessary, until the broken-down pieces are pretty small.

Other than that, I'd need more details. But I'm also reasonably good at this sort of thing, so ping me if you want to sit down and brainstorm. I *love* organizing.

I've tried breaking down projects before into smaller and smaller bits until it they were manageable chunks...and then still never made any progress after that. But you're right, I think doing that to some degree or another would be very helpful for the organizing; then I just have to get the motivation part down. Thank you!

And assuming that at some point I'm actually going to meet you -- it seems inevitable -- I'd love to talk to you about this kind of thing. :)

Oh, we definitely have to meet more than in passing at parties. (I'm pretty sure I've been in the same room with you.)

The external accountability bit that Molly mentions is also very useful;

aroraborealis offered to do that with me when I was writing my dissertation, and I didn't even know her very well, but I found this super helpful. I'd also be happy to "hear" about your progress on IM, or something. :)

(I'm pretty sure I've been in the same room with you.)

I would wager the chances of this being true are very, very strong. I hope next time it happens, we actually get formally introduced and talking happens. :)

I'm really getting the sense that this external accountability thing will have to be a big part of it. I think that previously when I've tried it, it's been more of a general "Hey, world, I'm gonna do this thing!"...but I don't have one person or a small group of people that I appoint as my Ass-Kickers General. I think that would work much better. So thank you (and

aroraborealis!) for the idea! (And I just might take you up on being one of those people!)

I'd be honored to be an ass-kicker general. I have boots!

Sweetheart, you are always Ass-Kicker Number One. I think my problem before was that I didn't put enough specificity on what I needed from you. I intend for that to change next time.

Also...hey, nice boots! ;)

work breakdown into laughably simple steps, and dedicating time in my calendar to work on them for a (short) time works for me.

Maybe that's part of what I'm missing...the scheduling. I'll break tasks down, write 'em down and everything, but still don't dedicate time to getting them done. I think I'll give that a shot. :)

I... struggle with this myself. What I do is this: Start with a ridiculously easy first step. Then a second step that seems similarly small. And so on, resolving to focus (mostly) on just the next step. If I think about the whole big thing I get distracted and overwhelmed. If I'm just taking one small step at a time I can just do it without getting bogged down in The Vast Implications or psyching myself out or whatever.

External accountability helps too, sucky as it might be.

If I think about the whole big thing I get distracted and overwhelmed.

YES. EXACTLY THIS. I get freaked out by the size of whatever I'm considering, and I just drop it and move on to some other project I won't finish. :)

And this "external accountability" thing seems to be a common refrain. I think that's going to have to be part of whatever it is I do.

Thanks!

There's a great book by Martha Beck that is supposedly about weight loss -- but is really more about how to get yourself rolling on huge scary undertakings in general. It's called The Four-Day Win and it's totally worth a read (as is pretty much everything else she's ever written, IMO).

I'll look into that book -- I know that I really enjoyed and got a lot out of Finding Your Own North Star (and it might be time to flip through that one again). Thanks for the link!

Oh, and: For some folks, "external accountability" can just mean an LJ post after every milestone. It's amazing how motivating that can be. (Of course, some others need a "boss", and many of us fall in between.)

I think I need the former more than the latter, but definitely somewhere in between.

How big? :)

Not sure yet. I'll let you know when I figure it out for sure, but I feel like Something's Coming. :)

Oh, let's see, something actual:

Figure out the parts of it.

Figure out what bit you can do without causing downstream trouble.

Do that bit.

Which reminds me I need to paint my doors. (no i'm not kidding)

This is part of my problem, as I mentioned to

jacflash above -- instead of looking at little bits, I get totally overwhelmed by the big bits. So yeah, I think trying to focus on the little bits is a Very Good Idea. Thanks!

And, um, glad I could help you remember to paint your doors. :)

53,000 words in 30 days

Wow! That is awesome. As it is now, I'd be surprised if I'm doing 5000 words a month. Well, assuming we are talking about novel creation type words and not post in LJ kinds of words. Time for me to climb back on the wagon.

That 53,000 words was most definitely the exception and not the rule, but I was determined to get it done. And sure enough, I wrote an entire novel in 30 days. Not a very good one, mind you, but I got one written. :)

How about looking for a big process instead of a big result? Then you'll enjoy the process instead of waiting for the end to come.

That's also an idea -- I get so wrapped up in results sometimes that I forget to have fun with the process, and if the process isn't fun, then why bother?

If you ever find a process that works, let me know. I've been breaking down the Big Comic into stages and micro stages and nano/femto/pico stages for about three years now, and I get discouraged after about three days every time I start work on it again.

The scheduling thing someone mentioned above is a good idea. What I really need, though, is a brain de-gausser that fills me with hope and creative zing.

and I get discouraged after about three days every time I start work on it again.

*nods vigorously*

If you happen to get one of those brain de-gaussers -- I think they might sell them at IKEA -- could I borrow it for awhile? :)

So, a deadline helps a LOT.

For Somerville Open Studios, I had an ambitious list of goals and I got to a lot but not all of them. And I had a lot of support from family and partners, but I feel like it was pretty self-motivated.

I would say that first I did more or less what

veek said about breaking things down into steps. But then I worked backward from my deadline and set internal deadlines for the steps. So I could look at my steps and say "even though there's three months to go to SOS, if I haven't gotten to step N, I'm not going to make it." (And of course I didn't get to all my intermediate steps, so there was some incremental replanning and dropping things that were lower priority...) Thus, short little deadlines and much less chance to fool myself with "I can catch up tomorrow".

I try to do the same thing with Arisia, but then I'm working in concert with a bunch of other people who have rarely gone through the same scheduling process, so there's a last minute scramble anyhow.

Anyway, I don't know if this is helpful. This doesn't work for me for things I either am trying to MAKE myself do or for things that don't have an external deadline; making up deadlines for myself has historically not worked for me. It also doesn't work for me for things that are just ongoing life changes -- eat more healthily for example -- but I am assuming from context that we're talking about a creative project.

But then I worked backward from my deadline and set internal deadlines for the steps.

I'm able to do that much better when, as you say, there's an actual deadline. My problem right now is that any deadlines I set for myself for the Grand Project Vaguely Floating In My Head is that they'll be entirely arbitrary and self-imposed...and those tend not to motivate me nearly enough.

Having something like an SOS deadline or an Arisia deadline would help, but with these rumblings in my head, that sort of thing just doesn't exist.

And yes, this was helpful -- thanks for your feedback! :)

For me, it depends on how much I understand the project going in, or how much I think I understand it. The biggest non-work project I've done recently (other than Benjamin) is the kitchen, and that started with some research, some machinery purchases and a lot of CAD work before I even got to making any sawdust. At every stage I had a pretty good handle on what I had to do, even though it's taken much, much longer than I anticipated. I think what made it work for me was strong intrinsic and extrinsic motivation: I love woodworking, and my existing kitchen was horrible. :-) At one point about halfway through I sat down and plotted out the entire rest of the project step by step, which helped a lot in tracking my progress.

For me, it depends on how much I understand the project going in, or how much I think I understand it.

And this is exactly part of my problem -- how much do I need to understand before I can start working? With creative stuff -- which my current mythical project is -- I'm afraid that if I plan too much before I start working, I sap myself of my enthusiasm to keep working on it. But if I don't plan enough, then things just...don't work right. *sigh*

WoW, have I *ever* had this problem!

Here's how it's turned out for me. I don't know that our brains work the same, but there may be some overlap.

It turns out that if I plan a project by starting with how I want it to look or end up in the end, I'm pretty much doomed: Sometimes I start seeing the work ahead of me in a too end-goal-oriented way, and like many fine things that really should be savored, thinking about how to finish it makes the doing of it no longer fun, it just feels like a giant to-do-list that I suddenly can't do... all the advice to break a big project into little parts, doesn't help if I start feeling like doing the little parts is a chore, too.

Or, if I know how it's "supposed to" turn out, I keep embellishing it in my head, making the project more and more complicated; or I start thinking about how it's going to be received and how awesome it will be once people see how great it is, and then get hung-up in the details and never finish it; OR then, it's really not really going to be good enough at all, unless I embelish it or polish it more, or, or, or...

SO, the answer for me turns out to be that I will only plan a little bit ahead of myself, and then if I start wanting to imagine what it will look like in the end, I turn my focus back to where I am. Say, for instance that I decided I wanted to do... I dunno, let's say, a 6-foot cube with four faces and a top, all being cut pieces like the ones I've been doing. Cool, huh? Well, If I tried to plan out what that would look like and design it all on paper, then I'd be utterly daunted by the whole project. It would be months and months of work to execute and then would it really turn out to be good enough to be worth all that effort?

If I were going to do that, instead I'd do just enough planning to figure out how the structure would work, and maybe in a general sense what I want the silhouettes to be about. Then I'd design *one* and cut it out. Then I'd design a second to go with the first, maybe according to the original general idea, or maybe changing even that. Over the months the project would take to complete, it would evolve and adapt to what I'd already done and to what it started to become.

The thing is that if a piece of art is going to express something going on inside you, you can't expect to stay the same person for the duration of a really big project. You have to leave lots of room for growth and change and development of you and your ideas, or else it's like growing out of your clothes, but having to keep going to work in them.

Anyway, that's how I've come to handle the problem: plan only as much as I have to in order to get and keep moving, and then keep loose and adapt along the way. And be strict about NOT trying to peek ahead and read the ending first. :)

I was sincerely hoping you'd answer. :)

You've touched on something here that I'm considering very strongly: namely, Making Shit Up As I Go Along. Or, more accurately, not planning too far ahead. I know that when, for instance, I think about writing a story/novel/screenplay/whatever, the more I figure out the story before I get started, the more I sap my enthusiasm for continuing with the project. If I already know all of the story, then I don't have much left to discover in the writing...it's just transcription.

Also, this bit:

You have to leave lots of room for growth and change and development of you and your ideas, or else it's like growing out of your clothes, but having to keep going to work in them.

...very helpful! I think I've tended not to do enough of that in the past.

Thanks very much for you insight! I'd love to find time to talk to you more about this some time in the future, especially if that gives us an excuse to hang out. ;)

I find it best to start with a mixture of obsessive listmaking and jumping right in with some part of the project that looks exceptionally fun. Also, everything that

roozle and

miss_chance say is good, except that I'm more at the "start at the deadline and work backwards to plan and then just do it" end of the spectrum, both for engineering and art.

I find it best to start with a mixture of obsessive listmaking and jumping right in with some part of the project that looks exceptionally fun.

I think the latter part of this statement is what will work best for me. Maybe the first part, too, if this listmaking is about what needs to be done rather than describing the work itself (as I mentioned to

miss_chance above, I think getting too much into detail about the work itself steals my enthusiasm).

Thanks, Scott!

Excessive list-making! ::raises hand::

I guess that I'm too late in weighing in to be of much help, and other people have said all the good stuff. But since you asked, this is wot I done in the past:

- I write down what needs doing. Writing things down is important; it makes it real and not so nebulous. By 'writing' I mean 'typing'. Finger-painting and cuniform are acceptable variations. Just get it down somewhere where you can refer to it.

- I break the Big Project down into steps, then break it down further and further until it's in manageable bite-sized pieces. Yes, one needs to do this. DO IT. Otherwise, it's too easy to get overwhelmed and you'll wonder how in heck it will all get done.

- If there is a deadline at all, I work backwards from it. Week by week, if possible. I'll allot work on the project to 6 days out of the week and rest on the 7th day. Like God.

- I decide how many bites I need to do per day (or want to do per day, if there isn't a hard deadline). If the bites end up being the wrong size to get done comfortably in a day, then I adjust them.

- The Big Secret: I focus ONLY on what needs to be done that day or the next few days. NO MORE. Once a week or so, I re-evaluate and see if I'm still on track. I do not allow myself the luxury of wallowing in helpless frustrated feelings from thinking about how it will get done. That is counterproductive. If I am staying more or less on my schedule, then it will get done. Simple as that. This works. When I look at everything I've done in the past 2 years, I'm almost not believing it. But I did it. All of it. And I'll do so much more.

If it turns out that I am not going to be able to keep up with my scheduling, then I re-evaluate everything and reconfigure for the time I have left. If the Project is something that doesn't strictly *need* to be done for survival of me or mine, then I examine my motivations for wanting to do it. Is it for education? Bragging rights? Usually, the result is that I let it go and find something more manageable to play with. Because no matter how fun something might seem in the beginning, it won't be by the end if I'm not able to keep up with it. I don't need that extra stress. No guilt or shoulda's.

YMMV, of course. But I hope that helps.

Never too late! Thanks very much for your input, hon -- yes, a lot of it echoes stuff other people have said, but that's a good thing, but it still helps as it means they're techniques that work for lots of folks! I really seem to need to try to do the "breaking down the bigger into the smaller" thing (which, seekritly, I've known for a long time but have always had difficulty putting into practice).

I think what I do is this: I think of a huge plan, and then I figure out the vague outline of the next big step or two. I want to be a crazy urban farmer, so that involves figuring out how to manage the farming and figuring out how to manage the business, for example.

Then I figure out the immediate next step on those things. This is the basic idea of Getting Things Done: figure out the next physical action you need to take to move something forward. Sometimes there are several, which is good when you're procrastinating, as you can tell yourself you just have to do the easiest one :)

When I do that action, I figure out the next one. I keep some vague cloud of timeline in my head -- farming is convenient, as it has years, but "I want to have this cloud of stuff more or less sorted before summer" also works for me -- but don't worry hugely about it.

I've also started using reverse-engineered timelines like

roozle mentions, although I agree they're best when some life or external factor makes a deadline important.

This is the basic idea of Getting Things Done: figure out the next physical action you need to take to move something forward.

I think it's maybe worth my giving GTD another shot -- I really liked the concepts of it, but found it hard to stick with it, as I have trouble sticking with, well, anything. :)

I actually participate in the system with varying degrees of completeness, depending on how incapable of remembering shit I feel, and it seems to tolerate this kind of laxness pretty well :) The only thing I find to be all-or-nothing is keeping a tickler file. It's damn useful, but only if you actually seriously check it every day! In lieu of *that,* I've used google calendar reminders & similar, which work for the things you put them in for regardless of whether you put things in every day, so long as you don't give up email :)

...so long as you don't give up email.

Pshaw. As if. ;)

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Hey, Creative LJ Peoples!

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