Tiago Forte's Blog, page 35

Building a Second Brain Workshop, at Collective Academy Mexico City

This is a complete, 2-hour video recording of a live workshop on the Building a Second Brain methodology. It was delivered in Mexico City to a group of students of Collective Academy, by Tiago Forte, Lauren Valdez, and David Perell.

For more information on the online course, visit www.buildingasecondbrain.com.

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Interview with Paul Millerd, Founder of Boundless U

Below is an interview with Paul Millerd, a freelance strategy consultant and prolific content creator, on his experience turning the knowledge he gained through his consulting work into a series of online courses on Boundless U.

We talk about, among other things:

Paul’s journey to creating courses (starting with a resume course 5 years ago)
Using in-person workshops & consulting projects to then translate into a digital course (“think like a strategy consultant”) and then turning that into Boundless U
3-4 lessons anyone can learn from strategy consulting problem solving
His approach to creating helpful tools first, and then later seeing how to turn it into a business
How he’s thinking about managing different income streams as a self-employed creator

I occasionally interview successful online course creators, as I know it’s something many of you would like to do at some point. I absolutely love creating and teaching online courses, and I think it’s one of the most exciting and promising frontiers online today.

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Zion 2.0 Podcast with Collin Morris: “Designing Your Reality”

In this interview, I spoke with Collin Morris on his podcast Zion 2.0 about what it means to “design your reality.” This conversation actually drifts quite far from productivity, and we got into some pretty interesting observations about personal growth, self-awareness, and the relationship between pain and pleasure.

Visit the episode webpage, or listen below:

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Crazy Wisdom Podcast, with Stewart Alsop III

In this interview, I spoke with Stewart Alsop III on his Crazy Wisdom podcast about how to build a second brain using technology. We got deep into how technology is impacting our ability to learn, for good and for ill.

Visit the episode webpage or listen below:

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How to Build a Second Brain in Notion, by Maria Aldrey

By Maria Aldrey of Groovywink, offering 1-on-1 productivity training for busy freelancers. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

The day in 2015 I took Tiago Forte’s course on Getting Things Done a weight was lifted from my “brain’s shoulders.” 

I recognized what I had been doing wrong; I was relying on my brain to store every bit of information I found offline and online. Not only that, but I wasn’t managing this knowledge, let alone optimizing it for action.

Not long ago, I learned about the Forgetting Curve: a hypothesis about the decline of memory retention over time. It demonstrated that we would forget about 40% of information received in the first 24 hours. After waiting another 24 hours before reviewing the information, we would lose 60%. 

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This curve indicates how information is lost over time when there is no attempt to retain it, but the point is not retaining it – it is managing it somewhere else so I could use that space for higher leverage creation.

Knowledge is only valuable when it leads to taking action on an idea.

As the years went by, Tiago kept releasing more information on how to Build a Second Brain. His methods helped me grow from working as a “stock associate” in a retail store to getting as many freelance clients as I could handle, traveling, and living life. 

More specifically, the PARA method supported me in organizing and learning new material.  I was able to grow my business without having to collect anything in my brain. 

PARA provided me with the space to think about developing new projects while handling many clients at once. 

I didn’t follow the BASB system in its entirety though, as the primary place of storage was Evernote; to be honest, it wasn’t my jam. 

“Creating a system of personal knowledge management is a design problem. And like all design problems, it must balance and trade off multiple priorities against each other: the balance between order and serendipity” – Tiago Forte

In 2018, I found Notion, an all-in-one workspace for note-taking, project and task management, A.K.A a place where I was capable of Building a Second Brain and keeping it up.

Notion hammers every point on BASB’s requirements for choosing a Note-taking App:

It’s backed up by the cloud, it’s cross-platform, and accessed via the web
I can quickly capture, edit, search, duplicate, and store any type of file such as notes, import text, images, videos, PDFs, embeds, and others
It’s effortless to add and move information between pages and databases with copy/paste and drag/drop
I’m able to save everything privately in one place and share individual pages for public viewing
It is highly visual, flexible, and minimal.

Being such a fan of GTD and BASB, I decided to design a more fluid method. Something that could spark my passion for action, because I used to get bored quickly and finishing projects was typically a struggle. 

BASB and Notion helped me:

Expand my creativity by making better connections between diverse ideas
Refine and externalize those ideas
Interpret the information I’ve found more accurately
Enable the information and ideas to simmer for an extended period of time
Devote more attention to the things that inspire me
Stop starting from scratch every single time
Get more frequent feedback
Reduce time by building shortcuts through automated workflows, databases, filters, links to pages, template buttons, among others
Find information faster and eliminate the question “What was I looking for?”

In this article, I will guide you step by step on how to use Notion to build a second brain of your own, following the method in Tiago Forte’s online course Building a Second Brain. I’ve created a free Notion template below that you can use to follow along. 

Click here to access the Notion template

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How to Build a Second Brain using Notion

If you are new to Notion, I recommend you get familiar with their concepts as it differs a lot from Evernote.

Instead of using ‘Notebooks’, In Notion, we work with ‘Blocks’. 

Blocks can be turned into a page, a checklist, a database, toggle, or even a table of contents. To do so, you just press forward-slash and a menu will pop up (the more you use it, the more familiar you will get with the shortcuts.) 

You can change the block’s type and layout. With the drag and drop feature, you can easily create columns.

How to setup PARA in Notion


PROJECTS

The best place to start knowing how to best use Notion and start setting up PARA is with the classic GTD Mind Sweep. This is an exercise to capture, group & manage your projects.

In an empty page, turn one of the lines into a checklist and start writing down all the things you want, need and have to do. 
Create a toggle at the top of your list with the name of the project for each task.
Create a page called PROJECTS and drag and drop your project toggles into this page.
Go to the Projects page and turn all your Projects into Pages and arrange them by priority.

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AREAS

Go back to the main page and create a page called AREAS and drag and drop the toggles that represent the Areas of Responsibilities.
Go to the new Areas page and turn all your toggles into pages.
Find a layout that works for you. Click here to go to Notion’s Template Gallery for more inspiration.



RESOURCES – Your Second Brain Library

In the main page, create a page called RESOURCES and drag all the bookmarks, web clippings, embeds, or anything that you’d categorize as a resource. 
Go to your new Resources page and create a Table Database – this will be your Second Brain Library.
Rename each column with the type of information you’d like to easily find. Example: Title, Description, Date Added, Summarization Status, URL, Theme, etc.

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ARCHIVES

In the main page, create a page called ARCHIVES.
Create another page called: “ARCHIVE – {Today’s Date} ” and move all the remaining blocks to this page.
Move the dated page to the main Archives page.

You should now have only four pages on your main page and sidebar.

How to use Progressive Summarization and Just-in-time Management in Notion

Progressive Summarization is a technique for designing notes that are easy to find in the future. The best way to prepare your resource collection for retrieval in Notion is by going through the following steps:

Create an Inbox page, a parking spot for random notes.
Dump incoming resources in the inbox page.
Bold the best parts of the resource you saved.
Highlight the best parts of the bolded parts.
Write an executive summary at the top of the page, for the most significant and insightful resources.
When you start working on your Projects pages make sure you create a Linked Database and filter the resources out so you can only see relevant items, this will help to keep them separated by existing projects or topics.

Developing a system for dynamism requires tools that allow for productive flexibility. Thanks to Notion & BASB, I’ve been able to respond to serendipity more quickly by creating conditions of rapid execution. Just remember, not everything needs to be perfect simultaneously.

About Maria Aldrey

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Maria is a Productivity Trainer based in Vancouver, BC. With 10 years of experience in Marketing and Communications, she understands how to get things done fast. Less time at work means more time to travel and live life.

She currently guides entrepreneurs to optimize systems that allow them to move towards their desired outcomes in business, relationships, health, and spirituality by gaining clarity, improving self-awareness, and taking on a growth mindset to identify and remove bottlenecks. Learn More.

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Summer of Learning 2019 Live Q&A

We recently hosted a live Q&A with past and future students of our two courses, Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage. On Wednesday, July 3 we kick off the Summer of Learning, with two back-to-back live cohorts of these courses focused on writing.

Watch the video below for answers to questions we received, and a great discussion about what to expect from this experience.

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What Makes Building a Second Brain Different

Here are some of the main differences between my online course Building a Second Brain, and other courses on similar topics.

1. This isn’t yet another online course on how to be successful

It is the course that prepares you to benefit from all those other courses – how to gather and organize the knowledge you need to make use of the knowledge from other sources.

2. This isn’t a monolithic system that you have to implement perfectly to get any value from

Applying even one or two of the methods taught can revolutionize your knowledge management.

3. This course doesn’t assume you have any particular pre-existing knowledge or skills

It only requires you to have the most basic familiarity with the basics of using a computer.

4. This course doesn’t force you into a one-size-fits-all box

It equips you to develop a system adapted to your specific needs and goals.

5. The methods taught in this course aren’t abstract and theoretical

They were developed in the trenches of running a real business, not in a laboratory or classroom, which means they are highly practical and useful in the real world.

6. This course isn’t a random collection of disconnected “tips and tricks”

It is a holistic system that works in an integrated way to capture, organize, and share your ideas

7. This course doesn’t exhort you to work even harder and do even more

It teaches you how to do more with less, how to use the sources of leverage available to you, and to offload as much effort as possible to computers.

8. This course isn’t about optimizing or perfecting yourself

It’s about optimizing an external system so you are free to imagine, create, and simply relax.

9. This course doesn’t condemn technology and the internet as pure evils

It teaches a balanced approach to using these amazing inventions to enhance creative work.

10. This course isn’t about forcing you to work in a certain way

It’s about providing a support system so you can create value no matter how you decide to work, and a safety net so you have the confidence that nothing is falling through the cracks.

This course is the only online course that combines practical technology skills with the bigger picture of how and why personal knowledge management can transform your career, your business, or your life.

Building a Second Brain focuses on practical skills, but doesn’t stop there: it also cultivates the deeper mindset and the paradigm shifts necessary to thrive in an age of information abundance.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 Building a Second Brain Chain of Beliefs

I recently joined an online course “accelerator,” in which a course marketing expert coaches 5 course creators through 10 weeks of exercises and experiments to level up their marketing efforts. It’s been a fascinating journey already, and I’ll be sharing bits and pieces of what I discover here on the blog.

One of the most interesting exercises we’ve completed is identifying the “Chain of Beliefs” of our prospective customers. These are the specific beliefs that someone needs to adopt before purchasing our course, or while taking it, to get as much value as possible from our program. Instilling these beliefs is a long-term, continuous process that begins long before they take the course, and continues long after they finish it. With this framing, “making a sale” is not a finish line, but just one step in a long relationship in which we are “selling” them on something much more profound: a changed future.

What do we do with this list? We systematically cultivate these beliefs through our free content – blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, websites, free tutorials and guides, etc. This ensures that each piece of promotional content has a purpose: moving a subset of customers (both future and past) a little further down the funnel from novice to master. Instead of the usual approach of haphazardly publishing all sorts of free content with no strategy, we begin educating them before they even know what’s happening. Everything we publish contributes to a “belief architecture” that improves their odds of success whether they ever take our course or not.

I want to share the beliefs I came up with, for two reasons: to get feedback and suggestions for any I may have missed; and to share part of the behind-the-scenes process of marketing an educational product online, in case it’s useful. Please let me know if you see anything I left out in the beliefs below, and any suggestions for cultivating them.

The beliefs are organized into three categories: beliefs the customer has about themselves (Customer Beliefs), beliefs they have about me (Expert Beliefs), and beliefs they have about my course (Offer Beliefs).

 

Customer Beliefs


You already are creative, and are already doing most of the work required


I already have the creativity – I just need sparks of inspiration to activate it


I don’t need to work harder or longer; I just need to better leverage the intellectual effort I’m already exerting


One piece of knowledge (how to X) can be turned into multiple formats for many uses (The Creativity Multiplier Effect)


I can make use of the knowledge I’m already acquiring to produce intellectual assets




Your notes are pure gold


My thoughts and ideas are valuable and worth saving and revisiting


The files and documents on my computer represent valuable intellectual property


There are valuable insights and ideas falling through the cracks of my digital life


I can make an impact using my intellectual output


Producing unique creative output is critical for my career


Ideas can do work – so it makes sense to spend every ounce of effort optimizing the productivity of your ideas




It is possible to get organized


Being disorganized/procrastination is a solvable problem


It’s not your fault, it’s your approach




Progress is more important than perfection


I don’t need to have a perfect process or system or practice. I just need to start


Having a system could bring me peace of mind and a feeling of order


It doesn’t take a long time to start seeing the results of digital note-taking


This method doesn’t require following extensive rules, or time-consuming filing and cataloguing




Systems give you freedom


You can accomplish anything with a trusted system


It is possible to improve my thinking by getting ideas outside of my head and into external media


This will reduce my stress and anxiety around FOMO and information overload




You need a system designed for your own needs


Searching on Google for information I need isn’t reliable or personalized enough


I can’t do my best thinking on demand; I need a way to capture my best thinking over time so it’s available when I need it




Creativity can be cultivated


Creativity can’t be created directly, but you can cultivate the right conditions for it to flourish


Creativity is cultivated by having a lot of resources to draw from and connect in surprising ways


Being organized lays the foundation for spontaneous acts of creativity




Expert Beliefs


Tiago knows what he’s talking about


Tiago has worked with many others who have gotten great results


Tiago has gotten great results with people like me


Tiago can explain things in an easy-to-understand way


Tiago is trustworthy and won’t screw me over


Offer Beliefs


What are the ultimate, tangible benefits of building a second brain?


Build a reputation in your company or industry as someone who does their homework and has original ideas


Become a thought leader and leader by publishing insightful, compelling writing


Use content marketing to bring in highly qualified leads and other business opportunities


Make money online by turning your ideas into products or services


Gather a community of like-minded folks who share your goals and interests


Develop and test new theories in public, allowing others to contribute and provide feedback (Rapid Knowledge Prototyping)


Build a body of knowledge you can refer to anytime you need to present, write, or advise on a project


Gather facts and research to prove your points and advance your causes


Understand your customers through small-scale, risk-free experiments with free content


Reduce your stress and anxiety knowing that every critical piece of information is being captured


Maximize all the time you spend reading and learning by saving the best nuggets in a trusted place where you can refer to them


Create shared knowledge resources that your colleagues and customers can refer to when needed


Start collecting ideas for an app, website, product, or company you’d like to launch one day, so you have a rich store of ideas by the time you get started


Collect bits of creative inspiration so you can quickly get into a flow state anytime you need to produce something new




Why is personal knowledge management the most important frontier in knowledge work?


You spend 11 hours per day consuming information of some kind; if you’re not capturing and cultivating it into a body of knowledge that is uniquely your own, most of that value is just going down the drain


Knowledge is the single most powerful force in the world today – if you don’t learn how to wield it effectively, you’re missing out on a whole epoch of history


Your success and impact is directly related to your ability to handle information effectively; it’s called the Information Age


If you’re paid to think for a living, you cannot afford to rely solely on your biological brain, which


Knowledge management calls for a division of labor between your biological brain and your technological brain. The explosion in human potential that specialization in labor unleashed in the Industrial Age will pale in comparison to what happens when we have specialization of minds


How much are you ever going to accomplish if you start each and every day with a blank slate, trying to do your best work on the spur of the moment? (Like trying to start a diesel engine in a frigid Alaskan winter)


We live in a time of abundant and free online resources to learn anything we want, but without a note-taking system, it just feels overwhelming and intimidating


Every moment spent trying to remember an idea is a moment spent not creating one


You have access to the best thinking of the world’s best thinkers – all you need to do is gather it, synthesize it, and put it into action and you can accomplish anything


“You’re not wasting your time consuming all the information you’re consuming, IF you do something with all that new knowledge. But you need a system…”


Notes are the “undo” button or “save game” for intellectual work, always giving you the option to step back and try again a different way




Why choose BASB over everything else that’s out there?


This isn’t yet another online course on how to be successful; it is the course that prepares you to benefit from all those other courses – how to gather and organize the knowledge you need to do anything of consequence


This isn’t a system that you have to implement perfectly to get any value from; even one or two of the methods taught can revolutionize your productivity




This course doesn’t assume you have any particular pre-existing knowledge or skills – only that you know the basics of using a computer


My digital notes can easily be saved, backed up, and exported to a different program if needed


I’ll generate a positive ROI on the time, energy, attention, money, etc.


“Capturing” information doesn’t have to mean overwhelm and obsessive “hoarding”


This course will be different than other online courses; I’ll be able to finish it and implement


This course doesn’t force you into a one-size-fits-all box, but equips you to develop a system adapted to your needs and goals


The methods taught in this course aren’t abstract and theoretical, but highly practical and useful in the real world


This course focuses on practical skills, but uses them as a gateway for personal growth and discovery around our relationship to knowledge and learning


The methods taught in this course weren’t developed in a laboratory or classroom, but in the day to day trenches of growing a knowledge-intensive business


This course isn’t a collection of disconnected “tips and tricks,” but a system that works in an integrated way to capture, organize, and share your ideas


This course doesn’t exhort you to work harder and do more, but to do more with less


This course isn’t about optimizing or perfecting yourself – it’s about optimizing an external system so you are free to imagine, create, or simply relax


This course doesn’t condemn technology and the internet as pure evils, but teaches a balanced approach to integrating them into creative work


This course isn’t about changing you and your habits – it’s about creating a safety net so things don’t fall through the cracks even if you forget about them


This course isn’t about forcing you to work in a certain way – it’s about providing a support system so you can create value no matter how you decide to work


This course is the only online course that combines practical technology skills with the bigger picture of how and why that technology should be used




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The Punk Strategy Guide to the Logical Thinking Process

In the 1980’s an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt shifted his attention to business. The most well known result of his efforts and studies was the Theory of Constraints (TOC). TOC originated in manufacturing, where it consistently resulted in production and profits that were previously considered unimaginable, impossible. However, it quickly spread to other businesses. For a good overview of the Theory of Constraints, see Tiago Forte’s series, Theory of Constraints 101, which introduces TOC in a series of 5-minute posts.

Towards the end of his career, Goldratt generalized the Theory of Constraints into an even more fundamental framework: The Logical Thinking Process (LTP). The Logical Thinking Process can be used to reliably understand and solve complicated and complex systems problems.

Goldratt introduces the Logical Thinking Processes in several of his books. I found these descriptions interesting and exciting, but not particularly helpful.The best introduction to the Thinking Processes that I’ve found is William Dettmer’s book, The Logical Thinking Process (notes). It’s a terrific book, and I’m extremely grateful Dettmer wrote it.

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Dettmer introduces the tools in the Logical Thinking Process one-by-one, and in great detail. He implies that for best results, you will use the Logical Thinking Process in sequence. For myself, I’ve found it useful to learn and use each tool individually. I hereby empower you to do the same. You can be the judge of which tool seems interesting or useful to you.

This article hopes to be an irreverent, stick-it-to-the-man introduction to the Logical Thinking Process. I’ll discuss the three tools that I’ve found most useful: conflict resolution diagrams, implementation trees, and problem trees. For each tool, I’ll give a simple, fast-and-loose introduction that aims to get you started sooner than later. By the end of this article, you’ll understand each tool and will be able to start using them in your own work life and beyond. If you’re interested in learning more after that, you’ll find that my notes and Dettmer’s book provide a more thorough introduction.

So get out your drum kit and your whiteboard markers: it’s time for a Punk Strategy guide to something so totally logical and not punk it’ll rock your cubicle.

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Making Diagrams

First, let me share a note on how to actually use the tools in the Logical Thinking Process. With each tool, you create visual diagrams to represent and clarify your own thinking, and to share it with others. You can use a variety of methods to make these diagrams. Analog methods like pen and paper or a marker and whiteboard work great. You can also use a tablet and stylus.

Finally, it’s worth considering using software. There are a few software options, but my favorite is Flying Logic, which was specially designed for using the Logical Thinking Process. It has built-in templates for each tool (which are slightly but not meaningfully different from Dettmer’s versions). Flying Logic’s killer feature is that your whole diagram adjusts on the fly as you add nodes and relationships:

Flying Logic strikes a sweet spot with its simplicity and ease of use. Unfortunately, Flying Logic is quite expensive – $269.00 – but a 30-day trial is available, and you may be able to get your workplace to cover the expense. If you like using software but need a more affordable option, Miro (formerly RealTime Board) is a good option – but it is still paid software, and doesn’t have the advantage of being designed specifically for using the Thinking Process. If all else fails, pen and paper work just fine – and they are Punk Approved!

Let’s dive in to learning about each of the three tools. I’ll start with the tool that has been far and away the most useful for me: conflict resolution diagrams. If you learn just one of the tools, learn this one.

Conflict Resolution Diagrams (Evaporating Cloud Diagrams)

Consider the following situation. You’re at the office, debating the merits of a proposed plan of a coworker. Whatever the topic – buy or don’t, sell or don’t, hire or fire – things are tense. You’ve already been arguing for twenty minutes now, and it feels like you’ve been over what to do again and again. Even worse, you feel frustrated and misunderstood, and you can’t imagine your colleague feels very understood, either. You’re at a complete impasse. It doesn’t seem like there’s any way forward. There’s no obvious solution, or even a compromise you can both agree to.

Then fast forward some amount of time. Maybe it’s ten minutes or two days later. Somehow, magically, confusingly, the situation has changed. A solution has emerged that makes everyone happy. You both feel lighter and happier, less alone, and more connected to each other. And the plan you’ve stumbled upon might just work.

Has this ever happened to you, where a seemingly unresolvable conflict suddenly became solved? These moments can save relationships, businesses – and perhaps even more importantly, our faith in humanity. They may seem like magic. And in a way, they are. The solution you find is something no one could have imagined or considered before the conversation.

It turns out that there’s a skill to arriving at these solutions. We can learn to recognize conflict, and improve our ability to listen to others within that conflict. Hearing both sides, we can become better and better at uncovering and questioning the assumptions latent in conflict. With that understanding, we can create novel solutions that meet everyone’s needs. In other words, it’s possible for everyone to be happy.

There are a growing number of frameworks and tools for developing conflict resolution skills. Some that I’ve come across include double cruxes and polarity mapping. These tools have different origins, strengths and weaknesses, but in each case, they share a suspicion of black-and-white thinking, an optimism that conflict can be removed, and that there is always a win-win solution.

Conflict resolution diagrams (originally termed evaporating clouds) are useful any time that you notice a seemingly unresolvable conflict in any aspect or area of your life. They are simple and quick to learn, but highly impactful.

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Read from right to left. Red boxes are wants or proposals which are in conflict. Blue boxes are needs. The green circle is the shared goal of both needs. This article uses colored boxes for explanatory purposes – you don’t need them in your diagrams.

Here’s how they work:

Notice you are in a conflict which seems tense or unresolvable.
Articulate what each side is saying. Usually, these are binary pairs: do X, or don’t do X (Y). Because these are logical opposites, you’re in a conflict – you can’t do X and not do X. Let’s take the example of hiring someone and not hiring someone.
Uncover what needs are behind each proposal: 1 and 2. Hiring someone means work will get done; not hiring someone saves money. Good news: 1 and 2, doing work and saving money aren’t in logical conflict!
Identify a goal that both needs meet, 0, such as profitability. Take a moment to notice everyone’s on the same team, with the same goal.
Discuss any assumptions present behind the alternate proposals (E.g., “we need workers to create our product”). List these off to the side beside each proposal.
Ask one or more of the following questions as generative prompts:

Is there a way to meet need 1, without doing X?
Is there a way to meet need 2, while doing X?

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I have made many, many conflict resolution diagrams. I’ve made them on whiteboards, I’ve made them in software, and I’ve made them in my head. They are my go to tool for any kind of conflict, whether it’s personal or professional, interpersonal or internal. Because they are related to conflict, the artifacts from these instances are often very private. They are also typically context-specific, and require a bit of background to make sense of them. That said, here’s a conflict resolution diagram that’s easy for me to share, because it’s personal but not very sensitive.

I have done over thirty week-long meditation retreats. One purpose of a meditation retreat is to keep a meditation technique going all day, every day. However, I typically have a conflict come up again and again, related to sleep and energy levels. There is usually time in the retreat schedule to rest and get some sleep. Usually, I’m tired, and want to get some sleep. However, I also want to make the best use of the retreat and keep my practice going. This tension caused me a fair amount of grief over the years, until I decided to describe it with a conflict resolution diagram:

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A conflict resolution diagram, describing the conflict between taking a nap, or not, on meditation retreat.

This diagram helped me to generate a number of solutions to this conflict:

Take a short nap
Take a caffeine nap (drink caffeine and then take a short nap, which I find relaxing and energizing)
Take a shower
Go for a walk
Do yoga/stretching
Switch techniques (which keeps things fun and interesting, and can also be relaxing, but maintains and can even increase momentum with the meditation practice)
Do meditation while lying down

This example is fairly specific to my life, but I picked it because it hit a sweet spot of being genuinely helpful to me, without being too private. Rest assured: conflict resolution diagrams have defused many of the most intense conflicts in my life in recent years, especially sizzling interpersonal conflict.

Problem Trees (Current Reality Trees)

Sometimes, you have one problem. In that case, traditional problem solving techniques that you are already familiar with work just fine. But at other times, you have many problems. This is exactly the kind of situation where Problem Trees, or CRT’s, come in handy.

The basic premise of this tool is that when there are multiple problems – what Dettmer calls undesirable effects or UDE’s – there is a casual relationship between them. There might be one or more vicious feedback loops where one problem causes another problem which reinforces the first problem. Ultimately, those undesirable effects can be tracked down to a small number of root causes or even one root cause. Those root causes are often subtle, non-obvious, and even counter-intuitive. That said, once you identify them, you’re in a better position to solve them. If you can find a solution for that core problem, you should be able to mitigate or remove the more surface problems. This is the reason behind the myth of a “silver bullet” – there is no one-size-fits-all solution, but if you can identify and solve the root cause of your problems, you’ll find that the problems disappear.

CRT’s have two kinds of nodes: causes and effects. Once you’ve worked out the causal relationships between the causes and effects related to the problems you’re seeing, you can identify one or more Root Causes: causes with few or no causes, which are potential candidates for adjustments and solutions.

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Read from bottom to top. Red boxes are undesirable effects. Black boxes are causes. Dark blue boxes are root causes.

Here’s how you make a CRT:

Pick a system which has problems – lots of them.
List all the problems you can think of (UDE’s)
List possible causes of those UDE’s
Examine causal relationships, connecting causes and effects in a causal chain
Identify one or more Root Causes which merit further consideration.
Sleep on it.

For me, CRT’s have a therapeutic effect. If a situation is at the point where I think to use one, it usually means there are a lot of problems, and I’m feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or worse. Above all, I don’t even know where to start. Just having a good map of the muddy territory often makes me feel better, and helps me identify one or two solutions to my problems which might just have a decent chance of making things better.

Implementation Trees (Pre-Requisite Trees)

I have a special term for a specific kind of work project: headaches. These projects have multiple steps, usually require the input and participation of several people, and tend to take place over weeks or months. They might also have several unknown variables. Often, these projects aren’t particularly hard, they’re just— stressful. The term “headache” feels like an apt description for this kind of complicated project.

If you have a project headache, implementation trees are like over-the-counter pain relief. They help you get from here to there, from headache to completed project.

Implementation trees have three kinds of nodes. First, they have a goal, like moving to a new city or holding a successful event. Along the way, there are milestones towards accomplishing that goal, like forwarding your mail or booking a venue. Lastly, there are sometimes obstacles holding up particular milestones, like not knowing what kind of apartment you want, or feeling overwhelmed about the many kinds of avocado dip there are available at your nearest grocery store.

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Read from left to right. Red boxes are challenges to overcome. Blue boxes are milestones. The green circle is the goal of the implementation tree.

Here’s how to make a implementation tree:

List your goal. Although Dettmer doesn’t account for this in the book, I’ve sometimes found it useful to split my trees into multiple goals. For example, when I’ve used implementation trees to move, I split the goal into three distinct stages: Move Out of Old Location, Move Into New Location, and Feel Settled in New Location.
List milestones needed to accomplish the goal.
Connect cause and effect relationships between milestones and the goal.
Add any challenges you’ll need to overcome to achieve specific milestones. Connect these to the relevant milestones.

Once you have a implementation tree, you’ll want to review and update it regularly as you accomplish milestones and learn about new tasks and obstacles. For important projects, I typically create a recurring task in my task manager to review the implementation tree. Depending on the pace of the project, I’ll set it to recur sometime between daily and weekly.

I also like to keep the trees neat and tidy, which, for me, means deleting milestones as they happen. This, however, makes it difficult to view the history of the project during or after its completion.

Recently, I used a implementation tree to plan an important event. As always, the trees made completing the project easier and more successful. I wanted to document the content of the tree for future reference, but ran up against my habit of trimming the trees as I go.

This diagram shows the key themes of this implementation tree, without getting into the nitty gritty details (or the dependent interconnections between branches). I’m betting that adapting those details to future circumstances will be easy, while remembering the themes and their rough timelines won’t be.

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A simplified implementation tree for planning an event. This lacks the details behind specific milestones, or the dependent interconnections between branches.

Hopefully, this image also gives you a sense of what a real implementation tree looks like. If you’re a Praxis Member, you can also look at the seventh post in the PARA series, Creating A Project Network, which describes how we used an implementation tree to migrate Praxis from Medium to WordPress.

When Tiago gave me the project to work on, he gave me three months to try to do it – the project had been stalled for months, and we weren’t even sure if it could even be done. After creating an implementation tree, I was able to complete the project in three weeks. The implementation tree helped me to parallelize and delegate certain aspects of the project, while prioritizing the next actions needed to move the whole project forward. It also helped me divide challenges into separate, smaller problems that could be tackled independently. All of that effort meant that the project was completed successfully, ahead of schedule, and with far less stress.

One last note: Dettmer discusses how you can convert implementation trees into Critical Chain Project Plans. This is a Shiny and Cool object for us project strategy nerds, but I’ve never found the need to actually do this. That said, if you find that you’re in a project with many collaborators and/or a firm deadline, you may find it useful to know about this option. In any case, making a implementation tree is a useful first step when faced with a “headache” at work.

Conclusion

We’ve covered three of the tools in the Logical Thinking Process: problem trees, conflict resolution diagrams, and implementation trees. When I learn a new thinking tool, I like to remember what conditions should trigger its use. So here’s a handy table for when to make use of your new Punk Strategy instruments:

Trigger
Tool


Many Problems
Problem Tree


Conflict, Arguments
Conflict Resolution Diagram


“Headaches”: complicated projects
Implementation Tree

Like a brand new punk-rocker, you’re probably not an expert in these tools, but you have enough to get started and put them into practice. Pick a tool that seems like it might be useful in your current work situation, and use it.

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Announcing the 2019 Summer of Learning

I’m very proud to announce the 2019 Summer of Learning, an integrated curriculum of two courses focused on modern writing. For the first time ever, we’re combining back-to-back live cohorts of Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage into an immersive program co-taught by Tiago Forte and David Perell.

In Building a Second Brain, we will teach you how to create a system for collecting and organizing your best ideas, insights, and research using a digital note-taking program. From July 3rd to 24th, the two of us will walk you through each step of setting up a digital note-taking program, creating notes to save interesting ideas, organizing them into actionable folders, and distilling them into easily retrievable knowledge assets.

The newly released version 8.0 of the course includes simplified setup guides, a new library of quick tutorials on how to capture any kind of information, new case studies, and official support for Microsoft OneNote along with Evernote. And for the first time, this cohort will focus specifically on writing, with new examples and exercises designed specifically for writers.

In Write of Passage, we will build on that system with a 7-part pathway to consistently publishing world-class writing. We will teach you how to set up a blog and email list, combine your notes into insightful thought pieces, and use them to build your reputation and connect with the people that matter most to your career. Live sessions will be held from Aug. 14 to Sept. 18.

We recently finished the first live cohort of 153 students for Write of Passage, with fantastic results. We’ve made a round of major improvements to both these courses, and now we’re ready to deliver the best curriculum on the planet on how to turn your ideas into impact.

Here is the schedule for the two-part curriculum:

Building a Second Brain: Live sessions every Wednesday, 10-11:30am PT; office hours via Slack every Friday, 9–10am PT)
Write of Passage: Live sessions every Wednesday and Monday, in the evenings ET

This offer is only available until July 2 at 11:59pm PT. Click below for more information and to enroll:

Enroll now

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.