Brian Walch explains why personal development projects need a fixed end date, not just goals. Without one, scope creep takes over and projects never finish. Set a start and end date, then stop at the deadline to capture what you learned and move forward.
I've been talking about the idea of creating a project plan for your personal development initiative, and we're going through some of the elements to include in that project plan. Yesterday we talked about scope and identifying what you're trying to do and making sure that it's not something too big so that you're overwhelmed, but also not so small that you're uninspired about it. So the next element to consider is your timeframe. In projects, there's a couple ways you can define what is done for a project. One of those is by identifying some objectives, what the project is going to complete, and that's what's considered done. The other way to do it is by setting a specific timeframe. So three months or four months or six months, whatever makes sense for you. And that's what I'd recommend for a personal development project. What happens in personal development initiatives is kind of similar to what happens when you introduce software in an organization. As you undertake the activities of the project, the objectives change. In projects, what happens is, it's called scope creep. The objectives continue to change, and so the project actually never gets done. That's why I recommend setting a timeframe. And at the end of that timeframe for your personal development project that's done, that's gonna allow you to wrap up the project and then reflect a little bit and look back and take what lessons you can learn and take those forward into your next initiative. You don't want to have scope creep in a personal development project because then it's never going to get completed. So set a timeframe. I recommend writing down your start date and your end date, and on that end date, regardless of what you've gotten done, call the project done, learn, do a postmortem, and then move forward with your next initiative. Next week, we'll continue going through some of the elements that I consider to be part of a project plan for personal development. I hope you have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend. We'll see you then. Thanks.
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