Making a Super Task Buffet from Activity Board with Ship Operations

Making a Super Task Buffet from Activity Board with Ship Operations
It turns out that my Ship Operations diagram builds off of last year's Activity Bingo Board, so why not merge them?

When I had trouble answering the question What Should I Work On Today last year, I created a diagram called the Activity Bingo Board (aka ABB). I describe the idea in the article Making Operational Diagrams, but briefly it is like a buffet of tasks that I can pick from that I know are related to my goals. The idea is that I can print it out and stick it on the wall, then stand in front of it looking for something to do then run with it.

My goals have changed in 2026 again, as I've noted in the 2026 Groundhog Day Resolutions, so I considered updating the ABB with updated goals, but then I realized that they actually haven't changed! My current experiment is to think of my business as a ship that embodies a sense of mission and adventure with complement of like-minded people, which I think would be super fun!

So, I just smashed last year's ABB with this year's freshly-minted Ship Operations Board. Here's what it looks like:

On the left is the Activity Bingo Board. On the right is the ship operations diagram I've been working on this week.

The main difference between the ABB and The Ship is how they feed my personal energy.

  • The ABB is a refined task list, but it doesn't address my personal energy needs to make things that people are actually excited about. It drains personal energy without replenishing it, making it a kind of battery power that I have to ration.
  • The Ship, by comparison, is designed to generate energy by harnessing the motivational power of human interaction from different sources. The Primary Hull is concerned with virtual interaction with me. The ship's Interaction Engine is concerned with generating in-person interaction through shared interest and purpose.

The big insight that came from mashing them together was that all of the 2025 ABB activities fit into the Sri Impulse Engine of The Ship. The impulse drive is slow and inefficient, requiring a lot of personal energy to get anything done. It does generate goods with market value and that is worth having. But for this to be sustainable, I know I need to have daily, meaningful conversations with people who share a sense of mission and adventurous fun. And that means I need to interact with more people in a way that maintains focus on my personal need; the Ship and Ship Operations is the narrative context that I'm hoping reframes my life-sustaining activities in a more joyful way.

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