Cut It in Half

7 minutes

I’ve delivered projects with complicated interconnected deliverables of software development, consulting, enterprise platform tools and training. I’ve managed multi-million pound project budgets with years long delivery roadmaps AND landed them in scope and budget. I’ve also delivered ambitious product features for 0 budget and 0 spare time in startups under insane working conditions.

I hope you don’t mind me saying so: But I’m very good at helping others plan, scope and deliver a vision.

Bizops is a fun field, how to deliver not just a single project but a vision at the macro level. Implementing strategy and facilitating the set up of processes, and helping teams get their minimum viable bureaucracy in place. Once it’s all humming along you move onto the next area of friction within a team or the business. Like polishing a mirror with finer and finer abrasive grades.

Then of course, the CEO will change. They’ll decide within weeks that they want a lens and not a mirror. So you start polishing on both sides and start all over again.

Expectations are always the hardest piece to manage. The iron triangle of project management is actually a pyramid. The additional axis is ‘Project vision’. “What do you want?.” Scope, quality, cost and time don’t speak to this at all. Loads of projects are well handled by their PMs and deliver inside the triangle without issue, but don’t achieve/deliver what the project initiator wanted.

More often than not a project can be descoped after initiation – in the planning phase – with a gentle interrogation of what the projects vision actually is. What was the need identified by the stakeholder which resulted in setting this whole thing in motion?


I bring all this up as I’ve been thinking a lot this week about my slow shift to being an ‘online creator’.

I said on the podcast this week that:

“I’ve got some cool plans for 2021, a lot I’d like to achieve and do.

If you’ve ever regularly enjoyed my writing or podcast please consider supporting my work this year at thejaymo.net/support

And I DO have some cool plans for this year. But thinking about what I want to do, what I can reasonably achieve, and to what level of quality I’ve decided to take my own advice to other online creators I’ve helped formally:

When I’m working on self directed projects, I need to cut everything in half and lower my expectations.

One big monolithic idea? Break it up, make it modular.

For example: 5 of the Dimensino essays that I posted last year began life as one gigantic 10k word long, crazy man blog post. Taking advice from other.internet squad and Paul Graham Raven Paraphrasing him: “Its a blog, use the medium, blog about it”. So I broke it up and posted it over multiple posts. It was better for it.

This Is It last year was a good idea at the time. But I don’t think I’d do another hour long audio essay. The time and effort involved in putting it together outweighs the returns. I was in retrospect creative self indulgence that I sunk hours and hours into fuelled by the manic lifting of my years long depression, and the strangeness of lockdown.

I might consider doing audio essays with slides and stuff. But that would be different.

Cutting things in half and lowering my expectations is what I meant by ‘Plan to Finish’ in my new years post. Putting more things out and quicker is also what I meant by ‘Shorter Loops’ as another vector for 2021.

My google drive is full of long scrambled documents full of tangents and sidetracks. Notes and observations that became reports for clients etc. Statute of limitations being up on some of them now so surfacing this would be good.

The realisation I’ve had over the last week is the lack of ‘modular’ thinking. I recently restructured the menus here at thejaymo.net industries and its made it much easier to surface older content. As I was going back though retagging and categorising old posts it was nice to see ‘content verticals’ develop.

The other advantage of modular thinking is the ability of producing one thing that can be shared in multiple formats and forums. All building on the vision, (or content vertical) I had in mind at the beginning of the project. I’ve been really pleased with posting my podcast scripts as 1k word posts and I should have been doing this from the beginning.

Anyway this is all to say, ducks are being lined up, and cats herded for my first ‘project’ of 2021.


Permanently Moved

Recent Reading

Some recent books I’ve read and enjoyed that haven’t been grimdark.

The Ministry Of My Own Labour

Reading some fascinating pieces that will be in a book I’m writing a response to to be included.

guild.is kicked off our tour of the state of DAO land.

Had some GREAT calls with some very cool people.

Getting ducks in a row.

Dipping the Stacks

Wardruna is Taking Back Nordic Pagan Culture and Music from the Far-Right – A Blaze Ansuz: Antifascist Neofolk

The Symbolic Structure of Movies – Conan the Barbarian (1986) – The Symbolic World

The Jane Austen multiplayer role-playing game Ever, Jane has shut down. ‹ Literary Hub
I started to do a deep dive on this, but pulled out. I had no idea about its existence. Wild idea, with a sad ending.

Saildrone Launches 72-foot Surveyor Revolutionizing Ocean Mapping

Is this place real? – Radiant Earth Foundation

Reading

I’m still reading Reimagining Our Tomorrows: Making Sure Your Future Doesn’t SUCK by Joe Tankersley on and off.

I started listening to Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore by Emma Southon with this months Audible credit whilst sorting out my bike in the rain the other day. Enjoying it so far.

I still think we need a multi season long TV series about Olympias, Alexander the Great’s Mother. It’s one of the greatest stories still to be told.

Music

thejaymo.net Spotify Playlist 

Ashnikko – Demidevil

After several delays, Ashnikko dropped her first album – sorry – ‘mixtape’ this week. Honestly the best track on the album in my opinion is L8r Boi. It’s a cover of Avril Lavigne’s Sk8r Boi – my go to karaoke jam – but WITH MUCH BETTER LYRICS:

He was a boy, she was a girl
Can I make it anymore obvious?
He was a punk, she did ballet
What the fuck does it matter anyway?
He didn’t try to make her cum
On top of all that, he was a little dumb
Honestly she was better off alone
Now he’s breathing down the phone

Fucking lol.

Demidevil is a whirlwind tour though pop genres of all kinds, held together by Ashnikko’s punk as fuck attitude. There’s also loads of samples and loops that are ‘just’ similar to smash hits that it makes you do a double take. I’d love to see a breakdown of all the musical references and callouts on this record. The collabo with Princess Nokia is very welcome too.

The lead single off the album Deal With it is a good example of whats going on. A hyperpop blend of tropical house, 90’s choruses as well huge respect for clearing the Kelis sample. It’s very 2021.

Updating the Spotify Playlist  I realise i’ve been remiss in not mentioning Ashnikko on the blog before now. Her track STUPID with Feat. Yung Baby Tate has one of the BEST videos of 2019, its a great track too. In my head this video is in dialogue with the 2020 video for WAP.

I wonder how big the squad is around Ashnikko at this point. I’d really like to know.

Remember Kids

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2 responses to “Cut It in Half”

  1. […] (previously) has a new single out. Its .. quite full on; lyrics, production, everything – the video is […]

  2. […] been a few weeks since I wrote Cut It In Half about how I had big plans. I wrote about how I needed to break the idea down and make it more […]

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