A Life of Frameworks

I tend to go through many books about growth. That can apply to leadership, learning, studying, you name it!

Every time I stumble upon any of these books, I come out with a potential framework. An example is Thiago Forte's PARA method. As I navigate these type of books, I come across different flavors of similar systems. Sometimes they solve the same problem in a peculiar way, sometimes they are just a way to organize your thoughts.

I wish I was more diligent in following any of them. Some stuck with me as a habit, others come and go. Today, I had a realization. What if I used a framework for "everything"? What if the way I lead a team, the way I navigate a crucial conversation, the way I make financial decisions, were all based on my own framework? In a way they already are, we follow our internal compass navigating these circumstances based on our life experience.

This can make it hard to measure the success of any of those systems. Sometimes you experience setbacks and adjust your compass, sometimes you forget about it. But do we ever stop and adjust our frameworks at any wrong turn? Would it be too challenging to start defining thinking systems for everything in our life?

Thoughts

On today's episode of scattered thoughts: everything can be a framework!

I like to nurture these passing thoughts and give them space to develop. I often come across different ways to approach a circumstance by reading books, taking a class, during a coaching session, and so on. While I consider how helpful these approaches could be, I rarely think about how I can effectively apply them to real life. I believe that this ability to closely observe behaviors around you (including your own) and how your decisions affect your life is a not-so-secret secret of highly successful people.

I'm starting to think (and writing it down makes it obvious) that "hoping" a lesson from a book sticks with me is wishful thinking. Note taking can only carry you so far; an almanac of frameworks could be something I use consistently and adjust based on its successes and failures. But how do I make it easy and simple to follow them at any given moment? That's more thinking for another day.