Xenofact

Projects Are Magic

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The world isn’t what it should be.  We want to change it for the better.  What is the key, the spell, the magic that will help us do that?  Or at least make stuff suck less?

And I answer, “Project Management,” which might not be the answer people want.

Workboards and flowcharts aren’t exciting to most people.  Market research sounds boring at best and manipulative at worst.  We want to act and get things done cleanly and honestly (at least honestly).  No one wants to be like some chart-obsessed office drone from a sitcom.

As a professional project and program manager, I feel otherwise most strongly.  Project Management is power.

Look at the state of the world.  The bad people are organized and productive, and there’s often more method to madness than you think.  Sure, they may not realize the ultimate results of their bad ideas, but they’re certainly getting them implemented.  If you want to make it in this world, change it, work your mystic and mutant strageness, you need to know how to get things to happen.

If you want to do something you need to know how to make it into a project and get it done – often with other people.

The “secrets” of Project Manager and easy to find – they’re not really secrets.  David Allen has written a bunch of great stuff under his “Getting Things Done” brand, and yeah he’s commercial, but he knows what he’s talking about (take it from me).  David Marquet does great stuff on leadership that explores language, management, and mindset.  For that matter, grab the Scrum Guide to check out a light way to organize projects from the “Agile” movement, or go to the Project Management Institute to go old-school.

The power is out there to get stuff accomplished.

I can say, personally, when you dive into Project Management and productivity in general, it turns out to be magical.  I mean this near-literally; it reminds me of occult and meditative systems.

You learn how to see the things you need to accomplish in a new way.  You see how goals are something deep and meaningful, not buzzwords (or shouldn’t be).  You understand breaking down work and how a project is a network of causality.  You get a vision of how things can happen and get done – and make it happen.  When you know Project Management the world becomes different because you can make things happen..

Project Management gives you a bunch of tools, techniques, and ceremonies (meetings and events) to bring some project to completion.  Once you see your work differently, you can apply these tools to get a goal achieved.  There’s vision and action, as long as you make an effort to learn it.  In fact once you learn it, it’s easier to learn from other organizers using the same language.

I invite you to take a look at various Project and Productivity tools.  Here’s a few to try:

  • Getting Things Done by David Allen.  A simple guide to personal productivity, not technically Project Management, but pretty much project managemnet.
  • The Scrum Guide.  Free, online, a fast project management method in the Agile vein, and so quick you can do it with sticky notes or an online document.
  • Project Management All-in-One for Dummies.  A combined guide for traditional and Agile methods, I’ve had decent results from the Dummies series.
  • If you want to go hardcore, you can even dig up serious traditional “Waterfall” project management guides at the Project Management Institute, This is the serious stuff, mostly flowcharts and breakdowns despite the organization being open to lighter methods.

Let’s change the world – and get organized.  What, do you want to leave all this knowledge in the hands of the people currently running the world into the ground?

– Xenofact

A Pamphlet Of Rebellion

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Recently I created a pamphlet for the Dobbstown Mirror, a SubGenius* newsletter. This simple c-fold creation had the best quotes of the Church founder J.R. “Bob” Dobbs so my fellow members had easy access to them.  What was a simple creative effort became more when I held the print run in my hands.

Here was something published made for love, not money – in fact I spent money on it.  I write as part of my career, but also write as a kind of side business/hobby where I do charge for books.  But here was something I deliberately “lost” money on as opposed to losing it on writing something no one wanted.

Here was something that was what I wanted to do.  There were no requests, no market calculations, nothing separate from my own creative drive.  It was what I wanted to do, to share with others – they didn’t even have to like it in a way.

Finally, this pamphlet was created to be distributed with a newsletter.  It was not thrown up on a website or entered into a marketing stream. It was part of something intimate, a newsletter that was part of a community.  You tossed it into an envelope and sent it to folks.

I felt many things, but one that stood out was a sense of rebellion.

I’m so used to things being written for money, hearing about audience calculations, and reading about distribution optimization.  Instead, here was something I spent money on in a giant “what the hell, this seems fun.”  Creativity that’s not part of the endless cycle of acquisition and capitalism we’re all too used to (and trapped in).

Such an experience is making me think about creativity outside of the profit motive, creativity for fun, for community.  I had been missing something, and this helped me understand how rebellious it can feel to just do something for people for fun.

Now I should note that in no way am I against people making a profit from creative works.  I want people to be able to make a living on their creative efforts.  I want artists of all kinds supported – and am glad to support them.  It’s just nice to get out of the endless cycle of profit-seeking and optimization.

Oh and you can print your own – get it and other Dobbsaganda here.

– Xenofact

* If you don’t know what the church of the SubGenius is, visit http://subgenius.com/ or just buy The Book of the SubGenius.  Trust me.