Tiago Forte's Blog, page 22

The Modern Swipe File: 15 Unexpected Uses for Digital Notes

One of the most common questions I’m asked is “What should I save in my digital notes?”

My typical answers include “highlights from books,” “website bookmarks,” and “social media favorites.” Those are the bread and butter of online content.

But they are also just the very tip of the iceberg.

There is a whole universe of kinds of information that are worth saving in what I call your “Second Brain” – a system of knowledge management that lives outside your head and helps you keep track of your most valuable knowledge. Once you start getting comfortable with the idea that you can store knowledge indefinitely in a reliable place, you will begin to see everything around you as potentially useful information.

In this case study, I’ll share 15 unexpected uses for digital notes, including concrete examples I’ve saved in my Second Brain to give you a taste of the stunning range and diversity of information worth saving. I’ll explain what I was thinking when I captured each one, how I might use it in the future, and include a link to the original notes.

Here’s the list:

Marketing assetsMementos and keepsakesTroubleshooting stepsHow-to checklistsIdeas for contentFavorite resourcesRepurposed contentCall/meeting notesBrainstormsModels or examples to followEveryday observationsNotes from coursesResearch findingsGuidelines and proceduresProject plans1. Marketing assets

Marketing assets are one of my favorite types of content to save. This practice has a long legacy: for decades, advertisers, public relations executives, and copywriters have kept “swipe files” with examples of ads that they wanted to borrow from or be inspired by.

BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN | ISSUE #50 BY ALI ABDAAL

In this example, someone had sent me a newsletter issue by a popular YouTuber named Ali Abdaal. I had seen his videos before, and through this newsletter issue I learned that he was a fan of my ideas.

I filed this note under “BASB 11,” a project notebook for the upcoming cohort of my course, as a reminder to reach out to Ali to see if he was interested in becoming an affiliate. When the time came, he was indeed interested. He also became an Alumni Mentor, and we’ve enjoyed a great working relationship on multiple fronts since then. You never know where a note can lead you.

2. Mementos and keepsakes

I highly recommend using your Second Brain to save keepsakes, mementos, and evidence of past successes, whether personal or professional. These small wins are exactly the kind of thing that tends to be forgotten over time. But they have a very special purpose: reminding you of where you’ve been and what you’ve achieved for those times when you need a dose of encouragement.

THE HEART IS THE BOTTLENECK AT #1

In early 2020 I published an ebook with the best writing from my blog, which I do every year. It was called The Heart is the Bottleneck, and for about a day it was at the top of the Amazon charts! Well, the free ebook charts, but still it’s a nice milestone to look back on.

In this case, I used the Evernote web clipper to take a screenshot of the Amazon page. I keep these keepsakes in an resource notebook called “Press/testimonials,” which I look through any time I need some motivation or proof-of-credibility for my marketing materials.

3. Troubleshooting steps

You can think of your Second Brain as a “reference library” full of bits of information that you have to refer to often. Because you’ll be accessing this information again and again, it’s worth keeping in a centralized place where you always know where to find it, and can share it with others easily.

WORKAROUND FOR “THIS TITLE IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE”

In this example, I often need to share these instructions with anyone who encounters an error when trying to purchase one of my ebooks on Amazon. Usually it is because they are located in a foreign country and need to log in to their own country’s Amazon store to make the purchase. It’s a simple fix, but requires a few key details. I don’t want to waste my time or my assistant’s time answering the same question again and again, so this note allows us to resolve their issue with a single shared link.

4. How-to checklists

Often you’ll encounter a helpful resource, but you’re not quite ready to put it to use. In this case, I found this extremely thorough list of questions for employee performance reviews via a newsletter I’m subscribed to.

1-ON-1 QUESTIONS FOR PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

I knew that eventually I’d want to draw inspiration from this list, but I had just hired my first employee and his first review was months away. I saved the webpage using the Web Clipper and saved it to an area notebook named after my employee. I knew that was the first place I’d look when it came time to do his review.

5. Ideas for content

As a content creator I constantly need new ideas for content I could create. The Internet is a hungry monster with an endless appetite, which means I need an endless pipeline of ideas to explore, skills to teach, and frameworks to develop. I have to draw inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. 

NEW POST: A GOAL WITHOUT A PROJECT IS A DREAM; A PROJECT WITHOUT A GOAL IS A HOBBY

In this case, I noticed that a throwaway line from my course was one of the most common quotes I heard from my students. It seemed to really strike a chord with them, so I made that line the title of a new note. You can see that I jotted down the first few ideas that came to mind, but otherwise this will serve as a placeholder for future thoughts. This is how most of my blog posts start – as small seeds of insight that slowly grow as I think of new points to add. 

6. Favorite resources

An excellent use for your Second Brain is to save your favorite resources. You probably find that people in your life or at work tend to ask you for the same kinds of referenves again and again. Chefs get asked about their favorite places to buy groceries. Residents of a popular city are asked for their top recommendations of places to visit. Designers are asked for a list of their favorite design resources.

TIAGO’S TOP RECOMMENDED PRODUCTIVITY APPS

Instead of coming up with an original answer time and again, which is time-consuming and repetitive, I recommend answering those frequently asked questions once very thoroughly, and then saving your answer to your notes. In this example, I saved a list of my most recommended productivity apps, which is something I am constantly asked about. Now anytime someone has this question, I can reply with a simple shared link.

7. Repurposed content

Often in creative work, parts have to be cut in order to produce a final deliverable. Sentences or paragraphs might get cut from an article you’re writing, scenes might be deleted from a film you’re making, or parts of a speech might get dropped when you’re trying to keep within your allotted time. This is a completely normal and expected part of any creative process.

But that doesn’t mean you have to throw away those parts. One of the best uses for a Second Brain is to collect and save those bits and pieces that didn’t quite make it into your creative work in case they can be repurposed for other uses. You never know how they might be useful or where they might end up. A slide cut from a presentation could become a social media post. An observation cut from a report could become the basis of a whitepaper. An agenda item cut from a meeting could become the agenda for a separate phone call. The possibilities are endless.

PRINCIPLE #10: REMEMBER THINGS BY FORGETTING THEM

This note was cut from a blog post I was writing on the principles of knowledge management. It was a little too nuanced for the piece I was writing, but I still believe is a perfectly valid point. I’ve revisited it when writing my book, and in the future could become the starting point of a dedicated blog post. Knowing that nothing I write truly gets lost, only saved for later use, gives me the confidence to aggressively cut my creative works down to size without fearing I’ll lose my work forever. 

8. Call/meeting notes

Calls and meetings take up significant time and energy, but if you’re going to attend them, you might as well take some notes on the main points that were discussed. And if you’re going to take those notes, you might as well save them. If you have an agenda for the call or meeting, I recommend taking those notes right there within the same note.

NOTES FROM CALLS WITH PUBLISHER

This note was from a call with a book publisher as we discussed an early draft of my book proposal. Notice that it isn’t anything like a full record of what we covered. It includes only a few of the ideas and phrases that really stuck out to me, or that surprised me. In this case, I took their recommendations and incorporated them into the proposal, making it stronger.

Conversations with other people can be an incredibly rich source of ideas and insights. There are usually a lot of things happening – different people sharing their perspectives, asking and answering questions, introducing new possibilities and ways of seeing things, or mentioning outside events or resources you may want to learn more about. All of these are candidates for saving in your digital notes, and the process of writing them down can actually help you pay closer attention and stay engaged.

9. Brainstorms

Brainstorming is a long-established practice that has become part of organizational culture around the world. The practice is well known, but what do you do with the results of a brainstorm? Often the whiteboard gets erased or the Post-Its taken down and thrown away, all that effort going into the trash.

HOUSING DECISION CRITERIA

This note is an example of a quick brainstorm that helped my wife and I in our house-hunting efforts. Sitting in the car before a home visit, faced with dozens of choices and tradeoffs about what we wanted, we took a few minutes and brainstormed a list of the most important things we were looking for in our first home. We took a couple more minutes to prioritize it from most to least important…and voilá! Suddenly we had a prioritized checklist to guide our decision-making.

10. Models or examples to follow

It is incredibly useful to start a task with some kind of model or example to follow, rather than starting completely from scratch. Whenever possible, I try to find a good example of what I’m trying to create, and then use it as a jumping off point for my own ideas.

FWD: CONFIRM EMAIL FOR GREAT ASSISTANT

This note contains an email I saved when I signed up for a free resource on a website. When I received it, it immediately struck me that it used a personalized, yet also professional approach to confirming my email address. I decided I wanted to use it as a model for a similar message that we would send to people who signed up for free resources on our website.

Instead of sitting down to a blank screen and trying to come up with good ideas, or asking my assistant to create an email like this without any guidance, I was able to send her a concrete model of exactly what I was looking for. The Internet is full of models for any kind of document or deliverable you would ever need to create. Take advantage of it (and cite your sources)! 

11. Everyday observations

A powerful feature of digital notes is that they are always with you. You might have a dedicated notebook at home for ideas, or client records at work, but you don’t usually have access to those kinds of specialized tools on the go. But as long as you have your smartphone with you, you always have your notes on hand.

One way to take advantage of this is to write down everyday observations from your daily life. Our days are full of little moments of insight, beauty, irony, and humor, and I’ve found that noting them down strengthens my ability to notice such moments. Sometimes they can even become the seeds of future writing, jokes, stories, or creative works. 

HOW SHORT FILMS COULD BE USED FOR CONNECTING PPL

In this note, I wrote down something I noticed as I was working on my documentary film project: that people seemed to be more comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings on camera than they would be in normal conversation, to my surprise. Noticing this and taking the time to write it down strengthened my resolve to continue with the project, confident that I wasn’t making people feel uncomfortable. Such observations also became the building blocks of writing I later did on my experience of filmmaking.

12. Notes from courses

The Internet has become the greatest source of education in the world – full of countless books, educational videos, informative articles, and online courses and tutorials on every topic imaginable. You can learn anything you want online, but only if you have the organizational skills to organize and structure that tidal wave of information.

I love online courses, but have noticed a paradox: I’m usually only ready to put to use a small fraction of the knowledge they contain. I might need to chew on and try out the first 10% or 20% of the curriculum before coming back and consuming the rest. But when I step away to do that, it’s often impossible to find the time and motivation to return to the course later.

POWER-UP PODCASTING NOTES

This note is an example of the solution I’ve found: to take notes on the course and create my own reference guide to it, with only the ideas and lessons that are relevant to me. That way as I make progress on implementing it, I can refer back to my notes, and not have to go back and review the course again.

I took these notes on Pat Flynn’s online course Power-Up Podcasting, which teaches students how to create their own podcast. As you can see, there was a lot of wisdom I found valuable, from big picture advice down to the smallest technical recommendations. With these notes in hand, I could set aside the course materials knowing that I had my own copy of the most important parts.

13. Research findings

Sometimes in our web browsing or while consuming content, we come across interesting facts or research findings that strike a chord with us. We might not have any idea how this information might be put to use, but it seems valuable and important enough to keep.

DAILY HOURS SPENT WITH DIGITAL MEDIA, US

In this example, I came across this graph of how many hours the average American spends engaging with digital media per day. I knew this could be a supporting point for my work teaching knowledge management. Within seconds I took this screenshot, saved it to my digital notes, and continued with my reading without even breaking my flow.

14. Guidelines and procedures

We’ve looked at a number of examples of content that is interesting or insightful, but often notes contain information that is exactly the opposite: so boring and utilitarian that you never want to have to think about it again. Your notes app will remember anything for you: both the good and the bad!

PODCAST ARTWORK GUIDELINES

This note contains the guidelines for submitting a cover image for my podcast. It was important that I follow these guidelines, but I didn’t want to spend even one neuron trying to remember them. I followed these guidelines to create the cover art for the first season of my podcast, and I know I’ll have them handy the next time I need to do so.

15. Project plans

A Second Brain isn’t just a dusty old archive – it is also a project management system. If you don’t do actual work with your notes, they’re always going to be an afterthought. To keep the ideas you save there alive, you should use your notes as building blocks for your most important projects and goals. 

3 STAGES OF A LAUNCH: OPPORTUNITY, TRANSFORMATION, ROADMAP

This note is an example of some planning my team and I did around an online product launch. I had learned a new framework for launches, called Opportunity-Transformation-Roadmap, and I wanted to apply it to our own efforts. It ended up being very powerful, giving us a framework for sequencing the launch in a way that appealed to people. This note helped us zoom out and see the big picture of our 6-week launch in just three major stages.

There are many specialized, complex, expensive software programs out there for project planning and project management. Sometimes you need those heavy duty tools. But for most projects, most of the time, for most people, we can get away with much lighter, simpler tools. Not only can we get away with them, they are actually better, because they free us to focus on the more creative aspects of the project. My advice: use the simplest, most informal tool for the job.

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.

The post The Modern Swipe File: 15 Unexpected Uses for Digital Notes appeared first on Forte Labs.

My New Book: Ways of Knowing

I’m very proud to present my new book, Ways of Knowing, a curated collection of 14 essays with my very best writing from the past two years.

The book explores the various forms of intelligence we have at our disposal as humans – not only cognitive but emotional, intuitive, somatic, and social – and how we can learn to tap into that intelligence with profound benefits for our health, performance, and happiness.

Pre-order the book on Amazon at the link below, and it will be automatically delivered to your device upon release on January 25, 2021.

Order the book on Amazon

Included with your purchase of this Kindle ebook is a complete copy of the book in Roam, a networked note-taking tool that allows you to connect ideas together and add your own thoughts (called an rBook). You’ll find a link and instructions to access it at the end of the book.

I’ll be hosting a live Q&A call in February to answer any questions about the book’s contents or creation. We’ll also be joined by Luca Dellanna, who compiled the rBook version and has some powerful tips for how to make the best use of it in Roam Research. Subscribe to my weekly newsletter to receive an invite to the call.

You can read the Foreword below, which explains what the book is about and how the essays it contains are tied together under the banner of “ways of knowing.”

Foreword from Ways of Knowing

I am obsessed with the nature of knowledge – what it is, where it comes from, how it’s created, and how to help people use it more effectively.

Years ago I set off on an intellectual pursuit to answer these questions. I studied the inner workings of the human brain, lessons from psychology and neuroscience, and the principles of information technology to try and understand what it means to “know” something. I documented that journey in my book Extend Your Mind.

But as I went deeper and deeper, I began to see that there was a completely different way of understanding knowledge, as I shared in The Heart is the Bottleneck. As embodied instead of dissociated, as intuitive instead of analytical, as somatic instead of cerebral.

I was slowly drawn to aspects of human experience that I was much less familiar with – personal growth, emotional intelligence, and the relationship between mind and body. I discovered that so much of our most precious knowledge isn’t stored in the form of facts and figures. It is stored inside the body and the heart as memories, instincts, traumas, and dreams.

Ways of Knowing weaves together these different ways of knowing I’ve discovered, from head to heart to gut. It includes 14 in-depth essays previously published on my Praxis blog, which have been edited for clarity and updated for accuracy. The odd-numbered chapters trace my ongoing explorations of the logical side of human knowledge, while the even-numbered chapters focus on the emotional and intuitive side.

The mind and the body are deeply intertwined, and it is essential to understand both. The logical approach of the mind allows us to learn from others via facts and research, while the intuitive-emotional approach of the body allows us to learn via our own experience. Like the double helix of a DNA strand, these two sides of ourselves interact and reinforce each other to enable us to “know” things on many levels and in many ways.

I’ve come to understand the heart and body as a vast, subterranean intelligence that extends far beyond anything we can consciously know. It draws on the unseen depths of our genetics, our ancestral history, our web of social relationships, and the natural environment we evolved in. The body is like an instrument panel with dozens of specialized sensors, taking in more kinds of data from more sources than we can imagine.

As we develop our self-awareness, we can begin to tap into this vast intelligence. It can guide us in making better decisions, letting go of beliefs that no longer serve us, and following the courage of our convictions. We can access it when we need to expand beyond our limited point of view, when a challenge demands more than we think we can give, or we’ve lost hope and need to be reminded that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. 

It is an inexhaustible source of wisdom that is always available to us if we know how to reach down and access it.

My goal is to better understand the nature of knowledge by reuniting the mind and body that modern society so often treats as completely separate. To recruit every form of intelligence at our disposal to help us live better, happier, more fulfilling lives.

The odd-numbered chapters (focusing on the logical side of knowledge) include:

Chapter 1 – Commonplace Books: Creative Note-Taking Through History: The history of note-taking across cultures and around the world and what we can learn from itChapter 3 – A History of Information Revolutions: A framework for understanding information explosions of the past, including how to use them to our advantageChapter 5 – Building a Second Brain: An Overview: A summary and overview of the methodology for personal knowledge management I’ve been developing for more than 10 yearsChapter 7 – The Story Behind Building a Second Brain: The story of how Building a Second Brain – the method, the course, and the movement – came to beChapter 9 – 7 Trends Driving the Note-Taking Revolution: A survey of the most powerful trends driving worldwide interest in digital note-taking as a crucial skill for all knowledge workersChapter 11 – The Complete Guide to Tagging for Personal Knowledge Management: A how-to guide on incorporating tagging as part of your knowledge management system, based on the principles I’ve discovered across different fieldsChapter 13 – The 10 Paradoxes of Entrepreneurship: My examination of the paradoxes that lie at the heart of entrepreneurship, or any other ambitious endeavor

Even-numbered chapters (on the emotional-intuitive side of knowledge) include:

Chapter 2 – How Emotions Are Made: The Theory of Constructed Emotion: The biological basis of the phenomena that govern our waking lives – our emotions – and how they work to both protect and limit usChapter 4 – The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Treatment of Trauma: A summary of the groundbreaking work on trauma by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk and what it can teach us about how our experiences are encoded in our nervous systemChapter 6 – Tiago Forte’s Origin Story: A short autobiography (so far), which I wrote to understand the events in my life that led me to where I am todayChapter 8 – Pleasure as an Organizing Principle: My deep dive into how we can use pleasure as the organizing principle of our lives, as opposed to self-sacrificeChapter 10 – Servant Hedonism: My Life Philosophy: A declaration of my newly recognized life philosophy, combining self-service with service to othersChapter 12 – What It Feels Like to Have a Second Brain: A personal description of how it feels to be in the flow of working with my Second BrainChapter 14 – Groundbreakers: My Journey Healing Trauma, Unleashing Anger, and Awakening the Vagus Nerve: The story of my journey of more than a decade as I struggled with an unexplained medical condition, which became my gateway to understanding my emotions and unlocking the potential of my unconscious mind

If you’d like to receive my future writing as soon as it comes out, subscribe to my free weekly newsletter. Every week I send out expert interviews, thoughtful essays, how-to articles, and other useful resources to help you become more capable and fulfilled. And if you want full access to my most in-depth content, become a Praxis member.

Thank you for being part of this journey with me, and for trusting me to illuminate part of it for you.

Tiago Forte

Long Beach, CA

January 12, 2021

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.

The post My New Book: Ways of Knowing appeared first on Forte Labs.

Why I’m Investing in SchoolHouse

I’ve decided to invest in a startup that I believe has enormous potential to shape the future of education. But to do that, we’re going to need your help.

It’s called SchoolHouse, founded and led by Brian Tobal, who has a long history of working in educational innovation, most recently as Head of Academics at Flatiron School (acquired by WeWork). We’ve had a series of conversations over the last year and I consider him to be one of the sharpest minds in the industry.

Here’s the idea: virtual classes aren’t working for the vast majority of young people. Not exactly a controversial opinion.

Students are tired of endless Zoom calls as a poor substitute for school. Parents are frustrated by having to teach their kids at home for months on end. Teachers are unhappy at having to expose themselves to sickness just to do their jobs, while being underpaid.

The solution: create “learning pods” made up of small groups of 4-8 students and hire an experienced educator to teach them in person.

In the short term this is ideal for the school closures and social distancing that are expected to continue in the U.S. until at least mid-2021.

But in the long term, we have the potential to completely reshape what school looks like. These “micro-schools” can pop up wherever there is a small group of kids (or adults) eager to learn, can be focused on any subject, and provide parents with unprecedented control over their children’s education.

SchoolHouse is creating a toolkit of parts that can be assembled like LEGO blocks, enabling anyone to “build their own school.”

SchoolHouse’s first group of learning pods was a resounding success. 100% of the participating students and parents decided to continue to the next semester.

Their formula is very simple: Put a great teacher in a room with a small group of students, give the teacher full agency to teach in the best way they know how, and spectacular results will follow.

The magic comes from teacher attention: there’s no question that a student receiving ⅙ of a teacher’s time instead of 1/30 is going to learn far more effectively. Small groups allow the teacher to adjust the content and pacing to the needs of the students, instead of forcing them onto a rigid timetable.

It also allows pods to learn anything they want, including traditional subjects like math, reading, and history but also rocketry, falling in love with science, unusual foreign languages, or experiential, project-based topics.

These micro-schools can meet almost anywhere space is available: commercial storefronts, religious centers, local parks, backyards, or even just a dining room table. By drawing on existing local networks and meeting in nearby places, pods invite parent involvement and ensure everyone is bought in to their kids’ education.

As much as I love online education, I’ve found that it doesn’t work for the kindergarten to fifth grade age group. At this age kids need to socialize with each other in person. They need to connect with a teacher in a way that unfortunately isn’t yet possible virtually. And too much screen time isn’t healthy for them.

By working in person, learning pods can address many of the shortcomings of online ed, without necessarily just reverting back to how schools have always been run. This modular, flexible approach also means that parents can use it as much or as little as they like. You could start with a one-student pod that more closely resembles tutoring, and add other students to the group over time. Pods can meet full-time 5 days per week as a complete replacement for school, or after school as a supplement to fill the gap between online and hybrid learning, or anything in between.

SchoolHouse recruits the top 5% of teachers. To qualify, they have to have a minimum of 5 years of experience, an advanced degree, and stellar recommendations from both past students and fellow teachers. Every precaution is taken to ensure that learning pods are protected from COVID exposure. Teachers are tested every week and use personal protective equipment, and all CDC social distancing guidelines and state regulations are followed.

What I’m most excited about is the potential to create multiple alternative pathways for kids to receive an education. I remember my own school experiences, constantly feeling like I was misunderstood and ignored. Some subjects moved way too slow to keep my attention, while others were way too fast for me to keep up.

All the teacher’s attention went to the most gifted or the most troublesome students, while the majority of us in the middle slipped through the cracks. I was fortunate to have other ways of learning that kept my innate curiosity intact, but I know many others weren’t as fortunate.

There isn’t one “right way” for kids to learn, and we shouldn’t try to force one onto them. Imagine the possibilities of learning pods that can move more slowly or quickly, or combine subjects in ways that align with what students are actually interested in.

Imagine mixing ages and grades together so older kids can learn leadership and responsibility, and younger kids can learn from their peers. Imagine the impact we can have on special needs students by designing the entire learning environment from top to bottom to meet their needs.

Brian’s team has raised a sizable first round of funding, and I’ve joined as an angel investor because I’m certain the future of K12 education looks very different than the past. The SchoolHouse team is signing up outstanding teachers at a rapid pace, and is ready to expand the first pilot into a larger group of learning pods. 

Here’s where we need your help: we are looking for a group of parents who are willing to try out this new educational format and form new pods for their kids in the new year.

This can be anything from a single student working with a teacher one-on-one to start, all the way to a group of 8 students in your neighborhood.

They are also exploring the possibility of forming adult learning pods. Imagine how cool it would be to meet up with a small group of adults in your area who share similar interests – like philosophy, economics, literature, or even productivity – and study a topic of your choosing, led by a highly qualified instructor, with all the logistics and planning taken care of.

If you’d like to be part of the micro-school movement, please opt in by submitting your email address below. I’ll send you updates on SchoolHouse’s progress, my own discoveries as I learn more about micro-schools, and invite you to an open Q&A session with Brian in the coming weeks. Whether you are a parent or interested in joining a pod yourself, are looking for full-time or supplemental pods, or just want to stay informed on SchoolHouse’s journey, we want to know who you are.

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.

The post Why I’m Investing in SchoolHouse appeared first on Forte Labs.

Tiago’s Top 20 Favorite Reads of 2020

Here are the best online articles and blog posts I read in 2020. For each one I’ve provided a short excerpt and an explanation of how it shaped my thinking.

#1 Seeing Like an Algorithm

“Understanding how the algorithm achieves its accuracy matters even if you’re not interested in TikTok or the short video space because more and more, companies in all industries will be running up against a competitor whose advantage centers around a machine learning algorithm.”

This piece by Eugene Wei was the most insightful thing I read this year explaining the meteoric rise of the social video-sharing app TikTok. It explains why the vaunted “algorithm” that powers TikTok’s recommendations is so powerful, but also how the overall design of the platform makes that algorithm possible in the first place. It’s a more nuanced take than most I’ve seen online, and also sheds light on a future where all kinds of companies will use mysterious algorithms as their secret sauce.

#2

“As I spoke I could see the other panelists faces change. They didn’t know the story and looked more and more concerned, shocked, and then horrified as I detailed how we had naively appropriated a sacred word from another culture and used it to name our marketing company. While it hadn’t been intentional, we had still misstepped in a major way, and taken something from another culture that wasn’t ours. But we learned from our mistake, apologized, and moved away from it.”

This is a story told by Nathan Barry, Founder and CEO of the email marketing platform ConvertKit (which I use), about how his team chose a new name to rebrand their company. Along with the wrenching process of walking back that name change when they realized it was appropriating a sacred word from a foreign culture. In a time when people are being publicly shamed and cancelled, and everything seems black or white, this is a more complex story of what it looks like when a company that cares about its values recognizes its mistake and changes course.

#3 Four Editors in Search of a Thread: A Documentary Roundtable

“The task of the documentary editor is not simply to tell a story, but more often to find that story, embedded in a enormous mass of material that initially seems to have no structure at all.”

This article is an abridged transcript of an interview by Andrea Van Hook with four of the top documentary filmmakers of our generation. You may have noticed I’ve been obsessed with documentary filmmaking over the past year, and this is one of the most insightful sources I’ve found on the topic. As the quote above illustrates, there is a parallel between the job of a film editor and a note-taker: to make meaning out of a morass of raw material.

#4 It Takes a Community: The Story Behind Circle

“Above all, we loved the idea of empowering creators by helping them build clean, distraction-free, non-toxic communities that prompted loyalty from their members, and open up monetizable opportunities for them like memberships.”

Community and connection is at the heart of everything we do, so it was a big decision to move our online community wholesale from Discourse to Circle in early 2020. Until now, private Facebook groups have been the norm for online courses. Discourse is a highly customizable, open source alternative, but was far too complicated for users and staff alike. With Circle, you can now provide a world-class experience without sacrificing your direct relationship with your customers. Founder Sid Yadav tells the story of their first year in business in this post.

#5 Announcing the next Substack Fellowship for Independent Writers

“We’re excited about a future where writers of all backgrounds can pursue the work they find most meaningful, free of gatekeepers, and independent of what’s trending, and we’re eager to make it accessible to even more writers.”

In 2020 the newsletter publishing service Substack launched the second round of their writer’s fellowship. I realized that I had a platform that could do something similar: accelerate the careers of up-and-coming, promising writers. I would focus on writers in the productivity and personal effectiveness arena, which is what my audience is most interested in hearing. This article by Fiona Monga inspired me to start the Praxis Fellowship, in which we are supporting three promising writers in publishing their ideas to the world.

#6 Why MasterClass Isn’t Really About Mastery

“I actually think this is what massive online open courses (MOOCs) got wrong. They have notoriously low completion rates (around 5%), which is generally cited as the reason they didn’t upend the education system. But I think their mistake wasn’t in that people weren’t finishing the courses. Instead, it was the thesis that online, low-touch courses were for skill-building instead of inspiration or entertainment. Maybe if companies like Coursera and Udemy would’ve leaned into edutainment instead of job preparation it could’ve been a different story.”

The quote above was in parentheses as an aside, but I found it to be the most insightful takeaway from this piece by Adam Keesling: the wave of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) over the last couple decades have been criticized for their low completion rates, but that wasn’t the real issue. The real problem is that they tried to impart skill-building, which is very difficult to do without feedback and interaction with an instructor and peers. Instead, self-paced content is best used for inspiration and entertainment, sometimes known as “edutainment,” which are no less important for learning despite not being as glamorous. Cohort-Based Courses, which is the model we use, are far better suited for training people in new skills.

#7 After Postmodernism: Eleven Metamodern Methods in the Arts

“Something seemed to have changed in the new millennium that made it cool again to express unabashed feelings — joy, wonder, sadness, vulnerability, triumph — in our art, and in everyday life, unfettered by the ever-present ironic snark that controlled the nineties and earlier… somehow, in such a way that didn’t toss out the fun that could be had in playing with irony.”

This year I was introduced to Metamodernism, the tentative name for the current wave of culture that combines the conviction of modernism with the relativity of postmodernism, with an emphasis on the felt experience of living. The piece What is Metamodernism?, written by Greg Dember and Linda Ceriello, explains what metamodernism is, and this one dives deeper into its main facets, which include:

Meta-reflexivity (“Life as Movie”)The narrative double frame (Eshelman’s Performatism)Oscillation between oppositesQuirkyThe Tiny (metamodern minimalism)The Epic (metamodern maximalism)Constructive PasticheIronestyNormcoreOverprojection (Anthropomorphizing)Meta-Cute

I don’t usually get into discussions of abstract cultural movements, but in this writing I saw a lot of my own attitudes toward the work I do. My father always talks about how powerfully modernism shaped his thinking, and I was raised in the decades shaped by postmodernism. I think metamodernism could be a new middle path that combines some of the best parts of earlier eras, ultimately allowing more kinds of meaningful creative expression.

#8 The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations

“The virus is rewriting our imaginations. What felt impossible has become thinkable. We’re getting a different sense of our place in history. We know we’re entering a new world, a new era. We seem to be learning our way into a new structure of feeling.”

Kim Stanley Robinson is one of my favorite science-fiction writers. His Mars Trilogy is, in my opinion, one of the greatest feats of future speculation ever achieved. The work he’s done to envision the finest details of mankind’s future give him extra credibility in examining the current pandemic. In this piece Robinson draws some profound parallels between what the coronavirus is teaching us, and what will be needed to tackle the climate change crisis in coming years. Beyond the tangible impact on our health and the economy, COVID-19 is rewriting how our imaginations work.

#9 The Web and the New Reality

“…we march into the Information Age hobbled by industrial metaphors. The ‘information highway’ is one example. Here we use the language of freight forwarding to describe the movement of music, love, gossip, jokes, ideas and other communicable forms of knowledge that grow and change as they move from mind to mind.”

This remarkable blog post by Doc Searls was first published in 1995, more than a quarter century ago now. It might as well have been written yesterday. It ranges across a variety of topics related to the momentous transition from an industrial to a digital economy, which has only picked up speed all these years later. It’s up to all of us to navigate these changes and decide what they mean for us, then and now.

#10 Bundle Magic

“…custom pricing is not always possible. Spotify doesn’t have time to negotiate with you. In those cases, bundles can be a great way to solve this problem. By offering a bundle instead of an individual purchase, you change the shape of the demand curve in such a way that it’s flatter, and there is less deadweight loss.”

This piece by Nathan Baschez unlocked a few important things for me. The concept of “bundling” is one of the most widespread business models on the Internet, yet it’s not well understood from the consumer’s perspective. In particular, Nathan’s piece helped me see how my online courses are bundles (as I explained in this Twitter thread), and what I can do to make educational bundles more attractive. It also inspired me to join the bundle that Nathan runs along with Dan Shipper, called Everything.

#11 Bibliologistics: The Nature of Books Now, or A Memorable Fancy

“Drawing on a recent complex of disciplinary engagements in infrastructure and logistics — which themselves draw on media studies, the environmental humanities, postcolonial theory, transnational geography, security studies, and more — this essay instead proposes a combination of network analysis and site-specific research I call bibliologistics.”

Books have now become virtual objects, abstracted from ink and paper into a web of digital connections spanning the globe. In this piece, Matthew Kirschenbaum traces the path of a single printed book through global supply chains as a way of understanding what it means to “publish” a book today. It’s a fascinating look into the system of global knowledge production that so many of us are part of today.

#12 Premonition

“Which of my beliefs remain unchanged? What assumptions will remain in place? What trends will be accelerated, which delayed, and which stopped entirely? What do I care about that has become newly relevant, and what no longer matters?”

This is a collection of trend predictions put together by Toby Shorin, gathered from his friends and network. It includes some striking ideas about how the coronavirus pandemic specifically and the vast cultural shifts it has accelerated in general will play out in the coming years, including implications for culture, brands, space, entertainment, tools and platforms, politics, and death. I don’t usually put much stock in trend forecasts, but these ones have an unusual amount of thought behind them.

#13 Can a School Have Product-Market Fit?

“I’ve worked with many schools and bootcamps over the last decade, and one of the things that has surprised me is that none of them have product-market fit.”

This newsletter by Brian Tobal may seem very niche, but it has significant implications for how online education will play out. His basic argument is that a single course can have product-market fit, by providing a reliable pathway for a student to get a good job for example. But once that course expands into a broader curriculum of courses (which make up a “school”), it’s not possible for that larger entity to have product-market fit because it serves multiple kinds of customers with multiple needs.

As I described in my year-end review, we’ve discovered this for ourselves, as our efforts to expand our roster of courses were met with frustration. On the Internet, the most relevant unit of education isn’t the school, as it is in the physical world. The most relevant entity is the course, and I think we’re going to see courses grow in scale, profitability, and brand recognition to eclipse even the online schools that host them. Which also means that individual instructors who create successful courses will have most of the power (and profits) in the online education industry.

#14 Digital Theme Park Platforms: The Most Important Media Businesses of the Future

“…the most important distinction between physical and digital theme parks isn’t the hours of operation, infinite capacity, or ability to disregard the second law of thermodynamics. Instead, it’s that these parks were designed to (or have since been converted to) allow for anyone to be an “Imagineer”. The developers of these titles aren’t trying to make a “game” but a “game engine” that allows everyone to create and share their own attraction.”

This piece powerfully shaped my thinking on the future of our business (and the media industry generally) this past year. Matthew Ball uses Disney as an example of how multiple kinds of media can work together to create something much greater than the sum of its parts. Kids can get to know a character in a Disney movie, buy Disney merchandise to play that character, go to Disneyland to interact with them, etc.

Sometimes I wonder whether I should pursue so many different kinds of content and products, from written pieces to YouTube videos to online courses to subscriptions. I want to keep the company small, so it might seem like a better idea to focus on just one or two channels and polish them to perfection.

But I’ve since realized that what I’m building is actually a “digital theme park.” It is a platform, but a platform where the participants create the content and experiences. This is not only a lot more fun, it gives them a sense of personal investment and shared ownership that is better for them (makes the ideas sink in more deeply) and better for us (generates more loyalty). It’s difficult to create this kind of 360-degree interaction if you’re limited to only one kind of media in one channel.

I see Forte Labs as an “extended universe” with many entry points, and once you’re inside, many ways of creating, discussing, learning, and interacting. There isn’t one linear “customer journey” through it all. There is a multi-layered community where the distinction between “consumer” and “creator” is blurred, just like I’m trying to encourage them to do in real life.

#15 Starting Up The Start-Up of You: Lessons Learned and Personal Reflections on Publishing a Bestselling Business Book

“…the most significant benefit of starting with a book was one we didn’t fully appreciate at the outset: a book’s linear, static format, and the expectations around the length and detail and substance of what’s inside of a book, collectively force upon the creative process a rigor unmatched in other mediums…Attempting to write a book forced us to be super precise and thoughtful about what we wanted to say. And of course, once you have precise thoughts, then it’s comparatively easy to disseminate them in various channels and formats.”

This is an account by Ben Casnocha of his experience conceiving, planning, writing, editing, publishing, and selling The Start-Up Of You, which he co-wrote with Reid Hoffman. It was published in 2012, but the hindsight provides some helpful perspective that is still just as valid today.

This piece makes the most succinct argument I’ve seen as to why it’s still worth publishing a book in print today. As the quote above points out, the length and depth (and permanence) of a book act as forcing functions to demand a far greater level of rigor than you would put into something digital like a blog post or even an ebook. And the rigor of the thinking that goes into a book is the single biggest factor in its success. I also really liked how Ben and Reid thought about the book as a product, which had to be designed and marketed and distributed just like any other product from a new startup. That’s exactly how I think about the book I’m writing.

#16 1,000 True Fans? Try 100

“As the Passion Economy grows, more people are monetizing what they love. The global adoption of social platforms like Facebook and YouTube, the mainstreaming of the influencer model, and the rise of new creator tools has shifted the threshold for success. I believe that creators need to amass only 100 True Fans—not 1,000—paying them $1,000 a year, not $100. Today, creators can effectively make more money off fewer fans.”

I loved seeing this piece by Li Jin, on one of the most underappreciated implications of the new wave of “creator” platforms: it is now possible to make more money from fewer followers, which means the “online creator” career path is open to more people than ever before. Jin riffs off the Internet classic 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly, to go a step further and argue that it is now possible to make a living from only 100 die-hard fans.

The most viable way to do that, in my opinion, is through Cohort-Based Courses like the ones we teach. Teaching a course in a highly interactive, community-based way gives instructors and students alike the benefits of teaching (scalability, structure), consulting (high-end experience, customization), and coaching (accountability, long-term relationship) all at once. I’d love to see “being a creator” continue growing from a tiny niche to a mainstream lifestyle.

#17 Starlink is a Big Deal

“Starlink satellites are the solution, at only a 550 kilometer altitude. Going much faster due to the lower orbit, they’re not going to stay put, viewed from the ground: you’re not going to be aiming a dish at them. There are also going to be a lot of them, which is why this project wasn’t feasible until the previous milestone of “cheap access to orbit” was checked off. Thanks to the hard work of SpaceX to make cheap, reusable rockets an everyday reality, now a project of this scale and ambition is finally realistic.”

This excellent article by Jeffrey Paul lays out the case for Starlink, a new global, satellite-based Internet network being launched by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. It does such a good job of explaining how the technical details of the Starlink network have world-changing implications far beyond what’s visible on the surface. It delves into how reliable, worldwide connectivity will change so many aspects of how our cities are designed and our jobs distributed. I think Starlink is one of the least appreciated, almost hidden technological changes that is about to rock our world.

#18 Systemics and design principles in support of Tiago Forte’s PARA framework

“The key lesson here is in how pace layers and the panarchy structure align to inform how we should be managing the materials of our work. These concepts re-emphasize the notion that Projects should be fast-moving while Areas move slower and Resources and Archives move slowest of all. They also reinforce the idea that these areas inform one another. Slower layers set boundaries on what can happen on faster layers; layers higher in the panarchy depend on the learning and innovation on lower levels.”

I couldn’t help but include this piece, written by designer Ryan Murphy, in support of my organizing system PARA. Unlike most content I see that might reexplain PARA in an author’s own words, Murphy did something more fundamental: he showed how PARA made use of well-known design principles such as “pace layers” and “panarchy.” I’m always amazed how common sense methods discovered through everyday working often end up being aligned with deep principles.

#19 How to read self-help

“We’re embarrassed by self-help, but we’re also attracted to it. We like reading it, but we’re skeptical that it works. We suspect self-help isn’t useful, but every serious list of business books turns out to be comprised entirely of self-help books.”

I loved this piece by Tom Cleveland for its balanced approach to self-help, which is all too rare. Critics usually either unfairly cast all self-help as scammy and empty, or embrace one particular book or method as a panacea. Cleveland instead describes a spectrum of self-help, from empty calories to nutritious feasts. What matters most is actually the attitude and mindset that you take on when you approach any kind of life advice. You have to decide what’s right for you, and how you’re going to incorporate it into your thinking and life. But that’s a lot harder than casually dismissing or mindlessly embracing the next bestselling book you see in the airport bookstore.

#20 The Internet of Beefs

“The Internet of Beefs, or IoB, is everywhere, on all platforms, all the time. Meatspace is just a source of matériel to be deployed online, possibly after some tasteful editing, decontextualization, and now AI-assisted manipulation. If you participate in online public life, you cannot entirely avoid the Internet of Beefs. It is too big, too ubiquitous, and too widely distributed and connected across platforms. To continue operating in public spaces without being drawn into the conflict, you have to build an arsenal of passive-aggressive behaviors like subtweeting, ghosting, blocking, and muting — all while ignoring beef-only thinkers calling you out furiously as dishonorable and cowardly, and trying to bait you into active aggression.”

In one of the most strikingly insightful reads of the year, Venkatesh Rao introduced a term that I think perfectly encapsulates what much of the Internet has become: an Internet of Beefs (as in, grudges or fights between people). He brings this simmering reality to the surface, calling out “Knights” (celebrities and pseudo-celebrities declaring war on behalf of their cause) and “Mooks” (anonymous foot soldiers doing most of the real fighting on the Knights’ behalf).

Rao entertainingly describes the quasi-feudal structure that many conversations on the Internet have taken on, with countless micro-battles between hordes of mooks playing out across every corner of the Internet. I loved seeing how far this analogy goes, and how it frames what is possible and what isn’t possible when we engage with strangers online.

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.

The post Tiago’s Top 20 Favorite Reads of 2020 appeared first on Forte Labs.

Windows of Opportunity: A Fleeting Chance at the Impossible

In the summer of 1964, a young engineer at NASA named Gary Flandro was assigned a seemingly mundane task: to study ways of exploring the outer gas giants of our solar system.

These planets didn’t get as much attention as our near neighbors, and remained largely unknown.

As he researched the possibilities, Flandro made a stunning discovery: according to his calculations, the planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune seemed to enter an extremely rare alignment once every 176 years.

This alignment meant that a spacecraft launched from Earth in a precise window of time could “slingshot” from one planet to the next using each planet’s gravity. This would allow the trip to be made in just 10 years, instead of the 40 years it would otherwise take.

The next alignment would occur in 1977, just 13 years away.

NASA got straight to work, and used Flandro’s discovery to launch the Voyager program. The Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft left Earth at just the right moment to kick off the greatest tour of planetary discovery in history.

The twin Voyager spacecraft charted Jupiter’s complex cloud forms, winds and storm systems and discovered volcanic activity on its moon Io. They studied Saturn’s rings and found enigmatic braids, kinks, and spokes. Its flyby of Neptune uncovered three rings and six previously unknown moons, a planetary magnetic field and complex, widely distributed auroras.

Author Stephen J. Pyne summarized this profound legacy: “Voyager did things no one predicted, found scenes no one expected, and promises to outlive its inventors. Like a great painting or an abiding institution, it has acquired an existence of its own, a destiny beyond the grasp of its handlers.”

43 years after launch, the Voyager spaceprobes continue to transmit useful data as they explore interstellar space, where no man-made object has ever traveled. Their discoveries also laid the groundwork for future missions to use the “gravity-assist” method, including the Galileo mission to Jupiter, Cassini mission to Saturn, and New Horizons, which visited Pluto in 2015.

A Modern Space Adventure

I first heard this story from Eric Anderson, the Founder of Space Adventures. His company kickstarted the space tourism industry in 2001 when it sent the first private citizen to the International Space Station (ISS) aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket.

In November 2019 I found myself in Seattle, and asked Eric to meet me for lunch after first connecting online. We met at an upscale Japanese restaurant on the top floor of his headquarters building in downtown Bellevue. The view from the restaurant windows soared out over the incredible fall colors and waterways of the Pacific northwest.

We spent lunch talking about our shared interests – productivity, software, entrepreneurship, and space. I was reminded of my youthful obsession with space, waiting impatiently for the next issue of Popular Science magazine to arrive and explain the next stage of ISS construction with colorful diagrams.

As we parted ways, Eric sent me a video of a talk he had given recently at the Getting Things Done Summit in Amsterdam. He’d spoken for the first time publicly on a concept he’d learned from decades working in space tourism, astrodynamics, and space mission design: Windows of Opportunity.

I believe that Windows of Opportunity represent the most important step forward in our understanding of goal-setting since the SMART framework was introduced in 1981. I highly recommend you take the time to watch the 22-minute recording of his presentation:

A Window of Opportunity, according to Eric, is “A rare set of circumstances and a brief moment of time in which an otherwise impossible outcome is potentially achievable.”

Flandro recognized such a Window of Opportunity in 1964, and took hold of it. He recognized that not all moments are created equal. That the chance to take advantage of such a rare planetary alignment justified changing NASA’s priorities dramatically. By jumping at that chance, he helped accelerate decades of discoveries which continue to this day.

Eric discovered the importance of Windows of Opportunity through his own business ventures.

The year was 1999, and Eric had a little problem: he had founded a space tourism company, but had no viable way of getting people into space. NASA refused to let the space shuttle be used for commercial flights. It began to dawn on Eric that the sophisticated private space launch vehicles being developed at the time might not be ready for years (they’re just starting to become available today, more than 20 years later).

The ISS was just coming online in a golden age of international cooperation. The U.S. and Russia were collaborating with 15 other nations in a global effort to get every component in place. There were more nations committed to space exploration than ever before.

Eric saw his Window of Opportunity.

He approached the Russian Space Command and asked them a daring question: what would it take (and cost) to get a private citizen into space? Their initial response was laughter and dismissal. No one had ever asked such a question.

But Eric persisted, traveling to Russia in person multiple times to show his seriousness. Finally, they conceded it was possible. But he first had to fulfill a long list of requirements, medical checks, training, and waivers, not to mention an exorbitant cost. It was clear they didn’t really expect him to go through with it.

But Eric was unstoppable in his determination. It took several years of intense effort, but in 2001 Space Adventures launched the first space tourist, Dennis Tito, into orbit for 8 days aboard the ISS.

This event marked the birth of the space tourism industry, and contributed to a new wave of attention and investment in space exploration. It helped reignite a new space race that fueled the rise of SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin, and the X-Prize today.

In his presentation, Eric asks the audience, “What’s the value of a shift in thinking like that? Opening up chances for millions of other people? That’s what these windows do when we grab them. They create new chances and new opportunities. They build.”

He then tells of how he began to look at his own life, and realized that “…nearly all the value [in my life] came in these definable, transformative moments…Moments of vision, perception, recognition, of actually seeing not only the opportunity, but what it meant to me at that time.”

The crucial thing to understand about Windows of Opportunity, he says, are that they end:

“You may have only moments to recognize it. You have to be able to clarify what it is, what it means to you, so quickly. You have to be ready to take action that you’ve thought about, that could be momentous, quickly. Distraction, hesitation, indecision – these will ruin your chances.”

Just 18 months after that first historic mission, the Columbia Space Shuttle was lost. Access to space was restricted, launches were cancelled, and the window that Eric had taken advantage of closed.

“We think these windows will go on forever, but they don’t. You have to be decisive, and grab it while you have it.”

Personal inflection points

Since being introduced to this idea, I’ve begun to realize that my own life has been powerfully shaped by Windows of Opportunity.

In 2007 I decided to apply for the Peace Corps, an overseas volunteer service program run by the U.S. government since the 1960s. I was living in South America at the time, and completing the application and interview process while overseas was incredibly challenging. The Peace Corps administration recommended I wait until I returned to the U.S. to complete my application, but I insisted on moving forward.

The 2008 financial crisis hit the next year. Applications to the Peace Corps soared and became much more competitive as young people sought to escape the collapsing economy. Luckily, my application was already in the queue and was approved shortly thereafter.

In the midst of the worst economic crisis of my generation, I was fortunate to spend two years serving in Ukraine learning a new language, acquiring new self-reliance skills, and gaining valuable teaching experience that would become the foundation for my career.

In mid-2013 I was taking my first tentative steps toward self-employment, looking for any chance to gain some exposure for my ideas. I received an email with a request for speakers for a local meetup that I occasionally attended, and decided to apply. I had no idea what I would speak about, but with the help of the organizer I developed a presentation on how to measure one’s productivity. It was a lot of unpaid work for the chance to speak for 15 minutes in front of a small group. A recording of my talk was posted online and received no more than a few hundred views, an apparent failure.

But a couple years later I got a message from David Allen, author of the mega-best-selling book Getting Things Done and my personal hero. He had seen my video, and invited me on his podcast to talk about it. That interview was my huge break, and became the jumping off point for dozens of other podcast interviews in the years since.

In 2015 I wrote a guest post on the Evernote blog, describing my views on how digital note-taking apps could be powerful tools to enhance people’s creative output. I thought that I was just scratching my own, obscure itch. But over the next year, I received a steady stream of messages from people wanting to know more.

I had discovered a window of opportunity: Evernote had ridden the explosive growth of the iPhone and grown to more than 200 million users worldwide. But few of those users knew how to properly set up and use such a powerful program. They were hungry for training in how to integrate digital notes into their work and lives. The product I created to address that need evolved over the years to become my flagship online course Building a Second Brain.

Each of these moments were inflection points for me. Windows of Opportunity that stayed open for mere weeks or months. Each of them required a heavy dose of luck, but luck wasn’t enough. I had to take decisive action – apply for a spot, deliver a presentation, write an article – to realize the potential of the moment.

Timing is paramount

The conventional way of setting personal goals was to ignore time as a factor completely.

Perhaps you were encouraged to think of a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” – the most outrageous ambition you could imagine. Publish a book and sell 1 million copies! But such lofty goals always take place far off in a hazy future, providing no guidance for what we should do today, tomorrow, and next week.

Or maybe you were fortunate enough to discover the SMART framework, which had you set realistic, measurable goals with a deadline for completion. Perhaps this led you to set a more conservative goal: to self-publish your book by “the end of next year.”

But this due date is completely arbitrary. It doesn’t take into account the constantly shifting landscape of your career, business, or the economy. So that arbitrary deadline comes and goes. Like a high interest debt balance, your goals get “rolled over” year after year, adding to the burden of guilt you feel for not pursuing your dreams.

Windows of Opportunity is a revolutionary way to think about goal-setting, because it recognizes that there is now one factor that is decisive in your ability to reach your goals: timing. Timing has become even more important than vision, hard work, or planning. That “T” at the end of SMART, which stands for “Time-bound,” is no longer an afterthought tacked on at the end – it is the most important element of your goals.

As the world changes faster and faster, the timing of when to make a leap becomes ever more important. This principle is well-understood in the startup world, where launching your product a little too early or a little too late is often a death sentence. But now we are all startups-of-one, and it is quickly becoming just as important on the individual level that we get the timing right.

In the brief moment when a new industry is emerging, making a name for yourself in that industry is vastly easier than it will be once it matures. When a new social media platform starts gaining traction, there is momentarily a far greater chance you’ll be able to build a following before everyone else comes rushing in. When you join a young company that is starting to grow rapidly, you have a fleeting opportunity to take a major leadership role and grow along with it.

These are the kinds of chances that are constantly opening and closing before us.

As Eric puts it, “Think about the Windows of Opportunity that lie ahead. They’re open. All of us, in all of our domains, they’re swimming in front of us. We have to look up. We have to be willing to open our eyes and really see what’s there. Where are paradigms shifting?”

Windows of Opportunity are less about dreaming up fanciful visions completely divorced from reality, and more about staying as sensitive as possible to your environment. What’s changed, and how can you change to match it? What goal is unusually achievable right now, even if it’s not the original goal you set for yourself? What opportunities are you blind to because you’re too wedded to the current path?

To take advantage of them, we have to be opportunistic, a dirty word that we typically associate with thieves and scoundrels. But there is a positive way of being opportunistic: to follow the path of least resistance, to go around obstacles instead of through them, to concentrate your efforts on the greatest leverage points.

What is your Window?

Windows of Opportunity might seem unimpressive at first glance: the chance to meet someone who happens to be passing through town, the chance to speak in front of a group when the main speaker cancels last minute, or the chance to get exposure for your ideas when a publication is accepting submissions.

These moments might seem insignificant, but their impact is momentous. They are slight deviations in the trajectory of a rocket launch that will eventually determine whether you end up landing on the moon, settling Mars, or exploring the outer solar system. They are dramatic pivot points that permanently change the direction of your life.

When these moments arrive, it’s not time to start researching things, or making long-term plans, or getting a degree. It’s too late for detailed analysis or asking your friends what they think. You must act. You must create. You must find your voice and speak now.

Eric describes it this way: “The greatest risk of all, is that you don’t even see the window. That you don’t recognize it. You don’t see the opportunity. You don’t understand even if you see it, what it means to you. You don’t know what to do about it. Or you do, and you fail to act within the window…that opportunity’s gone forever. All the value that could have been created is lost.”

There is a common misconception that you will always have the opportunity to achieve any of your goals. That’s simply not true. Most goals don’t wait around until you can find the time. They are open only for a season, when the planets align just right, and then they are gone forever.

This may seem daunting, but there is a silver lining: there is always another window coming soon. The greatest opportunities come in peaks and valleys, feasts and famines, dry spells and downpours. You have to stay flexible and fluid, because the next window won’t look like the last one. You might start a blog instead of changing jobs. You might publish a website instead of a resume. You might start a community instead of creating a product.

To be open to the possibilities, you have to start with the possibility that you might end up exploring a different planet than you expect.

What most often gets in the way of people recognizing their Windows of Opportunity is some preconceived idea of “how things should go.” A series of assumptions that Step A should come first, followed by Step B, and then Step C, and so on.

But that isn’t how Windows of Opportunity work. The reason they are opportunities is that they are moments in which it is possible to cut the line. Something’s changed – a rule, a policy, a constraint, or a new technological capability. In that change there is a chance to skip steps. But it’s up to you to notice the implications of the changes that are constantly happening around you.

Windows of Opportunity have another interesting implication: they are unique to each person. It is always tempting to compare your goals to others as a measure of how ambitious or driven you are. But these windows are specific to each person’s path through the landscape of reality. What makes them opportunities is the way they fit your unique combination of skills, knowledge, and past experiences. Our paths may intersect at certain points, but your chance is almost never a chance for me.

In other words, Windows of Opportunity are about creating something that has the potential to be not just linear, and not even exponential, but singular – a fleeting chance at the otherwise impossible. These are goals that no one else – not one of the 7.6 billion other people out there – can accomplish. They lie at the intersection of knowledge, skills, and relationships that only you occupy. The goals you find there might not be impressive or even coherent for others, but they are the ones that will be most meaningful to you.

I’ll leave you with some final words from Eric Anderson on what it takes to achieve them: “You have to notice that chance. You have to recognize what it means to you. You have to get ready for it. You have to give yourself a chance to be there, to do something that could mean everything…A chance to save a life, or to turn one around. A chance to end a war, or stop one before it gets started. Your most effective action is one taken at that moment that gives you the best chance at an otherwise impossible, transformative event.”

As you start the new year, my question for you is: What is the Window of Opportunity opening before you at this very moment? What would you have to risk, to let go of, or to question to be able to leap through it?

Thank you to AbdulFattah Popoola, Yorgo Hoebeke, George R. Silverman, Sam Ismail, Choi Veer, and Karthi S for their feedback and suggestions on this post.

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.

The post Windows of Opportunity: A Fleeting Chance at the Impossible appeared first on Forte Labs.

The Annual Review Workshop 2021

On January 9th, 2021 we’ll kick off our third annual workshop The Annual Review, which we’ve just opened for purchase.

It is a virtual workshop taking place over two days, Jan. 9 and 10, where David Perell and I will lead you through the process we’ve developed over more than 10 years of combined experience.

Doing a year-end review is the single most impactful exercise for your productivity, clarity, and motivation I’ve ever encountered, full stop. It’s the perfect time to reflect on what you’ve learned, celebrate wins and grieve failures, and use the insights that emerge to create a vision and a set of goals for 2021.

It takes advantage of the unique moment as one year transitions into the next – a moment when anything is possible, and we can set in motion the projects that will play out over the next 12 months.

Here’s an 18-minute conversation David and I recorded as we finished our own year-end reviews and started planning this workshop:

The cost of the weekend workshop is $299, which we’ve kept as affordable as possible so that everyone has the chance to experience it. Admission includes:

Four 90-minute live sessions with me and David to customize and complete your year-end review in a weekendPublic accountability and feedback from a group of like-minded peers around the worldLifetime access to a private Slack channel for past, current, and future participants to connect with each otherLive chat support from Tiago and David over the weekend to answer any questions or doubtsOur Annual Review Guide including examples, templates, checklists, and case studies of others’ reviewsLifetime access to the online curriculum with all call recordings and resources we share

I look forward to this weekend all year long because there is no other way I want to start my year than being surrounded by hundreds of ambitious, interesting, cool people striving unapologetically for their dreams.

Visit the website for the full schedule, answers to frequently asked questions, and to enroll:

Enroll in The Annual Review

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.

The post The Annual Review Workshop 2021 appeared first on Forte Labs.

My 12 Biggest Lessons Learned in 2020

As part of my annual year-end review, I always take some time to write out my biggest lessons learned from the past year. 

I find that this helps them really sink in, fills me with a sense of gratitude and appreciation for everything I’ve experienced, and maybe even allows others to borrow some wisdom for themselves.

Here are my 12 biggest lessons from 2020.

More often than not, a problem is challenging only because of my unwillingness to feel the feeling it provokes

This was a big lesson for me from the first cohort of The Art of Accomplishment, a new group coaching program I helped launch and also participated in. 

Twice a week we’d get on calls specifically designed for getting in touch with and expressing our emotions, and I was often annoyed at having to stop what I was working on to attend. But I was surprised again and again how often I’d walk away from those calls with tremendous clarity about a problem I was facing in my work. 

It seems like the tension and uncertainty that often makes problems difficult to solve aren’t created by the problem – they come from the internal tension of not allowing a certain feeling to come to the surface and be felt. Once it does pass, almost like a bowel movement, everything seems much more calm and clear. This is very much in line with the biological basis of emotions I’ve written about before.

Attention is the most precious substance in the known universe; when applied, it will make any situation better

I’ve long been fascinated by the nature of attention. But having our son this year, in October, brought my studies in attention to a whole new level. You only really value something when it is in short supply. What I’ve noticed is that anything you apply attention to will automatically get better, regardless of any other action you take or don’t take. 

Pay enough attention to your weight, your fitness, your diet, your finances, or your relationships, and those things will invariably improve. The quality of a piece of writing is almost directly linked to how much attention I’ve invested in it. If I’m worried about an area of my life, it’s usually because I’m resisting paying enough attention to it. The pain and anxiety I feel in that area is a sign that it is demanding more of my attention.

People will usually show you how it’s going to go with them within the first 15 minutes of meeting them

This is something I learned from Joe Hudson, and have found it to be true. The way that someone does one thing is typically the way they do everything, which means that you only need to observe them for a short time to know how your relationship with them will go. 

This doesn’t mean you should judge a book by its cover. But by carefully watching my dynamic with someone in the first minutes and hours, I can always find valuable foreshadowing. If I feel annoyance or resentment initially, those are unlikely to decrease over time. I’ve learned to trust my instincts with people and more decisively bring such interactions to a close.

Once you know you’re going to succeed, the most important thing is to savor every minute spent getting there

Looking back on my 20s, I was consumed with the question of whether I would be “successful.” It seems silly in retrospect – I had so much going for me, so many ways that I could succeed. But I felt so at risk of “not making it,” though I would have had trouble telling you what it meant exactly to “make it.” 

I was struck by a line from I Am Michael Ovitz, the autobiography of the famed Hollywood agent and founder of Creative Artists Agency. He said that at the end of his career, after having made many billions and achieved his goal to reinvent the film industry, he thought his happiest moment was back at the very beginning. Sitting in their empty office space with his fellow partners, before there was even furniture, plotting world domination with dreamy eyes. That, he decided, was his peak. 

I’ve never forgotten that, and that story always reminds me that now, right now, is the time I will look back on fondly. These times are the good times. Once I have a goal I tend to go after it so aggressively that I forget to even notice the experience of getting there. But I’ve done enough of these reviews to notice that reaching a goal is mostly empty. As soon as it’s within reach, it stops being interesting. The impulse to immediately set yet another, even more ambitious goal is mostly an effort to get back to the feeling of wanting, striving, reaching. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s healthy to appreciate that it’s not the only feeling worth having.

An immense amount of meaning is condensed into the tiniest moments, mostly moments spent with family and friends

This observation came from my documentary film project. When you repeatedly watch the same footage again and again, you start to notice whole new layers of meaning. Micro-expressions, momentary glances, pregnant pauses – these are the subterranean geology of human communication. I noticed time and again that tremendous amounts of meaning were packed into the tiniest of moments. Meaning wasn’t distributed evenly through time. It came in stops and starts, peaks and valleys.

The same is true of normal waking life I’ve since realized. This is why awareness is important. It is only with awareness that I’ll be able to catch those moments. They don’t announce themselves and don’t happen on a schedule. They seem to happen more often with people I love, but it is often those very people that I have the least awareness with, thinking I already know everything they’re going to do or say.

People’s wants are generally a subset of their needs, which means there are a lot of things they need but don’t want

Conventional thinking is that people’s needs are a subset of their wants. In other words, people want A LOT of things, but only very few of those things do they actually need. I think this is actually reversed.

People’s needs are immense. Almost limitless. I was struck reading The Body Keeps the Score that the symptoms of trauma are practically universal. It is the people that don’t have trauma that are the extreme outliers. And that it is neglect that is most damaging to the human psyche, even more so than outright abuse. 

But who hasn’t experienced neglect in some shape or form? Who hasn’t had an unmet need? Who hasn’t been ignored when they were hurting? Who hasn’t been ignored when they cried out for help? This makes me wonder, how much love and attention does a human need to not feel neglect of any kind? And the answer seems to be, a whole helluva lot. 

If nearly all of us have experienced some form of neglect in some area of our lives, then how would we discover what those areas are? It isn’t by looking at our needs – we generally have worked our entire lives to not need the thing we didn’t have enough of. It is by looking at our wants, which are symptoms of unmet yet fundamental needs that have been repressed. I got this idea from adrienne maree brown’s writings – that our desires and cravings are something deep within us calling, against all odds, for a taste of something it has almost never had, whether that is love, caring, intimacy, or connection.

Instead of treating people’s needs as “good” and their desires as “bad,” I’ve made a conscious effort to treat their desires as something inherently good and worthy. That doesn’t mean I have to give them what they want. It means that I treat the whole human as worthy of love and capable of meeting its own needs, even if that takes the form of compulsive cravings.

The more high end the product, the fewer features it needs

This is another lesson that it takes many, many tries to fully assimilate. I think it’s another symptom of my middle-class upbringing: to think that I have to get my money’s worth, and the best way to do that is to load up as many bells and whistles and features as I can possibly get my hands on. To treat overconsumption as a security blanket to ensure I don’t get taken advantage of. 

The most clear example in my own business was when I launched the Executive Edition of Building a Second Brain, to work directly with a small group of leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives. Charging more than 3 times the entry level course, I felt that I had to create almost an entirely new curriculum on top of the one I already had. More bells! Louder whistles! 

But the clear feedback I received was that the extra stuff was unnecessary, and actually a hindrance to their learning. They just needed more of my time, more of my attention (see lesson above). The more high-end a product or service or experience gets, the fewer (and better) features it needs. More features means more complexity and more to manage. When what people are really paying for is less to have to think about.

Fulfill the spirit of the project, if not necessarily the letter

As I’ve set more ambitious goals and taken on projects that I need help from others to complete, I’ve had to relax my definitions of success. It doesn’t make sense to rigidly insist that a project finish exactly the way I envisioned in my mind, way in the past when I had so much less information. 

It is instead the spirit of the project that matters. The intention, which is less precise but more meaningful and expansive than a desired outcome. Intentions have many ways of being fulfilled, many ways of coming true. I’ve learned that the further along a project gets, the more criteria I can relax without running the risk of it stalling. The closer to completion it is, the more those criteria represent the limitations of my imagination, not the endless possibilities of reality. 

It takes an entire village to support a single Very Productive Person

It’s become very clear to me that not only does it take a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to support just one Very Productive Person, or VPP. A VPP is someone who is able to make their own productivity their top priority. They are a rare and exotic kind of human, very unusual in the grand scheme of things.

In order to maximize their own productivity, a VPP has to outsource or eliminate all sorts of responsibilities: cooking, cleaning, and caring for others above all. They require large amounts of unstructured time to throw at any problem that might arise. They have to be able to spend time lavishly to improve the quality of their output only slightly. They have to spare no expense.

I can clearly see that I am such a rare and exotic VPP. I’m not ashamed of it, but I do recognize more than ever all the people needed to enable that: the gardener looking after our lawn and plants, the house cleaners maintaining our home, our families to take care of our son when we need to work, my personal assistant managing my emails, and all sorts of other service providers I call upon when I need something to happen. 

Everything, EVERYTHING has maintenance overhead

It’s so tempting working online to not account for overhead costs. You put up a website and it feels like it doesn’t cost you anything to maintain. You publish a course and it feels like it should just live there on its own indefinitely. But of course that couldn’t be further from the truth. Everything takes maintenance. There is no such thing as “passive income,” only more or less active income. 

I’ve tried to remind myself of this throughout the year as I’ve been faced with decisions about which opportunities and projects to pursue. I have a strong bias to pursue projects that can be run at a distance, in parallel, with light touches, by others, or only occasionally as desired. But as our business grows it becomes more and more important to protect our reputation, which means that anything we do must be done well. It must meet a certain standard of ongoing quality, which means it requires a certain amount of ongoing investment, which means something else will receive less. 

Most of the time I’m seeking achievement what I really want is connection

I’ve noticed many times over the years that almost the moment I reach an important milestone, such as signing a book deal or finishing a course launch, I’m off to the next one. In the AOA course I realized that much of the time I’m relentlessly seeking a new achievement, what I really am after is connection. 

Achievement gives me a semblance of connection – I feel connected to the needs of my customers, to the problem I’m solving, to the success of the team. But instead of going after the next white rabbit, I know that I can also just seek connection by itself. Knowing this is half the battle. It takes the form of a conversation with Lauren on the couch, taking a walk with my son, or calling up a friend. 

Ask: Do I have enough joy in my life?

I’ve been trying to kick several bad habits recently, like consuming sugar. I’m learning a lot about why I turn to sugar. It’s usually to avoid feeling boredom or loneliness, or to have more excitement or contentment in a day that feels devoid of it. It’s an unthinking habit and continues because it is effective at its purpose: allowing me to avoid checking in with what I’m feeling.

I’ve started asking myself a question every time I have a sugar craving: asking myself “Do I have enough joy in my life?” The question prompts an internal search for joy, which provokes a “zooming out” in my perspective from that one moment to my broader view of life. Once I have that wider perspective, even just a little bit, the answer is obvious: of course I do. Of course there is more than enough joy in my life, more joy in each and every moment than I can possibly contain. Then what am I seeking by eating this cookie, or cupcake, or doughnut? 

It’s the internal dialogue that is crucial. An internal dialogue that is about asking questions, looking for sources of joy, and being curious about the answer. I am learning to use my internal dialogue to be kind to myself, instead of to beat myself up.

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.

The post My 12 Biggest Lessons Learned in 2020 appeared first on Forte Labs.

Tiago’s 2020 Year-End Review

As I start writing this year-end review, the latest in a long line of year-end rituals, I’m filled with an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Even more than usual. In 2020 so many people around the world got sick, lost their jobs or businesses, or their lives. I want to start this ritual grounded in that reality, to never forget how lucky I am to be here at all.

What feels strangest about the year of COVID is how little it affected us. I don’t quite know what to make of it. The business thrived as millions flocked to online education. My work took off as the concept of a “Second Brain” caught fire. No one close to me got sick, much less had serious complications from COVID. Many of them actually seemed to benefit in many unexpected ways, from having more time to spend with their kids at home, to working in industries that have seen surges in demand during lockdown. Privilege isn’t just about having extra advantages, it’s about having built-in protection against disadvantages.

The biggest change of the year for me was of course the birth of our son Caio. He is just about 2 months old, and I’m still very much grappling with the aftershocks of this momentous life event. What’s clear so far is that he’s prompted a complete inversion of the principles by which I organize my life. I’ve had to go from optimizing completely for my own needs and goals, to optimizing for his. I’ve had to switch from a long-term planning horizon to a very short one, about the time between his dirty diapers. My focus of investment has gone from myself and my skills to his growth and development. And of course, I’ve had to give up all kinds of control – over my time, my sleep, my meals, my free time – in favor of being available for whatever he and Lauren need.

It’s become very clear to me that becoming a “family man” is a decision. It doesn’t happen automatically just because you have a kid. It’s a distinct identity shift that I think has to be by choice. My intention for this year-end review is to lay the foundation for my shift from a work-obsessed to a family-centric life, with my son and wife at the center of my universe. I want everything else in my life to be in service of them, simply because nothing else matters as much as them.

I want to start as I always do, by recapping our successes this year and revisiting the goals I set at the beginning of the year to close the accountability loop.

Signed a book deal for Building a Second Brain

This was the culmination of more than a year of work with my editor and agent. In April my book proposal went to auction between 4 imprints from 3 major publishers, and after a couple rounds of bidding it went to Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster. 

It wasn’t quite as dramatic as in the movies, with editors screaming ever higher numbers over the phone in a desperate panic. I wish! Instead, the bids were made in two rounds via email within a 2-hour time window. I sat at my computer staring at my inbox for those two hours as the bids came in. When it was all said and done, Atria won the auction by a wide margin, and I couldn’t be happier to work with them. Read the full story behind the book here.

Recently it was announced that Simon & Schuster is being acquired by the largest of the Big 5 publishers, Penguin Random House, which means my book will be published by the biggest publisher in the U.S. and one of the biggest in the world. That means I’ll potentially have access to more resources and more distribution channels, but it also means I’m part of a much larger portfolio that includes books by heavy hitters like Barack Obama and Danielle Steel. I’ll need to make a real splash to attract the attention needed to stand out among this crowd.

I’m currently working with my editor on the manuscript, which is due July 1, and it will then take around 9-12 months to prepare and distribute the book before its release. I’m expecting it will be available for sale around spring or fall 2022. We currently only have a publisher in the U.S., but are on the lookout for publishers in other countries. Let me know if you know any

The Second Brain Manifesto

We believe that ideas represent one of the most powerful forces in the world today

Ideas are not mere playthings. They are the building blocks of the modern world. Ideas inform our thinking and behavior every day. We depend on new ideas to improve our health, productivity, and relationships. To understand culture, politics, science, and history. New ideas breathe fresh life into how we view the world.

We believe that leveraging the power of ideas requires shifting our mindset from scarcity to abundance

Our society is desperately in need of a new paradigm in our relationship to information. The lens of scarcity, control, and pure consumption is no longer serving us. If we’re going to thrive in this new era, we need to transform information from a source of stress and uncertainty into a source of creativity and abundance. We need to learn how to surf the information wave instead of being drowned by it.

We believe that human progress depends on putting our ideas into action

The most important factor in our effectiveness, in our impact, and in our future is putting new ideas into practice. But despite all the knowledge we now have access to, it remains as difficult as ever to put it into action – to learn, to innovate, and to develop new ways of thinking and working. Our progress as individuals and as a species depends on our ability to turn our knowledge into concrete results in the real world.

We believe that power comes from sharing ideas, instead of hoarding them

The scarcity mindset of the past led us to hide and protect our ideas. But today, power and influence come from sharing our ideas, not from keeping them secret. Creativity is no longer limited to a select few, but is open to anyone with the courage and dedication to share their work with the world. We can all become creators of the ideas we most want to see manifested in the world.

We believe that everyone has the opportunity to improve their thinking using technology

We all feel this pressure to constantly be learning and improving ourselves, but so much of what we consume doesn’t get preserved in any form. With the rise of modern technology, we all now have the opportunity to outsource the job of “remembering” to computers and even use them to enhance and amplify our thinking. Now that we have “tools for thought,” we are free to dedicate our minds to the creativity that only we are capable of.

We believe that building a Second Brain enables us to develop our First Brain

Far from making humans obsolete, better tools for thinking will free us to invest in ourselves. A Second Brain takes over the burden of remembering facts and details, so we are free to imagine, to create, and to enjoy our lives. The ultimate purpose of a Second Brain is to put our ideas to work for us, so we are free to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

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.

The post The Second Brain Manifesto appeared first on Forte Labs.

Introducing the Keystone Course Accelerator

“Honestly, I feel like more people should know about you and your content.”

That’s how the email from a guy named Billy started.

It was April 2019, and I was at a crossroads.

I had been teaching my Building a Second Brain course for a couple years at that point. I’d had success, but the workload was totally unsustainable.

I was burnt out trying to do everything myself, from incessantly promoting the course to teaching all the lessons to answering customer service questions late into the night. The course I had created was consuming me, and I didn’t see any way out.

I knew that I either needed to turn my little program into a full-fledged online education business, and build the team and the support systems I needed, or risk burning out completely and losing all the progress I’d made.

I longed to get back to the original reason I’d started working for myself: to have more control over my time, my income, and my destiny. To have the freedom to pursue whatever interested me, and to work when and where and how I chose.

I’d lost sight of my ultimate purpose: to make a positive impact on people’s lives without sacrificing my happiness, quality of life, or integrity.

Billy explained that he was a marketing consultant for online course creators. He wanted to talk to me about potentially working together to grow my business.

I receive a lot of this kind of email, but as my finger hovered over the “delete” button, his name caught my attention: Billy Broas.

Hadn’t I seen this name before?

I searched my email and lo and behold, he’d been featured in Teachable’s newsletter just a couple days before right alongside me:

He was hosting a workshop on “How to Build a Sustainable Online Course Business,” which had piqued my attention. I saw that he was the only marketing consultant recommended by Teachable, the learning platform I use for my courses.

Needless to say, I replied to Billy’s email instead of deleting it:

“I’d love to have a call. I’ve been thinking for some time that it’s time to expand the marketing for BASB and my other courses. It’s becoming a full curriculum for how to work in the digital age and I think a lot more people could benefit from it than my own audience I’ve been focusing on.”

The phone call we got on a few days later would change my work, my business, and my life in more dramatic ways than I could have possibly imagined.

I decided to join Billy’s 10-week Course Accelerator program a couple months later. It was a group coaching program in which he taught course creators a scalable system for not only selling their product, but doing so in a repeatable, sustainable, and classy way.

Alongside Billy and a group of other impressive participants, I learned more about online marketing and persuasive psychology in 10 weeks than in the previous 6 years of solitary trial and error combined.

I realized that what I thought of as “marketing” was really a corrupted version of true marketing, based on the worst excesses I’d been exposed to. True marketing is about deep empathy and connection with others. So much so that when done well, we don’t call it marketing at all. We call it “sharing” or “storytelling” or “coaching.”

With that realization, the mindset of scarcity and anxiety around “selling” that was severely constraining me and my business completely dissolved, and was replaced by a philosophy based on generosity and abundance.

We focused on two main efforts: Building an engine to convert more of my audience into paying customers, and then pouring more fuel into that engine.

Over the next year, using the system that Billy and I architected together, I grew my email list from 6,000 to 38,000 subscribers.

 

And that drove my course launches from a previous high of $39k to a recent record of $985k.

 

Those aren’t results that happen by accident. They don’t just show up on your doorstep overnight.

It takes a system. But not the super complicated “sales funnels” or scammy ad campaigns you see influencers bragging about. Those “tactics” make everyone involved feel slimy afterwards. They aren’t consistent with creating a reputation you are proud of.

It takes an extremely high level of integrity combined with the fundamentals of storytelling: an email list you control, a deep understanding of the problems your customers are facing, a compelling story about what you can do for them, authentic testimonials and proof to back up your claims, all delivered in a consistent format with a clear invitation to join you.

It’s no secret that I’ve long wanted to create a program on how to successfully launch courses like mine. I’ve now launched three separate courses by three different instructors into the six-figure range, and have seen what a transformative impact they’ve had on the students and instructors alike. But my own course is growing so fast that it takes all my attention. Not to mention that I became a parent last month