The Concept of Efforts

Organization & Productivity
https://notes.linkingyourthinking.com/Atlas/Efforts

Efforts vs Projects and why they're liberating.

Efforts allow ideas to breath. Projects smother them.

What's so great about Efforts?

Efforts as efforts as opposed to projects:

• An Effort is more clear than a Project
  • The definition speaks for itself. Efforts require effort. You know that work needs to be done to make them come to life.
• **That said, the definition isn't also too clear
  • There's wiggle room to an Effort. Projects are rigid and narrow, in scope and in breadth compared to what an Effort could be.

What are the big differences?

1. Efforts don't force a top-down thinking proccess

A top-down mindset will suffocate ideas. Projects make sense in the corporate world because there's order and linearity. But today we work creatively and around ideas. Ideas need room to grow, and evolve like a garden.

Efforts are freeing

2. Efforts have no deadline

Projects require deadlines of some kind. Or rather, they often feel like they should have deadlines, even if they don't, particularly if they're personal projects. Efforts are flexible, fluid, and adaptable. They can have no deadlines, soft deadlines, hard deadlines. It's up to you!

Efforts are fluid

3. Efforts don't have a clear size

Efforts could be bigger than a Project. They could be smaller than one, or have no size at all. You can reframe your idea about what constitutes a project from the lens of an Effort.

How ideas and efforts work together

An example: LYT wants to write about Sensemaking (whatever that is). His process was:

• Make a note
• Name it triangulation
• Brush up on the history of it
• Develop the triangulation note over time, in a way they didn't plan for
• Adjust the title to match
  • "Triangulation" became "Sensemaking"
• Feel the spark of sharing the idea
• This is when it becomes an effort
• Change the title again
• Workshop lesson
• Reworked it into a youtube video
• And a Twitter thread
• And a newsletter
• And a website post

This couldn't have started as a "project" because the author didn't even know what he was trying to do. It would have smothered his spark of curiousity and replaced it with guilt for not "completing the project" - despite not even knowing what "it" was.

It was only because I eventually framed this note as an "effort" that I benefitted from the space to breath with the idea and allow it to grow into one of my favorite ideas!

Had I been worried about some sort of project-driven output, with a hard deadline, this idea would have never evolved to what it has now become. This is the power of "efforts" over "projects" when it comes to developing your ideas.

Basically - worry less about the output/endgoal, and focus on nurturing an idea into taking shape.