Steps to do a project
Here are some steps for doing a project. These are somewhat ordered but there is flexibility:
- Brainstorm goals. They should be clear enough that you can tell pretty unambiguously whether you succeeded or not. Don't just start with a single goal and never consider any alternatives.
- Think critically about the goals. Which is best?
- Brainstorm solutions: ways to accomplish the goals.
- Think critically about the solutions. Look for decisive flaws with them. Which won't work, and why? You can keep brainstorming during the critical process or go back and forth between those steps.
- Consider what resources you have available for the project and whether it will succeed within budget. Resources include time, money, tools, skills, helpers ... anything useful.
- Organize the best solution, or best few, into small, clear steps in a diagram.
- Consider ways the project may fail and what you can do to mitigate those risks.
- Action: do it.
- Evaluate whether it worked.
Extras:
- Take into account variance. You can't predict exact resource usage like how much time a project step will take. But, following Eli Goldratt's Critical Chain Project Management, don't pad the individual steps with margin for error. Instead, estimate resource usage for each step aiming for a 50% chance it'll complete within budget, then take the entire project and add a 50% safety buffer. (See Goldratt's book for more details.)
- Figure out what steps are prerequisites for other steps or use the same resources and what can be done in parallel. Using the same resources means e.g. two steps can be done in any order, but Joe has to do them and he can't do both at once, so they can't be done at the same time even though neither is a prerequisite for the other. The same issue can come up with other types of resources, e.g. two steps both need a hammer and you only have one hammer. For small single-person projects, this doesn't matter much: you can just do everything in series (one at a time).
Suggestion:
Do some small (tiny! easy!) projects using organized, conscious, intentional steps. Get experience and refine a process that works well for you. Then try a medium project using that process.
Do some small (tiny! easy!) projects using organized, conscious, intentional steps. Get experience and refine a process that works well for you. Then try a medium project using that process.
To accomplish any goal a plan needs to be made. Till now I have been making those plans in an unorganized manner. Every goal has sub goals which are accomplished using sub plans. The process that makes those sub plans are not open to criticism (due to being inexplicit and other reasons). As they are not open to criticism errors in them do not get corrected and they do not get improved. Which leads to staying stuck. In other words one is making sub plans for goals based on current bad autopilot. When one learns how to do projects one is improving at the skill of making sub goals. One is improving the autopilot which makes sub goals. This improvement is applicable everywhere as all life is accomplishing goals. And becoming better at accomplishing goals means becoming better at life.