quit before you start

For the last project I did, I identified the kill criteria-- the specific conditions under which I’d leave the project--before I agreed to take it on. Yes, that’s correct, I was thinking about leaving the project before I even started (lololol).

As a professional plate-spinner, I have multiple projects running at one time. And the biggest lessons I’ve had to learn over and over again are (1) clarify my intentions upfront and (2) don’t get sucked in and over-commit. These lessons are especially true with creative or passion projects where there may be fuzzy boundaries and even fuzzier financial resources.

A pre-mortem is an exercise in identifying the potential failure points. Instead of creating a plan where one assumes that everything is going to work out magically and you’ll get to your desired outcome, it’s anticipating all of the ways the goal will not be reached, and how/when you’d cut your losses. Strategic quitting.

For me, going through this pre-mortem process upfront gave me some internal clarity in ambiguous conditions, and informed the design of the project to mitigate risks.

Initially, I started writing a long and detailed post about how I successfully implemented a pre-mortem. Just y’know, demonstrating my strategic genius with the clear steps and delightful story that ties with a bow at the end.

But then it dawned on me:

I really should have written a pre-mortem for this damn writing project. I’m on day 12 of 30 and am experiencing regret. Why did I spontaneously commit myself to this huge project without planning ahead? Why didn’t I create some more intentional scaffolding and room for myself by anticipating all of the ways it could go sideways? Could I have made this smaller or more manageable and still achieve the desired outcome?

I’m squarely in the in-between, past the pre-mortem stage of anticipating and managing risks, not yet at post-mortem insights and lessons learned.

It’s the mid-mortem kill-me-now blues. What Seth Godin calls “the dip”--when something starts out rewarding, then gets very frustrating, but later (maybe) it gets rewarding again.

Honestly, I don’t know what to do from here, except consider this another one for the books and, at least for now, keep going.

time spent: 5 hours omg/ word count: ~403