Deliverable

Finished v .0.5 tonight:

44 or so more days to go before this thing is due. Yikes. At least I’ve moved up to the next size of binder.

Another version complete:

I really have to kick this thing into high gear. 53 days left before the 1.0 Preview version is due. Honestly, it’s a bit frustrating right now because it just seems like there are so many threads of this thing to figure out and put together, and it’s all on me.

I may plan some 2 or 3 day “dash’s”, where I commit to more time spent on the book… see how that goes.

-7/18/06-
9:46 p.m.

I actually did complete this version on time, but got around to posting it now…

I’m backdating it for the sake of consistency in the timeline that is my life.

Which reminds me, I have version v.04 due today…

Shit.

Version 0.2

Note to self: Find another way to print the book. The Village Copier charged me 3 bucks just to open the file and print front and back. Total: $11.30. Ouch.

I’ve made steady progress the past 9 days, but need to clarify the parts of the book better and dig in to the beginning sections that I’ve been putting off.

Well, I did it….

It’s nothing grand and glorious, but it’s a start.

Onward and upward!

This challenge definitely has a bit of a mad scientist element to it, but stay with me. I think it’ll make sense in the end.

I’ve been quite happy thus far with the success of my 30 Day Challenges. The momentum that I feel building in my practice and my fitness level feels great, and I’m confident that the same type of momentum will continue with my sleep, fiber & vitamin challenges.

I believe that these personal habits are building a strong foundation for long term health and happiness. The question that I’ve struggled with is “How do I consistenly motivate myself to do the work on my projects?” I see creative people like Ze Frank doing mad cool things and I’m inspired. I know that I also have mad cool creativity inside of me. If I could only get my brain to organize itself better and do the nitty gritty day to day work that goes into realizing the aforementioned “mad cool creativity” then I’d be a much happier camper.

Thusly do I present to thee the 30 Day Project Challenge:

For the next 30 days I’ll spend a minimum of 50 uninterupted minutes a day either working on one of my projects, or engaged in active “Me Time”.

Say what?

Basically creative work is like a well. (Major hat-tip to Julia Cameron for the “well analogy” that follows.) You’re either pouring your creative self into the next actions that will make your project a reality (emptying the well), or you’re taking a break from that creative effort in order to rejuvenate (filling the well). Day to day creative work is either emptying the well, or filling the well. The trick is to build momentum by consistently working on your projects without burning out. Balance. Ying, Yang and all that.

I’ve had periods where I’ve been incredibly productive. It has usually (but not always) involved some type of deadline, where I put things off until the last minute and then bust my ass getting the work done. I have something to show for my work and it feels great! (This is a good thing.) I then have periods during which it seems I’m doing absolutely nothing. (This is not such a good thing.) These jumps forward are good, but this way of working is inefficient, unsustainable and doesn’t lead to the type of exponential growth that comes from consistent day in/day out effort. It’s tough to hit a tipping point when you’re moving three steps forward, and one step back.

So, I know that in order to build momentum I want to create a challenge that I can do successfully for 30 days. How do I work on projects for 30 days straight in a way that allows for potential burn-out, and allows for my potentially topsy turvy schedule? I enlarge my definition of what a project is. For the purposes of this challenge “working on my projects” means either the actual doing of the project “next actions”, or filling the well… engaging in active “me time” that will allow me to rest and rejuvenate without guilt so that when I come back to the project my batteries are fully charged.

But enough “Blah, Blah, Blah”… here are the nuts & bolts:

• (I’ve created the following files called “me_time.txt” & “projects.txt”.) “me_time.txt” is a list of activities that I find rejuvenating. (Photography is one example). “projects.txt” is a list of all the projects I currently have on my plate, broken down by category. Anything on those lists is fair game for this challenge.
• I’ll spend a minimum of 50 uninterupted minutes a day working on items from the lists above.
• I’ll track my progress here. This is a simple record of whether (or not) I worked on projects, or had “me time”. I’m keeping the nitty gritty details of how I’ve spent my day in my work diary.

That’s the challenge. I might tweak it as I go along. Maybe it’s a harebrained scheme. Maybe it won’t work. Either way, I’ll know in 30 days when I check in.

—–
30 Day Challenge guidelines can be found here.

30 Day Challenge: Projects
Start date: Tuesday, 6/13/06
Check-in date: Wednesday, 7/12/06

I’ve come up with a timeline for completion of the book. My version control was inspired by Firefox.

Book: Project timeline
Start date: Tuesday; June 13, 2006
Release Date: Wednesday; September 13, 2006

Short term goal(s): Bound version for review every 9 days.
“90 Day” goal: Version 1.0 available for students on Wednesday; September 13, 2006

[v. 0.1] – Wednesday; June 21, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.2] – Friday, June 30, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.3] – Sunday, July 9, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.4] – Tuesday, July 18, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.5] – Thursday, July 27, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.6] – Saturday, August 5, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.7] – Monday, August 14, 2006 (complete)

[v. 0.8] – Wednesday, August 23, 2006 (incomplete)

[v. 0.9] – Friday, September 1, 2006 (incomplete)

1.0 (Preview Release) – Sunday, September 10, 2006 (incomplete)

1.0 (Official Version) – Wednesday, September 13, 2006 (1st day of teaching) (incomplete) – See my 90 Day Check-in here

The idea is to release early and release often. Every nine days I’ll bind a copy together for review by my peers, students, and anyone else I can think of to show it to. Changes to each pre-release version will be marked as follows:

Sample version control:

book_0.1.0.1.txt
book_0.1.0.2.txt
book_0.2.txt
book_o.2.1.txt

etc.

I think the naming convention should help me as I make revisions. I’ll alter this as necessary. Now that I have a timeline, my next step is to clearly outline a strategy for working on my projects every day. Look for that in a future post.

I’ve had some movement on how I want to approach my workflow for the book. It’ll look like this:

• Brain dump all of the sub-projects for the book onto 3×5 cards.
• Choose a sub-project to work on.
• Create a new folder with the sub-project title in the @Book folder
• Create a readme.txt file in the sub-project folder. You can leave any specific notes you have about the sub-project here (scaling settings in Illustrator, for example).

The sub-project will more than likely require several next actions, so…

• Staple the 3×5 card to a piece of lined notebook paper. Work thru the next actions on this piece of paper.
• Take the next action you have on your list

Some of the next actions might actually be another sub-project in themselves. If so, bump the sub-project over to a it’s own separate 3×5 card.

Other things to consider:

• Keep all of your associated Sibelius and .eps documents in the same project folder

• Don’t slack on naming things. Be specific, either in the way you label the folder, or the way you label the file. This will keep you from redoing work that you don’t need to.
• Don’t be slack in setting up templates. A well set-up template in the beginning will make things go much faster when it comes to repeating tasks.

I think that this should cover alot of the oranizational problems that I’ve had in the past that have led to duplication of work. It should also break things into manageable chunks. It just occurred to me that this is what I’m asking my students to do when I have them break down a song for practicing: “Why practice 50 things when you can practice the 5 things that will help you play the 50?”. I think that I can repurpose this into how I work on the book… just have to think through the possible connection a bit more.

Was traveling most of this past week and recovering from traveling the rest of the week.

I’ll try doing the same thing with the book (and my teaching) as I did with my practice. Simple tracking so that I know I’m putting the karma out there.

M:
T:
W:
Th:
F: 20 / 20 / 20 (2 songs to Sibelius)
Sa:
Su: