Write Down Projects (Cereal Example + Instructions)
Eating a bowl of cereal is a small project. It has multiple steps which are organized/synchronized/coordinated to work together to achieve a goal.
The steps are something like:
- get bowl
- get milk
- get spoon
- get box of cereal
- pour cereal
- pour milk
- close and put away cereal
- close and put away milk
- eat the cereal
- put the spoon and bowl in the dish washer
- put away the spoon and bowl after they're washed
Each of those steps could itself be viewed as a very tiny project and broken into its own steps. E.g. each one involves coordinating multiple muscle activations over time.
Some of the steps are interesting in that they aren't necessary for the main project goal of eating some cereal. You don't actually have to put away the milk in order to make and eat a bowl of cereal. So why do you do it? You (and perhaps other people you live with) have other goals in your life, so you want resources like the leftover milk to be available in good condition in the future.
The project steps are partially-ordered. That means there is some flexibility for what order you do them in, but you can't do them in any order. Order matters some but it isn't strict. Multiple orderings would work, e.g. you could get the spoon before the bowl instead of after. But you couldn't put away the milk before you poured it or before you got it out.
Think about some projects you already do, which you understand pretty well (nothing complicated or confusing), and write down the steps. Post it to the Message Board at the FI Learning Basecamp (not as a comment below).
Ideally, keep practicing with a dozen projects or more until it's easy for you to see and think consciously about projects. You want to get the basics of projects more intuitive, second-nature and autopilot. That will help enable doing bigger, harder projects.
The steps are something like:
- get bowl
- get milk
- get spoon
- get box of cereal
- pour cereal
- pour milk
- close and put away cereal
- close and put away milk
- eat the cereal
- put the spoon and bowl in the dish washer
- put away the spoon and bowl after they're washed
Each of those steps could itself be viewed as a very tiny project and broken into its own steps. E.g. each one involves coordinating multiple muscle activations over time.
Some of the steps are interesting in that they aren't necessary for the main project goal of eating some cereal. You don't actually have to put away the milk in order to make and eat a bowl of cereal. So why do you do it? You (and perhaps other people you live with) have other goals in your life, so you want resources like the leftover milk to be available in good condition in the future.
The project steps are partially-ordered. That means there is some flexibility for what order you do them in, but you can't do them in any order. Order matters some but it isn't strict. Multiple orderings would work, e.g. you could get the spoon before the bowl instead of after. But you couldn't put away the milk before you poured it or before you got it out.
Think about some projects you already do, which you understand pretty well (nothing complicated or confusing), and write down the steps. Post it to the Message Board at the FI Learning Basecamp (not as a comment below).
Ideally, keep practicing with a dozen projects or more until it's easy for you to see and think consciously about projects. You want to get the basics of projects more intuitive, second-nature and autopilot. That will help enable doing bigger, harder projects.