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If that title ‘The size of your life is the size of your projects’ is true, then it is easy to see why your life doesn’t look much. Doesn’t feel much.
You don’t seem to have any projects.
You may have goals. You may do stuff, but a project is more than either.
So what’s a project and why do I have to explain it to you? Why don’t you know already?
You don’t seem to have projects… or if you do, you don’t set them up right… and thus they pass by and leave no residue… other than occasional self-hate… disappointment.
I have had goals, I have had projects. Just a few goals, and a heaping amount of projects.
In 1988 I read the book, The color of your parachute. I only liked the part where it asked you to write up the story of seven projects you have succeeded to get to the result you wanted… And then look what those projects show you. What you had an inclination for, what skills you liked to use.
To my absolute horror, people I have been dealing with haven’t been having projects, so that part of the book has been totally and utterly useless to them. And thus it has been near impossible to tell what they could do successfully in life, the they would also enjoy.
Doing projects that use skills you enjoy using is mandatory for a life you can love.
When I view my own life, the biggest differences have come from projects, not tasks.
My confidence, my skills, my enjoyment of life come from having gone through these projects. Some of those were grueling and hard. But I like hard. I like challenges. But I have noticed that the past few years even I haven’t had projects… And life feels quite empty now.
Projects are largish, many-action efforts that span anywhere from a day to a couple of months, maybe even years. For example completing a university education is a many years-long project with hundreds of actions.
Well-chosen projects that you actually complete successfully are the hallmarks of a life that feels not-empty, a life well-lived. A life where you know who you are, what you can do. A life worth living.
So what is a Project?
Everybody and their brother encourages setting goals… But goals are more often misery-makers than not. Why? Because goals set out to accomplish or get to a result that you have no control over.
Here are some goals… Pay attention: just the result. But even if there is a timeline, the goal doesn’t mention any actions… even though all results are accomplished through actions that can produce that result.
- Lose 15 lbs.
- Increase my income by 20%.
- Learn French.
A project is therefore a plan that is designed to accomplish the desired results through actions:
- If I wanted to lose 15 lbs: the project could be: 1. Stick to my daily workout for thirty days. 2. Drink my food… and chew my beverages for the next 30 days, including weekends.
- If I wanted to increase my income by 20%: I could make sure that I increase the number of people whom I can sell to, increase the size of each purchase, or the frequency of the purchases… I would not necessarily increase the hours I work… but I would want to increase that my work is driven by increasing my sales activity.
- If I wanted to re-learn French, the project would be to sign up to an online language site and practice every day for an hour, or 30 minutes… and maybe to talk to myself in French, as much as I can.
Goals emphasize outcome while projects emphasize your input.
A well-planned project puts you in the driver’s seat, while a goal gives you the illusion that someone else is driving your bus.
When I look at people, they live as if someone else were driving their bus… almost no facility, almost no willingness to design effective, purposeful, result-driven actions. Actions you can commit to, because they get for you what you want.
In the Drink your Food challenge I teach the structure for fulfilling any project. So far no one has gotten to step 4 in that course: designing the actions.
Without actions nothing will happen.
Just like in the cartoon: people believe in miracles… Believe in divine intervention. Believe that something or someone will provide that missing piece where the action would be.
The job in a project is to drive that darn bus where you want it to go, through well-chosen actions.
A project is always a disruption. It disrupt your life, because when you put something new in, something has to go… Always.
So a project requires you to re-organize your life.
I have a client who had a project… but she left the work on it to the end of the day, so she was always interrupted by her husband coming home from his work…
If I had a husband, and of course I don’t, I have client meetings instead. I schedule the project to be finished for the day so I can give my full attention to clients I am meeting.
I focus on what I can control.
You still need to do the work you do to live. You need to spend time with friends and family, exercise and run your life. The project, because it is not the natural part of your day, needs to be given priority, or it will fall by the wayside. It will not happen.
Life as a Series of Projects
Projects are how you can organize your life, if you want to have a sense of AGENCY. Personal Power. Personal Authority.
Agency is a sense that you are doing what YOU want to do. That you are the author of your life, as opposed to the sense you have when someone tells you what to do.
The sense of agency, or sense of control, is the subjective awareness of initiating, executing, and controlling one’s own volitional actions in the world. It is the sense that it is I who is executing bodily movement or thinking thoughts.
Without agency life is forced on you, and your personhood is suffering.
When people come to me, their primary issue is that they feel stuck, that they don’t have a sense of power.
And then when we look, I find, without an exception, that they don’t have projects… They may have dreams, aspirations, but not a project.
A project is a plan of action to get to someplace or take something to someplace…
The operative words are ‘plan of action‘.
I have a client who had a project to market a sleep remedy to hotels… We all know that sleeping in hotel is bad for sleep… It’s not the bed, it is instead the ‘not in my own bed’ syndrome.
What she failed to do is market it. She had the idea that ‘if you build it they will come’. They won’t. That is a poor marketing plan.
She learned to set up webpages… Had she had that as the outcome of the project, it would have been successful… but that is not how she set it up.
So what I am driving at here, is that a project needs to be set up so it can accomplish what you really want to accomplish.
Projects can include big ambitious ones, like writing a book. Or doing a learning challenge for a reason. Projects can be small like trying to sketch every day while on vacation, or to chew every bite 40 times… or until it is liquid. Building a habit. Eating highly processed food only one time a day, not more. Highly processed foods, like orange juice, supermarket bread, peanut butter, most cheeses, pizza, burgers, most anything that uses something canned, or preserved, are killers. And you eat them often even when YOU think you are making something from scratch.
Daily habits can be, in the right context, part of a project. Changing habits, new habits, eliminating old habits.
A project is definite. It is finite… meaning it will end when you said it would end. You design it, plan it. You pit it front and center for a while, work on it, and then at a certain point, you finish it. Successful or not… you finish it. And complete it..
A project is like an elevator ride. When you come out of it, the floor plan may be the same, but you won’t. You’ll see the world from a different vantage point… and no matter the floor plan, when YOU are different, when YOU see different, the world is different for you.
In the Drink your Food challenge I started to teach projects… You can buy the videos. They will start you on the journey to a meaningful, rich life.
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