Let’s learn about the concept of the Project. I don’t mean the hyperspeed weekend to-do list. I mean Project with a capital ‘P’… the long-term ones that change you as a person.

This paper looks at projects as they relate to the Self and creativity and gave me some food for thought, so I’m sharing.

Think about the projects of identity you wanted to take on as a kid. “I want to be a famous chef,” or “I want to be a super-skilled coder/hacker”.

A pragmatist would say, “Uh, you’re 5… you can’t even see over the table”.

But pragmatists be damned, we might have still imagined ourselves taking on those roles — those identities — and then started to behave in ways we thought were aligned with them.

We were open to the fact that we might not know exactly how to get there, but the project of getting there became part of who we were. We looked at what we knew as tools to get us where we wanted to go. And we learned more about ourselves as we went.

No matter our age we can still use this way of pursuing projects of identity.

  • Start by exploring the possibilities of who our future self could be
  • Then prioritize some of those possibilities (a coder, a painter, …)
  • Then act in ways that are aligned with who you want to become

So, what kind of person are you building with your projects?

Reference

de Valverde, J., Sovet, L., & Lubart, T. (2017). Self-construction and creative “life design”. In M. Karwowski & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), The creative self: Effect of beliefs, self-efficacy, mindset, and identity (pp. 99–115). Elsevier Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-809790-8.00006-6