The Personal Program
Real Life Example of a Rare Animal
UPDATE: I’ve released a much more in-depth guide on the idea of personal programs:
We cannot define anything precisely. If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers, who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, »You don't know what you are talking about!«. The second one says, »What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?«
— Richard Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)
It's that time of the year again...
I'm participating in an epic online adventure—a cohort-based course called Building a Second Brain. 1000+ engaged productivity nerds are upping their game at creative content production.
It usually goes something like this: there are live lectures and mentor sessions to attend. Assignments to do. A capstone project to complete (you are currently reading mine). A community to engage with. And, of course, if any time is left, you also try to iterate on your personal productivity system along the way.
It's an intense learning experience that spans several weeks and takes up most of my free time.
But this is the fourth time I am doing this. So I took it a step further. I chose to become a forum moderator in the course. I took part in an extra beta program. And I am also preparing a PKM workshop for some friends.
This led me to question whether I could still call this a "project"?
To answer this, I went down a nasty rabbit hole. I dug up some interesting relationships, two of which I covered in the previous posts:
In the first part, I sketched out how personal productivity repeats itself on many levels.
In the second part, I introduced the program as a kind of project to manage projects.
These two pieces were abstract. So this time, we will get a little bit more practical.
Let's take my current situation as an example.
As outlined above, I am currently facing a heavy workload. To effectively manage it, I created multiple projects:
BASBv14 - Take part in the course (watch lectures, complete exercises, engage in the community)
BASBMod - Moderate forum & create a weekly summary post
FractalProductivity - Start a new blog and publish 3+ posts
PKMWorkshop -Prepare & Hold a PKM workshop for friends
ReadwiseReader - Beta-test the Reader and onboard new members
Obsidian80% - Move part of my second brain (mostly work-related stuff) to Obsidian
These projects are currently in progress; I work on them in parallel.
They all have the same deadline (the end of the course).
When I reach this point, I will conclude them, even if some are unfinished.
Why am I doing this? Because they are a means to an end. I want to improve at producing blog posts, slide decks, live workshops, etc. That’s the true intention I currently have in mind.
Once I hit that target, most of the leftover projects will no longer matter. It’s like archiving some unnecessary tasks from a project.
So I chunked these projects together, both mentally as well as visually. I created containers with the shorthand "aBrainForOutput", both in my task manager as well as my note-taking app. I set a concrete target: recalibrate my second brain for more effective & efficient output. And I defined the end of the course to be the deadline. All the things I would normally do for a single project (and I did it for the 6 projects above).
This is essentially what I mean by “introducing a program”. I add a meta-layer above projects. And I do this to solve two conundrums:
By chunking together multiple projects into one mental construct, I make it easier to think about the effort as a whole. We distinguish tasks and projects partly because of our mental capacities. We can only juggle a handful of things in our heads at any given moment. Yet, interestingly, if we package several different concepts or ideas in one mental box and label them appropriately, they only count as one. It only needs one mental slot. So, in a way, a project represents too many related tasks to think about at once. And a program represents too many projects to think about at once. If I didn’t chuck them up, they would float around loosely in my head & my system. They would occupy several of my "mental slots, " thus limiting me from thinking about them.
Using a higher-order unit, I preserve the original size of the projects. What I could have done instead was to define one big god project to encompass all the six projects that now form my program. But think about what happens when you do this on the level of tasks and projects. What happens when you put a task like "write blog post" in your task manager? Such "project-sized" tasks often just don't get done; there is too much activation energy needed even to get started. There’s too little structure and guidance. The same applies to projects. "Program-sized" projects just don't get pushed forward enough. They tend to lack clarity. In short, there’s too much potential for procrastination. By keeping my projects small, I keep them functional. By introducing a program, I additionally bundle them together and direct them to one greater outcome.
The point I want to make is that a program is to projects what a project is to tasks. It’s a stake in the ground to ease thinking about and managing a set of related projects. And it’s both a mental thing but also represented in your productivity system (e.g., as groupings of projects).
Once you grasp this, you can see that tasks, projects, and programs live on a spectrum. They are the same thing at different levels of magnification.
That does not mean we can treat them exactly the same.
For instance, a program for writing a book could easily benefit from a detailed plan. A project for writing a single chapter probably wouldn’t. The latter may still enjoy an outline, but as we get down to drafting a single page, even an outline is a waste. And how useless would it be to plan the physical movements in writing a simple sentence?
And, after all, what a task, project, or program is is quite subjective. It often depends on experience, skill, and goals. A project to you could be a program to me, and yet another person may see it only as a task.
That’s why I kept the focus of my posts on relationships. I explored how the concepts relate to each other instead of giving you concrete size-classes. This way, you can determine for yourself how a given thing fits into your life.
But I'll give you one concrete example here. Take the definition that the step from project to program is roughly the same as going from task to project. Here’s how this maps to my life: tasks live in a “workday.” That is, no task should span more than that. And I usually try to create projects I can theoretically complete in 1-2 weeks. So, if I apply the above relationship, a program would be roughly 7-28 weeks in scale (1-6 months). Looking at my current efforts, you see that this fits the description. The online course has a fixed duration of 5 weeks. I took this as the limit for some related efforts (my six projects). It requires much attention and can’t run in the background. Considering all of this, it was rather a program instead of a project for me.
But understand: I don’t think it is "nice to have" a program in such a situation. I deem it to be crucial to treat it as one. And I’ll tell you why in the last episode of this series!
I hope you enjoy my posts so far. If you do, please consider subscribing.
Or leave a comment below. Any feedback is more than welcome 🙂
This is nice Dennis, lots to think about. Such as examples of how the relationship of steps translates from programs, to projects to task or vice versa. Maybe will think about a kitchen analogy would help understand. Looking forward on the next article to gain more understanding. Cheers