Do I have "projects"?

This question was prompted by the launch of a new feature in idonethis.com. As a perk for paying $5 a month to use the service (a calendar where I note everything that I've done in a particular day, in the short term it's moderately useful, but after a couple of years it's great to have that record of what you've done, even if you don't always leverage that information to maximal benefit), I can add a tag to "make progress on projects." My first response was that I don't really have projects. I'm not writing a book or trying to develop a new product. But then I started to think about it a little more and realize that I do have projects, even if I don't really think about them in that way.

So what are my projects? I would say my MBA is a project. Maybe a better way to think about is that every class I take towards my MBA is a project. By narrowing the project down to just taking classes, that collects some of my other activities, like listening to lectures about the Revolutionary War or trying out Coursera by taking a class about dinosaurs.

Strange things start to happen when you start mixing classes like this together. While listening to a lecture about the progress of the war, I realized that my business studies have given me a much greater appreciation for the context of my work activities. (This insight came about while hearing about the flawed assumptions the British used in their execution of the war.) Even a class about dinosaurs gives me a fresh look at what I do every day. Paleontologists use every shred of data they can find to draw conclusions about animals that lived millions of years ago. That maximization of available data is something I strive for in my projects at work.

So I guess this is really a project about breaking my thinking patterns. When I think about what I may have done if I hadn't started taking classes at Marist, I assume that I would have spent more time working on getting a research paper published or some other activity that was very much in line with my graduate school training. I would have deepened the grooves that I was already treading rather than exploring new ground. My classes have revealed bodies of knowledge that I never would have sought out if not for my introduction to management and leadership theories in a formal class setting.

So I do things to #breaknewground (a tag that I will use in iDoneThis) in my thinking. Why bother? Well, most of the people I work with have academic training that is similar to what I went through. We're mostly PhDs in chemistry or pharmaceutics, something based in the physical sciences. With that shared background, we all tend to look at problems in the same way. That groupthink results in people seeing the same opportunities. Similar thought patterns produces similar pattern seeking behaviors that result in everybody seeing pretty much the same thing when it comes to where we should go as an organization. By breaking my thought patterns, I open myself to new possibilities. I might see something that others do not see. One of the biggest feathers in my professional cap came about because I see things differently that the people I sit with in meetings everyday.

So I break new ground in my thinking so I can see things differently. I'm also #pushing_it_toTheEdge in my workouts. A kind of off-hand description of what I'm trying to achieve physically that I write a couple of posts ago captures what I'm trying to do with my workouts. I want to be healthier, sexier, and primed for peak performance. That's a project without end. Well, most of my projects don't really have a set end point now that I think about it.

I read. I read books, blogs, magazines, lots of different things, but I only keep track of books. Why I read is too complex to try to capture in one paragraph of a blog post. Not that I really feel the need to express why I read. It's just self-evident that it's a worthwhile activity. Some of my reading is kind of project like. Reading an epic fantasy series is a project. (Reading fantasy, yet another way to challenge your assumptions.) Sometimes a particular book could feel like a project. Maybe there is no need for an overly clever tag when it comes to reading. Maybe #reading will do for now.

I have other projects in mind, but these will do for now.