A Short History of Effort Management
Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
This post is part of The Sub-Disciplines of Productiveness, a sub-series of The Productivity Chronicles. In this mini-series we look into the various subfields of modern productivity.
Previous entries in this series:
Full Disclosure: This essay was crafted with assistance of ChatGPT Deep Research.
Dwight D. Eisenhower once declared, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”1
Although he said this nearly a century ago, his insight remains strikingly relevant: no matter how well we map things out, reality has a way of rewriting the script.
In the first part of this series, we explored how time management underpins personal productivity. In this piece, we turn our focus to Personal Effort Management (PEM)—the art and science of structuring and managing workloads. While many other productivity disciplines intersect with time management, PEM takes a higher-level view, focusing on longer-term planning, prioritizing, and breaking work into suitable buckets with a size that works. In this installment, we’ll explore its origins and what it looks like in practice.
Quick Note: I use the term “effort” to mean any finite endeavor—something with a clear endpoint. A task is an effort. So is a project, that book you’re halfway through, or a big house renovation. Even sending a quick thank-you message qualifies. Efforts are “finite games”—activities that eventually conclude. They represent the steps we take toward our goals, commitments, protocols, ambitions, and values.
From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Hustle
Humans have always been builders. From the towering pyramids of Giza to the sprawling Great Wall of China, our drive to bring grand visions to life is woven into the fabric of civilization. These colossal projects—requiring massive labor forces, precise resource allocation, and long-term coordination—drove home a key insight: truly great achievements need effective organization, especially when more than two hands are involved.
Historically, large-scale effort management evolved in tandem with time management. During the industrial era, Frederick Taylor famously analyzed manual labor through a scientific lens, aiming to maximize each worker’s output by minimizing wasted motion.2 Although this approach sometimes overlooked the human side of work, it also sparked valuable innovations. Henry Gantt, for example, introduced his now-classic Gantt chart, a visual tool for scheduling tasks over time, spotting bottlenecks, and synchronizing a team’s efforts.3
The World Wars then pushed the complexity of coordinating thousands of interdependent tasks—like weapon manufacturing, supply logistics, and code-breaking—to a whole new level. Simple time-and-motion studies weren’t enough. New methods like the Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) emerged, mapping vast webs of tasks, dependencies, and shifting variables. After the wars, these techniques found their way into corporate settings—and eventually trickled down to individuals—helping with everything from product launches to weekend home improvement projects.4
Still, personal life is usually far simpler. Gantt charts and other specialized tools are mostly designed for teams. In everyday situations, we can afford much more flexibility. Yet within personal productivity circles, a discipline we might call Personal Effort Management (PEM) has grown distinct from time management, taking a broader look at how we plan and structure our work. Personal Effort Management isn’t a widely accepted term—yet in this series, it’s an umbrella concept for practices centered on planning, prioritizing, and structuring work into the right-sized chunks.
The Modern Evolution of Personal Effort Management
PEM arose out of various sub-subdisciplines. Today, it has three main subfields:5
Personal Task Management (PTM) zeroes in on very granular action steps. A task is a reminder for a small work-to-be-done, whether it’s as simple as watering the flowers or answering an email. These tasks are often the smallest work unit we handle—discrete actions with specific deadlines that form the atomic building blocks of accomplishment. PTM is the art of ensuring these tasks get finished on time, that important ones don’t fall through the cracks, and that as many as possible get done. Its roots stretch back to productivity pioneers like Ivy Lee, who in 1918 introduced the method of listing six must-do tasks for the next day.6 Yet, the exact boundaries of what qualifies as a task remain delightfully fuzzy, leaving plenty of room for personal interpretation.
Personal Project Management (PpM) takes the principles of PTM and scales them up to tackle bigger goals, longer timelines, and even multiple people. It’s about planning, breaking work into manageable steps, tracking progress, and adjusting along the way—whether you’re mapping out a personal milestone or coordinating a small team project. While enterprise frameworks like PMI’s PMBOK7 or Agile and Scrum8 offer formal, structured processes, personal project management tends to be a more flexible, one-person show, measured by personal satisfaction and growth rather than strict metrics. There isn’t a single well-known “first reference” for PpM; the concept evolved naturally as early productivity consulting laid the groundwork and was later refined by approaches like David Allen’s Getting Things Done, Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journaling9, and Tiago Forte’s PARA method.10 Though the tools for managing personal and business projects often overlap—sometimes involving Gantt charts or risk assessments for big decisions—the differences in scope and complexity can lead to confusion. For instance, David Allen’s popular GTD, despite using the term “project,” is effectively a task management system.11
Personal program management (PPM), scales out even further than personal project management, tackling the largest and most complex endeavors in our lives. Historically, this facet of personal effort management has been absent from mainstream discussions, but lately, authors (including myself) are coining the term and exploring new methodologies for managing ambitions too vast for conventional task- or project-based approaches. While many might wonder if individuals really need Gantt charts or intricate schedules, my new book demonstrates that many significant life undertakings exceed the reach of simple to-do lists. By adapting the wisdom of project and program management to personal goals, we can plan, execute, and succeed where ordinary methods fall short.
Conclusion
The evolution of Personal Effort Management (PEM) mirrors our enduring desire to maximize what we have—time, energy, and focus. Of all the sub-disciplines of Productiveness, PEM is the one I emphasize most. It’s ripe for fresh perspectives and cutting-edge ideas. In the decades to come, we can expect a more personalized, insightful, and holistic approach, likely supported by ever-present technology that anticipates our needs. By 2040, we may look back and wonder how we ever juggled so many apps and methods—when our AI tools streamline most of it for us.
This quote is widely attributed to Eisenhower and often referenced as: Dwight D. Eisenhower (1957). Speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference, November 14, 1957.
Taylor, F.W. (1911). The Principles of Scientific Management. Harper & Brothers.
Gantt, H.L. (1919). Organizing for Work. Harcourt, Brace & Howe.
Malcolm, D.G., Roseboom, J.H., Clark, C.E., & Fazar, W. (1959). “Application of a Technique for Research and Development Program Evaluation.” Operations Research, 7(5), 646–669.
Others include personal action management (PAM), which deals with the quantum realm of personal accomplishment. Depending on the main work unit, there are likely many others in business settings.
This is more of an anecdotal account than a formally published work. It’s often cited as originating around 1918 when Ivy Lee introduced his method to Charles Schwab (then president of Bethlehem Steel).
Project Management Institute. (2021). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – 7th Edition.
Schwaber, K., & Beedle, M. (2002). Agile Software Development with Scrum. Prentice Hall.
Carroll, R. (2018). The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future. Portfolio/Penguin.
Forte, T. (2022). Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Avid Reader Press.
Allen defines a “project” as any outcome requiring more than one action step—often just a handful of tasks—whereas business “projects” can span months or years. This definition confuses many people. In general, when comparing business and personal affairs, we often have a misalignment of one or two magnitudes. Thus, personal projects should be considered at least 10-20 times smaller than business projects. However, they should not be too small, as this would turn them into something else entirely. See Allen, D. (2001). Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Viking.