About that project timeline…
Last week I opined about project timelines and I was trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do. As a brief recap, I want to write a book. Not a novel, but a collection of non-fiction essays about my experience with Epilepsy.1 A great idea, but one that lacks structure.
In short, I need a series of deadlines. I don’t claim to work best under pressure, but I am certainly an expert in procrastination if I don’t have a definite goal to work toward. Case in point, rather than continuing to work on my essays, I have been scouring various sources to come up with some sort of project timeline.
And so I have come up with a framework. A popular project timeline out there is the “12 Week Year”, espoused in the book of the same name by Brian P. Moran and Michael Lennington. I tried to read about it and glean some insight into how I might make it work for me, but all of the posts about it focus heavily on the book and everything felt like a gimmick.2 Unfortunately that’s the case for a lot of productivity “hacks”. I buckled down Sunday night and wrote up a first draft of my timeline, and refined it yesterday during my lunch break. It’ll be at the end of the article.
One of the problems with my first draft of the timeline was that it lacked structure, and in some places was too specific. That might not make a lot of sense but it didn’t allow for flexibility. What I like about my plan below is that there is room for flexibility; each 3-week section is organized as a specific part of the process (organization, creation, then 6 weeks for review). If there are any setbacks, and I’m sure there will be, I can shift things around as-needed. There are some things — such as the idea of getting a beta reader — that I recognize should be further up, but that part of the process also isn’t strictly necessary in these 12 weeks.
In actuality, I don’t really need to complete the entire thing at the end of 12 weeks. This plan is to keep me moving forward. Without any structure, or a deadline, I might leave it as something I’ll get to when I get to it. With this plan, I at least have a goal date to hit.3
I liked this so much I implemented a similar plan for a weight loss goal. It’s a little more loose but includes specific check-in points along the way. The first week is about establishing a base line weight and picking out goals, organizing the plan, etc. After that there’s not much to do except keep going with what I’m doing and making any necessary adjustments.
Anyway I hope that this example of a 12-week plan for a project is helpful to you in organizing your own project. I also hope that this doesn’t come across as gimicky in any way — that’s what turned me off of a few things and almost halted my planning process. Let me know what you think of my plan!
Here's that timeline in picture form: 
I have already written some of these essays! You can read them in a few places: Medium, or WordPress. But a lot of them are either not going to be used, and in some cases re-written (or heavily revised).↩
This book has been turned into a blog that is trying to sell you things. Gimmick. Keep in mind the book was published in 2009.↩
As of this writing, October 15th.↩