07 · Flight Deck

Two columns. Every line flying somewhere.

The earlier chapters run an organization. This one runs you. Keep one page a week, with your glide paths on the left and your gravity points on the right, and draw a line wherever work is flying toward a commitment. What has no line is what needs your attention.

Each line is colored by its orbit state. Support portal drifts past the board demo, a Lift cuts scope, and it lands inside gravity again. The two dashed stubs are the rows with no line, and they are where to look first.

The Flight Log

Read the shape before the colors.

A glide path is a stream of work you are accountable for, with one owner and a current forecast landing date. A gravity point is a date someone holds you to: one you promised, or one promised on your behalf. The lines between them carry the orbit states from chapter 03, but the shape of the page tells you most of what you need.

What you see	What it means	Do this
Green or teal line	Work is flying toward a commitment and will land in time.	Nothing. Let it fly.
Amber or red line	Glide has slipped toward or past gravity.	Choose a Lift with an owner before Monday's Uplink (FR-5).
Glide path, no line	Effort that no commitment needs. Sometimes that's right; usually it's drift with a nicer name.	Within two Downlinks, attach it to a gravity point or stop it (FR-4).
Gravity point, no line	A date you owe that nothing is flying toward. The model is wrong, whatever the board says.	Assign a glide path now, or go back to whoever set the date (FR-3).
Many lines into one point	The commitment lands only when the slowest path lands.	Watch the worst line, not the average.
Many lines out of one path	One stream carries several commitments, so one slip misses all of them.	Give it your best owner, or split it.
More than seven paths	You can't run all those meeting pairs, so you have become the drag.	Hand a path off whole, gravity points included (FR-12).

Your personal system

Keep your tools. Change what they hold.

No new app is needed. Whatever you use today, whether a notebook, Obsidian, OneNote or a task manager, already has a place for each part of the model. Most of the change is in sorting: every item you capture is glide, gravity or noise.

You already have	In Gravity terms	Change this
An inbox	Capture	Sort every item into glide (work to do), gravity (a date someone holds you to) or noise (drop it).
Promises made in meetings	Gravity points	Write each one down within a working day, with the date, an owner and who you promised. The written record settles disagreements later: the paper becomes the bad guy.
A to-do list	Your own glide path	Each item that serves a commitment names the gravity point it serves.
Team boards	Glide for each path	Read glide dates from the board, never from memory or a status meeting.
A calendar	The cadence	Mark every meeting ↓ ↑ ↔ ✕ and cancel the ✕s. Book quiet orbit before anyone else books it.
A notes app	The Flight Log	One page a week: glide on the left, gravity on the right, one row per line.
Friday wrap-up	Flight Review	Your own Downlink: update the log, read the states, decide the Lifts.
Monday planning	Flight Plan	Your own Uplink: five gravity points at most, and what is not a priority.
1:1s	A small ↓↑ pair	Their Downlink first, then your Uplink.

Your week

A pair for every path, and a loop for you.

Every glide path gets a ↓ Uplink early in the week and an ↑ Downlink late in it. Your own Flight Review on Friday writes Monday's Flight Plan, so the direction you give is always checked against the latest telemetry.

Letters pair each ↓ Uplink with its ↑ Downlink. Hatched blocks are quiet orbit. The solid blocks are yours alone: Flight Plan on Monday and Flight Review on Friday.

Flight rules

Decided before launch, so nobody argues during the flight.

Mission control writes its flight rules before launch, so that in the moment nobody has to argue about what to do. These are yours. Each one has a number so a team can cite it, and the numbers in them are starting points to tune.

FR-1
Every glide path has a weekly ↓ Uplink and ↑ Downlink meeting pair. A path without a pair is flying blind. The pair can live inside meetings you already have; it needs a direction, not a new invite.
FR-2
Every gravity point has a date, an owner, a source and a fixed or floating flag. A date nobody can trace is a rumor.
FR-3
Every gravity point has at least one glide path flying toward it. One with none is Purple, however calm the board looks.
FR-4
A glide path may Float for at most two Downlinks. Then attach it to a gravity point or stop it.
FR-5
Every Amber or Red line has a Lift with an owner before Monday's Uplink. A Lift that isn't on the board doesn't happen.
FR-6
A promise not written down within a working day was not a promise. Written down, it becomes a gravity point.
FR-7
Say yes to a new gravity point only after naming the glide path that will fly to it. Agreeing to a date means drawing its line.
FR-8
Every glide path has one owner, and the owner is a person. A team can do the work, but one name answers for it.
FR-9
One Downlink packet per glide path per week, sent before the meeting. The meeting discusses what changed, not what the packet says.
FR-10
Two quiet-orbit blocks of two hours or more on your calendar, Tuesday to Thursday. Yours and your team's. Only a Mayday breaks them.
FR-11
Your Flight Review happens before Monday's Uplinks. You can't give direction you haven't checked against telemetry.
FR-12
Run seven glide paths or fewer. Past that, you are the drag. Hand a path off whole, gravity points included.

Templates

Copy them into whatever you already use.

Each template is plain Markdown, so it works in Obsidian, Notion, OneNote, a Git repository or on paper. Copy one here, or download the file. An AI assistant can fetch them as well, using the links in llms.txt.

Print a blank Flight Log

Flight Log · weekly.md

# Flight Log — <your name> — Week of YYYY-MM-DD

Glide paths on the left: where your work will land. Gravity points on the right: where it must land.
One row per line between them. A row with nothing on the right is Floating. A row with nothing on the left is Unstable.

States: 🔵 Floating · 🟢 Teal · 🟢 Green · 🟠 Amber · 🔴 Red · 🟣 Purple · ⚫ Black

## Lines

| Glide path   | Owner   | Glide date | State       | Gravity point | Gravity date | Fixed?   | Altitude            |
| ------------ | ------- | ---------- | ----------- | ------------- | ------------ | -------- | ------------------- |
| <workstream> | <owner> | YYYY-MM-DD | 🟢 Green    | <commitment>  | YYYY-MM-DD   | Fixed    | +4d                 |
| <workstream> | <owner> | YYYY-MM-DD | 🟠 Amber    | <commitment>  | YYYY-MM-DD   | Fixed    | −2d                 |
| <workstream> | <owner> | YYYY-MM-DD | 🔵 Floating | —             | —            | —        | Downlink 1 of 2     |
| —            | —       | —          | 🟣 Purple   | <commitment>  | YYYY-MM-DD   | Floating | nothing flying here |

## Lift before Monday (every 🟠 and 🔴, FR-5)
- <glide path> — <lift> — <owner> — done by YYYY-MM-DD

## Promises made this week (FR-6)
- <what> — to <whom> — by YYYY-MM-DD — flown by <glide path>

## Pre-flight checks
- [ ] Every glide path has a ↓ Uplink and ↑ Downlink booked this week (FR-1)
- [ ] Every gravity point has a date, owner, source and fixed/floating flag (FR-2)
- [ ] No 🟣 rows: every gravity point has a glide path flying to it (FR-3)
- [ ] No glide path has floated past two Downlinks (FR-4)
- [ ] Two quiet-orbit blocks of 2h or more on my calendar, Tue–Thu (FR-10)
- [ ] Seven glide paths or fewer (FR-12)

Flight Review & Flight Plan · Fri / Mon.md

# Flight Review — Friday YYYY-MM-DD
Your own Downlink to yourself. 30 minutes, after the team Downlinks and before Monday (FR-11).

## 1. Update the Flight Log
- [ ] Glide date and state updated for every glide path (from the board, not from memory)
- [ ] This week's promises added as gravity points (FR-6)
- [ ] Lines redrawn: anything Floating or Purple?

## 2. Read the telemetry
| Glide path | State | Trend (▲ ▶ ▼) | Why |
| ---------- | ----- | ------------- | --- |
|            |       |               |     |

## 3. Decide
- Lifts I own: <lift> — by <day>
- Escalations I send up: <ask> — by when — impact if not decided
- Glide paths to stop or hand off whole:

---

# Flight Plan — Monday YYYY-MM-DD
Your own Uplink to yourself. 15 minutes, before the first team Uplink.

## Gravity this week (max 5)
1. <gravity point> — why it matters this week

## Decisions to announce (from Friday's review)
-

## Not a priority this week
-

## Quiet orbit booked (FR-10)
- Tue <time>–<time> · Wed <time>–<time>

Glide path launch card.md

# Glide path — <name>

- **Owner:** <one person, not a team> (FR-8)
- **Flies toward:** <gravity point> — YYYY-MM-DD (one line per gravity point)
- **Current glide:** YYYY-MM-DD — <state>
- **Where the work lives:** <board or project link> (glide comes from here, not from memory)

## Cadence (FR-1)
- ↓ Uplink: <day, time> — <meeting, or "first 10 min of <existing meeting>">
- ↑ Downlink: <day, time> — packet due <day, time>

## Thrust
- People: <who, and how much of their week>
- What speeds it up: <automation, skills, parallel work>

## Known drag
- <dependency / scope risk / absence> — first signal: <what you would see>

## Landing criteria
- Done means: <a result someone else could check>

## Log
- YYYY-MM-DD — launched

Gravity point card.md

# Gravity point — <commitment>

- **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD
- **Fixed or floating:** Fixed (<contract, announcement, regulation>) | Floating (computed from <what depends on it>)
- **Owner:** <one person>
- **Promised to:** <person, customer or team>
- **Source:** <link to the email, contract, minutes or roadmap where the date was set>
- **Glide paths flying here:** <glide path> (at least one, FR-3)
- **Weight:** high | normal | low (what breaks downstream if it is missed)

## What "landed" means
- <a result someone else could check>

## Changes
Gravity moves only by a structural reset. Record every move.
- YYYY-MM-DD — moved from YYYY-MM-DD to YYYY-MM-DD — decided by <who> — because <why>

1:1 · a small ↓↑ pair.md

# 1:1 — <name> — YYYY-MM-DD
A small Uplink and Downlink pair with one person. Their half comes first.

## ↑ Their Downlink (they lead)
- Glide paths they own: state and trend
- What is slowing them down (drag)
- What they need from me

## ↓ My Uplink
- Gravity added or changed since last time
- Decisions that affect their work
- What is not a priority

## ↔ Growth (every other week)
-

## Promises made in this 1:1
- <what> — <who owes it> — by YYYY-MM-DD (mine go on my Flight Log as gravity points)

Week skeleton · calendar.md

# Week skeleton
Put the arrow in every calendar title, such as "↓ Billing Uplink", so the week's shape is visible at a glance.

| When              | Block                                               | Type |
| ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------- | ---- |
| Mon 08:30         | Flight Plan (15 min, on your own)                   | ↓    |
| Mon 09:00 onward  | ↓ <glide path> Uplink, one per glide path, 15–30 min | ↓    |
| Tue 09:00–11:00   | Quiet orbit                                         | ↔    |
| Tue–Wed afternoon | 1:1s                                                | ↑↓   |
| Wed 09:00–11:00   | Quiet orbit                                         | ↔    |
| Thu 09:00–11:00   | Quiet orbit                                         | ↔    |
| Thu 15:00 onward  | ↑ <glide path> Downlink, one per glide path         | ↑    |
| Fri morning       | ↑ Your Downlink to your own leader                  | ↑    |
| Fri 15:00         | Flight Review (30 min, on your own)                 | ↑    |

## Rules of thumb
- Short on meeting time? Fold a pair into meetings you already have: the first 10 minutes of Monday's team meeting is the ↓, Thursday's demo is the ↑. A pair needs a direction, not a new invite.
- Several glide paths with the same team can share one meeting, as long as each path gets its own line on the agenda.
- Anything that is not ↓, ↑ or ↔ is ✕. Cancel it.

The team packets that go with these, the ↓ Uplink packet and the ↑ Downlink packet, are in chapter 05.

Getting started

Your first week.

Begin with yourself before you roll anything out to a team. Once your own log is honest, the team rollout goes faster, because you already know where the Purples are.

Day	Do this	Done when
Mon	List every gravity point you hold: dates you promised and dates promised for you. Search the last month of email and meeting notes.	Each one has a date, an owner, a source and a fixed or floating flag
Tue	List every glide path you answer for, with its owner and the board where its work lives.	Each path has one owner and one board
Wed	Draw the lines. Mark the Floating paths and the Purple points.	Every Purple point has a path assigned or a conversation booked
Thu	Book a ↓↑ pair for each path, folding them into existing meetings where you can. Label the rest of your calendar and cancel the ✕s.	FR-1 and FR-10 hold for next week
Fri	Run your first Flight Review.	Monday's Flight Plan is written