Tiago Forte's Blog, page 13

Project People vs. Area People: Are You Running a Sprint Or a Marathon?

When I started my career, all the work I was doing felt like a giant blob labeled “work.”

The tasks I was responsible for stretched out before me toward an endless horizon. No matter how hard I worked or how many hours I logged, that horizon never seemed to get any closer.

But eventually I began to notice a pattern: there were “chunks” of work that seemed to start and stop, and “flows” of work that seemed to run continuously.

Once I noticed this simple pattern, I began to see it everywhere. 

In physics, we know light is both a discrete particle and a flowing wave. In supply chain logistics, we have both discrete stocks and flows of material. In mathematics, we have discrete numbers and continuous numbers.

I began to organize my work according to these two categories: the chunks became “projects” and the flows became “areas of responsibility.” 

I had no way of knowing that this miniscule change would dramatically reshape my relationship to my productivity, my creativity, and my commitments.

Let me introduce you to the most effective way I’ve found to organize my work and life: by project and area of responsibility.

What are projects and areas?

A project is any endeavor that has 1) a desired outcome that will enable you to mark it “complete,” and 2) a deadline or timeframe by which you’d like it done.

An area of responsibility has 1) a standard to be maintained that 2) is continuous over time.

In short, projects end, while areas continue indefinitely.

Every project has a corresponding area that it falls within. For example:

Running a marathon is a project, whereas Health is an areaPublishing a book is a project, whereas Writing is an areaSaving 3 months’ worth of expenses is a project, whereas Finances is an areaA vacation to Thailand is a project, whereas Travel is an areaPlanning an anniversary dinner is a project, whereas Spouse is an area

In all these examples, the projects have completion dates. They are either complete or incomplete at any given time.

Projects finish when the desired outcome is achieved (or fails to be achieved) – the marathon has been run, the book is published, the savings are tucked away, the vacation is over, or the anniversary dinner is successful. And you’d like each of these things to happen by a certain time, whether that is an externally imposed deadline or just a personal preference.

But just because a project is over, that doesn’t mean you never have to pay attention to that area of your life again.

Every area of responsibility has a standard to be maintained. And there is no end date or final outcome. Your performance in this area may wax and wane over time, but the standard continues indefinitely and requires a certain level of attention at all times.

In the examples above, the areas have no particular outcome to be achieved. There is no finish line you can reach that allows you to “complete” managing your health, or “achieve” writing once and for all, or “check off” finances as an ongoing concern, or never have to worry about travel or your spouse again.

Areas are crucial to your wellbeing, security, fulfillment, and peace of mind. Whereas projects have outcomes, areas have standards of performance that you want to maintain.

For example, if you’re responsible for an area like leading product development, there is a standard of performance (or a “quality bar”) for the product you are responsible for. That may include maintaining its speed and performance, fixing bugs, and approving new updates to be released. Quality and performance may wax and wane over time, but if it ever dips too far below a certain level for too long, there will be consequences. Not only do you seek to maintain that standard, you may even want to “raise the bar” and improve it over time.

For managing your finances, your standard may be that you pay all your bills on time and provide for your family’s needs. For being a homeowner, it may be that you do your household chores and maintain the safety and security of your home. For parenting, it may be that you spend quality time with your kids every evening and make sure they are always loved and protected.

Once you view your life through the lens of discrete projects and continuous areas, it becomes clear that both of these structures are essential. Projects bring you excitement, achievement, and recognition, whereas areas bring you balance, peace, and meaning. 

But they can only do that when you consciously feed both. 

Projects and areas are interdependent

Projects and areas depend on each other at a deep level.

Let’s say you start a project to apply for a new job. It has a desired outcome – to land a job – and a preferred time frame – by the end of the year. In order for this new project to succeed, you will need to draw on the order and energy you’ve cultivated as part of your areas. 

For example, you’ll need to conduct interviews on Zoom, which means your home environment better be reasonably tidy. You might need to dip into your savings between jobs, so your finances will need to support that. Looking for a job can be stressful, so the standard you’ve maintained for your health and supportive relationships will be crucial.

A project is much like a rocket taking off from a launchpad. It is an explosion of energy toward an objective, like a rocket pushing against gravity before finally hitting escape velocity and reaching orbit. Your areas are like the stable infrastructure that has been built up over time and enables that rocket to take off: the launch pad, the scaffolding, the cooling systems, and the command center.

In this way, projects and areas feed and reinforce each other. By keeping your areas of responsibility healthy and thriving, you are building up reserves of strength. Those reserves can then be spent in an explosive burst of energy toward a goal that matters to you. 

Every project requires a “heavy lift” to some degree, but those heavy lifts are far more powerful and effective (and brief) when you’ve already been collecting material in a “slow burn.” It is only when heavy lifts become a chronic, default way of approaching everything that they lead to burnout and exhaustion.

I’ve noticed that most people tend to favor either projects or areas in the way they manage their energy. Understanding this natural tendency is the first step toward building on our strengths while shoring up our weaknesses.

Project people vs. Area people

“Project people” are good at sprints. Give them a clear goal and a path to get there, and they will ferociously chase after it with everything they have. They are like elite sprinters, able to exert huge amounts of energy over short distances. 

But the weakness of sprinters is that once they’ve reached their goal, they will often have trouble keeping it going. They will often change direction and run after the next goal, leaving their past achievements to wither. Sprinters are prone to starting many things and getting obsessed for a short time, before moving abruptly to something else.

“Area people” excel at marathons. Send them on a long journey with some supplies and they will doggedly keep at it for as long as it takes. They are like marathon runners, able to maintain a steady flow of energy and keep pushing forward across long distances. 

The weakness of marathoners is that they often have trouble generating a lot of power on short notice. When an opportunity opens up that requires quick, decisive action, they’ll have difficulty changing direction and drawing down their reserves to chase it down. Marathoners will tend to stubbornly maintain their current direction and follow through on existing plans even when the situation has changed and requires a different approach.

Knowing which tendency you favor is an important starting point. If you can learn to master your natural energy pattern and know how to activate it consciously, you’ll have a capability akin to a superpower. 

But eventually, you’ll want to round out your strengths by addressing your weaknesses. You can choose to consciously cultivate the other end of the spectrum, learning to identify whether a given situation requires a project or an area. Once you know whether you’re working with a project or area, you can adopt the right mindset and take the most helpful approach for the challenge at hand.

Projects require you to be laser-focused, to ferociously drive toward an outcome, to overcome or circumvent obstacles, and to ignore distractions along the way. Areas, on the other hand, require mindfulness, balance, and reflection. This is the realm of habits, rituals, and intentional communities. Whereas projects tend to be more black and white, areas require more introspection and self-awareness because it takes more nuance to decide if you are meeting your standard in a given area.

Through my coaching and teaching, I’ve come to believe that even the smallest confusion between these two fundamental categories is a deeply rooted cause of many people’s recurring challenges with creating the life they want. 

If you have a project that you are treating like an area (for example, trying to write a book in 30 minutes a day) it will feel like it’s taking forever with no discernible progress. If you have an area that you are treating like a project (like trying to lose 10 pounds as a one-time goal), you’re likely to revert right back after it’s been achieved because you didn’t put in place any mechanism for maintaining that new standard.

If you are a “Project person” and want to improve your ability to sustain your areas, here are some techniques you can try:

Adopt a morning or evening routineSet limits to your working hoursTake regular breaks and walks in natureJournal and write out your internal anxieties and thoughtsCreate a meditation habit (or other mindful habit)Set your intentions each day, week, month, or yearEvaluate your schedule for a balance of intense work and healthy, mindful activities

If you are an “Area person” who wants to improve your ability to execute on projects, here are some techniques you can try:

Set a deadline with consequencesUse “timeboxing” to concentrate your energy outputMake a promise to someone that you’ll deliver by a certain timeSchedule a meeting or presentation during which you’ll unveil your workReduce the scope of the project and drop features as the deadline approachesBreak the project down into smaller pieces and set milestones for each one to be finished byDesign your working environment to promote focus by removing distractions and notifications

A holistically flourishing human life requires a healthy balance of exciting short-term projects and steady long-term areas. When they work together fluidly they allow our true potential to shine. 

But once in a while, you may want to tilt that balance in favor of projects. Here’s why…

The explosive power of projects

Projects and areas make up the first two categories of my PARA organizing method. 

That is no accident – a Second Brain can be thought of as a cognitive support system for both executing projects and maintaining areas, which is why those two categories are front and center in how I recommend you organize your digital life.

When you launch a new project, you have to set aside many of your usual habits, routines, and boundaries for a time. In order to recruit the necessary energy for liftoff, you have to let go of some of the structures that you normally rely on to stay balanced.

For example, when you’re about to close a big sales contract with an important client, and every decision is pivotal, that isn’t the time to rigidly stick to your gym routine. When it’s the middle of the night and you’re on the precipice of a major breakthrough in a piece you’re writing, that isn’t the time to dogmatically conform to your usual bedtime. When a window of opportunity opens in front of you, all your clever strategies, productivity systems, meditation rituals, self-reflection practices, and mindful habits may well be liabilities. 

When you temporarily let go of control in this way, a huge amount of extra energy becomes available to you. In essence, you give up the ability to steer where you’re going in exchange for more acceleration and momentum. If you insist on always perfectly maintaining all of your areas at all times, you’ll never gain enough speed to take off from the runway. It’s better to accumulate deficits in those areas temporarily and pay them off later once liftoff has been achieved.

We all know the importance of work-life balance and healthy boundaries, but once in a while we have to let all that go and focus every ounce of energy we have on a singular outcome. This is, by definition, unsustainable. But that is why it’s so important to move fast and break through barriers as quickly as possible: the faster you reach your objective, the sooner you can stop to rest and recover. 

You may be wondering why you’d want to do any of this. Why let go of structure and routine? Why are productive explosions desirable or necessary? For one simple reason: they allow you to get an extraordinary amount done in a short period of time.

I can trace most of the major breakthroughs in my career to just a handful of brief productivity explosions: the 2-week period I outlined the first version of my Building a Second Brain course, which became the flagship product for my business; the week I holed up in a hotel in Portugal and wrote nearly the entirety of my series on Just-in-Time Project Management, shaping my thinking for years to come; and a couple 4-day writing retreats during which I made most of the progress on my recently published book. 

To be clear, I was completely exhausted by the end of each of these sprints. But once they came to an end, I had made so much progress that I had full permission to step back from my work and take the time I needed to recover.

Consistent habits and “1% gains” work for some kinds of progress, but not others. If you’re trying to complete a major creative work, such as a book, website, proposal, or event, for example, these kinds of projects can’t be moved forward by tinkering with them for 30 minutes per day. They are informationally complex, which means you have to spend a lot of time loading up context into your brain before you take even one step. For such endeavors, only sprints will work.

Modern knowledge work is so complex and demanding, it is wise to think of ourselves as “cognitive athletes.” Unlike professional athletes, however, we have to train our mental fitness to run both sprints and marathons at different times.

Some seasons of our lives are all about the journey, but others are more like sprints.

Source: The Universe Will Now Explode for Your Pleasure by Venkatesh Rao

Thank you to Julia Saxena, Beth, Ashpreet Singh, Mike Schmitz, Kevin Mooney, Jeff Brown, and Gavin Rodriguez for their feedback and suggestions on this piece.

The post Project People vs. Area People: Are You Running a Sprint Or a Marathon? appeared first on Forte Labs.

The True Meaning of Productivity | Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal

I sat down in person with my friend, productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal, for a 1-hour deep dive conversation.

We covered a lot of ground, including…

How having a child impacted my productivityMy journey into the world of productivityHow to keep up with managing information flows Is the world moving away from productivity?What productivity means to meWhy building a business is at the core of what it means to make a positive impact on the worldThe Building a Second Brain bookAnd more

Watch the full deep dive below or listen on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or Google Podcasts. 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post The True Meaning of Productivity | Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal appeared first on Forte Labs.

How to Create a Knowledge Library | Art of Manliness Podcast

I joined Brett McKay on the Art of Manliness Podcast to talk about why and how we build a Second Brain, how to free up brain capacity, and the importance of information management. 

We also covered:

How to decide what to capture in our Second Brain The importance of a knowledge library The best capture tool on the market And much more… 

Listen to the episode directly on the Art of Manliness Podcast, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or Spotify. 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How to Create a Knowledge Library | Art of Manliness Podcast appeared first on Forte Labs.

How to Get More Out of Digital Notetaking | Goop

I sat down with Goop to talk about how to enhance the creative process, the benefits of externalizing your thoughts and how you can develop your Second Brain.

We also discussed: 

What is personal knowledge management The difference between digital notetaking vs paper notetakingHow we can learn to better manage information in the digital age

Read the full interview here: 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How to Get More Out of Digital Notetaking | Goop appeared first on Forte Labs.

Free To Learn: Curiosity, Playfulness, Sociability, and the Human Nature of Education

If you set out to create an educational system with the goal of preventing people from acquiring the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in today’s world, you would create the modern schooling system.

Before they start school, children learn at a pace that is simply mind-blowing. They come into the world burning to learn and genetically programmed with capacities that make them the ultimate learning machines.

Just think of some of the skills and information a kid absorbs in their first few years of life: how to walk, run, jump, and climb. They become fluent in one, and sometimes multiple languages. They wield those language skills to assert their will, to argue, to ask questions, to make others laugh, to make friends, and to make sense of their social and physical environments.

And they do all this without a curriculum, without tests or grades, without semesters and periods, or any of the structure of school.

In fact, when we introduce that structure, children’s learning dramatically slows down. We turn off their desire to learn and their capacity to absorb what they learn.

In his book Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life, Dr. Peter Gray tells the story of how his own child’s struggles with school provoked a shift away from neuroendocrinology, developmental psychology, and anthropology to now primarily focusing on children’s natural ways of learning and the life-long value of play. It began with a father wanting the best for his son, and eventually culminated with a book about the human nature of education.

I’ve summarized the book Free To Learn below because I want the information it contains to spread far and wide. These findings are critically important to everything from education, to parenting, to personal development, and far beyond.

I’ll focus on what I think are the most important, unusual, and powerful points from Gray’s message. Assume everything below is directly taken or paraphrased from the book, although I’ve tried to explain it in my own words. Any mistakes or misinterpretations are mine.

The Educative Instinct

Children are biologically predisposed to educate themselves. If you’ve ever seen a child left alone with an iPhone, you’ve seen how the core aspects of our human nature beautifully combine to drive self-education.

Just as we come wired with instinctive drives to eat and drink what we need to survive, we also come wired with instinctive drives to learn what we need to survive. These human educative drives—what a child uses to pick up an iPhone for the first time and quickly become fluent in its use —are curiosity, playfulness, and sociability.Curiosity drives the child to the apparatus. They want to know what it is, how it works, and what they might be able to do with it.

Playfulness drives the child to probe the apparatus. They hold it in front of their eyes, pass it from hand to hand, turn it over, rub it, shake it, squeeze it, drop it, pick it up, throw it, go get it. They are running little experiments, testing the apparatus’ properties and capabilities. 

Sociability drives the child to seek out people to tell them all about this fascinating apparatus and how it works.

This playful exploration is punctuated by moments of surprise, focused concentration, joy, and even frustration. But it is not long before the child, without any instruction from adults, is clicking, swiping, navigating, downloading, playing Angry Birds, and watching Blippi.

They try to discover what the apparatus is, how it works, and what they can do with it.

Curiosity: The Drive to Explore and Understand

All species are wired, to varying degrees, to explore, to probe their environment, and to figure out what they need for survival. Driven by this curiosity instinct, animals acquire information about their surroundings, food sources, predators, escape routes, hiding spots, and safe places to sleep.

Most research on the human curiosity instinct has been conducted with children. In hundreds of studies, children have been found to gaze far longer at novel scenes than at familiar scenes. They look much longer at events that seem to defy the laws of physics than at those that abide by them. They lose interest in a toy as soon as there is nothing new to learn from it.

To try to understand the world around them, children are pulled like a magnet towards anything that runs counter to expectation. They are relentlessly curious about anything new they encounter in their environment.

Playfulness: The Drive to Practice and Create

The playfulness drive is perfectly complementary to the curiosity drive. After the curiosity drive leads the child to pick up the iPhone, the playfulness drive kicks in.

If the curiosity drive is what pulls us towards novel things, the playfulness drive is what pushes us to get more familiar with those things. Without curiosity, we wouldn’t seek out anything new. Without playfulness, we wouldn’t become adept at anything.

In a classic series of research studies, a team of developmental psychologists looked at the transition from curiosity and exploration to play and practice. The shift from exploration to play, they found, is one from a focused, serious facial expression to a more relaxed, smiling one. There’s also a shift in heart rhythm—from slow and steady during an exploratory state of intense concentration to variable during a playful and relaxed state.

From a biological and evolutionary perspective, play is nature’s way of ensuring children acquire the skills necessary for survival.

With this understanding of play’s biological purposes, we can make sense of the patterns of play across species. For instance, it explains why:

Young animals play more than older animals. Younger animals play more because they have more to learn.Mammals play more than other classes of animals. Insects, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes come into the world with more or less fixed instincts. Because they don’t need to learn much to survive, they don’play much, if at all. Mammals, on the other hand, have more flexible instincts and to be effective, those instincts must be refined and shaped through play.

In other words, animals who don’t have much to learn are the least playful. Those whose surviving and thriving depends less on rigid instincts and more on learning are the most playful. (Interestingly, you can reliably predict what an animal will play at by knowing what skills it must develop to survive and reproduce.)

Sociability: The Drive to Share Information and Ideas

We are an intensely social species by nature.

Education, by Dr. Gray’s definition, is cultural transmission. It’s how each new generation of human beings, in any social group, acquires and builds upon the skills, knowledge, lore, and values of previous generations.

If there is no sociability, there is no education. If you eliminate sociability, you eliminate two of the most important forms of learning:

Observation. In The Anthropology of Learning in Childhood by anthropologist David Lancy, who has studied learning in many societies throughout the world, asserts that “The single most important form of learning is observation.” In just about every society, children first learn about culturally relevant activities and skills by watching and mimicing their elders.Age mixing. Teaching and learning are bidirectional activities: the “teacher” and “learner” learn from each other. By interacting with younger children, older ones learn skills, acquire knowledge, and gain experience they otherwise wouldn’t. They gain a deeper understanding of concepts by teaching them to younger ones, which forces them to think about what they do or do not know. 

We live in a social world. We cannot survive, and we certainly cannot thrive, without learning to cooperate with others.

The Sins Of Our Schooling System

“It is nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.”

Albert Einstein

Modern schools seem almost perfectly designed to turn off the instincts and drives that make children such natural learners. Our system of schooling is not made to encourage curiosity , playfulness, or sociability. It teaches, encourages, and rewards the opposite.

Schools kill the curiosity drive

The biggest most enduring lesson of school is that learning is work. The implicit and sometimes explicit message of our schooling system is, “Do what you are told.”

School is not a setting for exploration and discovery, but for indoctrination.

Through the forced nature of school, students learn to jump through hoops and check off boxes. Worst of all, they learn to silence their innate curiosity.

 

 

Schools kill the playfulness drive

In school, children are…

Confined to a largely unchanging environment.Not free to pursue their own interests in self-directed ways.Continuously evaluated, and the concern for evaluation and pleasing the teacher overrides the desire to explore and practice, to discover and fail.Shown one and only one way to solve a problem and are led to believe that other ways are incorrect.

All of which is to say: playfulness is thwarted in school.

Dr. Gray cites the research of the developmental psychologist Susan Engel and her colleagues. In a study of kindergarten and fifth-grade classrooms in the United States, the researchers repeatedly observed that when  children asked questions, they asked about rules and requirements – such as how much time they had to finish a task – not about the subject itself. Questions about the subject were asked almost entirely by teachers, and the students’ task was to guess at the answers the teachers were looking for. And when students did seem to show a spark of interest, the teacher often cut the interest off, so as not to fall behind on the assignment.

Who doesn’t have their own story of playing with something in the back of class before the teacher said, “Put that away and finish your work”?

And that is essentially what school is all about: the suppression of curiosity and playfulness so students can do what they’re told when they’re told to do it.

Schools kill the sociability drive

When students are evaluated for their learning and are compared with other students, as they constantly are in school, they learn to look out just for themselves and to do better than others.

You have the drive to share information and ideas? Don’t bring it into school. In school, sharing information and ideas is  known as “cheating.” Besides, helping other students learn risks raising the grading curve and lowering the helper’s position on it.

School, in other words, teaches selfishness, not sociability.

Dr. Gray’s prediction is that within fifty years, today’s approach to schooling will be seen as a barbaric relic of the past. How did they land on a school system that runs counter to nearly every aspect of human nature?

In fifty years, Dr. Gray argues convincingly that schools all across the world will be modeled after a place called Sudbury Valley.

The Sudbury Valley Model of Education

Sudbury Valley is a private day school founded by Daniel Greenberg located in a semi-rural part of Massachusetts.

In the early to mid-1960s, Greenberg was a young professor at Columbia University. A rising star popular among students, Greenberg became disenchanted by his students’ motivations to get the highest grades they could while learning the least possible amount of the subject matter.

Unlike most educators, Greenberg saw this not as a problem with the students, but rather a problem with the educational system. Why, he wondered, couldn’t there be an educational system that helps students develop passionate interests and then pursue those interests?

So Greenberg resigned from his professorship and moved to the wilderness in the Sudbury River region of eastern Massachusetts to ponder and write about the nature of education. In his book The Crisis in American Education, he argued, “The educational system in our country today is the most un-American institution we have in our midst.” In a democracy, Greenberg asserts, a school should be a setting for exploration and discovery, not indoctrination.

So in 1968, Greenberg founded such a school: the Sudbury Valley School. For its first four decades in operation, Sudbury Valley was the best-kept secret in education. But the secret is getting out and today roughly three dozen schools throughout the world are modeled explicitly after Sudbury Valley.

The basic premise of the school’s educational philosophy is that each person is responsible for his or her own education. It follows that adults do not control children’s education; children educate themselves. The school establishes no curriculum, gives no tests, and does not rank or in other ways evaluate students.

Additionally:

The school is a democratic community. The primary administrative body is the School Meeting, which includes all students and staff members and operates on a one-person-one-vote basis, regardless of the person’s age.The students are free. Students are free all day to move about the school buildings and ten-acre campus as they please and to associate with whom they please.The students are not assigned to grades or groups. There are no “first graders,” “middle schoolers,” or “high school students.” Equipment and staff expertise are available, but students are always free to use or not use those resources as they choose. Classes in specific subjects are offered when students request them, but no one is required or particularly encouraged to join a class and many students never join one.The school has a non-evaluation policy. Students who desire a diploma from the school must prepare and defend a thesis explaining why they are ready to graduate and how they have prepared themselves for responsible adult life outside of the school.

Dr. Gray’s interest in the school began after his son rebelled against traditional schooling. He sent him to Sudbury Valley, and his son immediately took to this radically different approach to education. Still, Dr. Gray was concerned. By attending such a school, might his son be narrowing his future options? Would he be able to go to college? Might certain potential career paths be cut off?

As a scientist and conscientious parent, he decided to conduct a systematic survey of the school’s graduates. The results of the study, which were published in the American Journal of Education, were as follows:

Graduates who had pursued higher education (about 75 percent of the total) reported no particular difficulty getting into the schools of their choice or doing well there once admitted. (Some, including a few who had never previously taken a formal course, had gone on to highly prestigious colleges and universities and performed well.)Regardless of whether they had pursued higher education, the graduates were remarkably successful in finding employment that interested them and earned them a living in a wide range of occupations, including business, arts, science, medicine, other service professions, and skilled trades.None of the graduates complained about difficulty adjusting to the formal structure of college or employment.82 percent of respondents said that their attendance at Sudbury Valley had benefited them for their further education and careers.

Dr. Gray distilled the benefits to Sudbury Valley graduates into four categories:

Being responsible and self-directed.Having high motivation for further learning.Having acquired useful skills and knowledge.Lacking fear of authority figures.

And perhaps the most telling finding was that not a single one of the graduates said that their life would be better if they had attended a traditional school rather than Sudbury Valley.

The Best Quotes From Free To Learn

“Children are designed, by nature, to play and explore on their own, independently of adults. They need freedom in order to develop; without it they suffer. The drive to play freely is a basic, biological drive.”

“The school system has directly and indirectly, often unintentionally, fostered an attitude in society that children learn and progress primarily by doing tasks that are directed and evaluated by adults, and that children’s own activities are wasted time.”

“Children don’t like school because to them school is—dare I say it—prison. Children don’t like school because, like all human beings, they crave freedom, and in school, they are not free.”

“Perhaps kids today play on the computer as much as they do partly because that is one place where they can play freely, without adult intervention and direction.”

“One thing we know for sure about anxiety and depression is that they correlate strongly with people’s sense of control or lack of control over their own lives. Those who believe they are in charge of their own fate are much less likely to become anxious or depressed than are those who believe they are victims of circumstances beyond their control.”

Glossary

Dr. Peter Gray uses many terms in ways or with a specificity we typically don’t. Borrowing from his definitions, I will briefly summarize those terms key to understanding and appreciating the argument packaged in Free to Learn.

Education. Education is cultural transmission. It is the set of processes by which each new generation of human beings, in any social group, acquires and builds upon the skills, knowledge, lore, and values—that is, the culture—of previous generations.

Play. Play is a confluence of several characteristics. Dr. Gray boils it down to following five: (1) play is self-chosen and self-directed; (2) play is activity in which means are more valued than ends; (3) play has structure or rules that are not dictated by physical necessity but emanate from the minds of the players; (4) play is imaginative, nonliteral, mentally removed in some way from “real” or “serious” life; and (5) play involves an active, alert, but non-stressed frame of mind.

Free play. Play in which the players themselves decide what and how to play and are free to modify the goals and rules as they go along. Pickup baseball is free play; a Little League game is not. Free play is how children learn to structure their own behavior.

Unschooling. Most simply, unschooling is not schooling. Unschooling parents do not send their children to school, and at home they do not do the kinds of things that are done at school. They do not establish a curriculum, do not require particular assignments for the purpose of education, and do not test their children to measure progress. Instead, they allow their kids freedom to pursue their own interests and to learn, in their own ways, what they need to know to follow those interests.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Free To Learn: Curiosity, Playfulness, Sociability, and the Human Nature of Education appeared first on Forte Labs.

Why We Should Build a Second Brain | Secrets of Success with Bill Horan

I joined Bill Horan on the Secrets of Success show to talk about why we should build a Second Brain, how our Second Brain can help us reach our full potential, and what the 4 superpowers of a Second Brain are.

We also discussed:

How businesses can benefit from a Second BrainThe elevator pitch for Building a Second BrainWhy we are surrounded by knowledge but starving for wisdomAnd much more… 

Listen to the show directly on  Secrets of Success or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Why We Should Build a Second Brain | Secrets of Success with Bill Horan appeared first on Forte Labs.

How to Sustain Behavior Change | Creator Lab Podcast

I joined Bilal Zaidi on the Creator Lab podcast to talk about sustaining behavior change, adopting the mindset of a curator, and designing notes for your future self.

We also covered: 

Why there is no right way to express your thoughtsThe power of cohort-based courses A comprehensive summary of the CODE method (Capture, Organize, Distill and Express) A live screenshare of my Second BrainWhy we shouldn’t start from scratch every time we start a new project  

Watch the full video below or l isten to the podcast version on Apple podcast or Spotify. 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How to Sustain Behavior Change | Creator Lab Podcast appeared first on Forte Labs.

How a Second Brain Is Relevant to Cryptocurrency and Web3 | Coin Central

I sat down with Coin Central to discuss how to make your knowledge more accessible and why we should apply the scarcity vs. abundance perspective to our knowledge. 

We also dived into: 

How personal knowledge management can improve your intuition How a scarcity mindset relates to crypto investing and lifeHow to beat beat cryptocurrency information burnout

Read the full interview here:

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How a Second Brain Is Relevant to Cryptocurrency and Web3 | Coin Central appeared first on Forte Labs.

How to Organize Your Life | Ali Abdaal

Popular productivity YouTuber and Ali Abdaal summarized Building a Second Brain in this 15-minute video.

This is an incredible distillation and expression of the book’s core principles.

Ali discussed: 

What is a Second Brain and why should you have oneThe CODE method: my 4-step process for knowledge management and creative workHow having a Second Brain has helped Ali in his work and life 

Watch the full video here: 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How to Organize Your Life | Ali Abdaal appeared first on Forte Labs.

How Lego Relates to Digital Notetaking | Conversations About Collaboration With Phil Simon

I joined Phil Simon on the  Conversations About Collaborations podcast to discuss legos, productivity, pencils, and metadata.

We also covered: 

How Lego is similar to digital notetakingWhat is the perfect organization systemThe power of knowledge managementThe timeless approach to a Second BrainWhy no one app will save you

Listen to the podcast here: 

Apple podcasts Audible Phil Simon Podcast 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post How Lego Relates to Digital Notetaking | Conversations About Collaboration With Phil Simon appeared first on Forte Labs.