Applied APP: Cohort Eleven (Underway)

The Final Cohort

Cohort Eleven: The Final Cohort is Underway and Sales are Closed!

Future live offerings will be hosted in the Action-Powered Productivity community.

Join the APP community for free!

Everything you’ve been taught about productivity is backward.

That’s why every time you’ve tried some new system to get your work done, it worked for a while and then failed.

All of those systems told you to get organized first. Once you’re organized, the systems say, you’ll be equipped to take action.

To put it bluntly: That’s wrong.

It’s worse than wrong. It’s exactly backward.

Don’t Get Organized

Content Dictates Form

– musical theatre composer Stephen Sondheim

Systems that prescribe structure (i.e., just about all of them) are imposing a top-down approach on your work. “Here’s what all work looks like, now let’s shoehorn your work into it.”

You wind up with projects that don’t fit what you need and functionality that isn’t aligned with the way you think and work.

Your vision of what’s possible is constrained by the imposed system. This is the exact opposite of Stephen Sondheim’s quote above: you’re starting with a form and contorting the content until it fits.

That’s destined to fall apart.

But without pre-built structure, what’s the alternative? Shooting in the dark and hoping you hit something?

Two Keys to Productivity

To consistently improve your productivity over time, there are two functions you need to get good at:

(1) Taking Action

Decide what you’re going to do and then do it.

To make Taking Action easier, Cohort Eleven will teach you to:

Create and schedule well-formed tasks
Take effective notes that surface when you need them
Store tasks (& notes) in containers: Bins & Projects
Link tasks and projects to relevant files and information
Prepare simple, valuable daily agendas
Group similar work into clusters to save time and effort
Keep logs of your work for review

(2) Capturing Recurrence

After you take action, ask yourself, “how can I do that work better the next time?”

Over time, your answers to that question will become the structure of your system.

If you’re doing something today, odds are you’ve done it before and you’ll do it again. When you capture that recurrence, that’s leverage to improve future work.

To develop the Capturing Recurrence skill, Cohort Eleven will teach you to:

Capture Recurrence in Productivity Bridges: templates, automations, procedures, recurring tasks, and more—all in service of making future work faster, more accurate, and higher quality
Recognize and implement recurring tasks so important work gets done: daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc.
Establish procedures so your work gets done right
Create templates so your work is 80% done before you even start
Build automations so your work is doesn’t even require you
Set up dashboards to make work and system reviews effortless
Discover and use “Proven Ideas”—other people’s recurrence—to execute new projects or pursue long-term goals

Action First, Then Organization

When the structure of your workflows is based on the action you take, your system will become an extension of you. It will support your work, not get in the way.

This action-first approach forms the core of Action-Powered Productivity.

And Cohort Eleven gives you the opportunity to get your action-first mentality set so you can take 2024 by storm!

What is Action-Powered Productivity?

Action-Powered Productivity (APP) is a method comprising tools, skills, strategies, and mindsets to help you work effectively and lead a fulfilling life.

In short: You’ll work better and faster, using less time, effort, and resources.

The tools, skills, strategies, and mindsets fall into three core components:

Workflows for Taking Action Right Now
Your Agenda, Log, Bins, and Projects are the methods you need to jumpstart your decisions and focus moment-to-moment.
Methods to Capture Recurrence in Productivity Bridges
Templates, automations, procedures, recurring tasks, and more will supercharge your execution. Increase the work you accomplish while also reducing your time and effort.
Reviews to Improve Your System and Adapt to Change
Dashboards simplify reviews and make you more likely to do them—which is critical, because your system can’t improve or even stay up-to-date without the feedback reviews provide.

Applied Action-Powered Productivity is a six-week cohort to develop your productivity tools, skills, strategies, and mindsets

In Applied APP, we do not build you a system that only works “in theory.”

By the end of the cohort, you’ll have a reliable productivity system that is tailored to accomplish the work that’s important to you, and customized to bridge over your specific productivity hurdles.

While APP is tool independent, I have to choose tools to use in course demos. My tools are Tana for my tasks, projects, and notes hub; Mac for my software environment; Keyboard Maestro for automation; and Hookmark for linking to practically anything.

You are more than welcome to use any tools you like, and I will help you to the best of my abilities. But you’ll be doing some “translation” from the demos when using different tools—perfectly acceptable, but it will require additional work.

Why is Cohort 11 “the final cohort”?

I am not eliminating all live offerings!

Once I have completed my book, though, there will be more room for specifically tailored live group sprints in place of one comprehensive cohort.

That book (title pending…) should be complete by the end of 2023—hence, “the final cohort.”

So this is likely the last opportunity you’ll have for a fully-featured, comprehensive dive into all aspects of Action-Powered Productivity in a group learning format.

BONUS: Because Cohort 11 is my last iteration of the APP content prior to the book’s completion, everyone involved in Cohort 11 will receive Special Thanks in the book when it releases!

💡Outcome

At the end of the six-week, live cohort course, you’ll be:

✅ Confident building, adapting, running, and maintaining productivity processes with Tana—or the Tool for Thought of your choice—as the hub

✅ Comfortable integrating Tana (or your TfT) with other apps or processes as needed for your work, especially Keyboard Maestro and Hookmark (if you use Mac)

✅ Confident building, adapting, running, and maintaining automation processes using Keyboard Maestro

✅ Equipped with tools and apps—including AI—to help you work efficiently, effectively, and accurately

✅ In control of your time

✅ Equipped with valuable routines & habits, as well as templates for your recurring processes and projects

✅ Equipped to further develop your system to adapt to future changes in your life and work

✅ More efficient and effective than you’ve ever been with systems you’ve used in the past—because this system is tailormade for you

❓How does the cohort work?

In Applied Action-Powered Productivity, we are focused on Action. Everything that’s included is to support your ability to Take Action Now and Capture Recurrence to take better action in the future.

Here’s what’s included:

🆓 My course Essential Tana Skills is included so you can learn (or refresh) the fundamentals of Tana (a $37 value, available as soon as you enroll!)

🆓 My Tana for Tasks Core (T4TC) template and tutorials is included so you can learn the mechanics of task management in Tana (a $37 value, available as soon as you enroll!)

🆓 Pre-built Keyboard Maestro macros that we’ll adapt to your Mac tools and workflows

🆓 An invite to Tana is included, if you need one

🆓 Free enrollment to the Action-Powered Productivity community, including access to the Intro to APP course. The community also has a forum, as well as spaces for discussion and learning from each other

👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Once weekly Live Group Coaching sessions via Zoom

❓ Twice weekly live Zoom Bridge Building sessions for demos, discussion, and Q&A

📼 All live Zooms are recorded and available to watch later

📆 See the calendar of live events: Google Calendar | iCal link

📺 Easy-to-understand video demos

🎓 Cohort Eleven Curriculum

Because this is a live cohort course, the curriculum listed below is subject to adjust a bit as we recognize what specific issues you face. But this will help you understand the structure of the framework you’ll learn.

Prior to Week 1 (before Nov 24)

Read and engage with content I share prior to the start of the course, so you’re ready to get started!
Tana users: Complete Essential Tana Skills if you need a solid foundation (or a refresher) in the Tana basics
Tana users: Install Tana for Tasks Core (T4TC) to have your task management ready to go in Tana
Mac users, recommended: Purchase and install Keyboard Maestro and Hookmark
Watch Intro to Action-Powered Productivity videos to learn some of the APP vocabulary
Get your calendar set with the live cohort sessions you can attend
Optional: Read books from the APP suggested reading list
Learn what Productivity Bridges are, and how they can change your life

Week 1: Capture Work with Core Bridges (Nov 24)

Read about Core Bridges in The Rhythms of Productivity
Effective notetaking
Clear, actionable tasks
Task containers: Bins & Projects
Identify areas of your work and workflows that need improvement
Receive and adapt a core Keyboard Maestro macro
Capture tasks and notes from email effortlessly

Week 2: Take Action with Now Bridges (Dec 1)

Read about Now Bridges in The Rhythms of Productivity
Scheduled & Impromptu events
Set your intention in Daily Agendas
Do your work and track it with Daily Logs
Read about Recurrence Bridges in The Rhythms of Productivity
Capture work once, do it repeatedly with Recurring Tasks
Craft reliable repeating processes with Procedures
Harness reusable work with Templates
Learn to leverage your Agenda, Log, Bins, and Projects to make better decisions in the moment, and to focus on the right work at the right time
Learn to Bridge from day to day with an Agenda, and from Action to Action by Capturing future ideas and work in the right Bins & Projects
Learn to leverage these recurring structures to work more efficiently, effectively, and accurately
Learn to Bridge hours of unnecessary work every week by harnessing recurrence and never starting from scratch again

Week 3: Capture Recurrence™ with Recurrence Bridges (Dec 8)

It’s one thing to focus on the right work at the right time. It’s another thing to do the work, and do it efficiently, effectively, and accurately
Use tools like Keyboard Maestro, Hookmark, and others to automate work
Leverage keyboard shortcuts and text expansions to work faster
Begin to demo systems and workflows for each other, and learn from your cohort mates!
Conquer the “blinking cursor on the blank white screen” block with AI

Week 4: Work faster with Execution Bridges, and Achieve Goals with Vision & Strategy Bridges (Dec 15)

Goals don’t work unless they’re tied to Action Now—which is why we often set big goals but fail to work toward them
- But once we have our Bridges for Now, Recurrence, Action, and Feedback firing, seeing the big picture is critical
- And we’ll reach our goals module just in time to kick off 2024 with a bang!
Learn to set your course for bigger picture goals, and recalibrate as needed based on regular feedback
Learn to set boundaries based on your core values, so you don’t take all the bandwidth your new productivity skills have freed up and fill it with work that doesn’t matter to you
Learn to Bridge from Goals to Action by applying effective Strategy

Week 5: Keep Current and Adapt to Change with Feedback Bridges (Dec 22 – Jan 4)

Content releases Dec 22, but live sessions will be Jan 2 & 3—we’ll take one week off for Christmas!

Nothing can improve without feedback, but if gathering feedback is difficult or time-consuming, we won’t do it
Learn to improve your productivity skills and maintain your productivity tools without unnecessary hassle
Design reviews at the day, week, and month levels—and within projects as needed—that won’t take forever or waste precious energy
Learn to Bridge from one week to the next, or one month to the next, and how effective reviews Bridge into the Middle of future work by providing clarity

Week 6: The Rhythms of Productivity (Jan 5)

Learn to keep building and adapting in the future
Learn that the system you’ve built is, itself, a Bridge to simplify your future work
Learn to troubleshoot your productivity tools, skills, strategies, and mindsets
Assess what you’ve learned and determine what skills and structure you need to develop to continue your productivity journey

Your Guide: R.J. Nestor

R.J. Nestor is a productivity consultant, musician, and writer. He is a communication and productivity expert with 20+ years of experience helping people say what they mean to say and do what they mean to do.

As a consultant, R.J. helps you get important work done. He coaches entrepreneurs, executives, and freelancers from diverse industries: technology, finance, architecture & design, real estate, insurance, fitness, law, and more.

You have great ideas and boundless potential. R.J. provides the tools and guidance to execute your ideas and realize your potential.

Cohort Eleven FAQ

When does the cohort start and finish?

Cohort Eleven will be November 24 through January 12. We will take one week off between Christmas and New Year (check the curriculum above). See the calendar of live events: Google Calendar | iCal link

How long do I have access to the content?

All modules will be available to you in the APP Productivity community, and for APP Pro members will be regularly updated as future cohorts are completed.

What if I am unhappy with the cohort?

The refund policy is simple: If you can demonstrate you completed the Week One content, and at that point you decide the cohort isn’t for you, DM me in the Circle community to request a full refund. Once the video content for Week Two is available (sometime December 1), no further refunds will be processed.

How do I access the private cohort community?

The sign-up link will be available when you enroll. If you have trouble joining the community, contact me.

Are there scholarships available for cohorts?

There are! Use this Scholarship Application Google Form to apply!