Long-term projects aren’t nonstop work.
Instead, there’s always periods of business and quiet. Hurry up and wait. The first big long-term project I remember was the planning of my wedding. Over the 18 months or our engagement, we had periods where we didn’t think about the wedding, and periods where we didn’t think about anything else.
I associate this feeling with planning a wedding, but it’s true for any big project. A concert, a book, a conference, a musical…all of these have these counterbalanced manic periods and rest periods.
Projects that don’t have wait periods interspersed with the hurry up periods are the ones that feel the most challenging – they are stressful and exhausting. Give yourself a little more time and a little more plan so you can breathe. (Or fill the slow parts of that project with fast parts of other projects….)