The Anchor Project: Steadying Yourself Before You Set Sail

Alright. You’re fed up with exploring.

You’ve collected your thoughts, discovered your strengths, followed your interests, and named your passions. Your mind is bubbling over with ideas and your heart is racing. You’re itching to set sail, but there’s just one problem: you don’t know where to start.

You could use an anchor project.

A Dozen Destinations and Nowhere to Set Sail From

Your problem isn’t that you’ve nowhere to go. You could list a dozen destinations. Your heart looks like one of those sign posts with a collection of arrows, each one pointing to a different location. 1000 miles to Xanadu, 1300 to Atlantis . . .

But your mind is stuck in indecision. So many places to go and nowhere to begin.

You feel listless and adrift. Your ideas are exciting but have no center, no place to call home, and nowhere to set sail from.

Perhaps the first thing you need to do is drop an anchor. You need to steady yourself and load your provisions before you hit the open waters. You need a place from which to launch and a place to return to at the end of every voyage. That’s what an anchor project can do for you.

The best way I know to explain it is to share some examples.

Three Examples of How an Anchor Project Works

Party Hardy

My friend Della dreams of many things: party planning, costume design, and jewelry making. But how can she do all these things at once? It’s simple. She can’t. She could, however, create an anchor project that, over time, will serve as a source of inspiration for all these things and more.

Let’s say she started with party planning. She could pick a few common themes and create a basic plan for each one. Agendas. Activities. Menus. Resources. Once finished, she’d have a basic package of party plans she can build on. Then the fun begins.

She could take one of her party plans and create costumes and jewelry that match the theme. Pirate party? Beach blowout? Halloween shindig? Is your mind clicking? Mine is.

Just one idea that comes to mind? Della could create parties for girls that center around a theme like high tea or a princess ball. She could design costumes and jewelry for the girls to wear and rent them out in addition to offering her party planning services. She could even sell her creations, displaying them at the parties or via a brochure or catalogue.

These are big ideas, but remember it all starts with a simple anchor project, like the set of basic party plans I mentioned earlier.

T-Shirt Library

My friend Barbara designs t-shirts. She also loves books, and I mean loves, loves, loves them. She devours them and likes to write about them. How can she make these two things dance?

She could create a blog about books. In fact, she already has. But what if she made that blog truly remarkable by displaying a book inspired t-shirt alongside every book review? The blog would be her anchor project. Read a book. Write a review. Design a t-shirt. Publish.

It’s anyone’s guess where things might go from there, but it would definitely be somewhere to go from.

Going Mild

I have all these ideas. Journal exercises. Blogging tutorials. Audio interviews. In my mind, they all work together, but to most they probably seem unrelated.

And this blog is strange. One day I’m tongue in cheek, the next I’m earnest and sincere. One day I’m posting a lengthy article, the next a quick video. Again, it all makes sense to me but it might be confusing to some.

It would make much more sense if I first completed an anchor project.

What’s my anchor project? It’s a simple matter of thinking backwards.

I mentioned creating blogging tutorials. Why? Well, to understand why I’d want to create blogging tutorials, you’d need to hear about something I call 90 Day Blogs. And to understand 90 Day Blogs, you’ll need to hear why I think it’s so important to collect your thoughts. To understand that, you might be interested to know why I think collecting your thoughts is one of the ways you can lead a life of quiet inspiration. And you’ll understand that when you read the book I’m thinking about writing called Going Mild: 10 Ways to Lead a Life of Quiet Inspiration. And there’s my anchor project. Write the book.

The book, you see, is a place where I can drop my anchor. I can also pull it up, set sail, and return when I’m done. But I’ll always know where home is. I’ll always know why I’m creating whatever it is I’m creating because it will all be related somehow to my anchor project, the book.

The Benefits of Being Anchored

Focusing on an anchor project can help you in many ways.

1. It can serve as a blueprint. Once your anchor project’s finished, it can show you what to do next and you can use what you’ve learned to complete any projects that flow from the original.

2. It can help you remember. You’ll remember what your work is all about, what you’re all about. You’ll remember where you’re going and who you’re serving. You’ll be better prepared to say yes to things that matter and no to things that don’t.

3. It will give you something to point to. When people want to know what it is you do exactly, you’ll have something to point to, something to show them, something that explains what might not be obvious at first glance.

4. It can prepare you for the next big change. Over time, your interests may change, but the process will remain the same. Should you decide to pursue a new set of interests, you’ll know how to anchor yourself once more because you’ve done it all before.

So I’m curious. What are your interests and big ideas? Do you know how to anchor them? Do you have a project in mind, one from which you safely launch all your other ideas? I’d love to hear about it.

Are you getting all the Quiet Inspiration you need? Subscribe to Quiet Inspiration, the Mildly Creative Newsletter. You can also subscribe to these blog posts via RSS feed or by Email.