# Planning for Actionability *** **Prev Card**: [[A Warm Welcome]] **Next Card**: [[Task Management - Wrangling Urgency]] *** ## Overview I feel like I am _terrible_ at task management. I hate goals, resist them actually, and I don't like to sit down and plan for the future. Sorry all you goal adherents, I know this is bothersome to hear. I am a task management heretic. I have read the bible of task management, the [[Getting Things Done|book Getting Things Done]] by [[David Allen]], and before that I took courses at Motorola designed to help me improve my task management and planning. I know all about setting SMART Goals, and I studied the [[library/Objectives and Key Results|book Objectives and Key Results]] by [[Paul R. Niven]] and [[Ben Lamorte]]. And yet, I find all of this level of detail deeply frustrating and demotivating. I never seem to know enough to plan properly, and I find that many of the systems take more time to maintain than the work itself. As a result one of my favorite resources is the [[library/The Antidote|book The Antidote]] by [[Oliver Burkeman]]. He basically goes about busting the myth that goals are the be all end all of living a productive life. There is a huge difference between habits (which align with Areas, on going parts of your life you don't want to "finish" such as your health), and projects - things that have a completion date. So what does that have to do with tasks and todo lists? I do in fact, I have a todo list. And I do actually complete some projects. However, I don't feel like what I do fits the populist molds for being productive. What I will share with you is a philosophy I learned from a friend, [[Corbin Glowacki]]. Corbin introduced me to the [[library/Master Your Workday Now|book Master Your Workday Now]] by [[Michael Linenberger]]. Very similar to the [[Tiago Forte]] idea of organizing information for **actionability**, Linenberger advocates organizing your todo's by **Urgency**. When we manage our urgency, we manage our stress. ## History of Productivity This is by no means scientific, but there has been a general progression of thoughts around project management over the last 100 years. It started with character. Be a good person, and good things will happen to you. Think, [[Napoleon Hill]] and his book [[Think and Grow Rich]]. However, being good, and thinking good may not make it clear what you need to do and when. So enter, the to-do list. Writing things down is useful and can sharpen our mind. After the list came time management, from guru's like [[Stephen R. Covey]] (the Franklin-Covey merger), where Franklin sold countless "organizers" for busy people. According to [[Chet Holmes]], the secret to most Billionaires is that they manage their time, and they only have 6 things they have to do in one day. Well after the good character, and to-do lists, and the scheduling, came the push for efficiency. We just aren't getting enough done! This is where [[David Allen]] and his [[Getting Things Done|book Getting Things Done]] comes in. Allen had an incredible system for getting things done. Allen's big insight was to group like minded tasks - not all work is the same, so you can "batch" work that is similar. For example, if you need to make phone calls, make all your phone calls. Need to send emails? Then send them all now. It is clever, but I did find it overwhelming and nearly possible to maintain. And that brings us to the present moment. One significant problem with Allen's GTD is that all tasks are created equal, and there is no recognition for the roles and responsibilities that shape our lives. The first pushback here came from [[Gary Keller]] and [[Jay Papasan]] in their [[The ONE Thing|book The ONE Thing]]. It was about making sure you do **the one most important thing** every day. [[Brian Tracy]] called this [[Eat That Frog!]]. This idea to focus on what matters, is what has finally lead me to the latest best information I can find to balance real life and the desire to do more. At present, the idea is to manage for **actionability** and for **urgency**. The two most important books here are: - The [[library/Building a Second Brain|book Building a Second Brain]] by [[Tiago Forte]] and - The [[library/Master Your Workday Now|book Master Your Workday Now]] by [[Michael Linenberger]]. ## The Big Idea First, organize all of your systems into four compartments. 1. Projects 2. Areas 3. Resources 4. Archives Here is a real example from my system. So it is not clean and perfect. ![[PARA - Novis Example.png]] My Dropbox folder, has PARA folders. My OneDrive folder, has PARA folders. My Obsidian PKM starts with PARA folders. Even my Google Drive has PARA folders. Unfortunately RTM wants to treat folders like projects, so I can't next folders inside folders, but the PARA structure is still present. The idea is that where ever I go, which ever system I touch, information is laid out the same way. ## A Real Life Example When I needed to create a presentation for Culture Kitchen for the Arkansas National Guard, I started by creating two folders: 1. `Project - CK for ANG` - in Obsidian 2. `Project - CK for ANG` - in OneDrive In Obsidian, I used a project template file to answer a lot of planning questions. Like, what was the purpose? What did I want to achieve? What was important? Who was this for? I gathered as much information as I could. Obsidian held my knowledge _about_ the project. For example, links to source material (bibliography), and my own thoughts. Then in OneDrive, I gathered all the resources to make the presentation. I copied logos, graphics. I made a PowerPoint file. I copied an older presentation that had a slide template I wanted to use. I did most of the _creating_ in PowerPoint, but the `Project - CK for ANG` held all the assets, everything I would need to create this project. It was not possible to create it all in one sitting, so I had to work on it over time. But this folder organization kept _everything_ together. This did lead to duplicates, like the logo files. However, it is my experience that logos change, and move, and can be hard to track down. The same with photo's and icons. I used a lot of icons from [thenounproject.com](https://thenounproject.com/) . So I put those in here too. When the project was done, and I delivered the material, I got feedback from the client and added that to the `Project - CK for ANG` obsidian file. Then I **archived** everything. Later, when I had an opportunity to present the program to the Oregon National Guard, I found these project folders, _copied_ them into new folders named: - `Project - CK - ONG` - Obsidian - `Project - CK - ONG` - OneDrive And I rapidly picked up where I left off. I implemented the changes from the Arkansas feedback into the Oregon presentation and I quickly had a new presentation for my new presentation. I wasted ZERO time looking for assets to build the presentation and getting up to speed was crazy fast. ## Next Steps That is what it looks like to prepare knowledge work, but what about tasks? How do you manage a bunch of seemingly related but unrelated tasks? That is the next step, managing **Urgency**. Next: [[Task Management - Wrangling Urgency]]