How I’m Deciding Which Projects Are Worth Pursuing Right Now

Image created with DALL-E 3 by author

I know I want to focus on foundational skills and habits to help improve my day-to-day, but there are so many different things I could work on.

Do I improve my software development skills? If I need to switch jobs, I should really study data structures and algorithms because that will be needed for higher-paying jobs. I haven’t needed it so far in my 20-year career, but I’m not getting any younger, and I need to compete with younger folks. However, I don’t want to drill LeetCode. That sounds boring. Besides, do I even want to stay in this career?

I’ve signed up for many courses through the years. There is a lot I’d like to work on. But there are also a lot of books I want to read. Several of my side projects, not to mention this newsletter, need attention.

I get so overwhelmed I don’t work on anything. Sometimes, I can do something, but it’s whatever I feel like doing at the moment, probably not the best thing to work on. I need to figure this out.

Ideally, I’ll have a list of everything I’m working on or want to work on and score them to identify which projects will give me the biggest return on my time & money investments.

You’ve probably seen some existing frameworks out there. A common one is the Eisenhower matrix, where you group tasks on whether or not they are urgent and/or important. In the project management space, there is a great acronym, RICE, where you score each project based on Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. However, these aren’t metrics that matter for personal projects.

The SHELL Framework

I headed to ChatGPT to help me brainstorm what a personal version of RICE might look like. Well, the acronym we came up with wasn’t quite what I expected going in, but I’m sharing the first draft of the SHELL framework with you today.

I’ve already found a few limitations of this framework, but it’s a good starting place.

SHELL stands for Speed, Heart, Effort, Longevity, and Leverage. Let me explain each in the context of this framework. Each metric will be given a score of 1-5, and then you multiply them together and sort the list by this total score.

Speed

Initially, I thought speed would be how long it takes to complete the project, but when I started scoring my tasks, I realized it should be more like a “Time Commitment.”

If it’s a major time commitment, it gets a 1, and if it’s a minor time commitment, you give it a 5.

I have several long-term projects that might not require much time on a weekly basis. Should these be scored low because they will be ongoing long-term projects? Should they be scored high because they don’t take up much time every week?

I’m choosing to score projects 5 if they have small weekly commitments, even if they are long-term projects.

Heart

Heart represents how much this project juices you up.

Are you excited and motivated to do it, or does this feel like a “should” that you think you need to do? This is important to consider.

Effort

How much effort will this project require? Is this an easy or difficult project? Give it a 1 if this is a super difficult project. Give it a 5 if it’s easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Longevity

Now, it’s not good to only prioritize quick and easy projects. You also need to balance long-term benefits.

Give longevity a high score if completing this project will make your life better far in the future.

Leverage

Leverage should be scored high if completing this project will make your other tasks & projects easier or unnecessary.

It doesn’t have to only help other projects on your list. You could score this high if it’s a fundamental skill like learning public speaking.

One trick I’m using is if the project has prerequisites, I score it 0 for leverage, so the whole row is zeroed out because I can’t start it yet.

Downstream Benefits

The biggest problem I see with the SHELL framework (which might be okay) is that an ideal score should consider the downstream benefits.

Leverage is an incomplete way to measure this. If I have a project that is a prerequisite for a bunch of high-value projects, should the score reflect this?

I don’t want this to become some crazy Gantt chart, so I think it’s okay to ignore. It’s just an extra piece of data you can look at when deciding what to work on now.

Implementation

To try this out and see if it was helpful, I created a spreadsheet and brain-dumped 28 projects that I’ve either started or would like to start.

Quickly, I realized that it’s helpful to consider scope. Many of my projects were “Read this interesting book.” Sometimes, that might be a higher time commitment (lower score), but then I remembered something we do at work.

Instead of just creating a ticket for a particular project, we might create an investigation ticket. This is where we’ll take a week or two to figure out the real scope of the project. Are there any prerequisites or blockers? Is this a much bigger project than we expected?

So, I change some of my projects to “investigation” projects. In the context of books, it might become “Skim this interesting book,” which is less effort and quicker. Then, I can decide if the book requires a deeper dive, which I can put down as a new project.

The result of doing this exercise is I discovered that I should spend my time right now completing two quick Timothy Kenny courses about specific learning skills, as well as the year-long iCanStudy program because I know if I invest in skills around learning and note-taking, all of my other projects will become more valuable.

I already struggle with getting value out of and remembering what I read (even worse with podcasts and audiobooks.) So, if I can postpone all these books until I’ve figured out new skills to try, they have a better chance of impacting my life.

What I also discovered is that, as of right now, it’s probably not the best use of my time to study algorithms and data structures. Yes, they scored high for longevity and mid for leverage, but it would be a major undertaking in both time and effort, and frankly, my heart isn’t in it.

I’m looking forward to using this list as an ongoing planning tool where I add projects (especially courses) to see if it makes sense for me buy and start. This alone, should help shrink my education budget category.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll keep adding projects as they come up. I know there are a bunch of ongoing coding projects I haven’t added yet. I like that if I put something down and it gets a low score, I can tweak it (change the scope) and see if there's a better way to approach it.

Feedback

What do you think? Does this help you? Any suggestions for tweaking it? Please comment and let me know.