Don’t start with the problem. Start with the people.
How to use a service-first mentality to choose your next project.
I’m in between big projects right now and trying to decide: what’s next?
First, I explored a super-nerdy approach to choosing my next project:
It was overkill. Overthinking at its best.
But I’m glad I did it. It forced me to make a list of projects and ideas I’m excited about and rank them against personally meaningful soul criteria — values, joy, purpose — alongside more practical survival metrics, like income, earning potential, timing, and skills.
It was painful to plot out cell by cell, but felt satisfying in a self-indulgent kind of way. And it served as an important reminder in a time of transition: there’s a ton of exciting projects I could work on.
On the other hand, looking at the heat-mapped spreadsheet above makes me queasy and reminds me: we’re a heady species. How often and easily we get stuck in our own introspection.
And if I’ve learned anything, sometimes the best way out is to redirect the focus off ourselves and…
