Tiago Forte's Blog, page 16

The Untethered Soul: The Roadmap of My Personal Growth – Part 2

 As I approached the town of Alachua, I started looking for the site of the Temple.

I half expected a towering spire to appear along the highway, but there wasn’t one. Then I expected to see a billboard along the two-lane highway threading its way through the backcountry, but there was nothing. As I turned off the main road onto a dirt track, I was sure I would encounter at least a sign telling me I’d arrived.

But there was no formal entrance, and before I knew it I was parked in an ordinary parking lot at the edge of a sprawling plot of land. I glanced Singer driving by in an old beat-up pickup truck. “What is going on here?” I wondered. Could it be that this famed guru had nothing in the way of ceremony or fanfare?

I parked the car and started strolling around the lot. There wasn’t a person in sight, and I walked all around the property until I ended up back at my car. I encountered only a small handful of unremarkable buildings spread around the land. It was getting late, and I decided to head out and find a place to stay the night.

My mind was still racing, trying to come up with an explanation for what I was doing here in case someone confronted me. But I also trusted my intuition that it was important for me to be here. I felt a sense of peace and quiet descend on me; the kind that arrives when you literally follow your heart.

I made my way to the local Motel 6 and settled in for the night, with a plan to return the next morning.

Samskaras: Impressions from the past

What is it about the heart center that allows it to open and close? Let’s look at the mechanics.

The heart closes when it is blocked, like any valve. It gets blocked by unfinished energy patterns from the past, which are stored in the heart for later processing. The Hindus call such a pattern a “samskara.” Samskara is a Sanskrit word meaning “impression,” like an impression of a shape upon the sand. 

Think of it like a little energy loop that keeps a bit of information trapped and cycling in place. This packet of cycling energy is quite stable, and can remain there indefinitely. All the samskaras you’ve collected over your lifetime are stored there in your heart center.

If these samskaras build up enough, they can block the flow of energy flowing through you. Like plaques building up in your veins, they can choke off the flow. When this happens, your view of life becomes dark because every emotion has to pass through that dark energy.

Every samskara is programmed with the specific details of the event that created it. 

For example, if you caught your boyfriend cheating on you, very detailed data about that trauma is embedded within. The emotions of the event, the circumstances surrounding the event, the people and places associated with the event – you will have enhanced sensitivity toward any of these details. 

Your entire being wants to process this information and be free of it. At first, it will try to express itself through the mind. You’ll think about it constantly, for days, your mind filling with chatter.

Anything that reminds you of this traumatic event – a similar location, the same time of year, the people who were there, or even the color of a shirt that reminds you of your ex – any element in common will trigger a cascade of frenzied thoughts as your inner voice tries to explain, rationalize, and justify what happened.

Samskaras are not a metaphor. They are real. They don’t just disappear on their own with time. 

Long term, the ones that aren’t processed via the mind will be forced into the heart, where they will express themselves through emotional upheaval. Any experience connected to the original trauma will bring all that data rushing back into your awareness, imploring you to feel it fully this time. If you still resist it, all that unprocessed energy gets forced into deep storage in the heart.

We generally don’t like any reminder of uncomfortable memories from the past. We call it “being triggered” and do everything possible to avoid it.

But there is another way to treat the experience of being triggered. An experience is just a pattern of energy flowing through your senses. It isn’t the experience itself that creates a samskara. It is when we block it, and close around it, and prevent it from passing through us, that the pattern gets trapped within.

These patterns are flowing through us constantly, all day every day. You’ll see that they are awakening and touching you on a deep level all the time. Moment after moment, experiences are rushing in and you are growing as your heart and mind expand. 

Every moment can be a stimulating, moving experience if you are completely open to it.

The service begins

I returned to the Temple of the Universe the next day, completely unsure of what to expect.

I wandered back onto the temple grounds, and soon found myself drawn to a central building, made from dark wood with a sloping roof. It was the main meeting hall. Coincidentally, a weekly service was about to begin.

The sanctuary had an open floor plan, without chairs or benches. Like a yoga studio, a slightly raised platform marked the front of the room, with the rest of the seating area arranged in a semi-circle around it. 

Pictures of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary hung next to Hindu gods and a smiling statue of Buddha. It was like a spiritual United Nations, all faiths and traditions welcome. I noticed a portrait of Yogananda, an influential guru who had been one of the first Eastern teachers to visit the U.S. and had famously inspired Steve Jobs.

There were about 25 people in the room. I could tell most of them were here for the first time. I would later find out they were from all over the country, and most of them had simply driven here out of curiosity after reading The Untethered Soul or Singer’s other books. 

I spoke with one young couple, teenagers from a couple states away, who huddled together on the floor with a blanket wrapped around them, eager to hear more about what this philosophy entailed. I was moved by the sight of so many curious seekers, meeting here in the middle of the woods for no reason other than a thirst for knowledge. It had been a long time since I found myself in such a congregation.

The service was unlike any I had ever been to. Singer came in from the back and sat on a cushion at one edge of the raised platform. He exuded a humble, yet expansive presence. His remarks seemed unplanned, but purposeful. His subject that night: a history of the universe.

That’s right. Singer chose this evening to tell us the (abbreviated) history of the entire universe. 

He started with the Big Bang, describing the unfathomable amounts of energy unleashed in an instant of primordial time, and how it expanded from there at close to the speed of light. He recounted the formation of galaxy clusters, waving his hands in the air like a conductor leading a celestial orchestra. He breathlessly narrated how entire star systems spun out as the newborn universe cooled. It was all scientifically accurate, as far as I could tell. The birth of a purely physical universe, unfolding according to natural laws.

Singer went on with his story for more than 30 minutes, every one of us spellbound by the play by play of an infant universe in the throes of cataclysmic formation. He slowed down as he approached geological time, narrating how our solar system began to take shape, and how the Earth and other rocky planets coalesced out of the cooling debris. He moved on to how the molten core of our planet came to be, the mysterious emergence of life from bubbling wetlands, and finished with the punctuation mark of humankind’s origins on the plains of East Africa.

It was a sermon, but not one with a single takeaway or lesson. As Singer finished, we were all struck with a profound sense of our insignificance. The realization that we are all just miniscule specks of dust in a vast universe whose existence has nothing to do with us.

Next we moved on to music. Instruments were passed around, and everyone joined in with an eclectic mix of percussion instruments, chanting, a melodic chorus, and occasional raucous cries. There was no clear object of worship, and no worship leader. 

I was taken aback, amused, but most of all, moved by this spontaneous outpouring of emotion. Free of dogma and theology, we were just people brought together by our search for something beyond ourselves. I was allowing myself to reconnect with the world of the spirit after years spent denying it.

I spoke with Singer after the service as he stood by the exit and greeted people. His eyes were so crinked by smiling that I couldn’t tell if they were open. He looked down at the ground and wouldn’t meet my eye, and kept bowing with his hands folded together in front of his chest as I thanked him for what he had written. He seemed introverted, almost shy in the presence of so many guests. I had the sense that this kind of encounter was a frequent occurrence for him.

As I shook Singer’s hand, I felt an electric prickle moving up my forearm as if he was plugged into a wall socket. In his book, he had described waves of energy flowing through his body and washing over his limbs, and I couldn’t help but imagine them flowing up through my arms as we touched.

The mechanics of healing

When a samskara is stimulated, it begins to open like a flower and release its stored energy. 

You’ll experience this as flashes of memory from the original event rushing into your mind – the thoughts you had at the time, the feelings you experienced, even smells and bodily sensations. The samskara stores a complete snapshot of the event down to the tiniest details.

If old memories come up because you were unable to process them before, their reemergence is another chance to let them go. Do what you have to do to process them – cry, laugh, scream, relax your heart, forgive. Just don’t push them back down. 

Of course it hurts when they come up. What was stored with pain is going to be released with pain. You get to decide if you want to continue walking around with stored pain blocking your heart and limiting your life. It only hurts for a minute and then it’s over.

In the end, we all have a choice: do we want to try and change the world so it doesn’t disturb our samskaras, or are we willing to go through the process of letting them go?

You can reach a point where you become centered and aware enough that you just sit back and watch this stuff come up. It will arise like a torrent and pass right through and out of you. The samskaras will come up during the mundane events of your day and even in your dreams. Your heart will become accustomed to the process of releasing and cleansing. Don’t process them one by one; that’s too slow. Just stay centered behind the flow and let go. 

As you go through life, things will happen that trigger the stored energies within you. 

Someone disagrees with you harshly in a meeting. Your ego and pride are hurt, and you feel a tightening. That is your cue that it’s time to grow. The minute you sense the energy within you starting to get strange, just stop. Stop mid-sentence, because you know where that road will lead. You can actually feel a sense of anticipation and excitement when this happens. It’s time to let go of the part of yourself you’re defending. 

Every time you feel the energy get activated inside, relax behind it. Don’t fight with it. Don’t try to change it. Don’t judge it. Don’t tell yourself, “Oh I can’t believe I’m feeling this.” Then you’re just going with the guilt thoughts instead of the wounded pride thoughts. Relax the area around your heart, and play with letting go of the feeling of being bothered.

This isn’t about fighting or struggling with the emotions you feel inside. Being free is not about the absence of emotions. There is nothing wrong with feeling anger, jealousy, or attraction. It’s not your fault those energies exist. Just remember that all those thoughts and feelings don’t make any difference. They don’t make you pure or impure. They are not you. They belong to the human you are watching. 

What I am describing here is a spiritual path in which you use life itself to free yourself. 

A walk with Rose

The service ended, Singer and his crew left, and a few of us were left in the meeting hall speaking amongst ourselves.

I felt awkward. I’m not very good at making small talk with strangers. But across the room I saw a middle-aged woman, and felt compelled to speak to her. I learned that her name was Rose. She was here for the same reasons I was – out of curiosity, hope, and a search for an answer to a question.

We began to walk around the grounds together, and I discovered that she was also dealing with a debilitating health condition. At this point I had spent years trying to diagnose and fix an unexplained pain in my throat, which I’ve written about previously. She’d also tried every kind of doctor and treatment to no avail. I felt a strong sense of kinship with her, as if we were destined to meet.

I had walked around the grounds of the Temple the day before, but hadn’t known about any of the trails leading into the wilderness. She led me to one, and we spent a couple hours exploring the most beautiful, untouched trail in the fading twilight. We spoke of our journeys, of what it was like to hope against hope. We talked about our families, the impact our condition had had on us, and what we had learned from Singer’s work.

For so long I had kept my own chronic pain hidden from almost everyone. It wasn’t supposed to exist, and so I didn’t speak of it, as if not speaking its name would make it cease to exist. I had built up a structure of shame around my pain, as if it was my fault somehow. That whole aspect of my life had become like a forbidden secret, a corner of my psyche kept hidden under lock and key. But the longer I refused to share it with anyone, the more it dominated my thoughts.

Speaking with Rose I felt a newfound freedom inside me. Seeing my own experience reflected in hers, I could see for the first time that my pain had a purpose – that it was a necessary and important part of my life journey. I hadn’t expected it, and hadn’t wanted it, but that was exactly why it was so valuable. It was teaching me who I was and who I could become in the face of adversity.

In his autobiography, Singer writes of the moment the spiritual flow that he had spent years cultivating began to overflow into his intellect and creativity. 

He was still pursuing a doctorate in economics, but had all but dropped out in order to meditate for as many hours per day as possible. But his professor insisted that he finish his final paper, and he decided to surrender to the request like so many others. He tells the story:

Notepad after notepad became filled with a totally logical presentation that began with a premise, laid out its argument, and ended with a conclusion. Along the way, there were graphs to present logical relationships, and there were references to facts I had previously read or heard in class. These facts would need to be polished and footnoted later, so I simply left space for them and kept on writing what was created in my mind. I stopped for nothing. There was no worrying or judgment of good or bad; I just allowed the process to unfold. When artists create a work, they first get the inspiration, and then they bring it down to the physical plane. That process is exactly what happened to me that night alone in my van. The inspiration for the entire paper came all at once, and then my mind digested it and gave it form. Instead of a sculpture, a painting, or a symphony, my work of art was an economic treatise. It came from where art comes from, but the medium of expression was logical thinking instead of marble or paint. I had no idea where that spark of inspiration came from. I only knew that in the flash of a moment, I had all the material I needed to write a doctoral-level paper.

As the parts of my life began to connect and make sense to me, I was starting to experience this kind of integration in my own life. All the flows started coming together – the flow of life, the flow of meditation, the flow of creativity, and the flow of the intellect. 

I began to understand that these are not separate flows, each requiring their own dedicated effort. They are interconnected, the flow of emotions driving the surge of ideas which is channeled through the flow of focused writing. 

I was one being, with information flowing through me as fast as I would allow it. I could label that information in different ways, but in the end it was all the same – the essence of who I am manifesting itself into the physical reality around me. 

Like a great engine starting, I began to experience inside of myself the quickening pace of a heart and mind unblocked and uninhibited by the traumas of my past. Not that they were all gone. Far from it! But after several years of seeking and meditation, it was as if a critical threshold had been reached. It now took as much energy to hold back the flow as it did to let it rip. 

I decided to stand aside and see what would happen if I removed my “self” – my ego, my pride, my fear, my past – as the bottleneck to my creative expression. I would perform my own version of a surrender experiment. 

It would be a grand experiment to find out for myself just how many good things life would bring my way if I expressed who I was without reservation.

To be continued…

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The post The Untethered Soul: The Roadmap of My Personal Growth – Part 2 appeared first on Forte Labs.

The Untethered Soul: The Roadmap of My Personal Growth – Part 1

One book has impacted me more than any other over the past 10 years: The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer.

I first read it in 2014 about a year after becoming self-employed. The first rush of excitement at my newfound freedom had waned, and I was beginning to feel the turbulence of the uncertain freelance world.

When I think back to the young man I was at this time, in my 20s, I see someone who felt threatened by life. 

I wasn’t able to simply be with many of my emotions. Fear, anxiety, disappointment, helplessness, and rage were my enemies, and I arranged my life to avoid them as much as possible. I thought that if somehow I could just not feel those feelings, I would be happy.

But my desire to start my own business had plunged me into a world of tremendous uncertainty and turmoil. I constantly found myself in uncomfortable situations – with disappointed clients, or marketing my services, or expressing my ideas with confidence – that I felt completely unprepared to handle.

I wish I could say I sought out personal growth on purpose. I wish I could say I was a naturally spiritual person courageously seeking out answers to the big questions of human existence. The truth is that life demanded it of me in order to survive.

I felt like I was at the center of a slowly constricting circle, the emotional borders of my life closing in on me inexorably.

Late one night, I was browsing Quora, searching for practical answers to my existential questions. Someone recommended the book, and I ordered it. I needed some wisdom on the intense worries and fears beginning to rage within me: Would I succeed? Would I fail? Was I making a terrible mistake that would end my career before it had even started?

I read it once, and then I kept reading it year after year. I was astonished to read Singer describe in precise detail what I was experiencing inside in a way no one ever had before. I used the book like a roadmap for my personal growth, guiding me on a journey of self-understanding that I was only dimly aware I had embarked on. 

In 2015, I went on to read Singer’s autobiography, The Surrender Experiment, which tells the story of his journey from young man to successful entrepreneur to spiritual guru over the course of several decades.

Hearing about the life experiences that led to his awakening made his writing all the more compelling, and I felt a deep desire to know more.

Singer told the story of how he conducted a “surrender experiment,” which involved continuously surrendering to the flow of life’s events, rather than trying to change or control them. He made “yes” his default response to whatever request life seemed to be asking of him, even if it required giving up his own plans and goals. 

I remember reaching the end of Singer’s autobiography, closing my eyes, and trying to sense what life was asking of me. I was shocked to hear the answer that arose within me: “Go for a visit.”

“What?!” I thought. I was supposed to go visit Michael Singer in person? What an absurd idea. Still, I googled his meditation and retreat center, called the Temple of the Universe, and discovered it was located in a small town called Alachua, in Northern Florida outside of Gainesville.

When would I ever find myself in Florida? I couldn’t afford to make such a trip on a whim.

Then with a start I realized I was due to visit Florida for a friend’s wedding the very next month.

With goosebumps on my arms, and after counting every last dollar in my checking account, I made the decision to extend my trip by a few days. Somehow I knew I needed to meet the man behind the writing that had affected me so much.

I’ve waited years to tell this story because it’s taken this long for me to understand what has changed for me through reading and practicing Singer’s work. These ideas have provoked a series of mindset shifts that have radically transformed how I approach business, relationships, emotions, and life itself. 

This is the story of the transformational journey I made to the Temple of the Universe, the most powerful ideas I’ve drawn from Singer’s writing, and my own insights into the nature of the human psyche I’ve discovered along the way.

The wisdom of direct experience

I was raised in a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian church in Southern California. 

As I’ve written about previously, every aspect of that belief system points to outside sources of authority: God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Bible, angels and other heavenly beings, apostles and prophets of the past, church elders and parents, in approximately that order.

Not only are you not supposed to trust your inner intuitions and feelings, you should be actively suspicious of them. The devil speaks in the quiet of your idle mind, so it’s best to follow the guidance of your elders.

The Untethered Soul starts with a premise that couldn’t be further from that view. You are the sole authority over your soul. Only you and your personal experiences can point you toward truth. Experimentation is not only allowed – it is essential. You must go on your own journey of self-transformation to discover the nature of that truth for yourself.

This is an empirical philosophy based on direct experience. Singer asks us to apply the scientific lens of skepticism and questioning to our spiritual life, and to be open to whatever answers arise.

What are you directly experiencing exactly? The self – the structure of beliefs, opinions, wounds, narratives, aversions, cravings, and thoughts that we call the “human psyche.”

Every experience we have in the material world is a reflection of our psyche. The experiences that hurt are pointing to the parts of ourselves that are hurt, or incomplete, or in need of protection. The experiences that give us joy are pointing to the parts of ourselves that are fluid and alive.

Singer’s message is simple: we can use the everyday experiences of life to heal our psyche of the wounds of the past. The answer lies not in theological texts or abstract theories, but in the moment to moment experience of being alive.

Learning to hear the inner voice

Singer tells the story of the day his spiritual path began.

At the time, he was working on a Phd in economics at the University of Florida, with hopes of eventually becoming a college professor. He had no preexisting interest in spirituality or metaphysics. In his own words:

I was a ’60s-groomed, college-intellectual hippie. It is worth mentioning just how analytically oriented I was at the time. I had never even taken a philosophy, psychology, or religion course while in college. My electives at school were symbolic logic, advanced calculus, and theoretical statistics. This makes what happened to me all the more amazing.

Out of the blue, for no apparent reason, as he was sitting on the couch in his living room and hanging out with his brother-in-law, Singer noticed for the very first time a voice inside his head:

There was a complete sense of separation between my anxious mind, which was spewing out possible topics to talk about, and me, the one who was simply aware that my mind was doing this. It was like I was suddenly able to remain above my mind and quietly watch the thoughts being created. Believe it or not, that subtle shift in my seat of awareness became a tornado that rearranged my entire life.

He noticed that the voice never admitted it was wrong, and that he would continue believing the voice even after it had been wrong a hundred times before. Every moment he was awake, he was tormented by the mad ravings of what he began to call his “inner monologue.”

Critiquing, narrating, judging, wondering, inventing stories, asking questions, answering them – we all have this voice, and it never stops. Noticing it leads to the natural next step – realizing that you are not the voice. You are the one hearing it. How could a voice notice itself? Clearly there have to be two entities in there – the voice that speaks, and the one who hears it speak.

Which soon leads to the next realization – that our problems in life don’t come from events in our lives. There is no pain, fear, anxiety, or depression anywhere out there in the natural world. Our problems come from the chaos and commotion that that voice in our heads makes about what is happening.

We don’t really experience the world itself. We experience a mental model of the world we are running in our heads. And the voice is the hidden narrator of everything going on in that little fake world we’ve created for ourselves. 

The purpose of the voice is to protect you from the uncertainty of reality. To filter the raw stream of sensory data into a nice story where you can feel in control. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel in control. But true personal growth is about transcending the part of yourself that thinks it needs to be in control in order to be okay.

You are not a human; you just happen to be watching one. The thoughts of the human you are inhabiting are not your thoughts. The feelings of the human you are watching are not your feelings. There is something about you that exists apart from all the experiences and memories of the human you happen to be monitoring.

Singer’s story gave my meditation – and through it, my spiritual life – a goal and a direction: I wanted to learn how to separate my sense of “me” from the inner storm of thoughts and feelings that never let me rest. I had learned the “how” of meditation at this point, but now I had the “why.”

So much of spiritual language speaks of “oneness” and wholeness, but paradoxically, before I could appreciate oneness, I first had to experience a sense of separation – between myself and the voice inside that never stops speaking.

A monument to late-stage capitalism

I touched down in Florida on a winter afternoon in early 2015.

This was a Florida winter – blazing sun, with everyone dressed in t-shirts and shorts. As I picked up my rental car, a white Jeep Grand Cherokee, that voice started speaking up inside me.

What the hell are you doing? Are you crazy? What do you think you’re doing driving out here uninvited? Who do you think you are? You have no plan and no justification! What a weirdo. What will everyone think of you when you show up there unannounced? You’ll probably be arrested for trespassing.

As these thoughts raced through my mind, I decided to take a break from driving and reconsider my plan. I saw a sign on the side of the freeway for the annual Florida State Fair, and thought this might be a fun diversion from my worries.

The only picture I took on this trip, at the Florida State Fair

I parked the car and began walking the grounds, amazed at this monument to late-stage American capitalism. Hot tubs, huge televisions, putting machines, tires, drones, and every kind of junk food imaginable – it felt like a cornucopia of everything modern consumer culture had to offer. 

It was all so clearly unnecessary. Like a caricature, all this excess and materialism only served to highlight how meaningless it all was. I was looking for something different, something deeper and more timeless. 

My resolve strengthened, I got back into the car and exited back onto the freeway, determined to find what I had come here for as the voice raged louder and louder. I didn’t know why I was going to the Temple of the Universe, or who or what I expected to find there. I only knew that there was something there I needed to see.

Opening and closing the valve of the heart

Think of a time when you were in the presence of someone you loved. 

You trusted them, so you lowered the walls protecting your heart. This allowed energy to rush into you, filling you with a sense of exhilaration and joy.

Now let’s say that person does something to offend you. Now you feel a tightness in your chest. A closing and restriction of the heart’s energies.

The next time you see them, you don’t feel so high. You feel guarded and wary. There doesn’t seem to be anything to talk about. This happened because you closed your heart. The energy flowing in and through your heart center was choked off.

Now imagine that person apologizes and makes it right. Your heart opens again, doesn’t it? With this opening you are once again filled with energy, and the love starts flowing again.

Singer asks us to closely examine what is really happening here. Clearly there is energy involved. A mere exchange of words can open up or close down vast amounts of energy within us. This source of energy is distinct from the calories we consume. It isn’t biochemical in nature. It is a kind of energy governed by the emotions flowing through our heart.

Every great faith tradition speaks of this spiritual energy. In ancient Chinese medicine, it is called chi. In yoga, it is called Shakti. In Christianity, it is called spirit. It goes by many names.

The important thing to understand is that this kind of energy is your birthright. You can call upon it any time you want. When this energy fills you, you feel like you can take on anything. It gushes up spontaneously from within and washes over you in waves, restoring and replenishing you. 

Which raises the question: What causes us to stop feeling this energy?

There are various energy centers in the human body, which the yogis call “chakras.” The one we are most familiar with is the heart. Singer asserts that when something happens to us that we believe shouldn’t have happened, we decide to close our heart center and cut ourselves off from this energy source.

The first time I read this, I thought it was outrageous. Of course no one simply decides to close their heart! I couldn’t see that that was a choice, much less a choice anyone would make consciously.

But as time passed, and through a lot of meditation, I began to see that there is indeed a brief moment when a choice exists. Someone cuts me off in traffic, and for a split second I get to decide: Do I let this experience pass through me, or do I cling to it and allow it to shut me down?

I’ve come to deeply appreciate Singer’s advice on the matter: “Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”

At first this feels unnatural, because we have been trained to close down in a wide variety of situations: when someone criticizes us, or disagrees with us, or takes something from us, or accuses us of something. We are conditioned to close down at the first sign of any uncomfortable emotion – anger, fear, grief, injustice, shame, sadness.

If you really look, you’ll notice that we create long lists of conditions for when we will remain open, and when we will close. We decide that we will remain open as long as things go our way, and people are nice to us, and life is predictable, and our plans come to fruition. 

But by defining what we need in order to keep our heart open, we are defining our limits. We are allowing the mind to create triggers that open and close us.

We are taught as children that we must close down to protect ourselves. But closing our hearts doesn’t really protect us from anything. It only shuts us off from the infinite energy source that is accessed through the valve of the heart. This is how the world becomes frightening: when any one of a vast number of events has the ability to close us off from the energy source that sustains us.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can actually train ourselves to do the opposite. When someone disappoints us, or a conversation upsets us, we can teach ourselves to open our hearts in response. The disappointment and upset isn’t coming from the outside anyway – it’s coming from a wounded part of ourselves that is being aggravated.

There is a very simple method for staying open. You stay open by never closing. It’s really that simple. All you have to do is decide that you are going to stay open no matter what happens.

To be continued…

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The post The Untethered Soul: The Roadmap of My Personal Growth – Part 1 appeared first on Forte Labs.

Creator to Company: How to Make the Shift from Solo Creator to a Team

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What’s New in Building a Second Brain 14

We are so proud to unveil the new generation of Building a Second Brain, our online course on how to leverage the power of information and unlock your full potential.

After 5 years and over 5,000 alumni graduates from over 100 countries, we’ve learned a ton about how to create the ultimate learning experience. 

We looked at many hundreds of pieces of feedback our alumni have shared with us and turned all of it into a massive overhaul for Cohort 14.

As always, our guiding question is “How can we make a course that is impossible to fail?”

I don’t want you to sign up full of excitement and enthusiasm, only to fall off the wagon as soon as it starts rolling. I refuse to add to the list of failed experiments you may have had trying to adopt various notetaking systems.

We’ve assembled a team of over 40 world-class operators and experts all aligned behind one goal:

Making. You. Win.

We are your support team to make sure you succeed spectacularly in your pursuit of this life-changing system we call a Second Brain. Learning is inherently social, and we’re going to give you all the mentoring, coaching, feedback, and accountability you need to decisively achieve your goals in the course. 

My promise to you is that this will be one of the most impactful, proud achievements of your life.

As always, we continue to offer every single student:

5 live sessions taught live by Tiago on the most important pillars of the BASB methodologyLifetime access to the BASB alumni community on the Circle platformLifetime access to future updates to the curriculumLifetime membership to the Forte Labs blog , including paywalled articles and series diving into advanced aspects of digital notetaking and knowledge managementA core curriculum of 7 lessons, with studio-quality video and broadcast-quality audioFull-quality recordings of all sessions (including mentor sessions) with full captions, transcripts, and when available, chat transcriptsOur Second Brain Snapshot comparing your knowledge management skills before and after the courseA variety of breakout sessions led by our Alumni Mentors on specific notes apps, kinds of creative work, and approaches to knowledge managementAccess to our Second Brain Resource Vault, a collection of case studies, templates, guided walkthroughs, and top Q&A answers by Tiago

The Premium Edition additionally includes:

Lifetime access to join any future live cohort                Exclusive interviews with writers, entrepreneurs, and other experts on how they capitalize on the value of their knowledge, not available anywhere else5 weekly Premium-only Q&A calls with Tiago, where he explores the more nuanced implications of Second Brain techniquesAdvanced tutorials recorded by Tiago on specialized use cases for how he uses his Second Brain 

BASB (as we like to call it) isn’t just a course you sit around and study by yourself. It’s not a huge library of videos you’re somehow supposed to find the time to watch. It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach that ignores the stunning diversity in how people think and act.

It’s more like a global conference – I deliver the keynote address and lead the main sessions, but then we break into small groups for more specialized workshops, intimate chats, and even serendipitous encounters with like-minded classmates in the virtual “hallways.”

We are first and foremost a community, and when you join a cohort you become part of that community forever. 

Enrollment is now open, and I encourage you to join the next chapter of the Second Brain movement as part of Cohort 14:

Join Cohort 14

 

Here are the biggest improvements we’re making to the course (see the version notes for a comprehensive list).

Signed Hardcover Edition of the Book

You will be among the first people in the world to receive a hardcover edition of Tiago’s upcoming book Building a Second Brain. We will send you a signed pre-release copy so you can benefit from the most succinct, distilled version of the BASB methodology we’ve ever released.

Tech Week

We’ve noticed that many people begin the course without knowing which second-brain app they want to use. So we’ve added a whole week of sessions designed to help you not only make this pivotal decision, but also to learn the features of the app you’ve chosen (and the best ways of capturing content into it) from people who have already mastered it.

We are here to support you in real time as you adopt a second-brain app as an essential component of your creative process, including the subtleties and nuances it might take you years to figure out on your own.

1 Year of Premium Access to Readwise

One of the main challenges that Second Brainers confront is “integrating” their various apps together. There isn’t “one app to rule them all,” and everyone at some point finds the need to get different platforms to work together.

There is one service that stands out in this regard: Readwise, the ultimate second-brain companion. It is designed specifically to help you capture quotes, excerpts, highlights, and comments from various sources (including books, online articles, read-later apps, podcasts, social media, emails, and more) and route all of them to the centralized knowledge repository that is your Second Brain.

We’re going to make it a no-brainer (heh) for you and foot the bill for a full year of premium access to Readwise, so you can explore everything it has to offer risk-free.

Guided Tour of Tiago’s Second Brain

Many of the most common questions we receive are about how Tiago personally uses his Second Brain. So we’re creating the ultimate answer to this question: an in-depth guided tour of all the nooks and crannies of his system of knowledge management across Evernote, Notion, and Obsidian.

This is the first time Tiago is opening the curtains on the most personal systems at the heart of his writing, business, and daily life.

Tiago’s Favorite Book Vault

One of the most powerful uses for a Second Brain is to automatically capture the highlights and comments from ebooks. We’ll share a collection of notes on 20 of the most impactful books on Tiago’s thinking, in exactly the format and style he recommends for digital notetaking.

This collection represents approximately 100 hours of mental effort to surface and summarize the most unusual, life-changing takeaways from 20 unique books, out of the hundreds he’s read over the past decade.

Tiago’s Collection of 4 Ebooks

Beyond the course, our blog contains extensive resources on different use cases and applications for digital notetaking. We’ve collected all of them, both public and paywalled, into a convenient 4-volume set of ebooks.

These 4 books represent virtually the entirety of Tiago’s life’s work going back years, all curated and organized in a distraction-free reading environment. We’ll share each book in the open EPUB format, so you can use any ebook reader. And don’t forget – you can use the Readwise app to automatically save any highlights from these ebooks in your own notes.

Alumni Sprints

One of the most frequent requests we receive is to keep the cohort going! There is so much enthusiasm and energy after spending 5 intense weeks together, we’ve decided to roll out “alumni sprints” for the first time ever.

Our Alumni Mentors – previous successful graduates of the course – will lead a series of 1-week “sprints” after the end of the cohort on practical ways to apply what you’ve learned to your projects, goals, and creative challenges. Each Mentor brings a wealth of professional and life experience to the table, allowing you to find the perfect role model for this stage in your journey.

BASB for Your Profession and Creative Medium

Our Alumni Mentors continue to be the backbone of Building a Second Brain. They deliver personalized support to help you implement what you learn using a wide variety of notetaking apps and other tools. 

Besides recommending specific mentor sessions to match your notetaking app of choice, we will now also recommend them based on the kind of work you do. Obviously the needs of writers are different from those of product managers. Designers don’t want the same kinds of content as engineers. Teachers have very different goals than researchers.

We’ve recruited and trained three separate groups to make sure you have the support you need:

Moderators will focus on answering questions and pointing out helpful resources on the discussion forum Mentors will lead weekly calls specialized for certain professions, apps, and use casesSenior Mentors will provide more advanced guidance and lead the Alumni Sprints

The mentor sessions are spread over 7 days of the week and across different time zones, so there will always be an opportunity for you to attend, no matter your schedule. You’ll be able to join as many or as few of them as you want to give you a smaller, more intimate setting to ask questions and get feedback. And of course, you’ll have access to full recordings of all of them indefinitely.

New Case Study: Launching the BASB Book to the World

In every cohort, I share a new case study about how I use my Second Brain to complete a project or reach an important goal in my own life. This time, I’ll take you behind the scenes of how I finished writing, launching, and promoting my first published book.

I’ll show you how I managed relationships with a wide array of editors and collaborators, how we created a customer avatar to guide our marketing efforts, how we secured international publishing deals in 7 countries (and counting) before the book is even released, and much more.

I’ll extract valuable advice from both my mistakes and successes alike for anyone launching a major creative project, showing you how my Second Brain made it possible every step of the way.

Join Cohort 14

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The post What’s New in Building a Second Brain 14 appeared first on Forte Labs.

Building a Second Brain: Book Pre-Order Bonuses

I’m proud to announce the pre-order bonuses for my upcoming book Building a Second Brain!

Pre-orders are the absolute best way to support me and the work our team is doing in the world. 

As I’ve shared previously, pre-order sales are the most important signal of a book’s early momentum, and every single copy adds to the tidal wave of enthusiasm we’re hoping to ride across the media landscape.

Pre-orders send a powerful signal to every corner of the publishing industry that people want this book. That signal of interest can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, incentivizing booksellers to display the book more prominently, which in turn leads to further sales.

Why does that matter? Because all of this early activity helps get this book translated to more formats and more languages, which ultimately helps it reach more people with the benefits of a Second Brain system.

We’ve spent months dreaming up the most tantalizing goodies we could think of, including an exclusive masterclass, signed books, guided tours of the most valuable notes in my own Second Brain, a customized notebook, and even access to our premium 5-week online course.

I’ll be blunt – if you’re ever going to purchase anything from us, pre-ordering books is by far the most affordable and helpful way to do it.

Why should you consider buying multiple copies of this book?

If you’re wondering what you’re going to do with multiple copies of a book, here are some ideas for how you can use them:

As gifts for people you care about, such as on birthdays and holidaysHost a book club with your friends, neighbors, or coworkersGive them to your team or department for their professional developmentGive them to the attendees of a conference, summit, or retreat you’re organizingProvide them as giveaways to your community, event, or social media followersGift them to your clients and customers as a thank you for their supportDonate to a library, youth center, church, or non-profit (with a potential tax deduction)

As you can see, there are countless ways you can use multiple copies of a book like this one. It will train you in new ways of learning, working, and creating, but those changes are most powerful and sustainable when you bring others along on your journey.

All of the bonuses below apply to pre-orders only, which can be made up until the official U.S. release date on June 14, 2022 (though later dates may apply in other countries). And they are available for any purchase, at any price, in any format, from any retailer, in any country, as long as you can submit a valid receipt here:

Submit Your Receipt Here

 

Questions? Please scroll to the bottom of this page for answers to the most frequently asked questions.

 

#1 – The Expanded Edition: Pre-Order 1 BookEstimated Cost: $28 USD for hardcover, $15 for ebook Get access to the complete replay of a 3-hour virtual masterclass delivered by Tiago teaching the essential 12 steps to building your Second Brain, following the methodology outlined in the book#2 – The Book Club Edition: Pre-Order 5 BooksEstimated Cost: $140 for hardcover, $75 for ebook

Everything from the previous tier plus…

Guided video tour of Tiago’s Second Brain, with Tiago walking you through his personal notetaking system and how he uses itA digital copy of Tiago’s book Extend Your Mind , containing all the background research that went into the making of Building a Second BrainOfficial discussion prompts for each chapter designed to help you facilitate a book club at work or with your friends#3 – The Team Edition: Pre-Order 20 BooksEstimated Cost: $560 for hardover, $300 for ebook (Limited to 250)

Everything from all previous tiers plus…

A first edition hardcover version of Building a Second Brain signed by TiagoOfficial BASB bookmark and stickers for your laptop, notebook, or windowTiago’s Book Vault: a private collection of notes on the Top 10 books that have most impacted his work and life#4 – The Course Edition: Pre-Order 50 BooksEstimated Cost: $1,400 for hardover, $750 for ebook (Limited to 50)

Everything from all previous tiers plus…

Access to the Building a Second Brain Online Course : Essential Edition, delivered twice per year over 5 weeks via Zoom (valued at $1,500 USD)12 months of Forte Labs membership (paywalled access to Tiago’s most in-depth content, valued at $100 USD)An exclusive BASB notebook, including a customized design following Tiago’s top recommendations for digital-friendly paper notetaking#5 – The Coaching Edition: Pre-Order 100 BooksEstimated Cost: $2,800 for harcover, $1,500 for ebook (Limited to 20)

Note: To access this tier and above please contact us at hello@fortelabs.co first so we can direct you to the best possible sales outlet.

Everything from all previous tiers plus…

Access to the Building a Second Brain Online Course: Premium Edition, delivered twice per year over 5 weeks via Zoom (valued at $3,000 USD)Have Tiago join a 45-minute Q&A session with your book club, meetup, team, or virtual event to get all your questions answered#6 – The Keynote Edition: Pre-Order 500 BooksEstimated Cost: $14,000 for hardcover, $7,500 for ebook (Limited to 10)

Everything from all previous tiers plus…

Access to the Building a Second Brain Online Course: Executive Edition, delivered twice per year over 5 weeks via Zoom (valued at $6,000 USD)Full keynote presentation delivered by Tiago (virtually or in person) at your conference, summit, retreat, or event, including working with you or your team to customize it for your needs and goals FAQsHow can I redeem my pre-order bonuses?

Submit this form by June 30, 2022 to be eligible to receive your pre-order bonuses. You’ll need to submit the receipt as a proof of purchase which clearly shows the date of purchase, the vendor, and the number of books you purchased. 

How much do bulk orders cost?

The estimated cost for each tier above is calculated using the listed retail price in the U.S. for the hardcover version, which is $28 USD, and the ebook version, which is $15. Other formats, sales outlets, and regions may offer a lower price and will still qualify for all bonuses.

How much are these bonuses worth?

The “estimated values” used above are not made up numbers. In all cases we’ve used the actual price that we charge our customers for the item.

How do I share extra copies of the book?

For the ebook version, you can share unique redemption codes, which can be easily downloaded on each person’s own device. For printed versions, ship them to your address and hand them out.

If you’d like to order multiple copies but don’t want the physical books, please either purchase the ebook version or email us at hello@fortelabs.co for suggestions on how to donate them to a school, library, or other worthy cause.

When will I receive my bonuses?

We will begin sending out bonuses within two months of the book’s release date on June 14, 2022. While we’ll make every effort to deliver them as soon as possible, we can’t promise exact delivery dates for either digital or physical items.

How will I receive physical bonuses?

We will ship all physical items using standard shipping. We cannot guarantee there won’t be additional customs tariffs or import rules in order to receive physical items. Any such costs or restrictions are your responsibility.

When can I redeem my online course access?

All bonuses including access to our online course apply to Cohort 14 (April–May 2022) or later cohorts, with no expiration date.

When can we schedule live and virtual appearances with Tiago?

All live or virtual appearances are subject to mutual scheduling.

What should I do if I have other questions?

Please email hello@fortelabs.co with any questions not answered here.

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The post Building a Second Brain: Book Pre-Order Bonuses appeared first on Forte Labs.

The Case for Brazilian Online Education

I recently traveled to São Paulo, Brazil, to meet with a Business Development representative from Hotmart, the largest online learning platform in Brazil and one of the largest in the world.

Hotmart was founded in 2011 and has grown explosively since then to over 1,000 employees, serving over 30 million customers in 18 countries with more than 500,000 digital products, including online courses, ebooks, podcasts, communities, and other format,. The company acquired Teachable in 2020 to expand from its home base in Brazil, Spanish-speaking Latin America, and Europe to the English-speaking world.

It’s become clear to me that the online education market in Brazil is a once-in-a-generation opportunity.

It’s extremely rare for any Brazilian company to acquire an American one, and in the tech sector, it’s virtually unheard of. This acquisition speaks to the massive size of the Brazilian online ed market, which isn’t fully captured in statistics because it doesn’t fall within traditional educational categories. It’s largely indie freelancer and independent creator types, offering education in many forms and through diverse mediums.

As we’ve discussed expanding Building a Second Brain “to the world,” there’s an issue that’s been nagging at me for some time. It’s that you can’t really take something “to the world.” That’s far too broad of a market to enter in a focused, strategic way. 

The way most specialized training in professional development or self-improvement from the U.S. enters other countries is through a broad effort at translating the core content into other languages, prioritizing the most spoken languages and largest countries. But without a particular strategy for any specific country, these efforts usually end up reaching only the most educated, wealthiest, elite people in major cities, who have access to these kinds of ideas anyway.

I’ve seen this play out time and again in Brazil. A speaker flies in for a few days, sees the sights in Rio, does a few speeches and events, aggressively promotes their book and other programs, and maybe sells a license to a local firm which does the most minimal marketing and can’t really support the program. Little effort is made to adapt the content to the local context, to support it in the native language, to test and iterate on how it’s delivered, and to find the promises and benefits that resonate with local people.

We have an opportunity to approach the Brazilian market in a very different way. We could enter the country much more purposefully, craft a customized strategy that reaches a wide range of Brazilians, and then use that model as a template to enter other countries in the future. Here are four rationale for Forte Labs to make such a move.

1. The size of the market

First, there is the sheer size of the market opportunity. 

Brazil is a massive, quickly growing online education market. Brazilians use online learning to access programs that don’t exist locally, to get around geographic barriers, to advance their careers, and to find more time for family and leisure. The market is a blue ocean, with few existing competitors, especially on our topic of Personal Knowledge Management. People are very open to new ways of learning and have high levels of Internet access and familiarity with innovative forms of media. 

Brazilians are one of the most “digitally native” populations on the planet. In some ways, they’ve leapfrogged industrialization and traditional college education and jumped straight to online learning and social media as their main sources of information, education, and community. Brazil has among the highest rates of Internet penetration (estimated at 75%) and social media usage. 

But Brazil also has a low level of English language fluency for its size and level of development, with only 5% of Brazilians stating they have some knowledge of English. This is a huge population of active Internet users who largely don’t speak English, which has fueled the rise of a Brazil-specific online education landscape with little overlap with other countries. Instructors and creators like Geronimo Theml, Seiiti Arata, Rocky Vega, Mario Cortella, Leandro Karnal, Clóvis de Barros Filho, André Cia, and Erico Rocha are building media empires through serving those needs just in Brazil.

85% of Brazilians make less than $400 USD per month. Another 12% make $400-1,000 USD per month. Only 3% make more than $1,000 USD per month. But this is a country of 200 million people, which means that 3% gives us a ready audience of 6 million individuals as a starting point, with much more room to grow beyond that. This is a country with a lot of poverty, but also a lot of demand for upward mobility through education. 

Reaching that 12% and especially the remaining 85% will require a dedicated, focused effort to translate not just the content, but the format and delivery methods. The most successful courses on Hotmart in Brazil cost between 1,500-3,000 reais, which is about $290-580 USD at today’s exchange rates. Coincidentally, this is about the price we would charge for a self-paced version, giving us a reason to pursue such a product.

2. Access to the Hotmark network 

Second, Hotmart gives us a unique entry point. 

Teachable was their biggest acquisition to date, and they are seeking to bring the top creators on Teachable to a global audience. We are a proven brand in the U.S., and would be the perfect candidate to expand through the Hotmart network. I’m already in touch with their U.S. team who have expressed a strong interest in helping us with this. 

We could work with them directly and create a self-paced course precisely tailored to what works on their platform, drawing on all their best practices. We would have access to 30 million potential customers who already take online courses and understand their value.

3. Tiago’s connection to Brazil

Third, my background makes me uniquely qualified to make this leap. 

There are few U.S. creators with deep roots in Brazil, who speak Portuguese fluently, have spent much of their lives there, and can credibly act as a representative from the tech space in the U.S. to the Brazilian public. Not to mention, Lauren and I want to live in Brazil for a long period in the near future so our kids learn Portuguese and have exposure to Brazilian culture. 

We could establish a home base in Brazil, and use it to hire a team of local collaborators to create localized content. We could immerse ourselves in the self-improvement and online ed field, and develop workshops and other formats ideally suited to Brazilian values, priorities, budgetary needs, and educational venues. We’d have the opportunity to start something new, while also leveraging all the assets, resources, network, and content of our U.S. business.

4. Developing a go-to-market model

Fourth, by focusing our efforts on one country where we have high odds of success, we can develop a go-to-market template that could be repeated elsewhere. 

Instead of following the previous generation’s playbook of exclusively licensing our content in foreign countries with no control over how it’s presented or used, we could develop direct relationships in our most important markets and understand what it takes to succeed on the ground. 

If and when we eventually do decide to license, we’ll have a much better understanding of what that should look like and what is required to make our product reliable. We can play a major part in spreading the idea that anyone can become a knowledge worker, anyone can be a creator or freelancer, anyone can build a career out of what they know, anyone can access the benefits of the Internet, and provide them the practical means of doing so. A Second Brain is an essential piece of infrastructure that few aspiring professionals and creators even know they’re missing.

Around 50 million people around the world consider themselves digital content creators, according to SignalFire. But only about 2 million (or 4%) are professional creators who are dedicated full time to their business. We could play a major part in transitioning the other 96% to a creator-friendly economy that allows more people to make a living from their knowledge and expertise.

The shift to online learning has had a major impact that I think few appreciate. The old model of “distributing content” through local vendors is no longer the only way to gain access to new audiences. Now we can translate our content to other languages ourselves, develop our own social media followings in those countries, and then serve them directly through platforms like Hotmart. That means higher margins, more direct impact, and better feedback loops, with licensing as a complementary option for the places we can’t or don’t want to enter ourselves.

The Hotmart representative I met with impressed upon me just how hungry Brazilians are for new ways of thinking, learning, creating, and working. Every metric I’ve seen – for the number of students enrolled, to sales figures for launches, to the growth rates of the most popular courses – surpasses anything I’ve seen in the U.S. They have a lot of respect for the U.S. and ideas that originate there, and are very grateful for anyone who bridges the gap for them. There’s a unique opportunity here to expand our reach and impact in a highly directed way while also laying the groundwork for future expansion. 

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Why I’m Not a Christian: A Testimony of Losing Faith

One of the most important milestones for a born-again Christian is to tell your “testimony.”

A testimony is your personal story of how you came to the faith. It often includes the problems or challenges you were facing in your life at the time, how lost or confused you felt, the person or experience that led you to god, and ends with your salvation as you accept Jesus Christ into your heart as your personal lord and savior.

This is my testimony, but in the opposite direction: how I was raised deeply embedded in an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian mega-church, how I became disillusioned with the view of reality it offered, and the unexpected journey I went on to leave my faith and build a different worldview.

One of the things I most wanted throughout this process were models of success: former Christians who had made the leap and discovered an alternative path to leading a successful, rich life. I’m telling my story because I want others out there who find themselves in the same spot I was in – questioning their received worldview and wondering if another path exists – to know that it does. There are many available worldviews, many possible beliefs, and countless other ways of moving through the world that can give you tremendous fulfillment, community, and a sense of purpose.

I’ve been amazed to see how quickly being an atheist or agnostic has become common over my lifetime. According to a recent Pew Research study, about 30% of U.S. adults are now religiously “unaffiliated.” This is a 6% increase from just 5 years ago and a 10% increase from a decade ago, a stunning shift in religious belief that has no parallel in American history. From 2007 to today, self-identified Christians have gone from outnumbering the religiously unaffiliated by 5 to 1, to just 2 to 1. 

We desperately need new visions of what it means to be a sincere, spiritual person without having to conform to anyone else’s religious template. I hope my story serves as inspiration for you to create your own.

Christian fundamentalism in Southern California

I was raised in a deeply religious, evangelical Christian household in south Orange County, California. I didn’t realize it at the time, but looking back now it’s clear that my family and the mega-church we attended were fundamentalist: we believed that every word of the Bible was literally true.

Every member of my family was always involved with the church – my mom sang in the church worship band, dozens of my dad’s Christian-themed paintings (check the “Biblical Themes” box) hung on every wall of the building, and my three siblings and I found ourselves in various services, youth groups, Bible studies, or volunteer trips multiple times per week. The church was our second home and faith the center of our family life.

I adopted the evangelical Christian worldview wholesale from a young age. It was all I knew. I spent my teenage years playing piano in the youth group band, going on countless mission trips and church camps in the summers and winters, and constantly evangelizing to anyone who would listen.

Throughout these years, I was always incredulous at the lack of urgency and concern displayed by other Christians. If you really believed every non-believer around you was on a path straight to eternal torture in hell, how could you do anything but preach the gospel?

From the time I was about 10 years old, I started going on regular service trips with my family and church groups. We would cross the border into Mexico to build homes, provide medical care, and donate books and other supplies in border towns like Tijuana and Mexicali. In high school, I spent my breaks on mission trips throughout the world. One year I spent Spring Break in Belize, where we built a school and provided free dental care to the local population. I worked one summer at a basketball camp in Alsace-Lorraine in France, which served as a cover for us to evangelize the youth in the area (Catholics and Europeans were considered about equivalent to atheists). 

The summer before my senior year of high school, when I was 17, I spent 3 months traveling throughout Ethiopia with a group of American missionaries putting on showings of The Jesus Film, a 1979 portrayal of Jesus’ life that is used as a method of conversion. Ethiopia has one of the oldest Christian traditions in the world, dating back to Biblical times, but our approach to evangelism required us to invalidate any faith that didn’t align strictly with our definition of being “born again.” I remember being pelted with rocks by a crowd of angry Ethiopians in the streets of the southern city of Awasa, enraged by our assertion that they weren’t “real” Christians and therefore needed saving.

If anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always said I wanted to be a missionary. I took my preparation for that career path very seriously. I became the leader of my high school’s Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) group, where each week I would prepare and deliver a lunchtime sermon to a classroom full of my fellow FCA students. I read many in-depth books on theology by writers like Dallas Willard and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I memorized countless Bible verses. I prayed like it was going out of style. I only listened to Christian music, read mostly popular Christian writers like Max Lucado, Lee Strobel, and John Eldredge, and the highlights of my year included going to Christian mega-concerts like the Harvest Festival.

How could I do anything else given the stakes of eternal salvation?

But looking back, underneath all of this zealous devotion I can see a slowly rising tide of doubt. Even as a kid, I couldn’t understand how a loving god could permit his children to be sent to hell. The miracles of the Bible didn’t make sense to me, given that there was no evidence of such miracles today. I figured I just didn’t know enough and would one day figure out the contradictions, but the answers were never satisfactory.

Most of all, traveling with my family to other countries exposed me to radically different cultural values, belief systems, and ways of living. Returning home, I simply couldn’t believe I had the great fortune of being born in the exact “right” place that just happened to impart all the “right” beliefs to me, and that everyone else was doomed because of the circumstances of their birth. I noticed that in many of the cultures we spent time in, people seemed happier and healthier than the people I knew back home in Orange County. It was bewildering.

But I was so steeped in the worldview of my Christian faith that I couldn’t even consider leaving it until years later. Every piece of my reality reinforced each other so perfectly, there was not even a crack through which a sliver of light could shine. I needed to endure several crises of faith first.

In college, I doubled down on my zeal, becoming a leader in the on-campus InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and even organizing a “Jesus Week” full of events at George Washington University (GWU) in Washington D.C. where I studied my freshman year. The school has a large Jewish population, and I still remember the leader of the local Chabad (a community center catering to secular Jews) screaming at me over the phone after I invited a Jews for Jesus representative to speak on campus. Looking back, I understand now that I was projecting my doubt and insecurity outward, trying to convince others of what I increasingly no longer believed myself.

I became political, once writing a guest column in the university newspaper about why homosexuality was morally wrong, but god still loved gay people (the classic, misguided logic of “Hate the sin, love the sinner”). I became steeped in “apologetics,” a Christian-themed pseudoscience which claims to use science to “prove” the existence of god. I remember buying thick apologetics books packed with “proof” of the Bible’s accuracy, which I would highlight and memorize in preparation for frequent debates on the subject with my non-Christian classmates.

The doubt rising within me finally broke through the surface when I was forced to drop out of GWU at the end of that year. I had been assured by all my Christian friends that god would provide a way for me to continue my studies there after I had exhausted most of my college savings in a single year (GWU is one of the most expensive schools in the country). Trusting him to provide, I put in zero effort to provide for myself, such as applying for scholarships or financial aid or seeking part-time work to supplement my tuition. I prayed vigorously for god to provide the funds I needed, and had total naive faith that he would.

My belief system crumbles

When the funds I needed failed to arrive, I found myself in a crisis down to the core of my being. 

My faith in god as I understood him was rocked. If my prayer, made in complete faith, failed to work, what else could I trust? Who could I trust when they had all assured me that god would deliver? The life path I had laid out so clearly in my mind – go to an elite East Coast school, graduate and work in a prestigious diplomatic post, and use that position to evangelize the gospel around the world – was gone. All the wonderful friends I had made and expected to spend 4 years with were suddenly out of reach.

I dropped out of college, moved back in with my parents, and wallowed in misery for about 6 months. I didn’t go to school, didn’t work, didn’t pursue my hobbies, and barely saw my friends. I had no motivation or desire for anything. Like so many other times in my life, reading was my only refuge. And this time I decided to follow the thread of doubt in my mind instead of fighting it.

I began to read much more widely than the books I had previously found at the local Christian bookstore. 

I read Elaine Pagels’ book The Gnostic Gospels, which told the story of how the books (or chapters) of the Bible came to be. Far from descending from the heavens on golden clouds like I had imagined, I was astonished to discover that there was an incredible amount of controversy and doubt over which books were genuine, and which deserved to become part of the canon.

The formation of the Bible we know today was a messy, political process of backroom deals, awful compromises, clear mistakes, and human failings. For a church so committed to the literal truth of every word of the Bible, it was a terrible shock to realize it had come together through a series of historical accidents. I felt betrayed by every person and institution who had told me with such confidence that these were the literal words of god.

A pillar of my belief system crumbled.

I wanted to know more, and read Church History in Plain Language, which tells the history of the Christian church through a scholarly lens, but in easily understandable language. Once again, I found that history to be full of greed, vanity, political backstabbing, and atrocities committed by the leaders of an organization that was supposed to represent god’s voice on Earth. I learned that none of the books of the Bible date back to the times they claim to describe, and most were written centuries later based on hearsay and tradition.

Another pillar of my belief system crumbled.

Spending a year on the East Coast, I had been introduced to the more traditional, left-leaning sects of Christianity for the first time. I was introduced to the concept of social justice, which had been completely absent from our West Coast, right-leaning mega-church. Once I returned home, that new lens allowed me to begin seeing through the culture of social conservatism that dominated Orange County-style Christianity, from the emphasis on personal salvation over communal justice, to the ways in which evangelical faith justified consumerism and materialism, to the links between evangelism and myths of American destiny and superiority.

It was like having x-ray vision, and several more of the pillars of my belief system fell.

I started reading more and more widely, including non-church-approved fiction. I picked up The Poisonwood Bible, a harrowing tale about a missionary family in Africa that utterly destroyed my conception of evangelism as a noble pursuit. The story is fictional, but I recognized so many patterns and themes in the missionary world I had been exposed to. I saw how evangelization was in many ways a new form of colonialism, playing out on the psychological and ideological plane instead of in a battle for resources.

Another major pillar – that we at least had good intentions – toppled.

One pillar at a time, the entire worldview that I had adopted from my upbringing was simply destroyed. Seven days of creation forged by a Christian god, the promise of salvation offered by his son come to Earth, my role as a warrior donning spiritual armor in a galactic battle between good and evil. It all came crashing down. I began to see that I was the one trapped in a narrow view of reality, ignorant of the deeper truths that I had been arrogantly trying to impose on others. 

At first, I honestly didn’t know if I would survive. There are few things scarier than having one’s worldview fall apart. I remember laying in bed one morning trying to find one good reason to get up. What reason did I have to keep going, to live? When you’ve been spoon-fed a single source of truth your entire life, it’s hard to believe that meaning and morality can come from any other source. I genuinely wondered if I would ever experience joy, or love, or a sense of purpose like the kind I had experienced immersed in the throes of the Christian narrative. I fully expected an overwhelming wave of nihilism, hopelessness, and depravity to descend upon me at any moment, like I had always been told would happen.

Finding a new purpose in entrepreneurship

One evening my mom gave me a copy of the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. She had picked it up while out running errands, and thought it might give me some new ideas and coax me out of my depression.

Reading that book was a revelation. I had never before considered any kind of career in business. In fact, I’d considered anything to do with profit or money morally suspect and contrary to the work of the spirit. But as soon as I began reading, I began to absorb a radically different perspective on what business is and can be.

I read the entire book in one night, hardly sleeping because of the excitement I felt. I then read almost every other book Kiyosaki had published, about a dozen in total. I could feel beliefs about money, ambition, and personal growth shifting within me in almost real time. I saw that business and, more specifically, entrepreneurship could be a means to the life I wanted – of adventurous travel, wide-ranging experiences, heartfelt friendships, a thriving family, and personal learning and growth. 

Most importantly, I saw that I didn’t have to abandon the kind of service I’d grown to love on those youthful volunteer trips. Business could be a means of service as well, and at a far greater scale. And I saw that my creativity and my passion could be channeled in a new direction, without requiring me to adopt any particular beliefs or swear allegiance to any particular faith. I could believe in facts, and results, and effectiveness in the real world.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad was about personal finance, investing, and entrepreneurship on the surface, but its deeper themes are about questioning the default life path, seeing money as a means to living a fuller life, and the power of knowledge to give you whatever you desire. It was about self-reliance, but also about trusting guides and mentors to help you. It was about working hard in pursuit of a vision, but also about not treating hard work as an end in itself. The book’s message was to use leverage and passive income to free yourself financially, as a first step to freeing yourself in other ways. Kiyosaki also recommended a wide range of other books, and through those recommendations I was introduced to the world of personal development.

I read Tony Robbins’ Awaken the Giant Within, and discovered the radical possibility that thoughts and feelings were something I could understand, and shape, and use to my advantage. Modern evangelical thought is actually strongly influenced by self-help, so it wasn’t a big leap. But I was being shown a path to improve my life and accomplish big things in the world without having to depend on the whims of an inscrutable god. It was music to my ambitious, 19 year-old self’s ears.

It is amazing to me just how powerful books about business and self-help were for me as a source of motivation. I enrolled in the local community college the next semester, got straight-As for the first time in my life, and was accepted as a transfer student to San Diego State University about an hour away from home. There I again excelled, earning university honors with a degree in international business, with an emphasis on Latin America and marketing. I was determined and on a mission to rebuild my life on my own terms. It felt in a sense that my life had been “saved,” not from sin, but from the clutches of a fundamentalist Christian faith that wasn’t true to who I was.

In the following years I swung to the opposite end of the spectrum and became a hardcore, militant atheist. I was angry, resentful, and vindictive. I read books like The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, and doubled down on my newfound view that Christianity and all other religions were inherently evil, reinforcing paternalistic family values and repressive political regimes around the world. I used my intellect like a hammer, doing my best to undermine the religious beliefs of anyone I encountered. I passionately argued with Christians to try and convince them out of their beliefs, which of course never worked. 

My opinion of religion since then has softened. I can acknowledge now that religions offer people a pre-made “package of beliefs” that is easy to understand, easy to follow, and that gives them peace of mind and a sense of community. The path I’ve followed was very hard and I don’t even know if I’d recommend it to anyone who isn’t already having a crisis of faith. If you can be healthy and happy in your faith, more power to you.

In many ways, I did ultimately fulfill my wish to be a preacher and evangelist, just for a different religion: the religion of self-actualization. 

I can see the many benefits I received from growing up in the church: a strong sense of right and wrong, nurturing and care from a wide community of like-minded people, and an appreciation for spiritual ideas and themes even if I no longer believe in the specifics. I continue to rely on a set of powerful abilities I gained from my fundamentalist faith: the ability to believe in something completely in the absence of evidence, which I now apply to my business goals; the skills to cultivate and grow an intentional community, which I now use with my audience; and principles of leadership that I observed in our pastors and elders. 

Perhaps most valuable of all, I have a security and confidence in my newfound worldview that is hard-won through experience. My beliefs now feel fluid and can evolve naturally since I know I can survive that kind of change, and thrive from it.

What Christianty is missing

In retrospect, there are a few things that didn’t work for me about Christianity, and that I think increasingly don’t work for a lot of people.

First, the extremist belief in the literal truth of every word of the Bible is completely falling apart. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. Fewer and fewer people are willing to believe that a whale literally swallowed a man, or that a sea parted with a wave of Moses’ hand, or that every species of animal on Earth was somehow packed into Noah’s Ark. These stories were clearly meant as metaphors or parables, or retellings of stories from other cultures, and it is childish to believe otherwise.

More importantly, it doesn’t seem to matter. If a religious faith is taken as a holistic life philosophy, it doesn’t matter if every story is literally true. Even some of the seemingly most foundational beliefs, such as the acts of creation, the existence of hell and heaven, and even Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, are increasingly being questioned by mainstream evangelical theologians and leaders. Interpreting those stories as historical events is doing incredible damage to Christianity’s standing, I believe, because it obscures the deeper truths they convey through metaphor.

Second, modern evangelical Christianity’s complete corruption by Republican, right-leaning, conservative ideology. In fact, I think the corruption goes both ways. The Right never wanted a separation of church and state, and so they combined them together, with disastrous results. Fundamentalist Christianity corrupted politics by infusing it with an absolutist, uncompromising, crusading spirit in which any perceived opponent is synonymous with Satan and the forces of evil. This has made it impossible to give ground and to see issues from other people’s perspectives. But politics also corrupted the faith, injecting untold amounts of money and power such that the Christian worldview became synonymous with reactionary, regressive, and authoritarian political stances.

The unholy offspring of the two is the modern crop of televangelists and “prosperity gospel” promoters who have come full circle, offering up a vision of the gospel that is all about worldly power and individualistic wealth, the complete opposite of everything Jesus ever taught.

And fourth, fundamentalist Christianity’s rejection of science. This is a profoundly limiting attitude that makes it difficult for them to engage in modern society. I remember the opposition to science as barely a whisper when I was growing up. I would hear adults grumble about the teaching of the Big Bang and evolution in school. Later on, that skepticism spread to stem cell research, climate change, and now, of course, vaccines. The inexorable march of science has increasingly become a threat to the evangelical worldview over my lifetime, to the point that Christian circles today are hotbeds of anti-science, conspiratorial thinking. I’m constantly hearing about my childhood friends being indoctrinated and brainwashed into the latest crackpot cure, secret governmental plot, or general phobia of modern medicine by “groups” on Facebook and other platforms.

It’s incredibly sad, and has the effect of pulling well-meaning Christians away from important conversations around scientific advancements that they could contribute to. Christians often have very sophisticated moral and ethical reasoning skills, and have spent years exploring the practical implications of disseminating ethical thought among a far-flung, decentralized community. They could teach us powerful lessons about how we should think about such technologies as genetic engineering, life extension, and the impact of social media on the human mind, but so often even talking about these issues is seen as anathema.

Looking back, I think the most fundamental departure that I made from the Christian worldview was to evaluate it based on its utility. My reasoning that Christian beliefs were no longer serving me, and explaining why I switched to new ones, falls on completely deaf ears when I speak with Christians. They don’t see themselves as having “chosen” their beliefs, don’t acknowledge the many ways in which they choose only the beliefs they want to believe, and consider the very idea that beliefs should serve the believer to be evidence of a depraved, self-centered human heart. Christian faith isn’t supposed to serve us here and now in this life. We’re supposed to serve it, and don’t worry, we’ll get our due rewards in the afterlife.

Constructing a new worldview

What do I believe today, you might be wondering?

No single idea or philosophy governs my life these days. Instead, I’ve cobbled together a life philosophy from many, many different sources. It has demanded tremendous creativity, resilience, and willingness to endure uncertainty for long periods of time. I had to find completely different social circles, new mentors and role models, and new definitions for such concepts as “faith,” “the soul,” “marriage,” and “morality.” But it’s also been the most interesting, fulfilling pursuit of my life.

There were a few values I learned from Christianity that I retained. Service to others remains a central part of my identity. The times I was serving, helping, volunteering, and giving were always the happiest for me, and if anything I doubled down on service as a way to step outside my neuroticism and anxiety and redirect my attention to the needs of others. I had spent my high school summers evangelizing in various countries, and after my de-conversion I spent even more time in my 20s volunteering abroad: teaching English in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, working in microfinance on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, and serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eastern Ukraine.

To my surprise, I found that my service was much more effective and genuine as an atheist. I wasn’t trying to “prove” I was good or worthy of my salvation, wasn’t trying to “earn my place” in heaven, wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything as a hidden motive, and wasn’t biased toward any particular kind of service by my faith. I felt I was much better able to focus objectively on what actually made a difference in people’s everyday lives instead.

Other values and principles I adopted from my family. The near-total devotion to family from my Latino parents remains one of my central pillars, and has served me so well as a lifeline of stability through stormy seas. The Brazilian emphasis on warmth, intimacy, authenticity, and fun were a crucial counter-balance to my neurotic, OCD personality traits. While the American values of efficiency, punctuality, and order were important antidotes to my Brazilian and Filipino tendencies toward chaos.

From my parents I inherited a passion for traveling and experiencing other cultures. We had traveled almost incessantly from the time I was 6 months old, from short trips to Europe to spending as much as a year in Brazil when I was 14. Each of these cultures was like an alternate reality for me, exposing me to such a wide range of foods, smells, landscapes, architecture, daily patterns of life, and historical and cultural works. I doubled down on travel and spent my 20s living and working abroad as much as I could afford.

But there were other values that I hadn’t found in the church or in my family, and had to cultivate consciously. One was a genuine thirst for truth, in whatever form and from whatever source it arrived. Christianity contains “truth” as a stated priority, but that search is always distorted by one simple fact: the conclusion is predetermined. The only place you are allowed to arrive at is that the Bible is true, good, and of paramount importance. So any bit of information that contradicts that conclusion is discarded or minimized.

Another was self-love and self-acceptance on my own terms. In the church, love is supposed to come from god primarily, and secondarily, from the congregation and community. But love with conditions isn’t real love, and the concept of “self-love” was treated with suspicion, as a symptom of arrogance and ego. Using the self-help literature I devoured, much of it Buddhist-inspired, I learned new ways of accepting and loving who I was without conditions.

Another quality I needed to develop was my intellect. It had been constrained in a Christian environment that viewed analysis, deconstruction, questioning, and experimentation as suspect. I discovered the “Post-Rationalist” community on the Internet in my late 20s, which fueled a complete transformation of how I viewed the world, sparked my writing career, and even informed many of the subjects I teach in my business. I immersed myself in the writing of Venkatesh Rao on his Ribbonfarm blog, using it as a guide to a far vaster world of ideas than I had ever considered.

More recently, I’ve dived into understanding trauma – what it is, where it comes from, how it manifests, and how we can understand and heal it. In retrospect, it is astounding to me that I never heard the word “trauma” uttered in church. It is so clearly a central part of the human experience, especially for people seeking solace from suffering. I think this is perhaps my biggest criticism of the modern church: the lack of practical, science-based education and training in how to live a better life. The churches found in every neighborhood and town could become training centers for teaching real skills like meditation, coaching, yoga, breathwork, writing and the arts, improv, and so many other powerful modalities. They could become beacons of light and hope if they acknowledged that the Bible does not in fact have all the answers for modern problems. It’s inexcusable that the main solution offered to people continues to be to pray and beg god for deliverance.

And most recently, I rediscovered spirituality through a new lens. I was introduced to a practical meditation routine through a book on mindfulness, was captivated by the religion-agnostic teachings of Michael Singer in The Untethered Soul, and inspired by radical activist thought introduced to me by my wife via the writings of Octavia Butler (Lilith’s Brood), adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism), Frank Pittman (Man Enough), and bell hooks (The Will to Change). I feel so grateful for the many interesting and useful perspectives I’ve absorbed from books like The Yoga of Eating, Reboot, The Body Keeps the Score, How to Change Your Mind, How Emotions Are Made, The Inner Game of Work, Finite and Infinite Games, The Art of Learning, Comfortable with Uncertainty, The Obstacle is the Way, and many others.

It feels strange to list those books, because I’ve learned at least as much from books and other sources that don’t seem “spiritual” or “philosophical” on the surface. My view now is that everything is sacred when seen through a certain lens – gardening, managing my to-do list, doing laundry, reviewing my budgets, walking in the park – these are all potentially holy activities when performed in a spirit of gratitude and awe. I don’t accept that any belief system, religion, or institution has a monopoly on what is good, true, or beautiful. There are many access points to the plane of reality we call the sacred, and you are free to choose your own.

My current spiritual journey is taking me right through the middle of the business world. I remember one of the first business books I read was the autobiography of Lee Iaccoca, the hard-charging CEO of Chrysler in the 80s who had to lay off thousands of workers and right the ship of a failing company. He is probably the furthest thing from a spiritual guru you can imagine, but I remember recognizing in his story all the signs of a deeply transformative journey of personal growth. 

I never saw myself as a classic entrepreneur, and when I first began self-employment it was mostly to avoid having to deal with the business world! But over time, I’ve come to recognize how powerful businesses can be for making a positive impact on people’s lives. That desire is my north star, and it’s led me to the unexpected path of starting a business, growing a team, streamlining operations, and developing products that people want and will pay for. The needs of a growing business are the greatest spiritual teacher I can imagine – constantly instructing, always holding me accountable, and forever surfacing the parts of myself that it’s time to acknowledge, embrace, understand, and sometimes, let go of.

On leaving one’s reality

When I see people steeped in modern religions – not only evangelical or other kinds of Christians but also conspiracy theorists, die-hard Trump supporters, and radical elements of the extreme “woke” left, I feel tremendous empathy for them. I know what it’s like to give everything you have for a cause, and to not even know you’re doing it. To be so immersed in a set of ideas that they seem indistinguishable from reality itself. And to not even be able to imagine ripping it all away, because that would feel synonymous with the death of the self.

When you immerse yourself in such a belief system, all the aspects of reality begin to synchronize and reinforce those beliefs. Every incoming piece of information either strengthens them, or gets discarded before it can really land. Every relationship is recruited to help reinforce those beliefs, or else that person slowly gets pushed out of your life. The news you listen to, the books and articles you read, the TV and movies you watch – they can all be interpreted to confirm what you already know and believe. It happens completely automatically, through a series of micro-choices you barely even know you’re making, all in the name of seeking truth.

Many have pointed out that religion didn’t die – instead, everything became a religion. Every hot button issue and corporate brand and hype-filled startup and new crypto token has become a die-hard cause that people wrap up into their identity, to the point that a wider and wider swathe of our culture is now fraught with ideological controversy and conflict.

It isn’t feasible to ignore or avoid the people in our lives who have fallen into one of these modern day cults. It definitely doesn’t work to convince them out of it using logic or reason. Beliefs that are not based on evidence cannot be changed by evidence. And it’s not even really viable to wait for reality to catch up to them and show them the error of their ways. The human mind can remain under an illusion indefinitely – for decades or centuries – as the continued popularity of so many world religions shows.

In retrospect, I had many things going for me that allowed me to break away. I had plenty of exposure to other lifestyles and worldviews – from the foreign cultures where we spent time as kids like Mexico and Brazil, to gay culture in nearby Laguna Beach where my father would exhibit and sell his artwork, to the religions and lifestyles of our diverse friends in Orange County, to the wide reading I did from the local library. There was no personal risk to me from changing my beliefs, even publicly, an incredible privilege shared by relatively few people in the world.

So many of the people I see falling into one cult or another are having their way of life disrupted. They are facing new overseas competition, or having their jobs automated by technology, or being overwhelmed by social media algorithms designed to stoke controversy in a way they are ill-prepared for. People will cling to an identity and belief system as long as they have no good alternative, no matter how painful it is or how miserable it makes them. When you believe you’re floating in an endless empty ocean, even a piece of driftwood feels like salvation.

I don’t have an action plan to offer, except to observe that we don’t appreciate how difficult it is to step out of a reality bubble. Most people won’t do it in their lifetime. It’s akin to leaving behind one’s previous life, like entering a witness protection program. And we are all caught up in alternate realities in one way or another. If you happen to have a vantage point from which you can see someone else’s delusion, treat them with compassion, and respect, and give them options, because they are doing the best they can with the information they have available to them.

But most of all, I want to make you a promise: that whatever your current worldview and belief system is, it is not the only one. You are free to choose it, but also free to choose something else. Your life is yours and yours alone. No one can tell you who you are, what you want, or what is good for you, except you.

Faith can provide immeasurable value to your life, but so can losing it.

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The post Why I’m Not a Christian: A Testimony of Losing Faith appeared first on Forte Labs.

How to Build Your Personal Productivity Stack

From the Dawn of Email to the Rise of Personal Dashboards

 

In the beginning… was email.

The very first email was sent 50 years ago, in the spring of 1971.

The incredible spread of email since then unleashed an unimaginable torrent of information into our everyday lives.

And to this day, we still haven’t recovered.

As knowledge workers, we continue to struggle to process our inboxes, not to mention use that flood of information to move our projects and goals forward.

Many have tried to lead us on a path out of information overload, and each “wave” of productivity tactics and apps valiantly attempts to solve the problems the previous one created.

But here’s the unfortunate truth:

All great technologies begin as blessings… but end up expanding so wildly that they become a curse.

The silver lining?

Each wave of technology does legitimately solve a new problem from the previous wave, and – if harnessed correctly – can move us closer to our goals: the experiences and feelings that we want more of. 

But if you’re like most people, you’re probably using email for multiple purposes far beyond what it was designed for:

You use email to send messagesYou use email as a to-do listYou use email to keep track of notes and ideasYou use email to manage complex projects and areas of your life

These are extremely different use cases, and using one platform for all of them ensures it fails at all of them. To perform each of them effectively, you have to break apart each of the four essential activities of modern work – Email, Task Management, Notetaking, and Project Management – and use the right tool for each of those jobs.

I call these four functions a “Productivity Stack,” since each one is layered on top of and builds on the one before.

Let’s dig into the history of the Productivity Stack – and how you can learn to use each piece of it better.

1. How to Stop Using Email as a Task Manager and Everything Inbox

A simple medium that was originally meant for sending messages – email – has expanded to become a notification system, a to-do list, a notetaking tool, a contact database, and an archival system for our digital lives.

Email overwhelm plagues many of us: too many notifications; abundant newsletter subscriptions; to-dos sent from family, friends and colleagues; meeting recaps; archives of important information; and a sprawling contact list – all in one application!

Email started out as a blessing, but over time the management of emails grew to consume so many of our waking hours that it now feels like a curse. Automobiles seemed miraculous, until they started crowding the highways and blackening the skies (this is called a Progress Trap).

All the subsequent waves of productivity software that we’re going to look at arose in reaction to the Email Big Bang, like gravitational waves echoing across the universe for eons. 

Each of them is an attempt to solve the problem of information overload that was unleashed upon humanity half a century ago.

In 2001, as we entered the new millennium, author and executive coach David Allen published a book that would define the modern practice of personal productivity: Getting Things Done (affiliate), or GTD for short. 

All of a sudden, productivity ceased to be a subject reserved for economists and politicians talking about the economy as a whole, and became an option for a broader range of individuals.

The incredible popularity of GTD – and the new problems email introduced – inspired the rise of a new category of software, known as task managers. 

2. Task Managers: How to Get Your To-Dos Off Your Mind

Task managers or “to-do list apps” sought to take over the job that email was worst at: managing to-dos and projects. 

Email created thousands of “open loops” – unfinished or incomplete mental tasks – in our lives. And as GTD sought to create a system for taking in, prioritizing, and closing those loops in a systematic way, digital apps like OmniFocus, Todoist, Wunderlist (acquired by Microsoft To-Do), and Things gained widespread adoption as people realized just how much easier it was to maintain a to-do list using them.

But history repeated itself, and once again the success of task managers led to their downfall. 

These apps were so effective at quickly and easily capturing stray thoughts, people began to use them for everything – capturing not just to-do’s, but reminders and notes of all kinds.

Task overwhelm occurs when the actionable items in your list are crowded out by the non-urgent ones: when your ideas, list of someday-maybes, inspirations, and random learnings make it difficult to find the singular, next important action.

When you’re in the midst of a busy workday and just need to know the next action, you don’t really want to wade through your grocery list, a reflective note to self, or quotes from a book you’re reading.

The simplicity of the to-do list became cluttered with all kinds of information – not all of which was important or actionable. The end result: your task list becomes less effective, doubling as a catalog of wishes, dreams, insights, reminders and surprises from your day.

This set the stage for the next wave of productivity software – digital notetaking apps. 

3. Notetaking Apps: Your Own, Personally Curated Solution to Information Overwhelm

Coinciding roughly with the rise of the iPhone in the late 2000s, digital notetaking apps like Evernote, Bear, and Simplenote rose to meet the demand for easily capturing notes from anywhere (and having them available everywhere).

Notetaking apps offered incredible speed and flexibility compared to traditional office documents and databases. They allowed us to edit the content of a note with a single click, without having to wait to “open a document.” You could search hundreds or even thousands of notes rapidly, save images and webpages alongside text, and sync your notes automatically between the multiple devices we increasingly used.

Notetaking apps swept across the productivity landscape, but they didn’t replace task managers. That’s generally not how technological advancement works: The invention of automobiles didn’t lead to the extinction of horses. 

Each new generation of tools takes over certain jobs but not others, and notetaking apps  unlocked a new form of digital creativity well-matched with our fluid, mobile, always-on, everyday lives.

That said, over the last few years, the wheel of history has turned once again. The notetaking apps that were so exciting and revolutionary in the 2010s now feel ill-suited to the way we need to track and organize our knowledge today – for maximum relevance, utility, and insight.

Notetaking overwhelm happens when you’re collecting everything, processing your notes, and growing a knowledge system – but somehow, you never revisit the notes you’ve captured, and don’t seem to be able to achieve the day-to-day usefulness from your notes you’ve already collected. 

As part of my work with entrepreneurs, companies, and creatives, I’ve noticed that there’s a small but highly impactful percentage of digital notes that are very different from the rest – notes that address the problem of note overwhelm. 

Most notes are made up of static content, such as quotes from a book, a list of project ideas, excerpts from an article, or bookmarks from the web. These are meant to be reviewed, referenced, and sometimes incorporated into new works, but not much else. 

But other notes are more complex. These special kinds of notes do more than store information – they analyze, interpret, cross-reference, and connect different pieces of information together. 

The bubble of notetaking apps is popping, and the seeds of a new revolution are beginning to blossom: the rise of Personal Dashboards.

4. Personal Dashboards: a Just-in-Time Springboard to Knowledgeable Action 

I propose a new term for higher-order, more sophisticated documents than standard digital notes apps can manage: Personal Dashboards.

Personal Dashboards push mere notetaking to the next level: they provide the big picture, using your curated knowledge and data to guide action and help you make better decisions.

Examples include a financial dashboard to display the current state of your finances, a checklist to manage an important part of your business that can easily be re-ordered, or a table with goals linked to fully-fledged projects with documentation and deadlines. 

The “job” of Personal Dashboards – which notetaking apps are least suited to – is to guide day-to-day decisions and actions, and “do work” by processing and reframing information in ways that are difficult for a human brain to do on its own. 

Your dashboards proactively inform the actions you take every day. To do that, they have to be dynamic and responsive to your changing needs. They have to change in response to how you want information presented in the moment, which facets you want to explore or understand, or based on changes in your digital environment.

This new kind of document is perfect for modern knowledge workers – more interactive than simply editing text, more intelligent than a static document, more dynamic than a bullet point list, and more collaborative than a Google Doc. And they address notetaking overwhelm by structuring, organizing, and reframing your existing notes on a just-in-time basis.

After all, the main purpose of a dashboard – think of the dashboard in your car, or the cockpit of an airplane – is to facilitate fast, informed decisions. 

When driving a car, you don’t have time for traditional information-gathering techniques. You need to see your speed, how much gas you have left, whether the engine is overheating – and you need to be able to absorb that information in a split second with only a glance.

For most of us, the consequences of a split-second delay aren’t usually so severe. But we also have a need for information that is both accurate and up-to-date. Meeting both of these requirements at the same time is difficult. We need intelligent software that can be more accurate and far faster than humans could ever be.

Here’s one of our Personal Dashboards at Forte Labs – the Editorial Calendar I’ve used to run our content business for the past few years.

Notion, an app specialized for Personal Dashboards

As a media business, we need to know and be aware of each piece of content flowing through our pipeline – what it is, where it came from, what it includes, who’s responsible for it, when it’s scheduled to be published, and what actions have to be taken to do so. 

There is no one “right way” to present this information. The right way depends on the person and their needs in the moment.

There are times when I want to see our editorial schedule laid out in a calendar view, with deadlines and due dates emphasized. Other times, I want to see it organized by person responsible, so I know who is working on it. Or maybe I want to see it sorted by stages of completion, from first draft to final version, so I know how much work is left to be done. It depends!

Until recently, you had to either hire an engineer to create such a dashboard (which is tremendously expensive), or use an existing off-the-shelf solution (but miss out on the benefits of customization). 

But the power of dashboards has now trickled down to everyone, as part of the “no-code” movement: apps that allow for extensive customization, without requiring technical coding skills, such as Webflow (for web design), Zapier (for automation), Airtable (for databases), and Notion, Coda, and Microsoft Loop (for the dashboards and collaborative pages I’m describing here). 

The incoming wave of productivity apps crashing upon our shores offers tremendous possibilities, but also presents new pitfalls. I frequently see people switching wholesale from a notes app like Evernote to Notion, and simply mass migrating all their content all at once upfront. But this is usually a mistake. 

It takes far more time and energy to create a Personal Dashboard in Notion, for example, versus a note in Evernote. A personal dashboard has to be architected – designed, and built, and iterated on, and maintained over time. 

The information that made sense in your free-form notes isn’t necessarily suited to a more structured tool. That content usually needs to be distilled, synthesized, or restructured before it can be functional as part of a dashboard or collaborative document.

Here’s my advice for deciding what is worth building in a more advanced tool like Notion: start building with the end in mind. 

Here are some good questions to ask yourself:

What problems do I want to solve – the big questions I’m trying to answer?

What is the ideal future state for a challenge I’m facing?

What personal dreams or goals do I have that I might not have shared with anyone else?

How can I focus only on the essential information I need to create this dashboard – while ignoring everything else?5. How to Craft Your Personal Productivity Stack

The reality is that we all have a holistic productivity stack, which changes slowly. My term for this stack is a “Second Brain,” because it allows you to offload and utilize all the complex information swirling through your mind.

Each new generation of productivity software adds a new layer on top, instead of completely displacing the ones that came before. 

The correct response to these technological innovations? Patience. 

Not only is it unnecessary to immediately ascend to the highest layer, it’s probably wise to wait until the dust has settled and it’s clear what the new layer is and what it’s for. 

As an example, here’s a note I captured recently in Evernote, with excerpts from a Kindle ebook I’m reading called Free to Learn by Peter Gray. It talks about the importance of play when it comes to learning. 

I’m only a couple chapters in and these excerpts already amount to over 1,300 words. Those words were saved to Evernote automatically, without any action required on my part, using a useful third-party service called Readwise.

This is a great example of content that is perfectly suited for a simple notetaking app. 

It doesn’t benefit from more structure, or need advanced functionality like toggles and tables and interlinked databases. And the details are so extensive they would probably just end up cluttering up my actionable documents. It’s a document with static text, and that’s the way I like it.

In contrast, here is our YouTube and live streaming studio “operating system” in Notion:

This document is highly interactive and dynamic, allowing anyone on the Forte Labs team to add or modify each “item” (representing a piece of gear we use to create our content or any other relevant item) as needed. Anyone on the team can check our inventory or walk through the studio’s goals, history, and current projects as they see fit. 

Furthermore, this team dashboard can link to and reference other documents, such as checklists we use for how to publish a video, our content goals for the quarter and year, and documentation for outside contractor roles we work with frequently. 

And with a few clicks anyone can instantly view this information in a calendar view, a list view, a table view, by the person responsible, or a custom view that they design themselves.

A notetaking app like Evernote cannot remotely handle this kind of sophistication… and it would be a mistake to try to get it to. But classic notetaking apps will win for the feature they still perform better than any other – capturing content in the first place.

A notetaking app can continue to serve as a “universal inbox,” able to capture content from anywhere, in any format, for any purpose, in one centralized place that is easily searchable. That is an important job, and it’s here to stay.

Each person’s productivity stack is different, but it’s always multi-layered, multi-dimensional, and nuanced. Some of the layers will change over time, while others may stick around in some form forever. 

It’s not about switching, it’s about layering – if and when you find that one layer doesn’t meet your needs, then and only then consider adding a new layer to your repertoire.

The truth is, all these tools and all these layers only matter to the extent they bring you more of what you want in life. 

Instead of dutifully starting at the bottom and painstakingly working your way up the stack, start at the top and ask yourself.

“What do I want?” 

Remember, the only purpose of productivity is to move you toward your goals – the experiences and feelings that you want to have more of. 

Identify what you are trying to accomplish, and work backward from there. 

You may find that you don’t need nearly as many new tools as you think.

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Book Update #6: Publishing deals in China and Taiwan

I’m incredibly proud to announce we’ve signed our first two non-English foreign publishing deals for my upcoming book Building a Second Brain! 

The book will be available in China and Taiwan, both with major non-fiction publishers who have worked with many of the top Western authors to have their books translated and widely distributed.

Knowing that my book will be available in China is especially meaningful to me, because believe it or not, the second-biggest slice of my ancestral pie is from China, about 22% (second only to my Brazilian-Italian roots). My mother is from Brazil and my father is from the Philippines, but these countries are both ethnically heterogeneous and full of immigrants from other places. Since we are not indigenous, our blood originally comes from other places.

My dad’s Filipino family is part of the Chinese diaspora. Family lore has it that our ancestors crossed over to Iloilo City in the Philippines from the Cantonese region of Southern mainland China, which includes the Pearl River Basin shared between Guangdong and Guangxi provinces. Our family surname, Lacson, is likely derived from the Chinese “Son Lac” or “sixth son.”

My family is extremely avid about researching our ancestry, and we’ve traced back multiple lines as far back as 1600 in Europe. But my Chinese lineage is the one I know the least about because that history is shrouded in a past my Filipino ancestors didn’t record or pass on (if only they had Second Brains…). 

For some reason, it’s gratifying to think that some distant contemporary relative of mine might pick up this book in a small village alongside the Pearl River, find some value or wisdom in it, and have no idea that there is an ancient bloodline connecting us. Neither of us will ever know, but somehow such mysterious possibilities fill me with a sense of wonder. It feels like a gift I’m giving them from across the centuries. And of course, having my book available there substantially increases the odds that I’ll be visiting some time in the future.

This is a major milestone because it represents the first non-English translations of Building a Second Brain, in Traditional Chinese for Taiwan and Simplified Chinese for China. This means we’ll have the chance to see how the Second Brain idea resonates with people who don’t share as much cultural and historical context. 

Examples like European commonplace books and American 20th-century inventors might resonate less, while examples like the Chinese tradition of biji (roughly translated as “notebook” including anecdotes, quotations, random musings, philological speculations, literary criticism and everything else that the author deems worth recording) might resonate more.

I’ve long wanted to visit Taiwan, the beating heart of the modern chip industry, and I hope this deal will give me an excuse to visit there as well. Asian countries have long been one of the strongest markets for digital organizing – Evernote achieved widespread adoption and there are many Evernote tutorials published in various Asian languages – and I hope to capitalize on that tradition with my book.

We don’t yet have the details of when and where you can purchase the Chinese and Taiwanese editions of my book, but we’ll add them to the buildingasecondbrain.com/pre-order website as soon as we do. We are in active talks with publishers in multiple countries around the world, and are doing everything we can to fulfill our mission of empowering anyone in the world to build a Second Brain. Stay tuned!

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Case Study: How the Second Brain Meme is Going Mainstream

One of my current obsessions is understanding exactly how a new idea, such as the “Second Brain” meme I’ve spent the last 5 years working on, moves from the fringes of society to become a part of mainstream culture.

This isn’t idle speculation: in 6 months, on August 2, 2022, my book Building a Second Brain will be released. The purpose of this book is to popularize the many useful and fascinating ideas related to digital notetaking and personal knowledge management I’ve found.

Our mission at Forte Labs is to break this idea out of the nerdy niches where it currently lives, and democratize access to the powerful capabilities a personal system of knowledge management gives people.

I recently encountered the very first mention of “second-brain apps” I’ve seen referenced in the mainstream media. An article entitled The Rise of the Tabulated Self: I Saw the Best Minds of my Generation Being Uploaded into “Second-Brain” Apps by Sophie Hagney was recommended by New York Magazine.

This article is a case study for answering the question: How do gatekeepers, tastemakers, influencers, and public intellectuals frame new ideas and introduce them to their audiences in ways that are understandable and attractive?

The sheer number and variety of interesting terms, metaphors, and cross-cultural connections found in just this piece provides a hint of the cultural tsunami to come.

Let me unpack how Hagney introduced the concept of a Second Brain one step at a time. This case study is about one meme, but the lessons it contains apply to any new idea you might be interested in spreading.

Making second-brain apps into a new category

First of all, I was shocked to see the term “second-brain apps” used to define the software category. Somehow it had never occurred to me that this might end up being the label for these kinds of apps. I had always used “Second Brain” on its own as a metaphor, and “notes apps” or “knowledge management apps” to describe the software. Sometimes the most obvious options are hiding right under our noses.

Giving a new trend a label is one of the most crucial steps in signaling to people that this is something new and exciting. People are inherently attracted to novelty, and giving this an interesting, attractive name is an important step.

Telling the history of second-brain apps

Second, it was interesting to see how Hagney provided the history behind the rise of “personal documentation.” It’s always helpful for people to understand where a new trend came from, but they also don’t usually want a lot of historical background. The job of a writer is to pick and choose a few elements of the past to highlight.

Hagney goes all the way back to the U.S. Civil War and the proliferation of printed material printed by businesses and collected by households. Most of her research seems to come from a book on the history of the filing cabinet (affiliate link), which she describes favorably: “The filing cabinet, then, was better than a human brain — it could hold and organize the entire contents of one’s professional and domestic life, broken down into discrete bits of information and made retrievable at will.”

Linking an emerging category of software with a pre-digital era frames it as timeless and evergreen, not subject to the whims of technology trends.

Framing second-brain apps in a positive light

Third, the piece is pervaded by a slightly skeptical lens. Hagney is clearly suspicious of the great feats of meticulous organizing that her interview subjects undertake, such as documenting their romantic relationships or all the books they’ve read. The subtitle of the piece says it all: “I saw the best minds of my generation being uploaded onto ‘second-brain’ apps.”

This kind of techno-skepticism has been around forever. Hagney even quotes a techno-skeptic from all the way back in 1930. But what is most striking about the tone of this article is just how much she pulls her punches and keeps an open mind about how a Second Brain might be a healthy and productive approach to managing information: “It’s tantalizing to consider: the idea that the answers to all of our questions are searchable in our own history and experiences, so long as we’re able to save everything (and arrange it in an orderly manner).” 

This open-mindedness is in stark contrast to journalists’ usual focus on the negative side effects of technology, such as eliminating jobs or fragmenting our attention. People want to be part of trends that are positive and uplifting, and seeing such an optimistic framing of the potential of second-brain apps is a welcome change.

Identifying with the problem that second-brain apps solve

Fourth, Hagney’s description of our current challenges with information is both relatable, and universal. Interestingly, she uses the royal “we” and includes herself in that group, unlike other journalists who tend to treat digital organizers like an exotic species:

We are constantly turning our lives into data, much of it nonphysical: photographs and screenshots and stray notes, reams of text messages and bookmarked tabs and other digital detritus…By now, we may even rely on our devices’ memories so completely that we’ve lost our ability to recall things without them. But the contents of our digital memories have themselves grown unwieldy, fractured across multiple devices and accounts, impossible to process.

Writers and influencers allow their readers to live vicariously through them, which means that one of the most powerful ways to inspire readers to take action is to convey a sense of personal interest and enthusiasm.

Showing how second-brain apps improve on past software

Fifth, Hagney references the more formal or “technical” terms for Second Brains, while also bridging them to the new term she is introducing: “Amid this flood of data, a new category of app has emerged, one that promises to collect all the digital material we generate into one single, seamless interface. They are sometimes referred to as ‘knowledge-management systems’ or ‘personal-knowledge bases,’ though many users refer to them as simply ‘second brains.”

Crucially, she identifies the key feature of the new generation of software, which is that it goes beyond storage to intelligent retrieval: “Like the filing cabinet for the pre-digital era, these apps are designed not only to store everything that our brains can’t hold — grocery lists, passwords, meditation schedules, work tasks — but also to make us better at retrieving the information in them.” And elsewhere: “they allow us to sort our archives into customizable, easy-to-navigate tables – and, in the case of Mem and Obsidian, can even show us how one piece of information (say, your to-do list) is related to another (notes from a recent meeting).”

Triangulating second-brain apps via existing cultural trends

Lastly, I was fascinated to see how Hagney used existing cultural trends to triangulate and define what second-brain apps are and what they’re for. Perhaps the single most effective way of introducing new trends into mainstream conversation is by linking them to existing ideas that most people already know and care about. 

For example, Hagney connects second-brain apps to:

Marie Kondo and her tidying methods: “Watching Notion evangelists describe their systems, I was reminded a bit of those devoted to Marie Kondo’s methods of tidying up.”The self-tracking and Quantified Self movement: “rather than emphasizing removal as an antidote to chaos, the answer lies in the act of continued accumulation: every book you’ve ever read, every glass of water you drank for months, every inchoate hunch or feeling.”Wikipedia: “The sprawl of her life had been broken into neat pieces of data: interconnected, searchable, easy to see and act upon. ‘It’s like building your own Wikipedia files,’…”Popular productivity apps like Notion: “The best known is Notion, which was released in 2016 and has grown from 1 million to more than 20 million users in the past two years (and was recently valued at $10 billion).”Search engines and data visualization: “Mem sees itself as a search company — one that will allow you to trawl through a visualized version of your own brain.”Other evocative terms and metaphors: digital detritus, alternate memory, digital memories, personal documentation, externalized personal memory, compendium of self-knowledge, self-documentation are all much more relatable than existing terms like Zettelkasten and Memex

A single article like this one won’t have a noticeable cultural impact. It is just one drop in the bucket compared to what will be needed to truly popularize the idea of a Second Brain and make it part of people’s lives.

But the energy and timeliness of this article at the intersection of many existing trends gives me tremendous hope that mainstream culture is ready to take on this new idea. Information overload and overwhelm have become a crisis of such epic proportions, I believe people are more willing than ever to consider radical new possibilities for how to stem the tide.

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