Tiago Forte's Blog, page 45

June 24, 2018

P.A.R.A. VIII: Core Principles

Over the past year, I’ve seen P.A.R.A. implementations of all shapes and sizes. I’ve seen them from every corner of the globe, in languages I don’t even recognize, in at least a dozen different programs, and both digital and physical forms.


Over that time, seven core principles seem to have emerged as fundamental features. Whether you’ve taken on the particularities of the system I’ve described in this series, adopting these principles will seriously upgrade your digital organization.


Here they are, in no particular order:



Organize by actionability
Organize opportunistically
Move quickly, touch lightly
Controlled randomness
Complex systems have to be grown, not made,
Focus on outcomes
Fail gracefully
Shallow hierarchies


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Published on June 24, 2018 21:39

June 22, 2018

Hostwriting with Michael Fogleman

I recently had a conversation and interview with Michael Fogleman, who offers a service called Hostwriting that takes writers step by step through the process of writing their book.


Michael and his team offer coaching services, an online course, and an ebook production service, all centered around the idea that writing can be fun and easy when it’s centered around a conversation. Their approach is designed to get words on the page but also make you a better writer in the process.


Check out the recording below, and click here for a limited-time offer Michael has offered exclusively for Praxis members. You can also join the Hostwriting email list which includes a series of automated emails introducing you to the Hostwriting method in small chunks.



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Published on June 22, 2018 18:07

June 20, 2018

A Conversation with Ryan McCarthy of the Global Kindness Initiative

For last week’s Praxis Town Hall, I invited Ryan McCarthy of the Global Kindness Initiative to join us for a conversation about the connection between productivity, knowledge management, individual performance and larger issues like organizational change, socio-emotional awareness, and effective communication.


Ryan’s recent guest post Impact Cycles: Finding the Why Beyond the How provides a good introduction, and we expanded upon it significantly in this 90m interview, conversation, and Q&A. Visit their website above or email Ryan at ryan@kindus.org if you’d like to talk about coaching or training for yourself or your organization.



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

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Published on June 20, 2018 15:16

June 19, 2018

One Taste of Orgasmic Meditation

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Published on June 19, 2018 15:29

June 12, 2018

Forte Labs Coaching Program, Version 2.0

In January 2018, we launched the Forte Labs coaching program. Our goal was to inspire deep behavior change in our clients, by helping them remove the noise and simplify their approach to productivity so they could apply what they already know.


As we roll out the new-and-improved version 2.0 of our coaching program, we’d like to share what we learned from the first cohort, and what we’re changing:


You don’t need one linear progression

The original design of our coaching program was based on a deliberate practice model centered on our curriculum of online courses: Get Stuff Done Like a Boss, Design Your Habits, and Building a Second Brain.


We found that although drawing on this content helped, the step-by-step progression created a bottleneck. If one part of the progression wasn’t completed in full, the next session would be compromised with catch-up.


Tiago and I created a new coaching model to address this: the Digital Productivity Pyramid. The Pyramid is non-linear, in that you can navigate in any order, in any direction, and opportunistically based on your needs at any given time. Skip parts you’re stuck on, and jump right to the parts you need now.


[image error]


We can streamline, customize, and personalize our program to YOU

8 weeks was a big commitment for both parties. Although we delivered on that promise, we’ve decided that a month-to-month commitment works better for three reasons:



Two months proved to be too long of a commitment for a large number of our clients
Some clients achieved their goals in less than eight sessions. A month-to-month commitment forces us to focus on concrete, short-term goals that are more in line with our principles
A monthly recommitment creates a regular milestone for both of us to decide whether to continue working together. This forces us to reconsider our goals, make improvements, and surface feedback

We’ve also decided to use the first session to co-design each client’s coaching syllabus (thank you to Chris Sparks for this idea). This lets us deliver one of the most customized productivity coaching programs on the planet.


The most common issue for our clients was Clarification

If you look at the pyramid, one of the steps in Level 2 is Clarify. Clarification is the process of figuring out why you want to complete a given task, and the “next physical action” required. After you capture everything, you need to figure out what to do next.


Most people in our coaching program started with projects that were only partially completed, or weekly reviews without the proper actions. Most of the time, we didn’t see comprehensive project lists. We’ve developed a series of exercises and tools mapped to each “block” in the Pyramid, so that we can quickly recommend proven techniques to address these issues.


Over time we will develop a toolkit and manual explaining how to use it, perhaps eventually licensing this material to other coaches and companies.


Don’t come into the program trying to fix yourself – do come in with a project

Everyone wants to be faster and more productive, but that’s not the value of the program. Our courses can help with that, but the bigger, more powerful goal is to apply your new skills to achieve results. You’ll master these skills more completely when you apply them to a real project, and remain motivated to continue learning when you see the results.


Use our program to complete that side project you’ve had on the backburner forever, launch that blog or YouTube channel you’ve always thought about, or overcome an obstacle you’ve always encountered in the past. Instead of improving your productivity for its own sake, we’ll focus both our energies on an outcome.


New Focus: Project-based consulting  

We discovered our ideal client is someone who wants to build something, whether it’s creating content to build an audience, get a passion project off the ground, or build an online business to generate passive income. This isn’t a question of traditional 9-5 employees versus freelancers and entrepreneurs. We all have the ability to build new things to advance our interests and careers.


For version 2.0, we’ll focus on the common thread of creation. We will of course work on all aspects of productivity, but with the objective of setting you up for success in your project.


Introducing Version 2.0

Here the components we are adding to the new-and-improved coaching program:  


 


Weekly Review Co-Design: We will work with you to condense, speed up, and automate your digital life into a weekly habit. This critical weekly ritual saves you time doing administrative work, sets you up each week with a clear focus, and provides a context for checking in with your values, goals, and purpose on a regular basis.


 


Project Co-Design: Whether you’ve never designed a project before, or you’ve just gotten stuck, we help you break it down step-by-step so that you can live your life, instead of spending it project planning.


Streamlined Onboarding: This will help us design your productivity habits. We will perform a personality profile and look at how you currently spend your time before your first formal session, so we can get a running start. Our intention is to make the live sessions more about taking action, and less about information gathering.


New coaches: We’ve onboarded Clay Nichols and Chinh Pham to our coaches roster. They bring to the table extensive experience with coaching, self-improvement, productivity, and knowledge management, and will help us continue to expand the impact and range of the program.


New Price – $689 for four weekly coaching sessions: The new pricing reflects our commitment to produce tangible outcomes on an accelerated timeline. It includes four coaching sessions spread out over 4 weeks, with the option to renew at any point.


Visit the coaching page for more information and to apply, or our original announcement for more on our approach and philosophy. Send any questions to coaching@fortelabs.co.


Subscribe to Praxis, our members-only blog exploring the future of productivity, for just $10/month. Or follow us for free content via email, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or YouTube.
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Published on June 12, 2018 11:29

June 10, 2018

The Digital Productivity Pyramid

Imagine if we had a learning curriculum for modern knowledge work.


This curriculum would reliably produce elite performers, training them in the fundamental skills required to thrive in the digital age. It would impart concrete skills that could be generalized to any kind of knowledge work, not just one discipline or career path.


In our work at Forte Labs, we’ve worked with thousands of people from all over the world on improving their productivity using digital tools. We’ve noticed that people often adopt new tools to address challenges they’re facing at work. The shiny new thing introduces novelty that seems to help for a short time. But it soon becomes just another layer of complexity, exacerbating the original problem.


We’ve taken our learnings from the past few years, and especially what we’ve learned in our coaching program, to create the Digital Productivity Pyramid. It provides a framework for any stage of a knowledge worker’s learning journey, showing them where to focus next.


[image error]


The Pyramid shows how higher-order productivity skills build upon and extend lower-order skills. It shows how each skill can be leveraged using a particular kind of digital technology, which is our focus.


Our hope is that this framework will guide not only our community, but anyone seeking to piece together the vast number of learning resources now available on new ways of working. It represents a learning curriculum based not on standardized testing or graduation requirements, but on the real demands of the 21st century economy.


Core Principles
1. Non-linear

The key breakthrough we needed to develop this model was that digital productivity is not a linear learning process. You don’t learn one skill at a time, in strict order, mastering one completely before moving on to the next.


It’s more like a spiral staircase, ascending through increasingly advanced versions of the same core skills. I would estimate that 90% of full-time knowledge workers are proficient in level 1, while less than 1% are proficient at level 5.


2. Skills + technologies

Each level of the Pyramid is a combination of human skills augmented or extended by some form of digital technology: hardware, software, or online platforms.


These skills range from very meta (noticing what you notice), to very actionable (using a text expander). Pairing each of them with a digital tool gives them scale and leverage.


3. Emergence

Each level emerges from the one below it, either extending or abstracting the same core principles. Each level also makes use of the time and attention freed up by the level below.


Building up each level involves an initial design/setup stage, during which key systems and habits are put in place, followed by a longer optimization/customization stage.


4. Information flows

The blocks within each level are ordered from left to right, not in chronological order, but in terms of which direction information flows. The actual behaviors involved with each skill may take place in any order, but are generally organized to process information from one state to another.


Let me briefly explain what each level means.


Level 1: Digital Fluency

[image error]


Includes:



Basic computer usage
Web browsing
Basic email usage
Keyboard shortcuts
Digital calendars
Scheduling apps
Read Later apps
Inbox Zero
Password management
Speed reading
Time tracking
Text Expanders

Digital literacy refers to the most basic familiarity with computers, such as how to visit a webpage or create a text document. Level 1 of the Digital Productivity Pyramid extends this concept to digital fluency.


Mastering computer skills is a learning process that never ends. Even the most advanced users continue to learn new keyboard shortcuts, discover new features of their devices, and optimize their settings.


We’ve placed these core capabilities at the bottom of the Pyramid because everything else depends on them



Focusing on your actionable tasks (Level 2) will involve a lot of friction if you don’t have a dedicated place for reading online articles (Level 1)
Building routines (Level 3) will be very challenging without a reliable digital calendar (Level 1)
You’ll have trouble finding the time to organize your files (Level 4) if your email inbox is out of control (Level 1)

Gaps in high-level performance can often be traced back to weaknesses in these core capabilities. Small bits of friction at lower levels can add up to major frustrations when trying to excel at higher levels.


Focusing on Level 1 skills will strengthen all the levels above it, which is why our coaching program starts here. This might include building a solid morning routine (Level 3), redesigning your Weekly Review (Level 2), or setting up a text expander or password manager (Level 1).


Relevant Praxis articles:



The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps
Case Study: Alex Hardy’s Successful Quest to Conquer Inbox Zero

Level 2: Task Management and Workflow

[image error]


Includes:



Capture: collect what has your attention
Clarify: decide what it means
Organize: put it where it belongs
Reflect: review what you’ve collected
Engage: take action

Task management is essentially “advanced to-do lists.” Popular digital task managers include Omnifocus, Things, Wunderlist, Todoist, 2Do, and Toodledo.


A workflow is simply the sequence of steps information moves through, from first being identified as actionable, to completion of a task.


Although there are many ways to create a task management workflow, there is one that stands above the rest: David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) method. The five stages of GTD are so fundamental to how actionable information is captured and managed to completion that we’ve used them to label this level:



Incomplete capturing (i.e. writing down) of your tasks will absolutely become a bottleneck to any ambitious project you want to take on, as decisions and commitments get lost
Trying to complete tasks that haven’t been properly clarified (i.e. formulated in a way that makes them actionable and outcome-oriented) is difficult and frustrating, since it won’t be clear why you’re doing them
The most comprehensive collection of potential tasks is useless if not organized in a way that they can be quickly identified and acted on
Strategic decision making depends on dedicated reflection time, to make sense of all the information being collected
And of course, all of these tasks amount to excessive record-keeping if not actually engaged with and acted on

We address task management and workflow Get Stuff Done Like a Boss, our video-based course that guides people through the process of building a GTD-based workflow.


Relevant Praxis articles:



The Annual Review is a Rearchitecture
The Monthly Review is a Systems Check
The Weekly Review is an Operating System
One-Touch to Inbox Zero
A Conversation with David Allen on Quantifying Productivity

Level 3: Habit Formation and Behavior Change

[image error]


After an initial setup period, each one of the five principles from Level 2 must be put on autopilot to have their full impact. The key is to adopt a critical, automatic habit for each one:



Capture => Collection Habit
Clarify => Next Physical Action
Organize => Project List
Reflect => Weekly Review
Engage => Contexts/priorities

These habits allow the principles of task management to recede into the background, taking up less and less attention over time. By understanding the basic principles, we can find original, creative ways of customizing them to suit our individuals needs and preferences.


Level 3 includes not just forming new habits, but extinguishing or adjusting existing habits. This requires examining underlying personal narratives, incentives, and patterns thats drive our behavior, using psychological and design techniques to reimagine them. We lead people through this process in our course Design Your Habits.


Relevant Praxis articles:



The Topology of Attention
The Inner Game of Work: Focus, Desire, and Working Free
The World Beyond Your Head: How Distraction Shapes Who We Are
A Theory of Unlearning: Ecstasis, Anamnesis, Kenosis
Experimental Habit Formation
Meta-Skills, Macro-Laws, and the Power of Constraints

Level 4: Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

[image error]


Includes:



Progressive summarization
P.A.R.A.
Workflow Strategies

Whereas Level 2 is about taming the flow of information related to actions, Level 4 is about the flow of knowledge.


Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a set of skills and tools for an individual to capture, organize, and deploy the knowledge they accumulate while completing their work. It draws from diverse fields such as digital archiving, process management, and project management, and includes software programs for e-reading, digital note-taking, word processing, cloud storage, and others.


Personal knowledge management is the topic of Building a Second Brain, which helps people unlock their creative potential using digital note-taking software.


Relevant Praxis articles:



Series on Progressive Summarization
Series on the P.A.R.A. Method
Masters of Creative Note-Taking: Luhmann and Da Vinci
From Multitasking to Multiplexing: 5 Steps to Building a Personal Productivity Network
Getting Things Done + Personal Knowledge Management
How to Use Evernote for Your Creative Workflow
Tagging is Broken

Case studies:



Second Brain Case Study: Teaching Progressive Summarization in an Undergraduate Classroom
Building a Second Brain in Emacs and Org-Mode

Level 5: Just-in-Time Project Management

[image error]


As working professionals, we don’t have time to consume a body of knowledge upfront and then regurgitate it for a test, as in school. Professional education has to take place right alongside daily work. We have to build the plane (and learn to fly it) as it’s taking off.


For PKM to be sustainable, it needs to directly enable the execution of real projects. That’s why Just-in-Time Project Management is the capstone of the Pyramid. The knowledge we are collecting and managing needs to have an immediate return to be justified, instead of only far in the future.


While you don’t need to build levels 1-4 before starting to work on real projects, the scale and ambition of the projects you can successfully execute is constrained by the structural integrity of your Pyramid. The taller the building you want to erect, the deeper and stronger your foundation must be.


Relevant Praxis articles:



Series on Just-in-TIme Project Management
Mood as Extrapolation Engine: Using Emotions to Generate Momentum
Bending the Curves of Productivity

Case studies:



How I Write Long-Form Blog Posts
Riding the Writing Wave: How to Improve Your Writing, Get Rid of Writer’s Block, and Accelerate Your Output
Personal Sprints: Applying Design Thinking to Your Life
Second Brain Case Study: Researching and writing a 10,000-word academic article

The Next Frontier

We are hard at work on the next frontier – making Just-in-Time Project Management as coherent and teachable as the other levels. Read our ongoing series on Just-In-Time Project Management for the latest developments.


In the meantime, we could really use your feedback and suggestions as we continue to refine and expand the Digital Productivity Pyramid framework. Comment below, in the Forte Labs Slack, or via email at tiago@fortelabs.co.


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Published on June 10, 2018 22:16

Just-In-Time PM #20: Speed as a Capability

In Part 19, I argued that continuously finding new sources of motivation was the most important challenge for knowledge workers, and that the best way to get started was to generate momentum through a series of small wins.


Although Progressive Summarization can bootstrap you to a minimum level of motivation, at some point you do need to go from faking it to making it. The mind can be tricked, but not fooled for long.


Our challenge goes from motivation to speed: how do you keep the wins coming fast and hard?


Throughout this series, I’ve emphasized again and again the critical importance of speed. Intermediate packets, downscoping, convergence, placeholding, small batches, and other techniques are all designed to help us maintain momentum.


Why is moving quickly so deeply important?



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Published on June 10, 2018 13:38

Just-In-Time PM #19: Explosive Inspiration

In Part 18, I introduced the idea that our states of mind come and go in “motivational waves,” and that we should try to surf them instead of forcing them to conform to our will.


Now let’s go deeper into what these motivational states entail, and how we can use them to our advantage.


A “motivational state” is more colloquially known as a “mood.” Moods usually have a negative connotation when it comes to productivity. Feeling “moody” is generally not considered a desirable thing while working. Often we don’t feel “in the mood” to do something we know we have to do.


But what is the function of moods in humans? What role do they play in helping us adapt and survive?


An intriguing answer is suggested by this paper: that the function of moods is to create momentum in the mind.



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You can choose to support Praxis with a subscription for $10 each month or $100 annually.


Members get access to:

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Members-only comments and responses
Early access to new online courses, ebooks, and events
A monthly Town Hall, hosted by Tiago and conducted via live videoconference, which can include open discussions, hands-on tutorials, guest interviews, or online workshops on productivity-related topics

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Published on June 10, 2018 08:28

June 8, 2018

Just-In-Time PM #18: Motivational Waves

In Part 17, I argued that unique states of mind are the most powerful resource available to knowledge workers. But these states are difficult to reproduce on demand, and come and go unpredictably.


Our challenge becomes clear: how do we capture the value from a series of valuable, yet fleeting mental states?


Let’s take the following states of mind for example:



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Published on June 08, 2018 13:48

Impact Cycles: Finding the Why Beyond the How

You’re a fast runner. You’ve trained for years, worked with great coaches, studied the best techniques and workouts, and you’ve got all the best equipment. You’ve mastered your skill.


The field you’re currently running through, however, is extremely foggy. You can barely see more than a few steps ahead of you, and because of that it’s hard to tell where you’re going. You can avoid rocks and potholes with impressive agility, but your overall progress is unclear. You’re tracking all sorts of metrics – your speed, your technique, the number of steps taken – but you still don’t seem to be making any real progress.


Here’s the problem: it doesn’t matter how fast you’re going if you’re running in circles. You need not just a path, but a destination. Not just a How, but a Why.


The World of How

We live in a world of How. How to make more, do more, be more. How to “win.”


But in a world of How, we rarely stop to ask “Why?”


Why are we doing all this? Why should we care about the results? What are we winning and why is it important to win it? The Why gives us our direction, our context, our purpose.


We are, both as individuals and as a society, more empowered to create impact than at any previous point in human history. But just like our metaphorical runner moving extremely fast through blind circles, there is a world of difference between Uninformed Impact – powerful but directionless moves without consideration of the surrounding systems and environments – and what we at the Global Kindness Initiative (GKI) call Informed Impact – moving in line with our own values, capabilities, and surroundings.


In order to have truly sustainable impact, we need something else. We need to understand not just the mechanics of how to create change, but how our work connects to the larger world, the direction it’s going, and the interrelation between the two.


We need both the How and the Why.


The Evolution of Maslow’s Hierarchy 

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is one of the most universal and influential models of human development ever developed. But the traditional presentation of a hierarchical pyramid has over time given way to a more nuanced model, like the one below.


[image error]


Just because we are pursuing higher goals, that doesn’t mean our core needs can be ignored. On the other hand, focusing on our basic needs doesn’t exclude seeking a higher purpose.


Maslow based his theory on a simple premise: it’s difficult to advance to the next stage of personal awareness and development until the needs of the current one are met.


As more of our basic needs are met, we have more capacity to devote mental energy towards our higher needs: identifying purpose, meaning, and impact.


This internal process is mirrored externally as we seek to create effective, powerful, and wide-reaching impact on the world around us.


What is Impact?

Impact is the effect you have on the space around you – be that physical, intellectual, or emotional. You can have impact within a broader system like a career or a relationship, or you can have impact with the application of a tool or technique in a very specific environment.


The amount of impact you have is limited by your ability to be aware of, navigate, and influence that space. At GKI we use a five-stage model which describes the process of maximizing impact within a system, which we call the Impact Cycle:



Exploration
Competence
Mastery
Identifying Purpose
Informed Impact

[image error]


The Impact Cycle follows the progression needed to create lasting and effective change within a given environment, be it internally or externally:


Exploration

When we first enter a new space, we know very little about the landscape. We need to try new things, with the understanding that they may not always go as planned. The Exploration Stage should be inquisitive and open; a beginner’s mind. Your first steps are a long way from your first marathon, but every bit as necessary.


Competence

As we begin to familiarize ourselves with the rough outline of the new environment, we start to learn how it works. But we are still finding our way, and we might still make a lot of mistakes. There may be larger interactions, shortcuts, and networks that we don’t yet see. Our ability to create impact is just starting to develop, although it may often manifest as Uninformed Impact.


Mastery

After enough iterations of Competence, we achieve Mastery. We have performed the needed tasks enough times that they have become routine. We no longer think simply about how to do the tasks and subroutines of the job, but how to do them well, with skill and efficiency.


So now what? So far, we have only mastered the How.


Much like Maslow’s Hierarchy, there is a a natural shift towards higher-order questions about the broader context we are acting within.


Now that we have developed this powerful engine, we must decide where to send it. Regardless of how great our mastery of a skill, without informed direction we cannot have real impact.


The missing piece is identifying our Purpose.


How is what you’re currently doing connected to your larger values? What larger trends are you contributing toward, and how do they interrelate with the thousands of micro actions you take in your daily life? How is what you’re doing now ultimately connected to who you are and who you want to be?


It is only with these two things, Mastery of a skill and Purpose in applying it, that you can have true Impact.


Our work at the Global Kindness Initiative focuses on helping organizations and individuals successfully navigate these transitions and maximize their ability to positively and sustainably impact the systems and environments around them.


We offer a variety of workshops as well as consulting and coaching packages around Diversity & Inclusion, Restorative Conflict Resolution, Mediation, Impact Coaching, and Strategic Communication for both individuals and teams. We deeply believe in the transformative power of aligning one’s skills and resources with their values and direction, and in the absolutely critical need for it at this time in our nation’s history.


With powerful organizational tools like P.A.R.A. and Just-In-Time Project Management to supercharge your implementation, along with powerful framing tools like Impact Coaching and Strategic Communication, we can create a vision for a new generation of skilled, connected, motivated, and empowered leaders ready to change the world in profound and beautiful ways.


Register for a live discussion with Ryan and Tiago on Wednesday, June 13 at 9am Pacific. I’ll interview Ryan about his work at GKI, and we’ll discuss the connections between productivity, knowledge management, social transformation, and a healthy, functioning democracy.

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Published on June 08, 2018 12:39