Weekend Upgrade 30: Action-Powered Productivity Cycles

Happy Weekend!

Organization Hell

We start with good intentions.

"I’ll reorganize every folder. I’ll plan every week down to my inhales and exhales. I’ll capture every fleeting idea, no matter how inconsequential it may seem in the moment. Then I’ll be able to work efficiently."

And we build! We create projects. We add tasks to those projects. We notice some of the tasks are really projects themselves and create more projects with more tasks.

We schedule tasks. We track recurring tasks for every day, week, month, year, decade, generation.

We vow to review our whole system every week to keep our big picture in focus, but the big picture keeps getting bigger and bigger and our lists get fuller and fuller and the bulk of the tasks we’re checking off are maintenance tasks serving the system—the same system that is supposed to be helping us check our actual work off the list.

We started with good intentions. But we know where roads paved with good intentions often lead….

The Bridge to Execution

Organizing lists is not executing tasks. Getting Things Done, for all its merits, relies on achieving a “Mind like water” to bridge from task lists into actual action—a nice image, but not practical for most people. If you’ve ever tried GTD in the past and found that you spent more time adding tasks to your lists than you did checking them off, that’s why: GTD is biased toward organization rather than action. Your mind is likely to drown in that water.

Ultimately, the productivity system you build in your Second Brain must be about checking items off your lists, not only adding items to your lists. That’s why you have to Take Action Now, regardless how well your tasks are organized.

💡 Create work cycles to Take Action Now 💡

👆 That’s your weekend upgrade.

The Ever-Present Now

I’ve mentioned The Ever-Present Now before (and I will again, often!). The only moment we have any control over is Right Now. The past is gone, the future is yet to be.

I call this approach Action-Powered Productivity. You prioritize Taking Action Right Now, and everything in your system aligns to make Action Now as fluid and friction-free as possible.

For our productivity purposes, Now is the duration of your attention to one thing. That thing might be a task, a project, leisure, a distraction. Whatever it is, the length of time you focus on it is Now.

To Take Action Now, then, is largely to manage your attention. One way to do that is creating Periodic Work Cycles that connect to Now.

Periodic Work Cycles

Each of the cycles below includes four phases: Startup, Work, Shutdown, and some form of Recovery. Startups focus your attention on the Work, and Shutdowns create tasks and structures that make the next Startup smoother. Recovery resets our mental bandwidth so we can move to what’s next.

By starting with Now Cycles and expanding into Daily Cycles, Weekly Cycles, and beyond, we ensure that every process in our system facilitates Action Now.

Now Cycle

If Now is the duration of your attention to one thing, then the Now Cycle tracks your progress through that one thing.

A Now Cycle Startup begins a log entry. Write down the task you’re focusing on and the current time. This helps you commit to this specific work, and be less prone to distractions. Startup also includes opening up any files or resources required to do the work at hand.

The Work phase of the Now Cycle is completing the work in front of you.

In the Shutdown phase, create any tasks and note any materials required to pick the work back up later. Then write down the end time to complete the log entry. This helps you close the mental loop and free up your mind.

To Recover and reorient, review your Agenda (see below) to determine what to focus on next.

Daily Cycle

Your Daily Cycle is an Agenda. It connects to the Now Cycle whenever you choose something from the Agenda to focus on next.

A Daily Startup should include any tasks that make the day flow more smoothly. For some people that might mean checking your email, for others it might mean desperately avoiding your email and journaling instead. One key for me is prerequisite tasks. What simple work can I do up front that will make later work easier? Do I need a response from a client before I can move on a project? Send that email first so when I get to that project in my day I have the response ready.

The Daily Work is proceeding through the Agenda, updating and adapting as needed to accommodate unexpected work that arises throughout the day.

The Daily Shutdown assesses what got done and what didn’t, plans tomorrow’s Agenda, and ensures that ideas or tasks created during the day are properly stored in your Second Brain.

To Recover and regroup, spend time with friends or family. Or enjoy a favorite game or movie. Wind down. Your preparation for the day ahead is complete, so let it go.

Weekly Cycle

Your Weekly Startup should direct your mind toward your big-picture intentions for the week ahead. What are the key goals? What requires special focus?

The Weekly Work is moving through the week, preparing Agendas every day, and occasionally checking back on your weekly intentions. It’s okay if something unexpected derails your intentions—adapt as needed.

The Weekly Shutdown assesses the accomplishments for the week and, based on that, sets the intentions for the following week. It should also include Second Brain maintenance. Are there tasks that weren’t assigned correctly? Are there Projects coming due that require increased attention next week? Make sure those are accounted for.

To Recover and recharge, set down your work for the weekend. Next week’s intentions are set—you’re good to go!

Monthly, Quarterly, Annually, Project-based, etc., Cycles

These cycles can expand indefinitely, as long as they continue to facilitate Action Now. The key is not to (over-) build the “perfect system” and then hope it helps you get more done. Instead, you start getting stuff done and use the cycles to organically shape the system.

As you work outward from Now, you’ll discover an Agenda is much easier to build if you can account for tasks and projects in your Second Brain. So you establish some parameters for those and use the new structure to populate your Agenda.

Your planning process becomes the interaction of cycles. You invest a Now Cycle when you shut down today to make your Now Cycles tomorrow more valuable. You invest a Now Cycle on Friday to make sure you hit the ground running on Monday. Planning is investing Current Nows to make Future Nows more valuable. But all of that must grow organically from Action Now, or you build structure that adds friction rather than fluidity.

Once you develop cycles that help you zero in on Intentional Work, when you Take Action Now, you can be confident it will lead you toward your larger, longer-term goals. Because you’ve built the bridge from organization to execution.

What do I do next?

(1) Take 2 minutes and answer this question: What’s one thing I learned in this newsletter that I can put into practice right away?

By committing to a specific action, you make it much more likely you’ll do it.

(2) In your tool of choice (I use Tana), create a Now Cycle template—what I call my Log.

You’ll need a place to store your start time, end time, and task name, at bare minimum. I also suggest you have a space to include any notes you take that you’ll need to review later.

This doesn’t have to be in a fancy app. I recently built this process in Excel for a client. Once they learned keyboard shortcuts for current time and current date, their Now and Daily Cycles worked wonders for them!

If this was valuable for you:

Share the newsletter with someone you think would also get value from it! https://rjn.st/weekend-upgrade-newsletters​

Until next time, friends:

Now is the only time you have available to you. Build cycles in your Second Brain so you can Take Action Now.

R.J.
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P.S. I am about to launch my updated Action-Powered Productivity (APP) community.

The free tier of the community includes the (upcoming) mini-course Intro to Action-Powered Productivity, full access to the APP Forum, the Daily Activator space for getting through each work day, and live pop-up Q&As.

The paid tier ($9/mo) will add scheduled Office Hours & Workshops, access to the previous completed cohort of Fundamentals of APP, access to Tana for Tasks, and priority registration and discounts to future cohorts and courses.

If this newsletter has been valuable, the community will ratchet that value up several notches! Keep your eyes open for the announcement!