Accomplish Big Goals in 6 Weeks with a Sprint Project

Hi everyone, my name is Matt and welcome to a new episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. I'm so excited and so grateful to be sharing this episode with you. And if you're watching on YouTube, thank you so much for checking out the YouTube channel. You are in the second episode of recording Connect the Dots at night and my new like little lighting setup. Last week it was orange light at midnight and tonight it is 8:25 PM Central Time, and I'm doing some blue light because I'm wearing a bunch of orange, and that would just be way too much orange, even though it's my favorite color. Anyway, thank you so much for listening. Thank you for watching. Thank you for rating, reviewing, subscribing. It means a lot to me. I think we're right around 20 episodes now, so this is— every 10 episodes I do feels like a nice little mini milestone. And like, yeah, you can keep going. Doing this. Let me know also. You can email me or you can, you know, ping me on Twitter, Instagram @MattRagland, and let me know what you thought about the couple of creator-centric episodes that I did. I'd be really interested to hear your feedback. But what we are talking about today is back to productivity, and one of the things that I want to help you put together is a really great 6-week sprint for a project. Now, when we talk about projects, we've talked about projects a lot before. We've talked about them in systems versus outcomes. We've talked about them in like how to have your most productive week ever. We've talked about them in like how to plan your year. We've talked about, you know, time blocking. We've talked about all these different pieces of projects. We've also talked about how I'm working in 8-week sprints for this year. And So I want to help you focus on this 6-week sprint duration. And I'm going to give you several tips and several like different productivity power-ups to help you connect the dots, pun intended, on getting from a starting point of a project that you have been really wanting to get done, maybe you just haven't been able to get over the hump, or you don't have a good planning slash execution process for actually getting the thing done. That's what I'm going to help you with in this episode today. The first thing that I want you to do to plan this 6-week sprint of a project is to define the outcome or success of what your project, what your goal is going to be. And I want you to pay attention to that word of outcome. Define the outcome because there is a difference. We talked about this on a different show. Look for it in the show notes in the description below. There's a difference between a goal that is outcome-focused and one that is system-focused. An outcome-focused goal has a completion date, or it has a specific series of tasks that you can complete to reach your outcome, to have a successful completion of the project. System-based goals, kind of like habits, aren't that way. They— you can still have a goal, like say releasing a weekly podcast, for me is a goal, but it doesn't have a particular, like, you know, completion. It's just whenever I decide to stop doing the Connect the Dots podcast. But it's not the same as I want to launch a podcast. That is an outcome-based goal. But, and then it can transition into a system-based kind of habit-based goal of I want to release a show every week. You see the difference between those things. Now you could also say I have like a a system or a habit of running, but an outcome-based goal is doing this particular race. So it can still, like, the same kind of, like, work or habit can have an outcome and a system-based goal. But for the 6-week sprint, I want you to define a specific outcome that you want to complete or reach that you would deem successful. The caveat to this also is make sure that this outcome is something that you can control.. And so maybe it is something like produce and launch a podcast or a course or do this thing that again has a specific number of tasks or a completion date that you control. Don't make it so like for me, if I was to say that I want to launch these 4 videos on YouTube and the goal is to get 10,000 views a video. Well, I, I don't really control that as much. You could say like, well, you know, you can have a good thumbnail, title, tags, all those things. And yes, that's all true. And I should, work to optimize those things. But I did the work, I produced the videos, but if I didn't get 10,000 views a video, is it a failure? That's often how we like set a lot of our goals. And sometimes that's good. But in this instance, to be super clear, first and foremost, make sure you define the outcome of your goal or project, something that you control, with an end date that has a set number of tasks or to-dos that you can control. Okay, speaking of those tasks and to-dos, the next thing that you're going to do once you have defined the outcome of your goal or project, I want you to take the time and brainstorm and list every single task, to-do, item, contingency that you can possibly think of at this moment that will help you reach a successful achievement and conclusion, completion of the goal that you've set. What I want you to keep in mind is you can always come back and add to this list. You can also come back and detract and delete from this list. So don't get overwhelmed or don't get yourself stuck thinking that, oh well, maybe I haven't thought of every single thing I have to do, or maybe I haven't planned for every single contingency. We're not, you know, launching rockets into space here. What will happen oftentimes is even after you make your first full list, yes, you will add some things, you'll also delete some things, and you'll be like, ah, this thing that I thought was really important actually didn't matter all that much. So take the time and list all the to-dos, all the tasks, everything that you can think of that will help you bring this project, bring this goal to fruition and to completion. The third thing that you're going to do when it comes to this 6-week sprint is you have a defined outcome. You've listed all the tasks that you can possibly think of at this moment. You always come back to it and you will come back to it. The next thing that I want you to do is look at it and just see if you can guess or project how much time this thing is going to take. Like if you looked and said, okay, I have 6 weeks to do this, but if I just looked at all the tasks as a whole? How long do I kind of think they'll take? How much time, if I look at this, do I believe that it will take to complete this? Is it going to take me 30 hours? Is it going to take me 50 hours? Might it only take me 15 hours? And just kind of guess. Again, if you're not very familiar and you haven't done very much like intentional time tracking and time blocking to better understand how long certain things take, then everything that you guess is really going to be a guess and a projection at this point. We'll come to that in the next, the next tip that I have for you. But go ahead and project out how long you expect this thing to take. That's going to be very important because the other thing that you're going to do is you look at this for 6 weeks and you just kind of break down in your head or, you know, on a piece of paper, like, I have 6 weeks to do this. How much time can I really spend on this project every single week? And that's a really important question to ask because if you think like, ah, you know, I can spend, you know, 4 or 5 hours a week on this, which is, you know, basically say an hour a day on workdays, or maybe you spend a couple hours on it over the weekend each day. But let's just say 4 or 5 hours. And I was spending— when I was doing all this as a side hustle, one of the reasons that I didn't do the podcast earlier, I didn't start writing daily emails earlier, earlier was because I knew that I only had about maybe 8 to 10 hours, maybe, to spend on YouTube videos, courses, and coaching every single week. And if that's the case, then I need to spend all of that time, and I was, on YouTube courses and coaching. And so I just didn't have the time to say like, okay, I'm going to spend another 5 hours. What am I going to do that and not do the YouTube channel? And so if you think you could spend 5 hours a week on this and you have 6 weeks, Okay, you've got 30 hours. If you have a project and you're kind of looking at it thinking like, ah, this will take 30 or 40 hours, you don't have very much, you know, room for error. You don't have very much margin for error at this point. That's important to know because then you can think about how you either want to expand or maybe contract the scope of the project that you have. I want to be clear that I'm not trying to make you second-guess yourself or get stuck trying to overplan the amount of time something takes, because if you're not 100% sure on it, then you should just do some time tracking for a week or two as you are working on this project. Maybe it's like a little, a little ramp up. So maybe this ends up being an 8-week project so that you can better understand and project your time going forward. Which leads us into the next tip, the fourth tip, which is to look ahead at your week, say just the next week or two, and block out the time that you need to work effectively on this project. Depending on what your project is and how much time you think it's going to take, I do recommend that most people spend at least 3, if not closer to 5 hours per week on the project. Now, if this is one of your core work projects that you are working on, then you might end up spending like 8 to 10 hours on it, and it may, you know, take you less time, or you may be able to do a much bigger project if you have 60, 70 hours to work on this thing instead of 25 to 30 hours. So you can see that steps 3 and 4 really go hand in hand. And when you think about how can I better estimate and project the amount of time that this project is going to take so that I can better protect and block my time going forward so that I have time— tying into the first 2 steps— so that I have time to work on the action steps each week, which naturally bring me to a conclusion of a successful outcome of my goal or project. At the end of these 6 weeks. Okay, now the next thing that you're going to do, which will really help you stay on track and create a lot of clarity for each week, is I want you to look through your action steps, and they may not all align perfectly like this, but I want you to pick out 6 actions or 6 kind of weekly milestones or deliverables that, you know, if you're hitting these deliverables every week, and maybe you have to smash a couple together, but if you're hitting these deliverables every week, you know that you're staying on track. To a successful completion of the goal at the end of 6 weeks. So go ahead and set up these weekly deliverables, 6 of them, to make sure that as long as you're hitting these, then you are staying on track for a successful completion of your goal. Now when I've worked with people on like this pillar, we call it a pillar project in the Productivity Power-Up. Didn't necessarily intend to have so many P's in my work. The Productivity Power-Up Pillar Project. Man, say that 5 times fast. When I work with people on this— there's another P— when I work with people on this, one of the things that can easily get people most stuck is when I tell them to set these, these 6 weekly deliverables. And a lot of times they have trouble coming up with 6. So what I want you to do is just come up with the first, uh, the first 2, maybe even just the first one. Because what will often happen if you just have like these first couple of deliverables ready and you still have your action, you still have all your action items, and you can kind of add and remove some of those depending on how much they're needed. But as you get started with the first couple of weeks of deliverables, then you'll see which one naturally comes up, what kind of delivery or milestone naturally comes up in weeks 3, 4, 5, 6, based on the consistency that you've already shown, based on the progress that you've made and the momentum that you've built. A story that illustrates this first track mindset really well comes from the book The Lion Tracker's Guide to Life. And true to its title, it's about a group of 3 trackers and they're out in the African bushveld and they are tracking a lion. And the main guy from the book, the actual author, is on the track with his two mentors. And one of the things that he talks about is like the, the eldest mentor, the eldest tracker of the group, he has this mindset of just find the first track, follow the first track. It— when you think about it that way, and I think I started thinking about productivity this way, and like you just need to find that first step, you just need to find that first track. A tracker— and they talk about this in the book— it would be silly if he saw the lion's first track, or whatever animal they're tracking, and he like looked off in the distance, he was like, ah, well, clearly this is the first track right here, but I can't see the 10th track, so we're not going to follow it. Yeah, you wouldn't, you wouldn't do that. Here's the first track, let's find the second track, then the third, then the fourth. And you can think of, you know, some of your productivity that way, you can think of some of your project management that way, because things that you think are important right now will not be as important by the time the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th week deliverables and milestones come through. These things that you may not even be considering right now because you're doing the work, because you're putting in the effort, because you're putting in the work, because you're following those tracks, things that you aren't even thinking of right now will become really important and you'll be able to do them very naturally because you already have that experience and expertise gained from following the tracks, from doing the milestones, from following through on the tasks that you've set for yourself. So have that first track mindset when you're going into planning. The next thing that you're going to do, and this is a power-up, a talent, a skill that if you've been watching me on YouTube and you've been listening to these podcasts, you already have this like power-up in your kit, and it's doing the GAP Weekly Preview. So now that you've set out at least that first track, that first week's deliverable or milestone, now you know going into next week that you have your goal of the week, right? And once you have that goal for the week, you can look at your action list and migrate, kind of move those actions from your master list into your weekly action list. And now you look at and say, well, I've already protected, I already kind of have an idea of the time that I need to protect this week. It's going to be on Tuesday, Thursday mornings. I'm going to focus on this for 2 hours on each day. And so now, you know, I've got 4 hours to do this. That gives me about 24 hours, give or take, for the entire 6-week sprint. But because I know my weekly milestones, I know what my weekly goals are going to be, and I know the action steps. I know I'm going to protect that time. So you see how all of this is coming together, how all of it is pulling together. I defined my goal. I know the action steps. I know when I'm going to protect my time for this for the next 6 weeks. And when I've defined that and I've set my milestones, now I can take something that is a 6-week project and I can squeeze it down to not just a week but to every single day. And we're able to do this, you know, backwards and forwards with any kind of project that we want to do. We can even expand it out to a little bit further time. And if you're not used to this, if you're not comfortable with even a 6-week goal, like not even to say like a quarterly goal or an annual goal, then what I want you to do is just think about that first week. Think about that weekly milestone. Think about that first track and just practice one track after another. What's my goal for this week? What are the action steps associated with it? When am I going to protect the time to do it? Okay, and we won't go into this too deep during this particular episode, but just at the end of the week, remember to do your WRAP review. W-R-A-P. And just as a disclaimer real quick, I have I have talked about this as warp in the past, but it does sound really nice. Shout out to Harsh from, uh, one of my courses for pointing this out. It just sounds really nice to say, I'm going to do my weekly wrap review. I'm going to do the wrap-up review. So it's wins, results of my aspirations, and pivoting to maybe different things or the same thing, and which isn't a pivot, but thinking about how I might pivot going into the next week. There's a whole episode on the GAP and wrap preview and review, so I'm not going to do like a whole deep dive into that right now, but make sure you check out that podcast and those videos because it'll give you a lot more information on that process. But that's how, in a really lightweight, simple, minimalist structure, productivity kit that I've pre-assembled for you, that you can take a 6-week sprint and a specific outcome goal that you want to accomplish and have a plan for it. Just follow everything that I've talked to you about in this episode today. Make sure you define the outcome, list all the action tasks, make sure that you understand how much time, estimate and project how much time something's going to take so that then you can protect the appropriate amount of time in your weeks going forward. Okay, make sure that you also create and set kind of a weekly deliverable for each week, because if you set those 6 weekly deliverables or milestones, that will help you backtrack and narrow a larger project into a weekly and even a daily process of looking at it from the, from the week ahead with that weekly preview and say, okay, I know my weekly milestone for the larger project is this. Well, now this becomes my main goal in the gap preview. So the goal, migrating in any of the action steps from the master list for the project, making sure that I'm protecting the time, maybe a little more, could be a little less for this particular week, and just staying consistent, staying steady, finding that first track. Don't get overwhelmed if you don't feel like you know everything about the project at this time. That's okay. Find the first track, then find the second track, and the third, and the fourth, and so on from there. The last thing that I want to tell you about that can be really helpful for this is to have a proper note-taking or idea information management system. Now this is one of the 5 pillars of productivity is having a good system and structure for organizing your ideas and your information. So you can do that with a bunch of different ways, but just as a really simple process template for this particular project, I want you to think about having like, say, a top-level note or page. It could be in your bullet journal collection, it could be in Notion, could be in Roam, of these are all the notes and ideas that I'm collecting for this particular project. And then having like sub-pages or sub-bullets for each week of deliverables. So you have this top-level page of notes and ideas that you put just anything that's at all related to the project. But if you have something specific for that week, make sure you put that on the weekly deliverable page. And that, in your Bullet Journal, could be like just your gap preview, you know, weekly preview page that you do before you go into all the daily logs. Now, I know when you're hearing this, and even if you're seeing it on YouTube, if you're watching this on YouTube, a lot of this, like, when you're just hearing it, can sound a little overwhelming. Well, we do run— I do run a cohort course about this 3 or 4 times a year. We're actually, as I'm recording this, we're in week 1 of the the second cohort of 2021 for the Productivity Power-Up. And so if you want to be on the list and you want me— and I think we have about 30 people in this cohort right now— if you want me and several other smart, motivated people to help you take this 6-week project over the hump and get it done and feel supported and get coaching and templates and structure, all of these things in a really great community, go to mattrogland.com/powerup. You'll get some free like email follow-ups to help you with it. And you'll also be the first to know when we launch a new cohort or a new round, sometimes I call it, a little bit later in this summer. So again, just go to mattrogland.com/powerup. That is where you can make sure you get all the information and some quick tips and resources to help you get over this project hump, connect the dots, pun intended, and assemble a specific productivity kit that will help you do the thing that really matters to me— to you— to me. Yeah, I mean, it matters to me that you're successful. That's why I'm doing this. But do the work that matters to you. All right, everyone, that's going to do it for this episode of the Connect the Dots podcast. Again, thank you so much for listening. If you're interested in the Productivity Power-Up, make sure you go to mattrogland.com/powerup. Follow me on Twitter and Instagram @MattRogland. It's a real pleasure to do these. If you have any ideas for episodes or things that you would like to hear more about, just, you know, reach out to me on those social channels or just work@mattragland.com. Thanks so much, and I will see you in the next episode. Bye.