Share: My Three Projects (week 2)
More Thoughts on Too Many Projects
As we’ve slid into September, I’ve still been pondering the idea of limiting myself to three projects. The more I think about the topic, the more projects I recognize I already have on the back burner. As I wrote last week, I’m still wondering where the line is between work/job/career or life and project. (Is working out a project? Is this weekly newsletter a project?) Plus I had ignored home projects, which I now admit must count toward one of my three projects.
In order for my larger (and more important to my overall life goals) writing project to have a place in the top three, I’m taking the approach of finishing a couple of projects that are close to completion—harvesting the low-hanging fruit. The evening before we headed out of town to move our college student back to school, I finished the pillowcases I mentioned in last week’s newsletter. Although that did open up a spot on the three-projects list, before I could slot the watercolor project there as planned, I realized that a higher priority project is to finish patching and painting the living room walls, a project my spouse and I started in the last days of July.
Even with my muddy pondering about what is a project, the three-projects plan, which I adopted in earnest just last week, has already enabled me focus on actually completing projects instead of having dozens of projects in various stages of completion. Rather than feeling limited by only three projects, I feel that I still have enough variety. (That might be something for me to be intentional about in the future, e.g., maybe I should have only one sewing project or one painting project on the three-project list.) Already I am feeling a sense of accomplishment.
If you’ve lived by the three-projects principle or have tried it out, I’d be interested in hearing your perspective. What’s on your list of projects?