Motivation
It is a repeating pattern for me, I am craving for: In some quiet minutes after work days, I am sufficiently good at getting projects done. Once leisure time (holidays / vacation) reaches me, I am craving for the moment to sit down, revisit the current state of affairs and plan ahead what the next steps are. I like that moment. It needs a lot of mental freedom, but I like it so much, that I make sure to get such a moment from time to time.
The most high-level question one can answer in this moment is “What do I want to focus on in my life?”. I am lucky enough, that I am not in existential mode all the time. At Aikido in Graz recently, I met a person coming from Odesa to Graz one month prior. We had a longer chat and that person obviously only had one focus in mind: ‘SURVIVE’. I am fortunate enough to be able to focus on other topics as well like digital typesetting or languages.
In this post, I want to present three frameworks which can help to identify what one wants to focus on.
Framework 1: Maslows’s pyramid of needs
The categories are taken over from the famous pyramid whereas the notes next to it, are my personal ones. It is my personal goal to have some projects in each category. If I have many projects in the category ‘Esteem’, but few projects in ‘Physiological Needs’, I am lowering the priority of ‘Esteem’ projects and increasing the priority of ‘Physiological Needs’ projects.
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Self-Actualisation (most sophisticated need): get bored to initiate creativity intentionally; implement new approaches/ideas; defining goals for your next 1/5/10 years in life; spread profound knowledge you gained by long-term efforts
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Esteem: interact/discuss matters with loved ones to reinforce ideas/concepts and dismantle prejudices; do something consciously which was once difficult in your life, but is now trivial; give talks; engage in a podcast episode; implement a difficult project having a good strategy at your avail
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Love & Belonging: plan ahead how/when you can meet friends/family to prevent neglect; strengthen your romantic relationships; organize communal events; invite someone over; talk to the neighbors; give tiny gifts or small-talk to people you know but you are not familiar with
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Safety needs: physical exercise; think through fallback options, if personal belongings get lost; discuss insurance options; declare assuring thresholds for income versus expenses limits; invest into physical or digital security
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Physiological needs: plan ahead food supplies; have emergency food in your storage; take care of your household and workplace; buy new clothes before the old ones are falling apart; get enough sleep
I am pretty sure my notes are a bit of a stretch. Some might be miscategorized w.r.t Maslow and many may not apply to your idea of ‘projects’. But it should give you an idea of my approach: look at each category, write down notes, and attach my (mostly existing) projects to the notes. After this process, I might recognize that my current projects are egocentric. Or that I could share my new knowledge in a certain talk.
Framework 2: time dimension
Another approach can be to have projects in all of these three categories:
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past: finish an old project which still makes sense, but had too little value to be finished; revisit old responsibilities which are usually self-initiated but should be done (→ volunteering work); renew friendships; summarize past experiences
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present: finish work-in-progress projects; answer inquiries; review pull requests
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future: plan ahead schedules; think through what would improve your life; consider in which way this new technology could improve your life
Framework 3: four necessities
This is a list of categories which I came up with personally. It is a list which makes it easier for me to achieve a uniform distribution of projects (e.g. 10 current projects in each category).
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mental: walks in nature; listening to thoughts of other people (face-to-face or in podcasts); implement creativity projects; expand knowledge; learn new skills
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social: host friends; engage in local clubs & events; discuss life with people from other cultures; understand how society works on a local/regional/national/international level; build relationships & friendships
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physical: stretching exercises; exercises for strength; running; bicycling; ball games; martial arts
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representational: report project status; publish your knowledge; micro-blog; write blog posts
Conclusion
I am fully aware that my blog post has many assumptions. I have a very broad definition of project (“any TODO which takes more than 1 day of work”) and I consider it in a flat structure (umbrella projects and subprojects are treated alike). It does not help many people to ‘even out’ projects in certain categories. But if this blogpost helped you to regain a high-level perspective what you are focusing on in life, this blogpost was worth it writing it down.