Why Traditional Project Management Wasn’t Working For My Creative Projects & Four Changes I Made To Finally Move Progress Forward Consistently.
How To Make Steady Progress On Your Big Creative Projects
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I build processes for myself not because I’m super organised.
But because I can’t be trusted to get work done otherwise.
👉 I am a procrastinator
👉 When anything feels hard I won’t do it
👉 I have shiny object syndrome
👉 I struggle to finish things I start
Lately I’ve been struggling with my process for getting big creative projects done. They feel like they are taking forever to finish. Each step feels big so I put it off thinking I need a bigger chunk of time to deal with it.
And I’m not working on them consistently.
In my 9–5 I have a pretty standard way of managing my work:
→ I have projects
→ I break down those projects into manageable chunks
→ I time block those chunks
→ I get the work done
→ I finish the project
But big creative projects feel like a different beast.
Many times there is no clear linear path to getting the project done. The ‘chunks’ or work feel bigger and so often need multiple work sessions. And there isn’t anyone driving you or directing you on what the priorities are.
Of course I could have heeded the traditional productivity gurus and just kept breaking down my project into smaller and smaller ‘manageable tasks.’
But how much smaller can I go than ‘outline this section of this module for this course’ before I’m just managing projects rather than getting creative work done?
Traditional project management and productivity advice just wasn’t working for these creative projects.
I needed a new approach. An approach that understands and takes into consideration the nature of creative projects.
