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Overcoming Project Freeze: How to Start When You Feel Stuck

Overcoming Project Freeze: How to Start When You Feel Stuck

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 "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." That was President John Kennedy in 1961, speaking at the Joint Session of Congress. It is possibly the best example of a project statement ever made. Links: Email Me | Twitter | Facebook | Website | Linkedin Join the Time And Life Mastery Programme here. Use the coupon code: codisgreat to get 50% off. Get Your Copy Of Your Time, Your Way: Time Well Managed, Life Well Lived The Time Sector System 5th Year Anniversary The Working With… Weekly Newsletter Carl Pullein Learning Centre Carl’s YouTube Channel Carl Pullein Coaching Programmes Subscribe to my Substack The Working With… Podcast Previous episodes page Script | 397 Hello, and welcome to episode 397 of the Your Time, Your Way Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development, and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein, and I am your host of this show. Starting projects. It can be tough. Where do you start? Where will you find the time? And what do you need to do? These are just some of the questions you will find yourself asking. Yet the biggest obstacle to completing a project on time is overthinking and over-planning. Thinking about and planning a project are not the same as working on one. Working on a project is doing something that moves it forward. Decorating your bedroom will require paint and brushes. The only pre-project decision you need to make is what colour. The first two steps, therefore, are: Decide what colour to paint the bedroomBuy paint and brushes I would add a third decision: when. When will you do it? Once you’ve done those three things, you’re ready to go—no more planning, no more thinking. Just get on and start. Yet, that’s not how most projects go, is it? There’s thinking, planning, then creating tasks in your task manager, and if it’s a work project, a meeting, then perhaps another meeting. Often, by the time a project is conceived, 80% of the time required to complete it gets spent on thinking, planning, and meetings. And that brings us nicely to this week’s question—a question about finding ways to reduce the thinking and planning time. So, let me now hand you over to the Mystery Podcast voice for this week’s question. This week’s question comes from Phil. Phil asks, “Hi Carl, how do you work on complex projects?” I find I spend a lot of time planning a project, end up with a long list of things to do, and when it comes to starting, I freeze. It’s as if I don’t know where to start. Do you have any tips on handling this type of problem? Hi Phil, thank you for your question. “Project freeze” is a common problem for many people. I suspect this stems from the belief that every aspect of a project needs to be planned before starting. Yet, for many projects, this would be impossible. Imagine you were part of NASA in May 1961, and you’d just heard President Kennedy’s speech at the joint session of Congress about why the US should put a man on the moon and bring him back safely to earth before the end of the decade. At that time, NASA was struggling to get even the smallest of rockets into space—the idea of sending astronauts to the moon and back was a pipe dream. Yet a group of incredible people at NASA in 1961 took on the challenge. Instead of planning every single step they thought would be needed to complete the project, they looked at what they already knew, the obstacles they would need to overcome, and the first steps. That gave birth to the Mercury space mission. The Mercury programme was not to put a man on the moon; its objectives were to orbit a crewed spacecraft around Earth, study the human ability to function in space, and ensure the safe recovery of both the astronaut and the spacecraft. Before they could reach the moon, they needed to understand how humans cope in space. So the project’s objective was to send a man into Earth’s orbit. The key was to get started, and they did this by listing out the obstacles they needed to overcome first. They then worked out how to remove those obstacles. Now, I know our projects are unlikely to be as big as sending someone to the moon and back, but we can adopt the same approach that NASA used to work on our projects. Even small projects can adopt this approach. Let’s say you were asked to do a presentation on the likely effects of AI on your company’s business over the next five years. Where would you start? For something like this, there would be several phases. The first would be to research and gather information. For this, the task would likely be to find out who to ask or what to read. Okay, when will you do this? Here’s the key point. It’s no good just deciding what needs to be done first. You need to make it intentional, and to do that, you will need ...
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