The Pilot, the Plane and the Engineer
The mental model for productivity: the pilot, the plane & the engineer and how to apply it to your own life. My other favorite things, quote & visual of last week.
🛫 Productivity Model: the Pilot, the Plane and the Engineer
This aircraft analogy is a mental model for productivity by Ali Abdaal
🧠 The mental model
The mental model includes 3 roles:
👨✈️ The Pilot is planning the trip and destination. He has a birds-eye view of everything and his job is to set our goals and direction. The pilot is in charge of the day and will decide what to do based on our internal wants & needs and the external reality.
—> We set goals and plan our future
✈ The plane is flying. The plane is basically following the instructions of the pilot. This includes 3 steps
a safe take-off
staying on track
a safe landing
—> We are doing the work
👨🔬 The Engineer’s job is to create the best possible plane. He creates and maintains a system that allows the pilot to organize it and stay on track. Moreover, he wants the plane to fly as fuel-efficient as possible.
—> We’re learning and optimizing
🏢 Apply it to your life
We’re actually all 3 of them. We plan, we do and we optimize all the time. Most importantly, we get to decide how much time we spend on everything:
When most of the time we are the pilot: we’re overplanning. We just set goals without a means to get there. Without actually doing the job, this is pointless. You’re overthinking and before you know it, the day is over and the plane never took off.
When most of the time we are the engineer: we’re just building something hypothetically in a lab that will never see the reality. We are just optimizing for nothing.
When most of the time we are the plane all the time: we’re just mindlessly doing. We don’t know where we’re heading and don’t do it efficiently. We might take on too much load because we didn’t plan it well. In the end, we’re just going to crash.
So, we need a good balance. It’s not science-based, but the suggestion is something like this
10% time pilot: preferably at the start of each day
5% engineer: take care of good systems that will support your goals such as a to-do list, calendar and file management system. Next work on your efficiency: improve by eliminating wasted time and speeding up the process
85% plane: rest of the time: biggest struggle with the take-off (actually getting started) and not deviating from our course (not getting too distracted)
And you? On which aspect do you have to work more? The pilot, plane or engineer?
😍 My Favorite Things of last week
🚚 Travel: our DAF van is back! Last Wednesday we got our travel van back and decided to leave immediately for the long weekend. We head off to the Black Forest (Schwarzwald, DE) for some awesome hikes! We had one cold night, the rest was actually really ok. The sunny hikes and the impressive forest and gorges made totally up for it. I mean… 15 degrees in mid-November: fortune is on our side!
📽 Movie - Prey: we recently watched the movie Prey with Amber Midthunder. I only afterwards realised it was a movie from the Predator franchise. The face paint of the actors stuck most with me. I read about it afterwards and apparently, they took the Comanche (Native American tribe) warrior painting very seriously. The actors (with Native American roots) had several days of hair and makeup tests before they started shooting. They really incorporated their culture by using family designs into their warrior paint.
🗨 Quote of the week
“Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times, when one only remembers to turn on the light.”
by Albus Dumbledore (J.K Rowling - Harry Potter)
✏Visual of the week
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