Efforts (Action)

Action-oriented effort notes, as well as projects, areas, and interests belong in the Efforts folder. I have a few subfolders for major types of action notes.

Actions: This folder contains my Effort notes.
Projects: Efforts with an defined outcome and a completion date
Areas: Ongoing major areas of responsibility (and roles) in my life, such as family, finances, health, house, work, etc.
Interests: Topics of interest like blog, music, photos, travel, reading, writing, genealogy, etc.

Actions

Under Efforts, I use an Actions folder with Effort notes about activities that I'm currently working on (my active efforts). They might range in scope from small to quite large. This helps me focus on the major activities for my PKM system of linked notes.

Previously, this used to be called Notes, but I wanted to emphasize these were action notes. However, I don't have a subfolder for each effort any longer; I just keep all the my Effort notes under the Actions subfolder. Notes used in my efforts now reside under my Atlas folder since I have realigned my ACE folders.

These are created as Effort notes with an Effort fileClass property using an Effort template. These are reflected in my Efforts View for workflow processing with Dataview queries to manage my efforts.

I use separate folders for active Projects with a specific outcome and completion date, as well as ongoing Areas and Interests of my life.

Areas

I have a subfolder under for ongoing Areas of my life (and responsibilities) such as Family, Finance, Health, House, and Work.

These reflect continuous responsibilities and roles that never end, but they are important activities.

These are created as Area notes with an Area fileClass property using an Area template. I use Dataview queries in an Areas View to manage my area efforts. These are specific kinds of Topic notes.

Interests

Also, I use subfolders for Interests on topics like PKM, Technology, Music, Photos, Travel, Health, Genealogy, Reading, Writing, and Blog.

These are also reflected as major sections on my Ghost WarrenWeb site with PKM, Technology, and Interests in its main menu.

These are created as Interest notes with an Interest fileClass property using an Interest template. I use Dataview queries in an Interest View to manage my efforts. These are specific kinds of Topic notes.

Projects

Projects are efforts that have a defined outcome and completion date. Currently, I keep them in this folder separate from the rest of my efforts.

These are created as Project notes with an Project fileClass property using an Project template. I use Dataview queries in an Projects View to manage my project efforts.

Intensities

It helps to identify efforts by their intensity: on, ongoing, simmering, and sleeping. In Ideaverse Pro, Nick Milo suggests using separate Efforts subfolders for intensities and moving effort notes between them. However, I prefer not to rely on folders, but instead use intensity and rank properties that I manage in my Efforts View queries.

Refactoring

My earlier Efforts folder had too many folder hierarchies and I wanted to streamline that further. Previously, I had folders for my areas, interests, and projects all under Efforts/Notes. Now it seems helpful use separate folders to distinguish between my life Areas and Interests.

Summary

It has been helpful to use my Efforts folder to focus on actions for my PKM system. Shifting all the content to the Atlas folder for knowledge and ideas has simplified the Efforts folder and emphasizes Atlas as my primary knowledge base used for my efforts.