When I begin a new consulting project, I start by creating a new folder under my ‘Projects’ using Tiago Forte’s P.A.R.A. organizational structure (see bonus section at the bottom of this post).

The first thing in my new folder for the project is usually a google doc with meeting notes taken while scoping out the gig.

The second doc is a google slides document that I use to keep a running timeline of the project. It basically tells the story of what happens, as it happens.

I’m often working on multiple projects, so that slide deck is critical for helping me re-remember where we are and where we’ve been. Basically, I choose to optimize for “re-loading” the context instead of trying to remember it all. It’s my narrative prosthetic.

Slides can be skimmed quickly and are image-friendly. The limited size of each slide is a useful constraint. 1 slide = 1 kairotic “moment”.

P.A.R.A. helps me keep everything organized, but I still sometimes need help finding the right thing at the right time. And sometimes important resources live outside my google drive (e.g., a miro board). So links to those things get added to the slide deck, as they come up.

Next I need to get immersed in the details. I want to understand the context I’m entering as best I can. So that’s a new Miro board, with every document, link, etc. all laid out so I can sort through it.

So something really useful for sense-making in miro is webpage screenshots. Miro actually has a tool for it in their extended menu (I think it’s called “web page capture”). Sometimes it doesn’t work, so I also use a browser plugin that will capture a full page screenshot.

Web page screenshots are useful for things like examining client sites, competitors, industry blogs, etc.

BUT it’s also useful for grabbing screenshots of LinkedIn profiles. I want to know everything I can about all the main players, so that I know how to best serve them.

Sometimes there will be patterns. Like people going to a particular college, or an interesting background / career change. These all inform my mental models of the people involved, and that helps me show up on the right foot on day 1.

When I’m catching up on a (new-to-me) industry, usually I’ll grab a bunch of blog posts and wikipedia articles that seem representative. I’ll skim them for patterns, ontologies, etc. that help me see how it “works.” (John Cutler also taught me to do a google image search, since there are often plenty of models and infographics to peruse that way.)

In miro, I’ll turn interesting words and phrases into stickies next to the screenshot of the article. Then I can sort and group them later. Some of those will end up in a Wardley Map or two of the basic ideas in play.

Once I’ve made enough sense of the client context, I’ll boil down the most useful parts into take-aways for the slide deck. This placeholds my sensemaking work so I can re-remember important conclusions or beliefs later on when I’m skimming that deck to pick the context back up.

Again, the slide deck becomes the keeper of the project narrative. Anytime a new deliverable draft, set of meeting notes, or client artifact enters the scene, it gets added to my folder and then referenced with a link in the slide deck.

Another thing I’ll do is start the first draft for any deliverables right away. I’ll even just put a placeholder headline in place, turn those into headings, and then add a table of contents. That way I can work on it throughout the whole project instead of waiting until the end.

Whenever I take meeting notes, I process those notes afterward in order to find notable highlights for the slide deck.

By default I’m just copying and pasting the interesting bits, but then I’ll also go back and clean it up for clarity. During that cleanup pass I’ll also add images or sketches that are relevant as well.

If there’s relevant content, I may also copy it into the deliverable draft for later editing.

Basically, I try to make having to start from a blank page nigh impossible. And since I’m drafting the deliverable bit-by-bit as the project unfolds, there’s very little heavy lifting to be done towards the end. It’s just a cleanup and organization problem.

There are some other things I do which are helpful… One is creating a Burja Map of all the key players so I can stay actively aware of relationships, alliances, and personal dispositions.

And on a weekly basis, I’ll refresh my ideal present for the project. Just to make sure I’m being intentional about the work. (I hate hate hate when a project turns into a slow motion trainwreck, so I want to do everything I can to catch any problems early.)

There are other little things, such as setting up a new project in my time tracker, but I think I’ve covered the big ones for starting a new consulting gig.

I didn’t discover all of it overnight. It took failing in enough ways and cleaning up enough messes to build a system that worked for me, bit by bit.

Hope you found it useful!

Bonus: Use P.A.R.A. to stop losing things.

My files are organized according to Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives (P.A.R.A) as taught by Tiago Forte.

With P.A.R.A., Projects encompass anything that begins and ends, so each client project ends up as a folder in here.

Areas are ongoing, with no ending. So for example I have an “operations” folder in my areas that contains things like payroll, cashflow, etc.

Then Resources would be anything I might reference anytime in the future for any reason. They’re things I use and re-use. Like Wardley Mapping templates, or my profile pic and bio.

I’m not perfect at it, but between the P.A.R.A. file structure and a comfort with knowing how to use the search, I rarely lose things.

Today we’re venturing outside of Wardley Mapping to a complementary planning method called the “Ideal Present,” which comes from the PhD work of Jabe Bloom (please cite him if you use the below in your work).

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Design a better now.

In short, the Ideal Present asks, “How do you design your actions towards a better now, instead of getting lost trying to reach some far-off ideal future?”

Here’s how to do it. Follow along with a pencil and paper.

1. Present Mess (a.k.a. the Current State): What’s today like? The good, the bad, and the ugly. (But we mostly want to pay attention to the bad and ugly.) What is problematic about the way things are today?

Ex: Today I hardly exercise. I feel weak, and I’m worried!

2. Future Mess (a.k.a. the Default Future): What’s the future we can imagine our Present Mess producing by default? It’s the undesirable future we’ll eventually crash into if nothing changes. What disaster lay ahead?

Ex: I will have higher risk for blood clots or heart problems, not to mention the fatigue of being out of shape. Ack!

3. Ideal Future: What’s something better we can hope for someday? Rather than making up something fantastical, keep it down-to-earth by emphasizing how it’ll be different from the Present Mess and different from the Future Mess, too.

Ex: I want to feel strong, by exercising every day (different from Current State), and in good health according to my doctor (different from Default Future).

4. Ideal Present: Now, this is the good part. How would things ideally be today if…

…we were already solving the problems with the Present Mess,

…we were already cutting off the path to the Future Mess, and

…we were already taking our first steps towards the Ideal Future.

Imagine an alternate reality or parallel universe where we are already doing those things. That’s the Ideal Present!

Ex: Today I would have already installed my chin-up bar and done my first stairs exercise (cardio).

Now act.

Your Ideal Present is now the goal. Go, go, go!

Instead of targeting some far off future, we target a better today. We seek to create the Ideal Present… the very thing that will produce our future(s).

(Wouldn’t it feel really good to take action right now?)

And repeat!

Jabe has always been careful to tell me that this process is a loop. As soon as we take steps towards the Ideal Present, we will discover new information that can change everything!

For instance, say we find out that our Ideal Future isn’t possible… a total fantasy. What do we do then? Well, it’s no big deal. Because this process only lets us onto the Ideal Future lightly, there aren’t any huge drawbacks to predicting the wrong future. We just run the Ideal Present process again!

Or, imagine instead that we actually achieve our Ideal Present. First of all, yay! But that also means our Current State has changed. And our Default Future, too! Heck, our Ideal Future may have changed as well. Since it cascades, we just need to repeat the full process again.

In fact, we can keep running it again and again, every time there’s new information. (I’ve even done this as a weekly planning process.) Loop, loop, loop!

“Always be now-ing.”

—Jabe Bloom, probably (at least I’m pretty sure I didn’t imagine him saying this)

Want to do this process with me? I made a walkthrough video for you! You’ll be moving towards the Ideal Present in no time!

Super huge thanks to Jabe for teaching me about the Ideal Present. Please cite him if you use this in your work!

• Here’s a talk he gave on power at Map Camp Atlanta 2019
• Here’s us discussing strategy in 2020
• And here’s his Strategy 101 writeup from 2022

In the latter link, he discusses Power, Maximum Deep Benefit, Cynefin, Iteration, Conditions/Consequences, The Expected and the Unexpected, Wardley Mapping, Burja Mapping, The Theory of Constraints, The Logical Thinking Process, Alliances, SWOT, Westrum Typology, and Commander’s Intent. It’s worth the read!

All this to set the context for a question he shared with me yesterday:

What are 1-5 strategy models or ideas that have you learned since 2017/2018 which have been especially valuable to you?

6 years is a long time, and one idea stands out above the rest.

The easy answer for me is Jabe Bloom‘s Ideal Present Design (short video, long video).

Ackoff’s Idealized Design

When he explains it, Jabe often starts with Russ Ackoff’s “Idealized Design” which compares different ways we mess up planning for the future:

• Recreating the past: Things will never be better than the “good old days.” So obviously we want to go “back” to that time by recreating it in the present.
• Preserving the present: Things will never be better than the way they are right now. So we must keep things the same at all costs! No change!
• Predicting the future: Things will never be better than some far-off future we’ve predicted (or more likely just made up). So we must do everything we can to get ready for that particular future! (Like prepping for the apocalypse, or colonizing mars to preserve the light of consciousness or whatever.)

Ackoff proposes a fourth option in contrast. It rejects the recreation of the past and the preservation of the present. It also does not assume that the future can be predicted and will automatically be better. Instead, this fourth way of planning aims for a better future by seeking to create the best possible version of today and continuously adjusting based on what we learn in the present.

Jabe’s background is Transition Design, which seeks to enable the possibility of intentionally-designed change over multi-hundred year timespans. So when he thinks of planning, he’s thinking of not one future but many potential far-off futures. Futures that make more futures possible (particularly ones where humans continue to be around). Talking about Ackoff is just an easy way to get us thinking in that direction.

There’s a really interesting digression here about time philosophy, process philosophy, futuring, and everything else Jabe has explored in his PhD work to bring him to this weird and different thing he calls the Ideal Present. For more of that background, I recommend the “long video” I linked up above. Related to it all is also the idea of conditions and consequence, and for that I’ll point you to Tasshin’s write-up.

Bloom’s Ideal Present Design

Here’s a rough idea of how Jabe describes Ideal Present Design, as part of his PhD work at Carnegie Mellon.

There’s a Current State that produces a Default Future.

However things are today, the present conditions, that’s the Current State. The good, bad, ugly, etc. This is where our complaints go. “What’s wrong with today?” These present conditions will, as a result of time and the natural unfolding of the situation, produce the future. So we can anticipate that future somewhat by asking, “What will plausibly happen next?”

Good things might happen, and bad things might happen. But let’s focus on the bad. We want to know what to avoid. So we ask, “What negative consequences are we likely to experience by default if nothing changes?”

Next is the Ideal Future. What would we like to see instead? Jabe is often careful to emphasize that our Ideal Future should contrast both the Current State and the Default Future. “How would our Ideal Future be different from the Current State and different from the Default Future?”

This Ideal Future is not a prediction we’re making nor a commitment. It’s just an imagined future that we’d like to see, and that we’ll hold onto lightly.

So now we have the Current State, the Default Future, and the Ideal Future all defined or imagined. What comes next is an intensely rewarding move that usually unlocks and compels immediate action. It’s the Ideal Present.

The Ideal Present is an alternate envisioning of “right now” that synthesizes the Current State, Default Future, and Ideal Future. It asks, “How would things ideally be today, if we were already solving the problems of the Current State, already diverting away from the problems of the Default Future, and already well on our way towards the Ideal Future?”

The way I try to think of it is by imagining an alternate reality or universe where all that work is already in motion. What would that look like? (If it helps, imagine beaming yourself Rick and Morty style to another universe where you get to study a version of yourself that’s already doing all these good things.)

From here, the trick then is to take all your effort and point it towards creating that Ideal Present, NOT the Ideal Future. We can almost reach out and touch that alternative, and what action we must take in that direction becomes extremely clear (or at least much clearer than if we were trying to plan our way towards an Ideal Future instead).

Here’s an example about fitness:

• Current State: I never exercise. I’m weak and easily fatigued.
• Default Future: I’ll only continue declining. The fatigue will get worse.
• Ideal Future: I want a ripped bod, with muscles for days. I want to feel fit and energetic.

Now imagine the answer to the question. “How would things ideally be today, if I were already solving my problem of not exercising, already diverting away from the Default Future where things get worse, and already well on my way towards getting that ripped bod?”

I can imagine all sorts of things now. I would already have my pull-up bar installed above my office door. I would be using the stairs in my place for cardio (I mean, they’re right there). And I would already use any negative feelings in my body (like anxiety) as an excuse / trigger to put on music or a podcast and avail myself of those two options to get my blood pumping.

(Fun fact, I paused in the middle of writing this post to install my pull-up bar and do my first pull-up in months. THAT’S the power of Ideal Present Design.)

The other thing to mention about the Ideal Present, is that as soon as something about the Current State changes, it’s a good idea to run the full exercise again. If the conditions in the Current State have changed, then the Default Future has likely changed, and that might have implications our Ideal Future and definitely for the Ideal Present. So the whole thing loops!

I guess this is the part of the post where I prompt you to do some Ideal Present Designing for yourself. If you want to give it a try, grab this canvas, print it out or throw it into Miro, and see what actions you unlock for yourself in the present moment. The short video I linked above is a helpful guide.

All things are temporary, even platforms.

I’ve come to accept that all content I produce on someone else’s platform is impermanent. But it’s important to note:

Some platforms are less impermanent than others.

In light of Twitter’s mess, I’ve embraced three alternative platforms.

My three platforms

The two less impermanent platforms I’ve embraced are:

• WordPress dot com (my websites and RSS feeds) and
• ConvertKit (my mailing list).

One more impermanent (but friendly) place I’ve embraced is Hachyderm, a LGTBQIA+ friendly Mastodon instance for respectful tech professionals.

It’s run out of someone’s basement. I’m under no illusions, and they’ve been very clear about expectations:

Update: Sounds like the infrastructure has had some changes! But my intentions are the same.

How I’ll use these platforms

Reducing my dependence on Twitter means making some changes to my habits around sharing, discussing, and writing. Here’s what I intend to do.

First, if I want to play with ideas and chat with friendly folks, I’ll do that on Hachyderm.

Second, if I want a more durable record of something I’ve been thinking about, I will blog it at HiredThought.com or LearnWardleyMapping.com.

Third, if I want more control of who I can reach / distribute my writing to, I’ll focus on my LWM mailing list, and share my best stuff with them.

And lastly, if I want to 100% stay in touch with someone, I will email, text or call, or hang out in a small scale community like discord.

I’m grateful that I recently invested in Johanna Rothman’s writing course. As a result, writing has gotten much more easy and free. It’s making this transition much easier to have the confidence to write. This post is one example.

In response to some of my thoughts here, Johanna had some wise words to share about other people’s platforms:

Writing on less impermanent platforms is what I’ll be doing for the foreseeable future.

As for everything else? Here’s what I expect: Easy come, easy go.

When that erosion has gone on long enough, that someone stops believing that their actions matter. They go with the flow of the system, only deviating briefly for small moments of joy that come along every once in a while.

They won’t fight for a big change, like championing a new business idea or objecting to a product management decision with poor ethical implications… but they’ll be sure to catch the little things — getting a new laptop every few years, or making sure to get a slice of cake from the break room.

The way the erosion of agency works is the same way that a millstone works on wheat, grinding it into dust gradually, persistently. A system like this, much bigger than an individual, has an emergent behavior… a “mind” of its own… that at no point can stop to care even for a moment about what happens to the grains it grinds.

Any harm is not particularly intentional.

Fast forward to a future moment where the same someone we’ve been discussing has a fresh opportunity to care about something. They see what could be. But they hesitate to act, and ultimately withdraw, because what use is it anyway? Things will just go the way they always go. It won’t matter.

Helplessness.

It’s learned, but it’s also consequential, as in… what other consequence could have even come about, from a situation like that?

This doesn’t stop consultants from scoffing at “problem” clients… and their unwillingness to change… unwillingness to stick their necks out, just one more time, to do something small, to get rejected once again. So selfish, these people who have been hurt. So helpless.

But they’re not helpless. They’re hopeless. Everything about what they’ve experienced is signal that there is no hope. No matter what they do, nothing will ever change. Nothing will ever matter. What’s the point of trying? Just do your job, get paid, go home, day after day after day. Promises, hopes… these aren’t to be believed.

It’s Learned Hopelessness, more than it is helplessness.

But where does hope come from, anyway?

Big ideas? Bold new purposes? Miracles? Doubtful.

But I wonder what would happen if the system could infuse hope with the same gradual, intense persistence of a millstone, grinding away hopelessness into dust.

I’m sure I’m getting it wrong in important ways, but the basic idea as I understand it is a flavor of live-and-let-live focused on which futures are allowed to exist.

My way of being is different than your way of being. But both ways deserve to co-exist. They both also deserve to have futures where they continue to exist.

If I decide your way of being is wrong, and I attempt to change it, then I am reducing the number of futures where your way continues to exist.

I might force you to adopt my way of being. This is just another path to eliminating your way from the world, eliminating your way’s futures.

Universalism

In contrast to Ontological Pluralism, the default way that we attempt to perceive the world is one of universality — one way, that we all share.

The resulting conflict centers on what is allowed to be in our one way and what isn’t. There is only one way! Only one kind of future that we make possible.

The consequences of one way is that we routinely kill off all other ways, removing futures where they get to exist. We terraform other ways in our image, whatever image that happens to be.

It’s Everywhere

You’ll start to see this universalist future-killing in any circumstance where some way of being is restricted by a force attempting to do the terraforming. There are pavers and pavees.

There are no simple lines. It’s a tangled mess of forces vying for the future. Some want to live and be left alone. Others want to own all futures.

The challenging thing with confronting universalism is that some things you hold sacred might be destroyed.

Take abortion. A universalist will argue for one particular kind of future for everyone. Abortion as a human right. Abortion as murder. Abortion as (some other nuanced view).

An ontological pluralist, however, would have to accept futures where some people view abortion as a human right, some view it as murder, some view it as only appropriate when “medically necessary”, others as a religious rite (looking at you, Satanism)…. AND all of these ways of being get to exist, and have futures, even the ones you don’t like.

It’s a challenging way to imagine the world.

The Limits

There is one problem, of course. What happens when one way of being’s way of being seeks to eliminate other ways of being, as universalism does?

After all, don’t all ways of being deserve futures?

The paradox of tolerance applies. That way of being gets exiled. Or possibly eliminated. (With a hard limit on getting recursive.)

That sounds scary. And it is. But to put things into perspective, Universalism means that all other ways of being not conforming to The One Way of Being are having their futures eliminated right now by default.

Wrapping Up

All this is a confusing mess in my head right now, but I keep finding new ways to appreciate how ontological pluralism offers a different way to see the world, and to elevate the ongoing elimination of ways of being as a thing happening right now.

It also looks suspiciously like an honest kind of libertarianism, but that’s a hot take I’m not ready to defend!

As a parting confession, I am not a particularly good philosopher. I find reading books like Escobar’s difficult. That probably means I misunderstand some aspects. But I do apply what I (mis)understand. And so I learn. If you notice something I could be learning better, please share!

The truth is, marriage is extremely rewarding. It is also extremely difficult. We’ve learned many hard lessons about building a good marriage over the last decade, and we’re sharing the ones that have helped us the most below. (We’re hopeful that what took us eleven years to learn will only take you five!)

Lesson 1: It can never be about winning or losing.

If either of you notices winning or losing in your conversations or conflicts, go immediately to therapy. Marriage requires mutual care, not winning and losing.

Lesson 2: Resentment is the relationship-killer.

Notice when the seeds of resentment begin to take root. Learn to say it out loud. “I feel resentment building when _____.” Then work together to do something about it.

Lesson 3: 50 / 50 won’t cut it.

Some responsibilities you can split. Others you can assign to one of you. But so, so many responsibilities require BOTH of you to show up and put in 100% effort, every single time. For every responsibility, it’s a choice to make and re-make as time passes: Split, Assign, or Both Show Up.

Lesson 4. No mind-reading.

If you don’t share your quiet assumptions, your needs will go unmet. The problem is, you often won’t know what assumptions you were making until you’re already hurt or confused. Find out what they are and call them out, even after the damage is done. “I think I was assuming that _____. Now that we both know, what should we do?”

Lesson 5. Love requires respect.

We grew up hearing lots of things about the roles of men and women in marriage. Above all that, love requires respect. Subordination isn’t respect. It requires winning and losing (back to #1). Instead, the most powerful thing you can do is cultivate a deep curiosity about each other’s inner lives. Stay curious, always in a state of wonder about what the other person is thinking and experiencing. Ask them about everything. Mutual curiosity builds mutual respect, and love requires respect.

I’m going to describe this framework in terms I find useful, practically.

At any point in time, you are in one of three possible circumstances described below. If you don’t know which one you’re in, then you’re in Disorder.

1. Cause and Effect is Predictable and Knowable

With a problem in this space, the situation may be completely Clear (formerly Simple/Obvious). Let’s say you’re building a new office space for your company. It is probably obvious that you should heat and cool the space (climate control). It is also probably obvious that you should put doors on the offices, have running water in the bathrooms, and have wireless internet for employee use. All these things are best practices. You just do them, with entirely predictable outcomes.

The situations can also be a little harder. It might be a Complicated process to actually install an HVAC system, so you would likely hire an expert contractor to do it for you. It is also probably complicated figuring out how to design conference rooms to minimize acoustic problems. You could certainly learn about acoustic design considerations, analyze the designs, and attempt to do it yourself, but you might instead just bring in an expert to deal with it (for an expert in acoustic design, very little about sound is unknown). With each problem, there are always multiple good practices to choose from; one expert might do things differently than another, but both would achieve the goals in the end. Fundamentally, the outcomes are still predictable.

2. Cause and Effect is Knowable Only in Retrospect

An example here might be deciding how and whether to incorporate feedback/suggestions from your employees into the office design. Should you do what every single person says? Should you pick and choose only the ideas that sound good to you? Can you bring in an office design firm or hire a consultant to figure out what to do based on the feedback? You could do any or none of these options and not know how the employees will respond.

Let’s get more specific. Suppose that some employees have suggested adopting an open plan office space instead of cubicles, while other employees have registered strong opposition to the idea. What will happen if you choose either option? Or if you compromise by splitting the space 50% each way? Will everyone be satisfied? Will they be satisfied a year from now? What’s at risk if you get it wrong? The point is that so many different things could happen, and so much of the Complex system is out of your control. You just can’t know!
There is no good or best practice, as outcomes just emerge. You can look backwards to understand and explain why something happened, but you can’t necessarily use that knowledge to predict what will happen the next time around.

The key to navigating this kind of situation is “safe-to-fail” experimentation. First, you identify ideas you have for getting “more” or “less” of something (e.g., one idea might be to split the space 50% open plan and 50% cubicles in order to bring about MORE stories of satisfaction with the office design). Then, identify all the things that can go wrong if you do that (e.g., a 50/50 split might not address the true proportion among employee preferences // the noise in the open plan space might affect the cubicle space // isolation might increase between these two kinds of employees). For each of those problems, identify strategies in advance that could mitigate them should they happen (e.g., use a non-permanent cubicle and open space design and continually adjust according to the supply/demand for each type of space // keep reserve funds for mobile sound-blocking partitions just in case they’re needed // shift around the break room or change the hallway pathing so accidental interaction between the groups is more probable). You also want to do the same thing for signs of success (but for amplifying the effects instead of mitigating them). While it might seem tedious, this process does improve outcomes in complexity.

3. No Cause and Effect

If encountered accidentally, these are situations of crisis. If the building is on fire, for example, everyone will move as quickly as they can to the nearest exit to escape the situation. If encountered deliberately, however, Chaos can bring novelty. For example, arbitrarily removing all furniture in one section of the office will displace its occupants (and probably piss them off… so don’t do this), but how they cope with that little bit of chaos might bring about novel solutions to the open office vs cubicle dynamic.

The above is meant to be useful rather than correct. If you want a better post, please go write one.

I recommend watching the video directly on YouTube, since there are important links in the description that provide context for the discussion. Reach out to Tasshin or me on Twitter if you have any questions. Enjoy!