I don’t know about the rest of you, but my life is pretty busy. Between work, the commute, and everything else that needs to get done (like writing this blog) there isn’t a lot of time left over. One of the great advantages of the modern age is that we can do so much more because of the effciencies involved in wireless-digital-multitasking-everything. Per Jevon’s paradox though, the more efficient we get with our time, the more we will use it.

So with all that going on, who has the time to go out and flip through Kickstarter, looking for an awesome project or two to support. With the volume of projects increasing so rapidly (3462 vs 3409 a week ago) it is harder than ever to keep track of the ones you like, let alone find them in the first place. Well, I have a couple tips for you to help you stay engaged, even in the chaos of your busy life.

Kickstarter’s search functionality is unfortunately limited, but it does have a number of tools to show you great projects, if you don’t mind missing out on a few of them. It is easy enough to just look at the featured projects on the front page, or to click on the discover link, go to the category of your choice, and then select staff picks. This will show you every project they have highlighted in the past month or two, and will likely, though not always, include the best of each.

But finding them isn’t the problem. What if you are torn, and can’t decide if you want to back a certain project? I have missed out on a couple (Forgequest and Star Command) that I really liked, and would have given money, but I procrastinated. Kickstarter has an answer to this problem, but I don’t find it to be very effective: the ‘remind me’ button, located under the video in each project. Clicking this button will remind you when that project is 48 hours from completion via the email account associated with your Kickstarter. Usually if I was too busy to decide if I wanted to back a project in the moment, I am too busy to decide if I want to later when checking my email.

As always, I think there is a better way: If you like a project, give them a dollar. There are a lot of sound reasons for this.

Giving them a dollar inches the project forward, and adds one to the backer count. You can always adjust your pledge up or down later. Becoming a backer has the benefit of receiving projects updates. These are far more likely to convince you to move your pledge up. If you don’t like the project enough to give it a dollar, you probably don’t like it enough to check back in on it later.

The project doesn’t need to have a one dollar support level to do this. You can simply click on the big green ‘Back this Project’ button on the right side of the page. From there you can donate any option you want. Becoming invested goes a long way toward wanting to take that leap in my opinion. The downside to getting invested though, is that sometimes, you put more money in than you should. I try to keep a philosophy about this as well, though I will be going over that in a near future post.

Has anyone else let a great project slip through their fingers? I’d love to hear more about the one that got away.

This entry was posted by David Winchester.