You've got an idea for an amazing product – whether it's text, audio, or video based, or a combination of all three. Now, your task is to make sure that you actually finish the project and get it out into the world. Because here's the thing: your creations can't change the world if they aren't out in it.
How many wonderful ideas, do you think, never make it to completion, and are instead hanging out on someone's hard drive? Too many for my taste. But it's understandable. Undertaking any large project can be intimidating, and it's even harder when you're invested in the end result.
Where do you start? How do you keep on top of it? All too often, it's easier to just throw your hands up and turn your back on your ideas.
Let's Start At the Very…End?
Seems like a weird place to start, but hear me out. Once you know where you're going, you can figure out how to get there. Take your product idea, and write down a detailed description of what you envision the end result being. (If your idea is still rather nebulous, check out these two posts for ways to get it more concrete.)
Once you have a clear picture of where you're going, you need to define "finished" for this product. There's two reasons that you need to decide what constitutes done for this project before you start:
To avoid "thrashing". This is what Seth Godin calls it when we get to the end of a project, freak out about actually shipping the project, and then proceed to add things to it, or take things away, or generally keep messing with it so that we don't have to put it out in front of the world. Understandable, but not very productive.
To keep "done" from being a moving target. If you don't have a concrete end point to head towards, it's easy to keep moving the finish line as you have new ideas throughout the project, and tempting, too. However, this is likely to lead to burnout and a lack of satisfaction. When you move the finish line a little further away, it makes it harder to build momentum and make significant progress on your product. You don't feel like you're getting anywhere, so scrapping the project seems like a better and better option. To help avoid getting sidetracked by shiny new ideas, make sure that you write your ideas down and store them somewhere safe (I like Springpad, myself). You can come back to them later and use them in a future iteration of this product, or in a different product entirely, but avoid getting sidetracked by them in the meantime.
Last but not least, you need to pick a deadline. Try to be realistic – you don't want to pick a deadline that's too soon, and not reach it, but you don't want to pick a deadline that's far off beyond the horizon and risk losing momentum. If you're feeling particularly audacious and you're working on a smaller product, you might try creating it in a weekend, even!
Whatever you do, when you pick your deadline, be sure to take your current and future workload into consideration. Unless you're working for a very short amount of time, you don't want to pile on a lot of extra work and get burned out before you even complete the product.
Do the Work
Now comes everyone's favorite part (right?!): actually doing the work to make your idea a reality. Once you start working on your product, the best way to make sure you finish it is to keep working. I've already mentioned momentum several times, and that's because it's so important when you're working on a project of any size – you need to be able to feel like you're moving forward with it, and see the work you've completed so far.
You might want to create a specific work schedule for your product – there's several different ways you can do that. You can pick a specific time of day to work on it, a specific day of the week, or some combination of the two. You'll want to take a few factors into consideration:
Your best and most productive, creative times of day. We all have times that we're at our best, and at our worst. Me, for example, I can get plenty done between 9 AM and 1:30 PM, but come 2:30 PM, I'm not good for anything except a nap. I can work during my "off" hours, but it's like squeezing blood from a stone – not very productive and slightly painful.
Your current task load and how this product fits in with that. How flexible is your schedule? Can you rearrange some of your other projects to make sure that you're getting in some peak work time on this product? How many hours a week are you going to be able to work on this, and how many hours a week are you working on other things? Again, make sure you're not overloading yourself.
Breaks! Make sure to schedule in breaks. In general, we can only focus on one thing for 45-90 minutes, after which our productivity actually goes down. Breaks can be anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes, depending on how long of an interval you worked for. It also helps to get moving when you take a break – do some jumping jacks or hula hooping. If you really want to make sure you get up and move every now and then, take an item that's essential to the project, and set it on the other side of the room or in a different room entirely. And don't forget to refill your water glass when you take a break!
There's two other tools you can use to increase the likelihood of finishing the product: accountability and rewards.
Accountability is basically when someone is holding you responsible for your actions. One of the most popular ways to create accountability for yourself is to either have an accountability partner or join a group, and check in on a regular basis (once a week is about perfect) with what you did in the last week to further your product, and what you're going to do in the next week. It sounds fairly simple, but the knowledge that if you don't finish as much as you wanted to, you'll have to check in and say so, is a powerful motivator for actually getting things done.
And then there's super-public accountability – announcing the launch date of your product before you even start on it, for example. Depending on your personality, this might work fabulously or it might just make you really nauseous and give you urges to hide in a corner.
Rewards are…fairly self explanatory. It is worth noting that the best motivation for creative projects is intrinsic, not extrinsic. Example: people are likely to do better work when they're motivated by pride in their work than by money. And knowing your intrinsic reason for creating this product, your "reason why", is incredibly important both to maintain motivation and when marketing your product further on down the line.
But, that being said, sometimes the motivation of an awesome chocolate bar is enough to get you to write those last 200 words when nothing else seems like it can. (Replace "chocolate bar" with "bike ride" or "ice cream" or "snuggly kitty time" or whatever floats your boat.) Used sparingly, rewarding yourself can give you that extra oomph you need sometimes. And of course, you deserve a reward at the end of this process – you did a lot of work!
Avoid Overwhelm by Zooming In
You've started on your product. You're toodling along, feeling great. And then you get hit by the overwhelm truck. You don't know what to do, and everything just looks so big and difficult and ahh.
Overwhelm can be caused by general life stuff, totally outside of the product that you're working on. You might need to readjust your workload for this product, or for some of your other projects. You might need to make sure you're getting plenty of recharging time, and taking good care of yourself. But, if you're good in all of these areas and you're still overwhelmed, I know what your problem is. You're not zoomed in enough.
Overwhelm happens when we're too focused on the big picture. When you're looking at the zoomed out version of things, seeing the sweeping actions that will happen and the end result of those actions, you can't see the tiny steps that will get you there. This can really freak you out.
Here's what I do to prevent overwhelm and stay nice and zoomed in:
At the start, create a list of milestones. Milestones are markers of significant progress – for example, if you're working on an ebook and you have a word count goal, a big milestone would be reaching half of your word count. Depending on the length and depth of this product, or how much work you can devote to it at this time, there might be more or less milestones. Three milestones is a good starter number to have, so that you'll have markers for about a quarter done, halfway done, and three quarters done.
Once you have the list of milestones, put it somewhere safe. Type it up and save it in Evernote or Springpad, or keep a copy in your product notebook. Just make sure that you won't lose it.
And then, ignore it. Or not necessarily ignore it, but don't focus on it exclusively. Once you have a map of the bigger steps that you need to take to complete the project, you need to focus on the smaller ones – what you're doing right now and what you're going to do next. That's it. You don't need to worry about what you'll do six steps down the road, or towards the end of the project, or whatever. You'll tackle those steps when you reach them, and wasting mental energy on them right now isn't helping you or your product. Focus exclusively on right now and next. You know that thing about how anxiety comes from living in the future? Well, overwhelm comes from living in the future of your product.
Ta da – you're zoomed in. When you reach one milestone and need to come up with your next set of tiny steps, you'll just look at the next milestone and figure out what to do to get there. This creates a step-by-step map for completing your product that you tackle one portion at a time, and if you need to zoom out again and check on your overall progress, you can just look at your list of milestones.
And now…
Now, you've got the tools you need to follow through on your next product idea. Now, you know how to avoid thrashing and a moving finish line, maintain momentum on your project, get your work done, and keep from getting overwhelmed. The only question left is – what are you going to do with this information & these tools? I'm hoping the answer is create something amazing, because we're all rooting for you. But in reality, it's your choice. Just know that it's entirely possible, and that you can do this.
Michelle Nickolaisen helps creatives get their best work done & out there with more ease and less frustration at Let's Radiate.