Tiago Forte's Blog, page 51

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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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 .

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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