I'm going to throw my hat in this ring 🎩

What you need to be productive in 2024, 2025, or the rest of the century is Action-Powered Productivity

REAL productivity improvements boil down to two core tactics:

(1) Take Action

(2) Capture Recurrence™

🧵

https://twitter.com/FrancescoD_Ales/status/1725921881759584620

The problem with most productivity approaches is that they put organization/structure 1ST and action 2ND

This is backward, and it's why every time you try a new approach it works for a while and then bogs down

Your system's structure should reflect the action, not vice versa

Music is the space between the notes
– Miles Davis or Claude Debussy, depending who you ask

It's a Zen approach to negative space—music isn't when you're playing, but when you're NOT playing

I think productivity is the same:

👉 Productivity is the space between the tasks 👇 There's a mundane interpretation for that, and it's TRUE

We DO lose a lot of productivity to the transitions between tasks and contexts, so improving that "in between" space DOES improve our overall progress

But like Miles or Claude, I really mean something deeper

You don't lack discipline—

You lack recurrence

Doing everything from scratch is exhausting and demoralizing. Nobody's got the discipline for that

You need a framework of recurring tasks, procedures, and templates

That's what's missing

"But I want to be CREATIVE!" you say... ..."I want to be FREE!"

Creativity is surrounded by, and enabled by, recurrence

Every act of preparation recurs

Painters mix paints on their palettes, stretch canvases

Repetition is key at the "work" level, too

Monet's water lily paintings? Repetition serving creativity

🔍 Live Search: Tana's masterpiece 🔍

The crown jewel of @tana_inc is the way it handles queries—which, in Tana, are called Live Searches

Live Searches are where you harvest the rewards from your well-tended Fields and Supertags

This thread covers the basics of Live Search... Live Search = Query

Nodes from anywhere in your Tana workspace can be gathered together in a Live Search

You can query by Supertags and Fields, or even plain text

Any #book (or #task or whatever) ANYwhere in your workspace can be assembled together in a search

🤯 Tana is mind-blowing... 🤯
...and occasionally, mind-bending too! 🤔

👉 If you see the potential in @tana_inc but don't know how to get started with it, keep reading

I'm a Tana Ambassador (and Productivity Coach)

I want to teach you the basic (and next-level) Tana skills! One way to learn the skills is to follow my Tana skills "thread of threads" that I'm adding to over the next couple of weeks:

https://twitter.com/rjnestor/status/1687807902944243712?s=20

In Tana, everything is a node.

But even at this fundamental level, there are a few things you need to understand.

This (short) thread will walk you through node fundamentals in @tana_inc When you enter information into Tana—text, images, audio, etc.—that information is going into a node.

- Nodes can be siblings to one another (at the same indentation level)
- Nodes can have a parent-child-(grandchild-etc.) relationship (a "child" indented under a "parent")

If #GTD doesn't work for you, here's why:

🚫 Organizing lists is not executing tasks 🚫

GTD relies on achieving a "Mind like water" to bridge from lists into action. Because of that, you add more tasks to your lists than you check off.

Your mind is drowning in that water.... But there's no need to drown. We can sail those seas instead, with Action-Powered Productivity (APP)!

APP is a set of tools, strategies, and mindsets to help you work effectively and live a fulfilling life.

The three main APP components are:

If you don't have some way to track goals, priority areas, and core values, your productivity system will be garbage in, garbage out. You might WORK a lot, but it won't be the RIGHT work.

Here's how I built my Vision subsystem in @tana_inc, from diagram to deployment... 1. This is the Practical Diagram of my Vision subsystem—what I need it to DO.

✅ Define Intentions both long-term and short-term

✅ Convert Intentions into Action

✅ Allow Identity to affect both big-picture and moment-to-moment decisions

(diagrams made using @obsdmd Canvas)

Using @tana_inc feels miraculous

But there can be friction when you're building supertags and fields

Not "mechanical friction," for the most part. Tana makes it easy to build things (and it keeps getting easier)

"Mindbending friction"—accurately modeling complex concepts.... Tana's power makes it both amazing AND mindbending

Because live queries allow data to be directly entered into them, there's an overlap of input & output that is exceptionally useful but also tricky to set up

That's why I use @obsdmd's new Canvas feature to map ideas first!

Tana for Tasks launches tomorrow (11/4)! 🚀

Comprehensive task management in Tana, in a simple, easy-to-understand course.

Modules 1 - 3 at launch, more coming throughout November (and beyond!)

And a bit of exciting news if you're NOT in @tana_inc yet... If you buy Tana for Tasks, you will get an invite to Tana! 🎉🎉🎉

🚨 IMPORTANT: Invites won't be available for a few days, so feel free to wait if you want (the $97 intro price won't go away yet). I should have invites by Monday, 11/7.

I'm all in with @tana_inc

It's been my "daily driver" for over a month now, and even in Early Access, Tana has enabled task workflows that exceed anything I've found anywhere else.

If you're waiting for an invite...

It's worth it!

(and no I don't currently have any 😊) To elaborate:

Tana provides a bridge between "bottom-up" and "top-down" that no other app has achieved.

Imagine the ease of Roam at the bottom and the structure of Notion at the top—that's what Tana can do.

Fields and searches make it possible (and they're easy to use!)

If you've landed a @tana_inc invite, or if you want to wrap your mind around Tana while you wait...

A general note about workflows in Tana:

👉 Every input (via field) should have a complementary output (via search)

Let me break that down: This input/output pairing may be self-evident to many Tana users, but it's an issue I'm encountering a lot as I help folks acclimate to Tana—

Especially Roamans coming into Tana who have had a great INPUT tool, but not necessarily a great model for OUTPUT—until now!

Examples:

Big announcement below concerning AP Productivity Cohort Six and @tana_inc...

But first, ground rules:

AP Productivity Cohort Six is for you if you want to invest eight weeks and $500 to dramatically improve your productivity using Tools for Thought. AP Productivity Cohort Six is NOT for you if you want to watch videos but never APPLY any of the tools or DEVELOP any of the skills.

The first few weeks are an investment of time and attention—and that investment pays off!—but be aware of the investment.

Now. The announcement:

My productivity in Tools for Thought friends:

11 days ago, my friend @houshuang demoed a new TfT for me.

It has the ease of @RoamResearch, but you can work with the data much like you would in @NotionHQ or @airtable.

A perfect match for fluid, action-first productivity.

1/ The TfT is Tana (@tana_inc)

It's officially out of stealth and available for Early Access:

👉 tana.inc

If you're a Roaman, it will largely be familiar, but you'll need to get used to a few adjustments. It took me 4-ish days to get my workflows running.

2/

We've outgrown #GTD

We'll always appreciate how far it brought us. And parts of it will live on in our processes.

But it's time for a system that is:

✅ Simpler, yet more Robust
✅ Modern, yet Timeless
✅ Customizable, yet Structured

I invite you to AP Productivity...

1/ I used GTD in @todoist for 6 years

I was "Enlightened," in Todoist's Karma

But I didn't know TRUE enlightenment until I moved my system into Tools for Thought (TfTs)

(@RoamResearch was my intro, but there are others: @amplenote, @logseq, @obsdmd, and more in development!)

2/

Productivity is answering one simple question — “What do I do Right Now?” — and then doing it!

Now is the only moment we have any control over, but we rarely talk about that.

We gather & organize tasks, but we don’t bridge the last mile to execution.

So, how can we do that?… Build your productivity system to support now. Use these three “Now Lists”:

1. Agenda

“What do I intend to do today?”

The Agenda takes potential work—tasks from other lists in your system—and schedules it for today. It keeps you focused but not overwhelmed.

Cohort Six of AP Productivity is open for Early Bird registration (15% off)!

👉 rjn.st/ap-productivit…

AP Productivity: Cohort is an eight-week course that will dramatically improve your productivity using Tools for Thought

1/ Cohort Six features upgraded benefits!

✅ Cohort Six establishes new fundamentals and vocabulary for the AP Productivity system.

Building and maintaining your system will be SIMPLE, and you’ll get loads more accomplished!

2/

Let’s talk productivity fundamentals.

Consider DNA—complex life emerged from the combination and interaction of 4 letters: A (adenine), C (cytosine), G (guanine), T (thymine).

To function well, your productivity system—NO MATTER HOW COMPLEX—must remain fundamentally simple.

1/ If you want to be consistently and reliably productive, you need these mechanics:

1. Lists

- Lists have varying properties: What items can it contain, what is its capacity, does the order matter, etc.

- Types (“properties settings”) include Agendas, Inboxes, Projects, etc.

2/

What does "productivity" mean to you?

You have to answer that before you build a system to SUPPORT your productivity!

My AP Productivity cohort course has seven Guiding Principles, which I revised while preparing for Cohort Six.

See what you think: The first 4 are about the Psychology of Productivity.

1. Productivity is not busy work. Productivity is accomplishing what's important to YOU.

Your productivity system should make your work more efficient and effective, but also set boundaries.

Nonviolent Communication, by Marshall Rosenberg, provides tools to navigate uncomfortable conversations, resolve conflicts, and empathize with those we disagree with (and have more compassion for OURSELVES, too!).

I had LOTS of takeaways, but I narrowed them down to these: 📝 Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is an approach to speaking and listening that leads with the heart and encourages compassion toward ourselves and others. NVC has four components:

(1) Observations
(2) Feelings
(3) Needs
(4) Requests

I've been thinking a lot about Reality, no doubt because I recently read @ByronKatie's "Loving What Is."

I see four ways to approach Reality:

1. Try to control it
2. Resign yourself to it
3. Ride it like a wave
4. Shape it

It's a lot like singing...

https://twitter.com/rjnestor/status/1553179667439419398?s=21&t=qeIoJnV8vDWz4Ogs42hWuA

When you learn to sing, at first you TRY to sing. You think a beautiful sound must be controlled.

If you let go of that, at first it'll be chaotic.

But eventually you let your voice BE your voice.

And you learn that if you set intentions (~ "act"), your voice will follow.