It takes me a while to fall in love with a project. I sent the current draft of my novel off to my agent, so I’m waiting on that. I finished revisions to my Philanthropy Roundtable book on teacher and principal quality. I’m gearing up on Mosaic, but right now it’s a lot of recruiting people to participate — following up on leads, confirming workshops. I enjoy writing more than I enjoy that. I know I will fall in love with this project as soon as I start doing real data analysis on it and as I do more interviews. What I already have is fascinating. It will be much more fascinating as I get more logs.
So right now I’m feeling in a post-project slump. I know I should be trying to get ahead of future chaos — future snow days and babysitter jury duty — and I should be tackling the backlog of personal things I’m putting off. But I don’t feel like it. So there.
I’ve written pieces about how to combat the post-project slump before. I know I should pull out my bits (and chunks) of joy list. I should daydream about future goals. I can make little bits of progress on these (like writing 1000 words of fiction, given that I want to crank out a novel a year). But I also know that some days you just don’t feel terribly productive. You think about that video on jelly beans representing your time on earth, and you recognize that today was not that great a jelly bean. It was licorice-flavored. And you’re not that fond of licorice.
Do you ever have days like that?
In other news: Here’s the podcast from the GTD Virtual Study group on early risers vs. night owls.
Just curious. Do you go through the same emotional cycle for your short projects, like the pieces for Fast Company?
@jd- nope. Those take a few hours at most for interviews and drafting. If I had such an emotional cycle I wouldn’t be able to function!
I would (submitted a paper today) except I really have to bake a cake for tomorrow for a party. And then we have candidates coming. And that report that was really due last month. And that other report due next week. But I’m totally planning on taking Sunday off.
Oh, except I can’t because my RA is working monday morning when I’m taking the speaker to breakfast. So I have to figure out something for her to do.
This happens to me frequently. Licorice, however, is my favorite flavor of jellybean.
I DEFINITELY have days like that! For me it often happens in the evenings, when I’ve had a long day at work. Even if it wasn’t particularly productive, but rather chaotic. I get home and think, “I should clean the kitchen, cook dinner, etc,” or even, “I’ve been wanting to write a blog post, and I could do that right now.” But sometimes, even good things that you generally want to do just aren’t appealing! I try to be kind to myself and give myself grace on those occasional evenings. 🙂