Are you working on a project or building a practice? Today’s episode is about how to tell the difference and why it helps to take a project-approach when you are establishing a new practice. I share two recent examples and how one practice worked while the other failed.

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A common question I've started to notice people will ask when they first

learn about the momentum formula. They'll understand

that it's based on the fact there are three different roadblocks.

Logical roadblocks, biological roadblocks, and psychological roadblocks.

All of them can get us stuck and can kind of stall our

momentum. And when it comes to the approach,

each roadblock needs a different one. For logical, you want a method.

For biological you want a mode, and for psychological, you want the mindset.

Now, the question that I notice comes out most after I've explained that

is, okay, but what do I start with? And my

answer is, always start with logical. Because this is where we can

address any gaps that might exist right now. And

it's really the fundamental thing of getting clarity.

What am I doing, when am I doing it, what tools am I using and

what skills do I need to develop? All of that is really important because

if we're missing those, there is just, there's a real gap for us being

able to move forward. And one of the things

that I like for people to do is

before they get into, okay, what is the method? What do I need to do?

I want people to actually ask the question of is this

a project or is this a practice?

And there's a reason why. Now, just to give some examples,

to make sure we're all on the same page. In your personal life,

painting a room is a project. Making dinner is a

practice at work. Building a website is a project,

and doing a weekly review, that's a practice. So these

projects tend to be time bound and we usually know when they're done.

They have a natural conclusion based on the work. But

a practice is something that tends to be ongoing, maybe not

forever, but it's something that's going to repeat over and over. And it

doesn't have the same time bounds that a project might

have. And why does this matter?

Well, I see that there's this

tendency, both by myself and people that I work with, to jump

into a practice without spending enough time

establishing a sustainable system. For example,

you might put something in your calendar for this practice

that you want to adopt and establish, but you haven't actually spent enough

time asking what is going to sustain this, what am I actually

doing and what works for me. And when I talk about

sustainable system in the momentum formula, a sustainable system

is when you have a clear and complete

method and you've got a mode that suits how

you'll work. In other words, you know exactly what to do and how to do

it. And you do it in a way that is natural to you, it

fits and it's something you want to keep repeating versus if

it really is awkward, uncomfortable, doesn't suit you at all. You're not going to want

to keep doing that method. So having the two of them together is how

you get this sustainable system. And then once you add

in the right mindset, if you're not holding yourself back, this is where you take

action and on focus. Because you have a method, it's consistent action. And because

you're using a mode that suits you and how you work, it's going to feel

aligned. And this is altogether is where you have

momentum. So what happens is that a

practice with momentum, you need both. You want to have a method

and you want to have the mode established so that when it's time

for this practice, you know exactly what is going on.

For example, I have a years long practice

of a daily review. I call it First Things first

and there's no friction. I see on the top

of my daily planner, it's time for First Things First. I open

that page for me, it's a page set up in notion. And

so everything is automatically set to the day. And I answer a

series of questions that I decided years ago that still work. Once in

a while I tweak it. But I took the time to establish a system so

that every single morning I can reflect on how yesterday went,

what were some of my wins, challenges and what books did I read, et

cetera. But then I also look at the day ahead. This is a regular

practice. It's something that I intend to continue. I

can make little tweaks to it, but there's just, there's no friction. I just show

up and I do the thing. It doesn't mean that I'm not paying

attention, it doesn't mean that I'm not present. But it is something that I can

do without having to make decisions or figure out exactly what I'm

doing. So I have established a sustainable system.

But this year around the same time,

I noticed that there were two different practices I was

attempting to start. One that worked and

the other didn't. I do not have momentum. One I have momentum and

one I do not. So what actually happened and

what is going on, and that's what I want to focus on is where can

we get stuck or confused if we're not clear on

on the practice versus project. So the two practices.

One is that I started a podcast and around the same time

I was returning to Instagram after years of

not using it for my business. And the thing that

worked, podcast, the thing that didn't Instagram. So let's actually

share a little bit about that with the podcast. I

knew that this was gonna be a regular practice where each week I was going

to have to do certain things in order to

prep, record, and then produce and put out and

distribute the podcast. Those are all things I

sat down in advance. I went through what does a sustainable

system look for me look like for me? So what

is the actual method? What am I doing on what days? And I do

have actual checklists that I use every single week in order to get it

done. So when I sit down, there is no confusion, there's just clarity

of what comes next. Instagram,

I did not take that approach. So for Instagram, I was trying to get into

action and I had joined a challenge and it was a

content creation challenge of let's keep putting out regular content.

Now, that suits my mode because I work well with

accountability. So joining a challenge where the whole point is, as a

community, we're all going to be regularly posting, we'll kind of cheer each other on.

And. And there was this big spreadsheet where each day that I

posted, I would put a link to it. That worked really well for Mode,

but I didn't realize it, that I had

completely neglected working on the method part. And

I only had part of this system. So I had the mode, but I hadn't

actually spent any time asking, what. What is my method? What are the things that

I'm showing up? Just like my podcast saying, on this day, I show up and

I do this on Wednesdays, this is what I do on Thursdays, this is what

I do. I didn't have that for the Instagram. And I

mistakenly interpreted this kind of momentum I had

with posting regularly in September, thinking that meant I was good

to go, when actually I was just running on accountability alone.

And I didn't have a system. And I didn't spend

any time being really deliberate to ask, what does this

look like ongoing when there's no more urgency of a challenge,

I was missing that method and then I lost that

consistency. So when we think about the

momentum formula, because I didn't have a method,

I only had Mode and mindset. So I knew a way of working

with accountability that was really effective for me and I had the

right mindset. So I was posting, so I felt aligned. I was doing this

work that's like, yeah, okay, I got this. But I did not have any

method. So it was not Sustainable, it didn't carry through.

And I also wasn't consistent. And each week I was trying to

figure out, okay, what does this look like? And in October, when things got

challenging, I had some personal commitments come up I had to take

care of. Everything fell apart because I did not have a method, I did

not have a system put together. And I think

the important point and why I'm trying to share this

specific example is that if you don't have the

structure in place, if you haven't spent that time to intentionally ask,

what does this practice look like? So I can continue it ongoing

without having to think or make decisions or have a lot of

friction, if you haven't paused enough to do that, then

it's going to fall apart because you haven't actually built a system first.

And all I did was put a recurring note in my daily

planner for Instagram, which is meaningless. And it's

the complete opposite of what I did with podcast, where every single

recurring task in my daily, my planner, my weekly

planner, has different things on different days because that's how I

create regular content for that practice. Now, Instagram is different than a

podcast, but I should take those lessons that there

needs to be a little bit more work than just putting a block that says

Instagram. So when it's time for Instagram, I am

left making decisions. I'm not clear on what I'm doing. So what

I need to do is acknowledge, well, it's a logical problem.

I am missing a method. And then this is where the project and

practice comes in. I need to actually treat it like a project

first. And in fact, most practices start

out as a project where you are asking

questions, okay, how do I set this up? What tools am I using?

If we look at my daily review example, I took

time to set up a page with very specific

questions that I would answer. I spent a little bit of time tweaking it,

but that was an actual contained project to get that

ready so that then I could maintain it as a practice.

And I think this idea of spending time, the project

itself is building that sustainable system.

It's asking the method. And remember, a method is about knowing, okay, what do

I do? How do I do it? What tools am I using? And when does

this happen? And then mode is about asking what feels natural,

what fits, what suits me. This might inform when

you actually do this work. Maybe that helps you choose the time of day that

it happens. Is it something where you need a little bit of accountability?

That's something I've got locked in for my podcast, but not for

Instagram. So. So it's really that conscious period. So

anytime you are establishing a new practice, there

is going to be this phase, this project phase, where you

are highly conscious. You are learning what to

do and what works. If you imagine the example of learning

to drive, if you've ever learned to drive, that first

period, you are so alert. You are paying attention to everything.

Where are your hands, what's going? You're looking all the different directions,

because this is new to you, and you're figuring it out, and it makes

sense to be very, very conscious. But eventually it

starts to become something that you know how to do. You're not questioning, you're not

making decisions. You already know how to do this. So you get in the

car and you focus on where you're going, not on how to drive.

And it's the same thing with practices and projects. First we

need to learn how to drive, and then you drive. It's thinking about

the practice and then doing the practice. And

this is where I think it really helps that if you've been struggling with a

practice, you want to turn it into a project. First

ask yourself, what does it look like for this to be sustainable, for

me to maintain this practice? What's the method? And also

how do I work? What's the mode? And then once you combine that with the

right mindset, well, then you're gonna find your momentum.