Month: September 2025

We’ve come to the end at last—Part IX, the finale—of this nine-part series. I’ve saved the least important—the physical tools—for last. Herein, too, we will get into project folders and reference files. What do we do with that ‘stuff’ that isn’t important now but may be either in the course of project management or in the distant future, like warranty information or instruction manuals?

Considering tools, I also want to discuss the pros and cons of analog and digital tools. I do use both, but I prefer analog—good old pen (or pencil) and paper. That said, digital tools excel in numerous ways and are superior in several contexts.

Reference Filing System

Let’s begin with files and folders. ‘Reference files’ can mean several things, depending on the context and/or time. Project plans and support materials are references that you consult relative to your current projects and their timelines of completion or due dates.

Other references, such as your home warranty or car insurance, you need to know where it is when you need them. It also needs to be useful—not intermixed with outdated or non-relevant information.

Some of these references are best kept digitally—addresses and phone numbers—we all (probably) keep on our smartphone contact applications of one sort or another. Other references—that packet of home warranty information—is easily stored and accessed (if needed) in a file folder labeled “Home Warranty,” filed alphabetically in a file cabinet.

With these definitions in mind, your system becomes a question of how much room you have (digital space wins here) and how much you want to keep. On the other hand, if it’s something I’m building or repairing, it tends to start like this:

Following on these examples, I have checklist templates for planning dinner parties and presentations (just as I had them for various repeating investigations like Fire Origin and Cause and DUI). These checklists are digital templates, so I open a checklist in the Reminders app from a template and save it under the appropriate name or date. These can also be printed out.

I also grab an empty folder and label it. The paper goes in the folder. Drafted menu? Folder. Recipies? Folder. Ideas for slides, pictures, quotes, or a topical outline? All goes into the folder. The folders then go into the active projects section of my file box, separate from Archives or Reference files (we will get to these in a bit). On any day that I’m working on the project, and especially on the day of my weekly review and processing, I can refer to the checklist and project folder for next actions to move the project forward to completion on time.

As previously mentioned, the checklist can be printed out and placed in the folder. As we’ll discuss soon, this becomes a balancing act between digital and analog. You either come to rely on one or the other, or you have to ‘synchronize’ the two—being sure to check off done stuff in both places.

Reference Files

Reference materials are essentially information, for which there is no current action or project, but that may have value—potentially useful—at a later date or for some future project. Examples include:
• Contact information
• Bank account information
• Instruction manuals
• Warranties
• Someday-Maybe lists

Take this stuff and stick it in folders. Label the folders so you know what’s in there. File them in alphabetical order in your cabinet or box. These folders should be specific, like “Home Warranty” or topical, like “Paint Samples, Interior,” in which you may have chips or card swatches for each room.

Reference Filing System

Due to its simplicity, comprehensiveness, and flexibility, I use and highly recommend Tiago Forte’s PARA method. PARA is an acronym for Projects, Area, Resources, Archives.

Project

Projects in this method are short-term efforts in your work or life that you are currently working on in some capacity. As previously mentioned, project support material is collected in a file folder, labeled with the project name, in your file box—that is, up front, if not in the top drawer of your file cabinet.

Areas

Next up is “Areas.” These are long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time. Jump back to Parts III and IV, where we defined Identities, Roles, and role-based goals. These are your areas of improvement or commitments to yourself or others—long-term responsibilities and goals. For example, my roles include ‘home handyman,’ ‘tech support,’ and ‘vehicle maintenance.’ Therefore, I have reference file folders that support these roles and their role-based goals. A folder labeled “Prius” that includes insurance information, copies of registration, and the most recent service receipts (which tell me when the next services are due). Don’t forget your “sharpen the saw” self-improvement (long-term) projects.

Resources

These are topics or interests that may be useful in the future, including repeating project templates and checklists. Here (digitally) is where I keep my kayaking trip and backpacking trip planning checklists. Maybe you’ve been thinking about remodeling or redecorating a room in the house, or changing the front yard landscaping. Here, in a folder labeled as such, is a good place to collect pictures, articles, bookmarks, and web-links relative to those as yet unformulated ideas, those someday-maybes.

A further note on References, I divide these by location in the house. I have sections in my reference files for each room in the house: kitchen, dining room, living room, etc. Within these, I’ll file information like (in “kitchen”) the paint swatches, warranties, and manuals for the appliances. This idea comes from my mother-in-law (shout out to Carol).

Archives

This area of your system is for inactive files from the other three categories. In the digital space, this can be enormous—every previous project, case file, presentation, or training manual. In the analog, physical space, you may need to be more selective. Here, I have compiled completed checklists, project files that I have finished (or put on hold or deleted), as well as areas (or roles) and goals that are no longer relevant or active. Why archive this stuff? Because it may become relevant again, or reactivate, or be useful to similar projects or areas of my life.

One way to maintain comprehensive archives is to scan paper documents into a digital format. Digital files of PDFs can be catalogued and searched. The Evernote app is a useful tool—Tiago Forte’s preferred tool, in fact—because it can search words in documents, PDFs, and photographs.

Shameless plug for future article: this is not how I organize my card catalogue of reading and studying notes.

Analog Versus Digital

Analog or handwritten notes create more long-term retention. Further, there is more free flow of ideas and thoughts, and active recall.

Tablets, which record and even transcribe handwriting, are bridging the gap, of course, but digital note-taking allows for immediate and near-infinite retention in cloud storage and the like. Still, I prefer handwritten. I handwrite the first draft of all my blog posts. I handwrite notes from reading and studying. This translates easily from book margins to common-placing notebooks to my 4×6 note cards in my card catalogue.

I also capture most ideas, tasks, and plans by hand. I do this either on a legal pad or scrap paper. The legal pad becomes just a list that I drop into my in box on processing day. The scrap paper is one idea or thought per page. I also put it into the in box.

When I am out and about, I forego the legal pad, but I do have a capture tool in the car, a 3×5 card notepad, or my “Traveller’s Notebook” in my bag. I’ll admit, though, it is easier and safer to dictate reminders into my iPhone app while driving.

The number one downside to digital, for me at least, is the lack of physical reminders to process and review. In the digital space, I have used “OmniFocus,” “Evernote,” and “Reminders” apps. There are more apps than you can shake a stick at, and I’m sure you can find thousands of reviews all stating how this or that app has changed their life. The problem here is that some will be constantly chasing that new shiny app feeling, instead of actually getting organized and getting to work.

Nowadays, I process almost everything into the Apple native apps—Reminders, Notes, and Calendar. Why paper to digital? Portability. By ‘almost everything’, I mean tasks, actions, lists, and appointments. What doesn’t go digital is my Project Folders (with a caveat) and Reference Files. The caveat is when project research begins online. In that case, I’ll clip pictures, ideas, and hyperlinks into my Notes app, in a note titled by the project name and filed under the relevant category in the Notes app. Depending on the project, these notes may be printed out and filed in my system.

Setting up my computer files, Reminders, and Notes app the same way as my physical file system—the previously described PARA method of Tiago Forte—has been a game-changer. The whole system is more synchronous that way.

My Toolbox

I used to cringe every time I heard an instructor or presenter say something like “another tool for your toolbox” or “tool belt.” It’s an overused, clichéd metaphor. Most of the time, rather than adding something useful to your skill-set, it really meant you needed to stop doing ‘it’ that way and start doing ‘it’ this new-fangled way that I invented and am now getting paid to tell you about. This is just the training version of chasing the shiny new toy.

Stephen King, in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, changed my mind on the toolbox metaphor, with a story about helping “Uncle Oren replace a broken screen on the far side of the house” when he was about eight years old. Uncle Oren lugged the big, old, handmade toolbox once belonging to “Fazza” (Oren’s father, King’s grandfather), all the way from the garage to the other side of the house just for a screwdriver.

Why carry the whole toolbox if all you needed was a screwdriver, young Stephen wondered? Uncle Oren explains, “I didn’t know what else I might find to do once I got out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”

King then encourages us to “construct your own toolbox and then build up enough muscle so you can carry it with you. Then, instead of looking at a hard job and getting discouraged, you will perhaps seize the correct tool and get immediately to work.”

Here’s a non-exhaustive list of past or current tools with some notes about why and how I use them:

• Apple native apps–simplicity across all my devices
⁃ Notes
⁃ Mail
⁃ Reminders
⁃ Calendar
• File folders; slowly transitioning from paper to plastic because they last longer and are reusable
• Brother P-Touch label maker
• Sharpies in black, red, and green—on my paper capture tool (legal pad), black means done, red means deleted, and green means processed into the appropriate list, app, or file
• Legal pad—either size, and I like the yellow color; the “Pocket Gold” pad from Tops Products (sold at Office Depot) is a good weight paper and tears easily at the top
• Levenger’s Meeting Notes pad—just like legal pads, but has a place for a title and date at the top, and a side bar for marginations
• 3M Stickee pads, various sizes
• Rhodia pads, A7 & A6 size
• Leuchtturm 1917 journal, lined—this is my primary journal, wonderful paper for fountain pens • Leuchtturm 1917 Bullet Journal dotted paper—I just started trying Ryder Carol’s “Bullet Journal” method on top of my other journal; I’ve committed to a 30-day trial habit, and if it’s going well, then another 30…
• Rhodia Composition Notebooks—for “common-placing” and study notes
• Rhodia Meeting pad, spiral-bound
• 4×6 note cards—these fit nicely into my card catalogue
• (Speaking of fountain pens) I use/have several fountain pens:
⁃ Waterman
⁃ Lamy
⁃ Pelikan—second favorite, fine nib, in black, blue, red, and even green highlighter inks
⁃ YStudio—with ultra-fine nibs, these (I have two, one for home and one for travel) are my favorite
• Other pens include Montblanc roller-ball, Lamy multi-pens (use “D1” refills from Montverde, Rotring, and others), Rotring ballpoint (20+ years old; I wrote several hundred citations and thousands of warnings with this pen before retiring)
• My favorite throw-away pens are Uni-ball Vision micro or fine roller ball
• Highlighters: Sharpie “SmearGuard” yellow, Staedtler “Textsurfer Classic” orange (these are refillable), Sakura Pigma Micron 05 in neon orange (waterproof, fade-proof, and acid-free “archival ink”), Stabilo “Pen 68” in neon orange
• Wooden “In Box”
• Baskets for shredding and recycling

Done

That’s everything I have for Personal Leadership and Management. I saved the least important for last. Where you should start is back at Part I of the series. Principles, your ‘Why.’ First things first—vision before goals, strategy before tactics.

In this eighth part of a nine-part series, we’re going to focus on Projects. What are projects? How do we complete or ‘do’ projects? How do we plan and manage them?

Projects are anything you want to get done that takes more than one step to complete. Project planning, then, is basically defining an outcome and breaking down the big picture into small, actionable steps or tasks. Project management is doing or delegating the tasks and action steps.

Think of it this way. You can’t ‘do’ a project. You can only do tasks. The key, then, is doing the right tasks at the right time to arrive at the defined project outcome.

The key to projects, then, is planning and managing them. Once a project is planned—you have a list of actionable steps, who is responsible for doing them, and what ‘done’ looks like—then you can return to parts five through seven of this series for managing the tasks and action steps.

Project Planning

My project planning method is inspired by David Allen. He ‘stole it’ from neuroscience. That is, how neuroscience has determined our brains naturally plan. Allen (and therefore I) call it the “natural planning model.” Over the years, I have refined the concepts presented in Allen’s book.

Most of your projects don’t need front-end planning; rather, you just come up with the next action in your head. Some of these are routine. Cleaning the house is a project—there are several steps/actions/tasks between here and completion—but you probably don’t sit down in front of a whiteboard and brainstorm before you get to work.

Checklists

Here’s as fitting a place as any to mention checklists. If you have projects that repeat, then checklists remove the drudgery of project planning. Save the project planning from the first (or next) time as a template for each repetition.

Until it became a habit, my weekly review, process, and planning routine was done using a checklist. Work travel planning was a checklist, so too was bi-weekly pay administration. Today, cleaning the house and hosting dinner parties start with a checklist.

BIG, New Projects

Now what about those ‘big, new, shiny projects’ for which you have no precedent? There are five steps to successful project planning:

1. Define purpose and principles—the ‘why’
2. Visualize outcomes—goals
3. Brainstorm ideas—strategy and tactics
4. Organize your thoughts
5. Identify next actions and assign responsibility and accountability

This process should seem familiar if you read parts I-IV of this series, which details Personal Leadership.

Define Purpose & Principles

Most people want to jump right into an outline of what we need to do. This is the biggest mistake in project planning.

Ignorati quem portum petat, nullus suus ventus est.

(If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him.)

Seneca the Younger, Epistolae LXXI, 3

Project planning should start with ‘why.’ I’ll let Simon Sinek explain.

Along with defining the project’s purpose, we should define our principles. This is especially important in group projects. For personal projects, refer to your own principles (see parts III and IV). But when working in a partnership or group, it’s best to clear the air up front: what are the rules of engagement? How do we act so that we don’t piss each other off and thereby conduct this train successfully into the station?

Visualize Outcomes

This starts with a simple question: “What does successful look like?” Write out the answers to this question. These answers may be very castle-in-the-sky, fantastical, high-minded, and need to be brought back down to earth. The best way to do that is with the research-based “WOOP model.” WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle(s), and Plan(s).

You’re probably familiar with the idea of SMART goals—Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. This concept was first introduced in a George Doran essay in the November 1981 issue of Management Review. Though the acronym is commonly used, research suggests that the framework’s effectiveness varies depending on the context to which it is applied. Criticism focuses on a lack of scientific foundation and empirical support.

Psychologist Gabrielle Oettingen’s WOOP model, on the other hand, is research-based with a scientific foundation in the psychological principle of mental contrasting—mentally focusing on the contrast between the positive aspects of your goals and the negative aspects of your obstacles or current situation.

WOOP adds “implementation intentions”—a self-regulatory strategy in the form of if-then planning introduced by psychologist Peter Gollwitzer in 1999. Studies by Gollwitzer show that the use of the if-then algorithm (“if this happens, then I will…”) can result in a higher probability of successful goal attainment.

Oettingen plus Gollwitzer equals “Mental Contrasting with Implementation Intentions,” which doesn’t roll off the tongue and wouldn’t sell very many books. Therefore, in Oettingen’s book, Rethinking Positive Thinking, the catchier acronym WOOP was introduced.

Long story short, it’s more like how your brain really works and therefore more useful to the “natural planning model.” You can still draft SMART goals, and those can be helpful. WOOP, by recognizing obstacles and then making a response plan (implementation intentions), moves our thinking from dreaming about a better future to making plans and identifying next actions.

Brainstorming Ideas

There are lots of ways you can brainstorm ideas—brainstorming, fish-boning (whale-boning?), mind mapping—and one surefire way to screw it up. The mistake here is judging the quality of ideas and thereby getting stuck in a debate over value. You want to go for quantity over quality at this stage. You can save the hunt for diamonds in the rough for the next stage. The little brother to this mistake is getting linear. Save that too for the “Organizing Your Thoughts” stage.

Depending on the size of the project, I like a blank sheet of paper (no lines is better) or a whiteboard and 2×2 sticky notes. The 2×2 size limits the idea to a short statement, forcing you to be concise. The sticky notes allow you to move them around, group them, and organize them in the next stage. The whiteboard allows you to draw connections, add notes, and get creative with color. I like using a chalkboard for the same reasons. Easel pads work just as well, only with less space.

Pro tip: Whiteboards are expensive—$200 to $350 for a 4’x6’ board. Wall paneling, however, which is available in laminated glossy white and functions like a whiteboard, is affordable—less than $20 for an 8’x4’ panel.

I use a single piece of paper for smaller projects where I already have a sense of action steps—usually from a checklist or having done a similar project before. I do my Why-How-What at the top. WOOP it, and then brainstorm ideas. I’ll get linear, organizing my thoughts (sometimes into an outline), and then listing identified action steps.

Organizing Your Thoughts and Identifying Next Actions

Here is where you can start outlining. By now, you will have a sense of what needs to get done, a chronology, who is responsible for what, and whether or not certain ideas of sub-projects need to be fleshed out (return to stage one and repeat).

Next actions should also start floating to the top of your thinking at this point. You can either list them, group them by context or responsible party, or start putting them on a timeline (or all three). Either way, like all actions or tasks, you need to plug them into your trusted system so they can get done, delegated, or deferred. As discussed in Part VI, processed into your daily workflow.

What About Project Management?

Well, all those thoughts, actions, and tasks developed during planning get plugged into your trusted system so they get done, delegated, or deferred into your daily workflow. See Part VI of this series for all the details of that.

To summarize, the five stages of the “natural planning model” merely articulate how the brain naturally plans to get anything done. We apply the natural planning model to ‘projects’ which we define as anything you want to do or get done, that’s not done yet, and requires more than one action step or task to complete.

Up next in Part IX—the final (thank goodness) installment of the series—I’ll talk about tools. I’ll give my two cents on digital versus analog tools. I’ll also detail how I do reference filing and how I set up project folders. Lastly (because it really is the least important thing), I’ll drop a list of the contents of my ‘toolbox’.