Area vs Project

My main takeaway from Building a Second Brain is to take more care to distinguish Areas and Projects. The author gives these definitions of the two categories:

Areas:

• Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time.
• An area doesn’t have a final objective.

Projects:

• Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now.
• Projects…have a beginning and an end; they date place during a specific period of time and then they finish.
• They have a specific, clear outdome that needs to happen in order for them to be checkeed off as complete.

These are neither new nor unfamiliar distinctions, but the reminder to separate the two was very useful. Many Areas spin out Projects continuously over time, and after a while that begins to blur the boundary.