There is an old saying that if you want something done, then you have to do it yourself. Obviously this is one way to do it. And more and more I come to think of it as the one true way of doing it. Why?

If you do it yourself, or better, if you have to do it yourself, because you don’t get any help or the wrong kind of help, then you decide very quickly if you really want to have it or not. Because doing it, for most of the time, requires an enormous amount of will power and work. Therefore, you decide fairly quickly if you want to see your wish or dream come true or if you want to let it be just that – a wish. You will find out very quickly if you want to achieve it badly enough.

Now obviously this strategy does not work for everything. However for personal goals and fulfillment of dream projects I think this is a very good strategy to weed out cool projects from the ones which are not important. Additionally it helps you grow personally since you are managing and creating your dreams at every single step yourself. You become a mover and shaker. You do something with your life.

What I have found so far, which works really well for personal projects, is this:

1. Do it yourself: This includes dreaming, planning and execution.
2. Small steps: Chunk your project down to manageable and non-frightening steps. You know you have the right granularity when any task or chunk evokes a feeling of “Pfft, peace of cake”.
3. Bigger and bigger building blocks: While it is certainly a charming idea to build a house with only a tooth pick and some tweezers, obviously you won’t come very far. Or if you do, then it takes you an eternity, at least. Thus, it is very commendable to start small, however, at every step of the project you should try to increase the potential of the tools at hand. That is, at every step you increase your leverage to do things and to move the project ahead. Ideally, you will get a nearly exponential growth of the project once you apply this leveraging technique. Hence, start small and make a building block. With this building block make more building blocks. Combine the building blocks to make yet another, much bigger building block. Combine the project with the biggest building blocks. This gives you also a hierarchical organizational structure, which reduces complexity. It’s a time tried recipe in all natural sciences and engineering. Your project surely will benefit from it as well.