2/10/13

Unfinished Projects: Hacks for the Distracted, Overworked, and Unmotivated

I have so many unfinished sewing projects, and I think, because I'm processing some other things in my life and trying to move forward in a major way, I'm organizing and paring down so that I can have clarity and tie up some things that have been hanging around the house for years.

Managing these unfinshed projects is a great excuse to talk about my little hacks that allow me to complete an enormous amount of projects and feel like an awesome accomplisher of things. Whoohoo. This is how I organized my unfinished sewing stuff, but this is the system I use for moving forward in a lot of areas of my life (for example, with all of the books I plan on reading this year):

  1. Take photos of all of my unfinished projects. This helps me remember all my projects at a glance. If it helps to make them pretty, try Pixlr, an online photo-editing program that is incredibly rich. 
  2. Upload them to my Trello board. If you don't know what Trello is, it's an awesome board sort of like post-its but on the internet. You can share them or assign them to others, and archive them when they are complete. I have 4 rows of "cards" that are broken up into: To Do Week of [Current Week], Spiritual, Mental, and Physical. I put the unfinished sewing projects into Mental, because I think they are helping me clear away both Mental and Physical clutter. 
  3. I take a look at my google calendar and figure out when I'd like to work on these projects. Some I am excited to work on, and some I need motivation for. I block the hours in my calendar, and I decide if the ones I need motivation for should be something I do with friends, or hire someone to help me with. 
  4. If I need help getting motivated, I post a task on TaskRabbit, Facebook, or ask a friend to come over for craft day. I'll also create a reward. I keep a list of treats I've been wanting for myself on Keep.com or Pinterest. I did a project for Keep last year.  It's a pretty cool platform, similar to Pinterest but everything must be able to be purchased. 
  5. At some point, I have to actually do the work. If the calendar announcement goes off and I can't bring myself to do it, well, it could be because I didn't have enough free time in the week, so I make an effort to take more time for myself, and reschedule for the next week. Or, I just do it anyway, then later feel tired yet satisfied. 
  6. The best part of this process is when I get to archive a card, because that means it leaves the board forever. It's satisfying. I think I might be a good candidate for of a project management platform that uses gamification. Or maybe I can invent one. 

Anyway, here's a bonus collage of all of the projects I've finished this month.



1 comments:

tokyo bag lady said...

Yay! You did it!

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