Addictive & Self-Reinforcing Double-Helix Pair of Motivating Projects

by Mike Levin

I need 2 projects now that motivate me and cross-pollinate, feeding off of each others energy and get me excited to get and keep working on them.

The first will go with the first real Moz work that I was assigned to, and that will be a slide deck. I should do a comprehensive overview of what data we have and how it’s accessible and usable in different ways, along with comparing it to competitors to the best of my (our) ability.

I tried to do this in a very fill-in-the-cell grid approach, which at first feels like a great way to go about this, imposes too much structure. It feels like if you can’t fill in the box, you shouldn’t and it makes it feel incomplete. I think a Powerpoint-style deck is a better starting point. Tell a story and flesh it out. Transpose what you discover back into grid.

The second project will be basically what I do on my own anyway, but I’ll Moz-itize it. There’s so many deliverable-types that you can generate with Python in Jupyter and then 24x7 automate (if appropriate) that… well, the sky’s the limit. I just have to ease people into this approach. It feels like there are technical hurdles.

Between throwing out my back and all the GPT ChatBot news of late, it’s almost like I started at Moz twice. This is me sinking my teeth in now. Start each project as just that initial kernel. Then start building on each. And the nature of that kernel is important. You know enough to do it well now.