Project management for novelty

The world is run by project managers, and what a project manager wants is a workforce that executes their vision. Thus, the world is built to create minions that execute assigned tasks.

We think of projects as being teleological. We have a goal and we work towards that goal. But I’m starting to realize I’m developing a personal project management system that works using a different algorithm called “novelty search”.

• Ideas: Is it new? This is where I explore the world in search of novelty. Is the idea new or is it being used in a novel way?
• Topics: What is improved by the idea? I’m not optimizing for a single feature or outcome. I maintain a list of topics I monitor, and ask if the idea improves some feature(s) among those topics.
• Projects: Can the idea live somewhere interesting? Rather than spend years writing a single book, I spin up a multitude of environments where the idea can live: social media posts, newsletter articles, books, and etc.

All my life I’ve been doing this unconsciously (and badly), but I think I can optimize this now that I see the pattern. For so long I’ve been trying to follow the project manager’s playbook when I should have been writing my own playbook.