Do people with projects in their lives, whether personal or professional feel more satisfied? Do they feel more purpose? Are they naturally more motivated people if they adopt a large project?
I’d argue the relationship between projects and life satisfaction, and projects and an individual’s growth orientation may vary from person to person. Would someone of an academic nature enjoy building a house? Would a person with trade-based skills particularly enjoy researching and writing a paper on an academic topic? The two aren’t mutually exclusive, but it's clear we’d assume not.
There must be more characteristics to explore in this scenario.
What can make or break a project for us?
For big life projects, I’d argue the one central aspect is that our projects serve as extensions of ourselves, and we all wish to feel understood and loved.
Let’s look at other factors that can influence how our projects affect us.
Trivial or Projects of a Lifetime – Some projects we can do subconsciously. Cleaning the dishes, walking the dog, and even buying food from the store. If you head to your local food provider subconsciously, you might not return with everything you wanted in the first place, but it’s a thing we can all do if we so wish. As we transition up the scale from trivial projects to those more life-defining, we naturally grow more conscious. While this can sometimes stifle progress, especially for those of a perfectionist nature amongst us, there are strategies we can put in place to mitigate these effects. I always press publish. It could be the worst piece I’ve ever written, but one has to take that unfortunate prize. But over time, progress continues in the right direction in my project of a lifetime.
Central To Our Being Or On The Edge – Some projects can be a small portion of us. Maybe we enjoy taking pictures of funny bits of graffiti around our local area, or purposefully making mistakes on Reddit to get incredibly downgraded. Both are ideas nestled in my ideas page from the past year that at one point I thought sounded great. But they wouldn’t have been central to me. Projects that align with our values, that feature a small piece of ourselves, can lead our projects to become projects that are central to our very existence.
Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash Self-Projects or Given To Us – When you choose a project yourself, it’s easier to develop that project due to your personal interests in it. Anybody who starts a project must have some level of interest in it. We can have the freedom to choose its direction, and we have a sense of control over its direction and success, however, we define success for our individual projects. We can also change our projects if we wish, not confined to the limitations of somebody else’s guidelines. It's not always all bad when pursuing projects set by others. It can allow us to develop skills we may neglect or expose us to new ideas and methods of working. We can also get more recognition for projects we complete that are set by others, which can advance those of us who are career-oriented.
Solo or Group Projects – Some projects, like many writing a book state, require solitude to almost “drain” the ideas out of yourself and onto paper. Other projects require a constant back-and-forth between project members to cultivate and grow the project into a combination of all these people, thus providing a more complete project come the end of its life.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
Concluding Remarks
I’m lucky that writing is the large project that I revolve most of my life around. It can be as glorious a pursuit as we choose. For many of us here, it’s a self-initiated, solitary pursuit, but one that brings grand purpose. Little pieces of ourselves that we put out there for anybody interested to take a peek into. A method of survival, as we traverse the complexity of life. The beauty of Substack is any small idea we have could become another newsletter. It might not be our project of a lifetime, and it might exist more on the edge, but it’s chosen by us. These projects can often be more carefree, and less edited, but not less important. Perhaps there is a chance yet for my funny graffiti idea!
If you’re lucky enough to find your “project” that sustains you, cling to it. We’re all trying too hard to get it right, when mistakes are inevitable, and nobody truly knows what they’re doing anyway. Some are just better at making it look as though they are. Anything that brings purpose and increased life satisfaction is a part of your self-worth exploring and cultivating.
So, what’s your project?
Short-Form Sunday
Song of the Week: Evangeline by Stephen Sanchez
Podcast of the Week: Bill Browder - State of Russian Culture, Russian Economy, etc - Curious Worldview Podcast
Advice of the Week:
When making any decision, ask yourself: If somebody else was making this decision, what advice would I give to them? Use any takeaways from this thought process to guide your own decision.
Sources:
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4684-0634-4_2
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/conscious-v-subconscious-mind-darren-timms#:~:text=The%20conscious%20mind%20runs%20the,the%20outcome%20of%20our%20lives.
A project verifies your abilities (or your need for growth), in a certain sphere of activity. That is satisfying right there. I would say that without engaging your thoughts into activity, you can't know who you are (in this moment). So then you are just thoughts. Thoughts can go anywhere, not necessarily on planet earth. Doesn't that squander your life?
Of course you engage with projects that draw your interest.
You could look at it, that projects present themselves to us. It may be through another, or it may be what we call volition. Then we say yes or no. Often when the other presents the project they might offer a stimulus, a salary. Still we say yes or no. I think group-projects have money involved. Otherwise what is the glue that holds them together?
I have a group project to enter into dialog. If nobody shows up on my blog comment section, I come here. So what's the problem? Fortunately that project is not to stay ring-fenced on my own territory, (only to grow my own blog).
So Hi Dylan, How are you doing?
.
I went into this with the expectation that the average person picks a few projects a year and sticks to them. I finished this with the knowledge that every day there is a small project I complete. It was a refreshing take on what makes a project, a project. Thank you for helping me discover this new perspective and for the enjoyable read :)