Ed. note: This post is appropriate because we’re “shipping” our son to the world in just a few hours.  Wish us luck!  Posting may be slow for a little while as we adjust to a bigger family, but if you’re signed up for email updates, Twitter, or RSS, you may not even notice!

If you work in the tech industry, you’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase, “Real artists ship”.  It’s a quote attributed to Steve Jobs, the founder and current CEO of Apple, as a motivator for the development team of the original Macintosh computer.

In this context, shipping means getting your product out the door and into the hands of the world.  But it could mean submitting your term paper, completing a big sale, or finishing a year-long boat renovation.  Life is full of projects like these that could go on indefinitely, but ultimately have to ship in order to make a difference. 

If these projects don’t ship, they’re just hobbies.  If they don’t ship, they were just fun ideas – and ideas are a dime a dozen… everyone has good ideas.  But shipping… that’s hard.  And the rewards of shipping are reserved for the few that are able to do it, not the people who first thought of the idea.

The “problem” with starting a project with the expectation that it’ll ship is that it imposes all sorts of constraints.  The technology isn’t where you need it to be, you don’t have the time you need to do everything you want to do, or you don’t have the people or money.  In order to truly think “outside the box” you need a team that’s twice as big with twice as much money and faster computers!  Of course that’s all bogus.

Constraints are why things ship.

If you didn’t have a deadline to submit your term paper, you could tweak it forever.  If you didn’t have customers waiting for the next version of your software or competitors breathing down your neck, you could add every feature you’ve ever thought of.  You need constraints to really think about how to best solve a problem.  Constraints are good.

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“Every year, hundreds of New Yorkers congregate on Tax Day at the 24-hour post office at 34th and 8th Avenue, polishing off their 1040s, filling out their registered mail slips, and sealing their envelopes. The lines snake up and down the cavernous interior of the building and most of the people are more tired than anxious. (With the exception of the few still filling out their forms.)”

Photo and description by Amit Gupta.

Last weekend I had the unenviable (yet unfortunately inevitable) task of getting our 2009 taxes prepared.  I stopped actually doing our taxes about 10 years ago, but that doesn’t mean I’m completely off the hook here.  There’s still just as much preparation involved to make sure everything is tracked and reported, and that my accountant has all the information he needs in order to file.

There are far worse things in the world, I know.  But I definitely don’t look forward to this time of year.  In fact, it’s probably the most postponed thing on my to-do list.

Let’s see… I could play with my daughter or sit in my home office surrounded by arcane forms.  We could go for a walk down by the waterfront as a family or I could scan and shred documents instead.  My wife and I could watch an episode of Friday Night Lights or read in bed… or I could sit at a computer adding up real estate taxes and 1099/W-2 forms.  You get the picture.

I decided to take a different approach this year.  Instead of dreading and postponing the project from week to week, I’d learn from it.  I knew I didn’t want to do this, but I knew I had to.  So I decided to use it as a sort of test for overcoming procrastination – how would I get myself to move forward despite knowing it wouldn’t be any fun?  At the very least, I could write up my experience on Refocuser and see if the process helps others.

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This post is part of the Project Management: Starting a Blog series.  Read the first part.

In the first part of this series I covered an overview of using project management principles for life projects, building out a project plan, and deciding on a name and logo for your blog.  Now I’ll talk about setting up WordPress hosting and hooking up Windows Live Writer.  By the end of this post you should have most of the high-level tools you’d need to start a blog yourself – and while that isn’t the focus of this blog necessarily, I do want to make sure that all this stuff I’ve learned over the last couple months doesn’t go to waste.  If nothing else I can point friends here when they ask me how to do some of this!

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This post is part of the Project Management: Starting a Blog series.  Read the second part.

Project management is a lost art and much needed science outside of corporate America.  Many people spend most of their working lives planning projects for a living, but leave that toolbox in the office when they jet for home.  However, life is a series of projects – some of them so complex they would put to shame anything you’d encounter at work – and the same tactics that have been proven over the centuries to work for managing vast, interdependent projects like the Roman Aqueducts also work for cleaning out the basement on a Sunday afternoon.

Project management doesn’t sound sexy though, does it?  I’d bet you immediately imagined some geek with a clipboard, sitting in a cubicle, staring at a GANTT chart in Microsoft Project.  But just work with me for a moment: what if the same process that works for that geek would work for you as well?  Would it be worth a shot?  What if learning some ”boring” project management skills helps you get that job you’ve always wanted, keeps you sane while moving across the country, or helps you to relax over your upcoming wedding?

Add little to little and there will be a big pile.  Ovid 43 BCE – 17 CE

Over time I plan to cover project management in more detail and relate the strategies and tactics to focus and to life (an amorphous, ambiguous blob lacking structure).  I strongly believe that solid project management skills can help you lose weight, get that degree you abandoned, start your own business, or… simply start a blog like I’m about to describe.

For now, let’s just examine how this blog got off the ground…

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