Modern Wisdom - #074 - Tiago Forte - The Definitive Guide To Digital Productivity

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello friends. My guest this week is Tiago Forte of Forte Labs. He is an online blogger and productivity coach, I guess you'd call him, but magician is probably a bit closer to his actual role. Today's episode focuses mainly around a blog post that he wrote a year ago. Me and Yusuf and Johnny came across it thanks to a couple of friends and fell in love with it. It is the digital productivity pyramid. This sounds like the realm of hypo nerds and people who wear warhammer t-shirts, but I promise you, if you want to make your life more productive, if you're a knowledge worker and if you use computers, this is

Starting point is 00:00:46 Nothing short of a curriculum that you can follow to optimize Pretty much everything. So yeah, expect to learn all of Tiago's favorite tools for productivity I have tried to find as many discount codes as I can for all of them and link them in the show notes below But they are beastly so get ready and also you will have a friend who cannot manage their inbox or doesn't know how to use to do lists or is terrible at noting down their summaries from books, send them this podcast immediately. Thank you very much, please welcome Tiago Forte. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back.

Starting point is 00:01:41 I am joined by Tiago Forte, a Forte Labs. We have already bonded over the fact that he too is an AirPods Evangelist. And I think that gives you a bit of an idea about what we're in for today. We're going to be talking digital optimization and how we can become more efficient in our online lives. Tiago, welcome to the show. Thank you, Chris.

Starting point is 00:02:04 It's really, really good to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to go through today. So, I'm going to get straight into it. The digital productivity pyramid was a blog post that you wrote about a year ago. And me and a couple of friends came across it. And it was a real friendship for us. I was super impressed with it. And I think pretty much since then I've

Starting point is 00:02:26 been hassling you in your inbox to try and get you on. So I'm very glad that we've found some time to get the air pods in your ears and to run through this. So let's take it from the top. Can you explain to people you've never heard of yourself or Forte Labs which is the blogging company that you run or the digital productivity pyramid, can you explain what it is and your philosophy behind it to begin with? Sure, sure. So the Pyramid really is not a pyramid scheme, I promise. It is a framework.

Starting point is 00:03:02 It's a framework that I developed, maybe a couple of years ago. I formalized it a couple of years ago, but it's definitely been rattling around my head for some years. And it really came about when I just realized, you know, as is this productivity experts, productivity trainer, productivity blogger, I run around every day making grand promises of revolutionizing people's work performance. And I just realized, well, you have to have some theory of what improvement even means. Right? And I looked around and was out there and all the available ones, more tasks completed,

Starting point is 00:03:38 seemed completely outdated, minutes of focus, even kind of scenes, like overly simplistic. I looked at a ton of metrics. I was super involved in the quantified self movement for some years. I've given a bunch of talks and I just realized none of those did the trick. And so instead of focusing on metrics, on measuring some output, which I think with creative knowledge work is basically impossible. I chose to focus on the skills. What is the latter, the pyramid of skills, that a modern knowledge worker would need to acquire in order to execute their work successfully? And a large part of it came about accidentally.

Starting point is 00:04:16 I actually looked at my courses that I developed. Each course that I've done came out of the needs of the previous course. I would create a course and then look, and then see the people completing it, what are they still needing? What are they still lacking? And then I would create it the next course.

Starting point is 00:04:30 And I've only done three courses, but those are the first three levels of the pyramid. And now I have my eye on the fourth level, which is starting to emerge. Really it's emerging. It's appearing before my eyes as the next thing that people need. We can get into what each of one of those are, but that's the basic story. I understand, yes, I was reading Deep Work by Karl Newport recently.

Starting point is 00:04:51 I know it's over due and his publishers sent me very kindly. Thank you, Karl, has sent me digital minimalism as well, which is next on the list to read. But going through Deep Work, listeners at home who are knowledge workers may not quite understand what we mean when we say that the output is difficult to define. But if you were to think back to a typical job 50 to 100 years ago, cranking widgets, I think is the term that Carl

Starting point is 00:05:18 Newport uses, which is where you would have some machine shop worker, you would have a bucket of undone parts in one side, a machine that was a process in the middle, and a bucket of completed parts on the other side. It was very easy for you to see when a part was uncompleted in process and completed. It was also easy for you to track how much was to be done and how much you had done.

Starting point is 00:05:40 Whereas it's a lot more kind of nebulous and cloudy and just difficult to define. You wake up with an amount of emails in your inbox and sometimes you go to bed with more having done loads all day and you have these serendipitous open work spaces which Carl's very critical of. Yeah, I think you've hit the nail on the head there, saying that it's difficult to define when work gets done. And your solution to that, as you're suggesting, is to focus on building a lattice work of effective skills

Starting point is 00:06:14 and frameworks that you can work upon, and hopefully allowing the outputs to kind of look after themselves on the other side. Is that right? It is. It is. And it's not that the outputs don't matter or something like that. It's that they're outside of my purview.

Starting point is 00:06:32 I don't think there is a way. It's like all the mechanical widget jobs, like you said, have now been taken by machines. The only ones that are left are inherently ambiguous, inherently undefined, inherently unstructured. And by definition, you can't, you know, metrics require repeatability. Metric only is only meaningful with the repeatable process. So when you're doing essentially art, and I know people hate the idea that they're artists,

Starting point is 00:06:58 but basically, in a way, we are all artists now, defining the problem is like most of the work, right? So I guess you can make a metric, you know, problems defined, but it just gets really are all artists now, defining the problem is like most of the work. Right? So I guess you can make a metric, you know, problems defined, but it just gets really weird and actually can be bad when you focus on a metric to the exclusion of the experience of the satisfaction of the fulfillment, which when you're doing work like we're doing, that's creative. It being motivated and satisfied as fulfilled is not optional.

Starting point is 00:07:25 That's not like, oh, it's great that you like your factory job. It's like you literally cannot go on. You cannot give of yourself what you have to give to do that kind of work if you're not fulfilled. I understand. There is an inherent degree of satisfaction that comes with crossing things off a list. We are as well as being

Starting point is 00:07:46 air pod evangelists, we're also big lovers of the Pomodoro technique and using the very obvious crossing off of a list or the coloring out or the ticking off of an item. There is such a, and it's so, it's such a comment, right, on modern knowledge work that we need to kind of artificially create this Done big button that we hit that identifies the fact that we've actually completed something But it's it's the antidote to a degree of this. I don't know when work begins and work ends I think there was a statistic that 80% of American knowledge workers check their emails after 11 at night and before 7 in the morning, like both of them. So you're like, you're maybe getting up at 3 in the morning to check your emails.

Starting point is 00:08:34 So I think you're totally right with what you say. So moving on to the pyramid itself, there's some core principles and then there's some layers, some levels should I say, where are we going to start? I mean, we can just start at the bottom and work our way out. Let's go. Okay, so the, well, first of all, let me just say what the five layers or levels of the pyramid are. The first base layer is what I call digital fluency. And I'll describe that in a minute.

Starting point is 00:09:07 The second one on top of that is task management and workflow basically to do lists. The third one is habit formation and behavior change, which you're very familiar with. The fourth level is what I call personal knowledge management, PKM, which is essentially storing your knowledge in some sort of digital tool, you know, offloading that knowledge from your brain onto a software program. And the fifth level, which is the most currently ambiguous, the most mysterious, but also I think eventually kind of the culmination of all of this, is a framework I'm developing, a methodology I'm developing called a methodology I'm developing called Just in Time Project Management. Interesting, is that going to be tip of the SPIA for you?

Starting point is 00:09:52 Probably, probably. Yeah, it all comes back to the same stuff. So, yeah, so the basic idea is that the levels go from, I'd go from more basic at the bottom to more advanced or more sophisticated at the top. But I wouldn't really say they go from easy to hard because what's hard is just whatever level you're currently working on. In some ways the base level, which is essentially just just how to use a computer, is the hardest. If you know someone, I know people in my parents' age, if they never learn to do that, basically they're not going to be able to take advantage of all the other levels.

Starting point is 00:10:38 I'll just talk about that. I'll say one more thing about that. So each level builds on the one before. And so what that means is that each level is sort of enabling or setting the ground for the level above it. It's kind of like a hierarchy of skills or a hierarchy of knowledge. It's like you have to start at the bottom. But then once you create a layer for yourself, you have then the skills and the knowledge to start building the second layer.

Starting point is 00:11:07 And then the last thing I'll say about that is there is also this kind of a spiral effect. Sometimes I get people like, okay, I'm just gonna finish one level 100% completely and then do the whole second level perfectly. But that's not quite how it works. It's kind of more like a cycle. I mean, the truth is that we're all always working on all levels.

Starting point is 00:11:27 Right? You never completely master any one domain. So, you know, I just took a course on MailChimp, learning how to use, you know, an email newsletter program. And that is at the base level. That's how to use a particular technology. But I found that I wasn't able to work at the higher levels until I kind of put that brick in the base of the pyramid, which is how to use how to use MailChimp. So you can't do task and management workflow of your MailChimp system until you've got level one digital fluency with MailChimp.

Starting point is 00:12:00 Yeah, so it's not always that direct direct or I'd say not usually that direct. Sometimes you can learn parts of higher order skills or learn them in a certain way or learn just enough to outsource them. There's different things. The pyramid shape makes it sound very like monument and very rigid. It's really not. This is human humans. So everything is quite intertwined.

Starting point is 00:12:27 I get you. So digital fluency, we're going to start at the bottom. What some of the skills that people need to be developing there and how can they develop them. Yeah, so really this comes from my time working. So actually in high school, in high school, I had a little business fixing Windows computers. And I would go, this was really the start of my, I didn't know it at the time or for many years, but the

Starting point is 00:12:49 start of what I would ultimately do is I would go around mostly to my parents' friends and then their friends and the neighbors and then their neighbors fixing their, you know, this was Windows XP in most cases. And it was really funny because I would build by the hour and a pretty darn good rate for high school students. But then every single time after listening very, you know, empathetically to their problem, that unique, unique problems they were having, I would just always apply the exact same solution. Hahaha.

Starting point is 00:13:22 I imagine there's a lot of physios listening that must feel the same thing. People that do sport, like strength and conditioning. I've got this very unique pain in my knee and this that and the other and they'll just send them away with the basics that work well. Exactly. Yeah, my solution was to wipe their hard drives and reinstall Windows XP. You just playing the game Tiago, it's fine, man.

Starting point is 00:13:45 It's still wonderful. But I don't know, I learned a lot in that job, and then in my subsequent job in college, which was at the Apple Store. So that was a similar thing, where I was a one of those people that teach. So I would teach them morning class, you know, at this time, just and still millions of people around the world were switching to max. It was kind of a golden era of switching and I would teach them how to use their max. So basically all the lessons from there, I distilled into what is it? Three times four, twelve, kind of specific technological skills, I'd say, or tools that I think you need to know at some point or another.

Starting point is 00:14:24 And those are really just basic computer usage. skills and tools that I think you need to know at some point or another. Those are really just basic computer usage. So, you know, turning on your computer. How to use email. Actually, those are other ones. So how to browse the web. How to use your email. How to send and receive emails.

Starting point is 00:14:39 Then kind of getting more advanced keyboard shortcuts for the programs that you use the most. Digital calendars. scheduling apps for scheduling appointments and meeting some things like that. Read later apps, so you find an article online, you want to read, you save it to apps like pockets and InstaPaper. Then we proceed to inbox zero, so not just using email, but using it systematically in a way that you are consistently closing the loops in there. Then password management, so you're not having to remember passwords or even worse use the same password everywhere.

Starting point is 00:15:14 Then there's three more speed reading, time tracking and text expanders. I'm looking through that list in my own mind and realizing that even at the bottom level of a pyramid that I hold in very high regard, there's still massive holes in my game. So I think for the vast majority of people, they will consider basic computer usage or most of the listeners, consider basic computer usage, web browsing, email usage, should be pretty simple. Keyboard shortcuts for things like YouTube, K pauses and Ellen, Jay, Jump Forward and back 10 seconds and Command and V and Command and C and stuff like that, I'm going to guess. Have you are you familiar with Alfred? Alfred app?

Starting point is 00:16:03 Oh yeah, I'm a big Alfred fan. Oh, you are among friends here, Tiago. You really, this is a safe space for you to talk about your snippets and your workflow and everything. The listeners at home head to Alfredapp.com, you need it in your life if you're on Mac, and if you're on Windows, unlucky, because literally do not do not even make it for Windows. Yeah, I know. So, digital calendars, what do you use? I know that we did this over Google Calendar.

Starting point is 00:16:33 Are you Google Calendar, man? Yeah, yeah, it's really just Google Calendar, but I'm still amazed how many people don't have digital calendars. I regularly encounter even professionals with the years of experience who are still using paper. My business partner has a... My business partner has a file effects.

Starting point is 00:16:53 Like a one, like week per two pages file effects thing that he likes to write down and he just likes to have it. I'm like, oh man. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, is a commotion when it comes to that. I will convert him eventually, but we don't know. Moving on to scheduling apps. By the way, Google calendar, like you, it's, I've fully transitioned now from I Cald to Google

Starting point is 00:17:16 calendar. And the way that it links in with when you get a flight, like you get an email about a flight and then you fly infos already in Google calendar with your check-in and it links to the email. It's so good. It is really good. Scheduling apps. What we're talking about there. So I use one called, what is it called?

Starting point is 00:17:41 There's different ones, there's at least a dozen of them. It's a bit of an issue actually because there's no standard, like, Kalenli. I mean, there's at least a dozen of them. Every, I mean, it's a bit of an issue, actually, because there's no standard, like, there is the Google Calendar. So every time I schedule with someone, I have to sort of navigate a new interface. I wish someone would just, like, merge them all or, you know, acquire them. Some of the completely, and can just take all 12 companies. Yeah, I can. Please, if you're listening, you've got a couple billion, you know, lying around, just

Starting point is 00:18:04 do us You was a solid and take care of that. I get you But they it's it's a very standard function. It's nothing fancy. There's not that many ways to do it You know you you designate spots on your calendar However long you want to make available and then instead of you know that back and forth of oh what time You know, I can't do that time out this time blah blah blah You just send them a link and they sort of scheduled themselves into your calendar And instead of that back and forth of O, what time, I can't do that time out at this time, blah, blah, blah. You just send them a link and they sort of schedule themselves

Starting point is 00:18:27 into your calendar. I understand. Read later apps. We are big fans of Pocket here. I love the feature that Pocket has where it will, on mobile, turn text to speech. Have you seen this? Yes.

Starting point is 00:18:43 So yes. Basically turns any article into an audio book. And it's pretty, for text to speech that's you seen this? Yes. So, yes. Basically turns any article into an audio book, and it's pretty, for text to speech that's done on mobile, like it's pretty legible, big fan of that. Toby, as an extension for Chrome, have you ever tried that? Oh, no, haven't heard of that. So, Toby for Mac, this, by the way, listeners, these show notes, I can already tell that the show notes for this episode are going to be absolutely humongous. But Toby for Mac is similar. Every time you open a new tab, it opens up a list of basically very well curated read-later bookmarks. You can imagine it as a very visual favorites list or to-be-read list. But it's every time you open a new tab

Starting point is 00:19:27 Toby comes up. So it just makes you think it pops it in your head like oh shit I need to read that I need to read that I need to do this. So it's quite a useful way to do it. But it does not sync with your mobile device which is where pocket pocket comes in and wins I think. In box In box zero will be a concept that a lot of people, especially my business partner's wife, Colleen, who has like 10,000 unread emails,

Starting point is 00:19:53 will be alien with. Can you explain why it's important? Yeah, so email is interesting. I'm actually doing a walk through tomorrow on the superhuman app. What's up? Have you seen superhuman? It's this productivity app that sort of made waves in the past couple of years for revolutionizing the email experience.

Starting point is 00:20:14 And it's most known for its eye popping $30 a month price. And for it's waiting list, which has like 200,000 people. And they only let small numbers of people use it at a time. So it's sort of like greatly in demand to even be able to use it. But anyway, I think people's email usage goes through phases. When you first, I see my younger brother, he's just starting in his career.

Starting point is 00:20:45 It's like emails is like, it's like postal mail. It's this vaguely annoying thing. He pays minimal attention to take some weeks to even open it. It's like very kind of low priority, right? And then most people, I think when you get your first sort of professional job, you kind of have a shock of cold water in the face when you realize Whoa, people expect me to actually keep up with these things It's high and it's a rules in the face of constant emails. You need to reply or respond. Yeah

Starting point is 00:21:19 It really is and I think we all sort of do a mix of whatever we can, like survival, syncing ship style, or maybe if we're lucky we have somewhat a model around us who teaches us something about how to use email, or maybe ideally, ideally, we read an article or take the course or do something like that. And there's just many, many levels just within that one little thing. And inbox zero, to me, it's not just this, you know, kind of bragging right that you

Starting point is 00:21:48 have an empty inbox, although that's nice. It's just the fact that you're not using your email as a to-do list, right? Which is what most people do. Each email in their inbox is an open loop. It's a task that they have to take care of. And I wrote this article, one of my most popular all-time articles, it's called One Touched in Box Zero. Is that the four different pathways?

Starting point is 00:22:10 Is there there's four things that you can do? Yes, that has been linked by Jordan, who's a friend of the show in our private members group. He put that in as someone who complained about the fact that he couldn't manage his inbox and he said, man, there's only four things that you ever need to do. So what are the four things? Because I can't remember.

Starting point is 00:22:25 Let's see if I can remember. Oh, here we go. The pressure's on. I mean, it's so ingrained at this point. Let's see. I mean, it's either archive immediately. And that's really the most common case. The amazing thing of emails, we use it for so many things.

Starting point is 00:22:41 But one of those things is just notifications. Just something happened. A package was delivered, but one of those things is just notifications. Right? Just something happened. A package was delivered, a subscription renewed, something happened out there, and you don't need really any more than a split second of attention on it, or if any. So it's just archive. See it? Delete it. A rather archive, which is different in Gmail, so you can refer to it later.

Starting point is 00:23:03 The second is make a task out of it. And this is the key feature of any task manager, any to-do list app that I ask people to look for. Is the ability to create a new task with a link that goes back to the original email. Like that, one little thing is unbelievably revolutionary. What do you use to love? I use things.

Starting point is 00:23:25 I've always used things. Things. Yeah, it's called things. Never heard of it. He really? We're opening a portal here, Tiago. Come on, tell me about it. Oh my gosh, things is just phenomenal.

Starting point is 00:23:38 It's made by a German company called Culture Code, which I think is key to its success. It doesn't, you know, they're sometimes criticized for their lack of feature development. They release a new version every few years. But I think that's amazing. Like I hate when my core productivity apps are constantly releasing new features when I've come to depend on whatever the workflow is. So I don't know.

Starting point is 00:24:04 Culture Code just has an absolutely incredible design sense that every little, like I discover things after years, little touches, little decisions they made that you know they spent hours and hours and hours talking about and thinking about. It's really my favorite productivity app. It's called Things. Wow, that is big.

Starting point is 00:24:23 Okay, so things will be linked in the show notes below. I'm excited to go and get stuck in all of these once we get on. So we've got a create a task from the email which has come in. I'm going to get, especially for me, a lot of the time that's if it's not urgent but important in the Eisenhower matrix, that's where I get a fair bit of the stuff would land. And if it's not just, yeah, your Amazon order has been confirmed, that's probably where like a fair bit of inbox stuff will come to, I guess, especially directly addressed stuff that's not just like part of a big five-person

Starting point is 00:25:00 CC loop that you're not commenting in. Yes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, there's actually, I pulled up the article here. There's actually, so there's six apps that you can send an email to, but there's actually six actions. Okay. Two of those actions are archive and reply.

Starting point is 00:25:19 So you just delete it or you actually keep the open loop going by replying in some way. But then the poor apps to interject the attiago people may be thinking I'm doing pomodoro's I don't want to interrupt my workflow. The way that I would format that is I would have a designated pomodoro every four or something like that that you would actually focus on right the start of this pomodoro is going to be email work and then I'll get back to it. Also, David Allen's getting things done his two minute rule. I'm a pretty big fan of that. It's like, look, if you can just do it, if it pops up, there's a notification you've left on somewhere because do not

Starting point is 00:25:57 disturbs not on, which is bad idea. But you just reply to it, like crack it out. If it's there and it's in front of you and it's a three-second job like just Yes tomorrow whatever like get it done Exactly. Yeah, yeah totally agree But then the four apps are basically I said task manager already read later app is the second one You just it's something you want to read but you're definitely as you just Referred to don't want to now interrupt your email to go read something. It's even worse because you just refer to, don't want to now interrupt your email to go read something, it's even worse.

Starting point is 00:26:26 The third is to add it to a reference app, a note-taking app, such as Evernote or Bear or OneNote or one of these. There's a snippet of text you need to save and attachment, you know, is going to be important. And then the fourth is to add something to your calendar, which is more and more automated these days. It's usually just a little kind of email that you hit yes or accept and then it gets added. So those are the only six things you can do with any given email.

Starting point is 00:26:53 Isn't it amazing that you can distill email down that's this crazy big monster to just six things. I could do one of these six things and you have zero unread emails in your inbox. Yeah, I know one of these days I'll record this, but no one believes this. But I do a weekly review every week on Monday. And it takes me just about an hour, maybe at most an hour and a half. I'm more or less ignoring my email the whole week. Like I'll pop in just if I know something's coming or just to see if there's something

Starting point is 00:27:24 important. But I just let it accumulate, let it something's coming or just to see if there's something important. But I just let it accumulate, let it accumulate because actually on Monday, I want there to be as many emails as possible because then I can batch process all of them in one gigantic session, which is still only an hour. But once you get going and you really get in the mindset of these six things, I mean, it's seconds. You're spending seconds per email, which completely changes the equation.

Starting point is 00:27:46 I love it. Password management. This is one that I am very interested to hear about what you use. I'm a huge fan of one password. Okay. It's just the number one plus the word password. And it's just, I mean, it's just a game changer. I used to use the same password. I mean, I'm amazed I never got hacked or had money stolen or anything. And then at some point I developed this more sophisticated system where it was the name of the website plus the date, some other variable, and then my standard password. And it started taking up so much cognitive bandwidth that I just thought I can't do it anymore.

Starting point is 00:28:25 Especially now that I can see in my password manager, I have over 300 log-its. You know, you I don't think people realize how many different accounts they have online. But basically one password just, when you need a password, you just hit generate password, it generates this long alpha numeric and symbol string, which is impossible to crack. And then it inserts your username and your password, saves it for you. And then if you ever come back to that website again, it recognizes the website and you just hit the little Chrome plugin and it inserts it right there. It's just incredible. Yeah, totally right. I had linked in had linked in recently had a data loss and

Starting point is 00:29:07 My I must have used the same LinkedIn password as I did for my deliver root account and Someone in London ordered themselves like 40 pounds worth of Nandos to their to their address off the back of the facts That yeah, I'm being I'm being serious And then I had to go through this massive rigmarole with Deliveruum that I didn't order this thing. It happened it was on my business partners, business card as well. So he was like, hey, what's this 40 pounds?

Starting point is 00:29:34 Why were you in London ordering Nando's? And I was like, oh God, that wasn't me. Went back through and sure enough, it was a LinkedIn data breach. So yes, Oh my gosh. Use a password management or else someone's going to sting you for 40 quids worth of takeaway food. So next, speed reading.

Starting point is 00:29:55 Yeah, speed reading is when I kind of have there tendatively. I've never done anything with speed reading. I think I read, in fact, I know I've tested it, I read quickly pretty naturally. I think that's from reading so much as a kid, I was such a such a voracious reader as a kid. So it's not it's not become a bottleneck for me in any way, but just based on what I've seen from others, I think if you don't have that naturally, that it can be a game changer. So I kind of have it there as if

Starting point is 00:30:23 that's something that you feel is starting to limit you. Is there a technique to that or is it just trying to read more quickly? I don't know the names. There's a few I've seen that seem to produce miraculous results but I've just never gotten into it. Tim Ferris has a good, this is only for books or for Kindle, but Tim Ferris has a good breakdown of how you can speed read books more easily by Bringing your eyes in from the margins and by actually using a ruler below each line to track down Which is kind of which is which is interesting, but Tim Ferris is super adamant and if Tim says it I'm I'm gonna probably presume that he's right time tracking is up next

Starting point is 00:31:01 Yeah time tracking is amazing And it's not like it's funny. People have really weird sort of associations with time tracking. I think they think of the punch card. They have, you know, trauma from their nine to five job where they had to, you know, be there exactly from this time to that time, or maybe they were paid by the hour. So they sort of, it feel like a ball and chain. But I think when you become more autonomous

Starting point is 00:31:26 and whether that's being a freelancer and entrepreneur or just as valid, just being higher up in your organization where you kind of have freedom to work, how you want to work, time tracking becomes this whole, it becomes basically a tool of self-awareness. People have such bad intuition about time. And time is the currency of life. Obviously, it's just the basic building block of all experience. Until you have a sense, I think if I used to quote jobs, I would have a project, oh yeah, build this website. Yeah, I can build

Starting point is 00:32:00 a website in two hours. And then you do the time tracking and actually track that project. And then you look at the end and you see, like I literally had projects when I was first getting started, when I had could barely pay the rent, but I would make much less than minimum wage by the time all the time was factored in. Like way less. And then I would look at other projects that were, I had some source of leverage or maybe I reused past knowledge or something. This is actually what got me started with knowledge management as I realized if I

Starting point is 00:32:32 can complete a project in half the time because of this existing knowledge that I've captured, then my per hour rate doubles. And I would have like a like a 50 literally a 50 times differential between per hour, between my lowest paid project and my high-dust. Now guess which one I should take in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Right?

Starting point is 00:32:54 So, it's pretty amazing. So, how are you tracking your time? What are you using? So, I don't anymore. Actually, I kind of think of it as a phase. Yeah. It's a phase and one may come again if I need to build up that self-awareness again,

Starting point is 00:33:06 but for about three years, I used ours tracker, which is a little app, a paid app. I think there's a free version to for iOS. I'm not sure it might have an Android version by now too, but it's just very simple. What I really don't recommend is automatic time tracking, things like, rescue time, or what's the other one? There's another one that's search for the T because that you can't, if you make something

Starting point is 00:33:32 automatic so therefore you don't pay attention to it, you can't build self-awareness, right? And plus that data is not useful. It's like, oh I spent seven hours today on my web browser. Well, everything happens in the browser. It's pointless. So what our striker forces you to do is manual. It's really like a punch clock. You say, I'm gonna do this now, and then you select that project or that activity. And then when you're done, you say, I'm finished

Starting point is 00:33:57 and you clock out. And it's amazing what a forcing function it creates. Because once you've clocked in, and then you go to reach for social media or email or something else, you go, oh no, I have to protect my data integrity. And then you stay on track just because that's what you've clocked into, you know?

Starting point is 00:34:14 Yeah, I get you. So does it work out what you've had on screen versus what you should be doing? Or is that just the back of your mind, you're undiscipline telling you that you need to stop being naughty and sneaking off from the back of the class with regards to you saying not to use social media? Yeah, it's completely unconnected to your computer. So nothing happens automatically. It's

Starting point is 00:34:35 just the way that I recommend people do it is based on projects and areas. So if you can't, so projects is better. If you can sort of assign this block of time to a specific project, do it. And that requires changing the items that you track occasionally or frequently, which is a little bit of friction. But what that allows you to do is that sort of post-hoc analysis that I mentioned, where you can actually figure out what things take. And yeah, the important part of this is doing the analysis. You need to export this data to an Excel spreadsheet later.

Starting point is 00:35:09 You have to look at it, break it down by, you know, month, by season, by client, by project, by all these things. You can do by day of the week. I came up with all these interesting insights. Like, you'll love this one. I found out that my average rate of task completion over a period of like three years was 8.1 per day. Fantastic.

Starting point is 00:35:31 See, this is the sort of thing that I like to think about before I go about it night. Like, that's the sort of stuff. A good evening with a spreadsheet and some nice data in front of me. Fantastic. And that's ours, H O U R S. Yep, ours tracker one word. Fantastic. Text expanders. We're talking about Alfred.

Starting point is 00:35:54 Yes, yeah. I originally used a different one called A text, but then they stopped supporting it. So now I use really that's that's the main feature of alpha that I use besides the search, is this they're called snippets. And I have them for all the usual stuff, my address, my phone number, my email. You know, when I'm sitting next to each other and I watch them type out their email address now,

Starting point is 00:36:17 I'm just like, whoa. Oh man. So the lot of the listeners at home will know what we are talking about, but on, uh, iOS, there is an equivalent. If you go to, uh, general, uh, settings, general keyboard, text replacement, there is exactly the same thing. So if you have a commonly written out sentence or even a paragraph, um, I have my num,

Starting point is 00:36:44 which is actually an art effective blackberry days that they had set in there. They had my num and my pin, and that would just expand out into your number or your pin. And you can have all sorts of stuff. Interesting, what do you use for, how are you using keyboard shortcuts? What's your one for your address, for instance?

Starting point is 00:37:04 How are you using keyboard shortcuts? What's your one for your address, for instance? I just do hashtag a and it inputs my address. I do hashtag P for my phone number. Let's see what else. I have all my websites, you know, so I have the dollar sign is the prefix for anything business related. So, you know, dollar sign, W-E-B is my website, dollar sign T is Twitter, dollar sign F is Facebook, it's like when people's like send, what someone's like send me your links, it's just like bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Yeah, it's just like five in a row. I love it. And then actually another really cool use is, is verbs, action verbs. So when I created that to do and things, so this is something I'm gonna have,

Starting point is 00:37:49 something I have to do in the future, it's tempting to sort of come up with words on the spot, right? So like let's say you need to email someone. You might word that many different ways. Like email, let's say it's Rob, email Rob, reach out to Rob, follow up with Rob, with Rob send Rob get in touch with there's like 15 different ways you might say email The issue with that is it's really hard to batch process right those tattles 15 tasks might be in 15 different projects

Starting point is 00:38:16 So it would take half an hour just to go find them So what I have is if I do forward slash e and then space, it expands into email colon. And then I write just what I have to email. And I do that everywhere. So what that means, and this is really, really cool. But I can do one single search in my task manager, and it will show me across dozens of different projects and different areas, every single task related to email.

Starting point is 00:38:40 And then I can just do a massive batch process and send like every single email that I have to send. That's awesome. That is, That's really, really cool. My shortcuts that I've gone to, instead of using the hashtag, I'm doing ADD1 for my home address, ADD2 for my office address, etc, etc. By adding the number in the same way as you've put the dollar sign, it's unlikely that you're going to type that. Use if one of the co-hosts of the show put the dollar sign, it's unlikely that you're going to type that. Yusuf, one of the co-hosts of the show, has, if he writes, kind space, re, it expands out into kind regards, Yusuf Smith at propanefitness.com, but because he forgets that it's there, a lot of the time he gets kind regards, regards, because he's continued through it, it's expanded out in all this stuff and then he's written it on the other side.

Starting point is 00:39:22 So you need to be careful with your shortcuts. Whilst we're on this Tiago, you should get the Twitter plug-in for Alfred, which allows you to tweet from your Alfred deck. Have you seen this? No. So what's your Twitter again? Forte Labs. Forte Labs to show him how awesome Alfred Twitter is. And that's just sent from my that's sent from from my desktop. So you need you need that as well. So we're moving on to the second level now. Is that correct task management and workflow? Yes. Yes. We've kind of touched on this already, but basically, you know, once you have all or some of the computer usage, you're comfortable with a core set of productivity apps, I'd say, you can level that up to really what is GTD? This was the layer that was really addressed by GTD, which said, the way that you manage tasks is not, or it doesn't have to be haphazard random, just reactive to whatever is coming across your plate.

Starting point is 00:40:34 It can be systematic. I'm sure you're familiar with GTD. Many of your listeners will be. That's really how I got my start in the business as I had a GTD course that I created. And there's just the five stages. You capture your open loops, you clarify them, organize them, you reflect on your project list, and then you engage with whatever is most appropriate.

Starting point is 00:40:56 And this is just a massive level upper. I mean, I think something like a little over 20,000 people have taken that course. And it was created almost six years ago and hasn't been changed since then. And I still get emails every week of people at every age, every stage of life, just discovering GTD for the first time,

Starting point is 00:41:16 which is amazing. It's been around for almost 20 years. And realizing that there is just a much more sensible logical way of managing their to-do list. Still relevant. Yeah, it really is. So really, can you just lay out, so capture, clarify, organize, reflect, engage. Can you clarify how you would instantiate those things or a little bit of an expansion on each of them, and then we'll get on to level three. Sure, sure. So each one is really just a principle

Starting point is 00:41:48 that can be instantiated many different ways. If we're using, let's say a task manager, which is really just a digital to-do list program, it's quite simple. So capture is really just get it from out there or in your mind somewhere into a centralized place. And that can be done very quickly. It should be done actually, quickly, frictionlessly.

Starting point is 00:42:10 You ask before how things does this. It's control space and this little tiny window in the center of your screen pops up and then you just type the task and hit enter and it just disappears. So you don't even have to so much as switch what program you're looking at. So yeah, that's Capture.

Starting point is 00:42:27 Yep. And Clarify, so because Capture has to be so frictionless, right? You might be in the middle of writing something, you might be in the middle of a meeting, you might be in the middle of a podcast interview. Because Capture has to be so frictionless, you want to separate the actual thinking about what that thing actually is into the second step, which is clarify. So what you're going to do is as you start capturing things, you know, every day or two or three, you're going to come to an inbox, arrive at an inbox, full of these things you've

Starting point is 00:42:56 written down. And sometimes you're like, what was I even thinking? What is that even referred to? Like you have to really do some clarifying, right? And clarifying can include making you more specific. It can include adding details like who you're supposed to call or why or what the agenda is. It can include what project it belongs to, what the goal of that task is, all sorts of things.

Starting point is 00:43:17 Go ahead. And that's step two. Yep. Step three is organized. So, you know, at this point, you still just have this, this formless C of different tasks that you've created. Organizing is really just to put those into projects, right? Projects and areas, which are his two distinctions. So what, you know, this, what is this group of tasks over here trying to accomplish? That's a project. This group over here is a different project. This over here is an area. So just kind of grouping them. And because once you have those groups,

Starting point is 00:43:48 you can actually see at a glance, what is the set of commitments, the set of projects that you currently have going, which you can't do if you just have 300 random tasks going to a giant list? Yeah. Yeah. You are very right. To go back to just the capture thing, a quote that I've been trying to remember that Johnny told me about is, I think it's David Allen. The mind is built for having thoughts, not holding thoughts. Is that David Allen? Yes. Yes. And that's so central, I think, to what we have here. The Zygonic effect, which is the open loop closed loop that everyone suffers with. It's a reason that inbox zero is a good idea.

Starting point is 00:44:23 It's a reason that the two minute rules are good idea that getting things out of your head and into some sort of capture process that is then clarified because the capture was probably pretty quick and rough-hune. Then we've organized it. We've put it into something which is a little bit more well-formatted and underneath headings of topics or dates or whatever it might be, and then we're going to reflect next. Yes, yes. So up till now, you've sort of been building and accumulating and defining your to-do list, but then all of that goes out of date. Tasts are perishable. It's like fruit. What was relevant yesterday, suddenly in the light of new information is not relevant, or especially once days, weeks have passed, you have to actually refresh this list of projects and tasks. And David

Starting point is 00:45:18 Allen recommends doing this in a weekly review or a monthly review, is taking some time, and the reason he's as reflect is this is actually not a mechanical analytical process. It's you have to step back and think, okay, why am I doing all this? What is all this still relevant? You know, you don't want to keep the heads down, chugging along for too long. You want to actually think about the big picture. So that's the reflect stage and then engage is really just, you know, you sort of

Starting point is 00:45:46 been preparing all this so that when you arrive at work in the morning, right? So it's that you have that fresh mind, you have a fresh cup of coffee you're ready to go. Instead of, oh, let me start with the beginning, thinking of my open loops, checking my email, clarifying, organizing, you actually are ready to just look at your task manager and pick a subset of, in my case, 8.1 tasks for the day, and then just actually produce value and get things done, like the name says, instead of doing your work instead of planning your work because you pre-planned and pre-organized all these things. I get you. So, with the fact that you're capturing quite quickly and then

Starting point is 00:46:26 reflecting on a weekly basis, where do you draw the line between something comes into your sphere of attention or sphere of awareness? Someone texts you, there's something that needs to be done, someone asks you a question, you realize there's something that you need to get from the store later on or whatever it might be. When or where do you draw the line between doing the action now or scheduling it for later? I mean, for things, so David Allen uses a two-minute rule, if you just can do it, immediately do it. He kind of shows two minutes as the threshold under which it's not worth all this time of Doing all these things the thing is that the people and we even talked about this when I was on his podcasts people seriously underestimate how much

Starting point is 00:47:22 Or overestimate how much two minutes is right? I mean two minutes is like nothing. It's like it goes by in a second, right? So you sort of have to in a weird way. There's something else that happens to you Which is usually when you have one open loop one thing you're trying to remember to do you're like, oh, that's fine One thing I can remember two things three things four things and then you get around like five or seven and it's only then that you realize Oh my gosh, I it's falling out. They're both crushed into the weight of my task. Yes. Yeah. So, so in a way, you have to sort of like underestimate yourself. You could keep five to seven tasks in your head, but you have to like, and it's really, you have to train yourself when one open loop arrives or two to think, okay, I could remember these, but let me just capture them. Right. It's sort of, it's a habit habit itself discipline because over time, you really do have thousands of tasks every year.

Starting point is 00:48:09 In box zero for your brain. Basically, yeah. Nice. I like it. So, we're moving on to level three. We finished level two there, right? There's nothing else that we need to touch on there. Yeah, pretty much. So, habit formation and behavior change. James Clears has been on recently, so everyone will be primed and prepped ready for this one. Yes, so this actually emerged. I had my course called Get Stuffed on Like a Boss, which was on that one on GTD. But then, I finished the course saying, now you know it, now you have it. The only thing you must do from now on

Starting point is 00:48:50 is your weekly review. Put it on your calendar, schedule it, and just do it. I was like, oh, yeah, this will be easy. And then, of course, as I follow up with people, as I hear back, that's the thing that they don't do. It's the linchpin, the keystone habits, the one habit upon which all others rely. It's hard to do. If you're not used to sitting inside an hour or two a week to actually reflect on everything

Starting point is 00:49:14 you're committed to, it feels like it's just tremendous burden. I guess as well, with the increase of the velocity of capture of to-do lists, if you don't have the reflect, what you've actually done is just pile weight on top of yourself. And you then eventually do a undisciplined manner, look at this and you just get like, get everything in the face, get hit in the face by these old artifacts of a time gone by when you were noting them all down, and it probably even would make some people shy away from being so efficient with their capture because they're giving themselves this future curse that they're going to have to come up against. It's true.

Starting point is 00:49:59 It's really true. Yeah, it's confronting. It's very confronting. You're right. Yeah, it's confronting. It's very confronting. So what the so I created my next course was called design your habits And it was really at the time and actually up until just this past December I was living in Silicon Valley So I was just immersed in the the power of habit stuff. We got to have it meetups quantified self You know, I was really into BJ fog and all his stuff. I went to the habit summit, which is near IALs, the author of Hooked. His behavior change, habit design stuff.

Starting point is 00:50:34 Well, those conventions like. Other wild. There's so much fun. It's so much fun because they're just uber nerds in this particular domain. Yeah. Just completely amping each other up to be even more nerdy. Oh, man, I love it. I love it. I'd love to be a fly on the wall there. It's like Comic-Con for productivity.

Starting point is 00:50:56 Yeah. I get it. Everyone's tracking everything. There's people walking around with those laptop holsters that kind of attach around your shoulder. Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:51:10 So, this course, it really teaches a sort of a systematic process for forming any habits. And in the pyramid, I chose specific habits because essentially, so weekly review is kind of a keystone habit of task management of GTD, but there's other ones as well. For capture, there's something called the collection habit, which is the thing I mentioned of just it occurring to you in the moment. It's not a habit that you do like at 9 a.m. every morning, but it's like the trigger is, oh, I'm trying to remember more than one thing at once. And then the habit is to actually write that down.

Starting point is 00:51:49 For the clarify stage, the habit is next physical action. So it's basically just to always, when you do write down that task, to write it specifically, instead of like, oh, figure out new computer. No, it's like, okay, like install operating system and then, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you writing down to do list tasks is a description of the state that your life will be in upon completion of that task, but it sounds like your point here is closer to what James Cleartouch is on, which is what is the first step which I need to take, which puts me on the path of this particular process? Where do we lie in between those two? Yeah, I think they are very different things.

Starting point is 00:52:49 And how you describe describing end states, I think that's more for goals or outcomes for me. That's the long, relatively long distance thing. So next physical action is really a great insight from David Allen. It's just the insight that often we define our tasks as essentially mental operations, like ponder, reflect, you know, and think about this particular thing. Yes, spend 32 minutes ruminating about topic X. And it's tempting to do that, especially with modern knowledge work, which is so cognitively

Starting point is 00:53:26 demanding. But it's an issue too, because mental operations, they tend to just sort of like, they're not concrete, not tangible, they don't really have a clear beginning and end. It's not clear when you've done them, right? So it's much better, according to this methodology, to just say, what is the thing you'll have to do in order to do that thinking? Right? Like he gives the example, decide.

Starting point is 00:53:50 Like, decide seems very clear cut. Oh, you just like go into your brain and you make a decision. But you almost always, if you can't make that decision instantly, there's something you have to do. You have to talk to someone. You have to make a list of pros and cons. You have to do some brainstorming, something, right? And it's better to write down that task because then something you can achieve, you can

Starting point is 00:54:09 accomplish rather than just some ethereal idea. I understand. So what is the literal next action that you need to take that progresses you along whatever path has been laid down through the collection? Yes. Cool. So, organize that project list. progress as you along whatever path has been laid down through the collection. Yes. Cool. So organize that project list.

Starting point is 00:54:29 Yeah. So the project list probably doesn't sound like a habit, but it's essentially the habit of maintaining it. This is something I teach in the, in back to two of these courses, but your project list is an absolutely fundamental piece of your productivity. It's really something that's unavoidable. People tend to think of their work in terms of tasks, which is too low level. Especially if you follow this method, they're too specific for you to really see the big picture, whereas goals are too big picture, right?

Starting point is 00:55:04 It doesn't help you to know in three years you want to have your blood in the South of Italy. Okay, well, I just need to know what I'm supposed to do now. And projects are really that medium resolution, right? It's like the medium elevation where they are tangible and concrete enough that you could see the path more or less to get there, but also big enough that they could actually have a huge impact. If you successfully complete a major project, that is a huge win. And David Allen has this quote that he has the same kind of preoccupation. He's like the biggest thing that I'm mystified by is the number of high performing people

Starting point is 00:55:42 that just do not have a project list. Like they just don't maintain it. So that's the habit. You are right. So how do you actually instantiate that? Once you have your rough-hewn bunch of things that you've put down, you're lumping them into a clearly defined set of categories? Yeah, yeah, it's just, it's assigning your next actions, your tasks to their appropriate projects,

Starting point is 00:56:12 but also it's a way of thinking too, right? It's just thinking in terms of projects, instead of like, it learns Spanish, that's a classic one I see, oh yeah, that's a gold mine, learns, okay. But that's not a project, you know, it has no end. You don't reach a day where, you know, that's the gold mine learns, okay, but that's not a project. It has no end. You don't reach a day where you just have learned Spanish. It's an infinite game.

Starting point is 00:56:30 It's a never-ending thing. So much better than that is to pick a first small achievable thing, complete Rosetta Stone or complete the Babel modules for Spanish. Just beginner ones. Then you can achieve that project. And then think about what you learned or emulate a new project. Really, on the way to any goal, especially

Starting point is 00:56:52 any major goal, there should be a long series of stepping stones. And those stepping stones are whole projects. I do this case study in my other course, building a second brain of you know redesigning my website We're if you really break down redesigning website. It's like a dozen different projects Right because you have to like create things you have to create you know I had to create my brochure because I wanted to put it on there. I had to get headshots. Oh my gosh getting headshots

Starting point is 00:57:18 All project by itself And then only when I'd completed most of those dozen projects did it even make sense to touch the web design itself. I understand. I'm going to guess that as we move down we're going to touch on this, but have you got away whereby people take goals or overall the overall ephemeral stuff and go top down and turn them from goals and objectives into projects and into actions because we're kind of going bottom up here, right? Something appears in your sphere of awareness.

Starting point is 00:57:49 It then gets instantiated and lumped into one of the projects. But if you don't have your projects there, you can't do this. Yeah. So this is very funny. I get this question a lot because essentially, no, I don't really do that. Interesting. And the reason I think, so a couple of reasons.

Starting point is 00:58:10 First is that that's what most others do. And there's definitely huge value in it. But every productivity book I've read, a goal setting methodology course I've done, is that, you know, is what is your, what is your tenure, your vision, your long term thing, the life you want to have, what are your goals, all these things, and then they sort of cascade those goals

Starting point is 00:58:30 down into specific outcomes and then projects and then tasks. And that has value, it's super, it's super good to do, I do it from time to time, but my general philosophy that you'll see in this whole pyramid actually is something that I haven't seen, which is sort of like Emergence productivity right in an environment where you don't know what the final goal is right where you're doing a big U.S. Creative work where you're as we said before discovering what the goals are as you make progress on them You have to let things emerge Right you have to you have to sort of do a fundamental series of activities that produce a value.

Starting point is 00:59:08 And then as you see the value you're producing, you take a step back and you go, oh, there seems to be a lot of value being produced in this part of my life. Let me now retroactively think of a goal that makes use of that value. So the listeners who tuned into the James Clear episode from a few weeks ago will know that James talked a lot about this. He talked about our genes do not predetermined, but they do predispose. And he suggests the fact that someone who has both a talent or capacity in a particular area and a passion is a very dangerous individual for whatever that domain of competence

Starting point is 00:59:45 is. And obviously what you're allowing to happen there is I'm just going to start doing stuff. And just do some stuff and see where I appear to be effective. And the places that you are most effective in probably quite likely will be where your competence is highest and also your motivation or feeling of fun. The metric that James uses is what do you do that to you feels like fun but to everyone else feels like work. And wherever that lies is, you know, okay, we'll start to exploit that a little bit. I'll have a look at what happens over on that side. Maybe I'm getting a little bit bored of that. is, you know, okay, we'll start to exploit that a little bit. I'll have a look at what happens over on that side. Maybe I'm getting a little bit bored of that.

Starting point is 01:00:28 But you've started to gear yourself towards that. In a very bizarre way, it's a very philosophical solution to what is an incredibly modern problem, isn't it? It can get pretty philosophical. It is fundamentally a different approach. I'd say not only to productivity, but kind of to life. It's like the point of your life is not to conform to a set of a priori objectives that

Starting point is 01:00:59 you'd imagined at some very early immature stage. The point of life is to experience life, right? And to experience it in a not always controlled way, right? Like to fully, I was just writing about this in a blog post like, you know, it is the lack of control of life that allows life to be exciting and invigorating and just from time to time absolutely terrifying. But I mean life is worth living because it's unpredictable. And I think I'm sort of like putting that into my productivity philosophy by saying allow your goals to be discovered or even in a way to discover you. Allow your goals to set you instead of you setting your goals.

Starting point is 01:01:45 I love that. That's really, that's a really nice way to put it. And I doubt that many people would have presumed that a digital productivity pyramid would have encapsulated something that was quite so fluffy and philosophical and conceptual, but here we are. So we're moving on to reflect the weekly review, which is the linchpin, as you said, of this particular this particular habit set Yes, yes, so it's really a habit This is the only one of these habits actually that it's sort of fixed in time You know, you can say I think David Allen recommends Wednesday afternoon

Starting point is 01:02:18 Everyone has their theory of oh the one time you must do it. When do you do? I don't So I actually don't have. Oh, God. Tiago, you were rumbling you on a minute basis here. I know everything. It's clear that I don't follow my own advice. But so my, so, OK, I always do it around the same time. Actually, that's not even true. The way that I do my weekly review is

Starting point is 01:02:41 based on the level of perspective that I need. This is actually the thing. Looking at this whole pyramid, every time there's a fixed recommendation, you have to do it this way. Really, that's a spectrum. It can be adjusted up and down depending on your needs. I think that's a higher level of sophistication. At first, you slavishly follow the two-minute rule, and that's useful.

Starting point is 01:03:04 You want to discipline yourself according to that standard. But then you realize, oh, actually, an example is when you come back from vacation, and you have 2,000 emails or something to read. If you follow the two-minute rule, you're going to be doing nothing but answering emails for three and a half days. In that case, you have to adjust that threshold down to say 30 seconds. And only actually respond to something that is like really, really fast. And the same thing is three of your weekly reviews.

Starting point is 01:03:31 So sometimes I'm working, it's clear, it's clear to me what I need to be working on for a few weeks at a time. If I'm working on, say, a manuscript of my book, I don't need. In fact, it's actually bad. It throws me off course for me to grind that to a halt. You know, all that mental momentum of like the manuscript. Just stop. Oh, no, no, no, it's Wednesday at 3.30 p.m. I have to do my weekly review. You want to actually just just maximize that forward momentum. But when I know I need to do my weekly review is when I wake up in the morning, and I just have this feeling,

Starting point is 01:04:05 I'm not sure what I should be doing today. To me, that's the trigger of, oh, it's time to take a step back, redo reconnaissance on all my projects, redo my calendar, it's like, get everything back into shape, so that I can have that clarity again. I get it.

Starting point is 01:04:22 Also, I totally understand what you mean about the fact that upon instantiating a lot of the strategies that we're going through today, these rigid rules are a good way to do them. It's the same reason that when anyone who's ever taken a martial arts class, they will learn how to jab and the process for a jab or Brazilian jujitsu, that taking whatever the fundamentals are, are quite rigidly defined because it is a useful framework for a beginner to layer their non-existent understanding over.

Starting point is 01:04:54 But this conversation between myself and you is like a blue belt talking to like a seventh degree like black belt. And you're now in this place where you are able to feel with a lot more fidelity and play around with the parameters of what the emergence of these strategies actually means. And it's that the weekly review is there every single week at the same time to create this framework and it makes you accountable and it gives you this repetition so that you learn to instantiate it. But you are right, like you would, the reason it's there at weekly is presumably a week is around about the iteration, like length, that's about right for you to need to do it. But completely correct, sometimes it might be a month,

Starting point is 01:05:45 sometimes it might be twice a week. So yeah, I think you're allowed to, when you're Tiago Forte, you're allowed to play around with the rules and break them sometimes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's the same thing in any domain, I think you're right, in writing. You can only, you can break the rules and produce incredible innovative pieces of writing, but only after you've mastered them. Right? If you're a beginner trying to just break rules, it's just going to be, you know, nonsensical, you know, whatever. Yeah, because it's not emergent from an understanding of the rules themselves, right? Exactly. So, engage context slash priorities. I don't know what this means.

Starting point is 01:06:29 Yeah, the, so Alan has this idea of context, which is the way you should decide what to do at any given time is based on the context in which you find yourself, right? It's not based on strict priority. It's not based on, it's just based on so, for example, if you are on the train and you only have your mobile device, let's say, you should only do tasks that are amenable that makes sense to do on your mobile device in that situation. You shouldn't sit down and try to do some big, heavy lift if you know that you're going to be getting off in 10 minutes. If you are walking through the city and you have your phone, you should make phone calls.

Starting point is 01:07:07 You shouldn't try to like, I mean, you could walk and be typing on your phone or something, but that doesn't make sense while walking through a city. You should make phone calls, right? So, and that's different from priority. It's like, it's basically saying that the top priority in any given moment depends on, in his case, he said the the energy you have how much energy is available to you the tools you have how much time you have and then finally last is the actual urgency that for the priority of it.

Starting point is 01:07:34 Yeah, I guess there's probably quite a lot of devils in the details with regards to that this final one this engage context and priorities. I imagine like creating a formalized framework for this and instantiating it's probably a bit more difficult to define. It's probably an experience game a little bit. Yeah, so once again, you can take his four contexts as a starting point. I don't find them all that useful anymore. I have some writing I've done about this, where in the past, your tool largely determined your context,

Starting point is 01:08:07 whether you had your computer, your phone, you were at the office, not at the office, but now with the phone, with a smartphone. GTD was formulated before smartphones. You could, in theory, do anything anywhere at any time. Yeah, you tell you right. So I have a post on this called Productivity for Precious Snowflakes.

Starting point is 01:08:26 That's a great title. Which is such a great title. It's one of my all-time most popular and most favorite posts. Still comes around on Twitter once in a while, but basically it's that I'm proposing a theory that the new sort of constraint on what you can do is your mood, that how you, what you feel like doing basically is the best basis on which to choose what to do, which requires, you know, a 5,000 word post to fully explain, but I'll let your readers find that if they're interested. They'll track it down. So we're moving on to level four.

Starting point is 01:08:59 We're high up on the pyramid now. We've got a nose bleed, we're terrified of heights, and we're looking at personal knowledge management. And I know that some of the co-hosts will be very excited for this because this is part of your building a second brain course. That's right. So this is my current area of focus. Essentially after the two previous courses, I noticed that people would have incredible testimonials from GTD. I have my whole to-do list, my tasks completely organized, my habits are great, that's not wonderful, but it always came back to knowledge. I seem to know things

Starting point is 01:09:39 to have subject matter expertise, to have work experience, to have professional wisdom speaking in wisdom. And I'm not sure where that goes. It doesn't seem to go into all these productivity apps at the very bottom. There's no place for it there. It doesn't seem to go into the five stages of GTD, which is all about action. There's no place for it in habit formation.

Starting point is 01:10:00 It's just kind of there. And I started noticing in my own work. So usually what happened is I'm at a kind of there. And I started noticing in my own work. So usually what happened is, I'm at a frontier of knowledge. And then my audience is just behind me. So it's like, I'm encountering the wild, whatever is next. And then I can hear them in the back. Just a few steps behind, in many cases, just like clamoring for the solution.

Starting point is 01:10:20 And that's what kind of propels me forward. But I read the, actually, the updated edition of GTD, which was in 2015, it came out. And he says all these times, there's actionable information tasks, and then there's reference information, which is everything else. And he keeps saying, I think seven or eight times, he says, reference information is one of the most powerful, high potential ways of completely, you know, revolutionizing your productivity. But then he just doesn't say anything. It's like, essentially, that's amazing. Yeah, it's outside the, the purview of GTD. And I just thought, oh my gosh, like, this is the next frontier. This is what's next. Right? Like GTD, in my opinion, salt taps. It's gonna be around 100 years from now.

Starting point is 01:11:08 But there's this whole other thing, which is everything else. Right? And I just started trying things from my, this is how it usually happens. I experiment from my own, I start reading books, I do interviews, I do consulting projects, and then through all this activity, which I have to do to pay the bills, fortunately, something emerges, which is this thing that I now call building a second brain,

Starting point is 01:11:31 which is the kind of the brand. That's my particular take on a field, which is actually I discovered, a pre-existing academic discipline called Personal Knowledge Management. Okay, I didn't know that. Interesting. Yeah, it's young. It started in the 90s. I've interviewed the guy who sort of coined the term actually in a paper, but it's a thing.

Starting point is 01:11:53 It's related to what's called personal information management, but I think different and that it's focused more on like your tacit knowledge, your personal experience, your subject matter expertise, and they're starting to be conferences on it. There's academic journals specifically dedicated to it. And now as far as I know, I'm one of the first sort of brands or products that is there to teach people how to do it for themselves. I understand. So I'm looking at progressive summarization,

Starting point is 01:12:24 P-A-R-A, and workflow strategies. Can we run through those? Yes, yes. So my methodology that's emerged over the years has three sort of legs to the stool. And they correspond to the three I have stages of my own, to the three, I have stages of my own, just like GTD, which is the stages are, remember, connect and create. Okay, so that's essentially the three things that you do with knowledge. What do you do with knowledge? You first of all have to remember it.

Starting point is 01:12:55 You have to know what's there, be able to recall it. That's the first stage. The second is you have to connect it. You know, you wanna do more than just stockpile, you know, bricks of knowledge in a warehouse. You want to actually mix and match it. You want to see, oh, this is like this. This is different from that.

Starting point is 01:13:12 This, you know, Shed's light on this other thing. It's like, that's what creativity is. It's making connections between things. And I have a second, so progressive summarization is my, the method I've developed for the first stage, which is remember, Para is the organizational system I've developed for the second stage, which is connect. And workflow strategies is the third one for the third stage, which is create. And basically, what this has to do with is my, my belief, which is that you only know what you make.

Starting point is 01:13:48 And that's actually a quote in Latin that's Vettom Epsum Factor from this 18th century, I think Italian philosopher. And it actually very succinctly describes a philosophy of knowledge, which is that, you know, until you actually know it through experience, right, embodied experience, you've actually taken action on it, you've made something out of it, you have tested it in some way, it's not actually your knowledge, it's just information, right?

Starting point is 01:14:14 If I read a book on, you know, horticulture and I have 10,000 words of notes on horticulture, that's not knowledge for me, it's knowledge for them, but to me that's just information. But if I go out and, you know, plant an orchard and try all these things, make mistakes, try on air, then I can slowly convert that information into my own personal knowledge. You've transcended the ability to remember as well. The listeners who are familiar with the Feynman technique, I guess, leverages something which is quite similar to this, which is that it's your job not only to read something, remember it, latch it onto the existing pieces of information that you have in associated and non-associated fields, but

Starting point is 01:14:58 also finally to then be able to re-explain it to someone who has no understanding of whatever the field is that you're talking about. And that's like the icing on the top of the cake, the final keystone in the bridge, so to speak, that locks everything together. Like, if you can do that, all of the other stages really kind of are just allowing you to do that. Yes, that's exactly my belief. Is this entire pyramid, the whole reason it's worth doing is to create new things Right, it's to actually produce something of novel value in the world that would not be there if it was not for you without that This is all just like really like kind of like naval gazing. It's just like What's the word? It's just like, what's the word?

Starting point is 01:15:45 It's just like widget making for, it's not even widget making, it's just like. It's not making anything, yeah, exactly. Yeah, you're not making anything, it's widgets are useful, you can install the places. You touched on it at the very beginning, Yusuf that all of the listeners will know, one of the co-hosts, he describes himself

Starting point is 01:16:02 as a furious indexer of information like his His ever-note I want to say is like up to between five and 10,000 notes on there now And it's the meta tags are unbelievable. I mean it would be like it's like heaven for you T. I go you would you love it It's all very very beautifully designed But his point is that it is just ruthless indexing. And when you don't actually then bring that forward into something, and as a perfect example for me, and some of the listeners might think as well, like, oh, well, I enjoy reading. I enjoy personal development.

Starting point is 01:16:39 Maybe I enjoy sci-fi, and maybe I enjoy everything. Like, you know, whatever form of media it is, but I currently don't have an outlet that gives me a creative medium in which to put this on display. And that was one of the main reasons for me why I started this podcast, that I didn't have a platform in which I could talk about things that I was interested in and then begin to layer on top of each other all of the about things that I was interested in and then begin to layer on top of each other all of the different things that I was learning about as I went on and I'd speak to you or James Clear or Rory Sutherland or you know whoever it might be. Exactly. Oh, I've now augmented my existing understanding with that and not only have I had my

Starting point is 01:17:22 understanding and their understanding, but when we've discussed them and brought them together, the sum has been greater than the whole of the parts, and I now have leveled up, and I know all of this extra stuff that I didn't even know existed before. Exactly. Yeah, that's absolutely key, and it goes back to that thing of being artists. We're not trained or educated in any way to think of ourselves as creators.

Starting point is 01:17:47 And that's the term I like to use creator, you know, because you can be creating anything. It's websites, it's videos, it's interviews, it's events, right? But until you actually step out and you really, you're putting yourself on the line, right? Like people who are endlessly just accumulating knowledge and accumulating knowledge and accumulating

Starting point is 01:18:05 more and more books read. I mean, that is, that is such a non participatory way of living in my view, you know, better to read one, consume one tenth as much as much information online and actually put that to use rather than just like racking up the, you know, the vanity metrics. I think that's think that's what it is. I agree. Just briefly before we move on to the pinnacle at level five, I wondered if you could just give us a brief explanation of your progressive summarization strategy. I know for many people, and me included, it's selfishly for myself. I like to read on a

Starting point is 01:18:47 Kindle Paper White because it's low distraction, my phone is fettered with work stuff that I can't really get away from. So for me, exporting notes, and I don't want to interrupt my read flow to create notes, and for listeners at home, they may also have the problem of, I read something, I can maybe do a little review in my head at the end of each chapter, but four or five or six chapters deep. I can't remember what was in chapter one, and then what is your your process for you reading a book or you're reading a very long article, a big chunk of information, how are you noting that down? Yeah, great question. The thing is though, Chris, I have a column three

Starting point is 01:19:32 minutes. Shit, right. We're going to go to the top of the pyramid just in time project project management. What's happening up there? So really coming back to that idea that projects are like the best unit of measurement for modern work. Justin Time project management is basically a new, just a new way of thinking about projects, where instead of planning foreign advance and having very detailed timelines and gant charts and all these things, just as the name implies, you do it Justin time. You do it at the last minute.

Starting point is 01:20:03 Why? And I know it's, so for the very same reason that just in time manufacturing, which is where I borrowed that from, completely revolutionized manufacturing, which is that when you, so if you think about it, everything else being equal, the best time to do something is at the last minute. When you do something right before it's actually needed, you have as much

Starting point is 01:20:25 information as possible. You have as much wisdom as you can gather. The solution you're creating is actually close in time to the problem that it's trying to solve, so you're not going to be creating something and then weeks or months pass and it's no longer valid. Coordination is easier, you can bring together everyone that needs to be there for that solution just when it's actually needed. Instead of like, oh, can you send me that thing that's happening in three months. The only reason that that sounds totally irresponsible and sounds impossible is we've lived in a world full of friction. You had to mail things around, you had a schedule meeting, you had to go find knowledge in a library

Starting point is 01:21:02 somewhere. But what I've found, and this has emerged almost to my surprise, is that when you have your knowledge externalized in a central tool like in building a second brain, you can instead of starting from scratch with each new project, oh, let me go research this thing, let me go read a book. You have all these little packets, these atoms of knowledge already at your disposal. And what a project becomes, really, is just looking at what's available, snapping together these modules, like Lego pieces, right, and doing it just in time. So you have as much information as possible about the problem you're solving.

Starting point is 01:21:38 And then just snapping it together, and there's your project. And this results in these, I have a 21 part series on this on my blog where I really get into some insanely minute things that I'm sure your audience will, some of your audience will love, but it's behind my pay well. So some of my blog articles cost $10 a month to read. I want to give that disclaimer. But if someone's interested in that, that's 21, 22,000 words just on just-in-time project management. Wow. Tiago, I don't want to take up any more of your time. Today has been exactly what I wanted

Starting point is 01:22:14 to be. It's been fantastic. Before you leave, can you tell the listeners where they can find you online, where they can head to get more of this information if they want it? Yes. Really, my website is the portal to everything else. It's Forte Lab's F-O-R-T-E-L-A-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A-L-A. It's Forte Labs, F-O-R-T-E-L-A-B-S. C-O, not.com.co. And that has links to my blog, my courses, my social media, my email newsletter, really, everything. Fantastic. Yago, it's been an absolute blast.

Starting point is 01:22:42 I hope you've revolutionized a lot of people's workflows. And speaking of just in time, you have about 30 seconds before your next call. So we've made up this on the head. Thank you so much for your time, man. Perfect Chris. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure. I'm really happy to talk about this.

Starting point is 01:22:58 And let's do a part two of that. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, yeah

Modern Wisdom - #074 - Tiago Forte - The Definitive Guide To Digital Productivity

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