Tiago Forte's Blog, page 30

Groundbreakers: My Journey Healing Trauma, Unleashing Anger, and Awakening the Vagus Nerve

I raised the tennis racket high above my head once again, the gloves on my hands failing to prevent the blisters already forming. 

My eyes were wide with fear as I struck the pillow before me with all my strength. I felt at the edge of control, at the edge of what I knew. 

The people around me cheered me on, looks of approval and even admiration on their faces. 

And then suddenly the act became real, the anger inside me rushing toward the surface through ancient channels. 

I felt my brow furrow, my wide eyes changing insantly to a predators’s scowl. 

The man directly in front of me, my guide, smiling in recognition, said “That’s it. That’s what we’re looking for.”

For the first time since I can remember, I felt rage coursing through me. Like liquid fire through my veins. 

Seeking peace of mind, I had found anger. Seeking control, I had found vulnerability. Seeking answers, I had found only questions. 

Let me tell you what I discovered. 

Preparation

This is the story of my experience at Groundbreakers, a week-long course designed to “change your relationship with the voice in your head to one of self-love.” 

The course was created and led by Joe Hudson, a former venture capitalist, philanthropist, consultant, and today, a teacher and executive coach. Hudson spent more than 20 years studying dozens of spiritual traditions and psychological frameworks and incorporated them into his own approach to personal transformation.

I had attended the introductory Tide Turners course the previous year. I decided I wanted to go deeper into healing practices such as the ones described in the book The Body Keeps the Score, which was a source of inspiration for this course. 

Once my application was accepted, I made the decision to fly to Northern California from my home in Mexico City to spend six days exploring what this experience had to offer me.

The weeks leading up to the course were filled with realizations. We were given journaling exercises to begin to reflect on the areas of our life and work we wanted to address.

I realized I wanted to be more direct with people. To tell them what I thought or what wasn’t working without feeling like I had to tiptoe around the truth. For example, a neighbor recently got angry with me for slamming the front door to our apartment, and for weeks afterward, I avoided him and felt my heart beating faster whenever I saw him. Even casual comments by customers or collaborators would leave me in turmoil far out of proportion to what was said.

And in the back of my mind, not as desire but as foreboding, I felt a call to leadership. I had created a business and lifestyle completely centered on working alone on my individual creative pursuits. And yet, I had reached a point where I could no longer push forward on all the frontiers at once. There were too many opportunities, too many demands, too many ideas from too many people.

But I also knew that there was something deep inside that was holding me back from leadership. An intense, instinctual fear of being scrutinized, of being revealed somehow. This fear made me step back when I needed to step forward. It caused me to leave enormous opportunities on the table. It kept me small and timid as the challenges before me demanded action and courage.

I wanted to explore the source of my hypervigilance – an unexplainable feeling that I had to be watchful and on guard all the time. It had served me well in growing a business, but I increasingly felt it kept me from connecting with others. I wanted to know why I felt numb and bored any time I wasn’t immersed in the adrenaline of working – while on vacation, or having dinner with friends, or exercising.

With all these questions on my mind, I boarded the plane with only the vaguest idea of what I was getting myself into.

My voice

There is a parallel story that needs to be told as well. It is the story of a different voice – the normal one produced by my vocal cords.

At work on an otherwise normal day in 2007, I began to feel a tickle on the right side of my throat. I ignored it, thinking I might be coming down with a cold. An ear-nose-throat doctor I saw the following week couldn’t find anything wrong. He prescribed me some acid reflux medication and sent me on my way.

I had no idea at that moment the impact that this small tickle would have on my life.

But in the meantime, I had bags to pack. I was set to study abroad in Brazil for two semesters and wasn’t about to let a mere sore throat keep me from it.

Day 1

After landing in San Francisco, I met up with two fellow course participants for the drive up to the course location — in the mountains near Nevada City.

We nervously chatted as the car ascended the mountain. I had never met these two women before and had no idea what to expect about the course or the people I would take it with. I was afraid, honestly, to see what would be revealed during a week of such deep self-reflection.

We arrived at the retreat center and unpacked our bags. It was a house standing alone at the top of a hill on a large piece of land dedicated to meditation retreats. The landscape was idillyc, with deer roaming freely and horses grazing in their pens amidst towering pine trees and lightly tilled fields of vegetables.

As we started to get to know each other, I sensed the same nervousness and fear in the others. But there was also a great feeling of hope, camaraderie, and determination. It was a rare group, to dedicate so much time and effort to inner work. I had the feeling we were all on the brink of a great discovery.

On the first day, we shared our intentions for the week by opening up about what we wanted out of the experience. 

As we took turns around the circle, I planned and prepared several different responses in my head. I had clever answers, intellectual answers, logical answers. But the one that came out surprised even me: I wanted to be able to let the tremendous amount of love that I felt inside me out into the world.

I shared with the group how I wanted to be more vulnerable with the people in my life. To share what was really going on with me and to ask for support more readily. I felt a longing to be able to fully express my love to the people I love the most, which has never come easy to me.

Brazil

For about a year while studying at two universities in Brazil, my throat continued to plague me. 

I increasingly had difficulty speaking and swallowing, as if the right side of my throat didn’t work properly. The tickle had grown to a scratch and then a dull ache, like a knot of flesh that was permanently tensed. Strands of burning pain were starting to spread down my neck, up to my ear, and into my head where they caused splitting headaches. 

I contacted a speech therapist at a local university and began working with him every week. The voice exercises he assigned me helped a little, but I knew they weren’t getting to the source of my symptoms.

I started getting worried about what it could be. A tumor? The beginnings of muscular dystrophy or multiple sclerosis? Part of me didn’t really want to know. Part of me wanted to stay in denial as long as possible.

And I had an easy way to do so. After returning from South America, completing my last class at San Diego State University, and graduating, I was setting off once again to fulfill a lifelong dream: to serve in the U.S. Peace Corps abroad.

I said goodbye to my family and departed for Ukraine in the summer of 2009, hopeful that the drastic change in climate, diet, and routine would somehow alleviate my symptoms.

Day 2

On the second day of the course, it was time to get in touch with our anger. 

The three facilitators had us lie down on our backs on mats around the room, and we began deep, uncontrolled breathing to open up the anger that had been stuck within our bodies.

During the instructions before we began, I raised my hand and asked, “But what if we don’t feel any anger?” I couldn’t feel any trace of it. With a slight smile, the facilitator asked me to give it a try anyway and see what happened. When my turn came, I laid down and began the breathing exercise, curious to see if anything would come up.

And boy, did it come up.

Within just a few minutes of deep breathing, with the facilitator coaching us on how to position our legs and torso, how to exhale without control, and prompting us to access memories of our past, I began to feel a squirming feeling deep inside my belly. 

Suddenly, a white-hot rage came rising out of me like molten lava. I began to see flashes of scenes from my past – getting spanked as a child for something I didn’t do, being mocked in class for a wrong answer, being bullied on the bus to school. I felt small stabs of fire upward into my chest, which were instantly suppressed, the anger converted into fear, guilt, embarrassment, and deep sadness. I could feel my body react, deflect, and do absolutely anything it could to avoid feeling the full force of that anger.

I sat up from the mat and turned to one of the facilitators in bewilderment. He told me, “It’s time to let it out,” and I responded, “I can’t.” I felt like there was a caged animal inside me that, if it got out, would destroy me. When the facilitator asked me why I couldn’t get angry, I instantly responded, “Because I’ll die.” That’s what it felt like, but hearing myself say those words in such a safe and supportive environment jolted me out of my trance. I could suddenly see the world I had been living in for so long – a world where so much of what I felt wasn’t allowed.

I got up from the mat and started the anger work. Two folding chairs faced toward each other with a futon folded on top of them. I put on gloves, picked up one of the tennis rackets they supplied, and began to strike downward at the futon as hard as I could. It was a safe space to let the anger out, and I was absolutely shocked at just how much of it there was boiling inside me.

Anger at my parents for not giving me what I needed. Anger at teachers for not understanding what I had to say. Anger at long-ago classmates that slighted me, ignored me, or disrespected me. I felt the anger of old heartbreaks never expressed. I felt anger at myself for not being the person I knew I could be. I felt anger at my body for betraying me. With each new memory, I yelled and screamed and struck that futon with every ounce of energy in my body. Like an inexhaustible volcano, I discovered new reservoirs of anger again and again waiting years to be released.

My fellow participants served as my support team. A couple of them held the chairs and the futon stable. Another – usually the one who reminded me the most of the person I was expressing anger toward – would stand in front of me and provoke me with words from my past. The facilitators coached from the side, encouraging us to focus on the physical actions and not get lost in the story. 

After about 15 minutes, I was completely spent. My shoulders and back burned and I could no longer raise the racket above my head. They had me raise my arms in victory, internalizing the embodied sense of power I was experiencing. I basked for a while in an indescribable feeling of joy, the unblocked emotions flowing through me like pure electricity. The others looked at me with such pleasure and approval, so completely opposite from any reaction I had ever experienced toward my anger, that I felt something in me permanently shift. 

As we decompressed at the end of the day, I experienced a sense of peace and safety I couldn’t remember feeling. It was the pleasure of knowing I could defend myself, of knowing I could stand up for myself. I had shared with the group about my voice condition, and a facilitator asked me, “What does that thing in your throat want to say?”

I had never considered asking this question. And was shocked at what it responded: “I’ve been here for you the whole time. I’m not a mistake. I have a purpose for you. I have a purpose.”

For all these years, I had felt that my voice symptoms were simply a mistake. It was something that shouldn’t have happened to me. But it had also become a major part of my identity and my life. Which meant that I felt like a mistake.

But if the pain I had experienced wasn’t a mistake, if it had a purpose, then I too had a purpose. And now I could discover what that purpose was.

Ukraine

After arriving in Ukraine and receiving a few months of language training, I was sent to my assigned posting in the eastern part of the country. I would spend the next two years living and working in Kupyansk, a mid-sized industrial town near the Russian border. 

I took advantage of my free government-sponsored healthcare during my service and began pursuing a diagnosis for the symptoms that continued to worsen. I badly wanted a label so I would at least know what I was dealing with. We did MRIs, blood tests, tissue samples, and every other kind of test the doctors could think of, but none of them showed a possible cause.

I pushed harder, and eventually, my doctor gave me the diagnosis I wanted so badly: glossopharyngeal neuralgia. It is a catchall term for pain emanating from the pharynx, the region at the very back of the throat, above the vocal cords. He prescribed carbamazepine, a powerful anticonvulsant usually used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It produced a numbing sensation throughout my entire body, like being mildly drunk.

I hated the medication and how it made me feel. But it felt like my only choice. I would take it before starting class each day so my voice would be functional for the students I cared so much for. But I felt numb and disconnected, floating far from my body, and, worst of all, I experienced the old throat pain symptoms as soon as the medication wore off.

Later I would realize that the medication also had an impact on my long-term memory. A two-week trip to Russia with a friend vanished from my memory as if it never happened. It was terrifying to realize that precious memories with people I cared about were slipping from my mental grasp.

Day 3

We started the day “practicing” our listening. Listening would be a major part of the following days, and we needed to become aware of how we were doing it.

We got into pairs, and one partner would tell the other about the most meaningful and exciting thing in their lives. In the first round, the listener was supposed to listen “skeptically,” without using overt facial expressions or body language. In round two, they did the same thing, this time listening with an attitude of approval and acceptance.

The difference between the two conversations was striking. As the speaker, I experienced the other person’s emotions deep in my own belly, as if I was reading their mind. Their doubt was heart-wrenching; their approval was like sunshine in the winter.

I was surprised and saddened to realize that “skeptical listening” felt totally familiar. That’s how I listened to everyone in my life, even my customers and my students. I’d been burned in the past when I got excited about someone else’s ambitions only to see them fizzle out, and I think I had adopted a doubtful, skeptical attitude to protect myself from disappointment. I realized that skepticism is also how I listen to myself — to my own dreams and aspirations. 

With this enhanced awareness of how powerful our listening could be, we learned four “moves” (or conversational techniques) that we would spend the rest of the week practicing. Each one was a tool for questioning a story that was causing someone to suffer. They could be used in the workplace, in coaching relationships, with our friends and loved ones, or with the voice in our own heads:

Rabbit hole: starting with a fear or a resistance, question the chain of beliefs that support it, following it down step by step by asking “What’s wrong with [insert previous statement]?”
Deconstruction: taking apart the belief system that lies behind a disempowering thought pattern by examining its logic while maintaining an open heart
Externalization: projecting a thought, emotion, or statement we tell ourselves onto someone else we love, to experience the heartbreak of treating our selves this way
Polarity: exploring a series of statements that contradict an existing belief to uncover where the resistance to it lies in the body

These moves formed the framework, but the essential ingredient of the process was always love. Love for ourselves, and for the person sitting in front of us. Love communicated in facial expressions, in body language, and in an unmistakable “presence” in the air. I noticed that if there was no tangible love present in the space between us, the conversation quickly turned adversarial. If there was love present, I hardly needed to say anything. 

Our role was to create the safety that was needed for our partner’s healing to come to the surface naturally. The more safety was present, the easier it was for the wounds to open, and then to heal.

California

I returned home to California after serving two years in the Peace Corps.

Despite all my health problems and the challenges of living through Ukrainian winters, I had the time of my life. The openness and warmth of the Ukrainian people, the hope and excitement of the kids I got to watch grow up over two years, and the chance to independently work on my own projects had a tremendous impact on me. I came out of the experience knowing that I could survive anything. I knew I could use whatever resources I had at my disposal and make something useful out of them.

But the journey of resolving my throat pain continued.

I visited a celebrity voice doctor in Beverly Hills known for treating Celine Dion and other famous singers. I thought he might have some new experimental treatment. But after paying an arm and a leg, I left with nothing to show for it. I worked with a well-respected speech therapist and professor at UCSF for six weeks as she put me through a rigorous series of hygiene practices and voice exercises. Again, it helped but didn’t get to the root cause.

Meanwhile, my throat continued to deteriorate. I no longer had good days – only bad days and worse days. I experienced throat spasms and spontaneous gagging. I began avoiding speaking whenever possible. I withdrew from relationships and communities. I spent more time online and during this period left my job and plunged into self-employment with no savings and no plan. I started working for myself not primarily out of ambition but because I couldn’t bear to spend all day speaking with others.

I started to experience the psychological effects of not being able to trust my own voice. Every time I opened my mouth to speak, I felt anxiety and uncertainty at whether the person would be able to understand my strained words. That fear became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as I resorted to exaggerated speech or body language to compensate. It felt as if the middle register of my voice was missing, so I could only speak very deeply and softly or very loud and high-pitched. I developed intense social anxiety in even the most casual daily interactions, which was something I had never experienced before. 

The last straw came when I saw a neurologist in Orange County. After another round of tests, his only solution was another kind of medication, which would cause the similar effect of numbing sensation throughout my entire body. I realized in that moment I had come to the end of the road. There was nothing else the conventional medical system had to offer me, and it was time to take control of my own health.

The suffering I experienced during these years started to catch up with me and sat at the center of my body like a smoldering fire. It colored absolutely everything about how I saw life: my goals, my dreams, my friendships, and my view of the kind of life I would be able to live. The world looked like a scary, forbidding place. I started to experience depersonalization – the sensation of not feeling real inside. I deeply feared no one would ever understand what it felt like to be me. That I would be alone forever in a hopeless place as the darkness closed in on my ability to communicate.

It was around this time that I discovered meditation. I went on my first Vipassana meditation retreat , and on the last day had a remarkable experience. After spending seven days sharpening my attention to a fine point, I happened to focus it on the point of maximum pain and tension in my throat. To my complete shock, it instantly unraveled, like a knot suddenly coming undone. My whole body flushed with heat from head to toe, I burst into tears and swallowed freely for the first time in years. 

I had discovered a new path.

Day 4

On the fourth day, we practiced externalization, a technique we had learned the previous day.

Over the preceding three days, we had slowly catalogued every negative phrase that we noticed the voice in our head saying to us: “You’ll never make it;” “You aren’t good enough;” “No one will ever love you;” “It’s your fault you were treated that way;” “You had better prove yourself.”

We began to examine these statements as a form of abuse. We would never accept such treatment from another person, but inside the confines of our skulls, we don’t think twice before accepting what that voice tells us. We studied the psychology of bullying and abuse, and how it might apply to our relationship with the voice in our head.

To practice externalization, we worked through these dialogues in pairs where we imagined saying these same things to others. What would it be like telling your child, “I’ll limit you so you don’t fail”? How would it feel to tell your sister, “Don’t love anyone so you never have to feel rejected”? To ask your friend accusingly, “What’s wrong with you?”

It was deeply saddening to realize how long we had treated ourselves that way. It was heart-breaking to see that these voices had driven us to achieve, but that achievement had done nothing to satisfy our fundamental craving for love.

We let this sadness flow into the next exercise: grief work.

We all laid down on mats around the room again. Except this time, we were getting in touch with our grief. We did a different kind of breathing, and the facilitators coached us through body movements and positions designed to stimulate that awareness. For example, we yawned repeatedly to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates the body’s unconscious actions.

And like an undersea current rising to the surface, the grief we were looking for arrived. We wept at the memory of parents who hadn’t come to us when we called. We wailed at great loves we had lost out of fear. We sobbed at the thought of all the love that had been available to us that we hadn’t been able to accept. The room shook with the unrestrained crying and wailing of 10 people who had suppressed their grief for so long.

We got in touch with the tenderness we had steeled ourselves against to survive in an unforgiving world. We accessed the child inside us who had been shut away for fear of being hurt. We allowed our hearts to be broken again and again by the sorrow that is part of every life and allowed it to come out in whatever way the body needed. And in the heartbreak, we discovered a purifying force that gave our pain meaning and immense beauty.

The grief was also, I sensed, for an old self that was passing away by the hour. We no longer needed the mechanisms and the shields to protect us. We were learning those shields were not us. And that beneath them, there was still something innocent and pure.

Inner work and the vagus nerve

My experience at the Vipassana retreat opened my eyes to a new world of inner work and alternative medicine. 

I took the first of a series of personal growth courses, the Landmark Forum , and for the second time experienced instantaneous, total relief from my symptoms. I went to Burning Man and tried LSD for the first time, experiencing total relief for the third time. Practices such as yoga, acupuncture, bodywork, Reiki, and others produced similar effects. I began to realize that there was something predictable and knowable about my condition. It wasn’t totally random. It just lay outside the scope of Western medicine. 

I began to narrow my focus to the vagus nerve — the longest nerve in the body which runs from the diaphragm all the way up the torso, through the neck, and to the head. I had learned from The Body Keeps the Score that this nerve is responsible for communicating fight-or-flight signals through the body. And that one needs to fully engage and soothe this nerve for traumatic memories to be explored without panic.

It was becoming clear that almost anything that affected my vagus nerve immediately improved my throat symptoms. Both major emotional releases and psychedelic experiences, but also simpler things like breath-holding, cool wind in the face, and playing with animals. I could often feel my throat muscles tensing or releasing in real-time based on what I was doing in each moment.

I began to study the vagus nerve. I discovered a paper called “ The role of psychogenic and psychosocial factors in the development of functional voice disorders .” It examined a range of studies and concluded that functional voice disorders “may develop in response to negative emotions following stressful life events” and especially “situations where there was a strong challenge to speak out and yet a marked constraint against doing so.”

I had never understood why I would have trauma when my childhood seemed so normal. But the research indicated that “traumatic incidents and serious situations involving death, loss, separation, and threat to personal or family security were reported infrequently” in patients with psychogenic voice disorders. They didn’t seem to be correlated with the “acute” trauma caused by rape, abuse, natural disasters, and extreme neglect.

Instead, these disorders occurred more frequently in people who had “interpersonal problems with close partners or family members (Aronson et al., 1964; Brodnitz, 1969).” This included “difficulties with the expression of negative emotions related to repressed hostility, discomfort over sexual feelings and rebellion towards authority figures (Barton, 1960).” This seemed to fit my situation much more closely. We grew up in a generally healthy household but also one where speaking out and expressing our emotions wasn’t tolerated.

The data also showed that teachers have a heightened risk for functional voice disorders. The study noted “a trend towards education and helping professions, and recent prevalence studies indicate teachers are more at risk for functional voice disorders than any other occupational group (Oates, 2000; Roy et al., 2004; Russell, Oates, & Greenwood, 1998).” I had been a teacher for almost my entire life.

The paper proposes a possible way of understanding the source of these disorders. The body expresses what thoughts and words cannot with physiological symptoms associated with fight-or-flight. Specifically, this flight-or-flight response “is thought to prepare the organism for increased physical work by fixing the upper extremities to the thoracic cage for combat, requiring firm adduction of the vocal folds and wide abduction to facilitate an increased volume and flow of oxygen in order to meet the body’s increased metabolic demands.” In other words, the body contracts the arms and the torso and opens up the airways for maximum oxygen flow, but both these changes can interfere with the voice.

This was the most precise description of what I experienced inside my body I had yet encountered.

Day 5 and 6

By the fifth day, we had developed a deep level of emotional openness and group cohesion. We knew each other so well that we could work in a more free-form way, utilizing whichever of the tools we had learned seemed most appropriate for a given situation or even improvising.

At this point, we as participants took the lead in each others’ healing. Most of the day was spent in pair work, as we explored each others’ inner worlds with a firm hand and an open heart. I saw again and again that more than intellect or technique, an open heart could create a safe space where the innate healing intelligence of their body and mind was free to arise.

The facilitators were skilled in many different healing practices and alternative medicines, and the conversation flowed easily between academic research, personal experiences, ancient techniques, and the most modern clinical treatments for trauma. The participants also had broad experience with such practices, which allowed us to look at healing in a holistic way. 

We looked at how animals cope with stress. When an antelope on the savannah escapes a close call with a lion, it will tremble to “off-gas” the fear and stress. This helps to release the effects of cortisol and adrenaline in the blood. In human society, we repress our reactions to fear and make it taboo to cry and wail and tremble. It’s no wonder our society is riddled with anxiety.

We looked at muscle tension and its relationship to emotional repression. Tension in the throat is a common symptom in people who don’t feel that they can speak out. It is the last point where sounds arising from within the body can be held and stopped. During another exercise on fear, the facilitators would press on a participant’s muscle (in the jaw, chest, hips, or other places) that had tightened to “hold” the associated emotion. Once that emotion was expressed through shaking and crying and yelling, the muscles around that point would visibly relax.

We looked at neuroscience and physiology. At how the vagus nerve is the gateway to the parasympathetic nervous system, which regulates our agitation and arousal. By tapping into it, we can encourage the body to release acetylcholine, which slows the heart down, relaxes muscles, and returns breathing to normal.

Often we work on the level of the “human brain” (or prefrontal cortex) through talk therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, or exposure therapy. That approach provides insights but doesn’t get at the underlying physiology.

To treat trauma at its source and produce lasting change, we also need to work with the “mammal brain” and “lizard brain.” As described in The Body Keeps the Score, we need to retrain how the nervous system responds to everyday events by acting out scenes from our past while changing how they play out. When the logical, emotional, and physiological parts of ourselves work together, we can understand what has happened to us on an intellectual level while also feeling it as a truth in our body. 

Reentry

After an experience like this one, coming back to “normal life” felt like reentry from outer space. 

I was definitely very raw. My heart was gaping wide open, and I felt everything with an incredible intensity. The sights and sounds of downtown Oakland were almost overwhelming, like the volume and saturation were turned up to 11. I met with a friend at a local restaurant and burst into tears when he told me about his frustrations with his boyfriend. I felt his pain directly. 

There was no shield and no filter. I felt like a newborn child – fragile and a bit scared but also tremendously hopeful and happy. To help us handle this reentry, the course staff offered a range of “integration” tools: a group text thread, a list of events in major cities for program graduates, an accountability buddy, and follow-up calls with facilitators in the coming months. They recommended spending as much time in nature as possible and practices like acupuncture and bodywork to help us integrate what we had experienced. 

I’ve noticed a range of effects in the months since completing Groundbreakers.

The first is enhanced sensitivity toward basically everything: my emotions, the emotions of others, and external and internal physical sensations. I wouldn’t have said this was something I wanted since I’ve spent so much of my life trying to be less sensitive. But I now have the awareness and confidence that I can handle those sensations skillfully and understand what they’re telling me.

With this newfound sensitivity, my compassion for others is much more front and center – even for those who criticize me, disagree with me, or oppose me. My defense mechanisms are less active than before. It doesn’t feel as much like there’s a fragile ego inside that I have to protect.

This newfound compassion is also directed at me. I feel I really love myself. I feel an affection and a curiosity toward all aspects of myself that I didn’t feel before. I don’t shift as readily into self-criticism and self-judgment, instead asking my self what I need or want that I am not getting. Whereas before I would have felt self-loathing at not being as productive as I wanted or not achieving what I set out to achieve, I now feel a softness and generosity toward myself. 

Others have noticed as well. My wife Lauren says she’s seen a dramatic difference in me in the months since I completed the course. She says I’m lighter, happier, and quicker to laugh even with people I don’t know well. She says, oddly, that I am more myself. 

I find it easier to be direct with people. Since I’m not triggered as much by my anger or theirs, I’m free to get angry if I want and then let it pass as soon as I’ve said what I need to say. Slights and offenses don’t feel as personal, as charged. I’ve discovered that anger is a form of vulnerability, because you are not in control of it. No longer fearing this loss of control, I find that other forms of vulnerability are more accessible as well. I feel freer to expose my weaknesses, my doubts, my fears to the people around me.

Aftershocks 

About two weeks after completing Groundbreakers, I was back home in Mexico City and settled into my usual routine.

One evening, I was working in our home office and Lauren said something that set me off. I noticed the cascade of internal changes – my heart started beating faster, my eyes widened, and my breathing got shallower. I felt a desire to escape, to run away. I also felt the temptation to shut the feeling down, to ignore it as I always used to.

But instead, I stood up and announced that I was going into the bedroom to do anger work. For 10 minutes I hit pillows and yelled, offloading the energy of my anger in a controlled way. Having released the energy, my mind was clear and my body was calm. We sat down and talked through the disagreement – communicating instead of reacting with passive aggressive bickering. That conversation lasted throughout the evening and led to many realizations about how our trauma interacted and the many ways we have learned to avoid it and shut it off.

And the next morning, my throat was relaxed again. It is as if my vagus nerve is a real-time barometer of how connected I am to my body and heart. When I go out of connection – by overworking, drinking too much coffee, distracting myself with social media, or not expressing myself – I feel it in my throat within a matter of hours. My vagus nerve seems to actually turn off, wreaking havoc on my ability to speak, swallow, sing, or laugh. And when I go back into connection, it turns on again, and I have my voice back. It is almost unbelievable that it could work so predictably.

In the following weeks, I continued to experience smaller “aftershocks” as I adjusted to normal life.

One evening I sat down to do my evening meditation as usual. Out of nowhere, I saw a vivid image of myself as a child. I was looking at my eight-year-old self in the eyes from a few inches away. I noticed every detail of his face and expressions. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the recognition of how good this boy was. I could see how totally pure and innocent he was. He wanted nothing more than to give, to be valued, to have a place.

The love that I felt for this boy turned to grief. I could remember what it felt like inside, that pure desire to be good. I could also remember the bewilderment and confusion at not knowing how to be good. I had no idea what to do to get the recognition I craved. 

I saw how over time, that confusion had turned into a desperate hunger for approval, an endless seeking of recognition. I could see the things I had done to survive this feeling: closing off my heart, channeling myself into ceaseless striving, and trying to earn love through sheer effort. I could see the terrible price I’d paid, not knowing that I was paying it, not knowing there was another way.

Then I saw that I could give myself that recognition. I could give myself the love I needed, then and now. As each of these realizations sparked the next, I was sobbing. Not like an adult, controlled and in charge. I was sobbing uncontrollably, like a child, great heaves and sounds that I didn’t recognize at all. The words that I was saying to myself were very childlike too: “I am good” and “I didn’t know” came out of my mouth again and again as I rocked back and forth on the living room couch. 

Eventually, I felt a tremendous wave of compassion wash over me, and the distinct sensation my inner adult was stepping back into the foreground, saying things like “You didn’t know” and “No one taught you how to love yourself.” I felt myself forgiving myself, or rather, realizing there was nothing to forgive.

And then there was a reversal, and I could suddenly see that I still am that boy. I still am good and innocent and worthy of love. And I cried a lot, because I could feel myself finally receiving what I needed. I could feel myself merging with that child, who I had in a sense left behind in an attempt to distance myself from his feelings of unworthiness and shame. 

I felt grief turn to joy and then a beautiful sense of victory. I told this boy in my imagination that “we did it” and “we made it.” I felt an incredible sense of peace and quiet, like a stereo I had forgotten was turned to pure static was suddenly turned off. 

I have always prided myself on not getting angry. I’ve always been calm, cool, and collected. I remember running to my room as a kid when my parents had punished me or I felt I had been wronged. I would play loud music, stuff my face into the pillow, and work my hardest to swallow the anger. I didn’t want anyone to see me out of control. I remember in my teens when I finally managed to swallow the anger wholesale, turning it instead into an icy determination to prove others wrong. I can remember feeling proud I had managed this feat of self-control.

I’ve come to understand that very early in my childhood I defined anger and love as mutually exclusive: If there is anger, there can be no love; if there is love, there can be no anger. I had withheld my anger most from the people I loved the most, thinking I would somehow damage the relationship if I let it out. But repressed anger eventually turns into resentment, and I found myself stuck in a pattern of distancing myself from people I cared about rather than telling them how I truly feel.

Growing up, it had never been safe to express anger toward my father, because getting his anger in return was too terrifying. Over the years, that cycle of repression became ingrained to the point that I had trouble expressing anger as an adult even when it was completely appropriate, or even necessary.

Someone I cared about would be in danger, and I couldn’t muster the anger to intervene. I would see an injustice taking place before my eyes and be unable to say anything to make it right. The one way it could get out was through tears, because that was the one thing my father always responded to. So I found myself bursting into tears anytime I started to feel anger – taking feedback from my boss or arguing with my partner – which was so embarrassing and emasculating that I learned to avoid those situations altogether.

There was a turning point in the week at Groundbreakers when this narrative broke down. I was doing pair work, and when my partner asked me a question, a feeling of numbness and emptiness descended upon me. We realized that that was what I felt in place of anger – nothing. The facilitator asked me, “What keeps you from seeing your anger as love?” and then more forcefully, “Your anger IS your love – it’s time to let that love out.”

My definition of anger and love as mutually opposed forces was obliterated at that moment. My resistance to feeling anger, seeing it as the antithesis of the love that I tried to live my life by, evaporated. Using the volcano metaphor, it was like the two chambers of anger and love, which I had spent so much energy trying to keep separated, collapsed together and merged. I felt them connect deep inside – anger tempered and directed by love and love energized and purified by anger.

In the months since, I have made an astounding discovery: there is a river of emotion flowing through me at all times. I can reach down into that river and access an overwhelming, infinite source of energy. When I am speaking in front of a group, I don’t have to try to be inspiring. I can just decide to be moving, simply by allowing myself to be moved by the torrent of love flowing through me. 

When I write, I can take a deep breath and tap into that river of pure intuition to know where to go next. When I meditate, I can sit down and let things come up, like bubbles rising to the surface. I don’t have to do anything. My body knows how to heal itself. All I have to do is let it happen.

In order to unblock your creative flow, I’ve realized, you have to unblock your emotional flow, because you need access to every possible emotional state like colors on a pallet. Your creative output is simply the stream of things you naturally do when you are in touch with the emotions in your body. They allow you to do everything we know as leadership: to make decisive choices, to take risks, to insist on pursuing what makes you come alive, to empathize with those in need, and to work toward a vision with unstoppable determination.

In my work, I use words like “performance,” “resilience,” and “effectiveness.” But what if the path to these qualities is not by making ourselves harder and more stoic? What if they have nothing to do with pushing ourselves or setting more ambitious goals? Maybe strength and power are a side effect of opening up our emotional range, of cultivating a healthy relationship with each and every part of ourselves. And just maybe, the process of connecting with ourselves and with each other is what we’re really longing for in the first place.

Conclusion

We all hunger for a feeling of connection – to each other, to a community, and to a cause that is greater than ourselves. But that feeling – and it really is a feeling in the body – starts with being connected to ourselves. To every part of ourselves, not just the parts we approve of. Once we have that feeling like a treasure deep in our gut, it can grow and spread to every other part of our lives.

I have always wondered what distinguishes the people who go after their dreams with everything they have, and those who don’t. In a way, this is the key question driving my work. Some people just seem to have a fire inside them that refuses to be put out – in fact, that gets more fierce the more life tries to drown it out. 

I’ve come to believe it is these capabilities – of being grounded in the body, of being able to access a wide range of emotions, of being curious about the sensations in their heart rather than afraid of them – that distinguishes such people. Sometimes they become great leaders with famous accomplishments. Sometimes they live humble, fulfilling lives enjoying the simple things. But either way, they live life with a profound sense of happiness and gratitude and finish it with no regrets.

I told this story for one main reason: to bring the ideas and practices that I have benefited so much from to more people.

There is a staggering need for trauma treatment in society. People are suffering and dying every day because they are tormented by the pain of their past. Many of them have no idea that anything can be done about it. They don’t know that it’s not their fault and that help is available.

We are living in the midst of not only a scientific revolution in our understanding of trauma and a clinical revolution in our ability to treat it but also a cultural revolution in our awareness and acceptance of trauma as a normal part of the human experience.

Our brains are infinitely adaptable and don’t come pre-wired for how to live satisfying lives. Our childhood environment “trains” our nervous system in how to survive. But modern life is complex and ever-changing, and what served us then doesn’t necessarily serve us now. We can retrain our nervous system to be more flexible, trusting, and open. We now know many, many effective ways of doing so.

As described in The Body Keeps the Score, there are three main pathways for treating trauma. The first is “top down,” using talk therapy to engage the mind. The second is medicinal, using pharmaceuticals and psychedelics to change how the brain responds. But there is a third pathway, using “bottom up” somatic practices such as the anger work I described.

This third path has gone largely unexplored, and I believe it holds immense potential for changing how we interact with trauma. It has the advantage of working very quickly, doesn’t require ingesting anything, isn’t illegal, and can be done anywhere very affordably. 

It is merely taboo, and we can change taboos. 

Working together with the other methods, this new three-fold path offers the possibility of a holistic, integrated, safe, customized, scalable, and research-backed approach to addressing one of the greatest challenges of our time. 

Imagine what life would be like if the voice in your head was encouraging you instead of criticizing you. Imagine what would be possible if the messages coming from your body constantly told you ”You are safe” and “You can do it.” What kind of a world could we live in if there was a practical path toward learning to love ourselves?

I am working with Joe Hudson to develop a few recommendations for anyone who wants to explore this kind of somatic healing work. They will include lightweight ones you can do at home, as well as more experiential, immersive ones like the course described here. 

Please subscribe to my weekly newsletter at the bottom of this page if you’d like to receive these recommendations once they’re ready.

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My Goals for 2020

Here are my goals for 2020. I’m publishing them for public accountability, and just in case anyone out there has a goal that is aligned with one of mine.

1. Write and publish Building a Second Brain book byJune 1, 2020, with 100,000 copies sold by end of 2020

This is the big priority for 2020. The last few months have been a wake-up call, as I’ve taken far too long to get the second version of the book proposal finished – I can’t do this as a minor side project, whenever I have time for it. The book is so monumental, its intellectual and emotional mass so difficult to move forward, that I have to put all my weight behind it this year.

To be able to do so, I’m limiting myself to 10 goals in 2020, and the projects directly associated with them. I’m putting stronger filters on what is allowed to occupy my attention, such as having our new course manager handle all course-related emails, having all cold mails routed to my personal assistant, saying no to all interviews and speaking gigs until the book is out, and blocking off all weekday mornings for deep work.

The book will be the beginning of a new era for me and my work, there is no doubt in my mind. It will create a platform far larger than the one I’ve had so far, by creating a delivery mechanism that can reach a far greater range of people and places. Every decision I am making about the book is to maximize its accessibility – from the terminology I am using, to its length and organization, to the metaphors and explanations, and eventually, to the licensing and translation deals I’ll pursue. I intend to make at least the possibility of a Second Brain available to every human being I possibly can. It is one thing that the world needs, that I am able to provide.

2. Produce an amateur documentary on Wayne Forte, his work, and his life, and screen it in a private theatre with family and friends for his 70th birthday, by June 30, 2020

This project has already been one of the most interesting and rewarding projects I’ve ever undertaken. It has led to some of the most profound conversations with my father and the people most important to him. It has opened so many black boxes I didn’t even know were there. Using nothing but a smartphone and some questions. It would have all been worth it even if I gave up right now and threw away all the footage.

But I don’t plan on throwing it away. I’m more determined than ever to see it through and to share it with the widest possible audience. Not just because my father’s life and work is extremely interesting and worthy of attention. But because it also contains profound insights into what it means to live a life of creative inspiration. A question that once was only for the artistic few, but today is relevant to the entire class of creative knowledge workers emerging around the globe.

I plan on completing the film over the next few months, once I incorporate footage from our trip to the Philippines and a few key remaining interviews, and learn some crucial editing techniques such as motion smoothing and color correction. I plan on renting a small theatre somewhere in Orange County, inviting all our family and friends, and premiering the film as a celebration of his 70th birthday in June.

Later I will premiere the film online for my followers, in a worldwide synchronized viewing that people can attend via local watch parties, or by themselves from home. Besides the lessons on creativity and life, I want to demonstrate how a meaningful community event can be catalyzed using nothing but the smartphone in our pockets (and tons of work and software and social media).

I believe amateur documentary filmmaking could be one of the most powerful sources of social change in our generation. With the proliferation of powerful smartphone cameras, easy-to-use editing software, and social media networks, that possibility is more feasible than ever. The only remaining constraints are our courage, our willingness to learn, and our ability to get ourselves organized and in action.

3. Praxis reaches 2,000 paying members by June 30, 2020

The past year I’ve been focused mostly on public writing to gather as much feedback as possible on my Second Brain ideas. And on interviews, for the same purpose. But this year I’m going to return my focus to my subscription membership program on the Praxis blog.

Despite being only two years old, Praxis counts over 800 members that I know represent the very best and brightest audience for productivity and personal effectiveness on the planet. There is practically no limit to what such a group of people – meaningfully committed to exploring and implementing radical new ideas about human potential – can accomplish.

I’ll be doing a deep dive on Praxis v3.0, gathering the best ideas I’ve seen from the past few years on how to create subscription products and services, virtual communities, and crowdsourced collaborations that deliver far more value than they cost. I deeply sense that there are enormous opportunities here, just waiting to be tapped. I don’t yet know what the third version of Praxis will include, but I’ll focus on a small set of new features that work synergistically together and are uniquely valuable to my audience and work.

4. Forte Labs content is licensed to 5 organizations, producing $5k per month in revenue, by December 31, 2020

In 2019 we had our first recurring licensing partnership, with Discover Praxis, a 6-month program that trains young people in modern workplace skills and places them in apprenticeships with startups. They adapted the Building a Second Brain material to fit within their curriculum, and put a few cohorts of students through it. It produced so much value, from amazing case studies and testimonials, to new ways of explaining the techniques that underlie a Second Brain. And best of all, it happened without our involvement, except for a short onboarding call.

I can clearly see that this is the future of our business. We aren’t going to build a vast organization with staff delivering our content in every possible format. We aren’t going to hire legions of professional, full-time corporate trainers who fan out across the business world. We aren’t going to have customer support call centers staffed around the clock. My #1 value is freedom, and leading an organization with a large headcount isn’t compatible with that. But I also believe that it isn’t necessary any longer to build a large organization to have a large impact. What I do best is create new ideas and ways of teaching them, and I’ll do best by focusing on that and keeping Forte Labs lean.

This of course means we need to develop licensing and partnerships as core capabilities of the business. This includes continuing to refine and expand the BASB online course, which is the standard bearer and reference for all the other formats. But it also includes forging win-win alliances, negotiation skills, creating solid contracts, carefully documenting our methods and exercises, strong and enforceable copyright protections, and who knows what else.

I don’t know how the licensing world works, but this year I intend to find out.

5. Enroll 1,000 new students in BASB course by December 31, 2020

Despite the above, continuing to drive forward the quality and growth of our online courses is more important than ever.

It’s important as content creators that we have exposure to real students. Otherwise we risk losing touch with what’s happening on the ground, and having what we’re teaching lose relevance, which would be a death sentence in the category of professional development. In the past this would have meant running in-person workshops and corporate trainings, which are time-consuming, expensive, and can’t reach many people. But now we can reach a global audience while keeping our organization extremely lean. That’s the magic of online courses, and the reason I am focusing on them and saying no to virtually all in-person trainings this year.

We’ve just hired our first full-time course manager for cohorts of both Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage, which we will run back-to-back all year long in 2020. Will is charged with managing all aspects of the courses, from promotion to onboarding to student experience. This leaves David and I with more time to promote the courses and continue to develop major improvements to them. We are looking at everything from the material itself, to how we communicate with students, to how we plan and deliver live calls, to ways of supporting the alumni community. Every new cohort this year will be launched alongside a fresh round of such improvements.

The course will also be crucial to the launch of the book. Having an easily monetizable “upsell” for readers ready and waiting means I can make the book itself a loss leader, investing all of its proceeds and then some into promotion, publicity, and hiring the best consultants and advisors. Instead of haggling with the publisher over half percentage points, the profitability of the course allows me to make strategic decisions and investments more aligned with the long-term success of the book. That means it can find its way into more hands in more countries, while giving the most committed students a pathway to receive in-depth training.

6. Reach 25k subscribers to Forte Labs Newsletter by December 31, 2020

In 2019 my eyes were opened to the incredible power of email marketing. Like a secret subterranean society, I discovered email is the real way that business is done online. It’s hard to fully appreciate since most of the attention goes to social media. But if you really look at where the money is made, and how businesses become sustainable and build defensible business models, it’s through email.

I made a lot of major investments in 2019 in this direction: from joining a 10-week course accelerator in the summer that focused primarily on email marketing, to hiring a marketing coach to work with me for the next year, to moving my entire email operation from Mailchimp to ConvertKit, to taking an online course on how to use ConvertKit, to publishing new subscription forms and my first lead magnets on the blog. My email list growth has skyrocketed as a result of these and other investments, growing from 100 new subscribers per month to about 800. But I still believe I’m barely scratching the surface.

Email addresses represent a meaningful relationship with a customer, that they have explicitly agreed to and welcomed. A relationship that can’t be taken away with a change in an algorithm or a frivolous copyright strike. Along with a self-hosted blog using open-source software, it is one of the core pillars of any online business that wants to stand the test of time. It’s definitely not as trendy or prestigious as a follower count on Instagram or YouTube, but is much more consistent with the long-term business I want to build.

I’ll continue making investments to gain subscribers and improve their experience after they sign up. I currently have about 9,000 subscribers to my weekly newsletter. Which means I’ll need to nearly double my average subscriber growth over the course of the year to hit my goal of 25,000 by year end.

Subscribe below if you want to help me out! I send out high-quality articles, videos, and resources on how to radically improve your productivity for free every Tuesday.

 

7. Enroll 1,000 people in Write of Passage, and reliably deliver a transformational experience for their writing and career, by December 31, 2020

I continue to have a stake in the success of our newest course launched in 2019, Write of Passage. The results have been tremendous, beyond our wildest expectations. The testimonials that stream in after every cohort inspire me to keep going all out in our goal of making writing online a more accessible path to professional success.

It’s an interesting role for me, to remain committed to every aspect of the course, while remaining a couple steps removed from its operation. Our new course manager handles the operations, while David is responsible for the overall strategy and direction. I am focused on the underlying plumbing of our shared infrastructure and operations, plus occasionally injecting ideas and suggestions for how to improve other aspects. It’s not a sexy job, but one I’m finding increasingly interesting and full of opportunities for creativity.

My goal is to help Write of Passage grow several-fold in 2020, increasing both its enrollment numbers and the impact it is having on students.

8. Visit 3 new cities/regions of Mexico with Lauren by December 31, 2020

We didn’t do as much traveling in Mexico in 2019 as I wanted, only visiting nearby cities like San Miguel de Allende, Puebla, and Oaxaca. One of our main reasons for moving to Mexico at the end of 2018 was being able to easily visit the regions of Mexico, and that is something I intend to do more of in 2020.

I’m focused less on the quantity of places visited, which is never a good metric. We’ll do just a few regional trips, but focus on quality. In July we’ll spend a couple weeks in Guatemala with our Guatemalan friends Max and Dani – it’s not technically Mexico but it counts for my goal since it will be a deep cultural immersion. I also want to visit Yucatán, Guadalajara, and Merida. But I’ll wait to opportunistically jump on those depending on where we have friends or projects.

We are falling in love with Mexico, its people and its culture, and looking seriously at how we can make it permanently part of our lives in the future.

9. Buy a home for our family, in Long Beach or nearby, by December 31, 2020

We’ve gone back and forth on this, but are leaning toward buying a home in or around Long Beach in 2020. We plan on moving back to California if and when we get pregnant, to be close to our families in Southern California.

Long Beach has stood out for us as an ideal home base due to its proximity to both LA and Orange County, the fact that it’s a cosmopolitan, walkable city with a good downtown and public transportation, and its rich Latino culture. It will put us close to everything LA has to offer without leaving us at the mercy of its downtown traffic. And when we eventually get cabin fever and decide to move abroad again, it will make an excellent investment property to rent out.

10/ To Be Decided

Even with my more limited focus this year, I always like to leave one slot open for the unexpected, the surprising, or the serendipitous. Looking back at my goals over the years, some of the most rewarding and impactful were completely unplanned and unforeseen. Truth is stranger than fiction, and the opportunities that life throws my way are often far more interesting than I could have invented myself.

Here’s to an exciting, profound, eye-opening 2020! If you have an idea for how to move one of my goals forward, that also moves forward one of yours, let me know.

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The 10 Paradoxes of Entrepreneurship

1. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires someone with a strong command of reason, who is at the same time thoroughly unreasonable

You have to be smart to be an entrepreneur, obviously. Modern businesses are complex, and you have to be able to reason effectively if you’re even going to understand how they function. But having a strong intellect is only half the equation. You also have to be able to let go of reason when needed. You have to see that reason is only one way of looking at things, and not a very popular one honestly.

If you decide to start a business, a lot of people will tell you (explicitly or otherwise) to “be reasonable.” To not take such an unnecessary risk, to not go so far outside the norm. It’s a fair piece of advice. But starting a business is inherently not reasonable. It’s never the “common sense” thing to do. It’s not reasonable to think you can create an entire organization from nothing and change the direction of an industry. No “reasonable” person would think that they can get lots of other people to believe in their vision, and invest their time and resources in making it real.

Entrepreneurship doesn’t naturally follow from a logical deductive process. If it did, someone would have already followed that process and started that business. You have to use reason as one of many tools, without letting it use you.

2. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires an abundance mindset toward the environment, and at the same time, a scarcity mindset toward the business

Successfully starting a business requires an abundance mindset toward the external world. You have to believe, at some level, that opportunities for success are plentiful, or at least available for those who work hard. You have to look at the market and see fruits waiting to be picked. Otherwise it simply wouldn’t be worth the risk.

But at the same time, you have to have a scrappy, survivor-like mentality toward the business itself. You can’t treat your money, time, or mental bandwidth as “abundant” if you’re going to ration and spend them carefully. You have to jealously guard every resource you have at your disposal, because every one represents a little bit of precious runway.

The challenge is knowing when a situation calls for an abundance mentality, and when it requires a scarcity mindset. It’s easy to get stuck in one mode, and not realize when the situation changes and a different approach is needed. Neither mode is inherently better. Each one is a tool that you wield when it’s most effective.

3. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires extreme vigilance of what competitors are doing, without being too influenced by them

You have to pay some attention to your competitors. If only because their decisions and actions yield useful information about what’s happening in the market. But you can’t be too focused on what competitors are doing, because then all your actions will be only re-actions. Too little, too late.

You need to have a kind of peripheral vision toward your competitors. Like explorers through a shared terrain, who you can borrow from and draft off of, remembering that ultimately you are not looking for exactly the same thing. You need to keep your competitiveness in reserve for when it’s useful, without letting it take on a vindictive life of its own.

4. Entrepreneurship is hard because you have no idea what you’re doing, but at the same time know exactly what you’re doing

Entrepreneurship is fundamentally open-ended. You are always working on some kind of frontier: the frontier of ideas, of what’s “normal,” of what customers are willing to accept. Which means that it can never be fully planned in advance. You need plans, of course. You also need to be fully committed to them if they’re going to teach you anything.

But at the back of your mind, in a private place you may not always show to the people you work with, you have to have some doubts. Like a “doubt room” in the basement of your house, you should occasionally spend some time there and let those doubts have their say. Because if you don’t, they’ll grow and fester and eventually explode as a full-blown crisis of faith.

Holding both total confidence and deep doubt in your mind at once requires something quite similar to self-delusion. There has to be some separation between them if you’re going to stay sane, but it should be more like a foldable partition that you reserve for parties, when you let it all hang out a little.

5. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires a willingness to go far out of balance, without completely losing control

I don’t know of any way to build a business while staying perfectly in balance at all times. Habits and routines are great, but when that one opportunity you’ve been waiting months for comes knocking, you drop everything and you run with it. And on the long path to building a profitable business, such opportunities will appear almost weekly.

You have to build the capability of going out of balance when needed. To lean in to the turn like a motorcycle racer. This sometimes requires postponing or “stretching” everything from your bodily needs to your relationships to your personal finances to your goals. Not that you have to blindingly sacrifice these things at all times, but they have to be at least a little fluid.

But just as importantly, you have to know how to bring these things back into balance once the opportunity (or crisis) is over. To recover, to heal, to build those reserves back up to a state of readiness. Otherwise when the next one hits, you won’t have any slack in your system. You’ll be brittle and frail.

6. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires being rigid where others are flexible, and flexible where others are rigid

Most people are naturally rigid in some areas, and flexible in others. They might be open-minded when it comes to their choice of food, but rigid when it comes to their religion. Mostly these come as defaults, as part of their upbringing and belief system.

But as an entrepreneur, you have to decide where you’re going to be rigid and where you’re going to be flexible. You have to approach your market with a set of beliefs that in some way violate or contradict or undermine the existing beliefs in your market. This naturally means that you insist, you take a firm stand, on areas that incumbent companies may let slide. Maybe you’re in payroll processing and customer service isn’t taken very seriously – it’s “flexible.” Taking a strong stand on that might ruffle all kinds of feathers.

But you also have to sometimes be flexible where others are rigid. Maybe you’re in legal services and you realize that educational pedigree is no longer as important as it used to be, and you relax your hiring standards. This also might encounter resistance as you threaten people’s pride! To take these stances you have to have a center and the center must hold. There has to be an immoveable place of conviction at the center of your being, that is not swayed by the opinions of others.

7. Entrepreneurship is hard because you have to not believe in tradeoffs, yet be constantly making them

Entrepreneurs have a skeptical eye toward supposed “tradeoffs”: statements that follow the format “To have more of X, you have to have less of Y.” That’s because every tradeoff is based on a long series of assumptions. And if just one of those assumptions changes, the tradeoff can collapse like a house of cards.

The auto manufacturing industry for decades was based on the assumption that it took many hours to change the “dies” of a machine in the factory (such as changing a drilling tool to a shaping tool). The entire industry was built around that assumption: from the way workers’ shifts were scheduled, to the way factory floors were laid out, to the lower pricing for larger batches of products. Instead of optimizing around this constraint, Toyota attacked it: they systematically lowered the time needed to change machine dies until it was less than 10 minutes. In doing so, they revolutionized the industry.

You can’t take tradeoffs too seriously, yet as an entrepreneur you also have to constantly make them. You have to pick your battles – perhaps you’re reinventing data science visualization, but that means you might need to conform to conventional accounting practices in the meantime. The energy required to destroy an assumption is in limited supply…for now.

8. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires caring deeply what others think about your product, while not caring at all what they think about you

There is a certain egolessness demanded of entrepreneurs. You simply can’t afford to make it about you all the time. You’re not that important. If you insist on being offended all the time, you are inserting yourself into the feedback loop between your users and your product. You are distorting the flow of learning to serve your own purposes.

And yet, at the same time, you can’t completely discount and write off what everyone says. You have to be obsessed, in fact, with what they say about your product. To hook your reward centers deep into their experience of the product, so that you feel their pain as your pain and their joy as your joy. It’s an extreme form of empathy I think, directed and focused like a laser on the intersection between what they need and what you can provide.

9. Entrepreneurship is hard because it requires you to be highly ambitious, yet not preoccupied with the inevitable failures it brings

You obviously have to be highly ambitious to be an entrepreneur. You have to have a vision big enough to justify its terrible cost.

But the more ambitious you are, the bigger the chasm you’re going to have to cross. The bigger your vision, the more time you’re going to have to spend in not-that-vision. This is totally obvious and yet paradoxical: the more you want to be right, the more you’re going to have to get used to being wrong. The more successful you want to be, the more you’re going to have to get used to being unsuccessful. To get good at error-correction, you need to become intimately familiar with error.

All this means that you’re going to have a lot of failures. You must learn how to reframe those failures as valuable lessons, which sometimes feels like bending an iron rod into an origami flower. But it can be done, because the meaning of those failures is completely up to you. The failures are real, but what they are telling you is not real, it’s made up.

10. Entrepreneurship is hard because you have to always do what you say you’re going to do, and also consistently say you’ll do impossible things

The edifice of entrepreneurship rests on a foundation of integrity. You absolutely have to be the very embodiment of your word, because at the end of the day that is all you have. Your word has to be so powerful that it has its own agency: you said it, and thus it will happen. Your word can bend reality to its will, and to build the business you envision, it must.

But simultaneously, you have to constantly be promising impossible things. That your business will grow by a certain percentage, that the market will expand by so many points, that such and such contract will be signed. These events are not within the realm of what you can achieve by yourself. To be interesting, the reach of your promises has to exceed their grasp.

And this brings us back to the first paradox. Human agency does not quite exist within the domain of reason. It defies the cold logic of causality. It uses logic to explain and to argue, but if you get to the very source of it, there’s no fundamental reason that anything it wants should happen.

Except for one: because you said so.

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My 26 Favorite Essays of 2019

As part of my year-end review, I always review my favorite reading of the year. These usually tend to be “long-form” online essays diving deep into interesting ideas.

Revisiting my notes on these articles serves three functions:

Helps me absorb their ideas more deeply
Serves as a reminder to think about how I can use their ideas as building blocks in upcoming projects
Reveals clues about where the next year’s learning may take me

This year I’ve decided to write a review of each of the most important essays I discovered in 2019. Each one includes a short summary of what it’s about, the main idea I took away from it for my own work and life, and a link to my full notes if any.

They are presented in no particular order.

To read this story, become a Praxis member.

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Members get access to:

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Opensourced: Increasing The Output of The World’s Creative Professionals

I recently spoke with Ian Lenny via videoconference for his series showcasing interviews with entrepreneurs, experts, high performers, and thinkers. We talked about my Building a Second Brain methodology, and what I’ve learned about the most effective ways for people to build one for themselves.

Watch or listen below, or visit the episode webpage for a full transcript.

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Decoding Superhuman Podcast: Distributed Cognition with Tiago Forte

I recently spoke with Boomer Anderson on his podcast Decoding Superhuman, about my ideas on productivity and knowledge management. Including:

[2:18] Why I moved to Mexico City
[5:19] My influences in developing productivity theories
[9:14] Benefits of network effect and momentum on productivity
[17:14] The guy who doesn’t like Cal Newport
[27:56] Organizing the endless flow of ideas
[34:05] Michael Hyatt’s tagging is broken
[38:00] The PARA system
[44:01] What is the MESA method?
[52:58] What does the future of work look like?
[56:17] Tiago answers the Superhuman 6

Listen below or visit the episode website here.

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Interview with Conor White-Sullivan, Founder of Roam

This is a one-hour interview, discussion, demonstration, and debate between Conor White-Sullivan, founder of “note-taking tool for networked thought” Roam, and myself. We’ve exchanged many messages on Twitter and other platforms about our differing approaches to knowledge management and note-taking. In this in-depth conversation, we talk about Conor’s background and what led him to dedicate himself to created Roam, the principles and insights that underlie the product’s design, and his opinions on privacy, security, networks, connecting ideas, and many other topics.

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Superorganizers: Inside the Mind of a Productivity Master

In this very thorough and in-depth interview, I walked Dan Shipper through every tiny detail of how I manage my daily productivity.

Dan runs the Superorganizers blog and newsletter, where he investigates how the smartest people in the world organize knowledge to do their best work.

He left no stone unturned, and even took the extra step of collecting screenshots and summarizing what I said in his own (much clearer) words. The result? A comprehensive written summary of how I work.

It’s gotten an incredible response even from people who have followed me for some time.

Click here to visit the Superorganizers blog for the full article.

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Notion as a Second Brain Tour

I’m very excited and proud to announce that I’ll be co-organizing a series of free meetups in cooperation with Notion, the up-and-coming productivity and knowledge management software.

We’ll be hosting events in the following 6 cities to start, with possibly more to come later next year (click each link to register):

Mexico City (12/4)
Sao Paulo (12/11)
Los Angeles (12/30)
Manila (1/7)
Singapore (2/4)
Kuala Lumpur (2/12)

Here’s a copy of the full description:

Notion and productivity leader Tiago Forte are teaming up for a world tour, bringing together our communities around “Building a Second Brain.” Join us and fellow productivity enthusiasts in your city to learn new skills and strategies for everything from learning faster to forming better habits!

About the tour

Notion is taking the productivity world by storm with its promise of a powerful, easy-to-use knowledge base for all. At these events, Tiago Forte will explain how to use Notion to build a “Second Brain” – a trusted, digital archive of your most valuable knowledge and expertise.

Drawing on his extensive blogging and online course, Building a Second Brain, Tiago will demonstrate how to apply timeless principles of knowledge management to the Notion software. You’ll come away with a reliable pathway for outsourcing your memory, expanding your creativity, and managing your life using technology.

The “Building a Second Brain” methodology starts with a simple idea: you can outsource your memory to computers, leaving your mind free to imagine and create new things. Once you have your most valuable knowledge saved in a trusted place, you’re free to cultivate and grow it. The methodology demonstrates how to cultivate one’s knowledge step by step following the four steps of CODE – Capturing, Organizing, Distilling, and Expressing your ideas so that they grow in value over time. For more information, visit Tiago’s website or watch Notion Office Hours: Building a Second Brain.

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Making Knowledge Work Visible

By Tasshin Fogleman

In my time as a reader and writer, I’ve discovered something I didn’t expect: reading multiple books at the same time, or writing multiple essays at the same time, increases not only the quantity of books I read, but also the quality of the essays I write.

As a young reader, I would always read one book at a time. I would start a book, and keep reading it until I had finished it. Very rarely, I would decide to stop reading a book before I had finished it.

I started reading multiple books in parallel while studying at St. John’s College, my alma mater and a Great Books school, where almost all of the school work involves reading books. Reading in parallel dramatically increased the number of books I was able to read in a given time period. I found myself reading at least 100 books a year (including my own personal reading). By reading multiple books at the same time, I was able to discover more quickly if I didn’t want to finish a book, and switch to a new book. Or if I simply needed a break from one book, I could move to another before coming back to the first with fresh eyes. Most importantly, I found myself enjoying reading (even) more, which resulted in me reading more. Since graduating, I’ve maintained the habit of reading in parallel, and consistently read 50+ books per year.

Of course, sheer quantity isn’t everything. What you read matters too, and even if you’re reading excellent books, it’s easy to misunderstand them without careful study. 

Still, I found something even more surprising: reading multiple books at the same time also improved the quality of my reading. The program of study at St. John’s is carefully designed. One of the intentions is to juxtapose similar authors and topics at the same time in ways that facilitate understanding. 

Partially, this is chronological: for example, you read the Torah before proceeding to read the New Testament and then various Christian theological writers. But you also read across topics in meaningful ways. For example, for my mathematics class, I studied Leibniz’ discovery of calculus at the same time that I was reading his metaphysical works in the main seminar class.

This all affords a kind of reading which Mortimer Adler, author of How to Read A Book, calls syntopical reading, or comparative reading, which aims at a broad, synthetic view of a topic across authors, books, and cultures.

Like most college students, I was also required to write multiple essays at the same time. I was also a prolific writer. One professor said that she would ask for 5 pages and I would hand in 10; that she would ask for oneone essay and get two. In the same way as with reading, I discovered that writing multiple essays at the same time made it easier to increase the overall quantity and quality of my writing.

Since graduating from St. John’s, the biggest influence on how I go about reading and writing has been a pair of online courses: Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain (BASB) and David Perell’s Write of Passage (WoP). 

Both of these courses borrow key insights from the Theory of Constraints (TOC) and Lean/Just-in-Time Manufacturing. In TOC, small batch sizes, processed in parallel, paradoxically improves the quantity and quality of throughput. This is an extremely counterintuitive finding in manufacturing, the original testbed for TOC, and in some ways it is no less surprising in knowledge work.

The courses gave me a system for reliably producing interesting ideas, and for distributing those in writing. This means that my current intellectual life is increasingly dominated by two forms of knowledge work: reading books, and writing blog posts. From a systems perspective, these can be seen as input and output respectively.

However, having implemented these systems, I discovered a new problem. I had more blog post ideas than I could possibly write. I had a hard time deciding which ones to work on, and began collecting a large number of half-finished drafts of blog posts. Similarly, swimming in an abundance of reading options, I started new books more often than I finished them. 

Both problems had a similar flavor: flow problems. How could I be sure I wasn’t abusing massive parallelism, and aimlessly multi-tasking? How could I prioritize what’s most important to focus on?

I found a solution in two key insights from just-in-time productivity: making work visible, and implementing work-in-progress (WIP) limits. I believe Tiago overlooked these ideas when adapting the best principles of TOC and JIT Manufacturing to personal productivity. In this post, I’ll review how kanban, work-in-progress limits, and a lean/agile approach can help knowledge workers produce even more with higher quality.

An Overview of Kanban and WIP Limits

Kanban (which in Japanese means “visual signal” or “card”) was created to solve problems of flow in manufacturing. Kanban has made its way into productivity software like Trello and Notion.

Kanban is a physical or digital board that visualizes work. In its simplest form, it has three columns – Ready, Doing, and Done – with cards (which can be post-it notes, index cards, or digital) in each column to track work. 

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Simple Kanban Board from Making Work Visible by Dominica DeGrandis

You can adapt this most basic form to the specific needs of your team, as well as the type of work being done. You can add or subtract columns, and make use of more advanced features, like color-coding, swimlanes, and time estimates. 

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A Customized Kanban Board from Personal Kanban – Mapping Work, Navigating Life by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry

Regardless of the specific form used, by visualizing the work, you and your team can see the big picture: what work is being done, what isn’t, where bottlenecks are, and what you should do next.

It’s easy to track and manage the flow of knowledge work with a whiteboard, sticky notes, and dry-erase markers, or with software tools like Trello and Notion. Simply making the work visible with these methods will help you do what’s most important.

However, in lean manufacturing and strategy, visualizing the work is just the first step of successful kanban usage. The next step is to install work-in-progress (WIP) limits.

Work-in-progress is all the work that you or your team have started, but not yet finished. For our purposes, that’s a book that you’re halfway through reading, or a blog post that you have a first draft of but haven’t published yet. 

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Unfinished Business by aehdeschaine (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Therefore, WIP limits limit the amount of work that can be in process at any time. Rather than starting a new book or blog post every time you feel like it, you try to not do too much at once. 

This approximates the focus that comes from, for example, reading only one book at a time. WIP limits afford the focus that comes from processing a limited number of items at a time, and the higher quantity of output that comes from processing in parallel.

WIP limits are usually arbitrary to start: you might limit yourself to reading three books at a time, or to writing two blog posts at a time. 

Over time, you can adapt as you understand more about how you work. If you find blog posts tend to go stale in your drafts folder, try lowering your writing WIP limit. If you find you are plowing through books, try raising your reading WIP limit. The most important thing is to limit how much work you’re doing, so that you can finish what you start.

Here are the WIP limits I’m currently using.

Reading WIP Limits

For reading, I am trying to read no more than four books at a time. One of those books is an audiobook. I love audiobooks, but the amount of time I have available to listen to them varies widely. I like having a go-to audiobook to turn to for driving and other similar occasions. 

The remaining books can be in any medium (print, ebook, PDF), but should fit into a specific category: a book for pleasure (usually a novel or biography); a useful piece of non-fiction that is relevant to my work or interests; and a book that has lasting benefit, which helps further my character development or meditation practice.  

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These categories follow Aristotle’s three kinds of friends, a choice that is partially playful – books are a kind of friend, no? – but also practical for me.

When reading these books, I also try to reduce the “batch size,” by ending reading sessions by finishing chapters or sections of whatever book I’m reading. As others have found, it’s easier to pick up a book when you’re starting a new chapter or section.

Writing WIP Limits

For writing, I have a backlog of ideas, posts that I am actively writing, and completed posts.

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I use a WIP limit of one post for each of the four categories that I am trying to explore with my writing:

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In addition to status and category, I also keep track of several other details, like venue (which blog I intend to publish a given post to); any co-authors a post may have; and reviewers, who I want to send drafts to for feedback.

Of course, I still might write a blog post about an unrelated topic. Or I might think of a post that ultimately proves to be a dead end. But overall, I find that I’m writing more posts, with higher quality and more focus.

Conclusion

WIP limits aren’t for everyone. I shudder to imagine Visakan Veerasamy, for example, one of my favorite internet writers, implementing WIP limits like these. His whole style, I think, benefits from a kind of mood-first productivity. 

For myself, I found that WIP limits have helped me to get the best of both worlds – higher throughput from parallel input/output, and the focus that comes from limits. I’ve also found that by experimenting with applying strategy concepts like kanban and work-in-process limits to my personal productivity systems, I’ve developed the intuition needed to apply those ideas to larger scale settings, like the workplace.

If you’re experiencing flow problems like the ones I describe in your reading and writing, or some other aspect of your knowledge work, consider making the work visible and installing WIP limits. 

Of course, you’ll need to find WIP limits that work for you – this will be a process of experimentation that likely results in limits that are specific to your needs and constraints. 

Whatever WIP limits you install, you’ll find that your system has higher throughput, with improvements in both quantity and quality. 

More Resources

Lean LEGO – The red brick cancer
Personal Kanban – Mapping Work, Navigating Life by Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry (notes)
Making Work Visible by Dominica DeGrandis (notes)
Venkatesh Rao’s Now Reading page
Notion Office Hours with Marie Poulin: Tiago Forte’s writing workflow

Thanks to James Stuber, David Howell, and Cory Foy for their helpful contributions to this post, as well as to Ben Mosior and Cat Swetel for recommending I learn more about kanban in the first place.

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