Tiago Forte's Blog, page 29

Interview and Q&A with Sönke Ahrens on How to Take Smart Notes

On Thursday, March 19, at 9am ET, I will be interviewing Sönke Ahrens, author of the breakout book How To Take Smart Notes. This is your chance to ask him your burning questions on note-taking and non-fiction writing. 

Ahrens is a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen and also coaches students, academics, and professionals with a focus on time management, decision-making, and personal growth.

I recently summarized my favorite takeaways from his book in a post called How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing.

Click the button below to register and receive a calendar invite. I’ll send a recording of the call to everyone who registers. Please send any questions you’d like answered to hello@fortelabs.co.

Register for the call

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 Interview and Q&A with Sönke Ahrens on How to Take Smart Notes appeared first on Forte Labs.

How to Prepare for the Coronavirus in Six Steps

Who is most susceptible: the elderly and people with preexisting conditions (mortality rate for those under 40 is only 0.2% while it is 8% for those 70-79)How it spreads: by aerosolized droplets (e.g. the droplets you release when you cough or sneeze. These droplets can travel over 6 feet if you don’t cover your mouth and nose effectivelyMost common symptoms:Fever – 98%Dyspnea / Hypoxia (trouble breathing, low oxygen) – 55%Dry Cough – 76%Muscle pain/fatigue – 44%How it proceeds:8 days to get shortness of breath9 days for Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome11 Days for ICU Admission









NO HANDSHAKING! Use a fist bump, slight bow, elbow bump, etc.Work from homeNo longer going to big group events (concerts, conferences, etc.)No more air travel or public transitNo going downtown, offices, etc.No big restaurants, bars, cafes etc.Places with < 20 people only









Use ONLY your knuckle to touch light switches, elevator buttons, etc. Lift the gasoline dispenser with a paper towel or use a disposable glove.Open doors with your closed fist or hip – do not grasp the handle with your hand, unless there is no other way to open the door. Especially important on bathroom and post office/commercial doors.If possible, cough or sneeze into a disposable tissue and discard. Use your elbow only if you have to. The clothing on your elbow will contain the infectious virus that can be passed on for up to a week or more!Try not to touch your face. (We touch our nose/mouth 90X/day without knowing it!). This is the only way this virus can infect you – it is lung-specificWash your hands with soap for 10-20 seconds (see this video for best practices) and/or use a greater than 60% alcohol-based hand sanitizer whenever you return home from ANY activity that involves locations where other people have beenKeep a bottle of sanitizer available at each of your home’s entrances AND in your car for use after getting gas or touching other contaminated objects when you can’t immediately wash your handsEvery time you get back home:Drop shoes outsidePlace bags near doorWash hands till elbowsDisinfect phoneThrow all clothes to washWash glassesShowerDisinfect laptop, mouse & chargers









Water (2 liters/person/day)1 month of non-perishable food (nut butters, canned food, frozen food, etc.)Coffee/teaPet food









Prescription medication (a few months’ supply)1 month of living expenses in cashToilet paper (tampons, etc.)Asthma inhalersFirst Aid kitPainkillersCough reliefWound dressingVitamin A and D supplementsMasksLatex or nitrile latex disposable gloves (for use when going shopping, using the gasoline pump, and all other outside activity when you come in contact with contaminated areas)Hand sanitizers – must be alcohol-based and greater than 60% alcohol to be effectiveBleach, alcohol, and other household cleaners that will kill viruses on shared surfaces









Everything in this guide was drawn from the following sources, which contain a lot more useful information:Taylor Pearson: Coronavirus Primer for Reasonably Rational PeopleNew York Times: Worst-Case Estimates for U.S. Coronavirus DeathsThe Atlantic: Cancel EverythingTomas Pueyo: Coronavirus: Why You Must Act NowDan Wang: Covid Observations from Beijing, March 11Johns Hopkins University: Coronavirus Resource Center









Canned food:Beans in tomato sauceKidney beansChickpeasTomato puréeSoups in cansRavioli in tomato sauceStuffed vine leavesWok vegetablesCorn TomatoesOlivesPeasPaprikaCornichonesPickled tomato & cucumberTunaFish ballsSardinesMackerelDry foods:RiceWhey proteinWaffle mixHard breadPotato chipsCookiesWholewheatSemolinaMuesliRice noodlesPastaSpiral pastaRamen noodlesCouscousBuckwheatFlourSugarBaking powderDry yeastGarlic OnionsPowdered milkChicken stockPowdered meal substitutesSweet stuff:HalvaApricotsPearsMixed tropical fruitPineapplePeanut butterBanana chipsDried berries mixChocolatesCondensed milkApple sauceFridge foods:CheeseButterHalloumiFrozen meat substitutesEggsCondiments:MayoOlive oilCoconut oilJamSaltPepperDry herbsSoy sauceVegetable brothLiquids:Pasteurised milkSoy milkOat milkAlmond milkCashew milkProtein drinksCoca Cola ZeroCoffeeTeaLinden (to promote sweating for feverish colds and infections, to reduce nasal congestion, and relieve throat irritation and cough)AlcoholDisinfection & protection:Nitrile glovesProtective suitRespiratorsSafety gogglesHand sanitiserEar plugsBleachTrash bagsVitamins:CDB12ZincMedications:ParacetamolIbuprofenNasal sprayStrepsilsFirst aid kitPrescription medicationsActivated charcoalHygiene:SoapIntimate washToilet paperPanty linersPadsShampoo & conditionerToothbrushesToothpasteAntiseptic mouth washWet wipesBody washMoisturiserDeodorantPaper napkinsOther:CandlesDuct tapeBatteriesCleaning spraySpongesLaundry detergentFabric softenerMop headsAll-purpose cleaning detergentCleaning vinegarSpare glassesContact lenses Lens fluid

The post How to Prepare for the Coronavirus in Six Steps appeared first on Forte Labs.

Saving and Organizing Resources in Notion, by Marie Poulin

This is a short, excellent video by Notion expert Marie Poulin on how she organizes her notes, reading highlights, to do’s, and other personal information in Notion. Including cameos by my PARA system and Progressive Summarization technique, and a reminder to save notes “just-in-time” instead of “just-in-case.”

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 Saving and Organizing Resources in Notion, by Marie Poulin appeared first on Forte Labs.

Tiago’s Comprehensive Guide to Creating a Profitable Online Course

This is a comprehensive guide to creating a profitable online course, based on my experience developing 6 courses over 7 years, which have been taken by more than 25,000 students and generated well over $1 million in revenue.

It introduces my 4-P model for developing a course, referring to the 4 main stages of Planning, Preparation, Production, and Promotion. This doesn’t include the actual running and delivery of the course, which is a whole different topic and depends a lot on the format you choose.

This guide also assumes you want to create a profitable, self-sustaining course. There are a lot of excellent reasons to create one, including learning, personal fulfillment, fun and experimentation, and simply to share what you know. But the level of preparation and effort I’m recommending in this guide is aimed at those who want to make a business out of it.

Here is a Table of Contents of the 36 specific steps that I use in my own course development. Under most of them I’ve included multiple examples of what it looks like in my own courses or those I’ve learned from. I’m sharing them in their full, messy glory because this process is inherently messy. I hope it gives you some guidance and ideas for your own course creation.

Table of Contents

Planning

What are your personal objectives for this course?Desired outcomes for BSB1Create a master course outline as the centralized reference for the courseBASB v1 PlanningHeadings:To Do’sPlanningObjectivesBrand designResearchContent Outline1. Title slide2. Unit 13. Unit 24. Unit 35. Unit 46. Unit 57. Unit 68. Unit 7Content to addSales pagePromotionLogisticsVideosCommunityActivitiesFinal ProjectFollowupWho is this course for?BASB customer personasBASB big picture and personasWhat’s the transformation they’re seeking?Forte Labs Customer ProblemsWhat it feels like to be disorganizedHow is this different?What Makes Building a Second Brain DifferentWhich ideas or phrases have resonated with your audience?Notes on Beta Sessions (FLO-Evernote) 12/13/16 (four 60-minute feedback sessions where I presented initial material and got live feedback from 15 people)Possible titles and subtitlesBrainstorm with RaphaelWrite/design the course pledge or promiseBASB: You will learn how to capture, organize, and share your ideas and insights using digital notes, with a systematic approach and tools that you trust to support creative breakthroughs in your workWhich sources do you want to review for inspiration and ideas?Content:Eureka notes (ebook by Evernote thought leader)Evernote Essentials notesUntethered with Evernote notesSpark Joy, by Marie Kondo notesPromotion:Mastermind Package (premium upsell to an online course)Little List Leverage: How to sell out your course… even with a small listGrowth Day Webinar: Table of ContentsHow to Create Mini-Courses and Email Courses to Grow Your ListJenna Soard – YouCanBrand notesFwd: (Super Time Sensitive) Content Marketing Bootcamp is open for registrationsTeachableBlog-UltimateEmailExampleGuideRebecca Katz’s Cancer-Fighting Kitchen notesHow to Write a Powerful Sales Page notesDan Kennedy – The Ultimate Sales LetterValue Prop Design notesFarnam Street: The Art of Reading online course notesaltMBA notesHow to Design Marketing Campaigns: The Importance of Market Segmentation – The Startup – MediumFlow Fundamentals sales page notesWho do you want to talk to?Stacey Harmon (Evernote certified consultant and online course creator)Brainstorm with RaphaelTing’s recommendationsStrategy Lunch (12-19-2017) w/ Tiago and AmitStart collecting v1 course material in a dedicated notebookInspirationWe believe that in work is the possibility of the full realization of human potentialImages:Photos to use in slidesRoad to universeLogistics notes:Zoom webinar modeResearch on Markdown in EvernoteThree ways to use Markdown with EvernoteWikiMatrix – Comparison of PKM appsForum/Discourse notesRealTimeBoard notesSSO ErrorsTeachable notesTechnical complaints for TeachableTeachable: Affiliate redirect setupInternet connection contingency plansPromotion:Future PaceSocial Media: Scheduled PostsDavid Allen quotes from GTD Connect interview w/ TiagoStart collecting material for future versions in a dedicated notebookEvernote notebook “BASB content”Schedule first live cohort and begin recruiting beta testersPreparationHire videographerCreate a promotional planForte Labs Marketing briefReferral sources for BASBBSB3 Promotional PlanWrite follow-up emails to be sent after each live sessionBASB1 Takeaway emailsCreate a checklist for conducting live sessionsPre and Post-Session ChecklistGuest Instructor ChecklistProductionProduce the core course contentUnit 3: Digital CognitionUnit 5: Maximizing Return-on-AttentionUnit 6: JIT Project ManagementUnit 8: The Big PictureIdentify the learning objective of each moduleIntentions of unitsWrite out personal storiesThe Story Behind Building a Second BrainDesign exercisesBASB2 activities/exercisesUnit 3 Exercise: 12 Favorite Problems (the Feynman Method)BASB4 Exercise #3: Define Your Project ListGuidelines/best practices on Project List exerciseUnit 2 Exercise: Define Your Project ListProject List MindsweepProject List MindsweepGTD Project List TemplatePARA Implementation ChecklistPARA Implementation GuideP.A.R.A. Migration ChecklistPARA setup walkthroughs notesPARA migration live walkthroughP.A.R.A. Setup ChecklistP.A.R.A. Setup Checklist (walkthrough)Unit 4 Exercise: Markup a NoteProject Execution ChecklistUnit 5 Exercise: Strengths as ConstraintsUnit 6 Exercise: Workflow StrategiesExercise #7: Learning QuestExercise #8: Design a Learning QuestPKM Workflow CanvasPKM Workflow Canvas NotesPKM Canvas revisionsBASB4 – Exercises v5Create case studies and walkthroughsFive Dysfunctions of a Team notesBASB Case Study: Toyota Design Thinking Workshop source notesBASB WalkthroughsBASB screen recording checklistCreate a pre and post-course evaluationQuestions for Note-taking Self-EvaluationWhat level are you at in your personal knowledge management?PKM Self-assessmentCreate post-course feedback surveyFeedback form notesCreate “next steps” moduleBASB Next Actions Checklist10 Steps Post-GTDCreate public FAQ document26 Highlights from Frequently Asked Questions | Seth Godin’s altMBADesign onboarding processaltMBA downloadable GcalPromotionHire course managerAgenda for Ben onboarding meetingBSB3 Course Manager job descriptionCourse Manager kickoff and standing agendaBSB3 Course Manager TimelogCreate landing pageBASB2 sales page copyBASB sales pageCopy of Course Price CalculatorBSB3 Sales PageIdentify potential partnershipsNotes on Appsumo partnershipWrite a version of the course curriculum for sharingBASB CurriculumPre-write and schedule social media postsScheduled social media posts for BASB2Create free content and bonusesBASB described in 10 stepsRESCOM (PDF freebie example)altMBA_OnePageraltmba free ebookGraphic: examples of tiny habitsBASB 20 CommandmentsHarmon’s EN desktop settings for MacPS Quick OverviewCubo docsOfficial BASB Note TemplateCool spectrum chartWrite introductory email sequenceBASB2 intro email sequenceBASB3 Introductory Email SeriesPromo Email CampaignsaltMBA email sequenceCreate promo kitExamples of PR assets from The Coaching HabitExplaining BSB in 140 charactersBASB simplified in others’ wordsMetaphors for Second BrainSchedule guest sessions/interviews and announce themGuest Interview: Dr. FrandGuest Interview: Venkatesh Rao

Subscribe below to receive weekly emails with our best new content, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. To receive instant access to our full collection of learning resources and future members-only posts, become a Praxis member for just $10 per month.

Version 10 of Building a Second Brain

One of my favorite science fiction books of all time is Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan.

[image error]

The series follows Takeshi Kovacs, an elite rebel fighter known as an “Envoy.” Takeshi lives hundreds of years in the future, at a time when a crucial invention has profoundly changed society: cortical stacks, known simply as “stacks.” They are small metal disks inserted at the back of the neck, containing the full contents of a human mind – their personality, memories, skills, and knowledge. 

[image error]

Stacks can be removed from one body (called a “sleeve”) and inserted into another, a process known as “resleeving.” This allows people to swap out bodies based on the skills or appearance they want. Stacks can be stored safely for hundreds of years, allowing people to “time travel” to distant eras. A stack can be “double sleeved” and placed into two bodies at once, allowing multiple “selves” to work together.

The book was recently made into a Netflix series, and you can see some of these ideas demonstrated in this quick recap of Season 1 (MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!!):

The Altered Carbon universe is based on questioning one assumption – that our body and our mind are inseparable. The implications are profound.

Instead of moving physical bodies across space, it is much cheaper and faster to send only a stack’s data from one planet to another. Platoons of soldiers are “transmitted” to download centers at the speed of light, where they are resleeved into new bodies to join the fight.

[image error]

Specially equipped sleeves provide all the strength and agility that anyone would need. The decisive factor becomes their “inner game” – their psychological resilience, their ability to adapt to change, and their ability to regulate their thoughts and emotions (and even turn their fear and anger to their advantage).

In one scene, Takeshi is pinned to a wall by government agents. They have him imprisoned in a virtual reality interrogation room where they can do whatever they want to him. But using his mental abilities, he realizes that he can “control the construct.” He begins to “delete” elements of the scene, to take back control of his environment using only the power of his mind. He breaks free from the virtual reality, finds his sister, and together they escape their captors.

[image error]

There are a stunning number of parallels in this story to our quest to build a “Second Brain.”

Technology has become so powerful that our particular knowledge and skills are no longer decisive. Modern technology is like a “sleeve,” allowing us to pick up capabilities in minutes that would have otherwise required years of training. 

The Envoys became a potent strike force based on their ability to download into an unfamiliar body, in a foreign environment, on a strange planet, and be ready to act within minutes. Likewise, those who have a Second Brain are able to drop into unfamiliar projects, adapt to rapidly shifting priorities, and strike ferociously at difficult objectives at a moment’s notice. 

In both worlds, it isn’t those who work the hardest or who have the most years of training that will succeed. It is those who know how to adapt to change and leverage the capabilities of technology no matter what challenge they encounter.

Join the Envoys on April 6

On April 6 we will kick off Version 10 of Building a Second Brain, our flagship online course on how to organize your ideas and put them into action in your life. I’m nicknaming this group “the Envoys.”

We will officially be opening enrollment for the Spring 2020 cohort on March 25, and the program will run from April 6 until May 6, 2020. Version 10 includes the biggest round of improvements we’ve ever made.

Click here for a sneak peak at the new features we’re adding

I have much more to share with you about how and why we’re taking this program to a whole new level this year. I’ll give you the full schedule, answers to frequently asked questions, and invite you to free events we’re working on in the coming weeks.

Enter your email address below to hear more about the new version of the course and the upcoming cohort. I’ll also start sending you my 7 Lessons Before You Build a Second Brain right away.

 

There’s one more character in Altered Carbon you should know about: Quellcrist Falconer. She is the creator of the stack technology, and the leader of the Envoys fighting the evil Protectorate.

[image error]

Quellcrist trains the Envoys in all the skills they’ll need to complete their mission. She trains them to use hardware, such as martial arts and gunfighting. She trains them in software, on how to sense their surroundings and adjust quickly to their new sleeves.

But most of all, Quellcrist is training their minds, the only permanent and essential part of their identity.

She teaches them to master themselves and their fears: “They control the construct, you control only yourself.” She shows them how to reframe their situation when they can’t control the outcome: “They think you are trapped; you know you are waiting.” Quellcrist reveals to her ragtag group of rebels, one lesson at a time, what they are truly capable of – anything.

That is exactly the role I will play in the Building a Second Brain course. I will start by showing you how to use the capabilities of hardware and software to take digital notes, save and organize them, and systematically turn them into completed creative projects. But most importantly, I will help you reframe your relationship to information, to productivity, to creativity, and to the goals that matter most to you.

Ultimately, my job is to unleash your creative potential. To show you just how much you are truly capable of when all the constraints and limitations fall away. That is what building a Second Brain is all about.

Subscribe below to receive weekly emails with our best new content, or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, or YouTube. To receive instant access to our full collection of learning resources and future members-only posts, become a Praxis member for just $10 per month.

Video Interview: Eclectic Spacewalk with Tiago Forte

This is the first interview I’ve done that was recorded on video, with Nicholas McCay on his podcast Eclectic Spacewalk. Originally published on their Substack newsletter, you can also read the full transcript.

Here’s the show notes:

How growing up in a diverse cultural household shaped his worldview. (03:02)
Reading and books were always a huge influence on Tiago (04:37)
Especially the works of James Michener (06:14)
Studying abroad in Brazil, working in microfinance in Colombia, and serving in the Peace Corps in Ukraine (09:10)
Leaving the Peace Corps and coming back to the US (16:32)
The principle of doing more with less (Ephemeralization) and the beginning of Forte Labs (25:02)
“Think of your brain as a pipeline of ideas.” (28:01)
“My recommendation is to focus on the system for generating insights rather than any one particular insight. This comes back to the principles not prescriptions.” (32:59)
Creative principles to try and help minimize the incessant grabbing of your attention (38:31)
10 principles of building a second brain (41:17)
Writing influences & history (53:10)
A Manifesto on Human Centered Work (56:31)
Personal growth is a privilege (01:00:06)
Personal growth is REAL work that isn’t just going to happen (01:07:10)
Imagination is crucially important for the future of work (01:11:09)
The experience of moving from San Fransisco to Mexico City (01:16:03)
What would you say to the entire world if everyone on Earth was looking back at you? (01:18:55)

More on Eclectic Spacewalk:

Watch all video interviews on YouTube
Follow Eclectic Spacewalk on Twitter
Visit the Eclectic Spacewalk Website

Subscribe to Praxis, our members-only blog exploring the future of productivity, for just $10/month. Or follow us for free content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Comparing Frameworks for Self-Development: A Conversation with Joe Hudson

If you’ve been around here for awhile, you know I’m a big fan of what I call “personal growth” (also known as self-development or personal development).

I’ve written a number of articles about personal experiences I’ve had and impactful books I’ve read on the subject. And personal growth was the overarching theme of the last book I published, The Heart is the Bottleneck.

But what the heck IS personal growth?

It’s not religion, though it often has a spiritual flavor. It’s not philosophy, although it can easily get metaphysical. It’s not merely professional development, though there is a lot of overlap with performance at work. And it’s not just a different word for “learning,” though of course it involves a lot of learning.

Besides the confusion over terminology, self-development can be a daunting minefield for anyone that ventures into it looking for answers. It’s filled with shady marketers, get-rick-quick schemes, overpromising headlines, cultish leaders, and pyramid schemes. We’ve all heard stories of horrible experiences and abusive leaders, all the more concerning in an environment where vulnerable people are looking for help.

Despite all these pitfalls, at the heart of self-development lies a powerful opportunity: to grow beyond your self and your fears. To expand beyond the limits of your ego and free yourself from the stories of your past. To discover who you are and your purpose in this life. And there’s many practical benefits as well such as better communication, resilience, and of course, productivity.

Next Thursday, Feb. 27, from 9-10:30am PT, I’ll introduce you to someone who can provide guidance on how to realize that potential without succumbing to those pitfalls. His name is Joe Hudson.

Joe has one foot firmly planted in the practical world of business – he is the founder and managing director of One Earth Capital, a boutique venture capital firm that invests in executive coaching, sustainable agriculture, and financial services. But his other foot is firmly planted in the world of self-development. Joe has spent more than 20 years studying and practicing dozens of spiritual traditions and psychological frameworks, and incorporating them into his own coaching and teaching.

For an introduction to the depth and power of Joe’s work, read about my experiences at his Tide Turners and Groundbreakers workshops.

I’ve never met anyone who has such broad AND deep knowledge of self-development. Who understands it as a practical field one can study and make progress in. Of all the programs and teachers I’ve had experience with, his work is some of the most modern, science-informed, and transparent I’ve ever encountered. It is a rare example of inner work that is also aimed at having a positive external impact on the world.

So many people who have a positive experience with one approach to self-development become fanatical in their devotion to it. They go all-in, believing it to be the One True Path to the exclusion of all others. They turn it into an unquestioning faith, instead of just another tool designed to address a specific kind of problem.

In this conversation with Joe I hope to balance out that tendency: to evaluate various frameworks for self-development objectively, comparing their strengths and weaknesses based on what you specifically are trying to achieve.

We will touch on ancient spiritual traditions and the latest neuroscience, compare approaches from the East and the West, and contrast self-development work that occurs at physiological, emotional, and psychological levels. I’ll ask Joe to give us frameworks for evaluating frameworks, so that each of us can find the best investment for our time, effort, and money.

Register for our 90-minute Zoom call on Thursday, Feb. 27, from 9-10:30am PT if you’d like to attend live and get your questions answered. I’ll upload the recording here shortly afterward for anyone who can’t attend live.

Subscribe to Praxis, our members-only blog exploring the future of productivity, for just $10/month. Or follow us for free content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

Notion As A Second Brain: Video

This is a full live recording of the presentation delivered by Tiago Forte and Lauren Valdez on their Notion As A Second Brain tour, on how they think about and use Notion in their work at Forte Labs. Scroll to the bottom of the post for a full transcript and slides.

Guest presentations

Below are two guest presentations delivered by Conrad Lin on how to gamify your productivity with Notion, and Visa Veerasamy on the mindset of sharing your ideas publicly:

Transcript and slides

Read the full (lightly edited) transcript of Tiago and Lauren’s talk below, and download the PDF slides here.

(JUSTIN)

It’s really good to see everyone here. My name is Justin. I’m one of Notion’s community ambassadors for Los Angeles, specifically for UCLA. I’m currently a student that’s going to UCLA, and Notion asked me to help organize this event with Tiago & Rita House. Thank you so much again, Sarah and Rita House, for having us here. It’s really great to see everyone. We’re going to have a great event tonight. We have a talk given by Tiago Forte, as I’m sure you’re aware, followed by a shorter talk by Lauren Valdez.

A little bit about myself. I’m one of Notion’s community ambassadors as I mentioned. I help Notion get organized at UCLA and help students get on board the product as I’m sure many of you are aware. I’ll let Tiago introduce himself and we can get this event started.

(TIAGO FORTE)

Thanks, Justin. Hey, everyone. I see a lot of familiar faces actually. My name is Tiago Forte, and I teach a course called Building a Second Brain. Has anyone here heard of Building a Second Brand by any chance? Can I see a show of hands? Okay, lots. Awesome! Building a Second Brain is a course, but it’s also a methodology, a philosophy, some would even say a way of life. BASB teaches people to use technology in a certain way, not just as a distraction or as an interruption or as a burden, but as an extension of their mind, an extension of their intellect, an extension of their intuition, and lastly an extension of their self. It’s very deep stuff.

I’ve partnered with Notion to do this series of events to talk about the relationship between that methodology, which has a lot of interesting ideas, concepts, frameworks, and a very practical thing which is the Notion software. The tool. So, what I want to talk to you about tonight is Notion as a Second Brain. It’s kind of self-explanatory in the title.

But, what would it look like, or could it look like or should it look like, to use Notion, a piece of productivity software, as something as grand and lofty and profound as a second brain? As an extension of the most complex and amazing mechanism machine in the universe, which is the human brain?

Can I see a quick show of hands of how many of you use Notion or have used it? Okay, similar numbers. So, that’s the course I teach. I’m not going to really talk about it much. If you want to learn more you can go to buildingasecondbrain.com. There’s a form at the top of that page that if you enter your email address, I’ll send you a series of seven emails that has my basic seven principles. One per day for a week. But I’m here to answer a different question.

Which is the question I receive day in and day out: Not are you switching to Notion, but when are you switching to Notion? The only question I receive more often is “Are you Elon Musk?” It’s the only one – they’re neck-and-neck though.

Really this is a question I’ve been slightly obsessively thinking about as we’ve been going to different cities and meeting some of the most passionate, smart, and engaged people we’ve seen anywhere. It’s really incredible to see the movement, the community that Notion is building. And so I had to really go back to the beginning.

We have to go back to the beginning, to a history of productivity apps, which may not sound like the most exciting topic ever, but I promise you it has a ton of relevance for what we talk about today. What I saw was that it all started with email. Email was like the big bang of productivity software, right? I don’t know if you remember, probably not everyone in here remembers, the arrival of email in the 90s. Remember AOL, when you’d hear that sound, that “You’ve got mail.” That was like a world-changing thing. I mean truly a singular moment in history. Before that you had to send telegrams, write letters, or maybe make phone calls and suddenly you could fire off an electronic message to any person with an email address in the world. And it’s funny to think back. You know, you hear that you’ve got mail and it was like, oh my gosh, I’m so special. Someone thought of me. There’s like this privilege. It was like you were the chosen recipient of this email. Now you see the red dot and the 50,000 number badge. Just like, oh more emails. It’s amazing how fast it changed from the greatest blessing to the greatest curse, and that’s a pattern we’re going to see again and again.

The amazing thing is the people who invented these things are still around and some of them still working. There’s people on those postcards out there that are still working, like Ted Nelson, right? So from reading, from talking to people, and from just looking at different sources I noticed that there’s a pattern and this isn’t mine. This is from a company called Gartner which is a research firm. It’s very well-established, and well recognized – this is nothing controversial. It talks about the hype cycle of how technologies enter the mainstream. So something happens, there’s some invention, some breakthrough, or some new kind of capability. Then it tends to get overhyped, everyone says that “this is going to change everything, the whole world will be different, nothing will ever be the same, our daily life will be transformed” and it kind of goes way beyond any reasonable expectation of what a technology could do.

Then of course nothing can fulfill those expectations. So it drops into the trough of disillusionment, but then it’s not that bad either right? It’s just a tool. It’s a technology and it kind of goes up the slope of enlightenment, and I love the parallels here to meditation and stuff, and then it hits the plateau of productivity. It’s interesting because all through this roller coaster it’s not really having a an effect on the way people work. Maybe some people like the fringe nerds like you and me, but for most people it hasn’t entered the mainstream, hasn’t become a part of a normal kind of work culture.

So what started to happen in the 1990s as we had this email explosion, what tends to happen is as the tool gets adopted and as it becomes really mainstream people start to stretch the use case, right? Email was started for a very simple thing: send and receive messages, but then as people spent more and more of their day in email it became like another limb. They started going: “But we could use this for notifications, we could use this as a to-do list, we could use this as so many things and all these functions started being added on to email.

If you think about it though, that really is not ideal right? How many of you use your email inbox as a to-do list sometimes, even I do it sometimes, come on, and that’s really not ideal. That’s not what it was invented for, right? How much sense does it make to have a to-do list that anyone in the whole world who has your email address can add something to at any time of day or night and when they add it to that list, it goes right up at the very top? It doesn’t make a lot of sense, right? So to kind of relieve that pressure, task managers were invented. Task managers are essentially digital to-do lists. It’s a piece of software for managing the things you have to do. So how many of you use a task manager like OmniFocus, Todoist, or Wunderlist? A lot of us, right?

Okay, and that was again a revolution. It really was kicked off, the explosion was in 2001 with the publication of GTD, Getting Things Done, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with. I mean, the reason GTD needed to exist was because of the incredible volume of what were called open loops, basically new things for you to think of and keep track of.

But then the same thing happened, the percentage of the population who was ever going to adopt a task manager is not a hundred. It’s never a hundred. They started going, “Oh we could use this for more things.” So does anyone have any guesses as to what we started using task managers for? Any ideas? Yes, notes. Yeah, right, you’re already there. You’re already writing things down in a list format, why not write your grocery list, a note to self, a reminder, and a quote from a book. All these things started going into your task manager which again created a pressure because it’s not ideal. When you’re there in the midst of the chaos of your day and you’re just needing to know the next action, next action, next action you don’t really want that Shakespearean Hamlet quote in there. You don’t really want that passage from a cognitive psychology book, and all these random notes that we take aren’t really helpful in that context. So in the 2010s really with the rise of smartphones, starting with the iPhone in 2007, we had what I call the digital notes revolution.

And I don’t know how many of you remember this. The early days of Evernote, the fervor and the excitement was surreal. I mean now we completely take for granted the ability to save text and different kinds of media and then just have it show up on different devices and be completely synced; it was absolutely magical. And the big difference that digital notes had was that it could capture large volumes of notes, it wasn’t just one line at a time like in a task manager. You could save thousands of words of text, you could save images, you can save links, you could save PDFs, attachments, gifs, all that kind of stuff in a place that it didn’t interfere with your day-to-day work. So it’s now on the eve of 2020, an almost sci-fi-esque year and I think this is where we’re at right now.

It’s like the bubble of digital notes is in the process of popping, and this is what I want to explore and look at more closely because I think it’s really interesting and has big implications. So the question is: if Notion is this new layer, this kind of new level of the pyramid, what is the job that it’s best suited for? And we have some clues from what we’ve just seen. It’s probably the job that the previous generation of productivity software is not doing very well. So here’s what I notice with digital notes. There’s a small percentage of notes, maybe two, three. five percent at most, that people access and relate to in a very different way. There’s your book notes and your random, static notes, but there’s certain notes, for example – dashboards, documentation, dynamic lists – which are more than just a list of 10 things that doesn’t change but lists that have more action and change – procedures, checklists, and templates, right? So things like standard operating procedures. How do we do this process in my business? Things like a list of goals that changes, that evolves. Things like checklists for say how you pack when you travel, or a checklist for how you publish a blog post, all sorts of different things. I’m starting to think that this job is the job that Notion is primarily going to be taking over.

I’m trying to come up with a word for these. I’m very open to suggestions because I think these ones are not that great. But I am currently calling them dashboards and I’ll tell you in a minute why. Or, “working documents” is a bit broader option, and I like the double meaning of working documents in that you’re using them to work but they’re also working. They’re working when you sleep. They have a certain intelligence. They have certain abilities beyond just a static document. Here’s some kinds of characteristics that I’ve picked out: they’re essential for action, right? So these aren’t just your notes on a textbook you read in college 15 years ago. It’s something you need to do your work each day. But they also change frequently, so there’s an updating, there’s a dynamic, there’s a responsive element that they need. They’re much more sharing-friendly than in the past. They’re designed with the assumption that you’ll share instead of sharing being this like backdoor kind of contingency plan.

Multiple views needed, right? You need more than one way of seeing that data. Sometimes it needs to be in a calendar, sometimes in a checklist, or sometimes in a template. It’s the same data, just needs different views. Its multi-dimensional and has more than just one kind of way of sorting it. And modular blocks. I think the analogy to dashboard is interesting because if you think of a dashboard it has to be accurate and informative. Your life depends, your safety and the safety of others depends on the dashboard. So it has to be accurate, has to be correct, but it also has to change constantly, right? Think about when you’re driving and you see someone come out onto the road you have to be able to glance in just a moment for a second at your dashboard and get just the information that you need to take the action to swerve.

It’s interesting if you look at how often the predecessors to these things start in business, right? Where we lived, my wife Lauren and I lived up until a year ago, you can’t walk into a startup office in San Francisco without seeing dashboards. It’s kind of like a trend of the past few years. There is sales metrics, there’s revenue metrics, there’s customer metrics, usage metrics, and all these kinds of things. Until now you had to be an engineer or have a ton of APIs with a ton of training, backend access, a designer, a UX designer, all these things to be able to create these. Now it’s sort of like they’re filtering down potentially to consumers. There’s a movement called the No Code Movement. Maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe not? Notion is part of it, other apps like Airtable & Webflow, that basically allow the creation of interfaces, the creation of software to a certain extent, without the use of code. It’s like drag-and-drop stuff. It’s things that you can not exactly create from scratch, but you can configure, you can customize, you can sort of build on your own using very user-friendly tools. So maybe this new generation, this new layer of the pyramid, can be working documents. If that’s the case, there’s three patterns that we should look for.

Three patterns that we saw in each of the previous generations. The first one is that the new generation of apps, productivity apps, takes over primarily the most sophisticated, complex, higher order jobs, right? They don’t take over the whole thing. They don’t even want to actually because most of the old jobs are kind of boring, they’re not very sexy, or they’re not very trendy. They want to do the new cutting-edge, the frontier stuff.

Second, and this is really kind of unexpected and counterintuitive, the previous generation doesn’t become unnecessary. Think of after all these generations, is email obsolete in any way? I’d say it’s more important than ever. It’s the one platform that doesn’t change constantly every few years, right? The previous generation doesn’t become unnecessary. In fact, it actually becomes better than ever because it no longer has to constantly keep innovating and trying to be something it’s not. It can just refocus on its original use case and especially efficiency in that use case. So, you look at what is the other hot, up-and-coming productivity app alongside Notion right now – Superhuman. What is Superhuman? It’s going back to that first generation and reinventing it with an insane focus on efficiency. Like they have in the corner, they show the number of milliseconds, microseconds it takes to delete a message or to send the message, all these things. It’s like they removed all the cruft of Gmail. Gmail has become this really kind of monster and they’re helping you do that one thing with extreme speed.

Third, each new generation provokes a massive explosion in the volume of the thing it helps people create. So you see this again and again, think about email, who would have guessed if you went back 30, 40 years that the average knowledge worker or the average professional needed to receive hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of emails per week? Like who would have thought? We had no idea! I mean how many letters did you get a week before email? It’s not even in the ballpark. It’s like two or three orders of magnitude more. Same thing with tasks. When the first task managers came out, It was like “Oh what are your ten tasks now.” Now they have to be able to track hundreds if not thousands of tasks. It’s normal to have hundreds of tasks. Anyone who does GTD knows that hundreds is normal as modern humans. Same thing with notes – who would have guessed these Evernote collections of 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 notes are normal, right? If you’ve been using these apps for any period of time they make it so fast to create whatever the thing is that the volume just explodes.

So, if these repeat and I think they will, here’s what we should see over the next few years. Specifically for Notion, Notion will fulfill the demand primarily, it will be used for other things, like some people will use it for tasks or notes, but its core use case, the most interesting thing, the most innovative thing, and the thing that really allows it to start a new paradigm will be working documents. Will be documents that are essential for action and also need to change quickly and have different ways of interacting and viewing them.

Second, and this is definitely controversial if you follow the digital note controversies on Twitter, as I’m sure you all do. The digital note-taking apps will survive and will thrive. Everyone’s predicting the imminent demise of Evernote. I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think that whole generation of apps, there’s so many of them. I mean you have Microsoft OneNote, kind of the old dinosaur. There’s Google Keep on the sidelines. There’s Simplenote. There’s a whole group of note-taking apps for the iPad that are kind of reinventing digital notes almost in the original way of drawing and sketching. And they’ll be better than ever because they’ll be able to focus on really the one thing that they were always destined for which is just taking notes. Think about a Moleskine. A Moleskine paper notebook just takes notes. That’s it. It captures. It saves. It sort of pulls things from the physical world into the digital world and that’s enough. That’s a big enough job I think to support an entire category of software.

Third, there will be an explosion. It’s hard for us to imagine now. I think just like with the other ones, working documents are going to explode. Dashboards are going to explode. Think about if you had as much information on your productivity as you did about your car or your computer or some device that has a dashboard. Imagine if you had a dashboard for your health that inter-related and showed you the relationships between your cholesterol and blood pressure and your exercise and your sleep. Imagine if you had dashboards for your relationships, you kept a personal CRM (customer relationship manager) that kept track of your different relationships – how strong they were, when you had checked in, what plans you’re making with them. Imagine if you had a dashboard for your finances; one that you created and not just some software someone gave you, but one you could customize. What do you want to see about your finances? What do you want to know? Imagine what would happen if we had the ability to create these working documents, anyone did, with whatever data they wanted, with whatever data they could get their hands on. It’s really a powerful future I think that we are looking at.

So some of you came here I know to answer this question, which is “Should I switch to Notion?” And I hope by seeing this kind of more complex history that you now see that that is a really overly simplistic notion. It doesn’t take into account that our productivity, as you saw with the pyramid, is multi-layered. It’s not just one thing. It’s not one dimension. Your productivity itself is this multi-dimensional stack of interrelated capabilities. Some of which are always there, have been there a long time, and maybe will always be there. Other ones that are much more advanced, that maybe not everyone in the world needs, only the most kind of advanced knowledge workers who work with the highest volumes of information or the most complex information. Okay, so I think it’s not about switching. It’s more about layering. It’s about layering the new generation onto the top of what you’re already doing.

So let’s get a little more practical. This is a note. This is a note from Evernote. I picked it at random from a recent Black Friday sale that I did. It was my notes on making an analogy of the second brain idea to the pensieve in Harry Potter, which is this magical dish that you can pour your memories into it and then relive your memories. It’s a very cool analogy, and I have a post on it. If you search pensieve on my blog you can find the post. This was just some simple notes. I think a quote from one of the books that I saw online, a couple forums, maybe some social media – just a few sources – that I used to write this blog post for this promotion and I discarded it essentially. It’s a disposable note. I mean, I’ll keep it in the archives but it’s super unlikely that I would refer to this note in the future. I’ll refer to the blog post. To me, this is a perfect note, right? This is a note that doesn’t benefit from more structure, doesn’t benefit from headings and toggles and tables and interlinked databases and all these things. Structure would not be an improvement on this.

So this is my Notion. This is how we manage the blog workflow, Praxis is my blog, and it’s really central to our business because everything goes through the blog. Every announcement, every promotion, every new product, every interview, every partnership, and every event like this one. It’s almost like the pipeline of all things that are happening in the business and we use this columns view of the workflow. Each one of these cards is a post. So, they start as ideas, then they have some notes attached (you can see some links here to Evernote), then they become outlines, then they become drafts, and then posts and then social media and then email and then finally they’re archived.

This I think is a really great use case for Notion if you think about what’s happening here. There’s a dynamic quality, things are moving in non-linear ways – something may move forward but then I realize oh it’s not ready and has to come back. If I realize they’re similar one post might get split up. There’s a lot of different ways that they move and then of course by clicking here and creating a different view I could see these in a different way. I could see them in a calendar. So, I want to know what are we going to be publishing six weeks from now, right? What is an announcement with that new blog post that’s coming out in six weeks that I can align with? There’s all sorts of strategic things. Some things have to be published before other things. Some things can’t be published until something else is published. Really that dynamic kind of behavior is captured well in Notion. Just in case you’re curious, there are a few other things I’m currently using Notion for.

Running my online course Building a Second Brain. So if you think about it, that’s something that repeats but is also different each time. So there’s kind of a template quality, and then this is now called Forte Labs HQ, our operations. We have standard operating procedures like how to set a meeting, how to organize a meetup, how to publish a blog post, and all that kind of stuff. And they all interlink. So, all the actions in these two that have to be done more than a couple times have links to the standard operating procedures. And of course, this is all shared with the team.

I think what’s going to happen with digital notes apps, such as my beloved Evernote, as I said before they’re going to revert back to their true nature and become like a universal inbox. Imagine an app that was a universal inbox. You knew that you could capture anything from any source, in any format, for any purpose. That is an important job and it’s one that still to this day, Evernote does much better than Notion. Not for technological, like oh they did better code, but for architectural reasons. Evernote is like a black box with a slot in it. You can just drop things in it because each note is the same. Each note exists on the same level. Each note is sort of interchangeable, the fact that it’s kind of dumb and it doesn’t offer that same level of capability and intelligence is actually a feature, not necessarily a bug.

So I’m going to leave you to think about your holistic productivity stack. To not necessarily have FOMO about jumping on the Notion bandwagon just because others are or just because it seems cool, but to think about what is really at the peak of that pyramid, which is your goals. It’s a perfect time of year. We’re on the eve of 2020. Everyone’s doing New Year’s resolutions. I myself am running a two-day online Annual Review Workshop, January 4th and 5th. We do it via Zoom. I encourage you guys to join us, it’s going to be super fun. But when people ask which app should I use? How should I use them? All these kind of questions. It depends on your goals and I really encourage you to start there and work backwards. What is that thing that pops up every year at the beginning of the year that you go: “I’ll do that next year”? What is that unicorn that you find yourself dreaming about, daydreaming about, that’s always there kind of at the back of your mind, that you want, that  calls to you, that moves you, that touches you, that you know is in some way related to your purpose, related to what really matters to you in this world. Then to work downwards from there into, what are the pieces of infrastructure that you need, not that you want, that you need to accomplish that. Productivity software even can just be another distraction if it’s just an excuse to keep making things and keep trying things rather than the thing that really matters in the end, which is action.

A couple notes. Notion has programs for education. I believe if you’re a student or teacher, you can get the personal individual plan for free. Okay, if you have an .edu email address, and also for startups, I think you have to apply and kind of go through some things but you can potentially get it for free or discounted if you’re a startup, so I encourage you to take advantage of that.

If you have not just questions, but anything to offer really, this is like the beginning, these events are the beginning of an R&D process of potentially one day offering a course, doing more workshops or writing a book, who knows. But if there’s anything that you saw in this presentation that you have thoughts on, that you think you can add some clarity to, that you have some personal experience with, because I always just have primarily my own experience – reach out. That’s my website. You can find from there my email address, my Twitter. May take some time to get back to you, but I will get back to you, and that’s the talk.

Subscribe to Praxis, our members-only blog exploring the future of productivity, for just $10/month. Or follow us for free content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

How To Take Smart Notes: 10 Principles to Revolutionize Your Note-Taking and Writing

I long ago stopped reading books on note-taking.

They were always too vague and boring, full of platitudes that had little to do with the world outside academia.

I especially avoided “how-to” style books on the subject.

They would often list dozens of tips and tricks that had little to do with each other. There was never an overarching system for turning notes into concrete results.

But recently I picked up How To Take Smart Notes (affiliate link) by Sönke Ahrens. Ahrens is a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen and also coaches students, academics, and professionals with a focus on time management, decision-making, and personal growth.

It is by far the most impactful and profound book I’ve ever read on the subject. I was astounded to encounter in its pages (with uncanny similarity) many of the same principles I had discovered over 10 years of personal experience.

This book is so full of insights that it broke my usual approach to summarizing books.

My approach is based on the assumption that most books are a few morsels of real insight wrapped in layers and layers of fluff. As I read, I systematically unravel those layers of fluff and extract only those insights, like a chemist distilling only the purest compound.

But this book is not written in the usual way. It is written using an external thinking system, which I call a Second Brain.

The evidence is clear: Instead of squeezing as many pages as possible out of one idea, How To Take Smart Notes squeezes as many ideas as possible onto every page. Every paragraph has a point, and I struggled to leave anything out of this summary.

By identifying the principles that stand the test of time despite huge changes in the underlying technology, we can better understand the essential nature of the creative process. We can focus our efforts on mastering the art of creative note-taking, producing more insightful writing, and fulfilling our full potential.

What the book is about

How To Take Smart Notes is a book on note-taking for students, academics, and non-fiction writers.

It promises to help readers adopt “a reliable and simple external structure to think in that compensates for the limitations of our brains.” By adopting such a system, Ahrens promises that we will be able to “efficiently turn our thoughts and discoveries into convincing written pieces and build up a treasure of smart and interconnected notes along the way.”

While producing published written works is the end goal, is it not the only goal. Ahrens argues convincingly that turning one’s thoughts into writing isn’t just useful for writers but for anyone who wants to improve their thinking and learning in general.

By focusing on writing, Ahrens is able to speak in concrete terms about a specific creative process while simultaneously drawing universal conclusions. Instead of notes becoming a “graveyard for thoughts,” they can become a life-long pool of rich and interconnected ideas we can draw on no matter where our interests lead us.

Luhmann’s slip-box

Ahrens’ approach to note-taking was inspired by the 20th-century German sociologist Niklas Luhmann (1927-1998). Luhmann was a prolific note-taker, writer, and academic. Early in his academic career, Luhmann realized that a note was only as valuable as its context – its network of associations, relationships, and connections to other information. 

[image error]

Niklas Luhmann

He developed a simple system based on paper index cards, which he called his “slip-box” (or zettelkasten in German). It was designed to connect any given note to as many different potentially relevant contexts as possible. 

Luhmann rejected alphabetical categorization of his notes, along with fixed categories like the Dewey Decimal System. He intended his notes not just for a single project or book but for a lifetime of reading and researching. He designed his slip-box as a research database made up of index cards (zettel) that were “thematically unlimited” and could be infinitely extended in any direction.

[image error]

One of the 90,000 index cards Luhmann created over his 30-year career, on Gleichheit (“equality”). Note the red number in the bottom-left corner indicating a branching topic. You can view a full archive of Luhmann’s notes in an online database maintained by the University of Bielefeld. [Source: Marvin Blum]

Although it appeared to be just a simple filing system made up of index cards, Luhmann’s slip-box grew to become an equal thinking partner in his work. He described his system as his secondary memory (zweitgedächtnis), alter ego, or reading memory (lesegedächtnis). He reported that it continuously surprised him with ideas he’d forgotten he had. Because of this, he claimed that there was actual communication going on between himself and his zettelkasten. As he built up his collection of notes, he embarked on a series of achievements that would eventually make him one of the most influential sociologists and scientists of the 20th century. 

[image error]

A picture of the very first notecard Luhmann added to his slip-box, labeled with a number 1 in the top-left corner. It begins “1 Introduction; It must be attempted to explain the criteria and concepts as clearly as is possible so that their inadequacy and imperfection becomes clear.” [Source: Taking Note blog]

Here’s how it worked:

Luhmann wrote down interesting or potentially useful ideas he encountered in his reading on uniformly sized index cards
He wrote only on one side of each card to eliminate the need to flip them over, and he limited himself to one idea per card so they could be referenced individually
Each new index card received a sequential number, starting at 1. When a new source was added to that topic, or he found something to supplement it, he would add new index cards with letters as suffixes (1a, 1b, 1c, etc.)
These branching connections were marked in red as close as possible to the point where the branch began
Any of these branches could also have their own branches. The card for fellow German sociologist Jürgen Habermas, for example, was labeled 21/3d26g53
As he read, he would create new cards, update or add comments to existing ones, create new branches from existing cards, and create new links between cards on different “strands”

This diagram shows how subtopics branched off from main topics:

[image error]

A diagram showing Luhmann’s system, with new cards branching off from existing ones and receiving a letter designation [Source: Daniel Lüdecke’s Blog]

Not only did this create a system that could extend infinitely in any direction, but it also gave each index card a permanent ID number. This number could be referenced from any other card, because it would never change. The branches created “strands” of thought that one could enter at any point, following it downstream to be elaborated upon or upstream to its source. 

It also led to a meaningful topography within the system: Topics that had been extensively explored had long reference numbers, making their length informative on its own. There is no hierarchy in the zettelkasten, which means it can grow internally without any preconceived scheme. By creating notes as a decentralized network instead of a hierarchical tree, Luhmann anticipated hypertext and URLs.

Over his 30-year career, Luhmann published 58 books and hundreds of articles on the way to completing his two-volume masterwork, The Society of Society (1997). It presented a radical new theory that not only changed sociology but also provoked heated discussions in philosophy, education, political theory, and psychology. 

For years, the importance of Luhmann’s slip-box was underestimated. As early as 1985, he would regularly point to it as the source of his amazing productivity: “I, of course, do not think everything by myself. It happens mainly within the slip-box” (Luhmann, Baecker, and Stanitzek 1987, 142). Until recently, no one believed that such a simple system could produce such prolific output. We are so used to the idea that great outcomes require great (and complicated) efforts.

But Luhmann often remarked that he never forced himself to do anything he didn’t feel like doing: “I only do what is easy. I only write when I immediately know how to do it. If I falter for a moment, I put the matter aside and do something else” (Luhmann et al., 1987, 154f).

Wouldn’t it make sense that such output over so many years would be possible because it was simple and easy, not in spite of it? Upon his death, Luhmann’s slip-box contained 90,000 notes. This may seem like a staggering number until you realize that it amounts to only six notes per day.

Let’s look deeper at the main principles that Luhmann used in his work, which Ahrens has adapted to the modern age. The explosion of technology and connectivity has inundated us with an overabundance of information. These principles go a long way toward reestablishing the boundaries and constraints that creativity needs to thrive. 

 

Principle #1: Writing is not the outcome of thinking; it is the medium in which thinking takes place

Writing doesn’t begin when we sit down to put one paragraph after another on the screen or page. It begins much, much earlier, as we take notes on the articles or books we read, the podcasts or audiobooks we listen to, and the interesting conversations and life experiences we have. 

These notes build up as a byproduct of the reading we’re already doing anyway. Even if you don’t aim to develop a grand theory, you need a way to organize your thoughts and keep track of the information you consume. 

If you want to learn and remember something long-term, you have to write it down. If you want to understand an idea, you have to translate it into your own words. If we have to do this writing anyway, why not use it to build up resources for future publications? 

Writing is not only for proclaiming fully formed opinions, but for developing opinions worth sharing in the first place. 

Writing works well in improving one’s thinking because it forces you to engage with what you’re reading on a deeper level. Just because you read more doesn’t automatically mean you have more or better ideas. It’s Iike learning to swim – you have to learn by doing it, not by merely reading about it.

The challenge of writing as well as learning is therefore not so much to learn, but to understand, as you will already have learned what you understand. When you truly understand something, it is anchored to a latticework of related ideas and meanings, which makes it far easier to remember.

For example, you could memorize the fact that arteries are red and veins are blue. But it is only when you understand why – that arteries carry oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the rest of the body, while veins carry blood low in oxygen back to the heart – that that fact has any value. And once we make this meaningful connection between ideas, it’s hard not to remember it.

The problem is that the meaning of something is not always obvious. It requires elaboration – we need to copy, translate, re-write, compare, contrast, and describe a new idea in our own terms. We have to view the idea from multiple perspectives and answer questions such as “How does this fact fit with others I already know?” and “How can this phenomenon be explained by that theory?” or “How does this argument compare to that one?”

Completing these tasks is exceedingly difficult inside the confines of our heads. We need an external medium in which to perform this elaboration, and writing is the most effective and convenient one ever invented. 

Principle #2: Do your work as if writing is the only thing that matters

The second principle extends the previous one even further: Do you work as if writing is the only thing that matters.

In academia and science, virtually all research is aimed at eventual publication Ahrens notes that “there is no such thing as private knowledge in academia. An idea kept private is as good as one you never had.”

The purpose of research is to produce public knowledge that can be scrutinized and tested. For that to happen, it has to be written down. And once it is, what the author meant doesn’t matter – only the actual words written on the page matter.

This principle requires us to expand our definition of “publication” beyond the usual narrow sense. Few people will ever publish their work in an academic journal or even on a blog. But everything that we write down and share with someone else counts: notes we share with a friend, homework we submit to a professor, emails we write to our colleagues, and presentations we deliver to clients all count as knowledge made public.

This might still seem like a radical principle. Should we publicize even the ideas we’ve only just encountered, or opinions half-formed, or wild theories we can’t substantiate? Do we really need even more people broadcasting half-baked opinions and theories online?

But the important part is the principle: Work as if writing is the only thing that matters. Having a clear, tangible purpose when you consume information completely changes the way you engage with it. You’ll be more focused, more curious, more rigorous, and more demanding. You won’t waste time writing down every detail, trying to make a perfect record of everything that was said. Instead, you’ll try to learn the basics as efficiently as possible so you can get to the point where open questions arise, as these are the only questions worth writing about.

Almost every aspect of your life will change when you live as if you are working toward publication. You’ll read differently, becoming more focused on the parts most relevant to the argument you’re building. You’ll ask sharper questions, no longer satisfied with vague explanations or leaps in logic. You’ll naturally seek venues to present your work, since the feedback you receive will propel your thinking forward like nothing else. You’ll begin to act more deliberately, thinking several steps beyond what you’re reading to consider its implications and potential.

Deliberate practice is the best way to get better at anything, and in this case, you are deliberately practicing the most fundamental skill of all: thinking. Even if you never actually publish one line of writing, you will vastly improve every aspect of your thinking when you do everything as if nothing counts except writing.

Principle #3: Nobody ever starts from scratch

One of the most damaging myths about creativity is that it starts from nothing. The blank page, the white canvas, the empty dance floor: Our most romantic and universal artistic motifs seem to suggest that “starting from scratch” is the essence of creativity.

This belief is reinforced by how writing is typically taught: We are told to “pick a topic” as a necessary first step, then to conduct research, discuss and analyze it, and finally come to a conclusion.

But how can you decide on an interesting topic before you’ve read about it? You have to immerse yourself in research before you even know how to formulate a good question. And the decision to read about one subject versus another also doesn’t appear out of thin air. It usually comes from an existing interest or understanding. The truth is every intellectual endeavor starts with a predicting conception.

This is the tension at the heart of the creative process: You have to research before you pick what you will write about. Ideally, you should start researching long before, so you have weeks and months and even years of rich material to work with as soon as you decide on a topic. This is why an external system to record your research is so critical. It doesn’t just enhance your writing process; it makes it possible.

And all this pre-research also involves writing. We build up an ever-growing pool of externalized thoughts as we read. When the time comes to produce, we aren’t following a blindly invented plan plucked from our unreliable brains. We look in our notes and follow our interests, curiosity, and intuition, which are informed by the actual work of reading, thinking, discussing, and taking notes. We never again have to face that blank screen with the impossible demand of “thinking of something to write about.”

No one ever really starts from scratch. Anything they come up with has to come from prior experience, research, or other understanding. But because they haven’t acted on this fact, they can’t track ideas back to their origins. They have neither supporting material nor accurate sources. Since they haven’t been taking notes from the start, they either have to start with something completely new (which is risky) or retrace their steps (which is boring).

It’s no wonder that nearly every guide to writing begins with “brainstorming.” If you don’t have notes, you have no other option. But this is a bit like a financial advisor telling a 65-year-old to start saving for retirement – too little, too late.

Taking notes allows you to break free from the traditional, linear path of writing. It allows you to systematically extract information from linear sources, mix and shake them up together until new patterns emerge, and then turn them back into linear texts for others to consume. 

You’ll know you’ve succeeded in making this shift when the problem of not having enough to write about is replaced by the problem of having far too much to write about. When you finally arrive at the decision of what to write about, you’ll already have made that decision again and again at every single step along the way. 

Principle #4: Our tools and techniques are only as valuable as the workflow

Just because writing is not a linear process doesn’t mean we should go about it haphazardly. We need a workflow – a repeatable process for collecting, organizing, and sharing ideas.

Writing is often taught as a collation of “tips and tricks” – brainstorm ideas, make an outline, use a three-paragraph structure, repeat the main points, use vivid examples, set a timer. Each one in isolation might make sense, but without the holistic perspective of how they fit together, they add more work than they save. Every additional technique becomes its own project without bringing the whole much further forward. Before long, the whole mess of techniques falls apart under its own weight.

It is only when all the work becomes part of an integrated process that it becomes more than the sum of its parts. Even the best techniques won’t make a difference if they are used in conflicting ways. This is why the slip-box isn’t yet another technique. It is the system in which all the techniques are linked together.

Good systems don’t add options and features; they strip away complexity and distractions from the main work, which is thinking. An undistracted brain and a reliable collection of notes is pretty much all we need. Everything else is just clutter.

Principle #5: Standardization enables creativity

Ahrens uses the excellent analogy of how the invention of shipping containers revolutionized international trade to demonstrate the role of note-taking in modern writing

Container shipping is a simple idea: ship products in standardized containers instead of loading them onto ships haphazardly as had always been done. But it took multiple failed attempts before it was successful, because it wasn’t actually about the container, which after all is just a box.

The potential of the shipping container was only unleashed when every other part of the shipping supply chain was changed to accommodate it. From manufacturing to packaging to final delivery, the design of ships, cranes, trucks, and harbors all had to align around moving containers as quickly and efficiently as possible. Once they did, international shipping exploded, setting the stage for Asia to become an economic power among many other historic changes. 

Many people still take notes, if at all, in an ad-how, random way. If they see a nice sentence, they underline it. If they want to make a comment, they write it in the margins. If they have a good idea, they write it in whichever notebook is close at hand. And if an article seems important enough, they might make the effort to save an excerpt. This leaves them with many different kinds of notes in many different places and formats. This means when it comes time to write, they first have to undertake a massive project to collect and organize all these scattered notes.

Notes are like shipping containers for ideas. Instead of inventing a new way to take notes for every source you read, use a completely standardized and predictable format every time. It doesn’t matter what the notes contain, which topic they relate to, or what medium they arrived through – you treat each and every note exactly the same way.

It is this standardization of notes that enables a critical mass to build up in one place. Without a standard format, the larger the collection grows, the more time and energy have to be spent navigating the ever-growing inconsistencies between them. A common format removes unnecessary complexity and takes the second-guessing out of the process. Like LEGOs, standardized notes can easily be shuffled around and assembled into endless configurations without losing sight of what they contain. 

The same principle applies to the steps of processing our notes. Consider that no single step in the process of turning raw ideas into finished pieces of writing is particularly difficult. It isn’t very hard to write down notes in the first place. Nor is turning a group of notes into an outline very demanding. It also isn’t much of a challenge to turn a working outline full of relevant arguments into a rough draft. And polishing a well-conceived rough draft into a final draft is trivial.

So if each individual step is so easy, why do we find the overall experience of writing so grueling? Because we try to do all the steps at once. Each of the activities that make up “writing” – reading, reflecting, having ideas, making connections, distinguishing terms, finding the right words, structuring, organizing, editing, correcting, and rewriting – require a very different kind of attention.

Proofreading requires very focused, detail-oriented attention, while choosing which words to put down in the first place might require a more open, free-floating attention. When looking for interesting connections between notes, we often need to be in a playful, curious state of mind, whereas when putting them in logical order, our state of mind probably needs to be more serious and precise.

The slip-box is the host of the process outlined above. It provides a place where distinct batches of work can be created, worked on, and saved permanently until the next time we are ready to deploy that particular kind of attention. It deliberately puts distance between ourselves and what we’ve written, which is essential for evaluating it objectively. It is far easier to switch between the role of creator and critic when there is a clear separation between them, and you don’t have to do both at the same time.

By standardizing and streamlining both the format of our notes and the steps by which we process them, the real work can come to the forefront: thinking, reflecting, writing, discussing, testing, and sharing. This is the work that adds value, and now we have the time to do it more effectively.

Principle #6: Our work only gets better when exposed to high-quality feedback

A workflow is similar to a chemical reaction: It can feed on itself, becoming a virtuous cycle where the positive experience of understanding a text motivates us to take on the next task, which helps us get better at what we’re doing, which in return makes it more likely for us to enjoy our work, and so on. 

Nothing motivates us more than becoming better at what we do. And we can only become better when we intentionally expose our work to high-quality feedback.

There are many forms of feedback, both internal and external – from peers, from teachers, from social media, and from rereading our own writing. But notes are the only kind of feedback that is available anytime you need it. It is the only way to deliberately practice your thinking and communication skills multiple times per day.

It is easy to think we understand a concept until we try to put it in our own words. Each time we try, we practice the core skill of insight: distinguishing the bits that truly matter from those that don’t. The better we become at it, the more efficient and enjoyable our reading becomes.

Feedback also helps us adjust our expectations and predictions about how much we can get done in an hour or a day. Instead of sitting down to the amorphous task of “writing,” we dedicate each working session to concrete tasks that can be finished in a reasonable timeframe: Write three notes, review two paragraphs, check five sources for an essay, etc. At the end of the day, we know exactly how much we accomplished (or didn’t accomplish) and can adjust our future expectations accordingly.

Principle #7: Work on multiple, simultaneous projects

It is only when you have multiple, simultaneous projects and interests that the full potential of an external thinking system is realized.

Think of the last time you read a book. Perhaps you read it for a certain purpose – to gain some familiarity with a topic you’re interested in or find insights for a project you’re working on. What are the chances that the book contains only the precise insights you were looking for, and no others? Extremely low it would seem. We encounter a constant stream of new ideas, but only a tiny fraction of them will be useful and relevant to us at any given moment.

Since the only way to find out which insights a book contains is to read it, you might as well read and take notes productively. Spending a little extra time to record the best ideas you encounter – whether or not you know how they will ultimately be used – vastly increases the chances that you will “stumble upon” them in the future.

The ability to increase the chances of such future accidental encounters is a powerful one, because the best ideas are usually ones we haven’t anticipated. The most interesting topics are the ones we didn’t plan on learning about. But we can anticipate that fact and set our future selves up for a high probability of productive “accidents.”

Principle #8: Organize your notes by context, not by topic

Now that you’ve been collecting notes on you’re reading, how should you organize them?

The classic mistake is to organize them into ever more specific topics and subtopics. This makes it look less complex, but quickly becomes overwhelming. The more notes pile up, the smaller and narrower the subtopics become, limiting your ability to see meaningful connections between them. With this approach, the greater one’s collection of notes, the less accessible and useful they become.

Instead of organizing by topic and subtopic, it is much more effective to organize by context. Specifically, the context in which it will be used. The primary question when deciding where to put something becomes “In which context will I want to stumble upon this again?”

In other words, instead of filing things away according to where they came from, you file them according to where they’re going. This is the essential difference between organizing like a librarian and organizing like a writer.

A librarian asks “Where should I store this note?” Their goal is to maintain a taxonomy of knowledge that is accessible to everyone, which means they have to use only the most obvious categories. They might file notes on a psychology paper under “misjudgments,” “experimental psychology,” or “experiments.” 

That works fine for a library, but not for a writer. No pile of notes filed uniformly under “psychology” will be easy to turn into a paper. There is no variation or disagreement from which an interesting argument could arise.

A writer asks “In which circumstances will I want to stumble upon this note?” They will file it under a paper they are writing, a conference they are speaking at, or an ongoing collaboration with a colleague. These are concrete, near-term deliverables and not abstract categories.

Organizing by context does take a little bit of thought. The answer isn’t always immediately obvious. A book about personal finance might interest me for completely different reasons if I am a politician working on a campaign speech, a financial advisor trying to help a client, or an economist developing monetary policy. If I encounter a novel engineering method, it may be useful for completely different reasons depending on whether I am working on an engineering textbook, a skyscraper, or a rocket booster.

Writers don’t think about a single, “correct” location for a piece of information. They deal in “scraps” which can often be repurposed and reused elsewhere. The discarded byproducts from one piece of writing may become the essential pillars of the next one. The slip-box is a thinking tool, not an encyclopedia, so completeness is not important. The only gaps we do need to be concerned about are the gaps in the final manuscript we are working toward.

By saving all the byproducts of our writing, we collect all the future material we might need in one place. This approach sets up your future self with everything they need to work as decisively and efficiently as possible. They won’t need to trawl through folder after folder looking for all the sources they need. You’ll already have done that work for them.

Principle #9: Always follow the most interesting path

Ahrens notes that in most cases, students fail not because of a lack of ability, but because they lose a personal connection to what they are learning:

“When even highly intelligent students fail in their studies, it’s most often because they cease to see the meaning in what they were supposed to learn (cf. Balduf 2009), are unable to make a connection to their personal goals (Glynn et al. 2009) or lack the ability to control their own studies autonomously and on their own terms (Reeve and Jan 2006; Reeve 2009).”

This is why we must spend as much time as possible working on things we find interesting. It is not an indulgence. It is an essential part of asking our work sustainable and thus successful.

This advice runs counter to the typical approach to planning we are taught. We are told to “make a plan” upfront and in detail. Success is then measured by how closely we stick to this plan. Our changing interests and motivations are to be ignored or suppressed if they interfere with the plan.

The history of science is full of stories of accidental discoveries. Ahrens gives the example of the team that discovered the structure of DNA. It started with a grant, but not a grant to study DNA. They were awarded funds to find a treatment for cancer. As they worked, the team followed their intuition and interest, developing the actual research program along the way (Rheinberger 1997). If they stuck religiously to their original plan, they probably wouldn’t have discovered a cure for cancer and certainly wouldn’t have discovered the structure of DNA.

Plans are meant to help us feel in control. But it is much more important to actually be in control, which means being able to steer our work towards what we consider interesting and relevant. According to a 2006 study by psychology professor Arlen Moller, “When people experienced a sense of autonomy with regard to the choice [of what to work on], their energy for subsequent tasks was not diminished” (Moller 2006, 1034). In other words, when we have a choice about what to work on and when, it doesn’t take as much willpower to do it.

Our sense of motivation depends on making consistent forward progress. But in creative work, questions change and new directions emerge. That is the nature of insight. So we don’t want to work according to a rigid workflow that is threatened by the unexpected. We need to be able to make small, constant adjustments to keep our interest, motivation, and work aligned.

By breaking down the work of writing into discrete steps, getting quick feedback on each one, and always following the path that promises the most insight, unexpected insights can become the driving force of our work. 

Luhmann never forced himself to do anything and only did what came easily to him: “When I am stuck for one moment, I leave it and do something else.” As in martial arts, if you encounter resistance or an opposing force, you should not push against it but instead redirect it towards another productive goal.

Principle #10: Save contradictory ideas

Working with a slip-box naturally leads us to save ideas that are contradictory or paradoxical.

It’s much easier to develop an argument from a lively discussion of pros and cons rather than a litany of one-sided arguments and perfectly fitting quotes.

Our only criterion for what to save is whether it connects to existing ideas and adds to the discussion. When we focus on open connections, disconfirming or contradictory data suddenly becomes very valuable. It often raises new questions and opens new paths of inquiry. The experience of having one piece of data completely change your perspective can be exhilarating. 

The real enemy of independent thinking is not any external authority, but our own inertia. We need to find ways to counteract confirmation bias – our tendency to take into account only information that confirms what we already believe. We need to regularly confront our errors, mistakes, and misunderstandings. 

By taking notes on a wide variety of sources and in objective formats that exist outside our heads, we practice the skill of seeing what is really there and describing it plainfully and factually. By saving ideas that aren’t compatible with each other and don’t necessarily support what we already think, we train ourselves to develop subtle theories over time instead of always jumping to conclusions. 

By playing with a concept, stretching and reconceiving and remixing it, we become less attached to how it was originally presented. We can extract certain aspects or details for our own uses. With so many ideas at our disposal, we are no longer threatened by the possibility that a new idea will undermine existing ones.

Don’t just feel smarter. Become smarter.

Working with a slip-box can be disheartening, because you are constantly faced with the gaps in your understanding. But at the same time, it increases the chances that you will actually move the work forward.

Our choice then is whether we want to feel smarter or become smarter.

Students in most educational institutions are not encouraged to independently build a network of connections between different kinds of information. They aren’t taught how to organize the very best and most relevant knowledge they encounter in a long-term way across many topics. Most tragically of all, they aren’t taught to follow their interests and take the most promising path in their research.

Ultimately, learning should not be about hoarding stockpiles of knowledge like gold coins. It is about becoming a different kind of person with a different way of thinking. The beauty of this approach is that we co-evolve with our slip-boxes: We build the same connections in our heads as we deliberately develop them in our slip-box. Writing then is best seen not only as a tool for thinking but as a tool for personal growth.

Thank you to Kathleen Martin, Fadeke Adegbuyi, Norman Chella, Fred Terenas, Maruthi Sandeep Medisetty for their feedback and suggestions on this article.

Subscribe to Praxis, our members-only blog exploring the future of productivity, for just $10/month. Or follow us for free content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.

The Heart is the Bottleneck

I’m proud to announce my new book, The Heart is the Bottleneck.

In this book, I explore and dissect a wide range of topics related to productivity and personal effectiveness. From note-taking and writing, to creativity and curation, to being a digital nomad and working with a virtual assistant. Tying together these topics is the theme of personal growth – tapping into the power of our emotions and intuition to produce more creative and impactful work.

Read the Foreword of the book below, and subscribe to my weekly newsletter below if you’d like to receive a free copy (offer valid until Monday, January 27).

 

Foreword

This book contains 18 in-depth essays previously published on the Praxis blog, edited for clarity and accuracy.

Until 2018, my work was focused mostly on the mind – in my course Building a Second Brain, I teach people how to offload their memory and improve their thinking using technology.

But what I’ve discovered is that there is a limit to how much you can expand your mind without also expanding your heart. When people focus only on their intellect, they soon plateau. The bottleneck to their performance then becomes their heart – their ability to tap into their emotions and hear what their intuition is telling them.

Humans don’t think with their head, for the most part. Even the most rational, analytically minded people don’t make the important decisions using cold logic. We fundamentally think with our hearts, based on what intuitively feels right. This tendency has been treated as a weakness or a mistake. I hear of people trying to “correct” their cognitive biases and remove all emotion from their decision-making.

But I don’t see it that way. The heart incorporates the emotions, which tell us so much about what really matters to us and what we truly want. The heart incorporates the body and its needs. The heart takes us out of the intellect that often limits our view, and into connection with ourselves and others.

It is for this reason that the main theme of this book is personal growth – the expansion of the heart.

The Heart is the Bottleneck chronicles my journey to understand the nature of personal growth. Through my own personal experiences as well as the works of others, I’ve sought to understand how it works without resorting to the religious, the spiritual, or the mystical. To frame it as a practical skill, that anyone can make progress on with time and effort.

Personal growth is not normally thought of as a “skill.” But the world is now changing so fast and so unpredictably that it needs to become one. Our grandparents had one job for life; our parents had multiple jobs over their careers; our generation will have multiple careers. This demands that we learn how to grow not as a one-time event, but as an ongoing evolution of our identity.

As I dive deeper and deeper into the world of personal growth, I’m increasingly convinced that it is not a rare, exotic phenomenon only to be acquired via special seminars or psychedelic substances. Personal growth is everywhere, all the time. Life throws at us exactly the experiences we need to grow. Not because it is specifically looking out for each one of us, but because it throws everything at us.

This implies that potential breakthroughs are everywhere. I read a book on meditation and there are stories of people getting past huge barriers and making a dramatic change. But I hear the same kinds of testimonials in books about tidying your house, and sailing, and writing, and fixing motorcycles, and almost every other topic imaginable. The mundane tasks of everyday life seem to be a gateway to living an extraordinary life.

The chapters in this book fall under five main themes:

Personal growth

In A Skeptic Goes to the Landmark Forum and Tide Turners, I describe my experiences taking part in intensive personal development programs, including what I discovered about myself and my past and how those discoveries impacted my work. In Emergent Strategy, I summarize my learnings from a book on social justice and movement building, and how I applied them to my teaching. And in You Need a Budget, I draw parallels between personal finance and personal productivity, including the growth mindset required to master both.

Writing and note-taking

I continue to be obsessed with the power of note-taking and writing to improve our thinking and change the trajectory of people’s careers. In Why I’m Leaving Medium, I look at the incentives and economics of modern blogging, and explain why they pushed me toward owning my own independent blog. In The Future of Ebooks, I speculate on what the future of electronic books could look like, if publishers embraced technology and online communities. In The Case for Digital Notes, I put forth my strongest argument for digital note-taking as a uniquely powerful category of software for enhancing people’s productivity. And in The Essential Requirements for Choosing a Notes App as Your Second Brain, I lay out the precise criteria I believe are most important in selecting an app for yourself. In RandomNote: Building an Idea Generator, I introduce a simple web app we created to strategically inject randomness into your workflow by resurfacing notes from the past.

Creativity and curation

Zooming out a little, I also wrote about creativity, as well as the pre-cursor to creativity, which I believe is curation. The Maker’s Guide to Content Curation lays out a path for anyone interested in creating their own content, starting with curating the content of others. In The 7 Pillars of Content Curation, I dive further into the most effective principles for curators to follow to begin developing their own ideas and building an audience. And in A Maker’s Ethos in the Era of Networked Attention, I propose a healthier approach toward online media that frees us from the worst effects of information overload, by valuing creation over mere consumption.

Practical guides

I also continued exploring the practical aspects of modern work. In The 5 Challenges of Becoming a Digital Nomad, I explain what I believe are the five biggest practical challenges faced by anyone seeking to become location-independent. In Desktop Zero, I present my findings from an analysis of the random files collected on my computer desktop over the course of a month, to determine whether it is worth sorting through and filing them. And A Productivity Expert’s Guide to Working with a Virtual Assistant contains my best advice on how to hire, train, coordinate with, and delegate to a virtual assistant your most common, routine tasks.

Future speculation

Finally, I allowed myself to speculate a little bit. In Trekonomics: The Economics of Post-Scarcity, I envision what a “post-scarcity” economy might look like, drawing on the Star Trek universe for inspiration. And in A Pattern Recognition Theory of Mind I summarize the scientific findings from Ray Kurzweil’s most recent book, and use them as a springboard to imagine the implications for my quest to build a “second brain.”

I sincerely hope this book serves as a guiding light on your own journey of personal growth. I hope it shows that the smallest details of how you manage your daily work, when compounded over the years, have a profound impact on the trajectory of your career and life.

If you’d like to be notified when new essays are published in the future, subscribe to my free weekly newsletter. Every week I send out free interviews, in-depth essays, how-to articles, and other resources designed to enhance your personal productivity. And if you want full access to all my writing, consider becoming a member of Praxis.

Thank you for being part of the community that allows these ideas to develop and spread. I’m forever grateful that I get to be the curator of ideas more interesting and powerful than anything I could invent myself.

Tiago Forte

Bacolod City, Philippines

January 27, 2020

Subscribe to Praxis, our members-only blog exploring the future of productivity, for just $10/month. Or follow us for free content via Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.