If you’re anything like me, then you always have a couple of projects open. It always seems like I am opening more projects than I am closing. In fact it is quite daunting when look at this ever growing mountain of work you are creating for yourself.

I want to build a guitar, create a number different web pages, create a video tutorial course, write a book, create an iphone app, finish painting the house, tile the bathroom, create a garden, buy rental properties, invest in more stocks, create a CD ladder, run a marathon, kill the remaining debt chunk, and much more. The list just keeps getting longer and longer and it is hard to get things moving along.

Some of these items are entrepreneurial while others are clearly much more personal, but the fact remains the same, I’m not accomplishing things as fast as I would like to be.  It is time to start focusing on projects one at a time to get them taken out.

I’m starting with the marathon goal.  Over the past two months I have been training for a half marathon.  I’m a little over halfway there, and there have already been huge changes in my body.  The first couple of runs were absolutely terrible.  I couldn’t run very far or very fast.  I had tried by starting off where I left off 10 years ago.  Not a good idea.

I had a ‘long run’ of four miles one weekend that made nervous.  I had no idea how I would make it as the 2 and 3 mile runs were either painful or aborted partway.  I took the slow and steady approach and made it through.

Now I’ve finished my 7 ¼ mile run without any problems and 4 ½ mile runs are the standard short runs.  While I still have 6 more miles to add to the long run, I have absolutely no doubts about running a half marathon.

The big problem with having to many projects open at one time is that you are always feeling behind.  The reason you feel that way is because it is true!  Let’s say you are working on five different projects with varying timelines from 3 weeks to 6 weeks and you only have a limited period of time to work on them (After your day job & on weekends).

Project A : 6 Weekends needed to Complete
Project B :  5 Weekends needed to Complete
Project C :  4 Weekends needed to Complete
Project D :  3 Weekends needed to Complete
Project E :  4 Weekends needed to Complete

If you were to alternate tasks each weekend the pattern would be…

A-B-C-D-E-A-B-C-D-E-A-B-C-D-E-A-B-C-E-A-B-A

Project A :  22 Weeks Taken from start of project (6 Needed)
Project B :  20 Weeks Taken from start of project (5 Needed)
Project C :  16 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)
Project D :  11 Weeks Taken from start of project (3 Needed)
Project E :  15 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)

It would take 14 weeks before the first project (D) is completed and 22 weeks until your important project (A) is complete.

Then when you add another project to the mix, it pushes out completion dates even farther across the board.  If you lose interest in a project, you are more likely to add a new one and do just that.  If at week 7 you add project F (4 weekend project) into the mix

A-B-C-D-E-A-B-F-C-D-E-A-B-F-C-D-E-A-B-F-C-E-A-B-F-A

Now we have added 2 weeks to the time line before project D is complete, 3 more weeks for both project B, C, and E, and project A takes forever!

Project A : 26 Weeks Taken from start of project (6 Needed)
Project B : 23 Weeks Taken from start of project (5 Needed)
Project C : 19 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)
Project D : 14 Weeks Taken from start of project (3 Needed)
Project E : 18 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)
Project F : 18 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)

These timelines are assuming a perfect system where you have absolutely no life and nothing ever happens to distract you.  It’s assuming that you only work on the given tasks each weekend and nothing else.  No going to baseball games, bad weather, helping people move, doing urgent and unplanned for repairs, or weekend road trips with this model.  That would push things back to far.

If you were only able to work on these core projects 3 out of every 4 weekends each month (weekends not dedicated to the core projects denoted with an X), your timeline would look more like…

A-B-C-X-D-E-A-X-B-F-C-X-D-E-A-X-B-F-C-X-D-E-A-X-B-F-C-X-E-A-B-X-F-A

Now it is taking 22 weeks from now to get project D done.  Project D should be done in three weeks from the day you start it.  Here it is done 18 weeks after you start it.

If you were able complete your projects before new ones, the timeline would still be the same length overall, but it the efficiency per project would increase dramatically.  I’ve included the X’s as side projects, real life events, mishaps, and other delays and distractions.

A-A-A-X-A-A-A-X-B-B-B-X-B-B-C-X-C-C-C-X-D-D-D-X-E-E-E-X-E-F-F-X-F-F

Project A : 7 Weeks Taken from start of project (6 Needed)
Project B : 6 Weeks Taken from start of project (5 Needed)
Project C : 5 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)
Project D : 3 Weeks Taken from start of project (3 Needed)
Project E : 5 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)
Project F : 5 Weeks Taken from start of project (4 Needed)

Now project A is opened and closed in 7 weeks.  Project B is closed in 6 weeks.  Each weekend the goal is to work towards completion.  If you get ambitious about the next goal, you need to focus on the current task so you can go work on it.

Two areas in my life that often add projects are programming and woodworking.  I’m a lot better at coming up with projects in both fields than I am at completing them.  Right now I have 3 programs swimming around in my head or partially written that need to get out.  I have a crib that is mostly built waiting for my to finish it.  All it needs is a little more sanding and the oil put on.  I’ve got two rooms in my house waiting for me to get in there and paint them.

I’ve got projects of varying lengths and complexities.  Many of them have been opened and have fallen into the never ending cycle of projects.  In my own project time line there are a lot more X’s than I should be allowing.  It’s time for me to focus in on the projects one at a time and destroy them.

There is a bit of overlap if I define the marathon goal as project A.  The amount of training each weekend takes time, but there is more than half of the day left over.  As long as the training has been completed, I’ll be able to focus the remainder on project B or one of the urgent X projects.

I wonder if it says something about me that my priorities are to train for and run a half marathon, and then to prepare the nursery.  =D

As I work towards the marathon, the improvements to my body and mind have been quite positive.  Now that going on a run doesn’t consume my body with pain, I am able to use the time to think about my life, my direction, my plans, and my priorities.  I end each run feeling good both physically and emotionally.

How do your priorities and projects fit together?

Podcasting has been around for a couple of years now, and it is still growing. If you don’t have a podcast of your own yet, don’t worry: there is still room for growth. Right now the people who already have a podcast have a leg up, but with some determination and a little direction you can not only catch up, but shoot past the incumbents.

You can create a podcast about pretty much anything and get it listed through iTunes for free. Your users have a few other options for downloading as well. They could get the episodes automatically from a number of other programs or manually from your web site.

Choosing a niche topic could be a hurdle. If you are doing it for your business or website, you most likely already have a topic that could be expanded upon. If you want to do one for fun, make sure you choose something that will last. I can’t tell you how many times I have subscribed to a new podcast only to be waiting months for another episode before sadly giving up on what could have been a great series.

If you are not sure why you would want to have a podcast, let me tell you why you NEED a podcast.

Become a recognized expert in the topic

Anyone can start a website or a blog about a topic, but that doesn’t make them an expert. Anybody with enough money or credit can open up a business, regardless of if they actually care about what they are selling or doing. Adding a podcast screams passion for your business, your hobby, and your niche.

If you take the time to make a podcast, you develop a reputation and a voice for your industry. If you know what you are talking about and do a decent production job, then you could easily be THE voice of your industry. When somebody needs to know about buying purple elephant guns, who are they going to turn to: the person with a minuscule website that instructs users to stop into the store but hasn’t been updated since 2003, or the person who has a one hundred page site with 89 separate audio reviews about different purple elephant guns?

I’m going to give my business to the person who keeps their information current, demonstrating a passion for their industry. It doesn’t matter if you’re painting houses, cooking, or manufacturing rubber chickens – if you are passionate, it will show. Even if you don’t consider yourself an expert yet, pick something you love and go for it. You will gain more experience and knowledge the more you podcast, and eventually you will be guru of your topic.

Minimal costs to produce and deliver

Do you know how much it costs to make a podcast? The answer can vary, but you could have one up today basically for free. You can make a podcast with the cheap plastic microphone that comes with your computer. It will sound like a cheap plastic microphone that comes with your computer, but you can do it.

You can grab a microphone for around twenty five bucks that will sound okay, or you can go all out! The sky is the limit. However, studio grade equipment might be a waste for a podcast recorded in a high traffic area with inherent background noise. The most expensive equipment won’t always give you a better sound.

Bandwidth is cheap. Storage on the internet is cheap. Domain names are cheap. Recording software is cheap. A decent headset and microphone is cheap.

If you already have a website, it’s simply a matter of getting a microphone and installing some free software.

Humanize your image

Listening to a passionate voice filled with inflection and emotion is so much more persuasive than text alone. Knowing there is a real person involved creates a connection for your audience. Beyond simply sharing an interest in the topic, listeners will feel like they know you, even if you don’t ever get a chance to meet them. I have bought products created or written by people who I have this connection with. I trust the person, not their companies.

Steve Jobs is a human, and Steve Jobs is also Apple. Bill Gates is a human, but Bill Gates is certainly not Microsoft. He may have started Microsoft and perhaps was at one time the company’s face but who is the human image of Microsoft now? It’s John Hodgman, the “and I’m a PC” guy from Apple’s commercials. In Job’s somewhat healthier days, he would give the keynote addresses and introduce new products and services. Steve was the spokesperson for Apple, and made Apple more than another Silicon Valley technology company. Bill Gates would have to spend a lot more to get the same results.

Talk shows are nothing without the unique personalities providing a face for them. The jokes don’t tell themselves, and text transcripts of jokes are never as good as a solid delivery.

Expand your brand

The more ways people can consume your information, the more ways you can bring in interest. I have checked out many sites due to podcasts. I found them in iTunes and now swing by the sites from time to time.

Now I’ve got them on my radar. I will know about anything new that they do.

I wouldn’t have known that they even existed if they never produced that podcast.

From all of my projects, I have found that having other people watching and interested makes doing the work seem more like fun. It’s marketing but it is not quite the same as traditional marketing where you get out there and start beating on doors.

Very Targeted Consumers

While I haven’t checked out the scene for purple elephant guns lately, there are obscure and highly targeted niches that have more listeners than current podcasters are covering. If you start downloading podcasts, it is because you are interested in the topic. Beyond that you are interested enough to seek out, subscribe, download, and invest time listening to a very specific topic.

The only reason to go through the effort (it is a minimal effort, but it does take actions on the end users part) is because you care about a given topic.

If you produce a great podcast on a popular topic, you can gain quite a following. Even a mediocre podcast in a topic with less competition can gain quite a following. Not just a following, but people who actually care.

Start Today!

It is much cheaper to keep a current customer than it is to find a new one. This is one of the first things you learn in any business or marketing class. A podcast is a great feature to help you get a larger internet footprint.

Podcasting isn’t going away. People are out there downloading them every day. Every day new ones are being recorded. If you want to start, now is the best time to do so. Grab your mike, and get going! Those purple elephant guns aren’t going to talk about themselves.

Malcom Gladwell’s latest book has been out for a couple of months now, and I’ve got to tell you that it’s great. He has a really easy to read writing style. He mixes ideas with stories so seamlessly that really build and support his conclusions.

One important part of the book is having 10,000 hours of any activity to become truely proficiant at it. It doesn’t matter if it is writing programs and designing software all throughout software like Bill Gates, or if it is playing night after night nonstop in seedy establisments like the Beatles did.

Getting in that many hours would mean that whatever you wanted to completely master would have to be something that you absolutly loved doing. It would have to be a complete passion of yours.

Malcom Gladwell is very good at making things interesting, even if they normally wouldn’t be appealing to you he is great at crafting his words together.

This is a great book and I highly reccommend it; however I do believe that his previous two books Blink and The Tipping Point were better reads overall. They had more information that could be applied to life situations. In this book there are a lot of moments that will make you think “Oh, that’s cool.”

I haven’t been dissappointed by any of Malcolm’s books yet, and this one certainly lived up. I would also reccommend the audio versions of his books, you can load them up on your ipod and listen to them. Being read by the author, they have the inflections and dramatizations added to them percicly where Gladwell wanted to emphisize.

Pick up either Blink or Tipping Point first, and then don’t let this one go by.

I just wanted to share with you this post from Seth Godin’s blog. The article is basically about the tendency to keep good ideas down in favor of the current status quo. It’s a short little post, but I found it to be motivational.

There’s a myth that all you need to do is outline your vision and prove it’s right—then, quite suddenly, people will line up and support you.

In fact, the opposite is true. Remarkable visions and genuine insight are always met with resistance. And when you start to make progress, your efforts are met with even more resistance. Products, services, career paths… whatever it is, the forces for mediocrity will align to stop you, forgiving no errors and never backing down until it’s over.

The forces of mediocrity