Taking Control of Projects (from Small to Big to You-Have-to-be-Joking)
Let's do a little bit of visualization. You've just been assigned a big project (or you've just assigned yourself a big project). By big, I'm not talking about "rake the leaves" or "email the customer." This is a project that will require multiple days or weeks of focused concentration to be successful. No matter how big the project is, your mind immediately begins picturing the completed result along with some of the steps that will be necessary to achieve it. It is amazing how quickly your mind gets to work imagining what the finished product will look like. You even feel some enthusiasm beginning to grow—you want to do the project now because you expect to get pleasure from achieving this goal the way your mind is picturing it.
Visualization is what the mind excels at. Managing the details required for achieving that vision, not so much. That early enthusiasm that feels so good can evaporate quickly if you don't have a good system for managing the project's details.
By "good system," I mean an explicit, methodical approach for planning a path from where you are now to where you want to be at the end of the project. For all but the most trivial projects, a big part of that methodical approach involves having (and using) a memory aid of some kind to keep track of where you are on that path. That's where Idea Cruncher comes in. I'd like to describe some of the ways that I use Idea Cruncher to keep my enthusiasm for a project high even when things get complicated.
Brainstorm, Organize and Identify Actions: The GTD Approach
Chapter 3 of David Allen's book called Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity is devoted to a project planning framework that makes a lot of sense. The thrust is that we can't do the project effectively unless we've taken the time to ask ourselves some important questions about the project goals and methods first. In addition to the outcome visualization that our minds are so good at, we need to brainstorm, then organize a plan, then identify some of the actions that the project will require, and then finally start working on those actions. Being systematic about using this planning process leads to reduced stress, and in the end, a better result. If you've ever pulled your hair out while working on a project that has gotten stuck in the mud, I recommend chapter 3 of this book. Allen writes in a brisk, entertaining style that brings what could have been a pretty dry subject fully to life.
When I start thinking about a new project, I bring up Idea Cruncher and make a new entry in the "Projects" section of my to-do list. (Since I'm not one of the very few lucky people who have only one project on the go at a time, I keep the plans for all of my projects together in one Idea Cruncher file, along with the rest of my to-do list. You can find some suggestions about managing your overall to-do list with Idea Cruncher here.) To help me focus, I usually "zoom" in on this new entry, temporarily hiding everything else in the to-do list. Then, I add four sections under the project heading: Why, What, Brainstorm and Organize. These are taken directly from the Getting Things Done book. "Why" and "What" are fairly short, but essential. I need to ask myself why this project is necessary—why will things be better after this project is done? The "What" section is the visualization of the outcome that we were talking about above. The "Brainstorm" is a free-for-all of creative thinking on the question of what pieces the project will need to contain—the beginnings of a plan. After brainstorming, some structure or sequencing between the different ideas will usually become apparent. I try to capture this structure under the "Organize" heading. While the other sections are usually flat lists, "Organize" takes advantage of Idea Cruncher's ability to add any amount of detail under ideas in a tree-like structure.
The final step of the planning process is to identify the required next actions that can be acted on immediately. I identify actions by right-clicking them in the tree and choosing the "Action" command from the pop-up menu. The idea changes from a blue sphere to an orange arrow so that I can instantly find my actions at a glance.
When actions are finished, I mark them as completed, again with a right-click on the action in the tree. I choose the "Completed" command in the pop-up menu and the action gets a line drawn through it, which always gives me a little shot of happiness. As the project progresses, more and more of these actions have lines drawn through them, making the actions I haven't yet completed more obvious.
This approach does not require you to do all of your planning up front. It is expected that you will revisit each stage (confirming why the project is important, visualizing the outcome, brainstorming, organizing and identifying actions) as the project unfolds. The important thing is to make an honest effort at each of these stages before you start doing the work of completing the actions. As you work on actions, you will likely get more ideas that you didn't have at the beginning. Some of these ideas will likely improve the project's overall result, so it's important to be able to go back through your project outline and make changes as you go. That need to go back and edit the plan shouldn't be discouraging. Even though you might not have the perfect cook-book style recipe for the project when you finish the initial draft of the plan, it's a pretty safe bet that you are still much farther ahead than you would have been if you had jumped straight into action without planning first. And happier too.
Part of the reason these cycles of brainstorming and organizing work is that big projects can usually be broken down into smaller pieces. These needed sub-projects only become apparent when you look at the relationships between the different ideas that you've brainstormed and try to organize them into a plan. There is a good reason that divide-and-conquer is such a time-honoured project management strategy: it helps you stay relaxed even when the project is massive. The Zoom command in Idea Cruncher is particularly helpful here. It works like a set of blinders, permitting you to focus on just one small part of your project plan without losing any of the rest of the plan. Once you've broken the project down and identified some actions, the work usually becomes a lot more simple and enjoyable. Outliner software like Idea Cruncher is designed to help with the process of arranging the sub-projects and actions in a common-sense tree hierarchy so that you can break it up into little pieces without losing sight of the big picture.
The outline serves as your roadmap while you're working on the project. We usually need this type of memory aid because we don't usually work on most projects start-to-finish in one big chunk of time. Even taking time off for sleeping means time away from the project. (And that is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, reflecting on the project while away from it often leads to brilliant ideas that you wouldn't otherwise have had.) But the point is, when you start working on the project again the next morning, you want to look at your project outline and instantly remember where you left off the day before. This is also true when you have to divide your time between multiple projects. A clear outline for each project saves you a lot of head-scratching trying to remember what you have to do next.
Getting the Information
This notion of stress reduction through up-front planning also extends to gathering the knowledge and materials that you will need to complete the project. In fact, this process of getting everything you think you will need for the project will probably make up the bulk of the initial actions that you identify. French chefs have been doing this forever. It's called "mise en place," which in the context of the kitchen translates as getting all of your ingredients chopped and prepared in little bowls in front of you before you start assembling your masterpiece. The planning and prep work is done up-front so that the actual completion of the project is predictable, simple and fun. In most projects, this prep work involves reading, internet research, summarizing—basically gathering around you all of the information you'll need to ace the project. This mise en place approach reduces stress in two ways. First, there's nothing inherently stressful about gathering information when you don't have to immediately act on it—you're just gathering information and considering options. Second, when you have all the information (or a good portion of it) gathered in front of you, putting the project together is a lot less stressful than it would have been if you tried to do the project without it. Think of it as a two-stroke engine of productivity: information gathering first, project achievement second.
Keeping the Information
Finally, one of the most important uses of an outliner in a project has nothing to do with planning. It is almost impossible to work on a project and not learn how to do something new. You will probably have use for that hard-won knowledge in some other project at some point in the future. You can save yourself a lot of time and mental energy by having a searchable record of the techniques you successfully applied in past projects. I keep a separate outline from my to-do list called HowTo.idc. It only contains descriptions of useful techniques that I have run across in my work. Some of them are simple checklists for jobs that I have to do repeatedly but always seem to forget a step or two. Some of them are new technical knowledge that I've gained the hard way and don't want to lose. All it takes is a little bit of time at the end of the project to capture those techniques in an outline for future reference. The first time you're straining your memory about how you did some cool thing months (or years) before, you'll see the value of having a record of what you did then. Investing a small amount of time creating the record saves you the time and stress of recreating that knowledge the next time you need it.
Give it a Try
None of these strategies is particularly earth-shattering. I think most people recognize that working from a plan is the way to make even the most complicated projects manageable. The key is to be able to temporarily compartmentalize each of the important parts of the project so that you can devote attention to them individually. This becomes much easier to do if you are working from an overall outline of the project. Idea Cruncher is one of the tools available to you to help divide your project into manageable pieces and conquer each of them. Please feel free to give Idea Cruncher a try using the recommendations described here the next time you start working on a big project. See whether you find the work more relaxing, and dare I say it, fun. I hope you do. And I'd love to hear from you if you have experiences that you'd like to share or any questions.
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