Starting Something New? How I Get Excited for a Big Passion Project!

How many half-started projects do you have? Let’s change that.

Motivation Has Struck! What Do I Do With It?

I don’t know about you but, when I’m motivated I feel unstoppable. (It took a lot out of me to not make a Taylor Swift quip.) When I’m not… well we can talk a little bit more about that later. For now, we’re motivated and we’re ready to start a new project. If you’re like me…

This time will be different!

And I’m not just saying that! Our last idea to sell homemade toaster strudel didn’t go so well. Whatever your previous endeavor was we’ll move past that too.

This is usually the part where in the past, I dive into the new project head first.

I want to walk through a couple of things I want to do project-wise and give you a personal formula that I’ve been using to make these things a part of my life and not just a future half-finished project.

Let’s harness the power of What and Why!

Let’s Think About This

Ok, we don’t want to lose our spontaneous streak of motivation because we all know how fast that can come and go. We do however want to think about this a little.

We need a plan!

What am I trying to do?

Depending on what we’re doing this part will be a little longer or shorter. I said that I’d walk through 2 plans as an example.

One is a shorter-term project (I want to learn how to rock climb) and the other is a longer-term one (I want to learn how to build a web presence).

One of these is more playful than the other but I’m going to approach them both with a mix of seriousness and playfulness.

Now I don’t think that we need to form a 5-year plan or even a 1-year plan. We just need a few bullet points on what we’re looking to do. Almost like a to-do list.

The reasoning behind me saying this isn’t the obvious one. Yes, a to-do list will organize you. That part is great. What I’m more concerned about is when you get into the weeds. When you’re in a flow state the last thing that you need to be thinking about is the high-level planning that you need to do next.

Let’s get some high level goals on paper! What do we want past the surface level thoughts?

They’ll be there for this session, and the next, and hopefully the one after that. Thinking about what we want from our project besides the “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” can do wonders for aligning us on our journey.

Losing a sense of direction during your groove while working on a project is the worse. Let’s mitigate that by doing a little pre-planning.

Think about What you’re doing. We want to strike while the iron is hot!

Cliches aside. We want to drive all of that motivation into something tangible. Not aimlessly waste our precious motivation while we have it.

Something To Try: Set 3 — 5 Loose High-Level Goals For Your Project

What Are My Goals? Do I Have Any? Should I???

At this point, you’re like this is the most basic walkthrough ever. First, a to-do list now focusing on my goals.

I hear you! With the goals talk I want to get a little deep. One of the goals that I have for myself this year is to be a little more selfish.

You read that right.

I need to be more selfish.

You probably read that and fly to one of two sides. The world has too many selfish people in it. What a ridiculous thing to say. Or… We could all look to take care of ourselves a little more. Being a little more selfish is needed sometimes.

Regardless of what side you’re on you’re right.

Your opinion doesn’t matter because of my Why. Let me explain.

Your goals are useless without a strong Why behind them. I want to be an astronaut is a useless goal if I don’t have a strong aspiration for space travel.

I’ve seen that I will move mountains for the other people in my life but I won’t even eat three meals a day when it comes to my well-being. I need to take better care of myself. That’s the simple Why behind my goal of being more selfish.

Now, back to our new project. Do we need goals? No. Should we have some? Probably. If we do though, be sure to sit down and think about the Why behind them.

I want to learn how to rock climb because I like puzzles and want something physical to do for fun.

Notice that that’s not really a Why.

Think about your Why as the thing that at the end of the day will drive you when your motivation wanes.

Why am I picking up climbing?

As a person my entire life I’ve loved puzzles. I need a form of exercise that I can look at as fun and not work. Puzzles have always been like games for me. I genuinely feel like I could fall in love with climbing and its community.

It’s similar but more thought out. It also may change with time. It doesn’t have to be your Why forever.

Something To Try: 5 Whys Exercise

What Do I Do When The Motivation Fades?

I imagine that you’ve caught on at this point. I’m not telling you what to do when you’re motivated. I’m trying to set us up to do when we’re unmotivated. That’s when things get difficult. That’s when our project will likely fall apart.

The 2 things that I had us do above was figure out What we’re trying to do and Why it’s important to us.

We could do a lot more, but again we want to do enough to get us going and not waste all of our motivation on preparation.

When you’re motivated you’re likely not thinking about handling the logistics that you’re not going to want to deal with when the demotivation eventually comes for us all.

Let’s handle those now and make our lives a little easier.

Now, those things that I mentioned are fine and dandy. This last part is what I’m personally focused on myself. I think you should be focused on it as well.

The other side of Motivation isn’t being Demotivated it’s being Disciplined.

This is something that I heard recently that had been resonating with me. Let me tell you something…

I HAVE NO DISCIPLINE 😅😭

Obviously, I’m exaggerating but, when I’m not motivated I don’t need discipline. When I’m demotivated, well I didn’t really equate that to needing discipline.

So, it’s not that I have no discipline but, I haven’t been training myself to use it. Recently, if I’m not in the mood, I’m just not in the mood. I didn't realize that that was a chance to build some discipline. To do some mental rewiring.

I didn’t realize that discipline was sitting across from motivation. Picture it as a gradient. The less motivation that you have the more discipline you’re going to need and vice versa. The more motivation that you have the less discipline that you’ll need.

So the last thing that we need to work on is building our discipline. It won’t be easy but it’ll make our lives easier in the long run.

Honestly, that’s the key takeaway here. Let’s make things easy for ourselves so when the motivation fades our discipline has less to do.

So What Are We Doing Again?

Let’s bring it all together!

Motivation has struck and I want to start working on a new big project.

What should I do?

1. Let’s think about what I’m doing. I want to build a web presence. What do I need to do for that to take off? Write? Tweet? Go viral falling off a wall at the climbing gym? Make a couple of goals now so you don’t have to later.
2. Figure out why I’m doing this. Having a strong why that resonates with you makes it easier to stick to the plan. The plan now has a greater purpose.
3. Make things easier for my future self. Sneaking this one in there but it was a sub-point. We’re not always going to want to put in the work. While we want to, let's make things easier for our future selves.
4. Look for opportunities to build discipline. I’m choosing to look a discipline as a skill. One that I haven't used in a while. I was a D1 athlete in college. I didn’t have the motivation to go to practice every day. I had the discipline. Let’s rekindle our relationship with that.
5. Finally, keep it fun! Remember me saying I wanted “a mix of seriousness and playfulness.” It’s because we’re not meant to work 100% of the time no matter what the internet tells us. Have fun and you’ll be more motivated more often!

Check out another one of my articles if you have the time!

I hope that you enjoyed this article! If you did please hold down the applause button as long as you can 👏🏽 (Really! Hold it! 😉)! Leave a comment to let me know your thoughts! Share with a friend or colleague! If you’d like to hear more from me please follow! Finally, please buy me a beer to keep me motivated! It all means the world to me! Cheers!