Microdosing Your Projects—You Can't Do Everything
Lizard brain friendly project management.
Thinking about the whole year is overwhelming. Thinking about tomorrow, less. Thinking about the task at hand, less. Deciding to start a task for only 5 minutes, less.
Your focus needs to be a streamline, a sequence where a thought of the next task is only triggered by finishing the current one. The first task should be the one with the highest leverage (doesn't necessarily mean the hardest one).
Chopping the beast
A problem I'm struggling with myself right now. I want to rebuild this newsletter. Change the name and overall general tone to a more specific and targeted direction.
That requires—choosing the audience I want to write for, choosing the right mission, brainstorming what tangible value I will provide to my subscribers, rewriting the page and welcome email (soon emails), changing the overall voice of the publication, picking something that is not too broad (like it is now) and not too niche so I actually enjoy writing about it and won’t burn out. Add anxiety about not f*cking up all those key elements and it gets pretty overwhelming.
I am aware of the problem and see a solution, but I have been putting it off for too long.
What I did to make things easier and clear, step by step:
Education: Humbling ego, back to basics, looking for a refreshing outlook.
Journaling sessions for clarity: Tidying up all the info I gathered and putting books on the right shelves in my head.
Making a Notion sketch page: And another one, and then another one. After going through this filtration process I have a skeleton. Now, I just need to put muscles on it.
Making a plan: Which in practice means identifying the actual tasks that need to be done, putting them on to-do list, blocking time in the calendar, and then actually sitting through the whole block even if my head is empty.
Making myself accountable: This is definitely the hardest part. It’s my project, I don’t need to finish anything, I want to. There’s no deadline, no boss getting mad. I have clarity, but I run from taking action anyway. What to do then? Believe it or not but, from all the fancy tricks, a simple visual behavior tracker works wonders for me. I made it available to buy a while ago. This is the exact formula I use. This is the post about it. An accountability partner is a good one too.
Bottomline: If a project overwhelms you, break it into the parts you can understand.
Mental gym sessions
Ok, this comparison is not the most accurate one but it neatly illustrates the concept. After the initial phase gym is easy. You go there, put in effort, done. You don’t need to think “How I’m gonna approach this next biceps curls rep?”, you just curl your arms.
Tackling ackling brain-heavy projects is different. Every session brings a new challenge, and nothing stops progress more than unclarity on the steps to take. There’s one common denominator with those two though—you need to show up and do the work to progress.
Lifting weights, eating and getting proper rest is an incomparably easier process than dealing with problems creative projects and business brings.
But it’s not impossible to comprehend.
Lift, eat, rest, and your muscles will grow. Guaranteed. Take the right steps on your project, it will grow. The rule is the same, it’s just that identifying the right steps is way more difficult.
Lack of clarity on the next steps is the most common cause of giving up on dreams.
Microdosing your projects
The actual practical way to make more progress by doing less.
The main points:
Limit your sight to this very moment in this very day.
Identify the priority task (one that is necessary for the next ones to become more clear, one that moves the lever the most) and do nothing else until it’s done.
Time blocking for that task.
Starting with just 5 minutes.
The practical framework:
Make a to-do list of, at most, 10 tasks relevant to your project.
Identify the 5 most important, cross out the rest.
Cross out 4 leaving one.
Set a timer for 15 minutes and write down everything about this task. What’s the first step? How much time? Don’t clutter your head with “Oh, but it would be good to do this first…” too late for that, you have already chosen the priority.
Sprint—2x45-minute sessions exclusively for this task. If you don’t have that time now, block it in your calendar. Color code it in a prominent way, make it a highlight of your day.
Set a timer for 15 minutes and write down a summary, where did you end up? What’s now?
If needed—repeat from step 5.
Yes, I am less active. Will be back, don’t worry.
Btw. What would you name my newsletter based on my posts? Open to any ideas, DM me!
Get the mentioned tracker I use:
