Happy Friday!

Prodigies

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is proof that some people are just innately skilled, even when they’re young children. Mere moments after he was born, Mozart sat upright at his family’s piano and composed his first opera. By the time he was six weeks old he had written eight symphonies and conducted their premiere performances with the local Salzburg orchestra. At four months, he invented the saxophone and played jazz in dives all over Europe.

In case it wasn’t clear already, that last paragraph was a bunch of hooey. Mozart was undoubtedly a skilled child, playing public piano concerts at the age of three. But Mozart’s prodigy status was more about his father Leopold and the rigorous music instruction he inflicted on a toddler than it was about Mozart’s innate skill. And though Mozart was a brilliant three-year-old performer, let’s not kid ourselves: he was still a three-year-old performer. Professional adult musicians are far more skilled than Mozart was when he was three.

What does Mozart’s experience have to do with our productivity?

Take Action, Capture Recurrence

Take Action and Capture Recurrence™ are the two core tactics I teach in Action-Powered Productivity (and in my book, The Rhythms of Productivity, which is now available for pre-order!). I’ve spent lots of time in past editions of this newsletter discussing the skill of capturing recurrence, as well as the various productivity bridges—templates, procedures, automations, etc.—you can use to increase the speed, accuracy, and quality of your work.

But I haven't spent a lot of time discussing the first tactic, taking action. Certainly, taking action will come more easily to some people than it will to others. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t learn to take action. Just as Mozart was trained to be a prodigy, anyone can take action more effectively if they learn and develop certain techniques. Even people who are naturally inclined toward action will be more effective if they improve their skills.

And what skills are those? In The Rhythms of Productivity, from which this newsletter is adapted, I break taking action down into chapters on effective notes; clear, actionable tasks; bins and projects to store notes and tasks; creating agendas; and keeping logs. Improving those skills will improve your ability to take action.

We won’t cover five chapters’ worth in this newsletter, but I want to touch on an aspect that underpins everything about action: making decisions.

💡 Take Decisive Action 💡

👆 That's your weekend upgrade.

When you hear the phrase “take decisive action,” what does that mean to you? Is it acting assertively, or with commitment and determination? Is it writing pros and cons, reviewing data, then driving full speed ahead at your objective? Is it some combination of these? Is it something else entirely?

It’s certainly possible to muddle through indecisive action, wandering about, sampling this and that, procrastinating on one project by whittling away at another. But we want to take meaningful action: action that moves us toward objectives. And to do that, we must make decisions.

Let me start by drawing a line in the sand: If you “make a decision” but you don’t write it down, you didn’t make a decision. Decisions are recorded. They are commitments. They capture the intentions that direct our action.

Decision Fatigue

You may have heard of “decision fatigue,” the malaise that occurs when you have to make too many decisions—particularly difficult ones—in a short timeframe. We all have a limited capacity for decision-making, and when we exceed it, making a decision at all becomes overwhelming. It's no surprise that couples going out on a Friday date night struggle to decide where to eat: they're at the end of a long week of decision-making, and their poor brains are exhausted from it.

I have a hypothesis about decision fatigue; see if it rings true for you. Decision fatigue is closely related to “mental RAM” or “mental bandwidth”—the idea that we have a limited capacity for carrying ideas and tasks around in our heads before we begin to feel flustered and frazzled. And just as writing those ideas or tasks down can free up RAM and relieve anxiety, recording our decisions makes us less susceptible to decision fatigue. This is why if you don’t write them down, they aren’t decisions. Holding them in your head compounds would-be decisions into muddy sludge, and the sludge mucks up our action.

Most importantly, recording decisions—writing them down—gives you leverage. Just like written language made human communication possible across time and distance, writing down your decisions allows you to build on those decisions later and elsewhere.

Notes are decisions

When you write down a note that will make a project easier to complete, you’ve made a decision. You’ve said, in effect, “This information is valuable.” And because you made that decision, your future work can build on it.

When you capture a task that states exactly what action to take to move a project forward, you’ve made a decision. “This action is valuable.” The clarity of that decision ensures you’ll know what to do when the time for action comes.

When you link those notes or tasks to their project, your project serves as a container so you don’t have to decide where to put the information. You already know. You created that container when you wrote down the project. “This work is valuable enough that I should commit to it.” And because you did commit, your future decisions are easier.

That’s the real solution to our decision fatigue. By recording our decisions, we spread them out. I don’t have to make those decisions now because I wrote them down before. I don’t have to remember information now because I wrote it down before. I don’t have to guess what to do now because I wrote it down before. I already decided.

The same is true of our agendas and logs. Deciding what to do tomorrow before we leave today—recording that in an agenda—makes tomorrow more reliably productive. Deciding what to do right now—recording the start of work in a log—makes it easier to stay focused on that work. We made a decision. We committed to it.

And because our decisions about what to do today were made yesterday, we’re not working from a deficit when we start today. We’re empowered to decide on our action moment to moment, because we narrowed down our options. We’re less susceptible to decision fatigue; the decisions are easier because we’re starting fresh.

Bridges for Taking Action

Effective notes support our action and put it in context. Clear tasks tell us exactly what to do, which makes it easier to dive straight into action. Bins and projects provide containers for notes and tasks, so we never hesitate about where to put them or where to find them. Agendas record our decisions about what to do tomorrow, so we never face a blank canvas. Logs record our decisions about what to do right now, so we commit to the work at hand.

Even if you’re already inclined toward action, improving your notes, tasks, bins & projects, agendas, and logs—or even just one or two of those categories—can dramatically change your relationship with work for the better.

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) Consider the most recent time you recall being overwhelmed and unable to make a decision.

What led you to that moment? Were there unrecorded decisions that could have helped you if you had only written them down before? And if so, what steps can you take to make sure you’re recording those decisions when you make them in the future?

If this was valuable for you:

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

Until next time, friends:

Write down what you decide to do, and take decisive action.

R.J.
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P.S. The 1st edition ebook of The Rhythms of Productivity releases on Friday, April 12, 2024. You can preorder it today, and you’ll receive a preview ebook of the first seven chapters right away!