Projects Over Categories

03/24/20 • 8 min

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Instead of organizing ideas by category – such as “psychology,” “marketing,” or “economics” – which leads to silos that they can’t escape from, organize your ideas according to the projects where they will be most useful and actionable. Organizing your ideas according to which project they apply to also makes it easier to decide where they go, and easier to find when you need them.

Previous Episode

Idea Recycling

Ideas are not single-use only. They can outlive the projects they were originally a part of. Every document or deliverable you create represents valuable thinking you’ve done, and can be recycled and reused in future projects. By putting in a little extra effort to preserve your work for the future, you’ll never have to do the same work twice.

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Slow Burns

Stop completing your projects via “heavy lifts” – grueling slogs of painful work where you create everything from scratch. There is another way – you can slowly gather ideas, in the background and over time, using “slow burns.” Once the project gets underway, you’ll already have a rich collection of interesting ideas, insights, examples, facts, and illustrations that you can easily combine together without burning yourself out.