Alex Selimov
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52 lines
3.2 KiB
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---
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title: "Pillars, Pipelines, and Vaults System by August Bradley"
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date: 2025-09-23T21:22:45-04:00
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topics: ["life optimization", "productivity", "self-reflection"]
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---
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## What motivated me to try it
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I somehow recently accidentally stumbled across the Pillars, Pipelines, and Vaults (PPV) system by August Bradley.
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In a nutshell, this system is a way to align your daily efforts to the pursuit of goals that contribute to core areas of your life (the pillars).
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As a husband and the father of a toddler and an infant, the free time that I previously had in excess has been scarce.
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My routines and schedules were extremely disrupted as I transitioned from my life as a PhD student to working a 9-5 and raising a family (my first child was born exactly one week after my dissertation defense).
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These routines never truly recovered.
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As a result, when I do come across some free time I find that I often don't know what to do with it.
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I also am guilty of jumping from project to project without focus, leaving things half finished or skills incompletely developed.
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## I've tried a few different methods for improving focus and alignment, but nothing ever really stuck.
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I've been learning about the PPV system and have noticed some positive effects already.
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Primarily around self-reflection, ensuring daily tasks are aligned to what is important, and ensuring that my effort towards things important to me is getting tracked.
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I'm halfway through the [PPV playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAl0gPKnL3V8s7dPXoo07mYnuErhWVk8b) and have started building out my personal PPV system.
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So far I recommend it.
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I definitely think that it needs per-user customization as I am not August Bradley, and his priorities won't directly translate to me.
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But some of the overarching concepts I find extremely useful:
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- You should define a small set of "pillars" that hold up your life (e.g. career, family, learning, personal projects, etc...)
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- Ensure that your daily actions and goals are aligned to those pillars
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- The action zone concept is fairly genius and has certainly led to improved focus for me.
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## I, of course, am not actually implementing these systems in Notion directly
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Instead, I found a FOSS alternative called [anytype](https://anytype.io/).
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I tried some other FOSS options like AppFlowy and AFFiNE.
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AFFiNE struggled from:
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- UI that was cramming in their AI service everywhere, and it couldn't be disabled.
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- Some concerns about how their telemetry works, [see this github issue](https://github.com/toeverything/AFFiNE/issues/6920)
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AppFlowy was pretty clean but I wasn't able to get the self-hosted AppFlowy-Cloud setup.
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I've yet to self-host a node for anytype.
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It uses a P2P protocol to synchronize spaces between devices which seems to make the self-hosting more complex.
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I plan to upload an additional guide if I find it difficult to set-up.
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## Conclusion
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If you haven't heard about PPV, definitely check it out [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAl0gPKnL3V8s7dPXoo07mYnuErhWVk8b)!
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It isn't for everyone, but I've seen the benefits already in my limited time using it.
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I may do a dive into my personal flavor of PPV and how I deviated from the original once it is fully completed.
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Hopefully this is helpful to someone!
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