Edition no.20. 27th of July, 2023

In 2022, I went through an agonizing period in life where I was overflowing with knowledge, but lacking progress.

As an Entrepreneur, this is simultaneously inspiring and painful.

Yes, kind of weird, right?

Inspiring because I knew I was heading in the right direction, and had knowledge to back me up. But even though I was knowledgeable, inspired, and giving my best… It was painful.

I couldn't convert knowledge into progress.

And this makes you feel like a failure.

It seems that with an inflow of high-quality knowledge AND a system to manage your knowledge, progress is certain, right?

Wrong.

"Knowledge is power", they say.

But knowledge only takes you so far.

This edition of the Fis Letter is focused on answering why knowledge can't solve everything.

And most important:

How you can use Project Management to achieve progress.

NOTE: This edition is a preparation for the launch of my first Tana Template, called: 🧞‍♂️ Tana Productivity Wizard.

Follow along to understand the core principles behind the Template and how it uses Project Management to help you reach your goals and improve your rate of progress.

Apologies for the longer wait time between letters. I hope it's worth it.

(Updates about the Template will be sent to your email)

💬 4 Quotes

Quote 1

I know you've heard this several times.

But usually, people don't explain to you why this happens.

I'm mentioning this because it’s a very important context to understand why knowledge is not enough.

The only person standing in the way of your success is yourself.

But why?

Which part of yourself is standing in the way?

Well… ↓

Quote 2

It's not your conscious mind that stops you from reaching success.

It's your unconscious mind.

This is a fundamental distinction that must be understood to identify why knowledge alone is not enough to make progress.

You don’t get what you want in life, you get what you believe you deserve.

Your unconscious mind simply will not allow you to reach success if you don't believe you are capable AND worthy of it.

The knowledge in your conscious mind matters less than the beliefs in your unconscious mind.

Do you understand me?

The unconscious mind dictates what you’ll ultimately achieve. It's those deep beliefs you hold about yourself, that sometimes you don't even know you hold.

This is the true source of blockage or allowance of progress.

Luckily, there are (many) ways to influence your unconscious mind.

The most prominent one is Action.

Quote 3

Action is power for multiple reasons.

First, actions get you closer to your goals.

Accumulating knowledge doesn't generate results, action is always needed.

Second, and most relevant:

• Action signals to your unconscious that you deserve success.

This is the most powerful aspect of action.

You need Action to believe in yourself.

James Clear mentions your identity as a fundamental aspect in Habit Formation. You take small actions that shape your identity and make you act a certain way.

It's the exact same principle here, your identity is your set of unconscious beliefs about who you are (and what you deserve).

This is why he advocates for Atomic Habits. Small but repeated actions will eventually lead you to change your beliefs.

• Action shapes your identity.

• Action shapes your beliefs.

• Action breaks the pattern.

Knowledge doesn't.

Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that knowledge can change your life.

But knowledge only provides you with clarity to change your life.

And clarity doesn't move the needle.

Action does.

Quote 4

Let's use this double quote to understand how projects can shape your unconscious mind.

First, Projects are short-term outcomes.

In a sense, projects are like James Clear's Atomic Habits. They are small actions, that, when completed, send a message to your unconscious mind. They shape your identity.

“I deserve to reach my dream outcome.”

“I deserve progress because I am making progress.”

This ties neatly with the idea that ‘completed projects are the Oxygen of your Second Brain’.

The wisdom buried deep within this quote is the following:

Completed projects are reinforcements to your unconscious mind that you are worthy of success.

This is not only the Oxygen for your Second Brain but for your life.

And this is why Project Management is super powerful in converting knowledge into progress.

When you finish projects, you are getting closer to your goals.

BOTH on conscious and unconscious levels.

In summary, the reason I was lacking progress was bad project management.

This can be a challenge, especially if you're an entrepreneur or a knowledge worker with a high degree of autonomy.

You're always the bottleneck.

In 2022, I finished around 40% of the projects I started. I didn't have a reliable system to help me direct my knowledge toward finishing.

I would keep jumping to the next projects, without actually finishing them, which of course, doesn't drive progress.

📄 3 Notes

1. The 3 Pillars of Massive Progress

There's ordinary progress and then there's massive progress…

The bare minimum to reach massive progress boils down to the effective management of 3 elements:

• 🔭 Vision

• 🎨 Projects

• 📚 Knowledge

To reach massive progress, you must manage:

• What you want, and Why. (Vision)

• How to get there. (Projects)

• Where to find your (Knowledge).

Notice I'm talking about “massive” progress. You can still make ordinary progress by removing one of the 3 elements or executing them poorly.

But even ordinary progress will be better with these in place.

Here's a summary, and then a full breakdown:

🔭 Vision Management

Your Vision guides your Actions.

A Vision is what you desire to achieve in the long term.

It's important to plan ahead and be deliberate about what you want to achieve. When you don't do this, you'll always be following someone else's plan.

So this is where a Vision comes in.

Ideally, a Vision should excite you. It's supposed to be something you deeply care about, which sparks true desire.

This is why a strong Vision is a HUGE source of Motivation.

And trust me, you want every possible source of motivation when pursuing challenging projects.

It's also where Alignment begins, as we've covered in the last issue.

Here, I like to include your Objectives and Areas of Responsibility over time.

🎨 Project Management

The next note expands on the Anatomy of a Project, but for now, what you need to know is:

A Project is a set of actions that are organized toward an outcome.

Your Project collection is a compendium of all the actions needed to achieve your Vision.

It's that simple.

But when you stack dozens of Projects, it's not easy to achieve your Vision, it takes a lot of effort.

Anyway, this means that Projects are the centerpieces of your Second Brain.

And they're also the centerpieces of your Progress.

If you invest most of your attention in completing your projects, you are set up for success.

📚 Knowledge Management

The job of Knowledge Management is to improve your progress in life.

This is why Knowledge is here to support your Projects.

Don't be mistaken, this is not only a difficult task, but also a very important one. In the era of information overload and mass ignorance, knowledge plays a vital role in success.

Action backed by Knowledge is an insane source of Power.

Knowledge is one of the pillars of massive progress. What happens is it's just not the focal point, as I once thought it was.

Rather, Knowledge has a supporting role.

Knowledge is part of the backstage crew.

People never see your knowledge. They can only witness the results of your outcomes (which come from your projects).

But knowledge plays a very important role:

The quality of your knowledge determines the quality of your outcome.

The key is not to overvalue or undervalue knowledge.

Keep things in perspective.

2. The Anatomy of a Project

Projects are the central pieces of a Productivity System.

• But what is a Project?

I've spent the last 2 months thinking about this, and after coming up with several possibilities, I boiled it down to 6 Major components.

With these, you'll have an overview of everything needed to finish a project.

By considering these components holistically, Projects will make more sense, and will be easier to handle and to finish!

Here are the 6 components:

• 🔭 Vision

• 📝 Notes

• 🛠️ Tasks

• 🗓️ Timeline

• 📦 Deliverables

• 🧑🏻 Stakeholders

🔭 Vision

Everything starts with a Vision.

Vision = Outcome + Purpose

I'm a firm believer in having a Vision. Clarity about what you want to achieve (and why you want it) is the first step to achieving anything.

Without clarity, your efforts are much weaker.

In the context of a Project, the Vision is simple:

• What exactly do you want to achieve (Outcome).

• Why you want to achieve it (Purpose).

🗓️ Timeline

Everything ends with a Timeline.

i.e. Without a timeline, you won't finish.

Yeah, OK, you may finish… But remember, we're interested in massive progress. And a Timeline is essential for such.

A Timeline is split up into:

• Start Date

• Due Date

• Milestones

• Project Phases

This ensures you encompass the Beginning, Middle and End of every project.

📝 Notes

Notes are the raw material of a project.

That's because Notes hold the project's Knowledge.

And extending what we've mentioned before, the quality of your notes will determine the quality of your outcome.

Notes are created (and most importantly, used) to reach the desired outcome.

Notes include:

• Tips

• Ideas

• Insights

• Meetings

• Brainstorms

• Conversations

• Knowledge in general

📦 Deliverables

Deliverables move the needle.

In very simple terms, a Deliverable must be finished to reach the desired outcome.

The most important component of a project.

And also the most overlooked component by the PKM community. A lack of clarity about what your deliverables are is extremely dangerous. It leads you to focus on taking notes, instead of taking notes to finish a project.

Finishing Deliverables will lead you to complete projects and feel productive.

By tracking deliverables, you can ♻️ RECYCLE deliverables.

Deliverables include:

• Content

• Events

• Services

• Webpages

• Documents

• Presentations

• Coaching Sessions

• etc.

🛠️ Tasks

Tasks represent Actions.

In a way, Tasks represent creation, transfer, or conversion.

This can mean:

• Creation of new knowledge.

• Conversion between the 6 project components.

• Transfer of knowledge from one place (or state) to another.

By completing tasks, you are actively creating something or converting between components.

Tasks are intimately related to all other components of the project. Remember that components do not live in isolation; they are all connected.

But Tasks play an important role in this connection.

🧑🏻 Stakeholders

Stakeholders hold the Project in place.

Surprise, surprise: You don't live on an Island.

Stakeholders are the people and companies involved in the project, they provide you with the constraints to know what needs to be done.

It's important to think about everyone involved in the project. This will make things much easier for you.

• Who cares about the Project?

• Who can you ask for help?

• Who will promote this?

• Who benefits from the Project?

• Who will hold you accountable?

• Who is paying for the Deliverables?

-

These are the 6 components of a Project!

These may seem complex, but in truth, every component is simple.

The key is understanding how they relate to one another, and how they set the constraints needed to finish a project.

It's much easier to finish your projects if you consider all of these components.

If you ignore or do not consider any component, you're missing clarity. These are inherent parts of a project.

They're always present.

In 🧞‍♂️Tana Productivity Wizard, all components are present in the project, fields represent the Vision, and the rest appear in the 🖥️ Project Station 📡:

3. AI Project Assistant

The Calendar above was generated using the help of AI.

🧞‍♂️ Tana Productivity Wizard comes with an AI Project Assistant.

It uses the 6 Project Components to progressively apply AI Prompts to generate the elements inside your Tana project.

It's very important to use AI as a partner, not as a project manager.

Your project quality is NOT guaranteed if you blindly ask AI to generate the project details.

But it can be extremely useful to assign dates to tasks, and quickly get an overview of what is necessary for a project.

Here is a quick overview of how I use the AI Project Assistant:

1. 🔭 Set the Vision: Write the Outcome and Purpose of the Project

These are fields because they are used inside the Prompts.

2. ➕ Provide Additional Context

Never assume that AI knows your specific context, IT DOES NOT.

It's VERY important to explain every possible detail about your project. This includes concepts, companies, software, people involved, requirements, existing material, etc.

The remaining steps are with AI's help.

3. AI will generate → and you will edit:

• 🗓️ Project Phases - Timeline

• 📦 Project Deliverables

• 🛠️ Project Tasks

These are iterative steps:

1. AI generates the Phases, and then you edit

2. AI generates the Deliverables, and then you edit

3. AI puts everything together into a Calendar, and then you edit 

In the end, the components will appear on the Calendar, like this:

Just as you will also edit… 👀… I have already edited the calendar to a more realistic scenario, adjusted the length of each phase, how long each task takes, and added new tasks!

But the general structure was all generated using the help of AI.

I will make a video tutorial about this later on, as we're starting to get too deep.

Of course, AI can power up more use cases, so I will keep updating the existing AI Commands, and creating new ones.

🔗 2 Links

Link 1: Project Management For Entrepreneurship and Creative Work, by Kahlil Corazo

I've learned a lot about Project Management from the PKM Community, but one person has had a significant impact on me.

Kahlil Corazo was very important in learning about Project Management.

Kahlil wrote an e-book focused on Project Management, and the cool thing is, he had Note-taking apps in his mind since the beginning.

He originally wrote the book focused on Roam Research, but the principles can easily be applied to other apps.

I highly recommend the read.

Link 2: Just-In-Time Project Management, by Tiago Forte

I've also learned a lot from Tiago Forte about how to improve my Project Management Systems.

And look at this!

Tiago Forte has a series of articles about Just-In-Time Project Management.

This is a formidable compilation of useful strategies you can apply to your System.

Thank you for reading!

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See you in two weeks, my friend!

Cheers, and be well,

Fis