Open Rhythm

When I started my new job, my todo-lists were chaotic and overwhelming. I had so much to learn, so many people to talk to, and so much to do. Keeping a list let me focus without losing track of important information.

But here’s the thing: it’s not sustainable. If you always operate from a perpetually refilling list of work, you never create space. You lose agency and proactivity as the tyranny of the urgent triumphs over what’s important. Most leverage lives with what’s important but not urgent. So if you’re only dealing with what’s urgent, you’re always behind. And when you grow comfortable with such a list, you often blindly follow it without question. You lose your ability to sense, to select, to direct. You drown in the noise and miss all the signals.

Over the past month, I threw out my to-do list. I didn’t even do it consciously. I just stopped writing down a list of things to do. I focused, instead, on managing my time and energy, and letting my intuition guide me toward the right signals. If something is essential, then it shows up on my calendar. I use little tricks like snoozing emails as reminders (among others), but the most effective method is having a system:

• Starting and ending my day with 30-minute routines following checklists.
• Performing weekly reviews and posting updates on Mondays and Fridays.
• Zooming out and planning projects and looking ahead every month.

The system should evolve and adapt with the work. It’s living, breathing. The right system creates space because you designate time and intentional actions for repeat efforts. It reduces cognitive load when you don’t need to wonder “when will I do that?” or “how will I do that?”

You already know! You have a system.

When a task comes in that doesn’t map directly to part of my system, I either:

1. Do it. If it’s small or high-leverage, I follow the signal immediately.
2. Store it. If it requires time, planning, or collaboration, it goes into a structured place like Linear or my calendar.
3. Defer it. If it doesn’t have urgency or clarity, I let my rhythms surface it naturally (or not).

That, in and of itself, is a system, too!

As I came to this realization about my own personal methods, I also began to see the similarities with team dynamics.

Most software development processes are built on the idea of cadences: two-week sprints in the Agile world and six-week cycles in Shape Up.

Cadences create a rhythm of predictability.

But, like most things, you need to find a balance. A framework is a great mental model to form a baseline understanding. Once you understand the principles at play, you should use them to find your own expression. That’s how I arrived at Equilio. It’s my expression.

When I started at a new company, I wanted to install a cycle cadence quickly. But, after over three months, I still haven’t. And I don’t think I will. While I believed it would create predictability, there’s too much volatility in the business and product space we’re in. We have to adapt to constantly shifting market dynamics, especially in AI. We need to move fast and stay nimble. Adaptability is the hallmark attribute of survival. Darwinism and “survival of the fittest” was never about strength. The “fittest” were the most adaptable to their environment. It’s the same for teams.

A rigid cadence can also hide the nuance of your team and product:

• The state of the product: Is it a 0-1 build? A mature product? Are there performance and stability issues?
• The state of the team: What’s the skill level of the engineers? How do you integrate design?
• The state of the market: Is the market space fast-moving? Does the underlying technology change a lot?

Don’t get me wrong: I love cadences. But if you don’t create adaptability and design your team’s cadences in a way that fits the product, team, and market, you create rigidity. And blindly adopting any framework without thinking critically about your use-case is a quick way to end up stuck.

A team needs clear systems, space to operate, and a fine-tuned intuition to focus on the right signals.

When we experienced outages, we didn’t say:

Sorry, we’re in week 3 of our cycle. We’ll get to it in a few weeks.

And we don’t have a big enough team to dedicate folks to the coverage. It was all hands on deck. We stopped what we were doing and focused on stabilizing the platform. And you know what? It was fine. We adapted, responded, and readjusted our timelines and priorities. I’d even say it helped the team gel with a new energy and cohesiveness.

When the signal is stronger than the plan, it’s worth following it.

This idea is called Open Rhythm, which lives in the Clarity Current of the Claritorium and Strategic Momentum of Equilio.

The three pillars are:

1. Systems to create the rhythm and stability.
2. Space to sense and explore the landscape.
3. Signals to find direction and meaning.

Systems

A system is a living transformation. A good system creates stability without rigidity. You take a set of inputs, do something with them (the process), and create a set of outputs:

Output = System(Input);

Each part of the system should change and evolve over time:

• Capture better inputs.
• Improve the process.
• Generate better outputs.

My team was discussing the idea of holding more brainstorming sessions because they’re so effective. Even though they are effective—and more like creative sessions than meetings—it’s still a fixed block on the calendar. It costs money to bring together a group of people. And we all know how hard it is to remove a recurring meeting once it’s set. So we decided to do something else instead: use our intuition and call out when it’s time to come together and review a feature we’re building. This is still a system, but the input doesn’t come through a regular meeting. The input is when the team calls out when it’s time to meet. Then we run a session and create outputs in the form of feedback to improve the work.

System Triggers

There are different System Triggers that affect how the system operates:

1. Event: A state change activates the system, like when a feature is marked “Ready for Review” and you perform QA.
2. Time: A fixed-time event activates the system, like my daily startup and shutdown routines of checklists.
3. Condition: A rule activates the system, like when the conversion rate drops below a specific threshold.
4. Intuition: A felt signal activates the system, like when the team feels misaligned and you need to realign.
5. Opportunity: A moment of potential activates the process, like when a new insight shows up in the data.

System Runner

Like Anatomica as a notational language for describing the anatomy of software products, System Runner is an annotation method for systems. This is super nerdy, but I find it to be a useful mental model for visualizing systems.

You can represent a real-world system as a function (written in TypeScript). This is still an exploratory idea, so feel free to check out the repository for yourself. Maybe it’s useful.

Principles

Now let’s discuss the principles of Systems. These are the foundational truths you can use to design your own systems.

Structure reduces load

A good system reduces decision fatigue because you know what to do. You don’t think twice. The system takes over. A lower cognitive load creates mental capacity for tackling more vexing problems.

Systems must evolve

To avoid rigidity, systems must evolve and change with the surrounding environment. No system is better than the wrong one. Pay close attention to the outputs and make sure they are creating the impact you expect.

Clarity lives in transformation

The value of a system is in the transformation, not the ceremony. Inputs, process, outputs—raw materials to catalyze a reaction of information from one state to another. Stay focused on how information changes.

Practices

These practices are expressions of the principles. These are examples you can build off of and remix to make your own.

Function Definition

Start your system definition as a function. Work backwards from the outputs to determine what inputs and process is required to generate the outputs. You can use the System Runner annotation as an example method for writing function definitions. I find it helpful to view systems in code because it helps me design them and refine them easily.

System Signals

Move beyond the idea of meetings and think more holistically about the signals that drive your systems. It can be a number of System Triggers that kick them off. And one of the most forgotten triggers is intuition. Sometimes you just get a feeling. That’s wonderful. It’s a critical data point in your work. When you create the function definitions, determine how your systems should trigger.

Use & Improve

The best time to improve something is immediately. When you see an opportunity to improve a system, don’t wait. Continue to use it and refine it. Let the function definitions synthesize the critical elements of the system, and use it as the blueprint to make it better each time you run it. It’s easy to be complacent and follow what’s always been done, but the real value is in constant refinement.

Space

I want you to think about your most productive day at work. But first, because productive is such a loaded word now, let’s define it as:

Doing meaningful work you’re proud of, enjoy, and challenges you.

I want you to really think about that day. The day where you were in flow, doing challenging work within your capacity of skills. Time was flying by and standing still at the same time. Maybe you forgot to get up or drink water or go the bathroom (I’ve been there). You entered a state of pure focus, producing your best work and creating an energetic flywheel rebalancing your energy in compounding waves.

Now think about a day on the other end of the productivity spectrum—one where you felt constrained, drained, and trapped. It could be a day packed with meetings; or a day reacting to endless urgent problems; or a day where you performed mindless work. No matter how you’d describe it, this is the type of day, when regularly repeated, that makes you question your life and your work.

Best day: “I’m doing what I’m meant to do.”

Worst day: “Why am I doing this?”

No matter what sort of day you thought of, I bet it was a day filled with space:

• Space to think and let your mind wander.
• Space to feel the energy shift in your body.
• Space to practice your craft and create.

To practice one’s craft is an exercise in embodied expression. Most of being good at things in life is caring enough to do it right. And you’ll never care enough without the space, the freedom, and the creative autonomy to follow your energy and express yourself.

When I talk about space, I don’t mean it in the sense of emptiness. Space is an opening, an opportunity for creative expression. Without it, quality suffers. With it, quality thrives. Space is the empty page waiting for you. Make it yours.

In the book Deep Work, Cal Newport says:

To produce at your peak level you need to work for extended periods with full concentration on a single task free from distraction.

There’s three parts to that:

1. Working for extended periods of time instead of splintered segments.
2. Working with full concentration instead of thinking about what’s next.
3. Working on a single task without distraction instead of splitting focus.

Put simply: Focus on one thing for a while.

Taking that idea further, Cal Newport, in his book Slow Productivity, describes the three steps for the process of Slow Productivity:

1. Do fewer things.
2. Work at a natural pace.
3. Obsess over quality.

This pairs nicely with the ideas above, and it adds a nice touch with quality. But quality can be a byproduct of space. You can’t obsess over quality when you’re rushing from task to task. Each segment of work becomes an exercise in frantic effort devoid of intention. And space without intention becomes meaningless.

Now, you may be thinking quality is an impediment to speed and working at a natural pace, but speed of iteration is how you achieve quality. To increase your iteration count, you need space. You can’t learn to paint with one brush stroke per day. You need thousands of focused repetitions:

Quality = Iterations × Focus

Quality comes from focused iterations:

• Iterations are how many times you try.
• Focus is the depth you bring to each try.
• And space is what you need to create focus.

Principles

Now let’s discuss the principles of Space.

Space enables focus

When you have room to think, to work, to create, you create the conditions for focus. Sometimes it’s harder and you need to train yourself, but space is the precursor.

Space reveals signals

If you don’t listen, you won’t learn. Signals emerge in the space between. Filling every moment with unnecessary noise stifles your ability to surface insights.

Space multiplies craft

Space provides time to do something repeatedly. And craft is what comes from focused repetition. The more space you create, the more iterations and focus you can apply in your craft. The effect is multiplicative.

Practices

These practices are expressions of the principles. These are examples you can build off of and remix to make your own.

The One Thing

Pick one key task or outcome you want to accomplish each day. Practice honing your intention to find the most critical effort to put your energy towards. Instead of pushing forward a lot of things an inch, push one thing forward a mile to quality completion.

Focus Time

Space creates the conditions for focus. Paired with The One Thing, you can block off time, turn off notifications, and hold a singular focus on your most important work. Doing this for your team has a massive impact. You can’t expect quality work from splintered attention.

Wandering Time

Going deep and focusing is draining. You can follow your Focus Time with time to explore, diverge, and wander. I call it Wandering Time, and it’s key to rebalancing your energy and fine-tuning your intuition. Do this with your team after focused project work. Give space to follow what you naturally gravitate to.

Signals

Every Monday morning, I review key data points from the previous week:

• Key Metrics: Metrics to track adoption, activation, and retention to determine if people are finding, trying, and continuing to use the product week over week.
• Project Status: Project updates to determine the status of each project—are they on track, off track, or at risk.? Are we making the right progress?
• Product Updates: Features, fixes, and improvements shipped last week. Are we making the product better?
• External Feedback: Customer feedback about what’s working, what’s not, and how we can improve the product.
• Internal Feedback: Feedback from executives, sales, marketing, and success teams to broaden the perspectives.

This may sound like a typical product rhythm. And, in some ways, it is. But what I’m really doing here is trying to find signals, like turning the dial on a radio to hear music through the static. Each data point brings its own noise, but there’s always a signal buried in there, too. You have to listen and know how to find it. It’s art, not science.

In the process, signals emerge:

1. Signal: Free trials are trending down over the last two weeks.
2. Signal: One project is marked at risk and grew in scope and complexity.
3. Signal: We shipped a key update that will unlock new sales opportunities.
4. Signal: Several customers are reporting continued errors with a key feature.
5. Signal: Multiple sales calls mention a roadmap feature we’re tracking.

Finding the signals is the first step, but then you use your intuition to understand what’s most important to follow. And how you’re going to approach it.

I start with grouping. Are any of the signals related? Are they tied to the same type of work? Doing so identifies areas where you can focus your energy by performing the same work and building momentum.

1. Funnel Issues: Signals 1 and 4 are tied to issues with the funnel in the product.
2. Project Management: Signal 2 is managing a project to keep it on track.
3. Sales Opportunities: Signals 3 and 5 are tied to sales opportunities and outreach.

Now, you determine what systems you have for handling this work. For me, all of these are part of my natural product rhythms. And that’s typically the case. When it’s not, do it now, or find dedicated time to focus on it.

Here’s a simple process for signals:

1. Follow the strong signals.
2. Monitor the ones you should watch.
3. Ignore the ones that don’t pull you in.

Principles

Now let’s discuss the principles of Signals.

Signals are patterns, not data points

Don’t think of signals as one-off metrics. They are the patterns in the data. When interpreting them, look for the narrative driving the signal. And figure out what it’s telling you.

Intuition is the interpreter

I believe strongly in intuition. What’s the point of honing your craft, thinking critically, and working to improve yourself if not to create a better intuition? Doing so makes it easy to find signals, to move in the right direction, to interpret the meaning. You develop a feel for the work. You just know.

Signals compete for attention

Not every signal should be followed. Adaptation comes from choosing the right signal, not chasing all of them. There’s discipline in knowing what signals to follow and which to ignore.

Practices

These practices are expressions of the principles. These are examples you can build off of and remix to make your own.

Signal Scanning

Building rhythms of repeat and focused effort allows you to improve your intuition. The more you look at something, the more you begin to understand it, to see the patterns unfold. Use systems and create space to scan for signals.

Signal Grouping

As the signals emerge, they’ll naturally cluster into similar categories. Over time, you’ll see it more easily. Finding the groups creates concentrations where the signal strengthens and makes it easy to discern priority. The more the signals cluster in one area, the stronger the signal for you to pursue.

Signal Naming

Name your signals. Find plain, simple language to give them meaning and use it to communicate with your team. If you group them and name them well, you’ll see areas surface organically. Then you have a foundation to build systems on top of.

In Balance

Ditching my to-do list was cathartic. I spent years obsessing about how to manage tasks without seeing the hidden current underneath, helping me manage the work. Look past your list of things to do. Focus on the energetic flow driving signals to the surface. I don’t mean to get all Yoda here, but it’s like The Force in Star Wars. You tap into this energy only when you create space. Without space, you can’t find the signals. And without systems, you can’t transform those signals into useable outputs.

Open Rhythm is a balance. You hold in tension opposing ideas of freedom and constraints, serendipity and cadence, verification and intuition. It’s an individual philosophy as much as a team philosophy. All rhythms, multiplied within teams, creates a compounding flywheel of growth and impact. It’s why I spend so much of my time cultivating individual practices—for myself, and for every member of the teams I work on. A team is the sum of its parts. If you don’t spend time working on the components, the unified system breaks down.

Start with your systems. Use them to create space so you can find signals. And then let intuition guide you in meaningful directions.

Now, find your own Open Rhythm.