Your target feature
Just had the surreal idea of a "Celebrity Fit Club" for little projects. "Your target feature for next week is tagging."
Courtney’s affection for VH1’s celeb-sploitation isn’t without its perks. Before Celebrity Fit Club went all sensational, it had some really optimistic moments. Seeing a person, celebrity or not, start to conquer their struggles with exercise and/or eating is really inspirational.
After each person weighs in to see how much they lost in a given week, the panel of judges gives them a weight-loss goal. Usually they are pretty small numbers, fairly easily achieved. Every once in a while they stretch it and challenge the contestant. Its never an unhealthy goal.
I think every project could benefit from this sort of goal setting. In particular, the part about stringing together some small achievable goals and bridging them with larger, riskier goals sounds particularly helpful. See also what the WuFoo guys said about The Importance of Deadlines:
We've recently gone back to a system with long-term and short-term deadlines, and we've already seen improvements in both focus and productivity.
I’ve yet to intentionally practice this. But, looking back at what I’ve accomplished over the past few months, I think some of the times I felt “in the groove” were after putting together a few small releases following a much bigger one. Any pithy phrase that gets me closer to said groove is one I’m willing to take to heart.