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What influenced the thinkers, creators, writers, and rebels to develop their unique perspectives and share it with the rest of us? What does their creative process look like today and how has it evolved? Let’s learn how the sausage gets made.
Tiago Forte: If you think of the world as your teacher, just ask yourself, what message does it seem to be trying to get me to understand? Tiago Forte. Tiago Forte. Tiago Forte. Is an internationally recognized speaker, productivity expert. World's foremost experts on productivity. Author of Building a Second Brain.
Building a Second Brain. Building a Second Brain, a proven method to organize your digital life. and unlock your creative potential. All the knowledge is basically free and universally accessible now, either through Google or ChatGPT or whatever. What is not universally accessible and never will be is my life experience.
Imagine if you were to talk to this alien and you were to tell them your problem. They would be so far removed. The only thing that you would have in common, if you think about it, is like the laws of physics that they would understand and not much else. In an
Nick Milo: alternate reality where Evernote disappeared tomorrow.
Where would you go?
Welcome to How I Think. I'm your host, Nick Milo. It's easy to see what someone writes or what they share, but I'm interested in exploring how they think. How does the sausage gets made? Yes, we'll explore the creative process, but we'll also explore someone's unique perspectives and see who's influenced them along the way.
My guest today is the very amazing. Tiago Forte. Tiago is a very generous person. You may know him as the founder of Forte Labs, the creator of Building a Second Brain, the author of the best selling book with the same name, along with his latest book, The Paramethod. He's also become a friend over the past year and a half, and our conversations on knowledge management and everything in between have been epically rewarding.
That's why I'm thrilled to have him on today to learn more about how his first brain actually
Tiago Forte: ticks. How are you doing? I'm good. I'm so excited to be here. I'm excited to
Nick Milo: have you. I think everyone knows how much you've put out there, how much you've shared, but we only every now and then get a taste of how you think.
And that's what I really want to explore today. And from what I understand, we have 10 special questions that we'll be covering. Some of your favorite questions. So before we get into that, I do want to start off with just a little bit of background here and finish this sentence for me. Building a second brain almost didn't happen,
Tiago Forte: but then.
Building a second brain almost didn't happen so many times, but if I had to pick one, uh, I realized that I could do online courses in a very different way than they had been done up until that point and decided to take a chance on it. Your
Nick Milo: online courses, so that would be mainly these cohorts, these one month transformational intensives that would teach someone how to do digital knowledge management and progress their
Tiago Forte: projects along.
Yes, exactly. Okay. And you ran
Nick Milo: 19 of these over the years. Yep. But there won't be a 20th. Nope. Why
Tiago Forte: is that? 19 is my wife Lauren's favorite number. That's one reason. But also, you know, what happened is we basically found other better ways of teaching it, uh, more efficient ways. So, so I wrote two books, which are, you know, so much more accessible, widely available and, and affordable, uh, than, than live online courses.
We have YouTube videos, blog posts, social media posts, a self paced course. So if people do want to take a course they can, but we, we sort of got. What we were teaching in the, in the second brain cohorts and just broke it into parts. And now people can kind of pick and choose the parts they want.
Nick Milo: So what's the normal path for them?
They might find the book first now. Is that what you're saying?
Tiago Forte: Or even before then, they'll probably follow us on YouTube or another social platform, hear about the book, buy the book, and then go on to the course from there. Okay.
Nick Milo: That's really fascinating to see how things evolved. So there won't be a 20th, but that's okay because you have the whole ecosystem to provide and kind of meet someone with where exactly they are in their journey.
Tiago Forte: Exactly. Exactly. We have, we have weekly events. So the other thing we have is a membership, uh, an annual membership that people can sign up to that has cohort like events, that same live learning experience every week throughout the whole year. Oh, wow. So that's almost like a year long cohort. You can almost think of it as.
It's really cool
Nick Milo: to see how that ecosystem has really just expanded to meet anyone with where they're at. So let's just talk a little bit more about books because you have published two books and both of them have made waves, especially building a second brain, which came out about a year and a half ago.
So when you were writing that, what books were you looking towards for inspiration?
Tiago Forte: I had in mind a set of books that were, were nonfiction, were traditionally published, were in the kind of self improvement category. And I think most importantly, that had really, that had really been successful. Not just financially, that's important, but I looked at books that had almost like changed the culture, really changed the conversation around a topic.
Uh, for example, James Clear's book, Atomic Habits, obvious example. David Allen's book, Getting Things Done, uh, Cal Newport's book, Deep Work. All these books were much more than books. They were almost like movements unto themselves because they, I think how they did it is they, it sounds simple, but it's almost impossible.
They really captured a zeitgeist. They captured something that was already happening in the world or in the culture or in and then they described it accurately. Provided a solution to that issue or that problem and it was a solution that many people could adopt and many people have I really wanted to do something like that and you know Essentially change the conversation around note taking where when people say note taking or digital note taking they mean something different Than what it meant before my book that is a really powerful framework for considering.
I'm in the process of writing a
Nick Milo: book. So just considering how you approach that and how you kind of have identified those books and what their huge goals were of capturing
Tiago Forte: a zeitgeist and providing a new solution for
Nick Milo: that. It's pretty fascinating. Um, while we're still on books. We know some of that influenced you while you were writing, but what are some of the under the radar type of books that maybe have had an impact on you in non obvious
Tiago Forte: ways?
Yes, there's been, there's definitely some books that are, that are under the radar, as you said. Um, there's one called Emergent Strategy that is written by Adrienne Marie Brown. She's a, she's a black, Afro futurist, uh, activist. She works in activism, you know, trying to make a difference in social issues.
And this book, uh, who I was introduced to by my wife, Lauren, is kind of at the intersection of strategy. There's business strategy and things like that, but also biomimicry. How nature, um, emerges, how nature finds ways of surviving, reproducing, thriving. So those two things plus social activism, somehow she intersected all those across lines, across categories.
Which influenced me in a lot of different ways. I mean, one of them is, is the idea that you can write a book that has no pre existing category, which in a way I think mine doesn't. You know, you could put it in productivity, you could put it in self improvement, but there was no personal knowledge management section of the bookstore.
There still isn't. Um, but it kind of gave me the permission to do that. That
Nick Milo: is fascinating. Now I have to check that one out. I love the title too, by the way. Um,
Tiago Forte: okay. Well, one
Nick Milo: more question or one more book related question before we really get into Tiago's top 10 questions, top favorite questions of all time.
Um, what book, I guess, what book do you find yourself remembering or bringing up at random times? So like the one that's just kind of there and then you're in a conversation and then you just find yourself.
Tiago Forte: Talking about it. I think I'd have to say this is another very popular one, but um, the body keeps the score Hmm.
Which we've talked about. You, you, I think you mentioned to me the title alone gave you like a light bulb moment. . It did. . Um, I read that book. It was eyeopening. I mean, that, it's a, it's a very extensive book. It's not a short, easy read. It really documents so many different aspects of trauma. Uh, I liked it.
In fact, I didn't like it. I found value in it. It was kind of. painful to read actually, um, but I found it so valuable that I summarized it on my blog and I send that link to so many different people because I think, I think there's this awakening going on in society that trauma is not this like one very specific thing.
You know, something traumatic happened to you at one moment in time and you have trauma. It's really kind of like a pervasive A pervasive aspect of the human condition. We all have something that happened in our past, or maybe something that failed to happen. Like we didn't get something from our parents, you know, um, that caused our body, our nervous system to be tuned or to be shaped in a certain way that no longer serves us.
That's my definition of trauma. Some way in which your body is calibrated that no longer serves you that has to be, you could say, healed or unlearned or just shifted to me is something that is, is completely universal. And so I find myself not often recommending people read that book because it's like I said, it's long, but I'll often quote it to them or cite, uh, one piece of, you know, I'll say like, Oh, I read some research when I say read some research, I usually mean that book when it comes to trauma.
I love that. And
Nick Milo: that title is, is. Fantastic. And when you brought that up that you summarized it, I thought, okay. So I found that and I've read, I think half of it and I intend to read the other half just so I have a greater sense of it. Um, that's a wonderful under the
Tiago Forte: radar book. Yeah.
Nick Milo: When it comes to books in general, have you changed how you approach reading them or taking notes on them over the years?
Tiago Forte: I feel like I'm more selective at every stage. I'm more selective about the content I consume in general. I'm especially selective about what books I read, because a book is such a massive commitment. To even start reading a book, it's hours, right? Um, I'm more selective about the books I've started. As to whether I'm going to continue reading them and finish them, uh, I'm more selective about the notes that I, the highlights that I save during my reading.
I used to take far more. I used to constantly be hitting the, uh, the 10 percent limit that Kindle imposes on how many highlights you can export. Now I never do. I take such sparse notes. Um, so it's sort of like, I mean, I think that's part of. Discernment. As you've been through the cycle of reading and taking notes on, and taking notes on and summarizing enough books, you just start to learn and, and be able to predict in advance what is going to be worth the time, and relatively few things are.
Discernment. That's a good word. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Anything you want to say about discernment? I mean, it's kind of underrated, right? It's like, you could say discernment, wisdom, judgment. Uh, that's what comes with experience. That's what comes with age. Um, I'm appreciating that more and more these days. Is that I have a life experience.
That is That is impossible to replicate. No one else has it. No book contains it. It's like my moat, my moats, all, all the knowledge is basically free and universally accessible now, either through Google or chat GPT or whatever, what is not universally accessible and never will be as my life experience.
So I guess just the value that I place on that is going up over time. Yeah. Okay.
Nick Milo: A couple more. And then we're finally to your questions. When did you actually start?
Tiago Forte: Writing in a public way. Yeah, it goes pretty far back the first time that I really sat down and wrote something significant That was not demanded of me required of me wasn't part of school was when I was 14 years old at that age in 1998 My parents moved me and my three siblings from Southern California Orange County to Brazil We went and lived there for a year because my mom was Brazilian and they said, you know what, we want them to have Brazilian cultural exposure and to learn the language.
And so we went down there and lived, and Brazil is just such a magical, random place that the things that would happen in the small town that we lived were so unusual. You know, the characters we would meet, the festivals, the food, the random things we would eat. It was like living in a fairy tale or like a, like a alternate reality.
These experiences were so unusual that I had to sit down and write about them. And the medium I chose was just these long emails that I would sit down at our like early compact laptop, one of the earliest laptop computers in the late nineties, and I would just. pen, these long stories. You guys won't believe what happened to me today.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'd tell the whole story. I still have those emails, by the way. Oh, wow. I still have them. And, and, you know, they're not in any way good at writing. There was almost no skill on display. But I think what I took away is that I can choose to write. I can, no one has to make me or incentivize me or give me permission.
I can just sit down and do writing. The, the important part was the reaction that I got back, you know, I would write basically to our extended family and family friends and they all, not all, but many of them would write back, you know, this was so entertaining, this was so great, keep writing. And so that encouragement was like the first little thing that gave me that idea that I could write.
The feedback loop, the
Nick Milo: positive feedback loop early on to get those,
Tiago Forte: that, that sense of confidence built up
Nick Milo: and that you have
Tiago Forte: permission to write too. Yes. I loved it. I'm going to
Nick Milo: add that
Tiago Forte: to my permission list. Awesome. Yeah. Awesome. I have permission to write. Sometimes you just need
Nick Milo: the reminder of the simplest things.
Tiago Forte: Seriously. Seriously.
Nick Milo: With your writing, you, you have a very popular blog. I'm just kind of curious. Is there any article, even if it's not the most popular one that you're really like proud
Tiago Forte: that you've written? I mean, my favorite blog post I ever wrote is nowhere near the most popular ones. It's called the throughput of learning.
It was kind of the deepest I ever went on, on understanding a set of ideas very, very deeply, and then trying to combine them, which is kind of what I like to do the most is cross, crossing boundaries, crossing borders, crossing categories. I just find that so rewarding. Uh, it was basically to give you a preview, applying principles of flow in manufacturing, like how factories are designed.
To maximize the efficiency of producing products. Combining that with what happens in the human mind when we learn. And thinking of learning as like a production pipeline. Of insights going from early stage to mid stage to late stage. Uh, yeah, it's there, you can find it on my blog. But it's, it's something that I love having written.
That's really cool. Because
Nick Milo: that intersection, throughput, is actually a term. For, uh, what, that systems way of thinking? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And you applied it to the human mind.
Tiago Forte: Yes. That's awesome.
Nick Milo: Okay. So we're finally to the meat and potatoes. The 10 questions that are your favorite for agency, for developing agency and just overall we can say maybe excellent thinking.
Tiago Forte: At number one,
Nick Milo: how is this thing that seems bad actually good? In fact, how is it exactly what I need at this moment? Yeah,
Tiago Forte: gosh, oh my gosh, each one of these questions has such a history for me. This really comes from Michael Singer and his book, The Untethered Soul, and then his other book, The Surrender Experiment.
And Michael Singer is this entrepreneur and, and kind of spiritual guru, turned spiritual guru, and he He just has this way of thinking that that or this idea that life is just your teacher life is your teacher It's just constantly there waiting patiently to teach you what you need to learn Not necessarily that it has a will of its own.
It's not, it's not necessarily God. You could call that God, but it doesn't have to be God. There's no theological belief necessary, which I like. Uh, it's really more like, just think, reality is just going to treat you the same way as everyone else. We'll give you no special treatment, but because reality just is the way it is, it doesn't, it doesn't modify itself for anyone.
You will, through living. rub up against the parts of reality that you don't understand, that you don't accept, and that you don't embrace. And you'll keep rubbing up against them. You'll keep hitting that little sharp edge until you accept it and embrace it. Um, and I've just really come to believe this, that if you think of The world is your teacher.
Reality is your teacher. Just ask yourself what message does it seem to be trying to get me to understand what experience keeps repeating itself, what pattern keeps repeating itself in my experience that I could learn something from? And often I find, you know, something bad is happening to me. You know, let's say, uh, I don't know.
I have a someone on on Um, Social media who's trolling me and they keep trolling me again and again and again. I can get angry. I can resist it I can resent them. I can try to ignore them. I can block them But if it keeps happening, usually I can find I can I could ask myself this question and just be like what is this?
repeat troll Trying to teach me What, what is the lesson? What is the truth? You know, they, they may be saying, accusing me of things and calling me bad names that are 99 percent false and not, not correct. But most things have at least a little bit of truth. They might have only 1 percent of truth and 99 percent false.
But if you can find that little 1 percent of truth. Then no experience in life is wasted. No even, even bad experience, even negative experience is something that shouldn't have happened to you or something that you regret. It's just another lesson that reality is trying to teach you. That's really fascinating.
Nick Milo: That's, that's a really nice example too. All right, let's move on to the second question. So how can I turn up the chaos slash entropy in this situation? Conversely, how can I turn down the chaos entropy? So that's interesting that you have. Both. What's
Tiago Forte: that about? Yeah. This, this is such a powerful one. You know, you know where this kind of came from.
There was an old software program. I think it was, um, Handbrake. The Handbrake app that some people out there used to use to, um, to convert their pirated torrented videos, uh, from, how could they? How could they? Such terrible people, uh, back when, you know, torrents were a thing. Um, and, and in that software, there's a setting that says entropy.
Oh, there's like, it's like a slider. You just go, Oh, how much entropy in this video do you want less or more? And that probably has to do with like how lossy the compression is for the video or something. But I almost saw it as like a sci fi thing because I also read a lot of sci fi. I'm sure we'll talk about that.
We're like, imagine if you had, I think when I saw that little dial, I thought, what if you had like a dashboard for reality? Like, for, for your, your, your surroundings. And you could, you know, turn up the, like, the speed of time. Okay, let's make time go faster, slower. You could turn, you know, the seasons. Oh, it's winter?
Turn it to summer. You could turn up the interestingness of the conversation you're having. Like, you could just dial in the experience you want to have. And what if one of those dials was entropy? You're like, I'm bored. Just turn up the chaos. Just inject chaos into this environment. Or you're kind of overwhelmed, and you turn it down.
lower entropy. Um, and that's basically what I try to do. I just find that there's a spectrum between order and chaos. Um, neither one is better. Like this to me was a big insight. We tend to, we tend to at least in the Northern hemisphere, developed countries, U. S. culture, we have a bias towards order. We like to control, we like to have kind of order with things.
Um, but I know from my experience in Brazil, where they do not have that bias. In fact, by default, things are much more chaotic, but wonderful things come out of that chaos. A lot of fun. You know, you're in the street and suddenly someone takes out a drum and then a guitar, and then there's a band and people are playing music and then people come out of their homes.
And before you know it, there's like a street party that no one organized. And you're just like, wow, this can only happen because. The level of chaos and entropy in this society is higher. It just is. And so often when I'm in an environment, you know, I'll just, I'll just ask, like, we're having a meeting with the team.
This is a good example. And you know, those meetings where, where it's like everything that's being said is completely predictable. You know, what's going to be said. You're going through the agenda. Every point, you know what each, you know, what each person is going to say, okay, Bob is going to say the thing he always says, Alex over here is going to say the thing she always says.
And you're just like, I just had this thought, why have an experience that is completely predictable? There's no value in that. And so, you know, I'm sure sometimes this is a bit, uh, you know, disruptive and concerning, but I'll just try to bring in a completely unrelated topic or say something that's a bit provocative or challenge something.
You know, like this project that we just spent the last two weeks planning, what if we just didn't do it? That's an example. Hmm. Like bringing out of left field a whole other option that people didn't even think was on the table is a way of kind of amping up the, the entropy. Big question.
Nick Milo: Number three, what would it look like to dial up the scope, making it much better than would normally be expected?
How can I dial down the scope? Make just an MVP minimum viable product.
Tiago Forte: Yeah, I feel like I learned this, uh, when I started my career, uh, working for a consulting firm in Silicon Valley in my mid twenties, uh, the lean startup, that book by Eric Reese was, I mean, all the rage. It was. totally changed. It was every startup in Silicon Valley was trying to be a lean startup, which was just this idea that you should launch something, an MVP, a minimum viable product, something basic and simple, uh, test it with real customers and then iterate from there.
To make it better, which today sounds just like common sense, like what else would you do back in the early 2010s? That was very new, right? So in a way, I'm getting that lean startup way of thinking and trying to apply it to everything else. So the way I would think of this is. When you're trying to finish a creative project, write a book, or a screenplay, or launch a website, or start a blog, usually when people, when people commit to something like that, they have in mind a very fixed scope.
They have a very specific set of features. For example, let's say you're trying to start a blog. Oh, well, it needs its own, its own website. Right? With its own URL, a nice URL people can remember, and it's got to have certain colors, and it's got to have a name, and it's got to have a banner across the top, and it's got to have the categories, and on and on and on.
There's probably dozens of things, but it doesn't need all those things, right? It really doesn't. Maybe one day it could have those things, but a blog could be, you know, something so much smaller and easier, something that you could do in a fraction of the time. Um, and so one thing I like to do is, you know, if we're trying to launch something, That feels big.
How do we, another way of asking this is like, how could we do that with one tenth the effort, or one tenth the time, or one tenth the cost? And often, once you ask those questions, you realize, oh, there is a miniature version, there's an MVP version of this that we could get out there. It won't be the best thing.
It'll be kind of rough. But there's even value in that because when people see something rough, they're more willing often to give you good feedback than if it looks all polished.
Nick Milo: That's really fascinating and I've seen that just kind of in the way that you interact on Twitter. So Twitter seems like it's also part of that minimal viable product testing ground
Tiago Forte: where you can just throw some ideas out there.
Yes. Exactly. This is a great example. It's, it's, I just have found over time that when I have an idea, a little spark in my head. If I think. If, if my thinking goes, Oh, this is, this is a really good idea. This is a special idea. I really need to preserve it and protect it. And then I need to carefully cultivate it and develop it over a long period of time and really give it everything I have.
That idea is going to die and never see the light of day. I just know it. But I found with Twitter and social media in general to, to counteract that. That going down that path, which is my natural default, I just say, Oh, I have an idea. I think it's a good idea. Put it on social media immediately. If it doesn't get some sort of feedback, some sort of reflection back and other people also think it's good, then I, then it should die.
And I just let it go. Yeah, that is so
Nick Milo: powerful. And I notice that same phenomenon in myself when I'm thinking I need to hold on to this idea. Those are the ones that then get suffocated. And you allow them, I see this so naturally, you allow them a way to breathe. So that's really cool to see the downscoping that you might do, dial down the scope of something and different ways to dial it up.
I love that prompt. Question number four. When facing a problem, what is upstream of this problem that might be easier to address? What is downstream?
Tiago Forte: This is a, um, I'm starting to remember where some of these came from. In almost all cases, they've been borrowed from someone or someplace that I heard them.
This is a Silicon Valley idea. I don't actually know that the true origin, but it's something that you'll hear Silicon Valley people say a lot is what's upstream of that. So, that's just kind of a weird way of saying what caused that, but I think what it gives you is the idea that there could be many causes.
Often, when you face a problem, it's It's not, it didn't just arise out of nowhere and it wasn't even one thing that caused it. There was a whole series of events. You know, you have a, uh, you get a big unexpected tax bill. This has happened to me. This is a real example. Okay. It's annoying. It's a big bummer, but you can really ask, and I remember at the time when this happened a couple of years ago, uh, when I had to do this, all, so many things happened.
You know, I, I wasn't in close communication with my tax preparation person. I didn't send them, before that, I didn't send them all the documents early enough for them to, to kind of give me a fair warning. Uh, didn't make, uh, all of my estimated tax payments on time. It's like, you can trace it back, back, back, back, back, all the way to things that happened years ago.
Like I, I remember that when I was younger, my, my, it's funny, my dad, he would just not pay estimated taxes and just pay the penalty. He was like, yeah, that's fine. Like I'd rather, I'd rather not deal with it. So I'm like, wow, every problem I face can be traced back to a whole past series of events. Um, and I can, and it's often what this question is getting at is it's often easier to address one of those earlier, earlier causes before it becomes the big issue you're facing.
Yeah, that makes
Nick Milo: so much, uh, powerful sense, too, to see that kind of effect, because we all have these problems, and then just recognizing, okay, what is upstream, trying to see if we can solve it there, and then downstream. So now we're talking about effects, and where the effects of not addressing a problem, that is, uh.
Tiago Forte: Yeah, so that, this one's less, less intuitive, because you think, well, downstream, how can what happens downstream affect what's upstream? Like, the causality would seem to go one way, but it doesn't. If you think about a river, uh, if it gets stopped up or dammed, It will, it will pile up the, the, the water, but also the logs and the debris all the way back up far up river.
And I think that's true when it comes to information. Any part of my life that starts to have information overload, whether it's my email inbox, too many browser tabs on my browser window, too many items on my to do list, too many notes in my notes app, anywhere. It's because it has almost always because it has nowhere to go.
There's no downstream place. There's no. Exit for that information. And so it just piles up, piles up, piles up until it's totally overwhelming. Let's see. That's
Nick Milo: funny because I was like, how does, might this be easier to address downstream? And I didn't want to ask you that because I didn't
Tiago Forte: think there was an answer, but then
Nick Milo: you, then you answered it.
I'm like, Oh, it makes sense now. Yeah. Things get log jammed and then backed up. Okay. Uh, and that, that, that's. Really can be liberating because then I can look at my emails tonight and say, okay, this, this is an issue. And then I can try to apply some of that, that mindset to it, to, uh, unclog that part of it.
Maybe by looking elsewhere. Yeah. That's great. Question number five. How is the opposite of what I think believe also true? How can I borrow elements of that opposite truth to incorporate into my own
Tiago Forte: worldview? Yeah. I feel like this is a, this is. An important one in this day and age of so much polarization.
Um, And I think where this comes from is growing up in so many ways with one foot in one culture and another foot in a different culture. So there was like one foot in my, the American side of my family, and then the other foot in the Brazilian side. But also, you know, my dad is Catholic, my mom is Protestant.
Um. Also, I grew up in Orange County, which is super socially conservative, but my, my dad is an artist and quite liberal, and we had a very cosmopolitan, very multicultural and diverse upbringing. So I sort of had the liberal effect too. I was raised on the West Coast, but then I went to school initially on the East Coast.
Like I, I keep finding in my life. of, you know, being analytical naturally, but also being really interested in creativity. I always am straddling some sort of border. Um, and so I find if there is a contentious issue or even just a disagreement at work, usually what causes conflict and disagreement is people are looking at an issue from two sides, but there is actually a lot of common ground.
Just in general, as humans, we actually mostly have many of the same values. It's just the way that we interpret them that's different. So I'll give you a very practical example, which I encountered when I, uh, went to school and I studied international affairs, basically politics, on the East Coast in Washington, D.
C., and started getting really familiar with all these kind of hot button social issues. So this could be controversial, but we're gonna, we're gonna dive in. Uh, gun control. Super pol like, hyper polarized, right? Personally, my personal belief, Tiago, is that there should be a lot more gun control. I think we should regulate guns.
But if I just Hold on to that tightly and say everyone who disagrees with this is wrong and bad. That's just not helpful. I can look at, say, an extreme gun libertarian who wants no regulation, and I can see so much that we have in common. Uh, their appreciation of freedom. I also appreciate freedom. Their, uh, suspicion of the government.
I also am suspicious of the government. Their, um, desire to protect, to protect traditional ways of life. Such as rural ways of life. I also am interested in that. So you can kind of like, like, find a way to find common ground, and then borrow parts of, it's really, it's really strange. It's like, you can see them as an enemy, or you can see them as a collaborator.
Borrow parts of their worldview, incorporate it into your own. And then not only does your own worldview get stronger and more, and more interesting, but you can also relate to people that might otherwise be like, on the whole other side of a debate. Yeah,
Nick Milo: that's, that is where it gets interesting. That whole incorporation of opposite worldviews and how it can allow one to be more connective, connected to the people around them.
Yeah. I love that one. Yeah. Number six. When I find myself judging someone, how is my judgment of them really a projection of parts of myself I can't love or accept? How would embracing those parts give me more freedom?
Tiago Forte: Yes. Um, this really comes. I think I first, this first dawned on me doing Landmark.
Landmark is this educational company that has a series of seminars and workshops that are, was one of my first introductions to like intensive personal growth, like, like a program designed for personal growth, which I did back in San Francisco. Um, and I remember I, I, I had a series of realizations about this as I was doing the Landmark programs.
Then I did a tweet storm, and that was my first viral, so my first viral tweet. Huh. It was the first thing that really took off. Uh, and so I guess maybe that was one of the reasons it stuck with me, but it's basically this idea that if anyone annoys you, even just, just a little bit, Or especially if they, they really annoy you, if they really trigger you, you know, why should, why should anyone annoy you ever?
There's just another person over there, another organism that is just making sounds with their mouth. Why should that trigger sensations and reactions in your body and in your mind and your emotions? That makes no sense. Um, I think the reason that's happening is they're reminding you of something about yourself.
They're reminding you of a part of yourself which is sort of being reflected back to you like a mirror. So we're all mirrors for each other. So when you look at that person, you're really looking into a mirror, seeing yourself. The parts that you're noticing, the annoying parts, are the parts of yourself you don't like, you don't accept, you don't embrace, you don't love.
And so you can use annoyance and ang and being, um, and getting triggered by people as a teaching method. You can really ask, kind of going back to the first question, this way that I'm being triggered or aggravated, part of myself, my psyche, my psychology is being pointed to as something that I could just accept about myself.
That's really
Nick Milo: valuable. It's almost like a, that you become a walking Geiger counter like, Oh, there's that's nuclear material.
Tiago Forte: Um, I need to deal with that in myself. I like that way of putting it.
Nick Milo: Yes. I love, um, that ability, that judgment. That's definitely something I've noticed for myself recently. That annoyance and seeing that as, um, more of a signal, uh, to, to reflect on.
Tiago Forte: Yeah. Yeah. It's, um, it's humbling too. It's so humbling and it gives you compassion for people. You know, if there's, uh, like, like, I'll just give one example. I used to get so annoyed by people who would get angry in public. Someone, you know, yelling because they got a parking ticket or having a public altercation somewhere.
You know, I was like, they, they should be ashamed. How dare they? That is so rude, so inappropriate. All these lists of judgments until I eventually realized that The reason that that was getting to me is I don't allow myself to show anger or other emotions too openly. Which is really, ultimately, a restriction on myself.
That's a constraint that I placed on myself, which gets to the end of the question, which is like, is like You know, sometimes you see someone, they annoy you, you then see the projection you're making for yourself, but then you're like, well, so what, like, you almost need a little motivation, a little extra motivation to then let go of it.
And that motivation for me comes when I ask, okay, by letting go of this, you know, restriction of not being able to show my emotions in public, how can I have more freedom? And I can almost always find ways that I would have more freedom and then I'm motivated to actually do it. Interesting.
Nick Milo: So you don't just go out of your way, though, to yell at the top of your lungs at that moment.
Tiago Forte: Good. No. Yeah. It's funny. I mean, maybe one day that will be the, there are probably situations where that's appropriate, you know? Um, but currently it manifests as just, just the moderate more willingness, maybe 10 percent more, you know, uh, openness that I have towards that. Yeah. That's great.
Nick Milo: Okay. Question number seven.
How can I start this with abundance? Abundance. Also, how can I start this with scarcity, which that one's quite
Tiago Forte: interesting for me. Yeah, I think this has to do with, um, earlier we talked about how when people think of say a creative project, they have a certain scope in mind. Like this is, this is the extent or this is the set of features that it needs to have.
Um, I think kind of related to that is when we think of taking on a project or goal, I think we tend to just assume a certain amount of preparation is needed. And we just, that doesn't come from anywhere. It's just something we make up. You know, if I say, okay, uh, Nick, you're going to take a vacation to Iceland.
Okay. Immediately, do you have a sense of even, even vaguely the amount of. effort and preparation that you will likely do for that trip. I have a sense. Yeah. Like a vague sense, right? Yeah. Which is not universal. Some other people will be like, ah, I'll just hop on a plane tomorrow. Other people will be like, I need to spend a whole year researching every aspect of Iceland's history, you know?
So, so really what that tells me is that. estimation of how much effort it's going to take is internally. It's more about our personality and our attitude towards change and uncertainty and risk rather than anything about the external world. And so what this question is getting at is, So abundance, I find some, sometimes you want to overprepare, you know, you're going to go and write an article and you want to really amass like way more material than you need, like 10 times as much.
And sometimes that's helpful because then as you're writing and you get stuck, especially if you have an awesome note taking system, wink, wink, you just. pull things in real time. You don't have to like go back to the drawing board. Um, that one's kind of obvious, but sometimes it pays to have way less preparation.
You know, it pays to do one tenth or one hundredth as much, whether you call it preparation or getting ready or research or whatever it is. And sometimes you can, you find a way to pull it off. So, so I don't know. I just like to play with that. So the one I
Nick Milo: wasn't expecting there was how can I start this with scarcity, because typically we hear we you want you need to have an abundance mindset.
And so I was just curious to see. And so you kind of see that, um, manifesting as when it's scarcity, sometimes it's less preparation, less having to get all the ducks in a row before
Tiago Forte: crossing the street. Yeah. Yeah. It's similar to how If you, if you take away the assumption that order and chaos is good or bad, same thing with abundance and scarcity.
What if abundance and scarcity are neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong, neither uh, you know, nothing like that, like moral judgments, just take those out. It's just two ends of a spectrum, and as you move the slider, again, back and forth, new options open up, new possibilities arise, new ideas arise.
There's actually a lot of, um, situations, you know, this idea of going on an information diet that a lot of people are thinking about these days. You know, consuming less, not just social media, but less information, less news, even reading less books, just less, is an example where artificial scarcity, um, imposing.
In this case, information scarcity on yourself can actually produce better, you know, less stress, a better state of mind, you sleep easier. Yeah.
Nick Milo: That's so interesting because scarcity in one domain allows for abundance potentially
Tiago Forte: in another one. Exactly. I'd love to see the scarcity
Nick Milo: abundance slider as part of your imaginary virtual dashboard.
Tiago Forte: I need to add that on there. Next to chaos entropy. Chaos up, scarcity down. What does that do? We're about to
Nick Milo: find out. I love it. Maybe that leads into question eight. How would an extraterrestrial alien who knows nothing of our history or
Tiago Forte: culture view this? I love this one. This really comes from reading tons and tons and tons of sci fi books.
What I would notice, I read like over a hundred sci fi books. In fact, the blog post that I wrote about what I learned from reading a hundred sci fi books was my first viral piece of writing back in the day. I would notice that I, I would, I mean, sometimes hours upon hours reading the sci fi books. And then I would, I would step away with such a sense of perspective, you know, I'm reading about how they're, you know, doing gravity engineering in the 27th century.
That's where my mind has been immersed in for the past few hours. And then I step out of my room and like, you know, the toilet's clogged. And it's like, this doesn't matter. This is, this is inconsequential. Like on the scale of which I'm aware of and which I care about this, this is a, this is less than a blip.
So it kind of gives me, it gives me that sense of perspective. And I would often notice that I could sort of see things through the eyes of aliens. So many sci fi stories are about aliens and humans meeting. And often you kind of. are on the side of the aliens. Yeah. You're like, gosh, these humans, they, they stink.
You know, the aliens are like often more, not just more technologically advanced, but more fair, more ethical. They're more, they treat, they treat their, their people better. And so I would start to view a lot of life situations as if I was an alien. And I had enough sort of exposure to alien thinking in the form of science fiction to do that.
Uh, and so I always imagine, I imagine an alien ship just in orbit, far above the earth. And they're just observing. They're like anthropologists. They might be like picking up our radio signals, maybe connecting to the internet and seeing some things, but just passively observing. Imagine if you were to talk to this alien and you were to tell them your problem.
They would, they would be so far removed from From everything, the only thing that you would have in common if you think about it is like the laws of physics that they would understand if you, if you, you know, complain, if you, if you are just said something related to the loss of physics, they would be like, okay, that makes sense.
Um, information science. That you would have in common. They would probably, which is based in math, like you would share math, right? And not much else. Maybe, maybe biological evolution, maybe like natural selection. They had a version of that back home. But besides those things, nothing with history, culture, music, art, uh, human psychology, relationships, social psychology, none of that would have any relevance to them.
And so I always imagine what they would say. Which I, I think that what that, that does is it removes the, what the culture says is inherently right, wrong, good, and bad, which is so deeply entrenched in how we view the world, it's really hard to remove that kind of moralistic lens. Yeah. But once you do, things just You can just see them with more perspective.
See, that's it.
Nick Milo: You, you say surprisingly profound things very often. And now I know why. Why? Because of this question. Because you're putting on that lens of thinking like, if I was an extraterrestrial alien, what would, what would they think of
Tiago Forte: this? Yes. Like that's, to me, it's such a powerful one. It can help in any situation.
Anything. Uh, I should probably think of an example, but like, like I'll just make up an example. This one's not real. You know, I imagine like, you know, someone getting in their little space shuttle, going up to the, you know, to the aliens and, and getting some coaching from the aliens. And imagine like one of the most dramatic human situations.
My spouse cheated on me. What do I do? It's devastating. The worst thing you can imagine. The alien would be like, Oh, okay. Um, well, first of all, uh, your species, which is really just one of millions. So you don't, you don't, you're not like that important, but your species in particular, you know, has evolved sexual reproduction, which is just one way of reproducing.
You could, you could probably figure out and engineer others, but if you want to stick with that, uh, within that you've invented this concept of, um, of, you know, monogamy, which I have to tell you is very weird. Like, and you can just imagine that that conversation continuing, they're basically getting There's a whole multiple layers of assumptions underlying the simple statement that being cheated on is bad.
There's like a, there's like a hundred assumptions underneath that. And an alien would just eliminate, discard, or really deconstruct most of those assumptions. And by the time they're done, you'd probably I mean, you would just, I don't know if you would not care that you were cheated on, but you'd be in a very different state of mind.
Yeah. And I find you can do some of that deconstruction yourself, on yourself. That is such a
Nick Milo: fantastic mental model that I'm going to stick in like the toolbox. Like a thought experiment
Tiago Forte: that you can just pull back, pull out whenever you need it. Yes. I love it.
Nick Milo: Yes. Question number nine. What is the feeling I'm avoiding feeling right now?
How can I feel
Tiago Forte: it? Yeah. Gosh. Gosh, this comes from. Um, the work I've done, the personal work I've done on what I would call either emotional intelligence or emotional fluidity. I think For most of my life, growing up until just pretty recently, a few years ago, I was so left brained, so biased toward the analytical, the logical, the rational.
There really was a time that I thought I could solve all of life's problems if I am just totally rational, do not let any emotion or bias or subjectivity into it. Needless to say, that is absolutely not true. Um, and so I started doing things, it started really with meditation, just simple, you know, um, silent meditation, some of landmark, which I mentioned, uh, psychedelics, uh, working with different teachers and coaches such as Joe Hudson, who you now know.
Uh, and what I've discovered, one of the many things I've discovered is that often when the mind gets busy, like it starts getting really frantic and manic and, and worrying about things and getting anxious and trying to come up with answers. It's really because there's an emotion in the body that's blocked.
The emotion wants to move, it wants to be processed. But if you stop it, so let's say, let's say there is, um, one emotion that I, that I know I have trouble feeling is helplessness. The feeling of being helpless, of being powerless, I hate that feeling. Probably some other people do too, right? But if that feeling arises and I'm starting to feel helpless, if I block it, and I, I do have that choice.
In fact, there's some research that there's an actual constriction in the body. Um, you know, like, like to hold that, that feeling, any feeling down you, there's actually a muscle somewhere in your body, your chest, your shoulders, your back, your legs that has to tense. And that's where emotional repression can lead to physical symptoms.
But if I hold it. Some very undesirable things are gonna start happening. , my mind is gonna start getting busy. Anxiety's gonna go up. I might lose sleep. I'm not gonna be as present. I'm going to crave, uh, distraction. I'm gonna crave stimulation. Like, and sometimes I just ask myself, okay, I don't really wanna feel this feeling.
I really don't wanna go down that path of all those side effects. So what I've discovered, and this is so amazing, is you can just sit and just decide to feel it. Just set aside 15 minutes. It's that easy. Sometimes it's that easy. Sometimes I need help, play some music, do some journaling, take a walk, talk to people.
Sometimes you have to take certain actions to kind of provoke it and get it to the surface. But sometimes I really can just be like helplessness, just like keep saying the word. And then it's unpleasant. It's like a It's like, uh, it's like almost like acid reflux, this feeling fills your body and it's just like, oh, but then within just minutes it passes and then you're done with it and then you can kind of move on and I find that that what I just described is so, uh, accessible and efficient rather than spending a week trying to process it through other means that I just try to do it whenever I can.
You know, that,
Nick Milo: that is so effective because I think with the first part of this question, what is the feeling I'm avoiding feeling right now? I think I was able to kind of do part of that. And I could realize that if I grabbed my phone, it was likely to distract from whatever I'm feeling. And, uh, but I only got that far, really, I think.
It's that second part, how can I feel it, that I think really packs the punch of where the, you could call it healing, whatever the moment needs, though, to get through that feeling. So it doesn't manifest itself in strange ways. Um, the body's kind of like whack a mole, where you, you, you suppress all the moles, but then when they do come up, they're all like, Hello!
Tiago Forte: You
Nick Milo: know, they're all messed up. And, um, So I really loved the two part of there because of the, how can I feel it? And with those suggestions that you provided very, uh, practical and empowering.
Tiago Forte: Thank you. Question
Nick Milo: 10 last of Tiago's 10 favorite questions. What is the bottleneck in the current system? How can I relieve it such that the whole system changes?
Tiago Forte: This comes from the Theory of Constraints, which is an entire discipline, um, that emerged from a book published in, I think, the 70s or 60s called The Goal by an Israeli physicist named Eli Goldratt. Pretty, in fact, it's obscure, but also it's like one of the best selling nonfiction books of all time. Hmm.
And. This, this book, I have an 11 part series on my blog, which is really just still an introduction, um, that you can check out if, if the viewers are interested in learning more. But I would boil it down by saying that you can think of almost anything as a system. This room is a system. Your body is a system.
The camera that we're using to film this is a system. And when you think of a system, uh, there's always a bottleneck. There's always one place that is most restricted, most constrained, most limited. And one of the greatest insights from the Theory of Constraints is that any system only has one bottleneck.
It has one strictest, smallest bottleneck. There might be many limitations, but there's one that is the most limited. And he has this phrase, only improvement at the bottleneck makes a difference. Often, when we're trying to improve something, There's, we want to improve everything except the core problem.
The core problem is the core problem because it's threatening, or it's complicated, or it's ambiguous. And so we'll polish everything else but the main thing. And what I just love about the theory of constraints is it just constantly has you ask this question, which is, you know, let's just take an example.
Um, I don't know. As a company, we're trying to make more money. It's a common goal, right? Somewhere in the company, there is one constraint. that is the most limiting or holding us back the most, more than anything else. That doesn't mean there's not many things that need improvement. There's practically infinite, but there's one that is like the bottleneck.
And this question has you constantly ask, what truly is the bottleneck? And then you think you have it and you try to improve that bottleneck. If the whole system doesn't improve, then that wasn't it. Improvement at the bottleneck. You know, it's the bottleneck because it improves the whole system. So if I think the bottleneck to us growing as a business is more email subscribers, that's the bottleneck.
And we spend a month or two focus totally focused on that, doing everything we can to increase email subscribers, if revenue or profit or whatever we're measuring did not go up. That was not the bottleneck, as good as it feels to have improved that.
Nick Milo: That, that really makes this come alive. I didn't know how fixing a bottleneck in the system could make the whole system change the way you described it.
It makes sense. And it's a great, it's a great bellwether to say, did I, did that change affect the system or not? Yes. That's wonderful. Yeah. That's great. So those are your 10 favorite questions for agency. And let's just say.
Tiago Forte: Yeah, anytime I'm stuck. Or I just feel bogged down in anything, whether it's a specific project or just in life.
You know, stuckness, that's a made up human concept. No animal ever feels like in a creative funk. You know, that's, that's an invention of our minds. And so freedom must come from the mind. The constraints that I'm facing, the roadblocks I'm facing, even if it seems like it's something in the external world, I, I have to believe it's actually something in my mind.
And asking these questions as a way of just playing with my mind is really what it is. It's like getting my mindset and the set of beliefs that I'm currently holding and just mixing them up, turning them upside down, turning them in a circle, adding things, removing things to see if that helps. And it almost always does.
I have
Nick Milo: one rapid fire question, in an alternate reality where Evernote disappeared tomorrow, where would you go?
Tiago Forte: I mean, I'd have to say after the video that we, uh, that we just recorded earlier this morning, which you should definitely check out on my channel, uh, Obsidian is kind of the clear contender, like the clear up and coming, um, strongest contender for second brain ops.
Okay. Well, you heard it here first, everyone.
Nick Milo: Um, with that in mind, we covered a lot of questions. And as we wrap up, with your ten favorite questions, what do you think's a good one to leave everyone who's listening with?
Tiago Forte: I think it's whichever one of the ten that we talked about that resonated with you.
Which one kind of broke your brain a little bit? Which one was the furthest out of left field from how you normally think? It's a great place to start.
Nick Milo: Okay, so keep that in mind. Trust your intuition. And just to wrap up, this is Tiago Forte. You can find him on Twitter at Forte Labs and on YouTube under Tiago Forte.
His first bestseller, Building a Second Brain, and his latest, The PARA Method, can be found on Amazon and wherever books are
Tiago Forte: sold. Thank you so much, Tiago. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Thanks for tuning into
Nick Milo: this episode of How I Think. We'll be sure to add all the links and resources we mentioned in the video description or show notes, depending on the platform you're watching or listening from.
And if you're curious for more, then feel free to check out another episode. I'll see you there.