Project Thinking: The Friend of Fabulosity

Volume 2, Number 7  |  July 2008

Back when I was a wee girl making weekend visits to Divorced Dad's Bachelor Pad, I got many lessons in impulse behavior. The pinnacle had to have been one rainy Saturday when, upon discovering that It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World was being broadcast that evening, he piled us into a cab, headed straight down to Marshall Field's in the Loop, and bought a color TV on the spot: still a wildly extravagant purchase back in the early 1970s, and an event that had made such a strong impression upon me, I reenacted it in my 20s, in New York, complete with rainy day and Checker cab (rare, by 1985).

There's nothing wrong with impulsiveness as a seasoning. My gut has never steered me wrong when it came to great leaps that took me out of myself, whether for safety (cross the street NOW) or adventure (say "YES!" to love, to the insta-road trip, to the color TV).

But that's what it needs to be: a seasoning. The meat-and-potatoes of any venture is methodical, structured, incremental action, punctuated by the occasional wild leap.

This seems pretty obvious when it comes to certain things, like building a house or becoming a doctor. For some reason, though, when we move into creative ventures, we tend to feel like we should go with the flow. I'm here to tell you: great in the context of an acting scene, death to an acting career. Or a career of any kind. Or, for that matter, to any scheme of greatness, from self-actualization to life change to vegetable garden.

In my experience--and at almost-47 and three careers (and counting), I have plenty--the best assurance of success comes from treating a dream like a project. And, while every project will work a little differently, there are commonalities to how you manage them.

1. "Start with the end in mind."

I lifted the above straight from Stephen Covey, but it's the best, most concise way I've heard it expressed. Without a goal, you're almost certainly sunk before you've begun. Your goal may shift slightly along the way as what you're after starts coming into focus, but really, if you've worked to find solid, heart-centered goals (i.e., what you really want vs. what you think you want, or what others want for you), you're off to a good start.

I'm also a longtime fan of Jinny Ditzler's Your Best Year Yet and many Brian Tracy books: Goals! is good. More woo-woo friendly types might prefer The Artist's Way or Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting. 

Coaches can be great for this kind of help, too. You know best whether you work better alone, in groups or with one-on-one guidance. But spend the most time upfront, with this step; it pays out big time on the back end.

2. Come up with a touchstone.

This is a distillation of your underlying goal, or life's purpose, put in terms that are meaningful to you.

Some people like theirs served up mantra-style, some like a more cut-and-dried mission statement. Mine is a kind of hybrid: "To be a joyful conduit of truth, beauty and love." I came up with it as I was shifting from being an adhole to committing to a performing career, but it's served me ever since.

Again, this is not necessarily the goal you come up with in step one. A literal goal--something concrete, something to point your guns at in the physical world--is what you're looking for there. That can change; the fundamental thing that you are, the thing that animates you, does not. This is what Joseph Campbell described as your bliss. His took him from a passion for Native American study to a study of the philosophy to a study of Sanskrit and beyond, but the thread was the same: to understand the big, underlying Truths of mankind.

3. Break it down

The initial rush of energy you get starting something new will not sustain itself or you. After the honeymoon comes the work, and in my experience, the best way to make the work actually workable is to chunk it into pieces and slot it into a schedule. Yeah, yeah--a thrilling prospect for you non-Virgos out there. But trust me, the digestible chunk is your friend.

Again, you're going to work backwards, from the end to the beginning. You don't need every detail of every step plotted out from the beginning, and things will change as you move forward, but you want to rule out avoidable roadblocks. There's a reason that one of the most famous books in the profession is An Actor Prepares, not An Actor Wins the Hollywood Lottery. Luck is great when it's good and it happens; not so much when it's bad or non-existent.

My favorite ready-made pancake mix for planning and organizing is David Allen's Getting Things Done, but you can't swing a cat these days without knocking over a stack of productivity books, and you can get creative and roll your own.

Speaking of which, boy-oh-boy is the Internet your friend when it comes to new ventures. There's almost nothing you can dream of that other people haven't already done and are willing to dispense advice about. Be judicious and prudent in what you listen to, but do listen to it.

In the midst of my own transition and grappling with some long-put-off goals of my own, I've been looking long and hard at what it takes to accomplish things. I'm finding that slow-and-steady--my daily walking program, my 30-minutes-per-day chipping away programs (with pre-arranged accountability check-ins to keep me honest)--is proving wildly, if boringly, successful. (Hey--my shrink gave me a gold star.)

What are you doing/reading/implementing that's working?

What pieces does it feel like you are missing?