A Project of One's Own

One of the unlocks to a life lived in flow

Mar 20, 2024

I recently re-read one of my favorite essays of all time, A Project of One’s Own by Paul Graham.

I was thinking about why some things are fun to work on and other things feel like absolute drudgery.

And I was especially wondering:

Why do some things start out as fun and then become drudgery?

I’ve watched things I work on switch from fun to drudgery and back again several times in my career — including in the business I currently run and adore!

The default assumption is that certain fixed characteristics of the WORK make it fun or drudgery.

If the work is aligned with your inherent interests and passions — it’ll be fun.
If not, it’ll be drudgery.

If the work is aimed at a mission you care about — it’ll be fun.
If not, it’ll be drudgery.

If the work presents the right level of challenge, where it’s not so easy that it’s boring but not so hard that it’s discouraging — it’ll be fun.
If not, it’ll be drudgery.

If you have autonomy and control over how you do the work — it’ll be fun.
If not, it’ll be drudgery.

And on and on and on.

Every productivity and purpose and flow expert in the world can give you a list of external characteristics your work has to fulfill for it to be fun and flow-creating for you.

In this view of the world, the right work for you exists somewhere in the outside world, and your job is to go find it.

You just have to FIND your thing, your passion, your niche, your ikigai, and then you’re all set.

And if something starts feeling like drudgery, one of those fixed characteristics must have gotten out of whack, and you need to either adjust it or find something new to do.

But here’s the inconvenient truth that I’ve observed.

The SAME freaking work…

Consisting of the SAME day-to-day tasks…

With NO change to the work’s fixed characteristics…

Can be incredibly fun sometimes and horrible, quitting levels of drudgery at other times.

This is exactly what has happened to me in my business.

I’ve designed my coaching business to play PERFECTLY into my inherent strengths and interests.

I work every day towards a mission I’m incredibly passionate about.

I can adjust things so that I’m always facing the perfect level of challenge — not too easy but not too hard either.

I have complete control and autonomy over what I do.

And yet… With no change to any of those external characteristics…

I’ve had long periods of time where I’m happy and in flow and having the time of my life in my business.

AND I’ve had long periods of time where I’m confused, stressed out, constantly feeling like I’m doing it wrong, and wondering every day if I should just quit and go home.

Why would I feel SO differently about the exact same work at different times?

Here’s the ONE key question I think it comes down to:

Am I seeing my business as A Project Of My Own?

Here’s how Paul Graham talks about A Project Of One’s Own:

A few days ago, on the way home from school, my nine year old son told me he couldn't wait to get home to write more of the story he was working on.
This made me as happy as anything I've heard him say — not just because he was excited about his story, but because he'd discovered this way of working.
Working on a project of your own is as different from ordinary work as skating is from walking.
It's more fun, but also much more productive.
What proportion of great work has been done by people who were skating in this sense? If not all of it, certainly a lot.

You know what it feels like to work on A Project Of Your Own.

It’s that thing you take up on the side, that no one asked you to do, but that you randomly got super into and now you can’t stop.

It’s the thing you find yourself sneaking off to do, in the edges of your time when you should probably be doing something else.

It doesn’t feel like work. It feels like an indulgence.

Here are some of the Projects Of My Own I’ve indulged in:

After I read Harry Potter as a child, I wrote reams and reams of terrible fantasy stories and cringey fanfiction.
I got super into k-pop in college, so I taught myself the Korean alphabet so I could read the lyrics and sing along accurately to the songs. (My karaoke Gangnam Style was KILLER.)
During Covid, I spent a two-week period being totally obsessed with burning candles to full efficiency, and I tried half a dozen techniques to use up ALL the wax in my candles.
When I was supposed to be studying for the GMAT in 2014, I procrastinated by watching hours of World Cup soccer every day and then reading and listening to all the commentary I could find. There was even a brief moment in time where I understood the offside rule.

I’m sure you can generate your own list too — and it will probably make you smile at your own silly, lovable self :)

But don’t think that Projects Of One’s Own can only occur outside of work! I’ve indulged in plenty of them at work as well, such as:

Doing dozens of customer interviews and then distilling the insights from them in order to develop a new small business banking product
Developing trainings for a class of new hires
Working with a team of statisticians to design, execute, and present a complex, interactive statistical model and user interface that let people see exactly how changing different variables would affect customer behavior

I know — these SOUND so boring and resume bullet-point-y when I write them out, but let me assure you, they FELT as fun as writing fanfiction and doing Korean karaoke.

And I’m sure you can generate your own list of Projects Of Your Own that you’ve done at work too.

Here’s the absolute KEY thing I want you to understand about Projects Of Your Own…

Whether a piece of work is (or isn’t) A Project Of Your Own is not an EXTERNAL characteristic of the work itself.

It’s an INTERNAL characteristic of your perspective, your mindset, and how YOU see the work.

Which means that ANYTHING can be A Project Of Your Own.

And anything can NOT be A Project Of Your Own.

And anything can switch between being A Project Of Your Own and NOT being one at any time, based on how YOU are thinking about it.

This is why I’ve had long periods of fun and flow in my business…

And long periods of pain and drudgery in my business…

All while doing the same day-to-day tasks and running the same damn business.

Nothing changed about the work itself.

What changed was how I was thinking about it.

When I was thinking about it as A Project Purely Of My Own, it was super fun and flow-creating.

And when I started thinking about it as a Real Grown-Up Business that had to Scale and Grow and Hit Revenue Targets to indicate that I was Doing It Right, it became absolute confusion and drudgery.

And again, there’s nothing wrong with scaling and growing and hitting revenue targets!

Remember, it’s not the work itself that makes the difference!

It’s your perspective on the work.

The problem was that I was seeing “scaling” and “growing” and “hitting revenue targets” NOT as A Project Of My Own.

I was seeing them as A Project Of Someone Else’s — the external mandate of some imaginary boss or authority or business coach or Successful Real Adult that was coming in and patting me on the head and saying “you did pretty good, kid, but now it’s time for you to grow up and get serious and do some real work.”

And the fascinating thing I realized is this…

It was easier to see my business as A Project Of My Own before I had any success.

Because when you haven’t had success yet, you have nothing to lose.

But as soon as something starts working, it’s very likely that loss aversion will kick in…

Your brain will start to enmesh your identity into your success…

Which means you’ll feel a strong desire to MAINTAIN your success at all costs…

Because succeeding and THEN failing seems even more embarrassing than never succeeding at all.

And I think the same thing probably happens to you too.

After you’ve achieved success, promotions, status, financial stability, entry into selective colleges or work places or social clubs…

Your brain might kick into Loss Aversion Mode and tell you that you have to maintain the success you’ve gained at all costs…

(You can’t go BACKWARDS! What will people say!!)

And that the way to maintain your success is to stop doing Projects Of Your Own (risky and weird)…

And commit to doing Projects Of Someone Else’s and constantly measuring yourself against external standards (safe and normal).

I’m here to tell you that the opposite is actually true.

You have accomplished incredible things, high achiever.

Looking around and shaping what you see into endless fodder for Projects Of Your Own is what brought you here.

And the greatest danger that you face is not that you fail or stumble or lose what you’ve gained.

The greatest danger you face is that your success make you brittle and afraid of failing and stumbling and losing in the future.

And that fear makes you turn your back on the very characteristics that brought you here in the first place.

And that fear makes you stop seeing the world as an infinite playground for Projects Of Your Own.

You know exactly what a Project Of Your Own feels like.

You know exactly how to turn anything you do INTO a Project Of Your Own.

That fun, playful, childlike version of you never went away.

They’re waiting for you to tap back into them anytime you want.

So open your eyes.

Let your inner weirdo kid come out again.

Stop seeing things as Projects of Someone Else’s.

And make everything you do A Project Of Your Own.

Because making things into A Project Of Your Own is not an external set of conditions you can “set and forget”…

But rather an internal mindset and orientation toward the world that you have to maintain in the face of constantly changing circumstances…

Making everything you do A Project Of Your Own is an ongoing practice, not a one-time switch.

It is a skill and a muscle that needs to be developed over time with regular reps, just like anything else.

And the best way to develop that skill and muscle?

The EASIEST way to give yourself those reps?

Come work with me :)

I’ll take all the guesswork out of the process.

I’ll make the plan.

I’ll design the workouts.

I’ll troubleshoot the problems.

I’ll keep things on track.

All you have to do is show up for an hour a week.

I’ll do the rest.

Book a free coaching consult

What my clients have to say…

“If you're just starting out, you should learn this toolkit with an expert like Pooja.

Now I'm able to open up a Google Doc and make good progress on my own.

But if you want to do it the right way, you really should have someone listening to what you're saying, guiding you, and course-correcting you.”

—Client | Solutions Engineer at Fintech company

“Pooja strikes a really strong balance between troubleshooting immediate problems but at the same time, really tying in that there are tools I need to solve all my problems.

And that even though a problem I run into this week is different from a problem I run into next week, you can use the same frameworks to work your way out of it.

Now, I feel like I have a nice tool chest of frameworks and habits that I can rely on that not just change my work life, but also my personal life too.”

—Client | VP at Major Financial Institution

Less Stress, More Flow with Pooja V.

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