Juicy Project Options!

If you call it a to-do list, you might be doing it wrong.

Might be working on the wrong stuff

For the wrong reasons

At the wrong times

For the wrong people.

This is something I’ve been wrestling with lately. My task list has grown lately to the point that I’m exploding out of a textbook-sized day planner with pages for twenty distinct projects. Unlike my pants, it even has pockets.

These are the problems of the multipotentialite. Everything sounds good and everything seems possible. It IS, it is, just maybe not all at the exact same minute.

Darn you anyway, Time Dimension.

I’m working on a particular project, something big. It’s the kind of thing that takes six months to plan. I’m doing it because it fits into a larger plan that is really important to me. I’m doing it because the skills involved are directly relevant to my interests. I’m doing it because it gives me the chance to work with a good friend. I’m doing it because that friend really needs my help and I want to be reliable for her.

Other than that, everything about it is driving me up the wall. The WHY is perfectly in place, the HOW is a continual stream of hassles and frustrations.

Meanwhile, I have another set of potentially extremely interesting projects that I really want to do instead.

Just like the frustrating project, these interesting projects involve a lot of steps that are the kind of task I don’t like.

Focusing on only one thing at a time!

Reading complicated instructions in fine print!

Filling out applications!

Putting dates in a calendar!

Choosing photographs of myself! *ugh*

Why can’t there be a super-interesting, super high-value project that involves me sleeping late, reading in the bathtub, and eating cookies?

What I’ve found out so far about GETTING WHAT I WANT is that it almost always involves my three least-favorite things:

1. Getting up at 6:00 AM on a Saturday
2. Being somewhere “on time”
3. Wearing shoes

Travel. Foot races. Trainings. Workshops. Hikes. Even a panel interview I did recently - yep, Saturday.

Why isn’t there more worthwhile stuff to do late in the afternoon??

Poor me, highly ambitious person, born into the body of a night owl. (Note: owls do not usually wear shoes) (Also note, not one minute after I wrote this, a child walked into my cafe wearing an OWL HAT and RAIN BOOTS)

I’m doing what I can to cope with all of this. Not the owl hat, the burgeoning project list. Try to stay focused.

The first thing is to always subvert the project in some way. That means I look at the desired results and ask, is what I’m being asked to do really the smartest way to achieve these results?

Surprisingly often, it isn’t! Perhaps more surprising, my ideas for ways that I’d prefer to do these things, my ways are often accepted or regarded as an upgrade. The trick to getting this across is first to explain that you want the same thing as everyone else, the highly valued end result. Also compliment specific things that are going well and thank everyone for hearing you out.

Each instance in which you save other people time, money, or resources is an opportunity to build a reputation as a solver of problems and an idea-generating machine. (Problem: then they bring you more of their problems to solve).

The second thing is that if you can’t subvert the project in tangible ways, you can still do it privately.

There might be a requirement to do certain things or take certain steps toward your desired end result, things that you have no interest in doing. There is not, however, a requirement that you refer to them as ‘tasks’ or ‘chores’ or ‘to-do’s’ or ‘honey-do’s’ or what-have-you. You can call them whatever you want.

You can also abandon ship and abdicate on the project, if you really hate it that much.

As an example, I simply would not do something if it “required” me to wear high heels, cancel my travel plans for my wedding anniversary, work in a room with cigar smoke, or probably a bunch of other things. Nope nope, that’s a big nope.

What I’ve been doing lately is to shift more and more of my focus to the desired end results, while I try to forget that I am often doing annoying things early in the morning when I’d rather be sleeping.

This is why I call my “to-do list”:

JUICY PROJECT OPTIONS!

There’s something that I do that most people don’t, and that is to remind myself that I have control over how I spend my time. It’s my choice whether to work on something or not. I didn’t feel that way when I worked at a convenience store, but I did start to feel that way as a young office temp. I was broke as could be, I didn’t have two nickels until I was thirty, but I always felt that I had the power to walk away from a truly cruddy job or a bad boss.

I often did!

I figured, if I was going to be broke one way or another, at least I could choose the job with the least-bad boss and the least-worst commute. So I did.

It’s my sense of power, control, and high agency that has brought me forward, onward and upward.

One of the saddest things in the world is untapped human potential. It’s deeply sad when someone with massive gifts feels trapped, forced into a power struggle with a bad boss for low pay. Sometimes, of course, that is literally true - modern slavery is one of the all-time biggest targets for people with great gifts to tackle, should anyone be looking for a worthy project. Mostly, though, we are dragged down by the power struggle, to the point that we utterly forget about our ability to imagine something better into being.

This is why it is so vital that we reimagine what we are doing. This is why we need more... JUICY PROJECT OPTIONS.