The Power of Project
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’ve got some words under my belt. I tend to use a lot of high-falutin’ language that can sometimes be difficult to read or comprehend. I’d apologize for that, except that’s just how I speak. Just ask Marie! (Kudos to her and her lack of fear; she’s always asking what this word means or that one means. I’m the type that hopes that he’ll remember a new word until he’s safely alone with his dictionary — ah, sweet dictionary.) Since part of what I’m trying to learn in this space is how to be more me I’m afraid you need to muddle through the effects of a lifetime love affair with words.
After all, I like words and I like the things that they can do. They can illuminate, illustrate and elucidate (how’s that for some pompous, pedantic wordsmith posturing?). One of the qualities that I like best about words is how well they can transform. There are times where they positively act like chameleons.
What if there was one word that chameleon-like could guide you through success in your own internet business? Allow me to introduce you to today’s word: “project.” In this post I’m going to use this word in three different ways. I’ll do my best to put them in the proper context, but how about some quick definitions?
- project: a set group of tasks with a well-defined outcome
- project: to send out, as with sound, over a distance
- project: to externalize and attribute motive and emotions to another person
Please keep in mind that these are my personal definitions. That third one is actually a very loose interpretation of a psychological term that has a very specific meaning, so if you’re trying to get something right on a test, I would suggest that you look up the word in a credible dictionary.
One Word Represents Internet Success?
It’s amazing how much the word “project” figures into successful internet marketing. The three definitions that I shared above cover the three keys to making a blog that others want to read, or a product that others will buy, or a service that others need. Take that word and add the spine of “habit” and the “head” of definition, and you have a whole business that can stand on its own.
You’ve got your business, you do some things and you have some goals. How do you know that you’re not just flailing? That’s where placing your work into a project fits in. Goals are great, I’ve got some myself. You may already be aware of SMART (S = Specific, M = Measurable, A = Attainable, R = Realistic, and T = Timely) goal-setting (), and that’s a great tool. But for my part, much of what’s expressed in SMART goal-setting is best actualized as a series of projects.
Projects Make Progress
I totally find projects less intimidating than goals, even when those goals are “SMART.” There’s something about projects that makes for more fun. For whatever reason, the corporate project tediousness never really sinked into my brain. Projects to me remain the fun, creative achievements that I’ve been doing since I was a kid.
There are all sorts of resources that better explain personal project management, so I won’t go into that here. To me though, projects are creative enterprises. When a project is complete, you have something. The successful completion of a project could result in a widget, or a book, or an experience. Put simply, finish a project and you get its fruits.
If your goal as a blogger or an internet entrepreneur is to provide your audience with the highest quality content that you can, making each post into a project is a great way to get to that end. Finish a “great post” project and in the end, you’ve got as good a post as you can manage. Finish two of those a week for a year, and your “build a great blog” project has brought you a great blog full of more than 100 high-quality posts.
The other benefit to projects is that they work around the need for “discipline” and the propensity for “procrastination.” Because you’re only doing little steps on a little work that you can see the effects of in a short term, projects are a great way to stay focused and stay flexible.
The flexibility of projects is another key benefit. Where goals have that inevitable “magic happens” moment in there somewhere, projects are pretty much designed to have a difficulty built in that won’t show its face until the project is underway. How many times have you gone to mow the lawn and run over a tennis ball that the dog left in the tall grass, and now you have to deal with that issue as part of the mowing process? Okay, probably not many. But, as almost all human striving has the seeds of conflict within it, projects are a time-tested way of dealing with that adversity. Jump that hurdle, keep on running, finish the race.
Shout It Out (only don’t shout)
Once you’ve finished your project, just change the word, and you’ve got a tool for letting people know. In public speaking, a technique is taught called “projection.” You are taught how to increase the volume of your voice to fill the space that you are speaking to without coming across as shouting.
You’ve been around on the internet, and if you’ve tried learning anything about using it as a tool for creating business or, heaven forbid, “making money,” then you’ve seen how many people shout to get your attention. They employ huge flash ads or twenty-five million word sales pages (I recognize that studies find them effective, but man are they annoying) in an effort to shout to you how they’ve got your solution and they’ve got your salvation. Ouch, I get it dude, stop shouting.
Still, you and I want to be a success in this path that we’ve chosen, and to do that, we need to be heard, right? How can we be heard without shouting? Project. Increase the volume of your personality without distorting who you are. You want to project your voice, increasing the distance that the sound goes but keeping the tone the same as every other communication that you have. It’s a tough trick to learn, but if you can do it; in public speaking or in your internet marketing, you can speak to thousands of people (hundreds of thousands even?) while allowing each audience member to feel like you’re speaking to them, directly.
And that’s the trick, isn’t it? To make sure that each person that you’re speaking to on this impersonal internet thingy feels like you actually have them in mind and speak to their needs, feelings, and concerns. And to do that, you need the third meaning of the word.
I Can See You Out There
You need to project your idealized person on your writing. When you write to an audience, you need to speak to a specific person in your audience. You need to project your idea of that reader, viewer, or listener onto the work that you’re doing.
Do you have an idea of who reads your work? Do you keep that person in mind when you’re writing? I’ve got a handy built-in vision for my posts (Hi, Marie!), but I’m sure that even if you don’t have a partner in your internet workings, you still need to find some sort of specific person that your projects need to speak to.
A lot of the instruction and posts that I’ve been coming across lately all agree on this: know who you’re selling to to be more effective at selling. Doing that means projecting a specific, emotionally identifiable persona on your audience and writing to that specific projection.
That’s the Power of Project
And that’s what project can get you; a whole lot of ways to move forward on the path to success with a single word. All that’s missing, all that you need to add is the will. Do you have the will to project a persona on your audience as you complete your projects so that you might better project your voice out in the internets? I believe you do. I believe I do too.
Photo used through the gracious permission of saebaryo via Creative Commons; Attribution-No Derivative Works license.
