Welcome. Nice to see you. All right. I'm going to also record. All right. We're here for the implementation lab on the Act phase for momentum system. November 5, 2024 great to see everybody here, and I'm excited to get started. So Elizabeth signing in. So I'm gonna wait just a second here to do my spiel. How's everybody doing? Okay under the circumstances,
I was hoping to make it to the lesson brief this morning, and I ended up getting stuck talking to other parents at the kids school during drop off. With all the election stuff happening, just seems to be obsessing everybody today.
I mean, for reasons, yeah,
yeah, yeah,
yeah. So first thing I want to say is, for all Americans, or like, big hugs, like, this is very the scary day, and I know that's true also. Like my French friends wrote me this morning, saying, like, oh my gosh, you know, good luck today. Fingers crossed. So it's international, and, yeah, it's anyway. So anybody want to say anything about that, feel free like, you know, the doors are open. I don't need to. We don't need to, like, you know, shut that down or anything. So if you want to talk about it, feel free. But I'm just going to go in with the plan, and we'll see where things go. So the plan for today is to go through the kind of high level overview of the Act phase. And I'm kind of interested, actually, in asking you guys a couple of questions about this, because one of the things I've been thinking about a lot in terms of the creative focus workshop is how there are, I mean, there are four phases, right? And so there are four phases, there are four different things we do. But also there's sort of, like a big area of making, sort of understanding our relationship with our projects, and making big decisions about things, sort of putting structures in place, generally strategically addressing, you know, overwhelm, indecisiveness, distraction, whatever. Then there's, let's finish a project. You know, there's like, Actually, let's do the thing. And they're obviously intimately related, and you need one for the other, then all that stuff. But they are two different ways that we need to engage with our work life. And I do certainly see a major difference in how people engage, like in the course that people get really excited about the beginning of the course, and they get here and they're like, oh, and I don't get, I don't get a lot of people going through the Act phase in detail. Um, which is funny, because when I teach it to, like my undergrads, for example. Um, when I used to do this class for for them, I would mostly focus on this. Like, this is what we were mostly doing. And, and yes, we had to make decisions about what the project was, but like, this is the actually, like, how do you lay it out and get it done? And when I'm working with clients like you, all in a group like this, we often talk a lot about this kind of stuff. Anyway. Just want to throw that out there. If you have any thoughts about that, I'd be really interested to hear your take on that and your feedback on that.
I do have thoughts, yeah, whenever you're ready for that lesson. Well, I was just thinking you were talking about undergrads. And I think that a big difference between your undergrads and us is your undergrads are doing it with the external accountability and the external motivation of completing a class and getting a grade, whereas we have to be, for the most part, much more intrinsically motivated in the projects that we're we're doing so great. I think that that's a big difference. Although
I would like to say that this class that I'm teach, that I used to teach this class, which is, it is they have to come up with their own project and see it all the way through. I'm not giving them a project. They're creating the project. So it's much more similar to what you do then. But they do get a grade. But I'm I may. Clear from the beginning, like, I'm not actually grading them on like, I am grading them on the work, but it's more like, are they learning and progressing and basically doing what we're doing? Like, are they doing this? So it isn't a one to one, and in general, they're in a structure where there are grades and semesters and deadlines and they're like, on that train, and so that all works, but the kind of work they need to be doing as art students is self generated work in their studio to create for shows, for exhibitions at the end of the year. And they're not good at that, you know, because it doesn't have grades and stuff. And so what I was trying to do with that course was to build that transition,
man, I wish I'd had that. I wish I'd had that in undergraduate and graduate school for that matter. The other thing I was thinking about where you said that the Act phase, that's kind of where folks like us can get hung up a little. And I think you're right. I think that there are almost two stages there, where you have the first stage of time management and project management practices, and then you have the second stage of actually doing the thing, taking the action,
yeah. And second stage takes a long time, right? So the the the other thing is that in the Act phase of your project. You could be in the Act phase for years, or in the Act phase of the course you're doing it in a couple days, you know? So, like in the core, like there, it's not a perfect mesh, you know, that you I'm asking you to design some things and come up with whatever that's acting in the course, but it's not executing your entire project. But I think sometimes people feel like they have to have executed the entire project in order to move on. You know? Yeah. Garima, yeah.
So I don't know, because I was already tracking my time and trying to, sort of like, you know, re assign the puzzle pieces when I came to act phase, actually, I I mean, I did everything. I mean, I made a plan, like you said, I made a project plan, and I've acted. I mean, I made my page I have shared with few people who are actually going to share it with their tribe, and now I'm waiting. I mean, I just did that yesterday. So it all actually, I mean, maybe it was just on my I knew exactly what need to do. So once I put those, I made project plan, like you had said, and then within that project plan, I just started acting. Basically, I mean, it just felt easier to start acting. And then the only thing that came up was, I think the mental block, a bit of bit of fear, like, Wow. I know that people will start coming, I mean, but then I just, you know, put that aside. Sent like, few emails, few Facebook, you know, connected with friends who are what you wanted me to work with them. So that's all done. So my website is live now with my coaching page. So, Wow, fantastic.
Congrats, yay. Yeah, that's great, yeah. I mean, I think that's the thing. Is, like, yes, there are various kinds of blocks that will come up around act. And one of those things is, oh, and now it's real, uh. But, you know, like, that's scary, right? You can that's the transition from the Collect decide to like, it becomes tangible, and like, what if it doesn't work, or what if it does work, or whatever, you know, so all those things, yeah, but good for you. That's awesome. Elizabeth, what did you want to add?
Well, I have a question, because I might have been asleep at the wheel here. Probably I realized I have these blocks and sometimes and in the weekend, completely overwhelmed. I'm fine now, but I have not written my project plan, and I really want to, but I simply don't know what tool to use. I mean, I started,
okay, we'll talk about that. Let's go through the actual material, and let's, let's make sure to talk about tools.
Okay, because then, then, I mean, this may sound so stupid, but what's the best way to enter the autonomous our our resource page? What's the best way to gather things in Google Docs, in a folder, cannot find the folder icon. It's driving me crazy, and so I can't delete folders, make a folder. I know it's very simple. Then I google how to find your Google folder. Then I found a recipe for like, How To Remove old stuff and make room and. For me mentally, this is very symbolic. I mean, I need to get that stuff out of there, and then I've been rearranging my office space. You might notice there's a different background. Now. I'm still moving furniture around, and somehow it's really helping me prepare to what I I'm starting to envision. But I'm such, I don't know, my brain fog is like, so intense that I just, I would just really, like, like, what are these tools? Where are they? They would really help me immensely. So that, I
mean, I think the tools that we literally use inside the creative focus workshop are Google Docs, and that's what you're talking about. I think that's like, the word,
yeah. Then I have, because I end up having all these docs that are, like free floating. I mean, I want to
Yeah. And what I've done with the Google Docs is I have made them, they all are titled CFW, and then the name of the the phase, and then the title, so that when you go to your Drive folder, your main drive folder, they should all sort in order. So you see CFW, CFW, all in one place. That's me, yeah. So that's, you know, one way to, like, make sure that they, even if you don't put them in a folder, they're all in one like, block in your visually, in your drive and just quickly to make a folder. When you look at your Google Drive up on the top left there, there's a button that says New and if you click that, you can drag down this new folder you create. You can create a new folder. And when you do that, once you create the new folder, you can name it, and then you can highlight a bunch of things and drag them to the folder. Or you can use the little move icon, which is like a little folder with an arrow in it, yeah, which is at the top. So okay, and there's demo that in a few minutes if you want
security feature, so you have to go in a different way and like, do, uh, I will. There's a different way of going in if you're going to delete folders. Apparently,
I have yet to do that. Yeah, maybe, I mean, if they're yours, you can delete them, but yeah, okay, so let's jump in the main two things in the Act phase, like the big, sort of overarching ideas I want to get at, are the idea of the flexible container and the idea of the project path. So the flexible container is a conceptual structure that is really about, like, how are we going to think about and approach any kind of planning we do? And, you know, this is a term I came up with not that long ago, but I've really come to love it. I love the idea of flexible container. This idea of something that has these kinds of, like resilient but strong sides, that kind of keeps us where we want to be. You know that we can rely on them, but they are flexible that like when things happen, when something, you know, like when we have election anxiety, whatever it is like we have a way to, you know, tack and be agile and move the plan instead of feeling locked into, you know, this one kind of way. And a lot of tools we've talked about already are very much for that, right? So things like using themes for your week, and then switching out a theme for a different theme or different temp, a template for a different template based on your physical needs, for example, or the you know, whether, like, if there's some family member who needs you on a regular basis, having a template for a day when you take care of that person versus when you don't, you know, are ways to, sort of, like, make this, implement this idea of flexible container more easily and more fully, so that you you are like you've pre forgiven yourself for things being not on track. You know, in addition to pre deciding what, what that's going to look like. So the, you know, looking at my list here of things I want to say, give me a second. The project path, then, is the actual kind of road mapping. It's like. So you have the idea of the flexible container. You have this concept of, like, how we need to both keep on track, and also, you know, give ourselves space to be human. But in order to keep on track, we need some, like, actual thing, like, things to do, and like, kind of know how those things lay out. And so I'm offering essentially two different ways of designing a project path. Project path is like getting from here to the end. It's just visual image. It's a path you're gonna be going along. It may be curvy path, it may be a straight path, but it's you're gonna be moving along a path towards some destination, which is the outcome that you imagine for your project. The outcome even could change, like you could take a different four. In the road and end up somewhere else, but it's still a path. And there are two different ways that I look at creating a project path, and they map to the kind of project it is. One is planning backward, where you have a specific goal, and particularly a time based goal, and this, I recommend hard planning backward when you have a hard external deadline, which is rare, but when you do like, that's the way to do it. Like, if you need to hit this deadline, you know taxes are due on April 15. Work backwards. Like, work your way backwards to what you need to prepare when you know, like, when do you have to get it to your accountant? When do you have to whatever the those are really strict backward planning projects. And it's important to recognize that those are not super flexible. But what other what needs to flex in that container is other stuff. If you know you have something that's got a specific deadline, and you've got to, you know, you got a milestone, you got to hit it in order to get to the next thing. When you need flex because of human things that happen and life things that happen, other stuff needs to flex. That's the thing that needs to stay on track. But that kind of project is exceedingly rare, especially when you work for yourself. You know, like, we make up deadlines all the time, but the deadlines are not that real, and they're more real or less real depending on, you know, what's happening. Like, I've had deadlines that have to do with like, you know, in order to finish this program by x date, I need to launch it by x date, which means I need to prepare by x date. That's a backwards plan. But like, Okay, what if I did the whole thing shifts up two months. Is that going to kill me? Is that okay, you know, like, there's, there's a flex, there's a little bit of flex built into that. And other things are like, boy, you know, I've been thinking about doing a summit, like doing a, you know, conference, for 18 months, and it just keeps sliding, because I just don't have the bandwidth to do it now. I think I probably will do it in the spring, but, you know, I thought I was gonna do it last spring, you know, and I was like, You know what capacity is, what it is it moves. So there's different ways of thinking about that still, though. And then there's forward planning. So forward planning is basically habits, practices, just keeping on track with something and wanting to do it and just continue. Just continue to do it. And so there, everybody here had at least one thing you were working on that's a forward plan that does not have deadlines, has may have milestones at some point, like, there may be, like, you know, Jess, you're working on a book, they're going to be milestones in that book. But the main thing is just to keep the practice going and reach the milestones when you reach them. And so you know the you're going to be tempted as you get closer to set deadlines and work harder. But it may be, it may make more sense to just stick to the pattern and just keep going with the pattern. You have to decide at that point, but there's plenty of other things that literally don't have any deadlines. Like, I want to have a writing practice that's a daily practice that's forever, you know. So you need to have a flexible container for that too, because there may be days when you can't and so what are you going to do instead? And, you know, make sure that you have sort of ways to deal with that built in. But it's, it's, it is inherently like a flexible, you know, an ongoing thing that is a forward plan. Now, the most common thing we need to deal with, though, is a mix between the both, where, as I said, many of our plans and projects, they have internal deadlines of some kind that are either more flexible or less flexible, depending on how tied they are to real things. I gave you examples, right? One is like, there's like, say, I, you know, in my life, things get really crazy around now in my family, not because of, like, there's holidays coming, but mine come earlier because my birthday is next week, then my daughter's birthday, you know, then Thanksgiving, then my daughter's birthday, then Christmas and New Year's and whatever. So we have, like, all of it lined up. So I try to front load the fall so that I'm not, like, creating new things from like, mid November on, which is earlier than most people need to think about it. Can it move? Yes? Does it move? Yes, but that's a pretty, you know, there's real stuff going on there that is not movable. And so whatever, versus the summit, where I'm like, Okay, three months, push it. I don't care, you know, I just gotta, I gotta live. So there's a, you know, some, some of these internal deadlines are tied to more real things, and other things are not but you still the when there is an outcome to the project, like the summit, like when it runs, it runs like it's a thing, it will be some live things. There will be people coming in. I will be dealing with lots of customer requests. I will be doing a live event. So I'll be doing all this stuff, right? So that's a real end point. And then what I need to do in order to get there is work backwards. When do I have to have the speakers in? When do I have to have the emails done? When do I have to have all this stuff done? Now, I bought a course to help me with this, but the point is that there's a whole there's major phases of work along this project path that all need to get locked into a calendar and and up to a certain point I can just kick it to the next season. Like I don't, you know, there's still a way to move it now, at some point it's locked in. It's been advertised. You know, I've got speakers expecting something like it becomes a real deadline, but for a period of time, it's very flexible still. So there's this, what I call a soft backwards plan, which is mostly what we do. Most of what we do here is
trying to combine elements of this forward planning. It's a practice. We show up, we keep going, we chip, chip away at this thing. It happens when it happens, versus there's a deadline at the end, and we really need to hit these milestones on days specific days, so trying to blend those things, that's the flexible container, right? And that's, I think, why all this project planning and task management stuff that's out in the world, it's so unrealistic and so hard to deal with because it doesn't acknowledge that. Doesn't acknowledge a, that our deadlines are fake and B, that life happens. You know that those are the two things I'm trying to deal with, while also allowing us to be ambitious and try to hit big goals and do stuff we care about and finish and ship. So you get to put those things together, right? So that's what we're trying to do here. That's the big picture. The small picture is, how do we do that? So the granular picture of this is that I imagine everybody here, correct me if I'm wrong, has some kind of task management system already. You have checklists, you've got a piece of paper, you've got post it notes, you've got a journal where you stick stuff. You got something right to remind yourself of things you may need to upgrade. You know, there may be something about this system that is not working for you, and you need to look at it and upgrade it. There's a lesson in the Act phase that's about that, essentially. And what I have is this, what I've developed, is this four step process for looking at any system that you're trying to upgrade so your calendar system broken, not working, you're not showing up for stuff on time. Do the four step process on it, figure out why you're not showing up for stuff on time. It's essentially a way of, have you guys heard of the five whys? The five whys is a process that was developed by Toyota, of all things, in Japan, to figure out, like to solve problems, basically. And so if there's a problem like the, you know, production line is stopping. It's like slowing down at this one spot repeatedly for the cars. Why is that? Well, because we don't have this part in our hands. Why don't we have the part in our hands? Well, because it comes from this other place over here, and it takes 15 minutes to get there. Well, why is it over there? Well, because that's where we built it. Well, why don't we put it over here? You know? So you get, like, you figure out a way by just asking why repeatedly to get to a root cause of a problem. And so it's not the same thing, but it's kind of related to that, where, basically I'm asking you with the four steps to say, like, Okay, first of all, what do you do now? Define what you do now. So if you have a test management system, which is, you know, write it on the back of my hand. Uh, that's your system. Now, it is a system, you know, it's not particularly functional, like, if you wash your hands, that's not great, which you should wash your hands. So that is great, but don't wash off the thing on your anyway, the maybe to move it up and it's on your arm and not on your hand. That's your that's your adaptation. But the point is, like you have some way of remembering stuff, even if it's just like, I churn it over my head every 15 minutes, like I find myself going through it, going through the list every 15 minutes. Then what's working about that? Well, when I look at my hand, I remember, you know, like it's in front of me, so I see it, or like it's going through my head, so I'm remembering these important things. Well, where does it not work? That's step three. Like, or part of Step two is like, where is it not working? Well, I washed my hand. It got blurry. I couldn't tell what it was. Or, you know, I'm spending so much time processing this stuff in my head that it's, you know, making me crazy. What's one thing you know, what would, what was your what your dream system be? Well, my dream system is that I have, like my everything in list and like it all, you know, reminds me and it pops up in front of my face, like in my goal. And whatever, right? And then you say, like, well, what's one part that I want to improve out of this thing, like, out of what's actually happening? Because if you try to just dump your old system and adapt a new one, adapt a new one, it's not going to stick, because it's not going to be like what you do. So maybe instead of writing it on your hand, you write it on, like a note that's like, pinned to the front of your phone or something like that. Like, you write it somewhere where it's not going to get washed off, but you are going to see it all the time. And that's like one little step to take. And when you're like, that's annoying to have it on my phone, well, what if I did it here? Like, so you can, kind of, like, bit by bit, move your system to something else. So if you have issues with time with with task management, that's what I would say. The other thing I would say is top threes with your task management, like putting those two things together, super important. Because the biggest problem I see with task management is not that people don't have a system at all, but there's too much shit in it. Take it out. Put it out of your eyesight. Do not look at it all the time. Have some way to have here's what's important now, in the next three days tops, the rest of this stuff is in a holding pen. It's in a green room. It's waiting its turn. And I have a way to go back and look at that, because I do my top threes, right? So that's the purpose. That's the sort of relationship you know, between those things that allows you to put things out of your view so that you don't you're not constantly trying to, you know, relitigate, what you're supposed to be doing on a given day, because it's not in front of you. It's just not occurring to you. The bigger problem that I encountered because task management became that part of it I didn't learn for way too long, getting it out of my sight, right? But the task management of just like keeping stuff somewhere out of my head, I mastered many, many, many years ago, and it was incredibly helpful to me to use, I use getting things done, the David Allen book and this whole thing of, like a brain dump and like, life audit and whatever, and like, put everything in in a system. You didn't call it that call something else. But anyway, the point being, like, get it out of your head and watch it into a system is all in one place. I did that. It was transformational. So because I stopped thinking about it, stuff all the time, I stopped ruminating all the time, and like, you know, trying to keep it all in my head. But here's the problem. Number one, it fools you into thinking that you can do all the things if you're not making decisions using a top three kind of, you know, style, decision making process. And number two, you can get stuck in the weeds. You look at all the little stuff, and you lose the view of the big picture. This is something I've struggled with forever. Still do my proposed solution to this. And this is the this is the piece that is the milestone goal for you all, for you know, earning another coaching call is to create a project tracker. And the Project Tracker is some it's not a task management system. It's a way of looking at the path that the whole thing now you may only look at if you have a big project in front of you, you may only have a Project Tracker of the phase you're in, not the whole thing, because you don't want to get overwhelmed, right? So it may not be something where you have like, this is a three year project. Let me put the whole three years, because you don't know what's going to happen. Things could change. You just want to look at what's in front of you, but you want to look at sort of like a say to two to three month arc of what's going to happen and what you want to do in this project, and have it in some form where you can regularly, kind of draw the connections between this project that's happening and Your daily actions. That's where it gets really tricky. That's really complicated. And I don't think there are many systems, like digital systems out there that handle this at all. I have created my own personal systems in notion where I have, like a weekly page and in daily pages, and also quarterly page. And I have processes that I go through to do, like weekly review, do daily check ins, and I do quarterly check ins. And that's when I I'm that's when I go actively and draw down from the project plan into the days into the week. That's my solution for it. So if I were to turn in, like a Project Tracker to me, it would be like a screenshot, I guess, of my notion board saying, like, this is, you know, here's my quarterly planning, here's my weekly planning. Here's how I'm going through this, you know, every week. But it's not something I want to hand to you, because it's so personal to me, I wouldn't just give you this dashboard and go, like, use this because it's it could be a little insane if you don't know what it is and why it ended up that way. But that's why I'm suggesting, potentially, a physical, even if you use digital term digital, digital media, a physical. Project Tracker to help you stay on track. Now, the Project Tracker could be for either for backwards, planned project with an end date, or it can be for a practice you know, you can, but they're not the same tracker, right? I have a practices tracker and I have a Project Tracker like, I have the two things separately because they're different styles. So if your main focus is a habit, then you can use a habit tracker of some kind. And I have people who have done this very physically, like literally taking, you know, a marble from one jar and putting it in another jar. Like, when you do the thing, or it can be, you know, a star chart, like I did it today. I put a star on the wall, you know, it can be, and it can be digital too. Like, there's, there's Habitica. There's other kinds of, like apps that are, like habit tracking apps, you can there's one where you grow trees. I forget what it's called,
you know, like, if that motivates you, if you enjoy that, that's fine, too. Those are all habit based, and your habit can be spend an hour on my creative project moving a an outcome based project forward has no deadline at all, but I'm going to continue moving forward with steps on this project. So, Jess again, your example of working on your book, the type of work you're going to do over time changes, but you're like showing up for your book for an hour or 90 minutes, whatever it is, twice a week, check, check, boom, done, right. And the the you can also have a thing, which is, like, I finished chapter one. You know, you can have a that kind of Project Tracker as well, but the more important thing is that you're moving along. You know that you're keeping up with just checking in and doing the thing. So I'm going to leave up to you what you want to do, as far like what would serve you best, as far as a Project Tracker, if you love digital tools and you want to use something like Asana or whatever, you know, cool, like, if you have like, a because they have project views, you know, click up whatever. There's like, project views, and you can, like, check off stuff in the project. That's how I run projects internally. That's what I do. I have notion I have a project page. I can see the stuff in there. It is a tracker of a kind I'm open to options, like you can do what you want, but that's, that's what the assignment is. And I really the main thing to look at, and the way, the main thing to like, kind of have front of mind as you work on it, is the difficulty of connecting your daily actions to this larger plan, larger goal, because that's the biggest thing that happens, is that when you have all your like, tasks, tasks, oh my god, I did all the things. I got them all on the list, and then that's all you end up doing, and you don't end up doing this stuff. That's that moves a needle, that's really important to you. So that's, that's what I'm that's my goal for you. That's why I made this a milestone for the program. Is like figuring out some way to test may not work great. You can try it see, you know, see how it goes. I want you to try it for two months and see how, see how this works out. So floor is open. Questions, yeah.
So I made a made my Project Tracker in clickup. It's very much like notion where you can actually but what was interesting, you said that something on a physical, sort of like paper, basically, and I actually worked with both in the sense, like I keep planner right next to me when I'm working, because I don't want to interrupt and put things in clickup while I'm working. I just note it down there, and also my appointments and that. So what is the advantage of paper versus digital?
I mean, I think there's, there's evidence, there's, you know, research showing that people like their brain chemistry is different when they're using their hand and paper than when they're using digital tools, right, right? I think that's there. I think that that's a and for some, for a lot of people, I work with digital tools just are like, like, they just cannot. It does not speak to them. For me, I couldn't do it kind of any other way, because I'm I'm managing so many complex, like, right streams of information I need to and I've built all these ways to interrelate these databases so that I see everything where I need to see it a I do sometimes have a physical tracker when I'm like, this project is breaking my brain and I'm not keeping it, I'll have and it's just a checklist on my desk. Like, it's just like, here are the things that are coming. Um. And that's what it looks like. It's not fancy, it's not, you know, designed or whatever. It's just like something I can like, okay, that's where I'm at, okay, you know, kind of reorient myself. I think there's an advantage for some people, especially people with ADHD, they need something in front of them. I need to actually see it physically in their space often. And so if, like, I have a friend who has ADHD, and she doesn't, she doesn't keep anything in her vegetable drawers because it's in the drawer. She won't eat it. She forgets about it. So she, like, the drawers are empty and her vegetables, and she's vegetarian, so like, she only eat vegetables, like the vegetables are like, all in the shelves, not in the drawers. And when she said that to me, I was like, it just kind of clicked, like a bunch of people I'd worked with, where I was like, oh, that's what's going on there. You need to see a thing. So there's people I know who do time tracking, who again, they have, they may not be diagnosed, but they have some level of that kind of neuro divergence. And they'll use a physical there's a physical tool called time you learn, and there's a couple different things where you can, like, you name the different facets of this polyhedron, and you can flip it to switch tasks and time track, if that's important to be time tracking, because they needed to know so they did it. So there's, like, there's reasons why you would want it physically in front of you. It's also can be very satisfying to like when I, again, with these students, I would do a big whiteboard in front of my office, and they would lay out their tasks on the lifeboard using index cards, and they were with magnets, and so you could move them, you know, because I was like, it's not going to stay like you think it's going to go like this, it's not going to go like this, and so this needs to be flexible, right? Flexible container. But when they did something, we would go every day, every class, once a week, and stand in front of the board, and I'd be like, what'd you do? What happened? And they would be like, I did this. And they'd check it off, I did this, and then give them a sticker. And they were like, Oh, these are almost adults, right? Basically adults and but they were just like, oh, my gosh, that was so fun. Like, I want to start, oh, wait, I want a unicorn. Like, they're they want the stickers so, like, don't underestimate the value of physically rewarding yourself with something you Yeah,
other questions or comments here,
both digital and handwritten, trackers. I think there's benefits to both, yeah, and, I mean,
I really, I really empathize with the physical tracker people, but I am not that person and both.
I'm sure a lot of you are the same way. You work in different locations. You are in different locations during the day. So it makes sense to have something digital, something that you can pull up on your phone, but at the same time, man, when I finish a task or complete a project and it's in my digital system and it's all checked off, it's marked completed, it disappears into the digital ether, you know? And I don't, there's something really satisfying about working through my, you know, my like bullet journal style, daily to do list. And it's, you know, a few months worth of work to get through one of these journals, and then the journal is complete, and I have this physical thing in my hands that represents all of this work that I've done.
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, that's why I recommend having, like, when you choose your one project, having a pre committing to a celebration, like when you hit these milestones, so you can mark it and go, like, I really did something. And one of the things I did is, in my weekly view, weekly tracker. I have a view of completed tasks. So, like, I don't look at it every day, but at the end of the week, I can see, like, there's a table of, like, the things that got checked off digitally that were completed that week. And I go, like, Oh, we did all this stuff, you know. And so that helps me kind of appreciate all that stuff, but yes, also, like when I'm making my physical notes on the on my desk, I love throwing them away. Actually, I love like being done and being like, okay, that's been on my desk for a month now. It's gone. No more. So I'm
trying I'm trying to experiment with something in notion for this, this Project Tracker, and I'm curious to see for myself what the result of it is. But I use notion for project tracking and task management too, and I have, I have a projects database, and then I have a tasks Database. Process and on projects, I embed the task database on the project page filtered to the tasks only related to that project, so they work together, and it's like it's a great system. My team has been using it for years, but then the project that I'm working on right now in in momentum system is part of a bigger project. So my project that I built the tracker for is to create a lead magnet for my personal brand, which is part of the bigger project of building a personal brand. So what I did is I created a task for create lead magnet for personal brand. And then I built just a very simple table on the page, which is not part of a database. It's just a simple table, but it has the stage, it has the action task, and then it has a column for instead of date, like you would have in a database, a reminder. So in notion, you can, you know, at mention, yeah, at remind Monday, 9pm so that I have the reminder set in the column, so it's not going to show up on a calendar anywhere, anywhere. But it's very simple, and I'm only setting the reminders for the next task, which, if you want me to show you, I can show you what I've got so far.
Sure, yeah, let me hang on a second.
Okay, that should work. What I'm hoping? Oh no, I don't want to react. So
the thing I'm going to say, as you're getting ready to share there, is that the the notion, problem with that is that potentially, you're not actually allowing space for these tasks to happen in your day if they're not visible within your task list.
So the this task is visible, yeah?
Sure, in my daily essentially, you have kind of, like, we're just moving along here, yeah? And
then when I open it up, I have this on the page, and this tells me, you know, every day, what I am going to be working on, what, what piece of the puzzle I'm going to be working on, and when? And then, once that's done, you know, I, I'll set a reminder for the next step, when I'm going to be working on that. And my hope is to keep this simple, but also, I, I'm a writer, like writing a lead magnet, that that is like falling off a log for me, but when I took the step from creative focus workshop to backward plan and really break it down into steps, it's like, oh my gosh. Actually, there's a lot more involved than just writing a lead magnet. There's a lot of pieces that needed to get written down and then planned out as I go. So this was really helpful for just seeing how seeing, seeing all of the pieces that actually needed to be done, and re forgiving myself, as you put it. For, you know, sometimes needing to move some of the pieces around, instead of just having this task on my list, create a lead magnet for a month, and feeling like it's just this thing that's just always hovering there and
right? It's a it's a project that looks like a task. Yeah, yeah. And this is the, the the way you're doing this is some the way, similar to how I end up doing things sometimes, where I call it a task, but it's actually a small project, yes. And inside the task, there's some there's stuff, there's like, a list, there's a checklist. And my assistant, we loves to work with a checklist more than anything else. So, yeah, just using like, check boxes is like the best
so, and I will check things off as I go.
Yeah, exactly.
There you go. How this done yet? But that's probably what that's gonna look like, Uh huh. So I have the visual representation of what I've done, and I can see all the pieces that still need to be done. So
yeah, this is something that, like creating any asset for a company is so complex, like there's so many parts to it, and so I've gone through and done kind of this, but like, is a generalized list. I'm like, what are the parts that go into a lead magnet? You know, it's like, you have the landing page, you have the form, you have the this, you have the that, like, all these different parts you have to create, aside from the actual content itself. You know, people are always like, Oh, why don't you just throw this other offer out. And I'm like, because this, this, this, this, this, this, this, that need happen in order for that to happen. So, yeah, good for you. Yeah. Elizabeth, you.
Yeah, I've worked with different project packages and milestones, and often in research projects, you know, you have these milestones, you have these EU projects, there somebody is integrating all this stuff and setting up this structure. And this is, for me, this is just the hardest part. I mean, this is where I've burnt out, I think, in the last five years, figuring out how to do it for myself and manage stuff, even though I've written a PhD and books and everything, it's like somehow breaking it down and doing it by myself. It feels very different. So to be the my own project leader and to do this. So I'm still suffering from feeling like I'm a failure at both the digital stuff and the analog stuff, because I started with good intentions, and then I don't know, I just,
I mean, I think we need to start with laying out your good intentions. What are the intentions like? What are you trying to do? Yeah, no, and make a note of that. Like, write down what is the why am I creating the system? What's it for? What do I want to do? Like, what are the parts I need to manage? What are the the outcomes that need to come out of this? You know,
is there and where is is there? Like, a system of like, questions. I mean, well,
this is the four part. It's kind of like the four part, okay, you know thing that I just went over with task management, which is in that chap, in that lesson, but you can apply this to any, any system. And essentially it's like, what am I trying to do here? What am I doing now? What's not working? What is working? What do I want to improve? What am I going to try? So you're sort of going through this list of questions. But the the thing I'm emphasizing here that's maybe not emphasized as strongly as it could be in the lesson is, start with, what am I trying to achieve? Like, what is this for? There's such a temptation, especially when, like, you, you know, see an ad for some miracles, you know, AI, whatever, project management, blah, blah, blah. You go, oh, this is gonna solve my life. I just get this thing and I just, you know, put it in and, boom, boom, boom. But, like, the problem is that if you don't know what you're trying to do, you cannot engage with this effectively. Yeah, let's take an example. Let's take a specific example. What is something you're trying to organize right now as a project,
making prints and making writing and printmaking,
basically writing and printmaking as one project or two different projects well combined, and that's also what confuses, okay, so it's a project with that includes writing and includes print making. Yes, okay, so what if you think about like, what is the in terms of keeping track of this project? What's your mission? What do you want to keep
track of? That's that thing. Well, I want to keep track of my, my my energy in doing it. And I have, I think, a certain formative period that I have to get through that is kind of bumpy for me. I mean, there's some bumps, or
you need to really, like do the conceptual work to prepare what you're going to do. So basically that's a stage of work that I talk about that in the project path, where I say everybody underestimates scoping and drafting, which is essentially the phase you're talking exactly scoping. There's a phase of work which is scoping and drafting, scoping first, then drafting, and then probably going back to scoping and back to draft, like you go back and go back and forth for a bit until you're like, This is what I'm actually doing. Yeah, that's a phase of work. And basically the only thing you need to do in that phase of work is have quota task chunks of time to work on it. And maybe there's a list of things like, for example, in this project, you may have source material. You need to review notes, you need to put together. Maybe you need to find the notes. Like there's tasks that go with scoping and drafting.
Okay, so which tasks, like new archives, that I have to put in order I have, right? That project description, you know, five to 10 pages. I have people,
every time you think of a thing like that, write it down like every you know, go do the archives project description, five to 10 pages. Those are all things that need to go onto a list. Like you just you brain dump all the things that are like, here's all the stuff that I know I need to do at some point. Then you're dividing it into chunks. You're dividing it into. This is scoping and drafting. This is, you know, executing on the plan. So in this case, it's making prints and also writing. So there's two different parts of that plan. Then you're going to be doing revision and polishing, then you're going to be releasing it somehow, right? So those are the main phases of almost any process. Project, right? Some version of that. And so you bring up all the things that are in your head, because clearly, as soon as you start thinking about this, you're like, but this, but that, but this, but that. Write them all down, right? Yeah, and then assign them to a phase. Okay, once you do that, all you need to do is look at the phase you're in, anytime you come up
with something to do it, or, you know, when am I going to do it? And that's
a different issue. So just in terms of, like, the first piece of this, the project path itself, is just what do I need to do, and what phase is it in? What order do these things need to happen in? And so if you have those five big buckets, you're putting things in these five big buckets, and then as you think of something else, you're tossing it in a bucket, you know? So like you're working on the scoping and drafting, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna have to do this. Put it where it belongs in a pile. You don't need to worry about organizing the pile until you get to that phase, right? So you just have a place which is like thinking about how you're going to release this to the world, right? I don't need to think about that right now. It's not important, but if you have a thought about it, you can put it in that pile so you don't forget it. You don't have to think about it again. So that's step one. Is like brain dumping all the parts, laying out these big pieces, right? That's the overall arc of the project, which is essentially the project path, but then putting it into a flexible container means integrating it with your actions and what you're doing. So in your case, probably this means you are assigning it chunks of time in your week. Yeah, I'm doing that, yeah. And whenever those times come, you open up this document, if it's a, you know, could just be Google Doc, whatever, just a list, right? Yeah. And you know what's, what's next on the list, archive sorting, okay, I'm doing that. That's it. So it basically ends up looking like Jess list. You know, her list is for a much smaller project than yours is, but it's just a list of things in order, and you spend, you know, 90 minutes on this, and then you're done. And then on Thursday, you spend 90 minutes on this, and then you're done. And if you start finding yourself getting stuck in the sort of research phase and not moving on, then you need to, in your weekly review, go like, Okay, I spent a lot of time on this research. I am actually ready to start putting some drafting stuff together. Doesn't mean I stop researching, but I'm going to be doing that. So then you're alternating or something, you know what I mean. So you you take a strategic moment to go like, Okay, where am I out of this project? Do I need to be moving on to a future bit of it? Am I getting stuck? And if I am, what actions am I going to take? And then you just change up kind of what is in those containers of time
and the containers of time? I mean, I think that's where I also have have issues, because to sit down and say and and translate it into some kind of calendar. I often use the digital calendar, and then I'm now doing the top three and my it's like, Okay, what did I actually then I have these post it notes, I'm starting to, like, move them,
yeah. Well, what I'm suggesting here is that you avoid as much as possible putting any deadlines on anything that you just are moving on this. You're just moving it forward. That's it, you know. So it doesn't have to be complex. You need to figure out when in your week you can do it. But then you don't need to give yourself like a do this specific thing for this specific amount of time, and it's due at the end of the 90 minutes, boom, you know? And if I didn't do it, I fail. It's like, I'm going to spend this time on the thing at that period of Day of the Day, and that's it. I'm going to move on. I have my list. I just go back to my list. That's it. I don't need a post it note. I have a list, you know, I have a thing that I can go back to.
I think I've been very output oriented for years. So
yes, so have we all? So have we all, yeah, yeah. And you, the thing is, you will make output. Like this will get you to output. But what you're doing right now is getting, letting the sort of inner voices saying, like you need to have this output, like swamp the actual actions,
yep,
and what's the point, right? So again, the thing I would suggest to you today is all that, if you have post it notes around you, get stuff on your calendar, take it all off, put it all in one nice list and divide it up by the phase that you're in. Just do that. That's your project path. That's it. You can do it on paper. If that makes you happy to do Google Doc. Doesn't make any difference. But like, have it all in one place. If you have more thoughts about it, put it there. Like, that's your discipline. That's the grit is. Like, put it in that same place. Don't. Yourself, put it somewhere else, or put it on your calendar, or whatever. Then, as the week goes on, when you have time for it, you just look at the thing that's in front of you. You have these opportunities, weekly, quarterly, whatever, to look at the project as a whole and say, like, do I need to be reassessing this and like, put it, like, moving to a new thing, or starting something else, or whatever it is. Or I'm, are we good here? And I just keep going. You know, you have these opportunities to reassess it, but in the moment when you sit down to do it, don't think about it. Just do the next thing on the list. Then it's like, studio time. Basically, yeah, right. Studio time and studio time, you'd have a list. You're like, this is my next thing. This is I know what I'm working on in studio time. And especially if you're working on the same thing multiple days, it's all set up for you. Yeah. Thank you.
That was very, that common we write down. Thank you so much. Good one who's like going through all kinds of Yeah, all right, we're
gonna run out of time in a few minutes. Any other questions or comments before we move on here.
Okay, the one thing I want to challenge you all with, because I mentioned this all to you when we did our road mapping is contingency planning. We are heading into a rough season. As I said, like in my family, you know, all the holidays and stuff. It's fun, but it's a lot. I want everybody to think about. One disruption you can predict with 90% plus certainty will pop up within the next three months. Think of one thing and then make a plan. What will you do when that happens? It could be something, you know, somebody's gonna get a cold because it's, you know, winter and like that happens. Or it could be somebody invites me to the last minute party, you know, sure, like all it could be good, bad, doesn't matter. The point is that it's, you know, unpredictable.
I have a quick question, yeah, is there a due date, so to speak, for the Project Tracker, for getting that to you, you were supposed to use the Project Tracker for two months. Okay, that is what's due by the end of January. So it's beginning of November. So that working backwards, you need to get it done by the end of November at the latest. Got it by the end of our active meetings, because it will still be in the, you know, you still be in the creative focus workshop for at least two more months, unless you renew and stay for longer. But this, you know, weekly meetings will end at the end of January. You have to have a two month tracker by then. Okay, great. Thanks. Yeah, just one thing I want to say. Jess, lots of empathy for what you're going through this week. I'm really, really sorry to hear it. Thanks.
Yeah, it's a full on lead generation business development mode over here. So everybody my primary business, I work with technology companies. I'm a copywriter for tech, and it's been a rough week in tech, another round of massive layoffs. Think a lot of people are kind of holding their breath with the election. Lost two big clients last week, so it's kind of panic mode over here. Well,
if there's any way we can help, I don't know what it would be, but we would, I'm sure, be happy to help in any way. You know anybody who needs a copywriter, I will absolutely, absolutely keep you front of mind for that. Thank you.
My team and I are very good at what we do, very, very good,
I'm sure. Yes. All right, thanks everybody for being here. Next week is an open call, so, you know, bring any questions or things you want to discuss then, and then the week after that, we will be doing the reflect phase. And yeah, so looking forward to it, and I'll see you then. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye.
