Hierarchy of Orginazational Topologies
Things get done at a point. Keep coming back to what you are doing.
Points get provisionally strung along a line. So respect the line next. Use a calendar to situate tasks in time. This allows you to not become overwhelmed. As much as possible when a task comes in try to assign a date and time to work on that thing. If it doesn’t get done and still needs to then assign it to a new time or break down the task and assign these smaller tasks to new times. If a task keeps getting pushed back drop it or create the conditions that make it absolutely necessary that it happen. Only schedule from hour after waking to end of workday most days and try to keep space 3-5 days out in calendar (like 30-50) empty so that things can be moved around.
Keep one big text file representing a daily schedule and a log of what happens as you try to follow that schedule is useful. So the day’s schedule/tasks get transferred from calendar to your logfile. Throughout the day take notes on what you are doing, feeling, and thinking. It doesn’t have to be structured just get it out. This is the space to think out loud and do provisional planning. If you write enough in the log then due to the nature of language thoughts start to take on a treelike shape. Occasionally new documents or additions to long-form documents describing a project or different aspects of your projects will emerge naturally.
Tend to the trees/documents in separate files that you work on in public as much as possible. Every Friday push updates to these trees/long form documents to a public, pseudonymous weblog. Carve out 90 minutes or so once a week to go back over the previous weeks log and look for stuff that hasn’t yet been integrated into a document. The idea is to go from scrap to something being shared as quickly as possible. As you iterate on these project descriptions, communicate with other people, and review the previous days activities tasks/next steps will suggest themselves and you can add them onto the schedule.
A bunch of trees/documents can be linked into a graph and in a large enough document a graph structure from resonant or explicit links will start to emerge.
While each topology is useful there is also a sense in which each is more phantasmic than the other. Dreams on top of dreams until the dreams create the net within which reality is co-created. From the perspective of a limited being giving priority to what is happening right now and situating yourself in time makes the most sense since it allows you to work with your most finite resource (time) not against it. Then viewing descriptions (the trees and graphs) as potential models/contexts that are of secondary importance. The contexts are there to help guide the action. You aren’t living to create a theory you are creating
Related posts: Anchor yourself in time