Getting Started
Organizing Your Work: Domains, Projects, Tracks & Todos
That’s a Project, Not a Todo
You’ve done this before. You open your todo list and write down “plan vacation”, “pay taxes”, or “get in shape”. They sit there for weeks. You look at them, feel a pang of guilt, and scroll past.
The problem isn’t laziness — it’s that none of these are actually doable in one sitting. “Pay taxes” sounds simple, but you’d need to gather documents, review last year’s return, fill out forms, and submit. That’s not a todo. That’s a project.
When everything lives on a flat list, the big stuff never moves because there’s no obvious next step. You end up doing the small, easy things and ignoring what actually matters.
Alpen gives you a structure to break these down. It’s a four-level hierarchy designed to turn vague intentions into concrete action:
- Domains — fixed areas of your life (Fitness, Finance, Career, Relationships)
- Projects — medium-term goals with a clear outcome (weeks to months)
- Tracks — short-term efforts where real work happens (days to a week)
- Todos — single actions you can finish in one sitting
Let me walk you through how this works with a real example.
End-to-End Example: Host a Family Visit
Your cousin’s family is coming from Colombia in July. You’re excited but overwhelmed — there’s a lot to coordinate. Here’s how this breaks down in Alpen.
Domain: Relationships
Relationships is one of your fixed life areas. You don’t “complete” it. It’s always there, holding the projects that matter to the people in your life.
Project: “Host family visit from Colombia in July”
This lives under Relationships. It has a clear outcome — by the end, your family has visited, had a great time, and gone home. The name describes what done looks like.
Tracks: Where the Real Work Happens
This is where things get interesting. You don’t plan a visit in one straight line. You explore, hit dead ends, and adjust.
Track 1: “Research fun things to do” You got excited and jumped straight into googling activities. You saved 30 links to restaurants, parks, and museums. Then you realized — you don’t even know what dates everyone is free, who’s actually coming, or if anyone has dietary restrictions. All that research might be useless. Dead end.
Track 2: “Coordinate schedules with family” You step back and start a group chat. Nail down dates. Figure out who’s coming. Ask about dietary needs and preferences. Now you have the information you actually need.
Track 3: “Plan the itinerary” With dates and headcount locked in, you book restaurants, buy tickets, and map out each day. The research from Track 1 isn’t wasted — you revisit some of those links now that you know the constraints.
Track 4: “Prepare and pack” The visit is close. Clean the guest room, stock the fridge, pack your bag if you’re traveling to meet them.
Notice how Track 1 was a dead end, and that’s fine. You learned what you didn’t know. Tracks are meant to be experiments — short-lived enough that a wrong turn doesn’t cost you much.
Todos: The Actual Actions
Under Track 3 (“Plan the itinerary”), your todos might be:
- Book restaurant for Saturday dinner
- Buy zoo tickets for Tuesday
- Send itinerary to group chat
Each one is something you can sit down and do right now. No ambiguity, no further breakdown needed.
Domains
Domains are the top level. They represent fixed areas of your life or long-term focus areas. You don’t “finish” a domain — it’s always there.
Examples: Fitness, Finance, Career, Relationships, Side Projects.
Your domains rarely change. Maybe you add one when a new area of life becomes important, or retire one when it no longer is. But most people have somewhere between four and eight that stay relatively stable.
Projects
Projects are medium-term goals with a clear outcome. They live under a domain and typically take weeks to months to complete.
The name of a project should describe what done looks like. “Networking” is too vague — it’s more of a domain. “Connect with the local basketball league” is a project. If someone asks “what have you been working on?”, a good project name gives you something concrete to say.
I believe projects are where motivation lives. Domains are too broad to feel progress, and todos are too small to feel meaningful. Projects are just right — big enough to matter, specific enough to finish.
Tracks
Tracks are short-term efforts, typically lasting days to a week. They live under a project and represent the current line of thinking or action you’re pursuing.
This is the level where you experiment. You create a track because you think it’s the right next step. You make progress, but sometimes you realize you went down the wrong path. That’s not failure — that’s learning. You close the track, take what you learned, and open a new one.
In my experience, tracks are where real progress happens. They’re short enough to keep momentum and concrete enough to guide your daily work.
Todos
Todos are single actions you can complete in one sitting. They live under a track and represent the atomic unit of work.
If you look at a todo and think “I’d need to break this down further before I can start” — it’s probably a track, not a todo. A good todo has no ambiguity about what “done” means. You sit down, do it, and check it off.
Why Structure Matters
You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
— James Clear, Atomic Habits
This is the idea behind the hierarchy. Most people have goals — “get healthier”, “advance my career”, “be a better friend”. But goals alone don’t produce results. What produces results is a system that turns those goals into something you can act on today.
That’s what Domains, Projects, Tracks, and Todos are. They’re a system. Your domain holds the goal. Your project gives it a concrete outcome. Your track breaks it into the current focus. And your todo tells you exactly what to do right now.
You don’t need more motivation. You need a system that makes the next step obvious.