Strategies for Long Projects
benbrostoff.github.ioExcellent post.
A lot of this rings true to my experiences as well, particularly being defensive about time and commitments. Really, most of the authors points had me kind of nodding along.
On the other hand, I somewhat feel what the author is getting at with optimism, but I'm not sure optimism is the right word for what makes me productive. It's difficult to put into words, but I do agree there is a kind of strange attitude adjustment that has to happen.
You need to reach a point where you decide you're going to do something, regardless of what problems come up, or how long it takes. There are problems in my own projects that I know I'll need to solve, and I don't currently know the solutions, but I know I'll come up with solutions for them, and whatever I need to do to pragmatically solve them will just need to happen. It's less about me feeling confident in myself, and more just saying, "well, I care about the outcome, and I don't care what I need to figure out in order to get there." I know I'll put in the time, or find the resources, or learn, or give up whatever I need to give up to make it happen.
I don't know if I'd call that optimism though. It almost feels a bit more like stubbornness, or defiance. It's not just an assumption that things are going to work out.
I believe the word you’re looking for is “grit”. Gritiness has also been shown to be the greatest predictor of success.
> Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.
I know you're just quoting Wikipedia here, but any idea what does "non-cognitive" mean in this context? What are some examples of cognitive and non-cognitive traits and why does grit fall into the latter category?
My understanding: it's behavioral, you don't need to have a certain level of intelligence to have grit
It’s a character trait, not a cognitive skill. Still learnable of course, but it’s more about managing emotions than thinking.
In my own experience there is a very strong feedback-loop effect attached to the idea of staying optimistic about progress and not getting put off by all the problems you can see in the future.
I've realized on many occasions that I was being put off spending time on projects because of all the stuff I could think of that would take even more time, all the difficult problems I could already see or was sure to find along the way. It's paralyzing. But the effect of crossing off items on the eternal to-do list, the sense of progress, is strong enough to keep me going.
Maybe that's what the author describes as 'optimism': not getting paralyzed by bears down the road, so you can keep the positive feedback from progress going?
I don't want to come across as putting down the author's work, but for the sake of everyone else, I want to reframe the definition of "long project".
This would be a nice post if it was titled "Strategies for Quick Projects". I'm on year 8 of what is likely a life-long project (at a pace that is doubling annually). That's a fairly long project, but far from the longest. The Manhattan Project, the Human Genome Project, the Apollo project. The Shuttle program. The National Cathedral. These are long projects. They're big too. There are other long projects which might be considered "small". Learning violin is a long, small project. Cataloging all the species of flora and fauna on an island is a long, small-ish project. Cataloging all the microbiota on that island would be a medium-big project. Cataloging all the microbiota on a continent would outstrip the Human Genome Project by a factor of 100.
I agree with the author about the definition he gives to "long".
I think it's subjective anyway. Notre-Dame or the Sagrada Familia were / are being built in more than a hundred years, so the dozen of years of Apollo could be qualified as short in comparison.
When reading "long", it can only be subjective so there is no point of arguing.
The Manhattan Project, the Human Genome Project, the Apollo project. The Shuttle program. The National Cathedral. These are long projects.
This is semantic hair-splitting a bit, but those things aren't "projects". They're portfolios of programs that are made up of lots of individual projects.
Well, that is a strategy to deal with large/long projects, break them into smaller/shorter ones.
The author starts off in the very first paragraph defining what he means by "long project". This passes the "Did the author communicate?" test with flying colors.
I like the idea of the specific strategies, although the three offered mainly seem to apply to one-person projects, or to the experiences of a single person in a wider team. There is a mention of the evolution of intra-team dynamics of a group project, but no specific strategies aimed at groups.
Just wanted to add this to your list of long-term projects…
"I’m in the middle of three multi-month to a year projects right now"
That counts as "long"?
Could be. "Long" is a subjective concept.
Great post, with a lot of helpful advice.
I particularly found this point of view interesting, would love to hear some examples of it:
> Moreover, I believe that choosing to feel something can make you feel that way even if the feeling is artificially manufactured. What I mean by this is that when someone asks us to label how we feel, the label we select is based on how we physically feel at the moment. But what if you said the exact opposite of how you actually felt? Is it possible the re-labeling could become reality? This seems absurd on the face of it, but my experience has been that re-labeling works and causes an actual physical response.
The reverse (physical response > action) certainly seems true. - if you sit and smile for 2 minutes straight, you're more likely to feel at least a little better.
We're all in some kind of delusion as our storytelling minds build up the world around us (and us in it). I believe the author is referring to crafting our delusions in some intentional way (although I don't have great examples myself of this working).
If you are happy, you smile. But also, try to smile if you are not happy, it works both ways. Your mind projects itself in the body, but by controlling the body, you can influence the mind. With this said, I can imagine how re-labeling can actually have physical response.
I love doing something similar with my small kids (4 and 2). I start laughing for no reason and when they see me laughing they start laughing. We laugh and have good time without any reason until we get tired. I also remember seeing some festival in India on TV. Everyone is laughing and having good time, for no reason.
Yes, with kids that works nice. Sometimes they are upset so I start to laugh for no reason until they cannot hold it anymore and start laughing as well. Well, sometimes they get even more upset, so use with caution.
Something I have been wondering all these years I've been working on long-term projects is, how do others make relationships work with something that, almost by definition, consumes all of one's free time and energy?
Just today, we put our kids to kindergarten, went for a coffee and had a nice walk in an autumnish weather. It is 11AM now and I still haven't started working, but once I do, I probably won't finish sooner than at 9PM.
I guess you need to find a sweet spot between tension and relaxation. Too tense and you end up being burned out. Too relaxed and you quit because it won't be interesting or challenging enough.
Your mind needs a rest too to serve you (and your projects) well. So by taking a rest and forgetting the project for a while, you actually help the project as well!
Since you post this on a monday, I assume you don't work a regular job? I also finish working at ~7-8pm, so I can only work on my own projects after that (until ~1am or so). I do rest, on Saturdays, but when I do I'm too tired to socialize, and if someone asks me out I will say no. I'm not going to give up my projects, hence the dilemma.
As a freelancer I have a luxury to be a master of my time, with all the bad and good that comes with it. Last week I worked half Sunday so this Monday I have hours covered.
I also work on my project, sometimes whole day, or two, sometimes even a week.. it depends on my clients' requirements and how skillful I was in planning the time.
It took me some years to get there, however. And now with kids it gets even more challenging.
Regarding socializing, it is true, my circle is now rather small, but I take it as a temporary state.
In my experience, you can’t let truly long projects consume all your energy or else you’ll burn out on them and stop. The key for these is to put in a few hours consistently and allow yourself to use the rest of the time to relax and do other things.
That’s part of how the author can have 3 long-term projects at once— no single project is taking up all of his attention. You can make surprising progress if you set aside a single 3-4 hour session each week, and still have time for everything else.
Thanks for this.
I've been struggling to work full time on a project for a few years now. I think it's the most important thing that I can do with my life now, so I refuse to let go for any reason. (I'm a US citizen literally starving in Colombia.)
I can't get traction the way I've been going, so I have to make radical changes immediately. Thanks for the list.
1. Tenacity (check!)
2. Logging (need a lot of improvement. where has all my time gone?!)
3. Compounding (I fear I'll be contemplating this one all day now)
4. Defending your time (prob need to back off on this one; too lonely)
I need to do my thing more openly instead of hiding out with my head down; maybe I would have never done that first project reboot, and I'd have customers by now!
Except for the fact that Elon Musk nearly always misses his own deadlines so what's the point of that rhyme if you don't even know what the deadline should be?
Making deadlines tight for the sake of it makes no sense other than to keep you working longer. Not that that's a bad thing, but if you end up missing the deadline, well... I don't know what you would think then.
Good point. But I guess the lesson for me is to have deadlines in the first place. At least it gives you a target.
I think, "go! go! go!"... and then fuck around with small details until I go broke. I need way more awareness of the big picture.
It's so hard to balance. I need a partner, but I've really isolated myself at this point :(
Also, you learn from missing deadlines. So having deadlines must be valuable even if you consistently miss them.
I don't know. What I learn is that I either: a) suck b) am slow c) drastically underestimated my ability d) drastically underestimated the projects complexity
Either way, most of it is negative. I can't think of much good coming out of missing a deadline other than it makes you look incompetent.
And you're better off without learning those things? Man, if there's a problem, especially with me, I need to know it.
No. It's just most people don't view it as themselves being the problem. Which is why it's all mostly a lie.
Even Elon doesn't seem to care about why he misses deadlines because he keeps making them.
Something that has helped me with recognizing incremental progress on long running side and personal projects where completion seems so far off is relating it to the crawler vehicles NASA used to get the Space Shuttle to the launch pad.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/the-crawlers https://youtu.be/N1WvVRavXsI?t=60
Incremental progress and speed seem slow (1 mph), but eventually you will get into position for launch.
This has helped me understand how weight and physical constraints (these == time commitments to a primary project, family, sleep, etc.) impact velocity on where you start from getting to an eventual goal (starting a side project and coming to release, launch, etc.). Some things just can't travel faster than 1 mph due to external constraints.
What I don't get is how does one know they will solve a problem? I run into many problems that I don't have a good solution for and can't seem to figure out nor find how to get one. So I usually need to ask a co-worker for help and even then, they usually have to do it for me because they can't find time to show me how to do it. And if they do it or even show you what you need to do, are you really solving that problem?
Guess it's one of those things no one seems to be able to figure out since most of these pieces never really describe, in detail, what their process actually is for something that's unsolvable for them.
This article rings true of my experience with accomplishing projects both in and out of software but I think it also describes my approach to life generally (optimism + grit) which makes me think it’s less a thing learned and more a personality/behavior thing. I know several people who’s approach to life, the universe, and everything is “everything is terrible, I’m going to fail” and have built up defensive mechanisms to manage to still succeed.
Also, I would have liked this post to touch on “what do you do when things actually fall apart” too.
This post couldn't have been more timely in my life.