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Focus — Dashboard

Section titled “Focus — Dashboard”

Portal (folder note) for the Focus ongoing project — the coordination layer over every tool Talbot uses to stay pointed at his Biggest Rocks. The current set is listed under Focus tools used below; the AI Focus Coach section documents the SMTM gates.

Why it matters: these tools compound directly on the CONSTITUTION’s simplification-first / SSOT principles — a focus system that drifts (stale wallpapers, orphaned shortcuts, scattered ideas) quietly erodes the very discipline it exists to enforce. Spun out of KB-OS task KB-OS-focus-ongoing-project (2026-07-22).

Type: Ongoing project (KB-native — the vault is the artifact; no repo) Owner: Core/Processes dept (Director, A1) Origin: spun out of KB-OS task KB-OS-focus-ongoing-project (2026-07-22)

This project is a coordination/portal layer, not a content move — SSOT rule: every underlying artifact stays where it already lives; Focus only indexes/links them.

Focus tools used

Section titled “Focus tools used”

  • sorted by current usage/importance

  • Ecco Pro — the Windows-only Personal Information Manager (PIM) Talbot has used for decades for task and project management; still unmatched on the combination of hierarchical collapsible outlining, per-item columns, and notepad views. His Today view carries a red bolded banner at the top — “FOCUS on Highest-Impact Activities First: Development, Marketing” — per-item columns ABC, Status, To-Do's, Action, Focus, and notepad tabs across the bottom (Working On, Today, Now, Planning, This Week, Focus, Development, Finances, Research, Maintenance, Health, Recurring, Accounting). Open files: Main.eco, TLS.eco, Notes.eco, Software.eco, Marketing.eco, BML.eco, WebDev.eco, Writing.eco, SDInvestments.eco. Ecco alternatives are tracked inside Notes.eco itself; the vault-side decision artifact is PIM-Alternatives (2026-08-20 — verdict: keep Ecco; Bases cannot do per-item columns, Dataview can).

  • Vault-native Ecco notepads (in trial) — Today.md beside Ecco, shared dv.view() engine, entry template. Usage: Ecco-Notepads-Usage. Build task: ecco-notepads-build.

  • Handwritten My Focus page — a short hand-written list of only the Next ACTions for the current day, ordered BIGGEST first. Deliberately analogue: the friction of re-writing the top priorities by hand each day is the feature, not a defect to automate away.

  • Dynalist

    • Mostly for Idea Capture (Inbox, mBR)
    • Partly for WorkingOn surface used (sometimes) when iterating with AI tools (markdown outline notes paste well into Obsidian and AI UIs)
    • Available-anywhere Personal reference notes

  • KB-OS

    • AI Focus Coach — the SMTM gates below, shipped 2026-08-19.
    • SMTM filter-focus-refresh skill — periodic refresh of Filter+Focus.md against new brainstorming ideas
    • Filter+Focus.md per business — MBR: MBR/Strategy/Filter-Focus.md; SDC equivalent — each already SSOT’d under <Biz>/Strategy/ per the 2026-07-15 business-strategy-doc convention; link only, never restructured
    • Progress Acceleration docs — MBR / SDC

  • Focus pages (standalone HTML, per business) — source <Biz>/_WorkingOn/Focus.md, deployed via web-deploy <brand>-focus. SSOT doc lives in the monorepo (~/projects/monorepo/docs/focus-pages.md); KB pointer at Focus-Pages (IT-owned — this project links to it, doesn’t duplicate it)

  • Google Calendar — time blocking, (emailed) notifications, some simple recurring Tasks (mostly personal: maintenance)

  • BuzzKill — unmissable Android alarm layer over Google Calendar (Calendar notification → BuzzKill → persistent alarm). Workflow: prefix a critical Calendar event with A1 and BuzzKill raises the alarm — no separate alarm to create by hand. Also fires from Google Tasks, email, and other apps. Android-only (the iPhone equivalent is a different app — see AlarmApps). Replaced GAlarm (retired 2026-08-19; GAlarm was cross-platform but required creating each alarm manually).

  • Notify desktop app (text + speech reminders) — D:\FSS\Software\Utils\PythonUtils\notify\; also used by Personal/Health/Achilles-Rehab-ACTion-Plan.md

  • Windows-startup visual reminder — see STATUS.md for current state (Focus.lnk retired 2026-07-22)

  • printed

    • d:\FSS\Websites\SDC.com\Mission$MART DEBT Mission.pdf
      • D:\FSS\KB\Business\02_Processes & Systems\Computer\Admin\Printing.md

  • d:\FSS\Misc\Planning\Focus.svg

    • To add this FOCUS to the Windows Screensaver Background images, copy d:\FSS\Misc\Planning\Focus.jpg to …
      • d:\FSS\Misc\Setup\DesktopImages\ScreenSaverSubset\Focus.jpg
      • d:\FSS\Misc\Setup\DesktopImages\ScreenSaverSubset\Focus-2.jpg
      • d:\FSS\Misc\Setup\DesktopImages\ScreenSaverSubset\Focus-3.jpg
    • Pin link to master file d:\FSS\Misc\Planning\Focus.jpg, in Chrome

  • IMPORTANT TOOL

    • An unmissable notification system that is always with me is critical for some tasks (like taking important medication, like chemo). Ideal is for Google Calendar to be able to reliably deliver unmissable audible notifications for calendar events and/or tasks.

AI Focus Coach

Section titled “AI Focus Coach”

Three touchpoints inside SMTM (Simple Markdown Task Management), all reading the hand-curated Biggest Rocks table in Core DASHBOARD — no separate rocks registry exists or should.

WhereWhat firesTrigger
/task-start Step 4bRock-alignment gate — blocking forced choice naming ONE alternative (Rock #1 + its next action): switch / proceed anyway / re-rank Rocks. Records rock: in the task frontmatterTask does not ladder to a named Rock. Skipped for _tmp.md, recurring maintenance, and tasks already carrying rock:
/task-continue Step 4bCreep gate — forced choice: continue / ship reduced scope now / stop and closeEvery round from 4 onward (4 is the AGENTS.md circuit-breaker threshold; it does not go quiet again after it)
/task-complete Step 7cOne row appended to focus-ledger — date, task, rock, rounds, dispositionEvery close. No retro questions
Weekly (Fri 1:30p)Plan: BIGGEST Rocks — re-rank Core/DASHBOARD.md and stamp rocks-refreshed:. Owned outside the vault: recurring task in Ecco + Google CalendarTalbot’s own block. SessionStart hook flags the table once the stamp is >7 days old — so a skipped Friday shows up at Monday’s first session, no separate reminder needed
Monthlyfocus-ledger review — read focus-ledger against its decision rule (>50% off after 10 rows → address why)Routines row. Deliberately not weekly: the ledger needs ~10 rows before it says anything

Why blocking, not advisory: measured in Talbot’s own Behavioural-Solutions SSOT — removing execution friction moved behaviour ≈0 (UK CASS, 12 years), while a decision prompt naming one alternative moved it 2.6% → 26.9% across five replications. An informational “consider whether this is worth your focus” note is the ≈0 version. Anyone editing these gates later: do not soften them back into notes.

Where priority truth lives — the actual defect (2026-08-20): the tool count is not the problem; each tool above does a distinct job. The problem is that what matters most is asserted in several places at once: Core/DASHBOARD.md’s Rocks table (the roll-up), MBR/Strategy/Filter+Focus.md (the business ranked list it points at — date-refreshed: 2026-04-08, 4.5 months stale), Ecco’s Focus column (bucket tags: Today / Now / Working On — a different vocabulary entirely, not a ranking), and the handwritten page (today’s ordered ACTions). One ranked list should be authoritative and the rest should mirror it.

Coverage limit: the gates only fire inside Claude Code sessions. The handwritten page and Ecco’s Today view — where the day actually starts — are not reached.

Live state

Section titled “Live state”
  • State: STATUS
  • Plan: ROADMAP
  • Ideas not yet committed: UPGRADES
  • Lessons: LESSONS
  • Tasks: Tasks/ (self-contained, per KB-native task-location convention)
  • Logs: logs/

Key references

Section titled “Key references”