How To Finish Any Long-Lasting Project (A Guide For Procrastinators Like I Was)

Medium asks me to tell you my story.

Well, let it be an article on that topic, but based on my personal story (you know, like in those movies where “based on a true story” caption changes the way people watch at things).

It all has started in December of 2014, when I was an intern at a co-working place. The concept of it was the following — guests were grabbing old broken clocks from the shelf, and all of them had those weird names — from “Sherlock” to “Potter” and “Kant”. Then they paid for the duration of their stay — that’s pretty much it. I didn’t get anything important from that internship (Moreover, I got thrown out from there and earned less than $10, keeping in mind Ukrainian prices), but what I got from here was a concept. No, no The Concept. AN IDEA.

I quickly developed an idea of a short film; it was unrealistically simple — people in their life are living according to a strict schedule. They work for the system, the elite controls them — similar to those “1984”-styled novels, right? It had some spices added to it, though, such as a personal story of two main characters, which were considering themselves as a wife and a husband, but they never had a chance to talk (or at least they never tried). A primary communication between them was conducted through texting, even when they’re in front of each other (somehow similar to our real lives, isn’t it?). That’s pretty much it, but I actually built that idea into a solid concept. Then I, obviously, shared it with my friends, and we have filmed a short teaser, where just basic things about our future project were explained.

We wrapped it up, gathered a crowd, interested in our project and collectively started procrastinating.

RULE 1: Procrastinate before you announce your idea/project/start-up to a crowd.

Why? Because you should understand whether you need this project, whether it needs you (or whomever else this project needs) and whether the world needs your project. Do a quick research (nothing special, really), Google it, check similar concepts, discover Kickstarter mad ideas. Waste your time on surfing the Net — it’s an insanely huge source of info. Understand that your project may potentially fail — of course if you don’t put many efforts into it. The reasoning behind procrastinating before you jump into everything is simple — you will re-organize yourself, so you procrastinate less on stages where it is unacceptable, but you still do that because your project is a no need or it’s just not very well-thought, or because there are many other projects like this one, or you do not have enough motivation because you didn’t think it over.

Alright, honestly speaking it took me another 6 (!) month to develop a simple script and invite other people. Some of my friends who initially joined me in my endeavors, could not make it in the team — they either found other activities (and I agree that I wasted their time for waiting!) or they rather decided that my idea is something that I personally do not believe in. We also did not have that many resources to build it and make it real.

Finally, we developed a simple plan to film everything within 4 days, we found actors to play in the last 2 days, venues that were initially set up for us told us to go away — and we spent another day panicking and searching for other options. After everything was planned (or I thought it was), we started filming.

It mostly went fine, except for some mistakes we made because we did not follow the RULE 1 (see above) and just because we lacked experience. All in all, the project and the raw material (very raw) was ready within a week or so. I was responsible for the very first step of post-production — editing of footages and making the actual motion picture. Honestly, I am still on that step. Even though we made a very short trailer based on the actual footage and a very neat poster:

RULE 2: If you are a last-minute person — be that type of person, you are probably more efficient that way. However, if your team is mostly not into rushing and making everything before deadlines — you must adjust since it’s all about a compromise.

Let me be very unstructured and deliver another rule right away.

RULE 3: Once you promise the deadline to others — make it real. Missing publicly announced deadlines is a total failure of any project. Especially, if you are a small one.

This is where I lacked. I spent hours and hours making a nice vid from what we’ve filmed, but I am still on its last steps for almost five month now — lamely trying to resolve technical issues that we have not predicted and doing my best to cut some time for it, since I am also a full-time student and a part-time worker (it’s not $10 per month now, luckily). I blamed myself for procrastination, I felt so guilty when I tried to explain to other people every part of my life that prevented me from finishing it up. They lost their hope into this project because I did. I didn’t know for whom I was doing this project and who needs it because I did not need it anymore.