We’re all busier than ever. Meeting after meeting during our workday. Which should mean we’re getting a lot done, right? 🤔
Yet, in a ClickUp survey, 21% of people said more than 80% of their workday is spent on repetitive, low-value tasks, such as sharing status updates, scheduling, and admin work.
The result? A glaring lack of progress.
The problem? Most planning systems focus on getting work done instead of helping you decide what really matters.
Tony Robbins’ Rapid Planning Method (RPM) differs in that it offers a more structured approach. It pulls your attention away from checking boxes and toward what you actually want to achieve.
- What Is the Rapid Planning Method?
- The Core Components of RPM
- How Does the RPM Method Work?
- Benefits of Using the Rapid Planning Method
- Examples of the RPM Method
- Tools to Support the Implementation of RPM
- How to Implement the Rapid Planning Method
- Rapid Planning Method vs. Traditional To-Do Lists
- Common Mistakes When Using RPM
- From Paper to Practice: Using ClickUp for Your RPM Plan
Summarize this article for me pleaseWhat Is the Rapid Planning Method?
The rapid planning method is a “system of thinking” that aligns your daily tasks with a clear vision.
It’s built on a simple idea: before you act, you need clarity about three things:
- What you want
- Why do you want it
- How you’ll get there
Developed by the globally-renowned author and life coach Tony Robbins, the RPM system transforms planning by adding intention to it.
Instead of reacting to the endless list of tasks you need to perform, you intentionally direct your actions so that they resonate with your long-term vision.
Here’s what Robbins has to say about the RPM System, which he designed for his own life in 1978 and has been using ever since:
🧠 Fun Fact: The word “priority” originally meant “the very first thing” when it entered the English language in the 1400s. For the next 500 years, it remained singular because people believed only one focus could be given the highest importance at a time.
The idea of having multiple “priorities” came much later, and with it, the struggle to give equal energy to everything. The rapid planning method helps bring that focus back to what matters most.
The Origins 🧭
We’ve all felt that sinking feeling of working so hard yet going nowhere.
Robins was no different. He had huge professional and personal aspirations, but none of the planning tools he tried actually helped him stay focused.
That’s when he realized the problem:
Most productivity tools emphasize meeting deadlines, rather than pushing us towards achieving real results.
So, Robbins began experimenting with a new way of doing things, one that would eventually evolve into the RPM system.
How RPM flips the traditional planning hacks?
In contrast to other productivity methods, RPM prioritizes clarity. The focus shifts from “busyness” to doing what actually matters. Plus, you do it more quickly and intentionally, which ultimately increases your productivity.
And that brings us to the “Rapid” in RPM.
In other words, stop frantically rushing through work. You will gain speed once you have a clear vision. When you know what result you want and why it’s important, decisions suddenly become easier. You spend way less time second-guessing yourself and more time taking meaningful action.
👀 Did You Know? Despite coming from a challenging background, including periods of homelessness, Tony Robbins is the owner or part-owner of 56+ businesses, with combined sales of more than $6 billion a year.
When tennis player Serena Williams was undergoing a turbulent period in her career, Robbins helped her tackle mental blocks. The coaching empowered her to improve every facet of her tennis game and reignited her passion for winning.
Summarize this article for me pleaseThe Core Components of RPM
According to Tony Robbins, RPM is more of a system than a time management strategy.
The rapid planning method works because it strips planning down to three core principles:
- Results: A result is the specific outcome you want to achieve. It’s different from the task you plan to complete
📌 Example: Your to-do list might say, “Go to the gym.” But what’s the real outcome you’re after? A more effective result is: “Run a 5k comfortably within the next three months.” This is far clearer and more specific than simply saying that you want to exercise more.
- Purpose: Once you lock in your result, you need to connect it to a purpose. AKA the reason why this goal matters to you. It’s this “why” that will keep you motivated even when things get tough
📌 Example: The purpose behind running that 5k might be: “To feel energetic every day, reduce stress, and stay healthy for my family.”
- Massive Action Plan (MAP): A flexible plan that lists all the possible actions that will lead to your result
📌 Example: Your MAP for preparing for a 5k could include actionable steps like:
- “Follow a three-day weekly workout plan”
- “Track meals and hydration”
- “Join a local 5K training group”
🌟 A quick note on the “massive” in MAP
It’s natural to wonder: Is it called “massive” because you need tons of action steps in your MAP?
Nope!
It’s “massive” because you’re identifying and choosing the few critical, high-impact actions that will produce massive success. And then you follow through on them with full steam ahead. 🚂
By pushing yourself to take these bold steps, you’re more likely to adapt and overcome any obstacles that pop up.
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow Does the RPM Method Work?
At the heart of the RPM system is a short, repeatable sequence of questions you ask yourself every time you plan:
1️⃣ What result am I aiming for?
2️⃣ Why is it important?
3️⃣ What actions will make it happen?
When you define a specific result first, your mind immediately begins to filter your options. It starts recognizing actions that genuinely align with that outcome. This clarity helps you identify which daily tasks actually contribute to your goal and which are just distractions.
But this clarity alone won’t keep you going.
You need to connect each outcome to a purpose. This adds emotional weight to your goals. When your actions are rooted in something personally significant, motivation comes naturally.
Finally, you brainstorm every possible action that could bring your result to life and prioritize the tasks that will have the highest impact.
🧠 Fun Fact: Social psychologist Roy Baumeister coined the term “decision fatigue” to describe how making too many choices throughout the day drains your mental energy. It’s exactly why successful leaders like Barack Obama and Steve Jobs wore the same outfits every day: they wanted to save their focus for what truly mattered.
RPM helps you do the same thing by cutting out unnecessary task decisions!
Summarize this article for me pleaseBenefits of Using the Rapid Planning Method
Here’s how the RPM productivity system empowers you:
- Gain sharper focus and find the right direction: The RPM method shifts your attention from endless to-do lists to meaningful, desired outcomes. You stop reacting to what’s urgent and start aligning how your daily tasks contribute to what truly matters
- Adapt quickly as priorities change: Since the Rapid Planning Method RPM anchors your plans to outcomes instead of rigid checklists, you don’t need to start over when new challenges arise. You simply revisit your desired outcomes, decide which ones matter most, and realign your time management system accordingly
- Make faster, more confident decisions: The RPM framework acts as a built-in filter for decision-making. If a task supports your desired outcome, it moves forward; if not, it waits, thereby enhancing productivity
- Instill time management skills: Because every action ties back to a specific result, your schedule becomes a reflection of priorities. You begin to use time management tools more strategically and naturally increase productivity by eliminating low-impact work
- Create balance between short-term tasks and long-term goals: The RPM planning block encourages you to connect what you do today with where you want to be months or years from now. It’s a step-by-step system that brings harmony between your professional goals and personal life
- Reduce overwhelm: A successful RPM plan helps you gain clarity on outcomes that matter. This time management technique emphasizes clarity and purpose, helping you stay calm, focused, and effective even in today’s fast-paced world
Ultimately, all these benefits lead to one thing: lower stress and a higher peace of mind. Want to hear this straight from the source?
Watch Tony Robbins break down exactly how RPM reduces stress 👇
Summarize this article for me pleaseExamples of the RPM Method
Below are a few specific Rapid Planning Method examples showing how you can use it to achieve both personal and professional growth:
1. Project management
Imagine your to-do list is bursting with multiple things: deadlines, stakeholder updates, and shifting priorities.
Instead of blindly jumping onto the first thing you see, you can use RPM to first set a clear result:
🎯 Result: Enhance project time management by delivering client work on time and with zero critical issues
With this clarity in mind, it becomes easier to identify actions that will quickly lead to your goal:
🗺️ MAP Steps: Finalize project scope early, brief your team thoroughly, set weekly progress reviews, and assign clear owners for every milestone
2. Leadership
As a manager, you’re likely spending most of your time reacting to problems instead of leading with purpose. Rapid planning method helps you zoom out and define a better goal, like:
🎯 Result: Make my team self-sufficient within the next six months so that they can meet goals without constant micromanaging
This lets you create actionable steps that reflect your purpose of building a culture of ownership:
🗺️ MAP Steps: Schedule weekly check-ins to review progress, hold monthly retrospectives to celebrate wins and learn from misses, and create peer feedback loops
3. Business growth
Maybe you’re an entrepreneur who’s exhausted from switching between sales calls, marketing campaigns, and hiring. You have huge dreams and want to take your business forward. But how do you do it?
Using the RPM method, you’d first ask yourself: “What does moving my business forward look like?” Each answer you get is the result you want to achieve.
Let’s say one of these results is:
🎯 Result: Increase annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 25% in the next six months
You’ll design a MAP for every outcome that represents moving your business forward. So, for increasing ARR, a few high-impact moves would be:
🗺️ MAP Steps: Double down on your three top-performing marketing channels, streamline the client onboarding process, and launch one flagship offer
4. Time management
It happens to most of us: We prepare a clear to-do list, hoping to log off on time, but emails and meetings hijack the day.
Instead of trying to complete every single task on your list, you can use RPM to start with a clear outcome first:
🎯 Result: End each workday having completed the top three priorities that move my key projects forward
To achieve this goal, you must actively clear and protect space in your schedule. The MAP for this would look like:
🗺️ MAP Steps: Spend 10 minutes at the start of the day to define the top three priorities, schedule deep work blocks for high-focus items, reserve afternoons for meetings, and spend 10 minutes before logging off to review progress
Want to learn how to prioritize better? We’ve got just the video for you!
5. Career growth
Let’s say you’ve been feeling “stuck” in routine work lately and you want to contribute more meaningfully. But you have no idea how to move up the ladder (or have too many ideas).
With RPM, you will first set a clear target to understand what career growth means for you:
🎯 Result: Earn a promotion to [next role title] within the next 12 months
Now, you’ll build your step-by-step action plan for successfully achieving this target:
🗺️ MAP Steps: Identify the next role’s required skills, complete a relevant certification, take on stretch assignments, request quarterly feedback from the manager, and showcase measurable results in team meetings
Summarize this article for me pleaseTools to Support the Implementation of RPM
The rapid planning method becomes easier to implement and stick to when you pair it with powerful tools:
1. Tony Robbins RPM planner
The RPM Planner by Tony Robbins includes three paper-based planners that guide you from big-picture vision to everyday execution, serving as effective time management tools.
Let’s quickly explore them one by one:
- Vision Planner: Helps you step back and see the bigger picture before you dive into action. It includes exercises like filling out your Wheel of Life, identifying your core Driving Forces, setting One-Year Results, defining your Categories of Improvement, and mapping out RPM Project plans
✅ Ideal for: Designing a long-term plan before shifting focus toward a daily routine
- Life Planner: Gives your grand vision a more nuanced and focused structure. The planner features monthly, weekly, and daily pages that prompt you to set key results, note down the purpose behind them, and outline necessary actions for each
✅ Ideal for: Turning your long-term vision into day-to-day execution
- Success Journal: Complements the RPM planners by helping you build a powerful mindset. It includes space for open journaling alongside dedicated sections for habit-building, such as Morning Priming, Incantations, and a Mood Tracker
✅ Ideal for: Building a consistent reflection habit and keeping your emotional energy aligned with your RPM goals
If investing in these tools early on feels a bit much, you can start simple and start small. Here’s what a critic had to say about the RPM planner on Reddit:
2. Time tracker apps
Time-tracking apps are essential because they give you an honest look at where your time actually goes. As a result, you can realign your efforts with your defined RPM goals.
For example, let’s say your RPM goal is to master a new analytics platform within the next six weeks and earn a promotion. You plan to spend two hours on it daily.
But your time tracker report shows the painful truth: you only averaged 20 minutes per day, with the rest lost to things like administrative tasks.
By tracking time regularly, you catch this misalignment right away and rework your productivity plan before it’s too late.
On that note, here are some time tracker apps worth trying:
| Time tracker app | Best for |
| Clockify | Free time tracking for teams of all sizes |
| Toggl Track | Simple, intuitive tracking, and reporting |
| Harvest | Time tracking with invoicing and expenses |
| Hubstaff | Remote/hybrid teams and workforce management |
| RescueTime | Productivity and distraction management |
📮 ClickUp Insight: While 40% of employees spend less than an hour weekly on invisible tasks at work, a shocking 15% are losing 5+ hours a week, equivalent to 2.5 days a month!
This seemingly insignificant but invisible time sink could be slowly eating away at your productivity. ⏱️
Put ClickUp’s Time Tracking and AI assistant to work and find out precisely where those unseen hours are disappearing. Pinpoint inefficiencies, let AI automate repetitive tasks, and win back critical time!
📚 Read More: A Quick Guide to Fast Tracking in Project Management
3. Project Management Software (PMS)
Look, paper-based planners are great for starting out. But they can quickly feel restrictive if you’re managing multiple goals or trying to use RPM with a team.
They’re not dynamic enough.
Project management software, on the other hand, solves this problem by giving you a centralized workspace to implement your rapid planning efforts. Here’s how:
- Create documents to store context: Directly create a document within the PMS to store all your results, purposes, and MAP steps
- Set up goals: Most project management platforms offer tools for goal setting and tracking. Use them to define your objectives, quantify them, and track progress
- Translate your MAP steps using tasks: Move closer to your final goal by translating each action step into a trackable task
- Allocate budgets: Use project management software to add an estimated cost of each goal and further divide it across various MAP steps
- Add due dates: You’ll receive automated notifications when a task is due in a day or if you’re running late, to make sure progress doesn’t take a back seat
- Track progress using dashboards: Get a real-time view of all your current goals, projects, and tasks. By visualizing progress, you can see what is slowing you down and if you can fast-track tasks to increase your pace
To help you get started with RPM, we have a simple solution—and it’s free to try too.
Stop wasting time flipping between different tools or rewriting your entire strategy from scratch every time a priority shifts (the biggest catch with paper-based planners).
With ClickUp’s Project Management Software, you can adjust everything easily in one spot:
- Create documents to store your RPM context
- Brainstorm ideas for MAP steps using AI
- Set goals and track how far you’ve come
- Automate task reminders and follow-ups
- Track progress in real-time
Here are some of the other project management tools you can try:
| Project management software | Best for |
| Asana | AI-driven workflows and team collaboration |
| Trello | Simple Kanban boards for individuals and small teams |
| Monday.com | Visual planning and workflow automation |
| Jira | Agile project management and bug tracking |
| Notion | Document-centric project and knowledge management |
⭐ Bonus: Your best ideas rarely show up when you’re sitting in front of a blank page. They can strike anytime, even when you’re brewing coffee or walking your dog.
ClickUp’s Talk to Text feature helps you capture these ideas on the go. You can simply speak your thoughts out loud—whether it’s a new goal, a purpose that suddenly clicked, or a fresh idea for your MAP.
Talk to Text captures each word and automatically refines the phrasing so that your document (where you store ideas for RPM goals and the ideas) is free of any mess.
By the time you sit down to plan, you’ll already have a list of things neatly noted down for you!
Summarize this article for me pleaseHow to Implement the Rapid Planning Method
Time to put theory into action. Here’s how you can implement the Tony Robbins rapid planning method.
Step 1: Create documents for context
The first step in implementing the Rapid Planning Method is to get ideas out of your head. Have a physical space where your goals, motivations, outcomes, and everything in between reside.
At this stage, you need the following details on paper (or document):
✅ The whole picture
Start with a “mental dump.” Write down everything currently on your mind — projects, responsibilities, dreams, frustrations, and even vague ideas.
Once it’s all out, you can see patterns and priorities more clearly.
✅ Vision and purpose document
Write your desired outcomes for different areas of life: career, health, relationships, finances, personal growth, etc. You’re looking for clarity.
Ask yourself, “What do I really want and why?”
Then, define the “why” in a short paragraph. When the going gets tough, it helps you stay focused.
✅ Anchor everything in emotions and visuals
Add photos, quotes, or affirmations that bring your goals to life.
Say your goal is to run a half-marathon. Include a picture of your dream race location or your ideal running shoes.
🎷 Consolidate your RPM outcomes using ClickUp Docs
ClickUp Docs acts as a single source of truth to host everything you’ve figured out at the brainstorming stage.
Structure your documents based on the different types of outcomes you want to achieve (e.g., if you’re planning for your org, list outcomes across marketing, product, engineering, etc.). You can easily customize the heading styles, fonts, and even add cover images.
Docs support rich media, allowing you to embed images, quotes, and even YouTube clips to fire up your emotional drive.
Lastly, if you’re planning as a family or team, share Docs for feedback, add comments inline, and tag people to own outcomes.
Step 2: Collaborate and brainstorm
Brainstorm the actions that will get you there—your Massive Action Plan (MAP) in Tony Robbins’ terms. This is where the energy of your ideas turns into movement.
List every possible action you can take toward your outcomes, no matter how small or imperfect. Capture everything, then later identify what’s most effective.
If you’re doing this as a team, you’ll want everyone to contribute ideas as well. A shared understanding ensures that every action aligns with the larger purpose behind your goals.
🎷 Turn ideas into actionable plans with ClickUp Brain
ClickUp Brain makes brainstorming faster and more focused. It’s ClickUp’s built-in, context-aware AI assistant that can draw from your tasks, docs, notes, and more in your workspace to give you smarter, more tailored suggestions than generic AI tools.
Inside your RPM Docs, ClickUp Brain acts like a built-in thought partner. For example, use Brain to draft supporting text, such as motivation blurbs, team briefs, or reflection notes. Or highlight dependencies or missing next steps so every action connects to a result.
Brain can even rewrite unclear tasks into outcome-focused statements inside Docs.
Your team members can add ideas, highlight key takeaways, or tag owners directly within the Doc. You can also convert any idea into a ClickUp Task instantly, connecting discussions to execution without losing context.
⚒️ Productivity Hack: After every brainstorming session, run ClickUp Brain’s “summarize and organize” command to instantly convert your raw ideas into a polished Rapid Planning Method outline—complete with outcomes, purpose, and next actions.
Step 3: Create an RPM plan
Let’s create your RPM plan now. Following the example, running a half-marathon:
📌 Result: Complete a half-marathon in under three hours by September.
🌟 Purpose: To prove to myself that I can stay consistent with training, improve endurance, and build discipline that carries over into other areas of life.
🔑 Massive Action Plan (MAP):
- Find a 12-week half-marathon training program
- Register for a local event and set the date
- Schedule 4 weekly runs (2 easy, 1 long, 1 interval)
- Track nutrition and hydration daily
- Join a weekend running group for accountability
🎷 Use ClickUp’s Action Plan Template to bring it to life
ClickUp’s Action Plan Template gives you a ready-to-use layout to organize your RPM framework. Break down each goal (Result) into smaller milestones and link them to your MAP.
Why you’ll love this template:
- Lays out all your ideal outcomes, motivating drivers, and action items side-by-side for an easy visual review
- Ties ClickUp Tasks to the respective action items from your MAP
- Gives space to define resources needed for your action items or for the entire goal
- Allows you to add Custom Statuses and completion dates for all tasks/items so that you can see progress at a glance
In fact, this template also doubles as a reflection planner. Since your entire RPM plan is laid out visually from the beginning, you can revisit it regularly, compare progress, and quickly see how close you are to your goal.
⚡ Template Archive: Action Plan Templates to Organize your Goals
Step 4: Set up and track goals
You need a way to track your progress and ensure that your daily actions move you closer to your outcomes.
Enter: Results in Rapid Planning Method. Start by turning each Result from your RPM Plan into a trackable goal.
Following the same example:
Goal: Complete a half-marathon in under two hours by September.
Break this into measurable milestones:
- Run a 5K in under 30 minutes
- Increase long-run distance by 1 km every two weeks
- Maintain training consistency (4 runs per week for 12 weeks)
- Hit 10% pace improvement by Month 2
When you see measurable wins, motivation compounds. When you see yourself completing one more long run, you know your actions are working.
🎷 Convert your results into measurable targets using ClickUp Goals
Create an RPM goal board using ClickUp Goals. This feature provides a clear scorecard for every goal, so you know exactly how far you’ve come.
Here’s how to set it up:
- Create a Goal for each major Result in your RPM Plan
- Add Targets such as milestones, metrics, or task completions
- Link your daily Tasks to those targets so progress updates in real time
This video shows you how to manifest your life goals.
Step 5: Break MAP steps into tasks
Now it’s time to bring those actions into motion through clear, trackable tasks. Continuing with the same example, break down the MAP into sub-tasks:
- Compare 3 half-marathon programs: Due tomorrow
- Register for the event: Due this week
- Long run – 10K target pace: Due Saturday
- Post-run reflection log: Recurring weekly
🎷 Turn each MAP step into an organized, actionable workflow with context with ClickUp Tasks
ClickUp Tasks are flexible enough to support everything from your personal fitness plan to multi-department business initiatives. Each task lives in one place, linked back to your RPM Docs and Goals.
Here’s how ClickUp Tasks elevate your RPM workflow:
- Custom Fields: Add details like effort level, priority, or category (e.g., “Training,” “Mindset,” “Nutrition”)
- Subtasks and checklists: Break down each action into smaller, trackable components. This is perfect for daily or weekly habits
- Task descriptions: Add your “why” directly inside each task description
- Views: Switch between List, Board, or Calendar View to visualize your MAP timeline
- Tags and assignees: Categorize or delegate responsibilities for team-based goals
If you’re new to ClickUp, here’s how you can set up your first ClickUp Task.
Step 6: Visualize progress
By reviewing progress visually, you can refine your Massive Action Plan, redirect focus toward high-impact areas, and celebrate measurable wins along the way.
Every insight becomes a feedback signal guiding your next iteration.
🎷 Turn data into insight with ClickUp Dashboards
You can add ClickUp Dashboards as “views” using pre-built templates (e.g., Sales Dashboard, Marketing Dashboard, Project Management Dashboard).
Easily customize your dashboard by adding or removing cards. For example, you can add a priority card to your dashboard to see all tasks sorted by urgency. Alternatively, you can add a status card to visualize progress using different chart types (bar, battery, pie, etc.).
⚒️ Productivity Hack: Use AI Cards in ClickUp Dashboards to automatically summarize progress, highlight blockers, or surface key insights.
AI Cards pull real-time data from your workspace, turning analytics into instant clarity, without spending hours reviewing data.
Step 7: Review and adjust
Set aside time weekly or monthly to pause and ask:
- Are my current actions still aligned with my desired outcomes?
- Do my “why” statements still feel motivating and relevant?
- What can I eliminate, delegate, or improve to create more impact?
⚡ Template Archive: Free Resource Planning Templates in Excel, Sheets, and ClickUp
📮 ClickUp Insight: 78% of our survey respondents make detailed plans as part of their goal-setting processes. However, a surprising 50% don’t track those plans with dedicated tools. 👀
With ClickUp, you seamlessly convert goals into actionable tasks, allowing you to conquer them step by step. Plus, our no-code Dashboards provide clear visual representations of your progress, showcasing your progress and giving you more control and visibility over your work. Because “hoping for the best” isn’t a reliable strategy.
💫 Real Results: ClickUp users say they can take on ~10% more work without burning out.
Summarize this article for me pleaseRapid Planning Method vs. Traditional To-Do Lists
Here’s how the rapid planning method stacks up against the traditional to-do lists:
| Rapid Planning Method | Traditional To-Do List |
| Starts with defining what personal or professional success looks like | Begins with a list of tasks you think you should do today |
| Focuses on the mindset: “What do I want to achieve, and why does it matter to me?” | Focuses on the mindset: “What do I need to clear off my plate right now?” |
| Each task connects to a clear result and purpose, which helps you beat procrastination | Tasks are often chosen randomly or reactively, which makes it hard to see the big picture |
| Proactive strategic planning approach, driven by clarity, intent, and impact | Reactive planning approach, driven by whatever deadline is screaming the loudest |
| Helps you do fewer things that matter more | Keeps you busy, but you don’t always feel productive |
Summarize this article for me pleaseCommon Mistakes When Using RPM
Even though the RPM methodology sounds like a simple time management system in theory, things can get tricky when you put it into practice. Here are some common mistakes people make with RPM and how you can avoid them:
❗ Setting too many results at once
Sure, RPM encourages you to think big. But if you’re trying to chase every single result at the same time, you’ll end up only inching toward your results instead of actually finishing anything important.
✅ How to avoid this: Take all your brainstormed results and compare them. Score them based on the impact they’ll create and the effort they require. Keep only the top 2-3 results as your focus and move everything else to a “parking lot” for later.
❗ Taking “purpose” for granted and not defining it properly
It’s tempting to jump straight from results to action. However, without knowing your emotional drivers, you won’t be able to stick with your MAP till the end. The moment a tiny hiccup appears, you might lose motivation to continue and hop onto the next shiny result.
✅ How to avoid this: For each result you want to achieve, define its purpose without fail. Find out what emotionally drives you to achieve this goal instead of writing a vague purpose like “Because I need to hit my targets.” Add this purpose to the top of your plan or task so that you don’t lose sight of it.
🎯 Framework focus: RAPID vs. RACI
RAPID and RACI are two popular frameworks for clarifying roles in projects, but they serve different needs:
- RAPID is all about decision-making. It assigns roles like Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, and Decide to streamline who’s involved at each stage of a decision
- RACI focuses on task execution and deliverables. It clarifies who is Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed for each task
Key difference:
RAPID helps teams make decisions efficiently, while RACI ensures everyone knows their role in getting things done. Many teams use both—RAPID for decision-making and RACI for execution.
❗ Overloading your MAP
If you stuff your MAP with as many tasks as possible, honestly, it’s no different from a traditional to-do list.
It’s fine to brainstorm every possible step at first. But not filtering it and making this your final MAP? That’s a recipe for disaster. You’ll spend more time managing this list than actually changing routine and getting results.
✅ How to avoid this: Brainstorm freely at first, but then be ruthless. Narrow your list down to the few actions that have the biggest payout.
Think about the 80/20 rule when it comes to prioritization: What 20% of actions will create 80% of the result?
Alternatively, use a time management matrix (like the Eisenhower Matrix). Categorize each action as:
- Urgent and Important: Do these first—they’re critical for your results
- Important but Not Urgent: Schedule these next, as they drive long-term progress
- Urgent but Not Important: Delegate or minimize these if possible
- Neither Urgent nor Important: Eliminate them
⭐ Bonus: After defining your MAPs, let automation take over the repetitive parts of your planning. ClickUp’s Pre-built Autopilot Agents handle recurring actions like updating task statuses, assigning owners, and sending reminders—so your focus stays on results, not routine work.
For example, you can:
- Generate summaries or daily recaps automatically
- Auto-update progress when subtasks are completed
- Assign tasks to teammates once the prerequisites are finished
Summarize this article for me pleaseFrom Paper to Practice: Using ClickUp for Your RPM Plan
You’ve now got the plan to build The Plan (and hopefully, the spark to follow through ✨).
All that’s left? A place to make it happen. Enter: ClickUp.
With our AI-powered project management platform, you can run every part of the RPM method with ease, precision, and flexibility.
Store your RPM strategy in a neatly formatted and shareable ClickUp Doc. Create and assign ClickUp Tasks to execute your MAP steps. And use ClickUp Dashboards to measure progress.
So, while RPM gives you clarity, ClickUp helps you implement it easily with a system in place.
Sign up for ClickUp today to set your first RPM goal!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Is RPM only for business goals?
Not at all! While the RPM productivity system excels in business settings (such as helping teams meet targets and manage projects), it’s equally powerful for personal growth. You can use it to plan everything from fitness milestones to family priorities.
How long does it take to plan with the RPM method?
Depends on the size of your goal. It might take only 10-15 minutes to create a daily RPM plan. But if you’re building an annual roadmap, it might take a few hours to get clarity on your goals, purpose, and the steps to achieve them. Nevertheless, it’s time well spent as it prevents wasted effort later.
Can I use RPM in ClickUp for personal projects?
Absolutely. For both personal and professional goals, ClickUp works great. Turn your personal goals into trackable projects, link them to your motivating drivers, schedule them, and watch the progress unfold.
What’s the difference between RPM and SMART goals?
SMART goals help you set clear, realistic targets so you know when you’ve “made it.” RPM asks why you want to achieve those targets and how you’ll make them real. It turns the SMART goals into something you’re emotionally connected to, something that pulls you forward even when motivation dips.
Everything you need to stay organized and get work done.
