The LIFE Project

Chapter 7: Taking Stock and Looking Forward

Hi everyone, Misha here. Before I start, I just wanted to say that I'm practicing what I wrote about in this section, so you might want to watch the video where I take stock and plan ahead as well. (The start time is July, 1, 2023 at 8 PM GMT+2 if you would like to join live, but I'll be leaving the video up for those of you who want to watch on playback.)

Then I also wanted to say a huge thanks for the awesome support I've been getting. I've been getting lovely messages and comments, and currently, The LIFE Project is ranking #32 in the Mindfulness category on Wattpad. 

Please do keep in touch and hit like if you find something of value in my writing. :-) 

It's half-way through the year, and today is an excellent day for for taking stock and looking back on how things are going. When I first started this book, I thought that using project management tools to manage what I'm doing and how might be an insane idea. After all, life isn't a project. Life is life, right? 

But the thing is, I was feeling abjectly miserable and needed to do something crazy to spring to action. More than that, I needed to think outside the box to figure out how to manage my limited energy at the time to generate maximum impact on my life. 

That was where the idea had come from. Project management is by definition about using limited resources as effectively as possible to maximize the impact of what you're doing within a given project. 

For me, the LIFE project is to improve the quality of my life and live as fully and as passionately as possible. I think many people wish to do the same, and that's partly why I decided to start chronicling my journey. Not because I think people should all do as I do, but because I truly believe that we can change our lives when we feel miserable. More than that, we should. So I'm basically experimenting on my own life to find my own best way forward. I'm not telling people to follow my exact methods because I do realize that my circumstances are different from the person next to me. 

But I do think there's something to the project-managing-your-life idea that is definitely worth a look. That said, it's been a hard road. PM is a useful tool that I've been using to conceptualize the day to day of my life as a way to live intentionally and with purpose, but it isn't a quick fix. 

It hasn't dealt with the harm and trauma I've experienced up to this point. It hasn't solved some difficult dilemmas that I continue to grapple with. It didn't turn me into a motivation machine. 

But. 

It does help me to sit down and look at my life on a holistic level. It helps me see what I need to do to improve my life, breaking activities down to as many and as tiny little chunks as I might like. It helps me see risks and threats in a non-anxiety-inducing way because it makes me sit down and think about any challenges I might face before they even turn into problems. It helps me see how I can counter those risks and threats and manage them. Using project management approaches helps me to see what kinds of resources I need when I want to achieve any given thing. And, perhaps most importantly, it helps me to see which activities are the most important and how even the smallest thing can contribute to my overall aims. 

Which brings me to my aims. I will be doing a full analysis of my progress so far to see how I'm getting along and to figure out the things I need to pay more attention to for the rest of this year. But I can tell you already that the quality of my life has already improved. 

That dead feeling I had at the beginning of this journey isn't completely gone, but I am in a place where I can feel the stirrings of life again. I am feeling more confident that I am able to take on new things. My anxiety mostly feels under control. Step by step, I am getting various aspects of my life back on track. 

Project management isn't the thing that got me to this point, but it created a the mind space I needed to make sure that the things I do make an impact. And that I believe I've managed. It does feel like every single thing I've done since November 2022 until today, July 1, 2023, has contributed to improving my overall level of wellbeing. 

This has been an important first step, and perhaps something that I will be delving into some more in future chapters. But it's been a long time since I've felt "okay", and that impacted my ability to do literally anything. For the first six months, I've focused on that sense of being physically, emotionally, and mentally okay because that is the foundation upon which everything else goes. 

Never underestimate the importance of your sense of wellbeing. I didn't know how important it was until I could no longer feel certain about it. I'll continue to spend a lot of my time and energy on my health (emotional, physical, and mental) because I know I can get into an even better place. My longer-term focus is shifting, though. I feel like I'm ready to move onto other aspects of my life and build those up a bit more as well. 

I'll keep evaluating, as I go. I'll keep adjusting and refining, and finding the best way forward towards the fullest life I can have. Where I'll end up because of this journey is still up in the air, but I know I'm better off for having started.