Prioritize your projects

How do you make progress when you feel spread thin?

I’m guessing you’ve heard about SMART goals - Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. It’s a great framework to keep in mind when you think about what you want to accomplish; a litmus test to ensure you’re working towards something real and actionable. Very important.

But many of my clients have lots of random, unrelated, and abstract projects, resulting in different priorities, dreams, or visions that they split their time and energy on. I am certainly guilty of that myself: I have my own coaching practice, group coaching within Tom Woods School of Life, I run a CIRS online support group and produce its weekly podcast, I plan regular meetups for multiple organizations, and I’m even working on a big conference. It’s hard not to spread yourself too thin trying to keep all the plates spinning at the same time.

In these moments, I often witness powerful progress when one project is chosen as a priority over all others. It's the snowball effect, a term most often used when paying off debts, but we can also apply it to our goals: One project gets all the love, and the rest of the goals get the minimum to keep them going, whatever that looks like. Once you get a good routine and pick up some momentum on that top project - maybe you pick a milestone, like a number of enrolled clients, a specific word count on your book, or a month of consistent cadence on social media posts, for example - you can shift gears into maintenance mode on that top project, freeing up some bandwidth to bring the next runner up into focus.

I know picking a project is like picking a favorite child sometimes, and it can feel impossible - but I think some ruthlessness is necessary. It’s a mental game - if you have a soup of unfinished and amorphous ideas floating in your brain with nothing to actually show for it, it's going to feel like you're miles away from success. And maybe you’re closer than you think, but because you haven’t hit a tangible goal on any of them, it can feel like you’re spinning your wheels. A total motivation killer.

If that’s you, I encourage you to choose a priority. Now remember: this is temporary. Pick your favorite child… erhm, I mean project, and stick with it until you reach a predetermined level of accomplishment. List out the steps that it will take to get there, and how much time you have to devote to each of those steps, preferably on a daily basis. Dial back efforts on other projects a bit (not entirely, unless you feel it's necessary given time and energy constraints) and plan AROUND this new priority. Everything else can wait til you get a strong foothold on this main focus. Try this out and see what happens.

If you’re really struggling with choosing a project to prioritize, I encourage you to talk it out or write it out, depending on how you like to process things. If you’re extraverted like me, speaking it out loud to someone who can, without judgment or their own biases, reflect it back to you, ask thoughtful questions, and help you think more deeply about it can really help you hone in on what’s important (this is where a coach would come in handy). If you’re more introverted and need to process information quietly and to yourself, then take a walk, write in your journal, meditate, or pray about it. Reflect on the pros and cons, and make lists. Brainstorm. Write stream of consciousness. Get it all out onto paper and read it back to see if it makes sense.

And when in doubt - just pick something. It’s impossible to steer a ship that’s not moving - just go and you can course correct later. Everything you do will teach you something that can be applied to all your other projects…and when you think about it that way, every effort you make on any one goal is actually progress on all your goals at once. No time is being wasted, unless you’re sitting with inaction and indecision. Move yourself and the rest will fall into place.

If you need accountability or coaching through this process, I offer one-on-one and group coaching, specifically for people looking to change careers or start a business to do what they love. Reach out at bw@barbaraproject.com if interested.