How do you manage to keep working on a project once the “honeymoon phase” wears off?
Have you found anything that works for you, when finishing a project takes longer than the initial motivation rush will take you?
How do you manage to keep working on a project once the “honeymoon phase” wears off?
Have you found anything that works for you, when finishing a project takes longer than the initial motivation rush will take you?
When you have no safety net it’s pretty easy to keep going no matter how tough or boring it is. I striped the shingles (4 layers), pulled the nails, fixed the 1x4 slats where needed, sheathed, and reroofed about 2500 sq ft with my own two hands. I had one person as ground support.
I broke it up into sections I could complete in about a week when the weather would cooperate.
The entire house is a major project. I call it a slum lord house. There was zero insulation, the windows suck, the electrical system was still mostly knob and tube, the roof was basically shot, the roof was saddling in one area, the plumbing lines switched randomly between steel, pvc, and cpvc, plus the water heater was plumbed backwards. I’ve still got to replace the windows, insulate the floor joists, and fix a few other things but it’s in a lot better condition than when we moved in.
Simply put, how do you eat an elephant alone? One bite at a time. When you take on a big project you have to keep working at it. You may need breaks but you keep going back for more.
This assumes the project is structured well enough that team members are working within the scope of their actual expertise.
I’m working on a nightmare project right now, which started in January, is expected to run untill at least the end of the year, and has multiple launch phases captured within a non-standard numbering system. People are expected to give their complete attention to this project, while simultaneously working their day jobs. There aren’t a lot of experts, so everyone is expected to step up and contribute wherre they can. However the few experts we have are being stretched very thin and asked to complete tasks they’re not trained in and have no background, like validation scripting and testing. How do you eat the elephant when you haven’t been given the tools to support it?