5 Steps to Start and Finish Your Project

So as you may know I have decided to post something every day this month to some various outlet or another, all as part of just another ridiculous parlor trick of things that I want to do just to see if I can do them.  I assume you probably realize this is what I am doing, and that's most likely what made you even look this post up.  Still, I am trying to make some relevant content for people, and hopefully this is part of that goal.

However, as I started thinking about topics that I could fit in on Wednesdays for this writing progress and writing updates, I thought that there might be some extrapolation from this whole "post-a-day" challenge of a few key and helpful tips to apply to finishing any writing project (or via further extrapolation any project at all).

So here are my five steps to start and finish your project:

1. Set a realistic goal: In order to finish a project, you have to start with that finish in mind.  Ask yourself, "What do I really want to accomplish with this project?"  The answer should immediately come to mind.  However, this goal needs to process through a few filters, which I consider to be "reality checks."  First, make sure that you want to accomplish the goal.  This may sound silly, as you say to yourself, "I set the goal, of course I want to accomplish it."  In this instance, though, I mean you have to really want to accomplish the goal.  For me, sometimes just a challenge of the goal is enough to drive me, but you have to see what drives you, be it passion, money, or something else, and then make sure this goal meets enough of that need to push you to finish.  Second, you need to make sure you have enough time to complete the goal.  I am notorious for underestimating the amount of time to accomplish something and overestimating the amount of time I have free and available.  In talking to others, it seems that most of us do the same.  So an easy way to fix that is to attempt to drastically combat that.  When you figure out if you have enough time to complete the task, estimate that it will take twice as much time as you think it will, and estimate that you will have one-fourth of the time you think you have to complete it.  If it is still manageable within those elements, your goal might actually be realistic.
2. Set and publicize your deadline: This is a corollary off of setting your goal.  Setting your deadline requires once again analyzing your available time and making sure that it is a deadline that you can enforce on yourself.  Just finding a magical date in the air and saying that is your deadline is not usually enough.  I learned through several years' participation in NaNoWriMo that it is important to publicize your deadline.  What does publicizing the deadline mean?  It means making sure there is some external force that can help you, via shame and peer pressure and other methods of interpersonal control, to make your deadline.  For some, your internal pressure will be enough.  For others, you may want to print your deadline and hang it in public view.  You may want to start telling all your friends and family about the deadline, so they will come back and harass you as you approach it.  For me, and my 31 posts in 31 days project, I posted to my site and Twitter about the goal, and then scheduled posts August 1 to kick off the project, artificially setting up a very public beginning to it.
3. Set your rewards: This is the fun part to me, generally. I give myself something to work towards other than just the completion of the project.  This can work with just denial of fun until the work is done, but sometimes it is nice to give yourself a treat for completing the work.  You may say, "I'll let myself take an entire weekend to do nothing and play video games after I finish."  Perhaps you'll reward yourself with that new wireless keyboard you have been eying.  Maybe finishing the project is what you have been waiting on to go and get the keys to that new Porsche you test drove last month.  OK, maybe you should only get the Porsche if this is a (very high) paying project.  Still, setting rewards is an important motivator towards finishing.  When I write novels in November, I generally wait to buy my NaNo shirt for the year until I've hit 50,000 words.  On my current writing project, I'm looking to pick up a new DVD-writer when the first draft is finished.  And don't forget rewards for milestones along the path, too!  Setting targets at 25%, 50%, and 75% are also valuable motivators.
4. Set and follow your pace: This is an easy one.  Sometimes.  If you want to finish your project by your deadline, then you can take the total sum of work to be done, take the total time you have allotted to work on it, and do some simple math to divide it.  This sounds simple, right?  Want to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November?  That's 1666 2/3 words a day!  But wait, there's more!  Sometimes, this simple math is just too, well, simple.  What if your schedule is insane one week, but much more free the next?  Refer back to the realistic nature of your goal, and start setting micro-goals for your milestones along the way.  When you divide up your work by available time, use the time that you are planning to work on the project, not all the time between now and the deadline.  So, if you know that you are only going to allot one hour a day for the first week of the project, and two hours a day for the second week, you should divide the work total by 21 to find a total pace of work per hour and then expect to accomplish 1/3 of it in the first week and 2/3 in the second.  If you had a third week with seven hours in it, you'd redo your math with 28 hours and come up with 25%, 50%, 25%.  Make sense?  Sometimes setting your pace, though, can redefine the reality of your goal.  If, after figuring out your pace, it shows that you need to be writing twelve pages every two minutes, then you either are the fastest writer I have ever met, or you have an unrealistic goal.
5. Monitor your progress versus the schedule and adjust if necessary: Your plan, once documented, is set in stone.  Until it isn't.  We all know the emergency comes up and life gets in the way and throws your plan a complete curveball.  For this reason, it is important to periodically set up checkpoints throughout the project to stop and evaluate your progress versus the goal.  As I tried to put out 31 posts in August, I used a big calendar of the month and checked off days as I completed a post for that day.  As I got closer to August 1, I was able to quickly check the calendar and see that I was almost complete with all of the posts.  Had I fallen behind, though, it would be helpful to reassess the amount of work I had remaining and go back to step 4 and adjust my pace.  Obviously earlier changes are easier to absorb than later ones.  If you skip a day's work at the first day of a month long project, you can spread the work for that day among the other 29 or so days in the month.  If you skip a day's work on the next to last day of the month, you won't have any time to make it up, or your last day will be completely overwhelmed attempting to do double-work.

All of this is, of course, easy to document as a process,  but much harder to follow.  Still, finishing projects is not something that you can magically begin to do.  It takes desire and persistence to make these things happen, and any process is only as good as your implementation of it.  So go, fight, win, have a blast!  Hope this process helps!