Tiago Forte's Blog, page 51

A Skeptic Goes to the Landmark Forum

Note: The views expressed on this blog are my personal views and are not the views of Landmark.

In September of 2016 I completed a weekend seminar called the Landmark Forum in San Francisco.

It took three close friends, recommending it to me in three separate conversations, to get me there. I was very skeptical that a self-help seminar had anything to teach me, but decided it couldn’t hurt to check out one of the most popular training programs in the world. I have a training business, and I figured I could write it off as competitive research, if nothing else.

My first experiences with Landmark were off-putting, to put it charitably. The people who greeted me the first morning were suspiciously happy. The marketing was comically corny, models in stock photos smiling back from shiny brochures.

Walking into a room of about 150 people, I was greeted with the following statements written on a big poster:

In the forum, you will bring forth the presence of a New Realm of Possibility for yourself and your life.

Inside this New Realm of Possibility:

— The constraints the past imposes on your view of life disappear. A new view of life emerges

— New possibilities for being call you powerfully into being

— New openings for action call you powerfully into action

— The experience of being alive transforms

I was confused. I’d never encountered so many words with so little concrete meaning. I wrote them in my notebook to decipher later. Despite the initial worrying signs, I decided I would go along for the ride for three days and an evening.

Day 1

The first “distinction” (or lesson) we learned was “stories.” It’s a familiar concept — that we create narratives to explain our life experiences. And then we forget that we were the ones that created those interpretations, and we live as if they are real.

These stories become the lenses through which we see, hear, and feel. Anything that confirms the story we latch on to as confirming evidence, and anything that doesn’t, we often dismiss. This pattern of seeing what we want to see and hearing what we want to hear is called having “blindspots.” What we miss because of our blindspots makes us suffer, holds us back from what we want in life, and suppresses our freedom, power, self-expression, and peace of mind (the four benefits that graduates of the program voted were the most impactful on their lives).

As I said, it’s a very familiar concept. In fact, everything I heard in the Forum was familiar. I can’t think of a single thing that I hadn’t heard before in a book, a course, or a talk of some kind.

But here is where Landmark is different — the conceptual lesson is just a starting point, not the main event. It is distilled down to the absolute minimum required to take action, instead of endlessly elaborated on. The Forum is designed to bring these concepts from “the stands,” where we sit passively as observers, and onto “the court” of our lives, where they become real.

The facilitator invited participants to go up to the mic with questions, comments, and challenges, and the stories started flowing. I was struck by how easy it was for me to see the stories of others, and how apparently difficult it was for them to see their own.

One woman had a story that her parents had abandoned her, working late every night at the convenience store they owned. After just a few gentle questions from the facilitator, she uncovered another perspective: that her parents had worked so hard for so many years only to provide for her and her sisters, who they loved more than anything else in the world.

Committed to her own interpretation, she’d resented them for years. Besides the distance in their relationship, there was a clear impact on her: every time she was on the verge of a promotion as a corporate executive in the pharmaceutical industry, she pulled back, because “committing too much” to her work raised the specter of “abandoning” her own kids.

Again and again, people revealed the powerful filters they had placed on their experience of life. One young woman sobbed as she recalled her father accusing her of shoplifting a small item at a grocery store when she was 9 years old. This one incident, burned in her memory as a child, outweighed years and years of her father’s care in her mind, informing her view of him as unloving and uncaring.

In paired sharing, I talked to a young man my own age who had been the youngest of 9 children, and the only one who hadn’t been physically abused. His story was that of the survivor — that he didn’t deserve to be spared, and was somehow culpable for what had happened to his siblings. Even after a brilliant career at some of Silicon Valley’s most prestigious companies, that story weighed on him. He was still living out the self-sacrificial script of a martyr, trying to make up for an imaginary debt he thought he owed.

We live our lives looking for evidence that our stories are true. We want to be right more than we want to be free. More than we want close and intimate relationships. If the story is “I’m not good enough,” then we’ll either try a bunch of things, all the while looking for evidence that the story is true; or we’ll try nothing, assuming it’s true. In either case, the story is confirmed.

By the end of day one, I was beginning to suspect I might have some stories of my own.

Maybe.

Day 2

This period of my life was a hard time. After three years of hard work on Forte Labs, I had the business of my dreams. And the business of my dreams was failing.

I had turned away from online courses after my second course, the first one I’d created with original content, hadn’t met sales expectations. The “story” I had made up to interpret that experience was that “online teaching simply isn’t profitable.” And that it especially isn’t profitable for me.

I began to pursue a series of other projects, taking on whatever I could to survive. The money was actually pretty good, and the clients prestigious, but it was missing what I loved the most — working directly with people on real challenges in their lives, especially people that couldn’t afford high-priced consulting and training.

I began to sink slowly into depression, using work to forget and to distract myself. I withdrew from my communities, from my friends, and even from my family, racing faster and faster toward goals I was sure would provide the satisfaction I was seeking. My health deteriorated, but I couldn’t find the motivation to change my lifestyle. I withdrew further, telling myself that I would return to my social life once things got better.

I remember one day walking to a local coffee shop when the cabin fever of working at home got unbearable. Walking up to the cashier to order my drink, I felt an intense wave of social anxiety, something I had never experienced before. I had become afraid of people. I had become afraid that someone would see how dysfunctional my life had become. I feared that they would point out what I deeply suspected — that I was a hypocrite, selling visions of professional success while my own life fell to pieces.

So I worked harder. I did more research, put in more hours, polished every nook and cranny of my online presence to a bright gloss. As bad as it was, I couldn’t face the alternative: that the business of my dreams had failed. It felt like if that happened, that I would have no future. Turning away from what was supposed to be the pinnacle of success, the only option I could see for myself was work that was less fulfilling, less interesting, and less rewarding.

As you can probably tell, this was all a big story. Not the lived experience, which was as real as anything. But the drama, the stark tradeoffs, the black-and-white thinking. It is when life becomes dull, restrictive, and threatening that you know you’re living in a story, not reality.

I sat in the Forum looking for a breakthrough that would help me bring my business back to life. And instead, I got my father, front and center in my mind. I kept trying to push the thought aside. My relationship with my father was fine.

Wasn’t it?

And slowly, as we talked and shared, the layers pealed back. I had a story that I was uniquely messed up, because of how my father had raised me. He had been too harsh, too judgmental, had failed to listen and to support me growing up. Because of that, my story went, I couldn’t have the self-confidence, self-acceptance, and happiness I craved.

This was, we soon learned, a “racket.” We blame others for things that happened in the past, making our case look as plausible and sympathetic as possible. We maintain lists of all the things our parents, our ex-’s, our former friends, and our ex-bosses did so, so wrong. We collect mountains of evidence supporting these judgments. But we are always innocent in our stories, victims of their inexcusable behavior.

The second distinction, of rackets, is that this blaming is often a pretense. It’s a way of concealing what’s really going on behind the scenes: we are getting a payoff. We get to be right (or make them wrong). We get to dominate them (or avoid their domination). We get to justify our behavior (or invalidate their behavior). We get to win (or make them lose). The ultimate purpose of a racket is to avoid responsibility.

A man blames his ex-wife for the failure of their marriage. But it is a pretense to justify his own less-than-stellar behavior in the relationship. A woman blames her lack of decisiveness for her business troubles, but it’s a pretense to protect her from ever having to take a real risk, to put something on the line (yes, you can have a racket against yourself). A recent college graduate blames the job market for not offering opportunities, but it’s just a distraction from the lack of preparation he hasn’t taken responsibility for (rackets don’t have to be against specific people). By selectively inflating the wrongdoing of others, our own responsibility is diminished in comparison.

The way out of the racket, with its sweet, juicy payoff, is to clearly see the cost. There is always a cost — love or affinity, vitality or wellbeing, satisfaction or self-expression. The cost ultimately boils down to the experience of aliveness. Over time, the payoff gets less and less enticing, and the cost grows steadily worse. Eventually we become like drug addicts, giving away much of what makes life worth living to buy even the tiniest amounts of self-justification.

I called my father, and followed the step-by-step format that we were coached through. I told him what I had been pretending: that he had “messed me up” and therefore my problems in life were his fault. I told him what that façade had been designed to conceal: that I had not taken responsibility for many areas of my own life, including my relationship to him as a son and a friend.

I told him the impact this had had on me: hiding things in my life that I didn’t think he’d approve of, silently judging him because I didn’t think he could handle what I had to say, avoiding rooms he was in because I couldn’t feel at ease with him around. The impact was that I had nothing more than a “cordial” relationship with the most important and influential man in my life.

I told my father that I loved him, with complete sincerity for perhaps the first time in my life. I told him that he had done a good job raising me into a man. And I thanked him for being the source of my life.

Saying these words was incredibly difficult. I had to choke them out through tears. As I said what I had to say, I had a vivid image in my mind of handing over my most precious treasure chest. My resentments and justifications stored inside like prized jewels. As I pushed it over, the chest opened, and there was nothing but trash inside.

Saying what I had to say, it felt like a thousand pound weight being lifted off my chest. I understood at that moment the saying, “Resentment is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” You don’t stop resenting for their sake. You stop it for your own sake.

Day 3

I’m not going to give away what happens on Day 3. I’ve tried, and it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever without having lived it. The Forum is a personal discovery, unique to each person, not a concept to be dissected and analyzed.

By day three, you have the foundation and the language as a group to move at a breathtaking pace. The paradigm-shifting moments I had looked forward to having every year or two with my own efforts happened about every hour.

I got clear that what was getting in my way was my constant desire to change. Trying to fix myself and everyone around me, I was blinded to how perfect we already are. Here and now, not someday or eventually.

I got clear that the only constraints I face are the ones in my stories. And I am the one telling them. I am the source of the language that shapes my experience, which means I can change it. I get to say how my life goes, and what kind of life is available to me.

Walking out of that conference room, I felt unleashed.

Day 4

I walked away from the Landmark Forum with a whole new relationship with my father as my biggest breakthrough.

It’s been almost a year and a half, and it’s only gotten better since then. He’s no longer a threat to me, no longer an angry and closed-minded curmudgeon I have to contain and avoid. He’s a friend and a partner in life. We can tell each other anything, even on topics where we don’t agree.

That would have been a pretty good result from a weekend, but what happened next took me by surprise.

I went back to my business, and everything started going differently. Meetings I’d dreaded started turning into meaningful conversations. Conversations that I hadn’t known how to navigate started turning into opportunities. Opportunities that I hadn’t been able to see before started turning into projects.

The lens I’d held up for my father had also been skewing my view of everyone else. I no longer sat down with an executive or a training manager already on the defensive, already expecting them not to like what I had to say. I actually started getting curious about what was going on over there, with them, instead of circling around my own head. I was able to see people simply as people, no better or worse than me, but with a need I could help with.

Over the next few months, I rebuilt my life. I opened myself up to my communities, which had been waiting there all along. I expressed what I was going through to my girlfriend, my friends, and my family, who in retrospect, had always been listening. I looked at my business with clearer eyes, letting go of projects that I’d taken on to reinforce my ego or avoid failure.

Landmark offers a whole curriculum of courses, on everything from communication to integrity to money to leadership. You get to choose your own adventure. A couple months later I took the Advanced Course, the followup to the Forum. While the Forum is about freeing you from your past, the Advanced Course has you design a new future.

The day after I finished the Advanced Course, on Monday morning at 8am, I walked into a Whole Foods cafe in Oakland and wrote out this note. This was the future I had designed in the seminar. It was to be a new online course, on note-taking and personal knowledge management, that I’d been thinking about for several years but had never been able to get started on.

I could see now the story that had been running in the background: that my success depended on me doing everything perfectly. This story had me endlessly revising and polishing my writing and my products, never convinced that they were quite good enough. It had me doing every last little thing myself, not asking for and sometimes even refusing offers of help (“They won’t do it right”). I had the experience of working harder and harder to try and “catch up” to an impossible standard I’d set for myself, but feeling like I was falling further and further behind. The piling debt and unpaid taxes weren’t the worst consequence of my unyielding perfectionism — it was the experience of myself as constantly stressed, anxious, self-critical, and resigned that it would ever change.

I decided to write a new story for myself: that I could work closely with others, with all the vulnerability, risk, and messiness that entails. I decided that people would no longer be threats to me, but rather the most precious opportunities in my business and my life.

I got to work on my new course that day, but in a completely different way than I had before — holing up for weeks and weeks of solitary work confined in my apartment. The first thing I did was ask 10 of my followers to work with me to develop it, meeting with me for 1 hour every week for 6 weeks. Each week I would concentrate on producing just one unit of material, and showing it to them for feedback. The perfectionism that had kept content development clenched tightly in my iron fist was, simply, gone. Those six weeks included some of the most gratifying, collaborative conversations of my career.

Even after 6 weeks, I only got to about 50% completion. There were too many unknowns to be able to make all the decisions upfront, and I needed to call on another group for help. I decided to start selling the course before it was finished, and at a price ten times the usual one: $500 instead of $50. I remember sitting at my computer as sales began, terrified that no one would even visit the page, much less pay me that much money for an incomplete product.

But 50 people took a bet on me. With their help, I completed the course, finalizing each week’s content based on their real-time feedback. I was open and transparent about what was missing and where I wasn’t sure. And not only did I not die from revealing something imperfect — my customers unanimously agreed that “seeing how the sausage was made” taught them as much as the course itself.

I’d discovered a new “way of being” — connected, vulnerable, fearless, generous. And that is far more valuable than any habit, tactic, or framework.

Today

That new future has become my present. I did three more cohorts of the course, making huge improvements each time. I hired a course manager and later, coaches, making it into a world-class training for a new way of working. In 2017 I nearly quadrupled the previous year’s income, while having far more fun, making many new friends and collaborators, and staying connected to my body, my communities, and my purpose in the world.

One year later, Building a Second Brain has become a movement. We launched a self-paced version, which will allow many times the number of people to learn the material. I have an editor, a lawyer, and a group of reviewers supporting me as I turn it into a book. I work with a decentralized, remote team of 4 outstanding people, driving toward our goal of transforming how people work.

How can I explain how all this happened? I had all the content, all the skills, all the tools, all the contacts, and all the knowledge I needed. There was no fundamental insight I had to have, or new framework with step-by-step instructions. The Forum isn’t about giving you something new — it’s about taking away what’s in the way.

I’ve become a passionate advocate of the work that Landmark is doing. I know of nothing that comes remotely close in its ability to change lives in so short a time. About a dozen of my friends and family have taken it since then. Every one has come back to thank me for sharing with them one of the most meaningful experiences of their lives (especially the skeptical ones).

The people I’ve met there have become some of my closest friends, and more recently, collaborators. I’ve seen personal miracles time and time again, from nothing more than having conversations about our lives and what’s important to us. I’ve had to question everything I thought I knew about humans, and how much can change in how short a timeframe. That questioning has been challenging at times, but it has left me with a vastly expanded sense of what is possible.

I’ve waited a long time to write about my experiences at Landmark. The ones I’ve included here are just a drop in the bucket. I waited to tell this story because I wanted to see if the results would last. I wanted to be sure it wasn’t just a temporary emotional high, before putting my reputation behind it.

At this point, I am absolutely convinced that it works, that it lasts, and that this is some of the most important education going on in the world today. I recommend the Forum above my own courses and programs. The ability to see past your own interpretations and take full responsibility for your experience are absolutely fundamental to changing how you work, but go far beyond productivity. The work that Landmark does enables so many kinds of learning, growth, and change, my own work included.

There are a lot of personal growth experiences I’ve benefited from, as I’ve written about before on this blog. But making a real impact on this world is going to require something different. Most people can’t take 10 days off for a silent meditation retreat, or spend thousands of dollars for a week at Burning Man. Most will not go on Ayahuasca excursions in Peru or float in sensory deprivation immersion tanks. Those are priceless experiences, but we need something more integrated into daily life. Something that happens in normal, everyday conversations and relationships, and that we can participate in after work and on weekends. And that is the Landmark Forum.

I’m hosting a live Zoom call next week for anyone who wants more information. I’ll answer any questions you have and share more of my experience, if you’d like. I’ll invite several other graduates to attend as well, both people I’ve met there, and people from my life that have taken it on my recommendation.

Register here to receive a calendar invite for a Zoom call on February 15 from 9–10am Pacific

The best way to see what the Forum is about is to attend a 3-hour introduction. Visit this page for more information and to find local times and addresses.

I especially recommend attending a “Special Evening,” a larger introduction led by a Forum Leader periodically in major cities. These sessions are facilitated by the people who actually lead the Forum, and use many of the same formats and distinctions, so you can get a sense of what it’s like.

The next Special Evening in San Francisco is on Feb. 21 (7–10pm at 75 Broadway). It will be led by Larry Pearson, one of the most remarkable leaders I’ve ever had the privilege of working with. I won’t be there, but let me know (tiago@fortelabs.co) if you’re going and I can have a friend meet you.

I will also be hosting a business introduction, geared specifically for creating breakthroughs at work and in business, at the Landmark Center in San Francisco (75 Broadway) on Wednesday, Feb. 28, 7–10pm. Drop your email below if you want to be notified of this and other introductions I’m organizing.

https://medium.com/media/84b0b2b7c0166e76167e7cbbf098c40e/href

Note: The views expressed on this blog are my personal views and are not the views of Landmark.

A Skeptic Goes to the Landmark Forum was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Building a Second Brain in One Tweet

Here’s how participants of Building a Second Brain , our online course on digital note-taking and personal knowledge management, described the course in one tweet (140 characters or less):

How to take digital notes, increase their value, store them for easy retrieval, and use them for projects and/or to create new connections.

— Greg Scholes

BASB is about making and using notes effectively in your work and life. It enhances your edge and intellectual capital.

— Mikael Suomela

Learning a simple and enjoyable process of specific actions you take to transform information overload into useful creative output.

— Moritz Bierling

An approach to PKM & GTD that integrates ideas from complexity, Zen, and lean to build a modern and useful system for shipping creative work.

— Joseph Kelly

Organizing information inputs (digital or otherwise) to make it available to efficiently support creative work.

— Drew Levy

Freeing the mind to focus on knowledge capture & management rather than task management by building a reliable habit structure.

— Dawn Williams

Collecting all relevant knowledge that I come across in a simple system that allows me quick and easy access.

— Jimmy Conway

Taking charge of your knowledge base so you can leverage it more efficiently.

— David Lukas

How to effectively apply note taking and content summarization strategies for increased productivity and workflow.

— Paul Solt

How to use Evernote to more effectively create value from information and your ideas

— Matthew Hamilton

Nominally, a system of writing & storing discoverable notes. Really though, it’s about re-imagining your relationship to your knowledge work.

— Rick Chafe

Creating a personal system to systematically create, obtain, organize, condense, and retrieve notes for recombination of ideas and concepts.

— Sang Hyo Lee

How can everyday mundane actions, structures and stances be molded into a personal emerging reflection and knowledge system?

— Jan-Philipp Hopf

How to turn notes from a pile of stuff into a living, improving knowledge & creativity source.

— Brandon Hudgeons

Getting the past, present, and future under control using brain-enhancing strategies and tools.

— Steve Parker

Drawing in data, remixing that data within and without into rich connections. Shaping that data as powerful perspectives to output.

— Damon Cook

BASB presents new ways of thinking about capturing flows of information and converting them into valuable knowledge.

— Evan Deaubl

Create a personal knowledge management system to Capture/Store, Organize and Retrieve ideas for creative insight/breakthroughs .

— Leonard (Lennie) Davis

To have strategies in dealing with the flow of information and resurfacing old information for new projects.

— Alexandre Jesus

A life reset on thinking. It’s a how-to on creating a personal, digital library and extracting meaning into physical packets of information.

— Ben Hazlerig

Notes — distillation, recall, organization, intersection.

— Richard Miller

Develop a system to manage all your information inputs and turn it into your best creative output.

— Jean-Francois Couture

Learning the ability to leverage digital note taking to create more value, creativity, and perspectives.

— Gjermund Bjaanes

Setting up a management process for your personal knowledge so that it is capture-able, retrievable and valuable both now and in the future.

— Gabe Bassin

Using digital tools and a well-designed workflow you create a 2nd brain to off-load organization, creative thinking, & idea generation.

— Wess Daniels

Managing reference material for actionability and for generating new ideas.

— Thomas McMurphy

BASB de-bottlenecks your main constraint, your brain, creating insights that help you chart your course in a complex world.

— Andreas Marinopoulos

It’s about a systematic approach to gather, store, process and prepare any information in a way to use it in future as fast as possible.

— Pavel Bubentsov

Constructing a PKM system to maximize focus on meaningful and purpose-driven work leading to a greater output of tangible projects.

— Jeffrey Golde

The course is about taking our stored knowledge and placing it into a dynamic system where it can be drawn up for use in new projects.

— Douglas Crane

BASB helps you exploit information collection so it’s the most useful for you at the right time.

— Angel Gonzalez

BASB provides a strategy for personal knowledge management that is robust, adaptable, and essential to thrive in a world of info overload.

— Graham Hawkes

A bootcamp for organising your projects, offloading them from your brain and 10xing the productivity using technology.

— Santhosh Guru

This course teaches you to retain, organize, synthesize, and remix the best of your knowledge.

— David Perell

How to systematically create connections where you never thought they would be.

— Kris Vockler

How to reframe your self-concept using reflection through digital notes to improve effectiveness of work and satisfaction from doing it.

— Joshua Daniel

For me it’s about organizing my thoughts in a systematic way that makes recall and re-assembly of those thoughts into ideas much easier.

— Michael Dorsey

Creativity on Demand.

— Mohammed Ali Vakil

Leveraging technology to increase organization & effectiveness and reduce cognitive burden by offloading tasks to your PKM system.

— Alex Hardy

I think this course is about realising the true potential of an individual for learning, thinking, and producing.

— Yasir Khan

Tweetably? BASB is about enabling creativity through the use of tools both intellectual and technological.

— Peter Shirley

Gaining greater clarity through notes.

— Zachary Sexton

Use notes to reflect yourself: see where you want to focus, what the steps are, how you’re progressing & draw new perspectives in the process.

— Callum Flack

Taking notes, organizing your notes, sharing them so that they become something bigger.

— Michael Fogleman

Combining theory and practice for PKM; putting your best ideas to work.

— Shruthi Jayaram

Building a Second Brain is about learning specific mindsets and techniques as it pertains to personal knowledge management.

— Corey Clippinger

Creating an actionable knowledge database.

— Thomas De Moor

A course that helps you manage your personal knowledge so you can become increasingly more productive over time.

— Yunzhe Zhou

Set up your reference information by capturing and organizing information in a way to enhance retrieval and leverage that info for new work.

— Michele Wiedemer

How to increase your creative output through better managing your ingestion & mobilization of knowledge.

— Nat Eliason

It’s about building a personal system for capturing, organizing and retrieving knowledge and about workflow to maintain it.

— Mikhail Miller

Having a structured approach for knowledge work that doesn’t rely on long stretches of uninterrupted time.

— Ellen König

How to take snapshots of the mind for future use.

— Chris Clark

Trusting in a system to take EVERYTHING on my mind and find a home for it — but teaching me how to get it back out again too…

— Rob Wilson

The course is about three basic elements of efficient knowledge management: how to consume it, organize it and then use it.

— Alex Sedgwick

BASB provides a roadmap and the necessary tools to challenge your previous methods of thinking and creates a format that enhances who you are.

— Chris Mazder

To learn more, check out our online bootcamp on Personal Knowledge Management, Building a Second Brain .

Subscribe to Praxis , my members-only publication exploring the future of productivity, for just $5/month. Or follow via email , Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn , or  YouTube .

Building a Second Brain in One Tweet was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Interview on the Super Power U podcast

Check out my new interview with Lisa Betts-Lacroix on the Super Power U podcast below (38m). We talk about “creative productivity,” how I was deeply influenced by my artist father, and how I identify people’s “superpowers.”

You can find highlights and resources mentioned on the official podcast page.

Talk radio, podcasts and live radio on demand in 1 mobile app | Stitcher Web App

Subscribe to Praxis , my members-only publication exploring the future of productivity, for just $5/month. Or follow via email , Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn , or  YouTube .

Interview on the Super Power U podcast was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Case Study: Alex Hardy’s Successful Quest to Conquer Inbox Zero

Just a month ago, I had ~100,000 work-related and personal emails in my inbox. Nearly 60,000 of them were unread. I had haphazard systems of tags, folders, and various inbox extensions to help me manage it. Suffice it to say, my email organization “system” (if you could call it that) wasn’t working.

me everytime I open my inbox

My poor email hygiene was a source of stress, a blocker to productivity, and (perversely) had me addicted to constantly refreshing my inbox for novel stimuli (in the form of new emails).

I give this prelude, because if I can conquer Inbox Zero, anyone can.

The method I use is primarily based on Tiago Forte’s Praxis article on Inbox Zero, with some slight customization.

Fully implementing this system took me a few hours, but it could easily be broken up into smaller pieces instead of a heavy lift. Most importantly, this system unlocks several hours per week for me, so the investment has already paid for itself many times over.

Here are a few of the most important takeaways:

Your mantra: Touch every email once, only once Your inbox serves the same purpose as an analog mailbox. It has one job only: collecting new inputsYour email inbox is not : a to-do list, your “read it later” queue, or a filing cabinet. You wouldn’t use your analog mailbox for these functions. It’s even crazier to use your email inbox for themWhen starting out, use tools like Mailstrom to take mass action to delete, archive, and unsubscribe from emails. This will save you hours of time.Get rid of every single label, folder, filter, and notification. They’re not worth the cognitive overhead and maintenance (especially with the power of email search). Your email system should be designed for the tired, bored, impatient, unmotivated version of you — as frictionless as possibleThere are only 6 options for which action to take with each email after you read it:Archive itReply (if and only if it takes less than 2 minutes)Add it to your calendarMake it a task in your task managerAdd it to your reference app (i.e. Evernote)Send it to a read-later app (i.e. Instapaper)From the original article

My own customization: I schedule my email delivery.

I have very little self control, and I wanted to defeat my addiction to checking my inbox (I estimated between mobile and desktop I was refreshing ~50x per day during the week).

Using a software tool like Boomerang or Batched Inbox, I only receive email at select times during the day. I only receive personal email at ~9am and ~4pm. I receive work email 7x per day (~every 90 minutes from 9a — 5:30p).

So If I ever navigate to Gmail, or open the mail app in my phone, from 5:30pm — 9am, or outside of designated “email delivery” times, I see nothing, and hear crickets.

https://medium.com/media/51c7b15c77dc991fb3054612f631bec3/href

Can you imagine going to check your analog mailbox 50x per day, because the mailman could bring an important letter at any time? Of course not.

Batching email is the most controversial element of my system. It’s also the most critical. I acknowledge that some people believe they never check email solely between 9–5:30. I also acknowledge that I am on Slack with my co-workers so this is a little bit of a loophole in my “disconnecting.”

However, a WIDE gap exists in knowledge workers’ current email habits (expectations of constantly checking email 24 x 7x 365) and something more reasonable. It’s not just for your own sanity (which is the most important benefit). Counterintuitively, it will increase your actual productivity.

For me, email is now gamified. I actually look forward to checking my email and seeing how quickly I can plow through it. I can typically get through 50 unread emails in 10 minutes.

Check out my original article One-Touch to Inbox Zero for the full workflow described above

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Case Study: Alex Hardy’s Successful Quest to Conquer Inbox Zero was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

P.A.R.A. V: The Project List Mindsweep

PART 1| PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5

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My interview on the Metalearn podcast

I recently had a great conversation with Nasos Papadopoulos on the Metalearn podcast.

We talk about the fundamental pillars of a great note-taking system, how design thinking can be used to improve your productivity and life, and actions you can take to prepare yourself for the future of work.

Visit the page below for the full show notes and recording (48m).

PODCAST | ML101: Tiago Forte on Building a Second Brain, Using Design Thinking to Improve Your Life and How to Prepare for the Future of Work

Subscribe to Praxis , my members-only publication exploring the future of productivity, for just $5/month. Or follow via email , Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn , or  YouTube .

My interview on the Metalearn podcast was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Announcing: The Praxis Anti-Book Club

Update: the book club is now closed

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Announcing the Forte Labs Coaching Program

I’ve been obsessed with coaching for the past year and a half.

I completed the Landmark Curriculum, a series of 4 structured coaching programs focused on personal effectiveness, communication, integrity, and leadership.

I then coached their Self-Expression and Leadership Program, supporting a group of 5 participants over 4 months as they planned and executed real projects to impact their communities or businesses.

I completed the Oneness Health program, which incorporates diet planning and cleanses, acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, reiki and yoga into a holistic health program for leaders.

I worked with a voice and speech coach weekly for 3 months, addressing everything from vocal tics to public speaking and executive presence.

And then I hired 6 coaches for my online bootcamp Building a Second Brain, training them to lead participants through each stage of understanding and building a system for personal knowledge management.

These investments totaled approximately $25,000 along with countless hours of study, preparation, and learning-by-doing. It may seem like a lot of money and time, but these have been some of the most valuable investments I’ve ever made. As direct outcomes of these programs I’ve quadrupled my business income, built a world-class team of collaborators, transformed my relationship to my body and mind, and expanded to completely new activities like paid writing, public speaking, and now, offering coaching services of my own.

As I first wrote about 3 years ago, I’ve been deeply dissatisfied with the vast majority of the articles, books, and courses on productivity and performance I’ve encountered.

Virtually all this content misses the most important thing: fundamental behavior change. I don’t mean the superficial habits visible to the naked eye, but the internal ones — the counterproductive thinking patterns, the flawed mental models, the limiting beliefs, and the incomplete paradigms that dictate what is “possible” and “impossible” in the first place.

We need a new way. A new paradigm for behavior change itself, that focuses on:

applying what you already know, instead of acquiring more theoretical knowledgesimplifying and stripping down your approach, instead of adding ever more sophistication and detail unlearning what is stopping you, instead of learning new “tips and tricks”taking away obstacles and noise, instead of adding new strategies and tacticsbuilding support systems — strong relationships and communities — that bring out your best self, instead of doing everything by yourself and for yourself

I’ve concluded that deep behavior change is indispensable to really making an impact on people’s performance. And coaching is absolutely indispensable to behavior change. There’s simply no way around it.

The mission of Forte Labs is “to enable people to derive more pleasure and freedom from their professional life.” To do this effectively, I believe we have to go to work on the most fundamental levels. Otherwise, we are just adding to the noise.

I’ve invested a lot in coaching, and now it’s time for me to pass on what I’ve learned to you. Some of it can be written up in articles and ebooks, which I’ll continue to do.

But the best stuff cannot. The personal breakthroughs as you step beyond where you’ve gone before. The profound realizations as your blindspots get revealed. The discomfort turning to excitement as you walk through what you thought were brick walls.

These breakthroughs can only come from an experiential learning process, not by simply acquiring information.

I’m extremely proud to announce the launch of the Forte Labs Coaching Program. It will incorporate the best ideas, techniques, principles, and frameworks from dozens of different disciplines. It will be project-based and relationship-centered, focusing on the kinds of learning that can only happen in human-to-human communication.

There are 4 operating principles we are building on to set this program apart from other coaching services:

1) Using content as a foundation

We require you to complete one of our self-paced courses on your topic of choice before applying to work with a coach. This helps you get the easy stuff out of the way at an affordable price, sets you up with a common foundation and vocabulary, and allows you to review the material before, during, and after your coaching sessions.

2) Relationship-based

We understand that coaching is a relationship, and not one to be taken lightly. We require applications to be able to learn as much as possible about your background, goals, and expectations. Your first session is dedicated to learning every detail about what is important to you.

3) Community-oriented

Humans are social creatures, and surrounding yourself with effective people is the best way to become effective yourself. You will have access to a monthly group call for the duration of the program, where you can share your successes, get feedback on challenges, and benefit from the learning of others.

4) Limited engagement

The initial term is designed to end after 2 months. This ensures we have the time to work with you to define a goal for that time period, with the supporting structures and accountability you need to actually get there. After 2 months, you’ll have the option of continuing with an ongoing coaching relationship.

I’d like to introduce you to the person I’ve partnered with to build this program: Corey Padnos. Corey has extremely diverse experience as a professional voiceover actor, sushi chef, competitive weightlifter, certified fitness coach, and professional development coach. His passion for high performance and belief in the power of coaching are the threads that tie all these experiences together.

We’ve worked closely together for the last 6 months across several programs. The results I’ve seen him produce with diverse clients gives me the confidence to bring him on as a partner.

Introducing Corey

I got into coaching when I was 21, and fell on my ass until I was 25. I was fresh off my first brain-based movement certification and I wanted to share everything I knew with the world.

I figured that everyone would want to learn about neurology because it’s COOL. But guess what? Sharing what you know with people and hoping they get interested isn’t coaching. That’s telling people about something and shoving it down their throats. You can imagine how successful a coach I was when I first started (read: I wasn’t).

People don’t actually need you to tell them about something for money. They can ask a friend or Google the answer. Coaching is giving people training and guidance in order to reach a goal that is important to them. Once I learned that, I became the coach I always wanted to be.

There are two things I want you to know:

How I coach: whether I’m coaching productivity, movement, or performance, there are some common principles that I’ve settled on as the most powerful and effective.My personal coaching philosophy: every coach has a different philosophy or an opinion on how coaching should go. This is mine.How do I think about coaching?

My methodology is grounded in neuroplasticity — the idea that the brain can change itself. I love this theory because it gives space for you to be the person you want to be. Although genetics, circumstances, and life experiences are all relevant, I do believe that at the end of the day if you want it enough, you can be anything. The high performers that get what they want (high-level CEOs and athletes) tend to have coaches to remind them of this.

1) My preferred coaching model: ARCS

There are tons of coaching models out there. None of them are wrong, but the one that I got trained in and prefer is the ARCS Model. It’s my favorite one because it ensures that the coach and coachee are on the same page.

Attention: I raise a question that challenges how you do things or offers a new approach to something that is important to you.Relevance: Why this coaching is important to you. I could give you gold and if you don’t see why it’s important, then it’s not going to help you.Confidence: You understand what you just learned and you’re confident you can do it over and over again. This is a reward for your nervous system.Satisfaction: You’re satisfied with the outcome and have actions to take. You’ve received feedback and reinforcement that the actions you’ve taken worked or didn’t work and you know why.2) Stages of Learning

I said earlier that I am an avid student of neuroplasticity. I think of everything as a skill. Habits, movements, even taking on a new attitude — they are all skills. Did you know it actually takes practice for your brain to create a skill?

I’ve taken the Fitts-Posner Learning Model, normally applied to motor learning, and applied it to learning just about anything:

The Fitts-Posner Learning Model

Cognitive learning: 1–1,000 RepsAssociative learning: 1,000–10,000 RepsAutonomous learning: 100,000–300,000 Reps

For our brains to really own a new skill, it takes 100,000 reps. I hope this model give you space to understand one thing: respect the process to mastery. It takes time and you will probably not be a superstar your first week of learning something new. Hang in there. As your coach, I will help you greatly speed up that learning process.

3) How To Create a Habit: A Formula

You’ve probably taken a self-help seminar, read a brain-hacking article, or read a magazine with someone who looks good naked on the cover. For what reason? You want to change a habit. But really, it’s not how you look, how you hack your brain, or what you know that gets you results. Below is an equation I use with my clients:

B(Behavior) = M(Motivation)A(Ability)T(Triggers)

In other words, if you want to change a behavior, you have to deal with Motivation, Ability, and your Triggers for taking action. You can figure out some of these by yourself, but trust me when I say that coaching seriously speeds up the process. Why? Because if you knew how to learn a new skill or change a habit by yourself you probably would have done it by now.

What is the practice of coaching?1) Coach off the principle. Limit your instructions.

Principle: “a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.”

I had a unique opportunity to train under two subject matter experts on Chinese Weightlifting last summer. One of the coaches told me five principles across every lift. And he said to me, “We only say five words to each of our athletes.” Why? You only need five words to coach people how to lift. Everything else overcomplicates what you’re out to accomplish.

The lesson I learned: say only what’s needed, discard the rest. The human brain can only take on so much new stimuli before it is overloaded.

2) Are you a coach or are you a critic?

Coach: Fills in the blanks to help you achieve a result.

Critic: Tells you what to do.

How do you know if you’re coaching or criticizing? If your client is left with power, you’ve coached them (they may not like you, but they feel powerful). If they feel disempowered, you’ve criticized them. The more you criticize, the less likely you’ll create change. And trust me, it has taken years of falling-on-my-ass practice to learn how to speak to different personality types and not have my coaching land as criticism. And I’m always learning.

3) Manage the promise, not the people

This was advice that I got from my friend Sanam years ago and it stuck.

Without trying to come off as cynical, people are going to let you down. And when they do, things get personal. “They didn’t follow what I said.” Or “I hate them.” Or, “They’re wasting my time.” When people let you down, you create an opinion about them. That’s why when I coach people, I always bring it back to a goal.

When I manage people, it becomes about me and my opinion of them. When it comes to managing a promise, it becomes about them and how to help my clients achieve their goals. Treat their promises like gold and they will rise to the occasion.

Visit our Coaching page for more details and to apply, or enter your email address below to receive news and updates on the program. Send any questions to coaching@fortelabs.co .

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Announcing the Forte Labs Coaching Program was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Second Brain Case Study: Teaching Progressive Summarization in an Undergraduate Classroom

Tiago’s note: this case study is from C. Wess Daniels, a professor of religious studies at Guilford College. It explains how he’s adapted the progressive summarization technique to help undergraduate students learn faster, retain it longer, and preserve their notes for lifelong use.

After learning about Progressive Summarization in Tiago’s Building a Second Brain course I took this past summer, I have been trying to find ways to incorporate it wherever, whenever, and however I possibly can. Tiago’s concept of “designing your notes” so that they are not only interesting to look at, but useful for your future self — balancing the tension between context and discoverability — has already made a huge impact on my research and writing.

I took the course this summer not just for my own professional development and to improve my own Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), but so that I could take some of the ideas I learned back to the classroom. I teach undergraduate religious studies courses at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Before I took Tiago’s course, I would assign daily reading reviews for my students as the bread and butter of their assignments. Over the course of a 15-week semester a student would write 28–30 reviews of various books and articles we covered in class.

These “old style” reading reviews are made up of a set of directed queries:

Journal 300–500 words that include key points, quotes, and your personal questions and reflections on the reading. Continue to connect these readings back to the bigger research questions of the course

And then I’d add a “collaborative” piece like this:

Respond to your classmates’ reviews

This is pretty standard — focus on the stuff that really stands out to you, key quotes, etc. and then interact with your classmates. We use Canvas to allow students to post their reviews in a discussion thread alongside those of their classmates.

The Inaccessibility of a Reading Review in a Comment Thread

After taking Tiago’s course, I couldn’t go back to this earlier method of review. Not only is it uninteresting, but more importantly, it is unhelpful for my students’ future selves. I realized that all those reviews— all their work and thinking about the texts they read — would become almost completely inaccessible to them after my class was over.

Although five years from now they could theoretically find those notes again, it would require remembering which class they read the book in, which semester they took the course, figuring out how to log back into Canvas, digging down into that specific course, and then working through each of the 28–30 class sessions, scrolling through all the comments in hopes of finding that one review they were looking for. You can see I’m not particularly optimistic about this process being successful after a couple semesters, let alone a few years.

I wanted to also build on the assumption that what my students are doing in my class might actually be USEFUL to them in their research for other classes, and perhaps even in their own lives. So why not make the majority of the content from the course — the notes they take for the class — more accessible and useful to their future selves?

Reinterpreting Progressive Summarization for the Classroom

Therefore, I set about translating progressive summarization into a regular practice (and assignment) in my classes. Here is how I went about doing that.

First, before introducing progressive summarization, I have my students write out 7–10 “problems” for the course. That is, when it comes to understanding the specific content of the class (theology, physics, philosophy, etc.), what are the problems or questions they would like to see answered? This is based off of Tiago’s 12 Favorite Problems exercise, in which we come up with large-scale, open-ended questions that can help guide learning and research.

I like this exercise in a classroom, not only because it tells me more about what the student is bringing to the class — and where I might change course to address their questions — but it creates a “clothes hanger,” so to speak, on which my students can hang the ideas from their reading. It provides a framework for resonance that we can keep coming back to throughout the course, and one that they will have a much higher likelihood of returning to long after the course is done.

Second, I teach them how to practice progressive summarization and I explain my adapted version of it for the classroom. You can find the four posts explaining progressive summarization here.

I want to show you exactly what I put into my syllabus, as well as link to from the Canvas course. Here is a link to these instructions in Evernote, with screenshots. I also share with my students an example of a progressively summarized note so that they have an idea of how it will look.

Here is the explanation I include in the class syllabus:Create a Google Drive folder for the class (e.g. GST 405…) and then one document per book, article, etc. Title the document (e.g. “Muers — Testimony”). At the top of the document write in the pertinent publishing information, link back to the book on Goodreads or Amazon, or link to an online article on the book so you can find your source later.Create a heading (e.g. Chapter 1 “Bearing Witness”) and then add your notes on that chapter.Take notes on each source as you read. You are looking for key ideas, critical narratives, important people, themes that stick out, or other connections that seem important. Anything that really resonates with you or greatly challenges your current thinking, especially as it pertains to one of your 10 problems. These notes are for you and your future self. Be sure to give yourself enough context that you know why you thought this was noteworthy in the past.After you finish reading the chapter and taking notes, go back through your notes and bold the things that stand out to you now, after having finished the chapter. You are looking to pull out the main points in each paragraph, the brief ideas that you can scan quickly to get the basic gist of the note.Share your Google Doc. Go to the course on Canvas and paste a public link for your classmates to read and mark up (make sure when you share the document that it is set so that anyone can comment).Read 3 classmates’ notes and for each one highlight 3–5 key points/sections/sentences/words that resonate with you. In the comments section, write a short comment about why you highlighted that portion, or why it resonated with you.We do this for the whole book chapter by chapter, and then we go back and write a 300-word summary at the top of our notes for that book, incorporating the “layers” created through this highlighting process.Extra credit — for those who do handwritten notes and “sketchnotes” (visual drawings). Please include these in your Google Doc. If you have pictures or images you want to include, use the Google Drive app, your phone’s camera, or an iOS app like Scannable to take a picture of the images and upload them to your Google Doc.

Goals for this project:

To practice different ways of note-taking that include “progressive summarization” so that you are able to quickly gather key points from your readingTo get immediate feedback from your classmatesTo give you an artifact you can take with you for other classes at GuilfordTo help you think through what resonates with you, what connects to the questions you find important, and what is relevant to your own thinking and development as a scholarResults

I have used this in two classes this fall. So far, the students have done incredibly well with it, have really enjoyed learning a new method of note-taking, and I have (anecdotally) noticed the quality of work going up as well.

I believe that this is a very “learner-centered” approach because by using P.S. in the classroom students find their notes become far more useful to them later in the semester. They are more accessible, focused on the ideas they are interested in learning, and quickly scannable for when they study and work on their research papers.

This also allows for the “slow burn” effect of ideas percolating over the course of a whole semester and are easy to come back to and retrieve when needed. If you’re like me and you’ve ever tried to find a note or an idea in a handwritten notebook from a class 20 years ago, you will understand the importance of easy retrieval.

Beyond this, the students leave the class with a set of well-designed, progressively summarized notes, to take with them throughout the rest of their college career and beyond, becoming a highly valuable asset to their ongoing learning.

I’d love to hear comments, feedback, and other ideas or techniques you have incorporated into your teaching as a result of Tiago’s methods.

Follow me on Medium and Twitter at @cwdaniels

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Second Brain Case Study: Teaching Progressive Summarization in an Undergraduate Classroom was originally published in Praxis on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Annual Review is a Rearchitecture

I previously described how the weekly review is an operating system, funneling each bit of information you captured during the week to its…

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