BriefingsBriefing for Asdra and Fae — planning practice and ops

Briefing for Asdra and Fae — planning practice and ops

Briefing for Asdra and Fae — planning practice and ops

What I want from you this week

  1. Practise planning, starting today. Write a situation–complication–question (SCQ) for a real problem, turn it into a plan of work, get it reviewed, then start executing. This is the most important thing. It matters more than any single task you complete.
  2. Review my inbox and Sylvie's inbox. This is high priority. It is also your first SCQ (see below).
  3. Get on top of ops, in parallel. When you are blocked on planning or waiting for a review, work through the ops backlog.

The aim is that you can take a messy area, work out what needs doing, propose a plan, and then carry it out mostly on your own, checking in with me only at the points you name.

How to work: SCQ, then plan, then review, then execute

  1. Write the SCQ. Copy templates/scq-and-plan.md to plans/YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>-<your-name>.md. Situation, complication, question, and a hypothesis if you have one. One sentence each. Background: Situation, Complication, Question, Hypothesis.
  2. Break the question into an issue tree. What sub-questions would you need to answer? See Issue and hypothesis trees.
  3. Write a plan of work. Actions in order, each with an estimate and a target date. Mark what needs someone else's approval.
  4. Get it reviewed. Commit it, push it to a branch and open a pull request for me to review. Say in the pull request which decisions you want from me. Do not wait for the plan to be perfect. A rough first version is what I want to see.
  5. Execute. Log each action as an issue (see below) and do the ones that do not need approval. Come back to me at the check-in points you named.

Your AI assistant can help at every step, including drafting the SCQ. But the SCQ should be yours: check that it says what you actually think.

Your first SCQs

Do these first, in this order.

  1. Inbox review. [Both] What is in Rufus's inbox and Sylvie's inbox, what needs doing, and what is the system for keeping on top of it? Proposed split: Asdra takes Rufus's inbox and Fae takes Sylvie's, then swap notes. Include a proposed weekly review cadence in your plan.
  2. Then one of these. Pick with me.
    • [Asdra] The ops backlog (see below).
    • [Asdra] The rebrand: the name (Seeds of Renaissance?), what to call the period "between worlds", updating the white papers, and whether Over the Mountains is renamed. Read the rebrand project first.
      • Asdra: Seeds of Renaissance brand rollout and rebrand SCQs.
      • Fae: Website SCQ.
      • Launch: deferred for now.
    • 🔥 The October/November team retreat, and when Asdra comes to France.
    • The content pipeline. Read the content delivery pipeline project first.
    • Marketing: there is no clear backlog yet.

Ops, in parallel

Work on these whenever you are blocked. Draft and prepare only; see the ground rules below.

  • Ops inbox: process it fully. For each item, either do it or turn it into a logged action with an estimate and a date. Tell me the things that need my signature or decision.
  • Known items: contracts waiting to be signed; anti-money-laundering information to send to people; a standard place in Drive for documents we often need (for example ID and passport photos for Rufus and Sylvie). Propose where that place should be.
  • Backlog: go through the open issues in life-itself/ops and mark each as do now, schedule, or close.
  • Cadence: propose a weekly ops review slot for the calendar, and a monthly run for payments. The ops handbook describes the existing payments process: invoices in by the 3rd, paid by the 10th.

Where to log actions

Follow the initiative or project's recorded tracker: for example, life-itself/ops for operations, or the existing Asana board for content work that uses it. Planning and agent work uses Beads here; you do not need to use Beads until access works for you. For planning work without a usable route, planning Issues is the temporary fallback, or send an update to someone editing here. Link existing tasks rather than duplicating them across tools. Put the estimate and target date in the task, and link it from your plan.

The exercise above uses repository files; it is not a requirement for every project. You can also start a project in an A10 / similar Google Doc without a repository entry or Tao issue. Initiatives are maintained here. See the canonical workflow for the distinction and current routes.

Ground rules

  • Draft, don't send. Prepare replies, forms and payments, but do not send, sign or pay anything without approval from me or Sylvie.
  • Read carefully, act narrowly. When you review my or Sylvie's inbox, only act on what your plan covers. Tell us if you see something sensitive.
  • No personal documents in the repo. Never commit passports, ID, bank details or similar to this repository. Put them in Drive and link to them.
  • Ask when unsure. A short question costs less than a wrong action.
  • Keep prose on one line per paragraph in Markdown files. Do not hard-wrap.

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