Train of Thoughts: We are doing just fine. Or do we?
This blog is part of a series of self-reflections and backstage stories of me. Me as a graduate in Experience Design, and project manager of The Unity Express, my “bigger than life” project I am involved in from the very start.
As someone who is constantly involved into a project, you become extremely biased. So biased in fact, that you don’t recognize anymore you are biased. And that is very dangerous from time to time.
Dangerous because you loose contact with new volunteers
Over the past 8 to 9 months all we have been doing is crafting the story and vision behind the project, talk with people about it, shaping the story bit by bit and in the end embedding it in our system. This led to the pitch of about 1 minute that I can give to any new person that has never heard of the project before.
And still, or maybe because, after so much work on the project and countless talks, I sometimes forget how little a newcomer knows. Sometimes I totally forget to tell about the CouchSurfing sleepovers. Sometimes I don’t even mention the name of the project. I figure my head thinks “they know that already, move on” at those moments. No they don’t, I do.
So far I only learned the hard way how to prevent this; people ask about the missing bits of information. “But, how much is all this going to cost?”, “Where can I find more information?”, “Are you just sitting in a train all day long?”… And I think that is in some cases just fine. By not telling literally everything about the project, the listener has a chance to get the basic concept and ask for information they are interested in the most at that time. But sometimes, I mentally slap myself on the forehead when I forgot to tell bits that really suit their needs. It is that balance you need to find between what is interesting for them and what is not. I still have a long way to go in sensing peoples needs, but I’ve started to learn how to pitch the most important bits, and go from there. A healthy dialogue is inspiring, because many people have their own unique questions, that we haven’t even thought of. And that is exactly why we do this collectively and open source.
Dangerous because you develop a false feeling of progress
In a negative way, that is. From an outside perspective, the project appears to be moving fast, and doing just fine. I can say this because people from outside have said this to me. But I, as someone who is working on the inside all the time and on top of everything, progress often seems too slow. Maybe it is because I am addicted to the rush of fast progress and is my mind always craving for a higher doses, just as a drug addict always wants more. Maybe it is not that heavy and it’s just that I loose track from time to time on what is actually happening around the project in a week. If you look at it from a statistical perspective, there are numerous small milestones every week. But emotionally it feels as if nothing happened. You don’t celebrate the little victories that often anymore. Although we do share all of them to the world, via Facebook, Twitter and other media. I just don’t register them that good myself.
Another side effect of this false feeling is that you become increasingly overly attentive to other voluntary projects. “Why are they moving so fast?”, “Why don’t we have a forum full of topics by different members?”, “Why don’t we have a 1000 followers on Facebook yet?”. It can drive you crazy. But if you get sane for a moment again and ask yourself “are we really doing that bad?”, often the answer is “No!”. Often that forum has a lot of topics, all started by this one very active member, with just a few comments here and there from other users. The phrase “200 active topics” at the top of the page is in this case a misleading statistic. Often a Facebook page with thousands of followers exists for way longer than ours. We are only live since end of July, that’s a mere 3 months. In those three months we got almost 640 fans now.
In the end it is all about not going insane and keep believing in what you are doing is the best you can for the project. Don’t measure your success according to others, it is useless, for they are incomparable. The parameters, scale, goals and/or organization might be totally different from yours. Of course you may be inspired by them, ask them for ideas and help and ultimately learn and use it in your own project. But don’t be jealous or let your own motivation go down because “that other project is having way more success than we are”. Sail your own course and don’t see them as your enemy, but rather as your ally.
From now on you never eat alone anymore
Loosing track of reality can easily occur if you stay in your own world, and run circles in your head, strengthening false assumptions and demotivating thoughts. A way to have a “helicopter view” from time to time for me personally is to just talk with people about the project. Not people who stand close to whatever project I’m working on, but people completely outside the volunteer community. They are my consultants, my advise givers and sometimes my motivation boosters. Because even I have times where my motivation has sunk to the bottom as well. It happens to everybody from time to time. Whenever that happens: talk to someone about it! Getting new energy and inspiration is as simple as having a lunch with someone you feel is genuine to you, but could cheer you up like nobody else and let you believe in the world again 
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I’m curious: do you recognize the situations I laid out here? Do you have more examples? How do you “helicopter” or keep sanity? Have advise for me and other visitors on how to prevent too much bias? Want to get something else off of your chest? Please share your stories 
