Recently, during my 30-day challenge of posting a live video on YouTube every day, I talked about the power of projects. I discussed how turning random tasks and habits into larger, overarching projects is a great way to make the tasks themselves more meaningful.

I’d like to some few examples illustrating my point, and encourage you to start a project of your own.

Cooking Project

Most of us cook, though some of us enjoy it more than others. I’m among those who deeply enjoy it – I have been to culinary school, after all.

But cooking random recipes – which could be considered a near-daily habit – isn’t particularly interesting on its own. When it’s a habit, it’s a matter of function. I cook to put food on the table for myself or my family. It doesn’t need to be fancy, interesting, adventurous, or creative.

But if I turn cooking into a project, suddenly “interesting” and “adventurous” materialize and I enjoy the process of cooking immensely.

A recent example is a project I’m working on with friends – a vegan cooking challenge that we’re designing as a series of online classes. For this course, I need to create some videos, and – most importantly – some foolproof recipes that even a beginner can figure out.

Yesterday, testing for this project entailed making four batches of chocolate chip cookies, experimenting with different ingredients and ratios as I went. It was great fun and now I feel like I have a solid cookie recipe under my belt.

Without the project in mind, I probably would’ve cooked a batch of chocolate chip cookies, look at the flat disasters and say, “well, that didn’t work, but oh well”. I wouldn’t try again. I’d eat the mediocre cookies and I’d probably go through the same mediocre cookie experience again a few months later.

But since I was creating a recipe for a project – the project of giving a beginner a good cookie recipe – I couldn’t stop there. I had to try again so that I could hit on something great.

Another idea: If I was creating a self-published cookbook for friends and family, I would be refining my skills and recipes, made meaningful under the umbrella of a larger project.

If I wanted to perfect my bread baking skills, I wouldn’t simply make random loaves here and there – I would follow and explore every page of a breadmaking book.

It doesn’t take much extra time to do this – aside from recipe planning for the week, which I do anyway, I simply take a few minutes to snap some photos of the plated meals and take notes in my digital journal.

It amounts to very little extra time spent for a massive output of meaning and interest.

The Music Album Project

It’s one thing to write songs here and there, which is something I’ve been doing since I was a child. But to say “I’m going to write an album” changes the meaning of songwriting – the songs themselves take on more purpose, and I push myself to excellence.

It is more work to create an album compared to writing disconnected songs. But it’s immensely rewarding. One of the top 3 highlights of my creative life is when my band The Criminal Kid recorded our first album back in 2012.

Health and Fitness Projects

Instead of running every day as a habit, why not try a “couch to 5k” program or signing up for a marathon?

Instead of saying “I’d like to lose weight and build muscle” and installing a daily exercise and meal-tracking habit, why not take photos of yourself every two weeks, with details of your weight and updated measurements? (When I did this back in 2017, a helpful side-effect of having updated body measurements was being able to shop online for clothing with ease).

What about practicing yoga with the intent to do an impromptu class in the park with your friends? Improving your flexibility so you’re able to do the splits? Improving your upper body strength so you’re able to do 100 push-ups, your core strength so you could plank for two minutes, and so on?

Teaching as a Project

One excellent project is that of teaching anything you’re learning. If I wanted to get into food photography, say, I might learn with the idea to teach it once I’ve learned it. I’d need to be able to explain the core elements of what I’m learning, which means I’d understand it deeply.

Plus, teaching is a win-win – perhaps you have a friend who’s always wanted to learn how to take better food photographs. You can spend the afternoon together, cooking and talking about photo techniques. You get to anchor your knowledge in the experience of teaching, and they get to pick up a new skill without having to take a class.

You could even create an online course after you’ve gone through the process of learning a skill. If you’re a new vegetable gardener, you could create a course based on your notes from the growing season, things you’ve read and your personal experiences. You could call it “The New Vegetable Gardener” and frame yourself as an enthusiastic beginner. People don’t always want to learn from experts, often preferring to learn from someone who’s only a few steps ahead of them.

You could then put your course up on a website such as Skillshare. Even if not a single person took your course, you’d still have the permanent benefit of solidifying your learning and adding meaning to your gardening experience.

Courses as Projects

Taking a course is a great project as well. If you’re wanting to learn personal accounting, you could do a bunch of random Googling – OR you could take a course on the subject. Learning from someone who’s taken the time to organize content for you, content with a clear beginning and end, is much more satisfying than miscellaneous internet searches.

Other Project ideas

What about the project of listening to 20 audiobooks in a year, where the stipulation is you can only listen to those books while you clean and do house chores? Cleaning becomes much more enjoyable that way. I’ve made my house spotless while engrossed in a particularly good fiction (The Help is a favorite).

What about turning a journaling habit into something more tangible, like a physical printed copy of your journal at the end of the year? I’ve been doing this since 2015, and my word count increases every year. It’s immensely pleasurable to receive my little paperback in the mail, and to see them take up more space on my shelf each year.

Conclusion

The idea of making projects out of habits and tasks is to create meaning out of chaos. Sure, I could journal every day until I die and reap immense benefits from it. I already have. But printing out my journals makes my life feel bigger, more coherent, and more meaningful. As a result, I’ve begun journaling more, and to a higher standard of quality. Perhaps ten years from now, I’ll look at my journaling habit as being the launching-off point to fiction or memoir writing.

Is there something you could project-ify in your life right now? A habit you’d like to implement, or a task you’re already doing anyway?

-A

In a recent live video, I discussed the idea of time tracking, something that has been making a huge difference in my productivity and awareness. I thought I’d share more about it here.

Last week I was feeling overwhelmed by life. I was confronted by the difficulties in planning for the future during Covid. I was unsure what steps to take as an eager musician living in a part of the world that isn’t particularly hospitable to original artists.

These things are still true – Covid, and my unsureness – but I have found some helpful solutions to make me feel more in control of my day-to-day experience. Time tracking has been one of them, and it’s a habit I’m going to continue for at least another month (and possibly indefinitely if I find it useful enough).

Sunday Reviews

Every Sunday, I sit down for a couple of hours to write a review of the previous week and plan for the next week ahead. I’ve been doing this process for years, and I deeply enjoy it. Planning for the week ahead, the day before I get back into work mode, organizes my mind and gets me excited to work and take small steps toward audacious goals.

What I haven’t done, and what I’ve resisted doing for years, is to schedule my work, and to keep careful tabs on how much time I’m spending on tasks.

Perhaps there’s a rebelliousness there – “I didn’t decide to start a business and work from home only to micromanage my schedule”. I figure that I’m a highly-motivated person anyway, so why do I need to give myself time constraints and boundaries?

The virtue of time scheduling

What I didn’t realize is that scheduling my days (in a series of digital to-do check boxes) is an extremely useful way to manage my life, making sure I don’t waste time working on the things that don’t matter much, and that I’m devoting adequate time to the things that do matter, but that might be a lower priority.

For example, I’ve been reading some music marketing books to better understand the industry, as I’m several months shy of an album launch. This is a low-priority task in a time sense – it’s certainly not urgent to anyone else in the world – but it’s a high-priority task in that it’s connected to my most meaningful project at the moment. If I don’t block time to read and study and plan, then I’ll likely not do much of it.

On the other side of things, I tend to spend too much time doing work tasks. If I don’t budget my time, I can spend an entire afternoon doing something I probably could’ve done in a couple of hours.

Gaining accuracy

One benefit I hope to reap the rewards of is a more accurate view of how I’m spending my time, and how long it takes me to do certain tasks. As I go through this weekly time management process, I’ll be able to make more accurate estimates.

When I’m planning for the week, I have at the bottom of each day’s to-do a total of the hours I expect to spend on work. When the day is over, I write the actual total of time spent.

At the end of the week I can see how close my predictions were to reality, and calibrate for the upcoming week based on what I’ve learned.

Improved social life

The huge advantage of this time-tracking approach is that I’m able to schedule in long hangouts with friends while having the peace of mind that everything else that needs to get done, will get done.

I love spending time with friends and family. It’s the difference between a good day and a great day. My relationships are a “deathbed” thing – the people I’ve loved will mean much more at the end than the tasks I accomplished.

Having focused 2+ hour conversations with people I really enjoy adds sparkle and joy to my life. But when I’m not time-tracking and live in more of an ad-hoc way, I tend to not socialize as much. I’ll make it to the end of the week and realize I didn’t do much else aside from work. Hanging out with friends is a high-priority but low-urgency activity, so unless I make room for it and actively plan it into my schedule, these meaningful hangouts tend to fall by the wayside.

Freedom of mind

When I’ve put plenty of thought into my weekly schedule to make sure I’ve made room for everything that matters – work and play – I experience a freedom of mind. When I’m with my work, I can be fully-focused on my work (without feeling like I’m neglecting my social life). When I’m with my loved ones, I can be fully-focused on them (without feeling like I should be doing this or that task).

Time-wasting habits

A final thought on time-tracking is that, even after a week of doing this, I’m able to notice the many insidious ways I tend to waste time. A 1-hour work session becomes a 45-minute one because I’m spending the remainder of my time texting. Or a 1-hour work session becomes a 30-minute one because I forgot to account for cooking and mealtimes. Or I forgot to do a particular errand, so I need to leave the house two days in a row instead of getting it all done at once. And on.

The biggest benefit I’m finding so far is awareness. I want to become more aware of how I’m spending my time. I want to become more aware of how much time I’m spending on different areas (time spent socializing, versus my business, versus my album). I want to become more aware of the discrepancies between my predictions and what actually happens in real life.

So far, so good.

x

-Alysia

I’m a huge planner. I love sitting down to a blank page to dream up scenarios and make lists. I plan my week ahead. At the end of the year, I like to plan my year ahead. And I‌ love daydreaming about my future self and all the things she’ll have achieved and tried and experienced.

Problem is, it’s a bad idea to make plans based on what you’d like to achieve in five years.

The logic goes like this:‌‌ In five years, I want to be a traveling and performing musician. So then I‌ work backward and figure out what I‌ need to accomplish this year, and then break that down further and figure out what I‌ need to accomplish in the next quarter. Makes sense, right?

This is how I’ve always done it. But life doesn’t work like that.

The universe is really interesting. Some of the coolest opportunities that come to us are totally unexpected, things we could’ve never predicted. We meet new people. We receive a job offer out of left field. A friend tells us they’re working on a creative project that sounds fun, but is completely outside the realm of anything we’ve done. So why plan for a future you can’t predict?

I’m not saying don’t plan at all. And I’m certainly not saying to submit yourself to the whims of the universe, floating goallessly through life.

But there is an approach that makes more sense. It’s in two parts.

1) Take action now. If I‌ want to be a performing musician in five years, that means‌‌‌ I’m really interested in music right now, at this very moment. Therefore I should ride that wave, and take advantage of the energy that this interest in music creates. If I‌ write some music, maybe play with friends, maybe try an open mic night or other type of performance, then I’m already a performing musician. If I enjoy it and keep at it, perhaps I’ll end up a higher-level touring musician in five years. Or perhaps, after taking action on it for a little while, a totally unforeseen opportunity for something else comes up. Maybe I play a show, and meet with someone who’s making a film, and end up collaborating on a film score. You really never know.

But you need to take action on what seems fun and interesting. We often get stuck in research/analysis mode. There’s nothing wrong with research, but it can be a way to delay taking action. You spend three months reading about writing music instead of just writing and experimenting, and you’re no closer to being that performing musician. Whereas in the first example, maybe you’ve already gone up on stage in front of others.

2) Instead of making 5-year plans, consider your 5-year character. We can’t predict the things that will happen in five years. There are way too many wildcards, and life would be boring if you could. What IS worth thinking about, and working toward, is the kind of person you want to be. The character traits you’d like to develop.

Is your five-year-from-now self more courageous? More emotionally expressive? More organized? Honorable? Forthright? Energetic? Fun? Creative?‌ Intuitive? Self-sufficient? Loving?‌ Kind?

Sometimes opportunities arise that allow us to upgrade our character. Perhaps you go through a devastating experience that ends up making you a more compassionate person. Perhaps an experience with being swindled makes you develop more honesty in your own character.

Even though we can’t control the things that happen to us, we can control what happens within us. The kind of person we are right now, and the kind of person we become.

Taking action now on those crazy-exciting ideas is going to make your life immediately better – no waiting for five years. And thinking about how you might improve your character is also something that can happen today.

Who is the person you want to become, and how can you be more like that person right now?