Develop Prompts to Action — Habits, Templates, Checklists, Standard Operating Procedures, and Projects

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

I spend a lot of time thinking about productivity. Part of this thinking is prompted by my ongoing membership and active participation in the AP Productivity course and community hosted by R.J. Nestor. This article was inspired by an email conversation with Brian — another member of the community.

Brian is a advocate of recognizing opportunities for recurrence. His ongoing advocacy of recurrence prompted me to think about where friction is important to my productivity and my ability, willingness, and excitement to do something. He has once again prompted me to think more deeply about when and how I apply prompts to action — things like habits, templates, checklists, standard operating procedures (SOP), and projects.

Let me begin by defining what I mean by each of these:

• Habit — an action or set of actions you do automatically or nearly automatically based on a cue like location, time, or start-up/completion of another habit or action.
• Template — a collection of prompts that provide timely reminders of when to do something/what to capture. Templates are flexible — you might not fill in an area in a template if the situation doesn’t call for it. You might do things in a different order if the…