How to build your own project?
How to build your own project:
Why am I writing about building your own project? In my personal experience, having a project helps you keep those creative juices flowing and allows you to fulfil the needs that your 9-5 job may not reach. If you don’t have a job yet, a project is a good way to keep yourself busy with an activity that could be part of your future portfolio. What do you need to get that idea starting?
- Fulfil a need: it’s the foundation of all the other ideas, whether you’re offering information, selling physical products or providing a service your ultimate goal should be to fill a need that wasn’t filled before or was filled poorly.
- List what you love doing: The best and more sustainable ideas are always those built around a thing that you love to do anyway. You can get started by making a list – the longer the better – of all the things you really love to do. List everything, even if it seems pointless like playing video games or watching movies. Then try and figure out some way for each one that you could use that skill or passion to help someone out or to teach someone something useful.
- Plan!!!: it sound obvious… But I can’t tell you how many people start blogs, community work or podcast without thinking what is my contribution to this topic? What is their goal? Who is their audience? What are the expected results? What is your standard format, schedule or content plan? It’s not an easy task to keep the wheels turning once the plan is set, so having one actually helps you prevent and overcome most of the challenges that will come along the way.
- Also, an important step before starting your project is researching what is similar out there. Not only to get inspired and see what other people are doing, but also to find what you can do that’s unique. In the case of Doing What You Love, I saw a lot of pages and blogs that were paid job platforms, personal blogs or job-hunting sites. My idea was not along those lines. My idea is to reach those people who haven’t yet figure out what they want to do – so they can find the most suited job for them and for those who are just starting on development – especially in developing countries – what would be the best ways to go about… It may sound selfish, but I was building the page I wish I had when I was 18. My perspectives are my own – which is almost a disclaimer, but I have been in this field for a while… So, you tend to notice patterns.
- Project’s team: Whether is a team of one or a team of many, it’s good to think how many people you want to be involved in the first stages of your project – in a realistic way. Most successful group projects are collective efforts, so if that’s your chosen format, it is imperative that the other members of the project discuss and agree on the mission, the coordinating mechanisms, communication strategy and so on.
- Be prepared to fail epically and learn from it! In my opinion, the most important quality you will need in this field is persistence… Grit, if you will. Most of us, who want to work in development, tend to be overachievers who don’t deal well with rejection. By don’t deal well with rejection, I mean, stop on their course and try something else, because if we are not excelling, we don’t want it. It is okay to start small and not be good at first. Learn from this to be better. Keep your spirit to excel and be great (your megalomania, if you will), but always remind yourself that this is only the first step in your journey… And enjoy the ride.
