Tiago Forte's Blog, page 18

Becoming Superhuman: Unlock Your Productive Potential with Email

We’re supposed to hate email and everything it represents.

But I have a confession to make.

I love email.

(Scandalous, I know.)

When it comes to email, I always think about the alternative: What would I do if there was no email at all?

Write letters? Telegrams?

Or most terrifying of all… get on the phone and call someone?!?!

Email makes it possible to be in direct contact with almost anyone in the world, at any time day or night, on any device. It requires no skills – other than reading and writing. And best of all… it’s free.

Email is the last bastion of free, open communication online.

But while email can make our communication more efficient and flexible, it’s also what some call a “Progress Trap” – a tool so effective and powerful that it grew beyond its inventors’ original intentions, and – in the process – created many new problems we have to deal with.

The very first email was sent in late 1971. This makes email 50 years old. It’s had an amazing run, but it’s time to reimagine and reinvent our approach to this medium.

After I started Forte Labs and became self-employed, solving email overwhelm was my first priority. I realized that if I didn’t solve the email problem once and for all, I would never get to more sophisticated, advanced forms of productivity.

So I studied. I experimented. And I read everything I could find to tackle the email problem… until eventually, I settled on a system.

Once I had tested the system extensively, I was ready to share more. So I wrote a blog post on my new method: One-Touch to Inbox Zero: How I Spend 17 Minutes Per Day on Email.

To this very day, this post is one of my most popular: I regularly receive messages from people who say it’s transformed their entire approach to online communication.

Without me knowing it – elsewhere on the web – my article was being read by the founding team of a startup called Superhuman.

Rahul Vohra, one of the top experts on email software in Silicon Valley, was working hard to crack the email code. And he decided to borrow some of the principles I described in my article to design Superhuman’s new email client.

Some of these principles included:

Treat your email as a receiving area only (not a to-do list, content management system, or project management tool)Pick & commit to your 4 essential “downstream systems” (a read later app, a calendar app, a notes app, and a task manager)Start at your oldest email and process one at a time (never skipping an email and never going backward)Make your goal to decide where each email actually belongs (hint: not in your inbox!), then forward it to one of your four “downstream systems”And many more ideas (such as why you should never “delete” an email – and what to do instead)

Want to dig into my most up-to-date thinking on all of these principles?

Good news: Superhuman recently interviewed me and summarized my approach to Inbox Zero – including 4 steps you can take to transition to this method.

Read it here:

Unlock Your Productive Potential with Email

 

By the way – all these years later, Superhuman has become one of the most popular and influential email client apps, offering a “premium” user experience with helpful defaults that guide people toward more productive habits with their email.

Instead of having to change your behavior through sheer force of will, fighting the design of Gmail, which is designed to accommodate the needs of billions of people, Superhuman asserts an opinion about how email should be handled.

I love our exchange of ideas because I hope it’s something we see more of in the future: conceptual thinkers and productivity coaches informing the design of software based on what they understand about people’s psychology and behavior.

The popularity of Getting Things Done (GTD) shaped a generation of to-do list apps, which adopted its use of terms like “inbox,” “next action,” “someday/maybe,” and “projects and areas.” Having a shared framework for a skill like email management similarly allows software creators to focus on what they do best – performance and design.

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The post Becoming Superhuman: Unlock Your Productive Potential with Email appeared first on Forte Labs.

Book Update #5: Our first international book deal – the United Kingdom & India

We’ve just signed our first international book deal to publish Building a Second Brain….in the United Kingdom!

The initial wave of pre-orders in the United States has turned publishing heads around the world, and my literary agency has reported a surge in interest and enthusiasm for BASB in multiple countries.

We’ve signed with Profile, whose UK catalogue includes such bestsellers as:

Atul Gawande’s  The Checklist Manifesto Ryan Holiday’s  The Daily Stoic Julia Cameron’s  The Artist’s Way Robert Greene’s  The 48 Laws of Power

(I’m incredibly honored to be in the company of these greats).

Once again, I want to send a signal to our new partners and to all the international publishers who are watching closely to see how this book performs outside the U.S.

If you are located in the United Kingdom, I humbly ask you to consider pre-ordering my book below:

Pre-order on Amazon UK Pre-order from Waterstones

 

This deal means we will have far better distribution in the UK (and Commonwealth countries), in more formats, and with better shipping options versus having to order from U.S. booksellers.

We’ll announce which Commonwealth countries will receive distribution as soon as we know, but for now I can confirm that this includes… INDIA!

Historically I’ve had more customers of my ebooks from India than anywhere else, even the U.S.

I know there are so many people in India who are eager to dig deeper in the digital economy – and it moves me deeply to be able to make these ideas available locally. You can pre-order on Amazon India using the link below:

Pre-order on Amazon India

We are focusing our initial efforts on Amazon as they’re usually earliest to open pre-orders. But as soon as more retail outlets become available, I’ll share them with you via this newsletter and the new Building a Second Brain website.

As a reminder: All pre-orders made before Nov. 30, 2021, in any country and any format, qualify for our first pre-order bonus: a virtual workshop covering the entire Building a Second Brain Method in 3 jam-packed hours. Submit your proof of purchase here to get the details and reserve your spot.

Thank you for being patient, for believing in and trusting me, and for jumping into action when it matters most. I am completely dedicated to making Second Brains available to every person on the planet who wants one.

Tiago

P.S. I’ve created a series with all book-related updates in chronological order and in one place. You can use it to get caught up on the latest news, and hopefully to learn from my successes and mistakes alike as I learn in public.

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Book Update #4: You showed up – book sales are taking off!

Last week I asked you to be among the very first people to pre-order my new book Building a Second Brain….and boy did you deliver!

The book quickly climbed the bestseller charts in the early morning hours last Tuesday, hitting the #1 spot in all 3 of its categories on Amazon.

We peaked at #65 across the entire Kindle store, which means for a brief moment it was the 65th best-selling ebook in the world! It was so thrilling to wake up and see that “Best Seller” badge in the corner.

Cracking the Top 100 in the Kindle Store is a stupendous achievement. Almost unheard of for pre-orders of a book 9 months out from the release date. We’re already receiving a flurry of interest from foreign publishers, potential distributors, and corporate buyers alike based on these results alone.

I don’t actually know how many pre-orders were made since only the publisher has access to the backend details. But my very rough estimation is that there were approximately between 4,000–5,000 in just the first week!

Which means…we are already halfway to our goal of 10,000! I honestly can’t believe it. It took a couple days to fully sink in. I was driving home from the gym on Thursday afternoon and all the anticipation from so many months of work, wondering whether people would respond to this first launch, hit me all at once in an overwhelming wave of relief and gratitude.

Thank you so much for stepping forward and taking such massive, decisive action at this pivotal moment. It means everything to me.

And if you haven’t secured your own copy, our first and best pre-order bonus is available only for pre-orders made in the next week (up until Nov. 30): an invite to join the first-ever virtual workshop in which I’ll teach the entire Building a Second Brain Method in just 3 hours. 

It’s taken 5 years, 12 cohorts, and countless iterations on this material for me to feel confident I know what the essential parts of Building a Second Brain are. Only now that the manuscript is locked and loaded can I distill what normally takes 5 weeks of intense, live cohort learning into a single 3-hour workshop.

Today we’re unveiling the new buildingasecondbrain.com website, which includes links to everywhere you can buy the book (including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Indiebound). We’ll add others as they become available.

 

All you have to do is pre-order the book (in any format and from any sales outlet) before Nov. 30, 2021, and follow these step-by-step instructions for how to submit your proof of purchase and reserve your bonus:

Pre-order and reserve your bonus

We’ve received a lot of questions about pre-orders, and I’d like to address the most common ones.

Frequently Asked Questions1. I PRE-ORDERED IN THE UNITED KINGDOM AND MY ORDER WAS CANCELLED. WHAT GIVES?

All pre-orders made through Amazon UK were cancelled this week. I had no advance warning of this, and I’m sorry for the confusion. This happened due to some imminent, very exciting news that I will share as soon as it’s official.

If you miss the Nov. 30 deadline to get access to the virtual BASB workshop, don’t worry – your pre-order will still qualify for access to the workshop recording when it’s eventually released. And in the coming months we will release a wide range of pre-order bonuses for purchases from 1 to 1,000 books, and any pre-order will qualify.

2. WHY CAN’T I PRE-ORDER THE BOOK IN MY COUNTRY?

Our ultimate goal is to make this book available in every country in the world we can. I’m determined to make that happen, but it will take time.

The publishing industry is a vast, complex network of relationships, distribution and sales channels, contractual agreements, and licensing rights. Each publisher purchases rights to a certain country or region, and then is only allowed to sell it in that region.

The reason we opened pre-orders so early, primarily in the U.S., and focused on Amazon is to climb the bestseller lists, make a splash, and use the momentum from that initial wave in negotiations with foreign publishers, which are ongoing.

By purchasing the U.S. Kindle or hardcover versions from any retailer, you are adding to that snowball of momentum and giving weight to my literary agency’s negotiations on my behalf.

Basically, we are focusing our efforts on the biggest book market in the world, the United States, to prove to publishers and distributors around the world that there is existing demand for this book. As soon as we have a way to distribute the book in your country, we will.

3. WHY CAN’T I PRE-ORDER THE BOOK THROUGH MY PREFERRED RETAIL OUTLET?

We are also determined to make this book available in every possible channel we can. From online book sites to corporate chains to small independent shops.

I know many of you prefer to buy through a small, local, and/or independent bookstore, and I fully support that. Currently it is available for sale through Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Indiebound. Other outlets take more time to begin making pre-orders available, but I will keep updating the BASB website as others come online.

For our purposes, all sales of the book through any channel and in any format matter. So I’ve decided that we will honor any and all pre-order incentives (subject to deadlines and quantity limits) regardless of where you purchase the book.

4. WILL YOU BE RELEASING AN AUDIOBOOK VERSION?

We are also committed to translating the book into every format available, including audiobook. But I want to record the audiobook myself, with my own voice, so that will also take some time.

It also depends on the sales momentum of the ebook and hardcover versions. Showing signs of success there will help us secure better terms and distribution rights for the audiobook as well.

In summary…

Thank you for making this sales spike happen – and for keeping it going!

You’re helping us bring the Second Brain movement to as many people as possible – in an accessible format for everyone.

More updates soon,

Tiago

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My Book Building a Second Brain is Open for Pre-Orders!

It’s not every day that 4 years of nonstop work hinges on one moment.

But today’s one of those days!

I’ve dreamed of writing this email for many years, and I can officially say it:

You can now pre-order Building a Second Brain, which distills all of my best insights from 7 years of writing and 5 years of teaching into a single, accessible book:

Pre-order Building a Second Brain

The fate of the Second Brain movement now lies completely in your hands.

This earliest wave of pre-orders is the most important moment in the life of this book.

The number of people reading this email now who pre-order will act as a signal to the entire publishing industry that this book matters, and that people are willing and excited to pay for what’s inside it.

Our goal between now and next August 2, 2022 when it’s officially released? 10,000 pre-orders (Combined across all sales channels and formats).

I’ve heard from many sources that this number is a threshold that will act as a tripwire signaling early momentum for a new book. If we hit this number, we could trigger anything from extra print runs to attention from mainstream media outlets.

It’s all in your hands. I’m humbled just thinking about it.

In the coming months we’ll announce a variety of pre-order bonuses. These bonuses will be organized into “tiers” based on how many books you pre-order – from a single book all the way to bulk orders of hundreds (e.g. corporate buyers and super fans). We don’t have 100% of our bonuses locked in, but any purchases you make in the meantime qualify retroactively for those bonuses.

(And it doesn’t depend on where you buy it – a purchase from any retailer in any format counts, as long as you can send us a valid receipt!)

I thought long and hard about the first and best bonus I wanted to offer my longest-time followers and subscribers. It’s difficult to put into words what it means to me that so many of you have supported me for so long. That’s why I’m offering the best reward I could imagine, available only to ultra-early pre-order purchases made in the next two weeks, by November 30, 2021.

This “early-bird” bonus is something I’ve never done before: a one-time, exclusive virtual workshop where I teach the entire Building a Second Brain method in one go.

It’s taken 5 years, 12 cohorts, and countless iterations on this material for me to feel confident I know what the essential parts of Building a Second Brain are. Only now that the manuscript is locked and loaded can I distill what normally takes 5 weeks of intense, live cohort learning into a single 3-hour workshop. It’s time!

If you’ve ever received value from anything I’ve said, written, or taught you…

This is the moment I need you most.

I’d be honored if you pre-order even one single copy of Building a Second Brain today, and be the driving force in our movement to unlock the full potential of our knowledge and creativity for as many people as possible.

Get your copy (including all our future pre-order bonuses) on Amazon in hardcover ($28 USD) or Kindle ebook ($15 USD) formats:

Pre-order Building a Second Brain

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

It’s been my supreme privilege to be able to reach this point (thanks to all of you).

With your help, I hope to look back on today as the very, very first step towards a beautiful revolution in human flourishing to come.

Let’s go! [image error]

Tiago

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Book Update #3: The Goal That Took Me 15 Years to Achieve

It was the fall of 2005. I was a 20 year-old student at Saddleback Community College near my hometown in Orange County, California.

Over the previous year, I had exhausted nearly all of my college savings by attending one of the most expensive universities in the country, in faraway Washington D.C.

Before I knew what hit me, my dream of graduating from a prestigious East Coast university and traveling the world as a respected diplomat had been shattered.

Broke and depressed, I moved back in with my parents to pick up the pieces of my life.

After a few months of feeling sorry for myself, I enrolled in a writing class at the local community college. Toward the end of the semester, our final assignment was to write a paper arguing for our point of view on a subject we cared about.

After I submitted it, the professor took me aside to tell me that he loved it, and that I should think seriously about a career as a writer.

I was stunned. Becoming a writer was a possibility I had never considered.

I enjoyed writing, but had never remotely considered what a writing career might look like. I didn’t know any professional writers. I had no special expertise or experience to write about. I didn’t even have an interesting life.

But somewhere within myself I felt a calling, like a hushed voice trying to break free. Though it took someone I respected to point it out to me, on some level I already knew I had a unique way of seeing things that would be valuable to others. I had a thorn in my side, insisting that I had something to say and that I absolutely had to say it.

My ruminations led me on a drive down Pacific Coast Highway to Aliso Creek State Beach, the go-to beach spot where I spent many summers with family and friends. We used to play in the sand and waves by an old pier that extended out into the ocean, that had long since been demolished.

I sat at a picnic table on the remains of the pier, and looked out toward the invisible horizon. It felt like I was at a crossroads between the conventional path everyone around me seemed to advise, and the wilds of a creative – but unknown – trail.

I could feel my identity shift in real time, growing and expanding beyond the lost and aimless teenager I saw myself as, to reveal someone else underneath:

An adult. An artist. A wise soul. A writer.

It was terrifying to admit to myself, in the quiet of my own head, that I even wanted to write a book. Just acknowledging it felt scary. It risked disappointment. It exposed me to the unknown.

I took out my journal and wrote out a promise: I will write a book.

I didn’t have any of the details. I didn’t know what my book would be about. I had no timeline or immediate plans. But I walked away from that beach a different person, with a new sense of purpose.

At this point, my innocence and naivete were my only real assets. I knew almost nothing about what lay ahead of me, and it would take many years for me to make even minor progress on my goal. But I had completed the first step. The step toward becoming the kind of person whose life is worthy of a book.

In my 20s, I lived and worked in foreign countries, and gained a greater diversity of perspectives and working experience than the dismal U.S. job market of 2009 could offer me.

I built up my writing muscles by publishing my writing online: first on a free Blogger account, then on Medium, and eventually on my own website.

My writing and editing abilities slowly improved, from short travelogues, to multi-thousand word in-depth essays, to ebooks that compiled those essays together.

As I did this, I gained the real expertise that I would eventually teach others: how to build a system of knowledge management. Instigated by an unexplained chronic pain condition, I began to keep rigorous medical notes and scan them into my computer. This whole ordeal felt like a diversion from what my path was supposed to be, like something that never should have happened to me and that I didn’t deserve.

But that experience became the very portal into the knowledge I needed. Through that pain, I was forced to develop new abilities. I had to create a system to support me when my body couldn’t be relied on. And as the years passed, I began to see that many, many people badly needed such a system for themselves.

It’s been over 15 years since the possibility of writing a book entered my mind. And somehow, after all this time, all the pieces have come together in the form of a book – THE book – I promised myself I would write.

I’m unbelievably proud to share with you the cover of Building a Second Brain:

In just one week, we will begin accepting pre-orders – in multiple formats and through multiple sellers. Subscribe to our newsletter below if you’d like to be reminded. I’m offering a very unique and special pre-order bonus only to subscribers of my newsletter, only for a limited time.

I’m beyond grateful just to be able to share this book with you. It is everything I ever hoped and more.

My only remaining desire is that it touches many lives, yours included.

One week to go – let’s do this!

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Book Update #2: Manuscript in Production

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Building a Second Brain 13: The 9 Biggest Improvements We’re Making

As soon as cohort 12 of Building a Second Brain finished earlier this year, my team and I sat down to start designing the next cohort.

We looked at everything: 

Feedback from students Ideas for improvements saved in our notesNew apps and features that have been releasedAnd our long-term plans for making this the best course on Personal Knowledge Management in the world

Throughout that process, we had one guiding question:

How can we make a course that is impossible to fail?

So many courses make a big promise of everything you will do and achieve…as long as you perfectly complete every lesson.

I remember taking these courses. The feeling of disappointment as I slowly dropped off time after time, always blaming myself and my lack of self-discipline for my failure. I don’t think I ever finished a self-paced course.

It seemed to work for everyone else, but why not me? Why couldn’t I be one of the glowing testimonials I saw on the sales page?

When I created Building a Second Brain, I was determined to create an experience that left people feeling empowered, not guilty.

I decided to deliver the course live via Zoom. Instead of assigning lectures for students to somehow find time to watch on their own, I led them through lessons live.

When the group got too big for me to work directly with every student, I hired Alumni Mentors to coach students through their process.

This approach is probably not as efficient or scalable, but it is radically more effective at delivering the promises we’ve made.

We’ve just released the full list of improvements we’re making in cohort 13, which I’ll explain in more detail below. Every single one of these changes is laser-focused on one target: Making you win.

Enrollment for Building a Second Brain 13 is now open until October 27, 2021. Visit our website below for the full details and to join:

Join Building a Second Brain 13 1. New Interactive, Studio-Quality Live Sessions

The design and construction of our home studio was 6 months in the making and is now finally complete. 

What was once a shabby garage is now a world-class live recording studio with ultra-high-definition video and broadcast quality audio that will completely change how you experience our live Zoom sessions. 

We invested in creating a “classroom that can teach the entire world” because we noticed what a huge difference production values make to the student learning experience. 

Better lighting, sound, image quality, framing, and backgrounds make it easier for you to pay attention and help me, as an instructor, connect with more of you in our interactive coaching sessions.

2. Improved Accessibility and Recordings

We want Building a Second Brain to be an inclusive environment that makes it easy for people of all abilities and backgrounds to participate in and benefit from. 

That’s why we’re adding live captions to our Zoom sessions. Our transcripts and recordings are also now compliant with Section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. That means they’re easier to read and navigate for the widest possible range of people.

3. Revamped Alumni Mentor Program

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

For this cohort, we selected 10 Senior Mentors, all with previous mentoring experience, to guide you. 

In the Mentor sessions, you’ll deepen your understanding of the techniques and principles of personal knowledge management, get your questions answered, and get to know a small group of peers more personally. 

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. 

For the first time, we’ll also make the full recordings (plus transcripts) of the Mentor Sessions available to all students – one of our most requested features. So, if you can’t attend live, you’ll easily be able to catch up. 

4. Redesigned Community Experience 

The community is at the heart of Building a Second Brain. Every cohort, we’re improving the structure of our discussion forum on Circle to further help you self-organize and find relevant information faster. 

From now on, each major notetaking tool (such as Evernote, Notion, and Roam) will have its own evergreen space in Circle, dedicated to discussions around that tool. 

Each of these spaces will be moderated by 2-4 alumni moderators who specialize in that platform and use it day to day. They’ll help answer questions and curate the best tips, techniques, and demos each week. 

5. Limiting Lifetime Access to Future Cohorts

One of the biggest changes we’re making is limiting lifetime access to future live cohorts to the Premium and Executive Editions only. 

Instead of continuing to raise prices, we’ve decided to limit the size of the group for both this cohort and future ones. The Essential Edition will continue to have lifetime access to both future updates to the pre-recorded curriculum and future iterations of the ever-growing alumni Circle community. 

If you’re joining the Essential Edition, you always have the option to upgrade to the Premium Edition later (but it will be more affordable to purchase Premium upfront).

6. More Engaging, Newly Redesigned Live Exercises 

As our cohort size grows, we face the challenge of keeping so many students active and engaged in our live Zoom sessions. 

Over the last couple months, we’ve worked closely with a master facilitator (and virtual theatre program director) to develop a new set of intentional exercises to help you put the BASB principles into practice right then and there, along with a new corresponding workbook.

These new exercises will make it as easy as possible for you to take action, bringing a bit of playfulness into the normally serious topic of Personal Knowledge Management. 

7. More Opportunities for Personalization And a Better Onboarding Experience 

There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to creating a transformational learning experience. We want to give you the opportunity to customize your journey as much as possible for your needs. 

This starts with guiding you in how to customize the communication you want to receive during the course (such as notifications and reminders). We’ve created a new guide to show you how to configure your email and Circle notifications so you don’t miss anything.

We’ve also redesigned your onboarding experience. Before the first live session, you’ll have a dedicated Welcome Week to give you time to prepare for the program. You’ll get guidance and a concrete checklist on how to be successful in Building a Second Brain and make the most of this learning opportunity.  

8. Updated Second Brain Snapshot

The Second Brain Snapshot evaluates your progress and identifies areas for improvement, measuring your Personal Knowledge Management skills along 12 dimensions. 

You’ll receive this Snapshot at the beginning and the end of the program to compare how you’ve improved over the 5 weeks of the course.

This cohort, we’re adding reflection questions to the Snapshot to help your future self recall the changes you’ve made.

9. New Case Study

Every cohort, we create a brand new case study on how I use my Second Brain to tackle a major project. 

This time, I’ll be taking you behind the scenes of one of the largest, most complex projects I’ve ever undertaken: the writing of my upcoming book. 

I’ll show you how I used my notes to manage every aspect of that endeavor, from drafting the proposal, to winning the publishing deal, to writing the manuscript, to moving forward the many moving pieces of the launch and promotion.

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Podcast Time Travel: What I Learned From Listening to 100 Episodes of the SPI Podcast

Over the last 18 months I performed an experiment in how I consume content.

I became a father in 2020. It was and continues to be one of the most profound, joyful experiences of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But alongside this dramatic shift in my life, I noticed another great love of mine fell by the wayside: consuming content and learning new things.

My previous approach to reading involved sitting in total silence in a peaceful room, classical music playing softly and strong coffee in hand, giving the piece in front of me my full and undivided attention. As any new parent could tell you, this idyllic approach was now impossible.

I sensed I needed an equally dramatic change in my approach to content. I needed a way to consume new ideas more passively without missing out on the richness of immersing myself deeply. So I decided to undertake an experiment:

I would listen to 100 episodes of the SPI (Smart Passive Income) Podcast, hosted by Pat Flynn. I would listen to each episode in order, without skipping any, even if the topic didn’t seem interesting.And I would only listen to the podcast during the “in-between” moments of my day: while running errands, doing household chores, or taking walks.The Listening Experiment

The previous year, I had taken Pat Flynn’s online course Power-Up-Podcasting and used what it taught me to create the first season of the Building a Second Brain Podcast. I was impressed with the course at every step of the way: the production quality, the frameworks presented, Pat’s personable delivery, and the attention to every little detail that makes or breaks a self-paced learning experience.

I kept an eye on Pat ever since, and soon noticed some striking similarities between us. We both had big ambitions – and these ambitions were accompanied by equally strong commitments to our family lives. We both had wide-ranging interests – yet were also drawn to building specific educational products. We both started as independent creators – but over time, chose to build out “real” businesses that transcended our personal brands.

On the surface, listening to a podcast isn’t exactly an unusual goal. But there were 3 unconventional aspects to my experiment:

I would listen passively , while doing other things like washing the dishes, doing laundry, or driving, and pivotally, without taking notes (Gasp!). I would listen linearly , straight through 100 consecutive episodes, rather than skipping around to whichever show or episode seemed interesting.Finally, I would travel back in time , to the point in Pat’s business that most resembled my own, rather than starting with the latest episodes.

Why passive listening? If I’m being totally honest, after a decade of meticulous notetaking, I’m getting a little tired of noting every single tip and tactic when I read. I now have 7,500+ notes in my Second Brain. Do I really need one more? The knowledge I’ve already collected could likely last me the rest of my lifetime. It was time to take in new ideas without worrying about capturing every little detail.

I listened linearly because I wasn’t looking for advice on any specific topic. I wanted to absorb Pat’s worldview: his way of thinking through problems, as well as the deeper lessons about what it means to be an excellent husband, father, businessperson, and human being. This meant I needed to retrace Pat’s steps and patiently navigate through the same topics and lessons he experienced, even if the subject of an episode didn’t immediately captivate me.

And finally, I chose to listen 4 years back in time because that was when Pat’s timeline most resembled my own. In early 2016, Pat was on the verge of releasing his book, Will It Fly? In April of 2020, I had just signed my own book deal. I could already sense that the added exposure and attention of a book launch would change the trajectory of my business and my life… and I wanted to see how it had changed Pat’s.

SPI was founded in 2008 so in 2016, when episode #197 first aired, Pat’s company was 8 years old. I started Forte Labs in 2013, so when I started listening to these 100 episodes, our company was 7 years old – almost the same spot in our business life cycle. That meant listening to Pat was like having a business coach in my ear – as he described his mistakes and successes in so much detail that I was able to map his experience onto my own.

I started with episode #197, Behind the Scenes of Writing Will It Fly? (released on January 20, 2016), and over the next 18 months listened to one episode at a time, 100 episodes in a row, until I reached episode #297, Looking Back at 2017—What Went Well, What Did Not (released December 20, 2017). I made no attempt to rush through the episodes or make progress at any particular pace. I listened exclusively while doing other things, which ended up being about 1.4 episodes per week. This was a marathon, not a sprint.

What I Learned

There were 3 powerful lessons I took away from this experience:

The importance of understanding the evolution of your industryThe value of removing yourself from the timeliness and urgency of nowThe power of immersing yourself in another person’s body of workThe importance of understanding the evolution of your industry

I teach online courses and sell other educational information products. In some ways, the online ed industry is still in its early days and might not seem like it has much of a “history” – but it absolutely does.

Pat’s business is only 5 years older than mine. But on the Internet, 5 years is a generation. It was eye-opening for me to hear about an entire “era” of online education that I hadn’t been a part of. This era is reflected in SPI’s name – Smart Passive Income – illustrating that it emerged on the scene at a time when many people were first being exposed to the possibility that they could sell things online to make money – as they say – “while you sleep.”

Flash forward to 2013, when I launched my first course. The business model that Pat helped pioneer was now well-accepted, and the frontier had moved to a new question: Can you start an online business that isn’t just “passive,” but competitive, profitable, and meaningful? The bar had been raised. People’s expectations had adjusted, and they now wanted to know if their online side gig could provide a real living.

Pat’s podcast allowed me to travel back to the peak of the “self-paced” course era when excitement and enthusiasm about “MOOCs” (Massive Open Online Courses) was at an all-time high. This helped me understand why people loved the cohort-based model that I had stumbled upon, leading me to write The Future of Education is Community: The Rise of Cohort-Based Courses describing this evolution in detail.

I understood why the crux of my kind of business was audience-building. Millions had flooded the market with information products over the previous decade, and it was no longer enough just to post a course to your website. Competition has shifted to marketing – with an emphasis both on growing the size of your audience, but even more importantly, your engagement with the buying psychology that leads people to purchase.

Even more eye-opening, I noticed how each cohort of successful online personalities rose together: how they supported each other, shared lessons and resources with one another, and promoted each others’ offerings. I noticed the same cast of characters appearing on Pat’s podcast, and him on theirs, again and again.

This made me realize I needed to invest more in relationships with peers in my field. That we were no longer an obscure little blog no one had heard of – the next chapter of our growth would be all about partnerships and collaborations with some of the biggest names in productivity, self-improvement, and online education.

The value of removing yourself from the timeliness and urgency of now

The second lesson was that there is tremendous value in removing oneself from the urgency and hype of the moment, and going back in time to the recent past.

The current online media landscape is strongly oriented towards NOW: the latest episode, the latest meme, the latest headline, the latest controversy. We get interrupted from reading a piece of content that dropped 5 minutes ago… by one that dropped 5 seconds ago. It’s an endless race to the bottom of our already short attention spans, each channel trying to be louder and more sensationalist than the last.

Listening to podcast episodes from several years in the past, I soon noticed I was developing a powerful immunity to the manufactured urgency of the moment. Once I committed to listening to a historical, pre-published library of high value content, I no longer had to pay attention to the ceaseless notifications buzzing at me while I scrolled an endless social feed for new content. Instead of swimming through the chaotic stream of NOW, I could wade peacefully through a deep pool of ideas that Pat had carefully curated for me on his podcast, years before I needed it.

If Pat mentioned an upcoming event, product launch, or change in strategy, I didn’t have to wait for it. I could simply “time travel” to the present moment and see how it had all played out. I knew that in only a few short episodes, I would hear everything he had learned from the experience, neatly organized for my consumption.

When authors were interviewed about their book launch strategies, I didn’t have to wonder if I should do the same. I could immediately look up how well their book ended up selling. Listening to the podcast was like taking in someone’s entire learning journey at 2x speed, skipping the waiting and going straight to the distilled wisdom.

Learning in this way also allowed me to gain tremendous perspective on how trends work. When a new kind of technology or hot platform first emerges, it always seems like it’s going to take over the world. Everyone’s talking about it and its future dominance seems inevitable. But if you follow the most-hyped trends closely, you’re always going to be jerked in one direction after another…and never actually arrive anywhere.

It was so gratifying to hear Pat talk about exciting trends of the time – digital magazines for iPad, Slack replacing email, and crowdfunding revolutionizing product development – and to know that those trends didn’t pan out. Or that some trends such as “live video” took many years to mature and ultimately fragmented into multiple distinct products, such as Zoom, Twitch livestreaming, and live broadcasting on social media. That observation gave me the confidence that many, if not most, of the trends of today will ultimately go nowhere, and therefore I don’t have to chase them.

The power of immersing yourself in another person’s body of work

There’s so much content available online these days – and so much more new content coming out every single day – that it tempts us to pick and choose only the morsels that happen to be most interesting or appealing to us in the moment.

We click on intriguing thumbnails, headlines that promise the moon, and whatever happens to be getting the most likes and replies that day. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, but over time I’ve noticed that this “grazing” approach to reading and listening can keep us in superficial waters. The most attention-grabbing content also tends to be the most shallow, sensationalistic, and hyperbole-filled. Deeper ideas take time and patience to absorb.

Not only that, but when we pick and choose each piece of content we consume, we tend to stay within the same topics and domains that we already know and like. We pick sources that we’re familiar with, which reinforces our beliefs and perspectives and contributes to the “filter bubbles” that are polarizing our society.

Paradoxically, I’ve concluded that the best way out of this trap is to exert less control over what you consume. Once you’ve chosen a writer, thinker, or expert, I recommend proceeding linearly through their body of work to walk through the steps of their thinking. Think of them as your “mentor at a distance” and dedicate yourself to studying their body of work, not just a single piece.

Making my way through the SPI Podcast, I couldn’t resist reading some of the show notes. And many of them didn’t interest me immediately. But I persevered, and those very episodes sometimes ended up being the most surprising and enlightening.

I learned about businesses I would never have had exposure to otherwise: a snack vending machine business, an art camp for kids, a weightlifting gym, a website for residential property managers, language learning classes, a clothing company, among others.

I was introduced to “content auditing” from Todd Tresidder (ep. #200) and how deleting a third of the content on a blog can significantly increase its performance (to my shock). I learned from Simple Green Smoothies how to run “challenges” (ep. #205) to get followers to take action. I gained some powerful insights into building a grassroots fanbase from the creators of a Walking Dead fan club (ep. #247).

All of these subjects and more I never would have chosen myself. And that is precisely why they were so valuable – they introduced me to ideas and ways of thinking I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

When you consume content in a linear way, without skipping things you’re unfamiliar with, you inevitably stumble across things you didn’t even know you were looking for. This approach takes up less energy and bandwidth, because you’re not having to make a decision about what to consume every time you have a few free minutes.

Most importantly of all, I had my mind changed in unexpected ways. Hearing from the makers of the Five-Minute Journal (ep. #271) convinced me that it would be worthwhile for us to publish a “Second Brain Notebook” one day despite the formidable challenges of creating a physical product. The episode with Pat’s wife and kids (ep. #225) showed me that it can be touching to talk more about my family, and that people appreciate hearing from them.

An interview with “gift-giving consultant” John Ruhlin (ep. #248) changed my mind about the value of thoughtful gifts, which I’d never placed much importance on since I don’t really care about gifts myself. An interview with Pat’s Managing Editor Janna Maron (ep. #215) hit me like a ton of bricks as I instantly realized I was badly in need of an “executive producer” for my own content after years of managing it all on my own (leading to the recent hiring of our first Director of Content, Marc Koenig, who edited this very piece!).

The Long Arc of a Successful Business

Stepping back from the details, when I look back at this podcast time travel experiment, my biggest takeaway is that the road to create a sustainable, fulfilling business is a long one. There are more steps on that journey than I expect – more pivots and repositionings, more rebrands and website redesigns, more product iterations, more partnerships and collaborations.

Being able to retrace the steps of someone I respect and admire is like having a roadmap for that long journey. It doesn’t tell me every single obstacle I will face. But it tells me what others have overcome who walked a similar road. I saw in SPI’s story that every business moves through seasons, that the definition of success is different in each season, and that what ultimately matters in the end is the quality of the life you lived while you moved through them.

Did each season make you a better person, even if it was filled with mistakes or disappointments? Did you welcome each new season as a part of life’s evolution? Did you appreciate and respect what each season had to offer, even if it was temporary?

Doing business online, it often feels like everything moves at light speed. Everything needs to happen yesterday, if not last week. The competition seems ever-threatening, the technology ever-intimidating, and the incoming trends never stop.

But I’ve noticed that while business tactics constantly shift, there are timeless principles and mindsets that are always relevant. When you abstract away the details of a particular marketing campaign, product launch, or sales goal, we are all just humans striving (or slouching) toward greater self-awareness, self-understanding, and if we’re lucky, self-acceptance.

In an always-on, manic environment that prizes only the novel and the public, there are so many benefits to prioritizing instead the timeless and the private. One way of doing that is to take notes and slowly digest them over time. Another way is to go back in time and absorb the lessons that others have taken the time to curate and share.

We live in a special time when it’s become so easy to create content, and so effortless to document and share one’s story online, that there are more leaders and artists and innovators than ever whose journey you can time travel through. It’s not a matter of going to the library and checking out stacks of dusty books. The life lessons of the world’s most interesting, creative, accomplished people are at your fingertips, if you only take the time to immerse yourself in them.

Special thanks to Nxt Animal, Mallory Baskin, Kevin Espiritu, Charles Brewer, and Yasi Zhang for their suggestions and feedback on this post.

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The post Podcast Time Travel: What I Learned From Listening to 100 Episodes of the SPI Podcast appeared first on Forte Labs.

Building a Second Brain 13: The Founders

We are officially launching cohort 13 of Building a Second Brain (BASB), our flagship online course on how to save your best ideas, organize your knowledge, and use it to lead a fulfilling life with more ease and less stress.

We’ve spent the last 5 months making a new round of radical improvements to every aspect of the learning experience, all with the goal of creating a course that’s impossible to fail.

If you’d like to hear more about what we’re planning and my latest thinking on personal knowledge management, subscribe below:

Once you subscribe, I’ll send you a series of short emails over the next two weeks that will include…

The solution to information overload I’ve developed after more than 10 years of research and personal experimentationWhich modern productivity and note-taking tools are essential must-haves and which are optionalWhat it means to become a “first-class citizen of the Internet” and why that will be so important in coming yearsWhat you need to “unlearn” first before you can fully embrace the benefits of building a Second BrainThe improvements and changes we’re making to cohort 13 of BASBWhat you need to know about the upcoming cohort, including the full schedule, the new curriculum, and pricing and payment optionsUpdated answers to your most frequently asked questions

In the last few weeks, I’ve been hooked on a brand-new sci-fi show on Apple TV+ called Foundation.

caption for image

It’s an epic story of how a ragtag group of scientists and scholars set out to preserve humanity’s most important knowledge so that it survives the collapse of civilization.

I couldn’t help but notice the many jaw-dropping parallels between the series and the ideas I teach in Building a Second Brain. I’ll use the series to illustrate the principles of creativity that are so timeless and universal, they can be found in any story or creative work.

Keep reading for my take on Foundation, and what it has to teach us about knowledge management in our own century.

Building a Second Brain 13: The Founders

A 12,000-year-old Galactic Empire.

A lineage of rulers, all genetic clones of the first emperor, Cleon I.

And a mathematician who uses science to predict the imminent collapse of a galaxy-wide civilization.

That’s the premise of Foundation, a new Apple TV+ series that was released just a few weeks ago. It’s based on Isaac Asimov’s novel of the same name, one of the most influential science fiction stories of all time.

Here is the teaser trailer to give you a sense of the Foundation universe:

It all begins with the mathematician Hari Seldon, who has developed a revolutionary science called psychohistory that allows him to predict the future behavior of large populations with uncanny accuracy.

According to his model, the delicate power balance of the Empire is about to implode, sending thousands of planets into a dark age of war and chaos lasting 30,000 years.

“Change is frightening, especially to those in power,” says Seldon. Naturally, the Emperor doesn’t take this news well.

After watching just the first few episodes, I couldn’t help but see the similarities to our own world today.

The old 20th-century economy is rapidly decaying. Bureaucratic government institutions are failing us as politicians do whatever it takes to stay in power. The media is stuck in the Industrial Age, and outdated industries are struggling to keep up with the pace of change.

To many, it feels like civilization as we know it is ending.

But there’s also a small glimmer of hope.

Although the inertia of the Empire’s fall is too great to stop, Seldon devises a plan by which “the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little” to limit the dark ages to just one thousand years.

He wants to build the “Foundation,” a repository of humanity’s knowledge that will allow civilization to start again. This Foundation will preserve the spirit of science and thus become the cornerstone of the future civilization that arises.

Torn between whether to kill Seldon and potentially accelerate the fall of the Empire or accept his devastating prediction and undermine his own power, the Emperor finds a middle ground…

He exiles Seldon and his followers to Terminus, a barren planet far out on the edge of the galaxy. There they can follow their plan, unseen and forgotten by the rest of the Empire.

Just like Seldon and his followers, Second Brainers (my term for people who build their own system for managing information) are creating a personal collection of knowledge that stands the test of time.

And they’re also doing it mostly hidden from the rest of the world. Having a Second Brain isn’t mainstream (yet).

Second Brainers are creating something so powerful that it will be difficult to keep secret for long. They are gathering their most precious knowledge into a system where it can grow and compound and ideas can connect together in ways never before possible.

They are preparing for a world filled with uncertainty, where survival and success depend on being able to access, shape, and direct information toward any purpose you desire.

That world is no longer science fiction: it has arrived on our doorstep today.

Join the Founders

I’ve dubbed this cohort “The Founders” to remind us that we’re pioneering a new way of organizing our digital life and improving our productivity as creative professionals.

But ultimately, we’re doing so much more than that in BASB.

This program is really about what it means to become a native citizen of the Internet. It’s about unleashing the full power of the digital tools at your fingertips. It’s about learning to use technology to capitalize on the full potential of your knowledge and ideas.

And by doing so, taking control of your destiny.

Enrollment opens for the upcoming cohort on Wednesday, October 20th at 12:00 PM EDT (4:00 PM UTC) (view in your timezone).

For the first time, we are limiting enrollment to the first 1,000 students who join. The program will run from November 3rd to December 8th, 2021 (with a week-long Thanksgiving break in the middle).

Over 5 weeks, I’ll teach you the fundamentals of CODE, the method I’ve developed for consistently turning the information you consume into concrete results, whether that is better decisions, new products or services, or better creative output. And along the way, drastically reducing the constant background anxiety that there’s something somewhere falling through the cracks.

Right now is the best time to equip yourself with a system for knowledge management, known as a “Second Brain.” Because let me tell you: the volume of information flooding your mind today is just a trickle compared to what’s coming.

Subscribe below to stay informed:

There’s much more to the story of the Foundation and many parallels for understanding our own challenges today.

In the emails I’ll send you, I’ll use the series to illustrate that the same principles of creativity and learning that worked thousands of years ago, and that work today, will also persist far into the future.

Join the Founders, and let’s explore this universe together.

Tiago

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Intermediate Packets in the Wild

One of the most powerful shifts I see people make in the way they work is breaking down their large projects or goals into smaller chunks, which I call “Intermediate Packets.”

I use the term “packet” because it reminds us that so much of our work today is digital, which means it is malleable and can easily be captured, edited, changed, adapted, and sent to anyone in the world through the Internet.

I use the term “intermediate” because it conveys that any piece of work – a slide, a paragraph, a diagram, a quote – can always become a component in a larger work. And not just one larger work, but multiple ones. 

If you design a slide that elegantly communicates a certain idea, why not keep it as a building block that can be reused in multiple slide decks in the future?If you write a paragraph that powerfully argues a point, why not save that paragraph and incorporate it anytime you need to make that particular point?If you create a diagram that effectively illustrates a trend in your industry, why not preserve that diagram so you always have evidence to support your assertions?If you find a quote that speaks to one of your deeply held values, why not put it somewhere that you can refer to anytime you’re feeling down or discouraged?

And instead of finding a separate place for each of these kinds of content and many dozens of others, keep them all in your system of personal knowledge, which I call a “Second Brain.”

Below I’ve collected many examples of how this concept is applied in different creative media and different professions. It demonstrates that the principles of creativity are timeless – it is only the toolset and the medium that changes through the years.

“Module” in software development“Taste test” in cooking“Alpha” or “beta” in startups“Sketches” in architecture“Pilot” in television“Prototypes” or “iron birds” in mechanical engineering“Scaffolding” in IT development“Pilot process” in manufacturing“Scrimmages” in football“Scenarios” in firefighting“Concept car” in automobile design“Demos” in music recording“Sample” in baking“First pass” in theatre lighting design“Marking” in the performance arts“Mock-ups” for websites“Sitzprobe” for rehearsing an opera performance“Comps” in graphic design“Animatics” in storyboard animation“Passes” in sculpting“Manuscripts” for writing“Franken-model” for hardware design“Storyboard” in filmmaking“Preprint” in academia“Straw man” in proposal drafting“Wireframe” in UI design Subscribe below to receive free weekly emails with our best new content, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. Or become a Praxis member to receive instant access to our full collection of members-only posts.

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