Working with the many projects, or goals (I’ll call them projects) in our professional and personal lives means that there is a lot which needs to get done. We almost always have more to do, than can be done in a day, or week. It is no surprise then that there are projects which get left. How then do we look at these projects, and decide if they should get a jump-start and how to jump-start them. There are three ways to deal with a stalled project.

  1. Drop it from our list of projects
  2. Reboot the project from the beginning
  3. Take stock of the progress of the project, and start where it was left at.

Dropping a Project

Dropping a project from our list of projects should be the result of serious contemplation. If the results of a stalled project no longer matter, then drop it, and do not feel bad. We are trying to be productive. Sometimes we keep projects on our lists long after the results would be meaningless. It sits there as a reminder of a failure. Some reasons why these projects stay on our lists are:

    * We feel bad about letting someone down * We “want” to carry it out someday * We forgot to remove it * We thought we were working on it.

It is a tough thing to feel like we let someone we care about down. We want to be able to come to them someday, and show them we have done what was asked of us. We also all have the someday I’ll get around to it projects. some systems say to keep these n a list and review them regularly. My only concern with a list of someday goals, is that they can grow to become huge. The list of some day I will do can clutter our minds, and souls. Sometimes our lists can be cluttered with projects which are no longer relevant, like projects from a job we no longer have. The last kind of project which we may consider dropping is the one where we thought we were working on it, but we really have not in a long time.

Reboot the Project

If you have a stalled project, then sometimes a way to get going is to reboot the project. A lot of the time rebooting the project is our best approach mentally, but not the most efficient. It feels good to make a fresh start, and to get going. If the pieces of your project need to be done in a certain time frame then starting over is the best choice.

Starting Where We Left Off

This is the best approach to a stalled project. Look over the action items, and start getting the project done. Make sure it is still relevant, and important to you.

The process of clearing out cluttered projects, and jump-starting important ones really breaks down to a few simple things to do. Clear out the old projects which are no longer relevant. Reboot the projects which need to be done, or continue to complete them from where you left off.