Tiago Forte/Blog/21/09/Intermediate Packets in the Wild

• Intermediate Packets in the Wild - Forte Labs
  • One of the most powerful shifts I see people make in the way they work is breaking down their large projects or goals into smaller chunks, which I call “Intermediate Packets.”
    • If you design a slide that elegantly communicates a certain idea, why not keep it as a building block that can be reused in multiple slide decks in the future?
    • If you write a paragraph that powerfully argues a point, why not save that paragraph and incorporate it anytime you need to make that particular point?
    • If you create a diagram that effectively illustrates a trend in your industry, why not preserve that diagram so you always have evidence to support your assertions?
    • If you find a quote that speaks to one of your deeply held values, why not put it somewhere that you can refer to anytime you’re feeling down or discouraged?
  • instead of finding a separate place for each of these kinds of content and many dozens of others, keep them all in your system of personal knowledge, which I call a Second Brain.
  • I’ve collected many examples of how this concept is applied in different creative media and different professions

    • #Examples of Intermediate Packets

      • "Module" in software development
      • “Taste test” in cooking
      • “Alpha” or “beta” in startups
      • “Sketches” in architecture
      • “Pilot” in television
      • “Prototypes” or “iron birds” in mechanical engineering
      • “Scaffolding” in IT development
      • “Pilot process” in manufacturing
      • “Scrimmages” in football
      • “Scenarios” in firefighting
      • “Concept car” in automobile design
      • “Demos” in music recording
      • “Sample” in baking
      • “First pass” in theatre lighting design
      • “Marking” in the performance arts
      • “Mock-ups” for websites
      • “Sitzprobe” for rehearsing an opera performance
      • “Comps” in graphic design
      • “Animatics” in storyboard animation
      • “Passes” in sculpting
      • “Manuscripts” for writing
      • “Franken-model” for hardware design
      • “Storyboard” in filmmaking
      • “Preprint” in academia
      • “Straw man” in proposal drafting
      • “Wireframe” in UI design