The popular view that the meaning of a life should be a project is assessed by examining a life that did have that shape. John Stuart Mill’s utilitarian life project is described, and is argued to be a best representative of the class. Turning points and unusual features of Mill’s life are shown to be side effects or preconditions of having a very large project center stage in it. Life projects are motivated as satisfying a coherence requirement imposed on the valuable elements of a life. But Mill’s biography demonstrates that living out one’s life as a project undermines its coherence. The overunified life, it is concluded, is to be avoided, and the meaningfulness of a life is best reconceived so as to give it application in the lives of loosely organized agents.