Newly Corporate

A blog, a small business, a hobby, a service organization; all of these things result in side projects. We all have them, the projects the we undertake outside of our regular business tasks. They can be fulfilling or they can just drag you down if you don’t manage them correctly. Here are three ways I stay on top of my side projects:

1. Harness your passion… immediately! You have probably heard the old saying “waste not, want not” while, it holds true when it comes to your passion for a side project just as it does elsewhere in life. If I don’t seize my big ideas and apply them in specific actions to my side projects, I lose them and progress stagnates. When the spirit moves you, capitalize on it or you will lose it! At the very least, write it down.

2. Clearly define each project. I keep all of my projects separate with different Outlook folders, Gmail labels and folders on my computer. I take basic notes in a text editor and track my to dos for each project separately with the most pressing ones on my daily to do list. If you let projects just mush into each other, things drop through the cracks and the wheels quickly fall off.

3. Fight through fatigue by building your team. I was talking to a friend the other day about one of his projects and he said,

“This is alot of work, I didn’t realize how much time this would take and I am getting tired of it”.

His project was definitely worth it, he provides a great resource but, he was just getting tired. You need other people to keep you in it and keep you fired up! If you are in a group, you feel committed to the group and they notice when you fall behind. So, if you start hitting a wall, grab someone else to help you over!

How do you stay motivated and work through your side projects?