Cal Newport's Planning System - Core Documents, Productivity, Discipline
Source: My personal notes and content from Cal Newport’s Planning System (In Detail) - YouTube
Explanation of how Cal plans work, work boundaries and alignment with his values and vision. I noted the approach is similar to principles in the book Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
The benefits of the systems are:
- Can be applied by anyone for complex and ambitious goals
- Help people stay true to your values and be present
- Supports your life outside of work as you can trust the system to capture and track all work and set boundaries
Core Documents - Describe your values and goals
Section titled “Core Documents - Describe your values and goals”For Cal they are:
- My values
- Career and personal strategic plans
The documents link to projects and weekly goals. Can be done in digital and/or physical notebooks.
Maintaining the Core Documents
Section titled “Maintaining the Core Documents”- Review values once per week. Every week highlight values you want to focus on this week
- Review strategic plans once per week or quarter
Productivity - Work plans
Section titled “Productivity - Work plans”Weekly Plan
Section titled “Weekly Plan”Use a weekly plan that is flexible. It can be more flexible like in summer months or vacation periods. It links back to the strategic plans.
Daily Plan
Section titled “Daily Plan”Use a daily plan which uses the weekly plan and time blocks for work can be done in the day. “What do I want to work on today?”
Have a work shutdown plan like time of day you stop work and start rest.
- Track tasks and events you did and still need to do
- Captures make you trust the system will keep track of things
Discipline - Habits, activities, measures
Section titled “Discipline - Habits, activities, measures”Examples: how many deep work sessions, exercise time per week
Disciple sets boundaries and you can track the activities to measure your progress.