In the multi-hyphenated world, specialization is not a thing, but uncertainty is. People who wear many hats at once struggle most with what projects to pick and how to get started because it’s difficult to make the “right decision.”
Some even have eight different career skills plus a ton of side hustle ideas but no clue which one to pick or which one to finish; the fear paralyzes them, making them feel like they might make the wrong choice or be disappointed by the outcome.
The good news is “we don’t have to collapse into analysis paralysis and think we’re making nonreversible long-term decisions when it comes to picking our projects. If we pick the “wrong” project, we’ll switch to another one once we see it through.” says Charlie Gilkey in his book “Start Finishing.”
So how can I create a system that makes it easy to pick and complete meaningful projects?
Now or Not Now?
It’s a mess, I know. Coaches will tell you to decide on your vision and focus on it, and it’s a hard thing to do. Decide what you want to do? That’s easy, everything!
Having a wide range of interests and capabilities is wonderful. Being able to do anything is ideal. But decision making is time and energy-consuming, and it becomes even more difficult when an infinite number of possibilities arise before you at once.
A project is essentially a bucket of decisions.
Everything has a priority level, which we have to keep focused on and complete what is important at the given moment in time. I sometimes feel that if I have a goal, I am already behind. But there is also a time to be patient and let things “happen,” patience and action both being important.
People with ADHD are the most creative individuals but also tend to be extremely impulsive and easily distracted. They live in the permanent present, so it’s hard to see the past or look into the future. I often find myself on the borderline between the two states of ‘Now’ or ‘Not Now.’
The ‘Not Now’ list
In an ideal situation, we would be time affluent, but most of us are time-poor, both being states of mind. When we are using our time to do meaningful and useful things, we are time affluent. On the other hand, when we feel behind, stressed, rushed or overworked, when we work on things that are not useful, we become time-poor.
The ‘Not Now’ list is a list of actions, projects, and ideas that aren’t ready to be worked on yet. It doesn’t mean that you abandon them. It simply means they aren’t at the top of your priority list right now.
Give yourself permission to write down anything you can think of without any restrictions. Whether it’s a crazy thought, passion, or idea, write it down and move on with your life or do some more research. It’s important to note things to have them when you need some inspiration or when the spark ignites.
The idea is to keep all your thoughts/ideas in the present. Don’t move them to a ‘someday/maybe’ list.
The problem with ‘someday/maybe’ is that it encourages us to procrastinate and allows that idea to sit in our minds and slowly fade away, out of sight, out of mind.
What’s on my ‘Now’ list?
As we all know, a project is only considered good if it’s completed. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that every idea you have needs to be done immediately.
The ‘Now’ list is a prioritized list of the top 5 non-competing projects that matter most to me. The ones that have actionable tasks that are ready to be worked on. Everything else goes on the ‘Not Now’ list.
When we are time affluent, we pick projects based on our values and how much energy and attention we are willing to provide in the time we have.
The idea is to limit the work in progress (WIP) as much as possible. Otherwise, this could mean a failure in your systems and priorities, creating a bottleneck and limiting how the process flows.
To keep it lean, every week, I go through my projects list with these questions:
- Did this project become irrelevant? I archive it.
- Is it important? I figure out the next physical action and schedule it.
- Is it important but can’t be bothered to do it? I delegate it to someone else.
Understand that priorities can change all the time. Resistance happens when we work within an unflexible unaccommodating work environment. Don’t shame yourself into doing things or for not doing things. Follow your gut and make a decision.
