The number one mistake that you’re making when working on projects

In class one of my students asked, “my friends and I want to study art in college, but how do we know if we’ll be able to handle all of the work.”

This is a really good and common question that I get from high school students, and the answer is, that you need to learn how to plan. The number one reason that we miss deadlines or feel overwhelmed is that no one ever teaches us how to break down projects, how to estimate time, and how to plan our weeks so that we don’t over-commit ourselves.

Learning how to plan might not seem fun or creative, but in fact, it can be both, AND, once you learn how to do it, you’ll spend less time stressing and more time creating and doing what you love, which is the goal, right?

The number one mistake that you’re making

The number one reason that you aren’t getting things finished on time without also drinking TOO many energy drinks and staying up way TOO late, is that you aren’t breaking projects down into small manageable tasks.

You’re probably saying things like, I have to write a thesis statement and book report, (and if you’re feeling really on top of things, you might include the due date, which is likely a few weeks away, luring you into a sense of confidence that you have plenty time.)

Instead, if you wrote:

• Select a topic of interest and draft a thesis statement
• Get feedback on my thesis statement, and make adjustments
• Research and select 1-3 books that relate to my thesis statement
• Read 20 pages a day and take notes on the reading
• Write a summary of how the book connects to my thesis statement
• Review my notes and write a rough draft of my book report
• Edit my book report
• Submit my book report

Now that all of the things that you need to do are listed out, you might feel less confident that you can put this off until the last day because it is much clear that you can’t do all of this in under 24 hours, even if you can find a book that is also a movie.

Let’s do another one together.

Instead of a school assignment, we’ll break down a personal goal. You want to illustrate and publish a book. Publishing a book with your own artwork is exciting, it’s also a big goal that is 100% doable if you break it down into small steps that you can take action on every day.

• Select a topic, what do you want the book to be about?
• Decide if you want the book to have text, or just be images
  • If you want to have text, are you going to write the text, or work with someone else to do that? Or , has someone already given you text? (we’re going to pretend that you already have the text for this example.)
• Read through the text and determine where the page breaks should be
• Determine what size the book will be… aka what size does each page need to be
• Brainstorm and make notes of what you want the images to look like for each spread. If you’re planning to have the book printed, or self-publish, research the size options first. For example, when I publish on Amazon KDP, I always make children’s books 8.5 X 11
• Determine what materials and processes you want to use, and purchase any needed supplies
• When do you want to publish the book, and how many spreads are there? This helps to determine how many spreads you need to finish each week. Children’s books usually have 20 spreads. So you might say that you’re going to complete 2 spreads a week.
• Photograph or scan the images
• Add text to each spread
• Have someone edit
• Upload to the publishing site, write the description, and publish

This list is long because illustrating a book is a big project, but now you have clear steps that you can take and work on every day. You can also quickly notice and adjust if you’re falling behind.

Learn how to break down big projects and feel confident that you can achieve your dreams, one step at a time.

For additional support check out BOTH breakdown planners. They also come with video lessons to help you learn how to use them and develop your ability to break down and plan for any project.