Two Projects

If you’re working on something, it can be a surprisingly good idea to work on it twice.

Let’s say you’re trying to write a book. You’re not sure if you should do a lot of research, planning, storyboarding, collecting data, and outlining before beginning or if you should just “shoot from the hip” and do that stuff in the editing process later.

Here’s a thought: write two books. Start two distinct projects on the same topic. Use one method on one project and one method on the other. Devote time to them separately – split your original writing time in half.

Maybe you’ll find one method just works better than the other for you, and you’ll be able to know that firsthand. Maybe the combination will yield results greater than the sum of the individual efforts. Maybe you’ll just write two books!

But most importantly, the work on one will reinforce the learning from the other. Instead of wondering if you’re being too meticulous in your planning, you can just look at the other project. Instead of wondering if your writing would benefit from more planning, you look back at the first.

You can’t always build two houses – but a surprising amount of the time, if you stop to look, you can work on a duplicate without losing anything in the way of efficiency. And potentially gaining much more.