Show notes
Breaking down large projects
- Work is rarely handed to us in small, easily achievable pieces
- Breaking a project down into small pieces gives you a map
- Measuring your progress improves your odds of succeeding
Know your limitations
- You only have so much capacity to do work
- Time, energy, resources, people, knowledge
- Identify what your constraints are
Start whittling away
- Name a few things that represent success for the project
- What needs to happen to accomplish each of those things?
- Prioritize your list
- How can you group similar tasks?
Don’t break everything down at once
- You can’t do everything at once
- You need a list of small things to work on for a short period of time
- When do you resume the project breakdown?
- Doing this exercise takes time and is part of the project
- Ask yourself if you’re close enough to stop
Overview of the process
- Write down your constraints (time, energy, resources, people, knowledge)
- Identify your main objectives (this is what success looks like)
- Prioritize that list
- Describe high-level steps to achieve each objective
- Repeat numbers 2 through 4 for each step until you can start working
- Resume the process when you need to
A fun Twitter exercise
- From Tinker Elle (@elle91): Without using the title of your job, tell me what you do.
- Erik: I help people find ways that tech and tabletop games can make them feel powerful.
- Leo: I teach people about productivity and technology in order to make their lives easier.
