I think long-term solo projects take more than motivation and persistence. Your willpower is like a muscle. Even if you are strong, it can still run out if you rely on it for everything.

In this post, I’d like to talk about how to achieve and maintain great productivity for long-term projects.

The Background

I’ve not a naturally organised person. I like to avoid putting my things and thoughts into boxes. But as I experience more ways of working, I started to appreciate systems and orderliness. I realised I’m very lucky to have learnt the system to organise long-term projects at my first job as a Software Developer. 

I’ve been working on my own software product, MusoPipe, for 2.5 years now. Even though I tried to limit the scope of the first release, it’s still taking much more time and effort than I anticipated. Without this system to organise my work, I would have been stressed out and given up long ago.

The Secret

The system I use is a software development method called Agile. Agile helps me focus and preserve willpower.

There’s a lot to be said about using Agile correctly, but for this post I’d like to find the essence that allows me to work at my optimal pace.

Consistently Great Productivity

Focus

Your productivity depends on how well you can focus. Your focus depends on how well you can let go of irrelevant thoughts to your current task. To let go, you write things down.

This is the gist of the GDT (Getting Things Done) system too. By writing down your future tasks and concerns, you get them off your mind. This frees up your working memory and lets you work better. 

For laser focus, I recommend the Ivy Lee Method. It’s a very simple method that lets you temporarily let go of everything else than your current task. I’ve been using it to manage my daily tasks for a few years. I can’t go back to working without it. James Clear wrote a nice article about it here. 

To keep track of my plans, ideas and notes, I use Trello. Here’s a description of how I use Trello. On my Trello board, I have lists for Roadmap, Business Backlog, Development Backlog, Current Sprint, Done, Notes, Wishlist, and a recent addition of Grateful. The Roadmap is a high-level overview, where each item on the list can take months or years to accomplish. Backlogs are where I keep track of future work. I like to colour code the items in the Backlog, so that they correspond to the items in Roadmap. Current Sprint is where I keep the items that I’m currently working on, typically it only holds 1 or 2 items at a time. Once I’m done with the item, I move it to the Done list. Grateful is where I keep track of people and things that I’m grateful for relating to this project. 

Prototyping

It’s much more important to work on the right thing than to work at your best speed. Prototyping and getting feedback is how you can validate ideas most efficiently.

When prototyping, it’s easy to get side-tracked by details. This is the biggest trap here. The more time you spend on something, the more likely you’d get emotionally attached to it. The more attached you are, the harder it is for you to see its flaws. Love is blind.

To minimise emotions and pain, I recommend keeping things plain and ugly to start with. For example, I think it’s better to prove the idea by drawing simple diagrams on paper, rather than making professional looking prototypes. You don’t want to fall in love with your prototype and end up defending a bad idea. It’s easier said than done, but always try to think if a piece of work is necessary before doing it. 

Feedback

We don’t like to admit it, but giving, receiving and asking for feedback are skills that we have to learn. Taking critical feedback is hard but worth the pain.

The most important thing about getting feedback is to ask the right people. I eventually reluctantly realised that my friends and family rarely give me the critical feedback I need. They tend to be biased because they love me, or they may feel like giving critical feedback is attacking me. Although positive feedback are nice, criticism help us improve. A way to get feedback from the right people is to ask a lot of people. I like to ask for experts’ opinion, and then test the idea in real-life situations. Experts tend to be good at giving constructive feedback. For example, when figuring out how intuitive a product is, ask the UX designers, and also show it to people who’s never seen it before.

Even though everybody knows that constructive criticism is helpful, it’s still difficult to process them without feeling upset. What helped me the most is to realise that the person giving me feedback is putting their trust in me. They trust that I can take their helpful feedback logically rather than getting overwhelmed and defensive. Focus on appreciating their trust. Constructive criticism is priceless. And if you really can’t deal with it in the moment, just say thanks and think it through later. It gets much easier after a while

Patience

I used to get excited about approaching the finishing line, and then feel disappointed to find another mountain to climb around the corner. Now I don’t mind how long my project is taking anymore.

I think the change came from my new routine of daily meditation practice. Now I value the process as well as the result. I allow myself to enjoy making things nice sometimes. I realised that the end is just a moment which will pass, even if it’s a nice moment. The finishing line is the start of a new process.

Summary

• The key to focus is to let go of thoughts irrelevant to your current task.
• The key to efficient validation of ideas is to make barebones prototypes and be emotionally detached from them. 
• The key to learning from feedback is to ask a wide range of people and appreciate their trust. 
• The key to patience is to value the process. 

And in case you wonder why I do all the work by myself? Well apart from not wanting to owe people money when I don’t need to, and being someone who likes to learn everything.. I buy into the idea that it’s beneficial for a founder to have working knowledge of all aspects of a business. I do ask for help on things that I’m not very good at. I learnt about the importance of asking for help and feedback during my project too. You may find my post about interdependence interesting.

This post is written for an inspiring person who’s starting her PhD program. I hope there is something helpful in this post. It’d be my pleasure to make some contributions to science 🙂 Best wishes!

• agile
• productivity
• project management
• willpower