Looking through the project lens
Last week, my good pal Tom wrote this excellent piece to help people taking the independent career path through the times of pandemic.
Such is the speed of change (especially now), I missed it on first release but for a couple of reasons I’m very glad I picked up on it
First, each point is succinct, actionable, and contains a real-world example to help frame it.
Second, I quickly realized that each of Tom’s 7 points map into a post idea I had brewing for a few days. And, at the meta level, I could apply a couple of his suggestions into this post.
Over the past few weeks I’ve had quite a few people getting in touch to catch up, exchange ideas, or just talk about the state of the world and what may be coming next. And I’ve been doing the same kind of outreach myself. No doubt, all of us are seeking.
Many of these conversations have been with people who either got laid-off, or left their job just before the pandemic really hit.
I believe we’ll see two shifts happen in the coming months: on one side we’ll see more people move towards self employment and entrepreneurship; and on the other a strong desire from many to obtain the most secure and stable full-time role they possibly can. This, in line with the acceleration the pandemic causes across all swathes of society, with result in the gutting of the middle of the market in just about every industry.
For the people I’m speaking with who find themselves between things in their career, most are focused on the first of these options – the move to going it alone, at least for the short-medium term.
As I’ve spent much of my working life doing my own thing as an independent (and consecutively so for the last 5 years), I’m often asked what suggestions I have for stepping out into the great unknown – particularly in these challenging times.
I wish I had a silver bullet, but alas I don’t. However, the one place I keep returning to is the last point in Tom’s post, and which all his suggestions point towards: projects.
A project can mean different things to different people, has different meaning in different situations. There’s no one definition, but here’s my take:
A project can be infinite, but far more often is finite. It’s something you crafted, put your elbow grease into, got stuck on, and stuck into. Part (or all) of it didn’t work. A project has part of your identity deeply woven into it. You did because you chose to, not because you had to.
You weren’t a cog in the machine. You helped design, build, and maintain the machine – if you even wanted there to be a machine in the first place.
A project can be done alone, but it’s often better together. You can be an instigator, an impresario, or a contributor. You can be hacker, hustler, hipster – or all three if you choose.
And a project is something you can point to and say ‘I made this happen‘ – no matter if you had false starts, malfunctions, bumps, scrapes, scratches… or even failure to launch.
Because you still made something, and you most definitely learned something.
The project lens
I’ve always had a hard time wrestling with labels (am I self-employed? an entrepreneur? something else? do they – can they – stop and start?).
Perhaps a better way to think of what I do is through the lens of projects.
And for those now seeking – figuring out where they stand in the world, where their skills can be best applied, who they want to be next – taking a project-based approach may be the best way forward.
As Tom suggests, now is a time to collaborate, to write about the things to work on and pique your curiosity, to make the process you employ more easily visible. It’s a time to go subterranean (if you have the means) in order to see and then be found again.
Projects can give us all of this and more.
A project may not be the thing. It may not even get us the next gig, or give us that unlock we’re seeking. What a project really does is provide clues. Sometimes these clues are subtle, but we must seek them out. Because -eventually – they’ll lead us to the answers.
Here’s a list of all the projects I’ve worked on over the last decade or so. I’m sure I’m missing a few, and I’ve left out paid client projects – all of the projects here are things I started myself. Listing these out was a surprisingly cathartic and sometimes cringe-inducing process. The best bit? I uncovered a few new clues and answers along the way.
First, 3 things I’ve learned (which I’m sharing here as a reminder for myself as much as anyone else)
- Trust your gut; I’ve abandoned things too early where my hunch was later proven right
- Make it one size smaller than you need; it’ll probably come out just right
- Even a small injection of energy and insight from a collaborator can lift a project (and your spirits, your thinking, and your approach) like you’d never believe
Which project are you going to contribute to next?
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