Maybe you’ve heard that story about the pottery teacher who divided the class into two groups: half would be graded traditionally based on the quality of their work, but the other half would be graded on sheer quantity alone. As in, literally, he would take all the pots they made that year, weigh them, and X kilograms of pottery would get you an A+. As the story goes, the quantity group produced not only the most pots, but also unambiguously the best pots.
I’ve always been captivated by music, but much like many kids decide they “can’t draw” or “suck at math,” I likewise labeled music as a mystical alien magic that would forever be beyond me.
Later, in high school, I met a girl in the year below me who played the saxophone. She was really good and I assumed she started playing in elementary school. Nope, she started playing the previous year. That moment was the first click for me – you can just start learning new things, anytime. Even today.
The key argument is that it’s all about putting in the pracitce, the repetitions or “reps”, and not making excuses. From his own story:
It wasn’t easy learning an entirely new career, but I’m quite good at it now, and it didn’t take nearly as long as I thought it would. It turns out you can just learn new things if you have the right people to guide you and you have the opportunity and the inclination to put in the reps.
…
Learning, ultimately, is about putting in the reps. Figure out what you want to get better at, and practice doing it.
There’s a lot of things I would like to do. I mostly don’t do them. My reasons are all stupid excuses.
He outlines – and then rebuts – all the usual reasons we don’t learn more then outlines his solution, “operation garbage fountain”.
Basically a set of commitments to himself to just do the creative practice to get better, and to share it online in its raw form. Not concerned about quality, not concerned about the overall narrative arc of your posts, not concerned about audience or community building. And no guilt about posting too little or too much – just a commitment to make a little progress as often as you can, and to always post it in some form.
I love this. It’s a different take to what I also liked in Blogging as an Ideas Garden … but I’m not sure it’s incompatible.
On Sunday I finished reading “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Belsky (founder of Behance).
I’m the sort of person that has ideas. So many ideas. Some are ideas for apps or products, side projects or start-ups, cool programming libraries or fun creative projects. When I look back at my work history, I am proud of the things that I have “shipped” and finished, or if not finished, at least gotten it “finished enough” that other people could start using it.
But there is definitely a graveyard of good ideas that I was very excited about at one point in time, that I even thought were game-changing, and maybe even started work on, but never managed to finish or get out there.
As I was wrapping up 2016 and planning for 2017, I realised that I have several ideas that I actually want to see become reality. Two ideas in particular (tentatively named Enthraler and Model School) I’ve wanted to do for at least 5 years, and have kept not doing.
When we finally launched Today We Learned I found out the pain of launching a good idea too late, and seeing someone else carry a very similar idea to success. If I wanted 2017 to be different, and if I wanted to be part of these 2 ideas becoming reality, I had to get better at executing on ideas, pushing them forward and getting them out there. And all of this while having a full-time job that I really love and am already feeling stretched in.
So when my my sister Clare and her husband Zac gave me a book for Christmas that promised to help me “Overcome The Obstacles Between Vision And Reality”, I was eager to get stuck into it.
Disclaimer and caveat: It’s worth pointing out that I’m viewing this book as advice on creative projects, which I’m viewing as distinct to start-ups. Both of them involve ideas, innovation and execution, but there’s a crucial difference. If you want a start-up to succeed, you should probably not start with an idea. You should start with a problem that real people hate so much they’ll pay someone to solve it for them. Find a gnarly problem first, then let your ideas develop around that. Creative projects on the other hand, start with your idea. It’s a work of art, as if inspiration has visited and requested that you make an idea real, and it’s your job to make it. It’s as much about self-expression and creative fulfilment as it is about business development.
Overview
The first half of the book (“Organisation and Execution”) is all about getting it done. It’s full of practical tips to stay organised, stay focused, and keep pushing ideas forward until they’re ready. These have made a massive difference for me so far. The second half (“The Forces of Community” and “Leadership Capability”) focus on the relational aspects of ideas. Ideas feel their most exciting, and most pure, when they’re in your head. The moment you start sharing them, and inviting other people in to participate, things change. This might feel like your idea is losing potency as it gets diluted by others, but it’s only with their help (and with the new aspects they bring to the project), that your idea is going to be successful. How well you utilise these forces has a massive impact on your ability to consistently bring ideas into reality.
Organisation and Execution
The competitive advantage of organisation
The action method: work and life with a bias towards action
Prioritisation: managing your energy across life’s projects
Execution: always moving the ball forward
Mental loyalty: maintaining attention and resolve
I was really surprised by how prescriptive Scott is in this first section. His basic argument is that they key to creative success is actually finishing your projects and getting them out the door, and doing that as often as possible. The trouble is that ideas are exciting at the start, boring in the middle, a hard slog near the end, and then only get exciting again right before you launch.
Ideas are exciting at the start, then get boring and hard in the middle, for a long time until you’re ready to ship – and only then does it get exciting again. Beware the temptation to start a new (and exciting!) idea during the project plateau.
So the key to all of Scott’s advice is to just keep you moving forward, one small step at a time, to get you through the trough and out the other side where your idea is finally a reality. To do this, it takes dozens of small actions. Focusing on these actions is the key principal in “The Action Method” – Scott’s big idea on how to do this.
Most other productivity books I’ve read have talked about the motivation and less about the mechanics of getting it done, but Scott is quite prescriptive. For example:
Organise your whole life into “Projects”. Not just work projects. Not just side projects. Even mundane things like “grocery shopping” and “remember to call mum” go into a project. He isn’t prescriptive about where to store your projects, but I’ve used Trello. I have one Trello board for my whole life. The lists I use are “Home Admin”, “Personal and Social”, “myEd”, “Enthraler”, and “Model School”.
Each project has 3 types of things you can store:
Action Steps – literally, a specific action you can take to move the project forward. The first word should be a verb: “Create nice styling for multi-choice component and upload to Github”. Or “Read through things Cassie sent me and send through feedback”. My friend Stephen had an interesting take on this, going one step further and having a super specific first step in the action. “Open gmail, read through the docs Frank sent me…”. The trick here is to make it so obvious what the next step looks like, so whenever you have half an hour to work on something, you can easily pick an action step, start it, and push a project forward.
Back-burner Items – these is where you keep possible future action steps that you’re not ready to commit to yet. Maybe they are ideas for much later in a project, or maybe they need some more thought before you commit to starting them. Keeping them in a separate place, where you can come back to them, but where they’re not confusing you as to what the next steps should be, helps hugely.In my “Enthraler” project I have 8 ready-to-go Action Steps, and 29 items in the Back-burner. That goes to show that when I start a new project, I’m excited about the possibilities and I keep thinking them up. But I know if I want to keep moving the project forward, I just pick one of the Action Steps I’ve already committed to, and all of the exciting future ideas are in the “Backburner” list where they won’t distract me.
References – this is for things which you want to remember but they’re not actionable. An example is finding a colour scheme I really liked for a project. In the past, I may have taken a screenshot of the colour scheme and added it to a task. But it’s not really an action I can take! It’s just something I want to store so I can look back if I need to. Now I keep things like this in references. Also helpful: meeting notes, contact details, etc. Keeping all these things in one separate spot helps keep the clutter down so you can focus on your next action steps.
Have a regular “review” session, say once a fortnight or once a month, where you go over your projects, see if the actions are still relevant and clearly defined, check what’s in your back-burner and references, and update things as necessary. He recommends doing this some place nice, like your favourite coffee shop. This is a part I haven’t had much practice with yet!
A screenshot of my projects in Trello. Each list is a project, each card is an action. (There is also a References and a Back-burner card in each list).
The Forces of Community
Harnessing the forces around you
Pushing ideas out to your community
One of the headings in this section is “Seldom is anything accomplished alone”, and I find it a perfect reminder. Some ideas are small enough that they can be accomplished alone, but even something like writing a song will benefit from collaboration. Not to mention the help you would need in producing, mixing, mastering, distribution and release strategy. And every project is like this – if you want it to become more than a hobby, you are going to have to bring other people into it.
A key part of this is overcoming the fear of people judging and criticising your work. Overcome the fear, then get feedback early, and get it often. You don’t have to listen to what people say, if you want you can hold on to the exact vision you have. But if you overcome the fear, and get the feedback, you will probably hear things that will make your project better, so it’s worth putting yourself out there.
There was a beautiful story in here about a story-telling course Scott went to, where people practised sharing a story, but the audience were not allowed to give “constructive criticism”. Instead, they were only allowed to share what they really appreciated, what made the story come alive for them. He found that as people iterated on their stories, this approach helped the “alive” pieces of the story shine even more, and somehow, the weak parts of the story began self-correcting with each iteration, but without losing the strength of the parts that really shone. I loved that!
One of the things that challenged me the most in the section was to actively self-promote what you’re working on, and to build an audience of people who care about what you’re working on. If you’ve ever read case studies on a site like “Indie Hackers”, you realise that a common story in side-project success or start-up success is that the person starting had an audience who really cared about what they were working on, so when they launched a new project, they had someone to launch it to. So don’t be afraid to self-promote and build an audience, and show them what you’re working on regularly. The fear you have shouldn’t be that you’re inflating yourself in front of others, it should be that you’re not giving your idea any air, and it might die in your mind without ever becoming a reality.
The way Scott consistently reinforced this was a wake-up call for me.
Leadership Capability
The rewards overhaul
The chemistry of the creative team
Managing the creative team
Self leadership
I’d been reading the book thinking primarily about my side projects, which are solo-shows for now. Scott offered distilled wisdom and advice from his experience and from the research conversations he conducted, and while it’s not immediately applicable to the projects I’d been thinking about, I can definitely see how it ties into my work at myEd, and how it will be important to attract more contributors for any project I do going forward. It identified a weakness in my approach to executing so far – the tendency to do it all myself.
Much of the advice given in this section was focused on character. So not so much “how to run a meeting”, but “when in a meeting, let other people talk first and make sure you actually listen”. Things like that. I really do believe that humble leaders attract talented collaborators, but more importantly, their humility and strength of character breeds loyalty – which you just don’t see as clearly when it is obvious the leader isn’t paying attention to your input and your ideas.
The difference it has made for me
Reading this book came at the perfect time for me. After closing down Today We Learned last year I began working full-time at myEd, but found I was still swimming with ideas for outside projects. By the time the new year rolled around, I had multiple projects I really wanted to run with, but was just not convinced I could push them all forward while still being effective at work 5 days a week.
This book, especially the focus on the action method, has helped me dramatically – and people have noticed. Most significantly my wife Anna – who keeps commenting that she can’t believe the change in how I work and in my energy levels, and in my ability to keep things moving – not to mention staying on top of things at home more effectively.
On a practical level, it has meant that I’m staying focused and effective at work, not getting stressed out by home administration (keeping track of finances, bills, investments etc) because I know I have everything tracked, and if I sit down at work, or sit down to do some home admin, or to give time to a side project, the next actions are right there for me to continue with.
Because of the stage of life we’re in – we moved across the country to focus on our work and our creative pursuits, and we don’t have young kids to care for and hang out with – we have a fair amount of spare time. I try to give 1 hour each weeknight to push a side project forward, and then a few hours of blocked out time on either Saturday or Sunday. With this rhythm I’ve been able to push forward my two main side projects to the point where both are almost at MVP (minimum viable product) level. And this has been during one of the most incredibly busy and stressful periods at work – coming home and having a different project that I can get into has in many ways helped me maintain my energy and positivity during some of the more stressful moments at work.
The challenge to think about how the community around me has also been incredibly helpful. As well as the two side-projects I’ve been pushing forward, there were another two ideas that I couldn’t shake, and that I wanted to help become reality – but you can only stretch yourself so thin before you stop being effective. By reaching out and sharing these ideas with friends, I’ve actually found other people working on similar things, and have been able to support them rather than carry it forward myself, and I’ve found this incredibly rewarding, while at the same time satisfying the creative urge that demands I be part of making that particular idea happen.
It’s been an incredibly timely book to read (thanks Clare and Zac!) and has helped me hugely so far. To anyone who has ideas but can’t seem to get them off the ground, I recommend it highly. I’m excited to see how the rest of my year pans out as I continue pushing things forward one action step at a time.
I’ve mentioned it a few times, but I’ve found Marcus Buckingham’s Standout profile and website really helpful. The profile for me was accurate and insightful, and the tips I get sent each week are great.
One of them encouraged you to log the things in a week that you love (that leave you energized, strengthened) and the things that you loathed (that leave you drained, weakened). This wasn’t about what other people do to you (a police officer gave me a fine – I loathed it, my boss gave me a pay rise, I loved it). Rather this is about the work you’re doing, and what parts of your work energize you and what drains you.
Here’s my list.
Loved It
Working on new business strategy, or figuring out the brand/story that makes a new product have meaning.
Writing code for new APIs or frameworks that will be well designed, get use by many people, speed up development. While I’m doing this I’m engaged, I’m learning and tweaking my skills, and I’m making something for that benefits both me and others.
Delivering a feature that has immediate customer benefit
Meeting people, getting them on board with a new idea. This week it was a friend (and possibly future business partner), a learning support officer (who is an aspiring entrepreneur) and a friend who is wanting to get into graphic design.
Trying to consider how my faith world mixes with my business world. Particularly this week: how can I see people as people, not resources or assets. How can I help them find their particular spot in the world, and help them grow into it, rather than “how can I get you to do what I want”.
Maintaining old projects. Especially if it’s something I didn’t care for to begin. (For me this week, that includes Koha, Canvas, and Moodle to a lesser degree)
Being apart from Anna for too much of the week
Working on projects that feel like they will never end or progress. I need a sense of momentum and an expectation that one thing will finish so that new things can start.
Having to report to (and problem solve with) a group of people who don’t understand the technical nature of the problem.
Having to answer questions where the “correct” answer is “drop quality, deliver faster”
Avoiding answering / helping people, because other deadlines are too heavy
Having to pretend something is good/ready when it’s not. I’d rather be honest. Drop projects if they suck, or at least admit it.
There’s my list for this week. I’m in the middle of an extremely busy work season, so this is mostly focused on work and doesn’t touch much into my family life or faith life – both of which also have strengthening moments and weakening moments. Still, a great exercise.
According to Marcus Buckingham’s StandOut profile, this is how to get me doing my best work when I’m working with you:
I am resourceful and can fill the gaps quicker than most. If there’s a project to begin that lacks details or data, I can get it off to a good start.
Tell me that if I try to serve everyone I wind up serving no-one. I must make a choice about who to serve well, and then serve them well. Know that I will be sensitive to any criticisms.
If you’d like to grab my attention, tell me I am not moving boldly enough. Tell me that you expect me to be the first person to challenge an existing way of doing things, the first person to spot, bump into, and report back on a new threat, or a new opportunity.
The overall StandOut profile was disturbingly accurate for me and a friend who took it with me, and this tip also resonates strongly. I would recommend the profile to anyone seeking to understand their work self better, and I’d recommend this advice to people trying to work better with me :)
My friend Amanda writes a great blog over at Capture30Days. Her recent post “getting stuff done” outlines the Pomodoro technique: work for 25 minutes uninterrupted, take a 5 minute break, start again. I think it works great for some sorts of work.
It doesn’t work for me.
I had tried this technique, but I found for my sort of work it sometimes was in fact harmful. I guess my work (designing educational apps) swings between product design (creative, collaborative) and programming (a different sort of creative, lots of problem solving, often on my own) and so I sometimes need to just work through a task list and have lots of interactions with others, and I sometimes need to have long periods of uninterrupted focus.
For the programming especially (and to an extent the design also), I have to work hard to get into a “flow” state, where I get the entire mental model of what I’m creating in my head, so that I can work and create efficiently, remembering how all of the different pieces of my app are supposed to fit together. It can take me a couple of hours to get into this state. And when I’m in this state, I don’t want to stop.
And knowing I have to stop, because my 25 minutes is up and it’s time for a 5 minute break, or because I have a meeting, or because it’s lunch time, can seriously throw me off. I’m not the only one. Paul Graham contrasts the “managers schedule” (1 hour blocks, optimised for meetings) and the “makers schedule” (usually blocks into “morning”, “afternoon” and “working into the night”, optimised for creative work). He makes the point that for a creative, a single meeting can destroy a whole afternoon. I definitely have experienced that.
So, alternative to the Pomodoro technique? I personally go for the 1-3-5 technique. It goes like this:
Today I will achieve:
1 Big Things:
_______________
3 Medium Things
_______________
_______________
_______________
5 Small Things
_______________
_______________
_______________
_______________
_______________
I find this gives me the flexibility I need to work on big tasks that require long periods of focus, as well as help me not forget the small things that also need doing. In reality, a day may end up looking like this
Morning:
Small task 1 – emails
Small task 3 – voicemails and phone calls
Small task 4 – fix small bug
Medium Task 1 – draw interface designs for a new feature
Afternoon:
Small Task 5 – responding to support questions
Big Task – programming a new feature
Medium Task 2 – got started finding a bug, did not finish.
If I’m having trouble getting into “the zone” or “flow”, I start with the small tasks and work my way up to the big ones. If I get stuck on one task, I jump to a different one. Then anything I don’t get done, goes on to the list for the next day.
Finally, there’s a website which makes this easy: http://1-3-5.com/ I set that site as my homepage, so every time I open a new tab, rather than Google or Facebook, I see my task list.
Do you have any tips for staying focused and managing your time when working on creative or programming projects? Especially when you don’t have a formal workplace to keep you accountable :)
