The Rhythms of Productivity
Maximum Action, Minimum Effort, and a Meaningful March to Your Own Drummer's Beat
The Rhythms of Productivity by R.J. Nestor introduces a revolutionary approach to productivity that helps you take decisive action, capture recurrence, and achieve more with less effort.
In a world of endless demands and distractions, it's easy to feel like your work and life are chaos. Urgent tasks and responsibilities clamor for your attention, leaving you overwhelmed, scattered, and stuck. Popular productivity systems offer rigid, one-size-fits-all solutions that don't account for your unique circumstances.
What you need is a more flexible, personalized approach—one that works with your natural rhythms, not against them. In The Rhythms of Productivity, author and productivity expert R.J. Nestor draws on his background in music and theatre to introduce Action-Powered Productivity (APP), a framework that helps you:
- Take decisive action to get work done
- Capture recurrence in useful Productivity Bridges to save time and effort
- Align your action with the roles you play in your life and work
Through memorable analogies, real-world examples, and practical études, Nestor shows you how to create a personalized productivity toolkit that surfaces the right information when you need it. You'll learn concrete skills for capturing and surfacing notes, crafting clear tasks, using hubs like bins and projects, planning agendas, as well as leveraging recurrence in recurring tasks, procedures, templates, and automations. Plus you'll learn to think big-picture and plan long-term using stable, flexible roles rather than arbitrary goals.
Let go of rigid systems and goals that don't serve you. Compose a productivity toolkit as unique as you are, and make work more fulfilling in the process. March to the beat of your own productive drummer with The Rhythms of Productivity.
I finished 'Rhythms' yesterday, and I want you to know I haven't felt the same confidence and enthusiasm since I first read GTD more than 20 years ago. I have been on the Hyrum Smith/Franklin Covey/GTD/Todoist (Grandmaster)/Roam 'keep it together until it comes together' train for my adult life, and 'Rhythms', to me, is the most 'adult', real-world, holistic, battle-tested, accurate approach that I've come across.
Video Overviews, Chapter by Chapter
Learn more about The Rhythms of Productivity and the Action-Powered Productivity method it champions. The videos below are grouped by sections of the book. They're short—no longer than 4 minutes.
Each chapter that introduces an important concept is represented by a video below. Watch a few to get a feel for the Action-Powered Productivity approach!
Take Action: Why everything you know is backward
Don't "get organized." Take action.
When you take action first, the structure of your productivity toolkit will take shape organically and support the work you actually do.
Capture Recurrence™: The most important skill you’ve never heard of
Discover Capturing Recurrence™, the game-changing productivity skill that leverages the repetitive nature of your work. Learn how to identify patterns, create templates, and build automations that streamline your tasks, saving time and mental energy for more creative and strategic work.
Build Productivity Bridges™
Learn about Productivity Bridges™, the structures you create now to enhance the speed, accuracy, and quality of your future work. Discover how to build effective bridges like templates, procedures, and automations that allow you to "always start in the middle" of your tasks, skipping repetitive parts and focusing on unique aspects.
Always Start in the Middle™
Discover the power of Always Starting in the Middle™, a strategy that allows you to skip repetitive setup and dive directly into the unique aspects of your tasks. Learn how to leverage Productivity Bridges to transform time-consuming processes into quick, efficient actions, saving significant time and energy for more valuable work.
Notes
Explore the fundamental unit of productivity: notes, and learn how to effectively capture and surface information for future use. Discover the key elements of successful note-taking, including clarity, ease of capture, proper surfacing, and the importance of capturing relationships between notes to ensure they're available when and where you need them.
Tasks
Discover the essential components of well-formed tasks: action verbs, clear objects, specific schedules, and relevant context. Learn how crafting precise, actionable tasks can significantly reduce procrastination and increase your productivity by providing clear instructions to your future self.
Hubs
Explore the concept of hubs, the magnetic centers that attract and contextualize relationships between your notes, enhancing organization and productivity. Learn how to leverage two essential types of hubs - bins and projects - to efficiently categorize tasks, capture information, and harness the "Hub Effect" to generate action and progress towards your desired outcomes.
Agendas
Discover how daily agendas can transform your scattered days into streamlined, productive ones by providing a flexible roadmap for your tasks and events. Learn to create effective agendas by planning ahead, prioritizing "Hot Pan Tasks," establishing routines, and maintaining realistic expectations, all while allowing for necessary adaptations throughout your day.
Logs
Explore the power of logging your work, a practice that enhances task commitment, identifies optimization opportunities, and improves future planning. Learn how to effectively create and use logs to track your actual work patterns, compare them with your planned agendas, and ultimately refine your productivity strategies for better time management and task execution.
Recurring Tasks
Discover the power of recurring tasks, the backbone of your productivity toolkit that ensures regular responsibilities are consistently managed with minimal mental effort. Learn how to effectively identify, capture, and leverage recurring tasks for reminders, maintenance, and preventative work, optimizing your workflow and preventing major issues through consistent, "little" actions.
Procedures
Learn how to create effective procedures, the documented sequences of actions that serve as recipes for your work, enhancing efficiency and accuracy. Discover the key elements of good procedures, including conciseness, clarity, and adaptability, and learn how to capture, store, and maintain them to ensure consistent, error-free execution of repetitive processes.
Templates
Explore the power of templates, pre-built structures that allow you to start your work in the middle, saving time and ensuring consistency across repetitive tasks. Learn how to identify opportunities for templates, create effective ones with predictable content and clear placeholders, and maintain them over time to continually boost your productivity and work quality.
Automations
Discover the power of automation, the ultimate form of captured recurrence that delegates repetitive tasks to technology, freeing you to focus on high-value work. Learn about three key types of automation - keyboard shortcuts, text expansion, and macros - and how to effectively implement them to increase efficiency, ensure consistency, and reduce friction in your daily tasks.
Roles
Explore the concept of roles as a powerful alternative to traditional goal-setting, offering a more stable and flexible approach to long-term planning and big-picture thinking. Learn how to identify, define, and leverage your current, aspirational, and vestigial roles to guide your actions, clarify your priorities, and ensure you're focusing on what truly matters in both your personal and professional life.
Reviews
Discover the importance of regular reviews in maintaining an effective productivity system, keeping your workflows updated, and your work aligned with your goals. Learn about the three main types of reviews - maintenance, alignment, and big picture - and how to implement them effectively using principles such as triggering with recurring tasks, executing with dashboards, and focusing on notes and hubs rather than arbitrary time intervals.
Play your PART
Learn about the PART cycle (Prepare, Act, Reflect, Tune), a powerful framework for capturing recurrence and improving your productivity at every level of your work. Discover how to apply this cyclical approach to daily tasks, weekly intentions, projects, and roles, creating space for continuous improvement and maximizing the effectiveness of your productivity toolkit.
Prototasks
Discover prototasks, a unique type of note for capturing potential future work without cluttering your task list or causing undue stress. Learn how to effectively use prototasks to manage possibilities, review them periodically, and make intentional choices about what work to pursue, helping you maintain focus and reduce overwhelm in your productivity system.
Symphony No. 1 by… you!
Explore how mastering various types of Productivity Bridges - Core, Now, Recurrence, and Vision - allows you to achieve maximum efficiency and direct your efforts towards what truly matters. Learn to view productivity as composing your own symphony, where you continuously refine your skills, invest saved time and effort into fulfilling pursuits, and create a masterpiece of productivity, passion, and purpose in your life and work.
[The Rhythms of Productivity] ingeniously builds upon the foundational principles of David Allen’s "Getting Things Done" (GTD) methodology, seamlessly integrating modern Tools for Thought such as Roam, Obsidian, Logseq, and Tana.... I confidently place this book alongside productivity classics like "Getting Things Done," "The Checklist Manifesto," "4,000 Weeks," "Deep Work," and "Work Clean." Its effectiveness is truly exceptional. For anyone intrigued by GTD or seeking to optimize their productivity, acquiring this book is an absolute must.
About the Author
R.J. Nestor is a productivity consultant, musician, and writer. He founded the Action-Powered Productivity community to help people accomplish their most fulfilling work. His book The Rhythms of Productivity teaches readers how to take action, leverage recurring work, fulfill the roles they play in their life and work, and review their productivity toolkit to keep their approach working smoothly. He lives in the mountains of West Virginia with his wife Elisha and their three children.
How to buy The Rhythms of Productivity
Purchase Rhythms on Amazon in one of three formats!
[In other systems, t]here is usually so much to set up before you can get started, and then the system only works if you adhere to it completely and devotedly. Instead, R.J. Nestor's approach is far more modular. Put in place a few good foundational habits, then learn to spot the opportunities to save time and effort in your day to day work, allowing them to compound and build on each other.... [M]any times I found myself going from "Oooh that's a good idea!" to having the particular system set up within a few minutes, and I was already benefitting from many of them before I finished the book.
Action-Powered Productivity Live
From time to time, R.J. hosts Action-Powered Productivity Live (APP Live)—a 29-day live group course to implement the principles laid out in The Rhythms of Productivity using your favorite notetaking and task management apps.
To learn more and see if there is an APP Live coming up soon, visit the official Action-Powered Productivity Live site.