Curious how others deal with this: if I focus on one vertical slice of a long project (e.g. some design problem), I become annoyed that everything else remains frozen for long periods; if I work on a horizontal slice (a few pieces at once), bulk progress is very slow. Any escape?
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Work with other people? I sometimes like switching as well between "vertical" (actually solving things) and "horizontal" (getting motivation from progress). Sometimes I save the easy horizontal bits for "fun" at the end of the workday. Not sure if this helps.
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With clients I often find that some blend of quantitative and qualitative indicators can help.
Ex: When you're starting to write a piece, important to put words on the page, # goals. Later, a sense of whether edits are progressing is often good enough.
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Maybe something analogous in here? Also just making it deliberate/explicit if only to yourself can help.
"This month, I'm doing (x) because (y) realizing that (z) will be on the backburner. I'll revisit at time (a), until then this seems like the best option"
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Work with people is the obvious answer I suppose.
That’ll move projects in parallel but will give plenty other things to be annoyed with :-)
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I’m developing the habit of writing extensively about projects and intermediate thoughts and theories with the hope that it would help delegate easier.
I have a theory of how to manage r&d style projects around decisions rather than tasks to help with effective communication.
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The key question: What’s the most important thing I could be doing right now to make progress on the project?
Do that. Don’t worry about the parts that remain frozen. If you keep answering the question, eventually, their time will come.
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I really like this angle, Ken!
Sensing into why I hesitate to do this: I think it's because the scope/definition of my projects are often so contingent, continuously-negotiated. And so I feel (right or wrong) I need to pay attention to the rest to shape the scope/def'n over time
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Create in public. Find a way to break into smaller pieces which can be completed and launched more quickly. Works for writing (books -> essays -> tweets), startups (complete vision -> smallest version that delivers real value -> hacked together version that doesn’t scale), etc
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Creating in public has certainly been very rewarding!
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