I only ever start a big project if I’m really excited about it. That excitement doesn’t last for long, but while it’s there, it makes me forget how difficult the project actually is, so I let myself imagine the best version of it. This feels very freeing.

Of course, after a couple days or weeks that feeling fades and I’m faced with the reality of the work ahead. But if not for that initial moment of delusion I wouldn’t have started in the first place.

Let the vision grow first

My best ideas show up right when I’m excited and not yet buried in work. That’s the time to think big instead of strategizing how you’ll pull it off. Worrying about the how puts boundaries around your vision that don’t let it grow fully.

Making a project bigger rarely costs proportionally more, if you expand it while you’re still building the foundation. You’ll end up with more ideas than you can use, and when you’re actually building the thing, you’ll keep the good ones and discard the rest.

That’s what happened with my book. I first planned a small guide for one part of anatomy, but while I was researching it, it grew to around 250 pages. That was two years ago.

I recently went back to that old plan and refined it, and it finally made sense for the first time. If I use the diagrams I draw as standalone posts along the way, I can actually pull it off. That’s the moment the how showed up, and that’s my cue to stop growing the vision and start planning it.

Then turn it into a plan

Once the how shows up, I stop growing the vision and sit down to turn it into an actual plan, while I still don’t mind the extra work. It feels like assigning tasks to your future self so you don’t really care in the moment, and that’s a good thing! Once the excitement fades, every new idea would start to feel like more work, and I’d stop adding to the project and keep it small. But by then the plan is already made, so I just follow the steps.

Once it finally made sense, I spent two weeks gathering information. I read the 3 other furry anatomy books and researched how the authors structured their table of contents. Then I spent a week learning InDesign and figuring out the perfect format, studying grid systems, thinking through what kind of print company I’ll go for. All of that built a foundation that I can now follow without too many uncertainties.

So to summarize:

  1. Grow your vision, without worrying about how.
  2. Keep that vision in the back of your mind. The missing piece of how tends to show up when you actively search for it.
  3. Once it does, use what’s left of your excitement to turn the vision into a real plan.
  4. Follow the plan.