Handle Side Projects Effectively With Your Mentally Prepared
When it comes to side projects, time management is very important. Rather than wasting precious time on side projects figuring out how to pick up where you left off, you can mentally prepare yourself during breaks throughout the day and get to work right away.
When you have work and other commitments that take up most of your time and energy, side projects are pushed into your brain most of the time. When you finally have time to work on a side project, you spend a huge chunk of it figuring out what you did last time and what is the next step. Quora’s Kah Keng Tai invites you to do some mental prep work before starting a project:
In the case of a side project between the moments when you are working on it, your ideas and thoughts often live in your biological memory, probably in the medium to long term storage. I found that it takes time to get it all back into the center of your thinking and creative process, but it would be a waste if that time could be spent actually working on your project. Instead, I spend all my time on the road deserializing, mentally preparing a list of things I can do as soon as I get home.
If you have a commute, jogging on business, or just being alone for a little while during the day, use this to start piece by piece. By the time you finally get started on your side project, you will know exactly where to start, and you won’t be wasting any time. This way it will be much easier to meet your personal deadlines and see how your hard work will lead to something. Just make sure you mentally prepare yourself for times when you don’t need your mental strength for something else.
Kah Keng Tai answers the question: how can you increase the productivity of third-party projects? | Quora via Inc.