148: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

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1. 00:00:00 I feel like this could be a long one, Mike.
2. 00:00:02 - It could be.
3. 00:00:04 This is gonna be a fun topic though.
4. 00:00:06 I can't wait to dive in here.
5. 00:00:08 - Yeah, and I know that you've had early access
6. 00:00:13 to this book, so I know that you've got
7. 00:00:15 a little bit of a leg up on me on this one,
8. 00:00:18 but I did finish it almost a week early,
9. 00:00:22 so I've had a little bit of time with it as well.
10. 00:00:24 So maybe we'll be uneven putting with that.
11. 00:00:26 However, before we can get into the thing
12. 00:00:28 that everybody wants us to get into this time around,
13. 00:00:32 we have some follow up to do, Mike.
14. 00:00:33 - We do.
15. 00:00:34 - And I don't really wanna talk about follow up
16. 00:00:37 this time around.
17. 00:00:38 (laughs)
18. 00:00:40 - Why is that?
19. 00:00:42 - As you would expect, two reasons.
20. 00:00:44 One, I didn't do either, one of mine.
21. 00:00:47 And--
22. 00:00:48 - Oh, come on.
23. 00:00:48 - I know, I know, I know.
24. 00:00:50 But two, I really didn't wanna do one of the two,
25. 00:00:53 so then that, yeah.
26. 00:00:57 - Yes, bad things.
27. 00:00:59 - Show.
28. 00:01:00 - Bad things happened.
29. 00:01:01 - Come on.
30. 00:01:02 - I know, right?
31. 00:01:03 - I was going to share my eulogy with six different people
32. 00:01:06 this week, you being one of them, and nobody else did it.
33. 00:01:09 (laughs)
34. 00:01:10 - Yep, yep.
35. 00:01:12 So this is partly because I,
36. 00:01:18 if I only had a brain, good job, Blake.
37. 00:01:20 I think that part of this is that I had a lot of time
38. 00:01:25 to set aside to do both of mine.
39. 00:01:28 One of was to write my eulogy.
40. 00:01:30 The other one was to create my daily plan type thingy,
41. 00:01:33 which is like the printable, daily, whatever,
42. 00:01:36 piece of paper.
43. 00:01:37 - Yep.
44. 00:01:38 - And I ended up, this was somewhat caught me off guard,
45. 00:01:43 I ended up taking last week off of work,
46. 00:01:47 so I wasn't around computers at all,
47. 00:01:51 so that meant that I had an entire week's worth of stuff
48. 00:01:53 that I didn't get done.
49. 00:01:54 So it happens, but on the positive note,
50. 00:01:59 I built a tree house for our girls,
51. 00:02:01 which is super fun. (laughs)
52. 00:02:02 - Nice job.
53. 00:02:03 - Yeah, telephone poles in the ground,
54. 00:02:05 tree house in the air, awesome, super fun.
55. 00:02:09 - Very big, very exciting.
56. 00:02:10 Okay, my failures have been talked about,
57. 00:02:13 can we talk about your stuff?
58. 00:02:16 Hopefully your system is bad as mine.
59. 00:02:17 - My failures instead.
60. 00:02:19 (laughs)
61. 00:02:21 - I said stuff, I didn't say fairs.
62. 00:02:22 - Sure, sure.
63. 00:02:23 (laughs)
64. 00:02:25 - No, so the ask what if this was really just trying
65. 00:02:30 to get myself to think bigger?
66. 00:02:34 What if, basically, I was able to do anything
67. 00:02:39 that I wanted to do?
68. 00:02:40 If failure wasn't an option, what would that look like for me?
69. 00:02:44 And I feel like that kind of manifested itself in my eulogy,
70. 00:02:48 which, I've gone back and forth on this,
71. 00:02:52 but whether I wanted to read it on air or not,
72. 00:02:54 I think I'm going to, just because
73. 00:02:56 I want other people to do this.
74. 00:02:58 I found the whole exercise very rewarding,
75. 00:03:00 so I'll share that in a second.
76. 00:03:03 - Okay.
77. 00:03:03 - The other one was what elements of my story
78. 00:03:05 do I want to make normal for my kids?
79. 00:03:07 And as I started thinking about this,
80. 00:03:09 I realized that all the elements of my story
81. 00:03:11 that I want to make normal are kind of expressed
82. 00:03:16 through the core values that we've identified.
83. 00:03:18 So all of the individual things,
84. 00:03:20 I even shared some examples in the last episode
85. 00:03:22 of the one on ones that I do with my kids.
86. 00:03:25 I want that to become a normal part of my story
87. 00:03:28 that my kids choose to implement in their own families
88. 00:03:31 when they have the opportunity.
89. 00:03:33 We have this thing at church after prayer,
90. 00:03:36 I have a different handshake I do with each one of my kids.
91. 00:03:40 They've all got their own special handshake.
92. 00:03:41 We do them all one right after the other,
93. 00:03:45 just as a way to make prayer a fun thing.
94. 00:03:48 And so there's lots of stuff like that,
95. 00:03:49 which as I was thinking about those things,
96. 00:03:52 I realized that the specifics there,
97. 00:03:55 the actual activities aren't as important
98. 00:03:57 as the values that they're based on.
99. 00:04:00 And if I really instill the values,
100. 00:04:03 then the activities take care of themselves.
101. 00:04:06 It's kind of like lead versus lag measures
102. 00:04:08 for personal stuff.
103. 00:04:09 So I didn't spend a whole lot of time on that one.
104. 00:04:13 All right, enough dilly dallying.
105. 00:04:15 Here's the eulogy.
106. 00:04:16 You ready for this?
107. 00:04:17 - Hit me.
108. 00:04:18 - All right, now this was interesting timing, by the way,
109. 00:04:21 because as I was working on this week,
110. 00:04:24 my wife's grandmother passed away.
111. 00:04:28 So we went to a funeral and heard a eulogy
112. 00:04:31 and got the little brochure thing
113. 00:04:34 with the thing printed on the back.
114. 00:04:35 So I had a real life example to go off of.
115. 00:04:40 And I realized looking at that,
116. 00:04:43 that there were, that shaped how mine finished up,
117. 00:04:47 but it also highlighted things of a standard eulogy
118. 00:04:50 that I wanted to change.
119. 00:04:51 So here we go.
120. 00:04:53 Mike Schmitz was a loving husband to his wife Rachel,
121. 00:04:55 an ever-present father to Toby, Joshua, Jonathan,
122. 00:04:59 Malachi, and Adelaide.
123. 00:05:01 Family was his first ministry,
124. 00:05:02 and he always made sure to put them first.
125. 00:05:04 He frequently said no to work and business opportunities
126. 00:05:06 to spend time and go on adventures
127. 00:05:07 with the people that he valued most.
128. 00:05:09 Mike was a committed member of his church.
129. 00:05:12 When he wasn't spending time with his family,
130. 00:05:13 he could often be found serving there.
131. 00:05:15 He believed that God had blessed him richly,
132. 00:05:17 and he gave generously of his time and treasure
133. 00:05:18 to those who had need.
134. 00:05:20 Mike's life was driven by a desire to be a good steward
135. 00:05:23 of what was entrusted to him by God.
136. 00:05:24 He desired to inspire, encourage, and teach others
137. 00:05:27 to connect to their calling, discover their destiny,
138. 00:05:29 and live a life they were created for.
139. 00:05:31 Everything he did was filtered through his life theme,
140. 00:05:34 and he helped others to accept responsibility,
141. 00:05:36 glean clarity, and take action
142. 00:05:39 in living a purpose-driven and meaningful life.
143. 00:05:42 He was an entrepreneur who loved building businesses
144. 00:05:44 and making art.
145. 00:05:45 Before he died, he wrote "Sover in New York Times"
146. 00:05:47 best-selling books and gave away over $10 million.
147. 00:05:49 There's the thinking bigger part.
148. 00:05:51 - Nice.
149. 00:05:53 - He taught his kids to be lifelong learners
150. 00:05:54 and discover their own creativity.
151. 00:05:55 They've all followed in his footsteps
152. 00:05:57 as creative entrepreneurs who live life on their own terms.
153. 00:06:00 What do you think?
154. 00:06:01 - Well done, sir.
155. 00:06:02 The only thing, there's only one point that stood out to me
156. 00:06:09 that was like, hmm, that seems odd,
157. 00:06:10 was the $10 million piece.
158. 00:06:14 And the only reason I say that is not because
159. 00:06:19 of the thinking big piece, it's just like,
160. 00:06:21 okay, why does that need to be in there?
161. 00:06:23 'Cause just from my perspective,
162. 00:06:28 if giving away $10 million is something
163. 00:06:30 that you want to aspire towards,
164. 00:06:34 my guess is that at some point,
165. 00:06:36 you're probably gonna reach the mindset
166. 00:06:38 where you really don't want people to know about it.
167. 00:06:41 - That's fair, yeah.
168. 00:06:42 So that number really means nothing
169. 00:06:45 other than it's unattainable for me right now.
170. 00:06:48 - Sure, sure.
171. 00:06:50 It just seems odd from,
172. 00:06:53 I'm looking at this perspective of this is your public
173. 00:06:56 publish in the pamphlet at your funeral perspective, right?
174. 00:07:00 I don't know that I would put it in that.
175. 00:07:04 However, that said, having a personal eulogy
176. 00:07:09 that is not shared publicly, this would be spot on.
177. 00:07:12 - Exactly, so this is not actually intended
178. 00:07:15 to be shared publicly.
179. 00:07:16 I feel like some of the stuff in Domino Miller's example,
180. 00:07:19 there was some specific things in there.
181. 00:07:21 He didn't have a specific number in terms
182. 00:07:23 of how much money he made or gave away or something like that.
183. 00:07:26 But I put it in there just because I want
184. 00:07:31 to give more than I take.
185. 00:07:35 And I picked a number that was absurd
186. 00:07:41 that would force my world to be drastically different
187. 00:07:44 in order for me to hit it, right?
188. 00:07:46 So, yeah, I definitely wouldn't want this exact thing
189. 00:07:50 printed in a paper that's handed out
190. 00:07:55 at my actual funeral.
191. 00:07:58 But as I read through it though,
192. 00:08:00 that's also one of the more exciting
193. 00:08:04 or motivating parts of it for me.
194. 00:08:06 So I feel like it does its job.
195. 00:08:08 And again, I probably, I don't know,
196. 00:08:13 an argument could be made that this was never meant
197. 00:08:15 to be read out loud, but I want other people to do this.
198. 00:08:18 So I shared it.
199. 00:08:20 - Yeah, yeah, no, it's spot on.
200. 00:08:23 I'm glad that you went through it.
201. 00:08:25 I'm gonna do my best to make sure I've got mine done
202. 00:08:29 by the time we talk next.
203. 00:08:30 So I'm not discarding the two action items
204. 00:08:34 that I completely failed on.
205. 00:08:35 Just because I took the week off,
206. 00:08:38 like I just need to get it going again.
207. 00:08:40 - Sure.
208. 00:08:41 - And today's book's gonna give me more action items.
209. 00:08:43 So this is the way things go, right?
210. 00:08:45 - Is it will?
211. 00:08:46 (laughs)
212. 00:08:47 - So anyway, well done.
213. 00:08:49 It's a pretty solid eulogy, I would say.
214. 00:08:51 - Hey, thanks.
215. 00:08:53 - So, unless there's something else
216. 00:08:55 we need to chit chat about before we get into
217. 00:08:59 a potentially long episode here,
218. 00:09:01 we should jump into this one.
219. 00:09:03 This is, today's book is Building a Second Brain
220. 00:09:07 by Tiago Forte.
221. 00:09:09 And I have to say there are a lot,
222. 00:09:14 well, there's a lot of buzz about this book right now.
223. 00:09:17 And part of me thinks that that's partially
224. 00:09:20 because of the size of Tiago's audience
225. 00:09:25 and just him being able to do that sort of thing.
226. 00:09:29 At the same time, it's also,
227. 00:09:31 this book has a lot of a promise behind it
228. 00:09:34 that is pretty solid as well.
229. 00:09:37 So because of those two,
230. 00:09:38 I think it ends up elevating it quite high
231. 00:09:41 in the marketing and buzz worlds.
232. 00:09:45 So some of that's probably justified, some of it.
233. 00:09:49 Maybe, we'll see.
234. 00:09:51 So we'll see how this episode goes.
235. 00:09:54 - I'm actually gonna push back on that a little bit,
236. 00:09:57 I think, in terms of the size of the audience that Tiago has.
237. 00:09:59 Maybe he has more influence than I realize,
238. 00:10:02 but when I think about building a second brain
239. 00:10:04 and compare it to something like Atomic Habits by James Clear,
240. 00:10:08 I feel like James Clear was starting at a point
241. 00:10:13 where he was much further ahead than Tiago was.
242. 00:10:18 And what I have seen from following both of those journeys
243. 00:10:22 fairly closely, it feels like Tiago's is accelerating
244. 00:10:27 faster than James Clear's was.
245. 00:10:30 And I think that is partly maybe in terms of the promise
246. 00:10:34 of the whole building a second brain idea.
247. 00:10:37 Partly, he's got a potentially very resonating message.
248. 00:10:42 I think the quick trajectory that we've seen with this
249. 00:10:46 is an indication that,
250. 00:10:49 separating it from the book that we're about to discuss,
251. 00:10:51 that the idea itself is very important to people right now.
252. 00:10:57 - Yeah, and I think that's the latter part of what I was saying,
253. 00:11:02 like the concept of what he has is striking a chord
254. 00:11:05 as opposed to the size of the audience.
255. 00:11:10 I mean, he does have, from my perspective,
256. 00:11:12 he does have a pretty large following.
257. 00:11:15 I wouldn't say it's on the James Clear level,
258. 00:11:18 and it's certainly not like Tim Ferriss level,
259. 00:11:21 or Jill Rogan level, like we're not talking about that size,
260. 00:11:25 but size enough that you send out a few newsletters
261. 00:11:30 and you've got a few thousand copies sold,
262. 00:11:32 like at that scale, he's definitely there.
263. 00:11:35 So that sometimes is all it takes to start creating that buzz.
264. 00:11:39 As long as there's a little bit of authenticity involved
265. 00:11:44 and there's some truth behind what you're promoting, right?
266. 00:11:48 There has to be some element there.
267. 00:11:50 That's the part I wanna try to flush out today,
268. 00:11:53 is how does this concept of a second brain,
269. 00:11:58 the promise of a second brain,
270. 00:12:01 as the introduction is here,
271. 00:12:03 how does that impact us?
272. 00:12:05 Maybe, specifically you and I Mike,
273. 00:12:08 but also the digital world in general,
274. 00:12:11 'cause I know that that's,
275. 00:12:13 essentially we're gonna be talking about PKMs a lot today.
276. 00:12:16 (laughs)
277. 00:12:17 I think that's pretty obvious.
278. 00:12:19 So just what are the ramifications of that,
279. 00:12:22 and why is that needed?
280. 00:12:23 So there's a lot of that discussion
281. 00:12:26 that's gonna come out here.
282. 00:12:27 So, we'll see, see how it goes.
283. 00:12:30 All right.
284. 00:12:31 That all said, the introduction starts us off
285. 00:12:36 with the promise of a second brain.
286. 00:12:39 Basically, what are you gonna get out of this?
287. 00:12:41 And it's kind of a, why should you do this?
288. 00:12:45 And he has, I think, is it just the one list?
289. 00:12:51 Yeah, there is a list in here,
290. 00:12:52 that the building a second brain,
291. 00:12:56 which you should know,
292. 00:12:57 building a second brain started,
293. 00:12:59 maybe you should speak to this.
294. 00:13:00 It started as a video course, or like a cohort?
295. 00:13:03 Is it a cohort or a video course?
296. 00:13:04 I think it's kind of both.
297. 00:13:05 - To be honest, I don't know exactly how it started.
298. 00:13:08 I do remember seeing it show up, though,
299. 00:13:11 as a $99 course back in the day.
300. 00:13:14 - Yes.
301. 00:13:15 - That might have been--
302. 00:13:16 - It is far from that now.
303. 00:13:17 (laughs)
304. 00:13:18 - Yeah, it is much more expensive now.
305. 00:13:20 I have actually gone through it,
306. 00:13:22 and I can recommend it.
307. 00:13:24 I have things that I disagree with
308. 00:13:26 in the system itself,
309. 00:13:28 which I'm sure we will talk about.
310. 00:13:30 Yeah, but I will say that the course itself
311. 00:13:33 that Tiago has put together is very, very good.
312. 00:13:35 He has, at this point, I think 15 or 16 different cohorts
313. 00:13:39 that he's done, so he's got a whole bunch of alumni,
314. 00:13:42 and they come in and they present some guest sessions
315. 00:13:45 on how they've implemented it in different tools
316. 00:13:47 and things like that,
317. 00:13:48 which is a pretty genius approach.
318. 00:13:50 It's expensive, like I said,
319. 00:13:52 and I think for most people who are listening to this episode,
320. 00:13:55 if you're unsure about building a second brain,
321. 00:13:57 the place to start is absolutely going to be
322. 00:13:59 to read this book first.
323. 00:14:01 That being said, if you are convinced
324. 00:14:03 that building a second brain might be for you
325. 00:14:05 and you just hesitating based on the high price tag,
326. 00:14:09 you get out of these sorts of courses,
327. 00:14:11 what you put into it,
328. 00:14:12 but I can put my stamp of approval on this one,
329. 00:14:15 and I would recommend it,
330. 00:14:17 but it is gonna be intensive
331. 00:14:19 and it's gonna take some work.
332. 00:14:22 - Yeah, I know that it started out much cheaper.
333. 00:14:25 If you do some digging online and try to figure out,
334. 00:14:28 is it worth it or not?
335. 00:14:29 You'll run across articles and forums
336. 00:14:31 and stuff where people have talked about like,
337. 00:14:32 "Hey, yeah, I did this,"
338. 00:14:33 but it was $200 when I did it,
339. 00:14:35 and now it's 800.
340. 00:14:36 I don't know where it's at right now.
341. 00:14:38 - More than 800. - So it's not cheap, I know that.
342. 00:14:42 So anyway, that said,
343. 00:14:44 the beginning of this book in the introduction,
344. 00:14:47 he's basically spelling out why a second brain
345. 00:14:51 and what is it that you're going to get out of this?
346. 00:14:56 Honestly, a lot of it,
347. 00:14:58 from my perspective, if I had to distill this down,
348. 00:15:03 it has to do with being able to find things quickly,
349. 00:15:06 like just raw facts that you've collected,
350. 00:15:08 and maybe the other side of that
351. 00:15:12 is being able to process your thoughts ahead of time.
352. 00:15:16 Right?
353. 00:15:17 Again, this is probably your territory.
354. 00:15:19 Interesting that I'm leading this,
355. 00:15:21 but to me, it's one collecting things quickly,
356. 00:15:25 finding things quickly,
357. 00:15:27 but then processing your thoughts ahead of time.
358. 00:15:29 Thus, the thinking part of this
359. 00:15:31 and trying to get things out of your head,
360. 00:15:33 the second brain, quote unquote,
361. 00:15:36 like that's where that's starting to come from.
362. 00:15:38 So you're externalizing thoughts and thinking
363. 00:15:40 so that you have something to reference later
364. 00:15:42 that you can then process.
365. 00:15:45 What do you want to add to that, Mike?
366. 00:15:47 Sounds good to me.
367. 00:15:48 (laughs)
368. 00:15:50 Figured it would.
369. 00:15:51 So let's jump into the book itself.
370. 00:15:57 Surprise, surprise.
371. 00:15:59 Guess what?
372. 00:16:00 Three parts, introduction, three parts,
373. 00:16:01 plus a bonus chapter.
374. 00:16:03 Did you do the bonus chapter, Mike?
375. 00:16:05 I realized when you put the outline together
376. 00:16:07 that I did not.
377. 00:16:08 (laughs)
378. 00:16:09 My previous one didn't have it,
379. 00:16:11 and I didn't bother to go read the hardcover one
380. 00:16:15 that showed up in the mail.
381. 00:16:17 So I completely missed the section.
382. 00:16:18 That being said, I have thoughts on the tagging itself.
383. 00:16:22 So.
384. 00:16:23 Okay.
385. 00:16:23 So that'll be a fun one-sided conversation.
386. 00:16:26 That all.
387. 00:16:28 Well, if you want to open this can of worms right now,
388. 00:16:31 I will say the issues that I have with this
389. 00:16:34 is that he doesn't really talk about
390. 00:16:35 the bidirectional linking in apps
391. 00:16:37 like Obsidian and Rome and Kraft and stuff like that.
392. 00:16:40 So our view tagging is just another way to organize things,
393. 00:16:43 just like folders, just like bidirectional links.
394. 00:16:45 Like when you use all these things together
395. 00:16:47 you can achieve some cool results.
396. 00:16:48 I have no interest in how specifically
397. 00:16:50 you want me to do this per para.
398. 00:16:53 So.
399. 00:16:54 I will say that what you just described
400. 00:16:57 as far as like tagging as a way to find things,
401. 00:17:00 that is what he recommends you don't do.
402. 00:17:02 So that's not what he wants you to do with him.
403. 00:17:06 We'll get into that.
404. 00:17:07 That'll be fun.
405. 00:17:08 We'll get there.
406. 00:17:09 I suppose you probably know as you point on that,
407. 00:17:11 even though you didn't read it, but yes.
408. 00:17:13 So let's jump into part one here,
409. 00:17:17 which is the foundation.
410. 00:17:19 And I didn't list all the chapters in the outline
411. 00:17:22 'cause I didn't want to follow the chapters exactly.
412. 00:17:24 So the three chapters, as I work my way there,
413. 00:17:26 are where it all started, what is the second brain
414. 00:17:30 and how a second brain works.
415. 00:17:33 And the first chapter of those where it all started,
416. 00:17:37 which by the way, I noticed the very beginning,
417. 00:17:40 he does what a lot of people do with nonfiction books.
418. 00:17:42 He's got quotes at the very beginning of the chapters.
419. 00:17:45 And the very first quote is by none other than David Allen
420. 00:17:49 of getting things done fame.
421. 00:17:51 Your mind is for having ideas not holding them,
422. 00:17:54 which is probably one of David Allen's most commonly
423. 00:17:58 quoted phrases, I guess.
424. 00:18:02 So yes, interesting that he started out there.
425. 00:18:05 But anyway, he tells the story about how
426. 00:18:08 he suddenly experienced pain,
427. 00:18:12 like physical pain.
428. 00:18:13 And then it became unexplained as far as where it was coming from.
429. 00:18:17 And he goes through this whole thing
430. 00:18:20 of trying to figure out where it is
431. 00:18:22 and ultimately lands on the process of writing things down,
432. 00:18:27 getting things out of his head,
433. 00:18:29 so that he can then see them all
434. 00:18:32 and try to make connections between them.
435. 00:18:35 And to summarize the end of the story there, it works.
436. 00:18:39 It helps him find ways to help alleviate the pain
437. 00:18:42 and get healthier.
438. 00:18:44 Again, not gonna go into the details there.
439. 00:18:47 But the point he's trying to make is like externalizing things
440. 00:18:50 and writing things down is ultimately what led him
441. 00:18:52 to having success in coming up with the ideas
442. 00:18:56 in what to do from there.
443. 00:18:59 Thus, second brains are important.
444. 00:19:02 That's what he's telling us.
445. 00:19:04 - So to summarize his health issues,
446. 00:19:07 this is in my node file,
447. 00:19:09 the pain in his throat was only treated
448. 00:19:11 by anti-seizure medication.
449. 00:19:14 And one of the side effects of that medication
450. 00:19:15 was severe short-term memory loss
451. 00:19:18 and a numbing sensation throughout the body.
452. 00:19:20 So pretty severe side effects.
453. 00:19:23 What he did is he asked for his complete patient file
454. 00:19:25 and he started digitizing everything which started
455. 00:19:28 and then started to manage his health
456. 00:19:29 with some different lifestyle changes.
457. 00:19:31 So building a second brain, the whole idea
458. 00:19:34 was born out of a season of pain
459. 00:19:37 and trying to find a solution
460. 00:19:38 to a very real physical problem that he was dealing with.
461. 00:19:43 I feel like that's the best way to start this story.
462. 00:19:46 You know?
463. 00:19:47 - Yeah.
464. 00:19:48 - A lot of people,
465. 00:19:50 a lot of the productivity books that we read,
466. 00:19:53 a lot of the gurus that create the systems,
467. 00:19:56 they try to make it,
468. 00:19:57 they try to make this thing
469. 00:20:00 that's generally applicable to all these different people.
470. 00:20:03 But how they start the explanation
471. 00:20:06 of how they arrived at that system
472. 00:20:07 is really important to me.
473. 00:20:09 If it's not born out of you solving a problem
474. 00:20:12 that you had yourself,
475. 00:20:13 if you're just trying to answer a problem
476. 00:20:15 that you see somewhere else,
477. 00:20:17 but you haven't had to wrestle through it yourself,
478. 00:20:19 I got no time for you.
479. 00:20:20 But this is a very authentic,
480. 00:20:22 I feel a very vulnerable start.
481. 00:20:24 Had a Tago Forte on the Focus podcast
482. 00:20:27 and he talked about this.
483. 00:20:29 Wasn't sure how comfortable he was gonna be
484. 00:20:32 talking live about the specific things
485. 00:20:35 that he had struggled with,
486. 00:20:36 but he was very open and honest about it.
487. 00:20:40 So I have a lot of respect for him as a person.
488. 00:20:45 And I feel this is a very good introduction
489. 00:20:49 to the whole concept.
490. 00:20:52 You have my attention
491. 00:20:54 and you have authority in my eyes
492. 00:20:56 to speak to this at this point.
493. 00:20:58 Oh, other thing regarding David Allen,
494. 00:21:01 there's actually a David Allen Blurb,
495. 00:21:02 I think on the back of the book cover maybe.
496. 00:21:06 And I think building a second brain
497. 00:21:09 probably has a lot of similarities to GTD.
498. 00:21:14 It feels kind of like GTD for the modern age.
499. 00:21:19 That's very general
500. 00:21:24 and I'm sure there's places where that analogy falls down,
501. 00:21:26 but I feel like building a second brain now
502. 00:21:30 is maybe what GTD was 20 years ago.
503. 00:21:33 Yeah, that might be true.
504. 00:21:35 I know that, again, if you do some digging on this online,
505. 00:21:39 there's quite a few folks.
506. 00:21:41 There's obviously people on both sides of the fence,
507. 00:21:43 people who will say building a second brain is terrible
508. 00:21:46 and you should never have anything to do with it.
509. 00:21:48 And there are folks who say like,
510. 00:21:49 "This changed my life and it's what everybody should do."
511. 00:21:53 There's obviously people on both sides of the fence.
512. 00:21:54 Same thing with GTD, same deal.
513. 00:21:57 But there are quite a few folks who talk about
514. 00:22:00 how this has so many similarities and connections to GTD.
515. 00:22:05 Like it has a lot of the same methodologies behind it
516. 00:22:10 if you look at the core philosophies and not the technicals.
517. 00:22:14 So like that's what they're getting at now.
518. 00:22:16 Having gone through this and reading the book on it,
519. 00:22:20 like I can see where they're making that point
520. 00:22:24 and there are elements of it.
521. 00:22:26 I guess that's true, but, and I've said this for a while,
522. 00:22:29 there are a lot of elements of GTD
523. 00:22:31 that are just natural human actions.
524. 00:22:34 Like it's not something that David Allen invented
525. 00:22:36 and proposed and then people adopted and it became a big deal.
526. 00:22:41 He was simply acknowledging something
527. 00:22:42 that people do naturally,
528. 00:22:44 thus like his natural planning model.
529. 00:22:47 So like stuff like that comes about.
530. 00:22:48 Now I don't like the whole of GTD.
531. 00:22:52 You know, we've talked about that.
532. 00:22:54 But at the same time, I think you and I would both agree,
533. 00:22:57 we don't necessarily like the whole
534. 00:22:59 of building a second brain either.
535. 00:23:02 Just from the quick interactions you and I've had,
536. 00:23:05 I would assume you're putting on that,
537. 00:23:06 but maybe I'm putting words in your mouth.
538. 00:23:08 Yes.
539. 00:23:10 Anyway, let's keep going here.
540. 00:23:11 What is a second brain is the second chapter in this,
541. 00:23:16 he gives us kind of a history, I guess, of like,
542. 00:23:20 this isn't something new.
543. 00:23:21 Like a lot of times when people see this
544. 00:23:24 or talk about BASB, they will refer to things like PARRA,
545. 00:23:29 now code, and then also like, this is a new concept.
546. 00:23:34 Well, no, he takes us back and it's like,
547. 00:23:36 okay, no, this is something that people have done
548. 00:23:38 for a long time in the concept of like commonplace books
549. 00:23:42 or just notebooks in general.
550. 00:23:44 People have grabbed onto the collection of ideas
551. 00:23:48 and tried to find ways to organize those.
552. 00:23:50 So it's not a new thing.
553. 00:23:52 You know, trying to externalize things.
554. 00:23:54 Anyone who has worked in the world of knowledge work,
555. 00:23:58 like this is definitely something
556. 00:23:59 that you're doing somehow.
557. 00:24:02 And it's something that more and more people
558. 00:24:05 are needing to do, 'cause more and more people
559. 00:24:06 are working in the world of knowledge,
560. 00:24:08 as opposed to being welders and pipe fitters,
561. 00:24:12 plumbers, electricians and such.
562. 00:24:14 Like there's not as many people in those trades.
563. 00:24:16 So anyway, there's a whole bunch,
564. 00:24:18 like there's a whole nother issue of people not being,
565. 00:24:20 in those trades I know there's a shortage of that,
566. 00:24:21 but at the same time, like we work in knowledge.
567. 00:24:24 Like this is something we need to think about doing
568. 00:24:27 is how do we collect our own ideas?
569. 00:24:28 How do we process them?
570. 00:24:29 How do we think ahead, et cetera, et cetera.
571. 00:24:32 - Yeah, I like the part in this chapter
572. 00:24:36 about the commonplace book.
573. 00:24:38 The commonplace book is something that I had heard about
574. 00:24:41 before, but I never really understood the history of it.
575. 00:24:46 Interestingly, in the MacPower users forum,
576. 00:24:50 there's a whole bunch of people who are complaining
577. 00:24:52 at the moment about Tiago's use of the commonplace book
578. 00:24:57 and how it really started somewhere else.
579. 00:25:00 And I just kind of laugh at those comments,
580. 00:25:02 like whatever, congratulations,
581. 00:25:04 maybe you're technically right.
582. 00:25:06 Who cares?
583. 00:25:07 (laughs)
584. 00:25:09 Commonplace book as Tiago defines it is a place
585. 00:25:12 to connect bits of information from other sources.
586. 00:25:15 And I think that's a really cool idea.
587. 00:25:18 I had been doing that for a long time inside of day one.
588. 00:25:22 I was using it not just for journaling,
589. 00:25:24 but I was using it to collect quotes that I wanted to keep.
590. 00:25:27 I was building a database of these quotes
591. 00:25:29 that I wanted to remember.
592. 00:25:32 And when he talks about the second brain
593. 00:25:33 being a digital commonplace book
594. 00:25:35 and he gave a couple of specific examples
595. 00:25:37 that he used it for, like a study notebook,
596. 00:25:38 a personal journal, sketchbook for new ideas.
597. 00:25:41 I mean, those are the ones that resonated with me.
598. 00:25:43 I mean, yeah, that's basically how I'm using obsidian
599. 00:25:46 at the moment.
600. 00:25:48 But I never really considered obsidian to be a second brain
601. 00:25:52 just because everything that goes along
602. 00:25:53 with building a second brain,
603. 00:25:55 and this isn't Tiago's fault,
604. 00:25:57 but I feel like a lot of people have latched on
605. 00:25:59 to a surface level understanding of some article
606. 00:26:03 that he wrote and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, I get it.
607. 00:26:05 I get it.
608. 00:26:06 I know all about that second brain stuff.
609. 00:26:07 You don't need to talk to me about that anymore.
610. 00:26:10 And if I'm Tiago, I'm really frustrated
611. 00:26:12 'cause I'm like, no, you don't get it.
612. 00:26:14 I'm like, you understood the technical process
613. 00:26:17 for progressive summarization or something
614. 00:26:19 and you decided that it wasn't for you
615. 00:26:21 and you just wrote off the entire idea
616. 00:26:24 without getting to understand what it really means.
617. 00:26:27 And so the whole idea of a commonplace book
618. 00:26:29 at the beginning here, this resonates.
619. 00:26:32 This, I feel kind of sets the stage
620. 00:26:35 like building a second brain,
621. 00:26:36 that the second brain could be anything that you want.
622. 00:26:39 It could be one specific bucket
623. 00:26:41 for this type of thing that you wanna collect.
624. 00:26:43 And if that's all it was, then you've got a second brain.
625. 00:26:46 You don't have to manage everything out of a single app,
626. 00:26:51 which is kind of how I think some people think about it.
627. 00:26:54 He also does a really good job
628. 00:26:55 of articulating the pain points.
629. 00:26:57 The average US employees spend 76 hours,
630. 00:27:00 76 hours per year, I think I missed the term there.
631. 00:27:04 Looking for misplaced notes, items, or files.
632. 00:27:07 And 26% of a typical Knowledge Workers Day
633. 00:27:10 is looking for and consolidating information across systems.
634. 00:27:14 So much wasted time for what.
635. 00:27:18 (laughs)
636. 00:27:20 And this also kind of speaks to
637. 00:27:24 what kind of information are you trying to manage?
638. 00:27:26 Are you trying to manage all the information?
639. 00:27:29 Which is what I've saw a lot of people do
640. 00:27:31 with Evernote back in the day.
641. 00:27:33 Just dump it all in there.
642. 00:27:34 I mean, even the logo, it's an elephant, right?
643. 00:27:37 'Cause an elephant never forgets anything.
644. 00:27:38 You've got it in your system.
645. 00:27:40 If you ever need to go back and find it.
646. 00:27:42 And I feel like that is selling the whole concept
647. 00:27:45 of a second brain a little bit short.
648. 00:27:47 Yeah, I think it's easy.
649. 00:27:49 We love to rip on Evernote.
650. 00:27:51 Anytime it's something along Evernote's lines comes up,
651. 00:27:54 at least I do.
652. 00:27:55 I love to rip on it.
653. 00:27:55 It's not the tool though, it's how people use it.
654. 00:27:58 Correct.
655. 00:27:59 Yes, so the thing that,
656. 00:28:02 at least I tend to overlook
657. 00:28:04 because it's more fun to rip on a tool like that,
658. 00:28:07 is that despite the fact that I think Evernote
659. 00:28:10 was regularly used incorrectly,
660. 00:28:14 I think it definitely opened the doors
661. 00:28:17 or helped us learn ways to operate
662. 00:28:21 with collecting, collected information.
663. 00:28:24 Thus, we've been led to things like Rome Research
664. 00:28:26 in Obsidian and Notion and Craft and et cetera, et cetera.
665. 00:28:30 Like those tools have kind of built on
666. 00:28:32 what Evernote started.
667. 00:28:34 So I'm not gonna give all the credit to Evernote
668. 00:28:37 by any means, but I think it's definitely a part
669. 00:28:40 of that puzzle in helping us to understand it.
670. 00:28:42 Thus leading us to some of what Tiago Forte
671. 00:28:46 is telling us about here in this book.
672. 00:28:48 So it is still,
673. 00:28:49 I think it is still a tool that people can use well.
674. 00:28:54 He's gotta be smart in how you do it.
675. 00:28:56 So.
676. 00:28:57 Yes.
677. 00:28:58 'Cause doesn't Tiago still use it?
678. 00:28:59 I think he uses Evernote still.
679. 00:29:01 He does.
680. 00:29:02 I believe in the focused episode,
681. 00:29:06 he mentioned that he doesn't like to use an app
682. 00:29:10 that's less than 10 years old.
683. 00:29:11 Okay, sure.
684. 00:29:13 'Cause he wants it to be around for the long haul
685. 00:29:16 and I think that is a perfectly valid approach.
686. 00:29:19 I mean Obsidian, even though it's been around
687. 00:29:21 for a couple of years now, is technically still in beta.
688. 00:29:24 They could decide, you know what,
689. 00:29:25 there's no business model here, let's shut it down,
690. 00:29:27 let's go home.
691. 00:29:28 At that point, I don't know what I'm gonna do.
692. 00:29:31 Hopefully they open source it
693. 00:29:34 and you and I can take over and start running away.
694. 00:29:37 Yeah, there's definitely other options at this point.
695. 00:29:39 I consider this to be the golden age for note-taking apps.
696. 00:29:44 There's a lot of really cool things,
697. 00:29:45 a lot of really interesting things
698. 00:29:48 that are possible now.
699. 00:29:50 And it's kind of interesting,
700. 00:29:52 it's like modern note-taking apps
701. 00:29:54 built on a very old technology, markdown files, plaintext.
702. 00:29:58 But what you can do with those plaintext files is,
703. 00:30:01 it's kind of mind-blowing when you think about it.
704. 00:30:05 Yep, especially if you learn shell scripting, Mike,
705. 00:30:08 you should do that.
706. 00:30:10 I would love to see you write a shell script.
707. 00:30:12 (laughing)
708. 00:30:13 I'd be very excited to run it the first time.
709. 00:30:15 Well, maybe I wouldn't, maybe I wouldn't do that.
710. 00:30:18 That might be a bad idea.
711. 00:30:19 Might be a bad idea.
712. 00:30:20 We found a watch though.
713. 00:30:21 (laughing)
714. 00:30:23 Okay, let's go into the third chapter here
715. 00:30:25 'cause we haven't even made it to the meat of this.
716. 00:30:27 How a second brain works.
717. 00:30:30 And I think we'll, as we go through part two,
718. 00:30:33 I think we'll end up talking about
719. 00:30:35 like some of the technicals of what this could look like
720. 00:30:37 or what a second brain looks like.
721. 00:30:39 But in this section,
722. 00:30:42 at least the part that stood out to me is he talks about
723. 00:30:45 like the superpowers of a second brain.
724. 00:30:48 And there's four that he works through.
725. 00:30:52 One is making our ideas concrete.
726. 00:30:55 So because you're externalizing things
727. 00:30:57 and you have things somewhere that you can process it,
728. 00:31:00 it becomes something more long-term.
729. 00:31:02 So it's something you can build off of.
730. 00:31:04 So making our ideas concrete,
731. 00:31:06 revealing new association between ideas.
732. 00:31:09 So because you have them externalized,
733. 00:31:11 you can now start to have them pop up in places
734. 00:31:15 where you wouldn't expect them.
735. 00:31:16 Thus new associations between different areas.
736. 00:31:19 The third one incubating our ideas over time.
737. 00:31:22 Again, because you have it external,
738. 00:31:25 it can come back up later, like 10 years later,
739. 00:31:28 and then start to process it
740. 00:31:31 and distill it quite a bit more.
741. 00:31:33 And then the last one, sharpening our unique perspectives.
742. 00:31:37 That's kind of what I was talking about early on
743. 00:31:38 is how if you're able to externalize your thoughts,
744. 00:31:42 you've now created a way for you to process your own ideas
745. 00:31:46 and thinking ahead of time.
746. 00:31:47 And then when you're in a conversation,
747. 00:31:50 kind of like what you and I are having, Mike,
748. 00:31:53 you kind of know what you think already.
749. 00:31:54 So then when someone asks you a question,
750. 00:31:57 there's not this, I don't know.
751. 00:31:59 I don't know what I'm thinking about that.
752. 00:32:01 Or you say something or a phrase
753. 00:32:03 or a monologue of sorts trying to pass the time
754. 00:32:07 because you haven't processed it.
755. 00:32:09 Instead, you've already thought through some of those ideas.
756. 00:32:12 So then you can speak intelligently about it
757. 00:32:14 instead of putting off the question.
758. 00:32:17 As people will do sometimes in interviews
759. 00:32:19 when I go off script, super fun to do that.
760. 00:32:23 So, yes, these are the four superpowers.
761. 00:32:27 What do you want to add to that?
762. 00:32:28 - I would just add that in the situation
763. 00:32:31 that you described about thinking about something ahead
764. 00:32:34 of time and deciding what you really think,
765. 00:32:36 the real value of this is not in predicting those moments
766. 00:32:39 and being ready for every possible scenario,
767. 00:32:42 but recognizing when you get asked one of those questions
768. 00:32:44 and you don't have a good answer being like,
769. 00:32:45 "Huh, I should figure that out."
770. 00:32:48 And valuing, figuring it out enough
771. 00:32:51 to put some notes into your second brain
772. 00:32:56 as Tiago defines it.
773. 00:32:58 As he's talking about these superpowers of a second brain,
774. 00:33:01 every single one of these, I completely agree with.
775. 00:33:05 And if you would have given me this list
776. 00:33:07 prior to reading "Building a Second Brain,"
777. 00:33:10 I'd been like, "Yes, 100%.
778. 00:33:11 "That is what I believe."
779. 00:33:13 And then if you would ask me,
780. 00:33:15 "So are you gonna do "Building a Second Brain?"
781. 00:33:16 and be like, "No, not for me."
782. 00:33:18 (laughs)
783. 00:33:19 Right, so I feel like I, for a long time,
784. 00:33:22 had an improper understanding of what this actually was.
785. 00:33:26 But this is really just the creative process.
786. 00:33:29 I mean, all of these things have kind of discovered over time
787. 00:33:33 through like, steel like an artist
788. 00:33:36 and all those conversations that we've had about collecting
789. 00:33:40 and connecting dots and things like that.
790. 00:33:42 That's really what he's talking about here.
791. 00:33:45 And so I think there's a link between the whole
792. 00:33:48 second brain idea and creating,
793. 00:33:52 which is not explicitly seen.
794. 00:33:58 You first come across "Building a Second Brain"
795. 00:34:00 and you probably think kind of like I did
796. 00:34:03 with "Ever Note" back in the day.
797. 00:34:05 So it's a thing that I dump stuff in
798. 00:34:07 and then I never have to worry
799. 00:34:08 about being able to find something again.
800. 00:34:11 But that's not really it.
801. 00:34:12 It's really about what are you gonna do
802. 00:34:16 with the quality, not the quantity,
803. 00:34:19 of the things that you put into it.
804. 00:34:22 And the whole idea of incubating,
805. 00:34:24 that's interesting to me.
806. 00:34:25 For a long time, I actually described Obsidian
807. 00:34:30 as my greenhouse for my ideas,
808. 00:34:32 which I think fits that whole idea really well.
809. 00:34:36 Like you don't really even know what an idea is
810. 00:34:39 until you've given it some time
811. 00:34:42 and you've bounced it around in your brain
812. 00:34:44 and looked at this thing a few times
813. 00:34:46 and you can figure out different ways
814. 00:34:48 to connect it to some different things.
815. 00:34:50 But your brain is kind of doing that anyways.
816. 00:34:54 If you're reading all the books that we're reading
817. 00:34:56 and you're collecting all these different dots,
818. 00:34:58 your brain is gonna start connecting some of these things
819. 00:35:00 in new and interesting ways automatically.
820. 00:35:02 But what's so fascinating to me about
821. 00:35:04 these connected notes apps is that graph
822. 00:35:06 and the ability to actually see for the first time
823. 00:35:10 the types of connections that I believe my brain
824. 00:35:13 was making anyways.
825. 00:35:15 But now I can kind of see it externally.
826. 00:35:19 It is my second brain in a sense.
827. 00:35:22 But also I can influence it.
828. 00:35:25 I can see the things that are there
829. 00:35:26 that I don't recognize there's a connection there
830. 00:35:29 in my brain and I can be inspired by that connection
831. 00:35:32 and I can formalize it with a couple of brackets
832. 00:35:36 and then I'm off to the races
833. 00:35:37 'cause you never know what that one connection,
834. 00:35:40 what sort of chain reaction that is going to trigger.
835. 00:35:44 But the ultimate goal has to be, I think,
836. 00:35:46 the output, the sharpening your unique perspective.
837. 00:35:49 How are you gonna do that?
838. 00:35:51 I mean, it can't just be enhancing your thinking.
839. 00:35:55 There's gotta be some output associated with it, I believe.
840. 00:35:58 Whether that's writing it down into a notebook
841. 00:36:00 or creating a blog post, recording a video,
842. 00:36:02 even if it's just the whole, I know you hit the idea
843. 00:36:05 like the map of content, right?
844. 00:36:07 But that sort of idea, the workbench where you're playing
845. 00:36:09 with these things and deciding for yourself,
846. 00:36:11 what do I actually think about this?
847. 00:36:13 There's a lot of inspiration and revelation
848. 00:36:16 that comes from that process.
849. 00:36:19 - Yeah, for sure.
850. 00:36:20 I think, well, let's keep going 'cause I think
851. 00:36:24 more of what I'm thinking about what you just said
852. 00:36:27 is gonna come out as we continue here.
853. 00:36:30 So let's jump into part two and in order to do that,
854. 00:36:34 I'm gonna wrap up the last part of part one
855. 00:36:37 because he introduces this framework called code.
856. 00:36:42 I think I mentioned that a little bit ago.
857. 00:36:44 Code is an acronym that stands for capture,
858. 00:36:49 organize, distill, express.
859. 00:36:52 And the next four chapters in part two,
860. 00:36:55 each chapter is dedicated to one of those letters,
861. 00:37:00 one of those components.
862. 00:37:02 And the first one of those is capture.
863. 00:37:07 The tagline on this is keep what resonates.
864. 00:37:10 And one thing that I haven't really done in the past,
865. 00:37:15 capture is one of those things that,
866. 00:37:19 even to use that term, makes me immediately think of GTD.
867. 00:37:23 I can't help that, it's just immediately what came to mind.
868. 00:37:28 But one of the things that he calls out here
869. 00:37:32 is that you don't necessarily need to capture everything.
870. 00:37:38 And this is, I think maybe the deciding factor
871. 00:37:41 that differentiates this from what we all used to do
872. 00:37:46 in Evernote was just capture everything and all the things
873. 00:37:48 and put it all in one spot and hope you could find it later.
874. 00:37:51 In here, he even has a section of what not to keep in this.
875. 00:37:57 And I'm not used to someone telling me that.
876. 00:38:02 In the world of digital files,
877. 00:38:04 it's easy to keep everything and never get rid of anything.
878. 00:38:09 So it's just interesting, like, okay, don't keep this,
879. 00:38:12 get rid of this.
880. 00:38:13 So I'm not used to that.
881. 00:38:15 So anyway, that's a little bit refreshing
882. 00:38:17 to have someone take that perspective.
883. 00:38:20 There's more I wanna say about this, but I'll pause
884. 00:38:23 'cause I think there's so many places you could go with this.
885. 00:38:28 Capture is an important piece 'cause like,
886. 00:38:30 that's the point at which you're grabbing the big thing
887. 00:38:34 to get it out of your head.
888. 00:38:35 Like that's your starting point, right?
889. 00:38:37 If you don't have that process super simple,
890. 00:38:41 it doesn't happen at all.
891. 00:38:42 I have this habit on my phone.
892. 00:38:46 I still do it today.
893. 00:38:47 What's the number one thing we'll do
894. 00:38:50 before they lock their phone?
895. 00:38:53 Like it's pretty common, you'll swipe up
896. 00:38:54 and it takes you back to the home screen, right?
897. 00:38:56 Like that's the most common thing that people will do
898. 00:38:59 when they're closing their phone.
899. 00:39:01 Mine's a little bit different.
900. 00:39:02 I have drafts in the dock and my habit is to swipe up
901. 00:39:06 out of whatever app I'm in and tap that and lock it.
902. 00:39:09 Oh yeah, that's right.
903. 00:39:10 I've done this for a very long time,
904. 00:39:12 which means every single time I open my phone,
905. 00:39:15 drafts is already open.
906. 00:39:17 So just unlocking my phone immediately has drafts open
907. 00:39:20 at all times.
908. 00:39:21 Highly, highly recommend this.
909. 00:39:24 Super fun.
910. 00:39:26 Anyway, awkward talking.
911. 00:39:30 So yeah, there's lots in this capture section.
912. 00:39:34 I do like the, in this chapter four
913. 00:39:41 and the whole idea of resonance, that's interesting
914. 00:39:46 and that's a great descriptive word.
915. 00:39:48 I've been using that a lot more since I read this.
916. 00:39:52 You don't need to capture everything.
917. 00:39:56 And again, in the Mac Power Users Forum,
918. 00:39:58 there are people arguing that, well,
919. 00:40:00 depends on those type of books that you read.
920. 00:40:02 Maybe you do need to capture everything.
921. 00:40:03 Like, okay, fine.
922. 00:40:06 For what I do, I'm looking for ideas,
923. 00:40:11 not details of a process I'm gonna have to be able
924. 00:40:15 to repeat over and over and over again.
925. 00:40:16 If that's what you wanna do, that still applies here.
926. 00:40:20 Like that is a second brain example.
927. 00:40:22 He talks about code libraries as a second brain.
928. 00:40:25 Go ahead and build those or swipe files for marketers.
929. 00:40:29 But the point is that there's all this information
930. 00:40:33 all around us and information is food for your brain.
931. 00:40:36 And this kind of gets into like the quality
932. 00:40:38 of the dots that you collect, right?
933. 00:40:40 So this is an idea I picked up years ago
934. 00:40:42 and I've been trying to collect better dots,
935. 00:40:44 have a better information diet,
936. 00:40:47 things that are more valuable, more nutritious, right?
937. 00:40:51 If you wanna get into like the diet analogy here,
938. 00:40:55 you can choose what you want to feed on,
939. 00:40:59 but you are what you consume is another point
940. 00:41:02 that he makes in this section.
941. 00:41:05 So collect the things that are important to you
942. 00:41:09 and have the idea of these things that you collect,
943. 00:41:14 these are gonna become, he calls them knowledge assets.
944. 00:41:18 And I like the term asset because that implies
945. 00:41:20 something that is going to be valuable over time.
946. 00:41:23 It's not something that seems important right now.
947. 00:41:25 It's not something that will be important at some point.
948. 00:41:28 It is something that is both important now
949. 00:41:31 and in the future, but it is going to get better
950. 00:41:34 as I keep it in this second brain and as I develop it.
951. 00:41:38 He's got a whole bunch of different examples
952. 00:41:40 of these knowledge assets.
953. 00:41:43 But the very, my very favorite thing from this chapter
954. 00:41:46 is this idea of thinking like a curator.
955. 00:41:50 Because I've realized as I was going through this
956. 00:41:54 and understanding the code system,
957. 00:41:58 I've actually developed my own sort of version of this.
958. 00:42:02 I call it the five C's of creativity
959. 00:42:07 and it's capture, curate is the second one.
960. 00:42:10 So he's just kind of combine those two.
961. 00:42:13 But for me, I capture everything that seems important
962. 00:42:16 in the moment and then I transfer about 10% of it
963. 00:42:21 over into obsidian and 10% even maybe high.
964. 00:42:24 The things that are really important will come over
965. 00:42:27 but most of it I throw away.
966. 00:42:29 And a curator, like a curator in a museum,
967. 00:42:32 kind of like you're deciding what to add to the collection.
968. 00:42:35 But the collection becomes more valuable
969. 00:42:37 not just based on the things that you add
970. 00:42:39 but also on the things that you choose not to add
971. 00:42:42 because it doesn't fit.
972. 00:42:44 One of these things is not like the other.
973. 00:42:46 Well, don't put it in your second brain then.
974. 00:42:48 It may be important for somebody else
975. 00:42:50 doing something totally different
976. 00:42:51 but for what you're doing right now,
977. 00:42:52 it doesn't belong in your collection.
978. 00:42:55 And I feel like that's a really important step
979. 00:42:58 that coming back to like the problem with Evernote,
980. 00:43:02 just dump everything in there.
981. 00:43:03 There's no filter.
982. 00:43:04 This might be important and it's just text.
983. 00:43:07 These are just markdown files.
984. 00:43:09 I may as well just throw it in there
985. 00:43:10 and then I can find it if I think about it later
986. 00:43:12 but you lose some of the spontaneity
987. 00:43:15 and the spontaneous reactions that can occur
988. 00:43:19 as your ideas bump into each other
989. 00:43:20 if you have a whole bunch of garbage in there.
990. 00:43:23 And garbage isn't the right word
991. 00:43:24 but things that don't belong.
992. 00:43:25 Things that really don't have any sort of value to you.
993. 00:43:29 - There's another piece of this section
994. 00:43:32 curious your thoughts on it Mike.
995. 00:43:34 The 12 favorite problems piece.
996. 00:43:36 (laughing)
997. 00:43:37 And this comes from Nobel Prize winning
998. 00:43:40 physicist Richard Feynman.
999. 00:43:42 Feynman, Feynman.
1000. 00:43:44 - Feynman.
1001. 00:43:45 - Feynman, there you go.
1002. 00:43:46 - I know this because David Sparks and I recorded
1003. 00:43:49 a focused episode on this specific thing,
1004. 00:43:52 the 12 favorite problems. (laughing)
1005. 00:43:54 - Got it.
1006. 00:43:55 Basically the concept here is that Feynman had
1007. 00:44:01 12 problems that he would regularly try
1008. 00:44:07 to come up with new ideas for
1009. 00:44:11 or keeping top of mind I guess would be the way to say it.
1010. 00:44:14 And these questions would be things that would be
1011. 00:44:19 something that he wants to try to solve
1012. 00:44:24 doesn't mean he's gonna make that his life goal.
1013. 00:44:27 It's just things he wants to keep around.
1014. 00:44:28 Something to have his list pet projects I guess.
1015. 00:44:32 And I've never really thought about this
1016. 00:44:35 but having certain problems
1017. 00:44:39 and he has a list of examples here like
1018. 00:44:41 how do I live less in the past and more in the present?
1019. 00:44:44 Like if that's a problem that you're trying to
1020. 00:44:47 keep on your mind and you're trying to solve,
1021. 00:44:51 your tendency is going to be to see things
1022. 00:44:56 through that lens.
1023. 00:44:58 So if let's say you're talking about PKMs and obsidian
1024. 00:45:02 but I'm thinking about how can I live less
1025. 00:45:04 in the past and more in the present,
1026. 00:45:08 my tendency is going to be wanting to see how obsidian
1027. 00:45:12 or PKM can help me process things now
1028. 00:45:14 instead of processing things from the past.
1029. 00:45:17 Like you get what I'm saying, like the lens changes.
1030. 00:45:20 But if I have things in my past that I've never dealt with
1031. 00:45:25 and my problem is how do I overcome things
1032. 00:45:28 that I've dealt with in the past?
1033. 00:45:30 I'm gonna see the exact same topic through the lens of
1034. 00:45:33 how can I process what happened to me in the past?
1035. 00:45:36 You know what I'm saying?
1036. 00:45:37 So it can completely change the way that you view that topic
1037. 00:45:41 because of that, because you have these problems
1038. 00:45:43 on top of mind, like it just can help form
1039. 00:45:46 your thinking at the time.
1040. 00:45:48 If you ever tried to do something like this,
1041. 00:45:50 like writing down favorite problems to process,
1042. 00:45:53 is this, I've never even tried this.
1043. 00:45:55 - Got a list right here.
1044. 00:45:56 - You wanna hear 'em? - You wanna hear 'em?
1045. 00:45:57 - I'm not sure, go for it.
1046. 00:46:00 But I've been debating coming up with 12.
1047. 00:46:03 I've not ever done this, but it seems like
1048. 00:46:05 it would be a cool idea.
1049. 00:46:06 It is, it's a fascinating idea.
1050. 00:46:08 I haven't actually implemented these,
1051. 00:46:12 well I guess I've written them down
1052. 00:46:14 and the goal is to look at these weekly
1053. 00:46:17 and just kind of bring attention to them
1054. 00:46:18 and then I'm believing that they are going to
1055. 00:46:21 subconsciously kind of change how I approach
1056. 00:46:25 some of the things that I come in contact with.
1057. 00:46:28 That's the whole idea behind the 12 problems.
1058. 00:46:31 I did some research into this after reading about it
1059. 00:46:34 in the book because I thought it was an interesting idea.
1060. 00:46:37 And then, yeah, David and I wrote them down together.
1061. 00:46:41 So, how can I make things easier or simpler
1062. 00:46:44 as my first one?
1063. 00:46:46 How can I live with more meaning?
1064. 00:46:48 How can I create more and consume less?
1065. 00:46:51 Who are my true fans and what do they want?
1066. 00:46:54 How can I better lead and serve my family, wife and kids?
1067. 00:46:57 How can I better understand the other side?
1068. 00:47:00 That one in particular, like just to give you an example
1069. 00:47:03 of how these can be beneficial.
1070. 00:47:05 How can I better understand the other side?
1071. 00:47:07 There's a lot of ways that that could manifest
1072. 00:47:09 but one obvious example could be
1073. 00:47:12 with somebody who doesn't believe the same way you do
1074. 00:47:16 politically or religiously, whatever.
1075. 00:47:18 They have a different set of beliefs.
1076. 00:47:20 The tendency is just to, oh well,
1077. 00:47:21 you're not as enlightened as I am, right?
1078. 00:47:25 You haven't discovered the truth yet
1079. 00:47:28 so I'm not gonna listen to anything that you have to say.
1080. 00:47:30 And I want to instead listen to understand,
1081. 00:47:33 like I wanna understand where the other side is coming from
1082. 00:47:36 even if it doesn't completely change my mind about something,
1083. 00:47:40 I want to at least understand their arguments
1084. 00:47:43 instead of just assuming that they're wrong
1085. 00:47:45 until they get my attention and prove otherwise.
1086. 00:47:48 So I feel like just approaching conversations that way
1087. 00:47:50 obviously can have a world of good
1088. 00:47:53 in the atmosphere and the culture that we live in right now.
1089. 00:47:57 How can I have more fun?
1090. 00:47:58 What about this would make a good story?
1091. 00:48:00 What can I learn here?
1092. 00:48:02 How can I set my kids up for success?
1093. 00:48:04 How can I leave my dent in the universe?
1094. 00:48:05 How can I focus on what really matters?
1095. 00:48:08 These are not specific problems to be solved.
1096. 00:48:11 There's no project associated with these.
1097. 00:48:13 There's no completion date on a lot of these.
1098. 00:48:15 I guess you could say the ones with my kids,
1099. 00:48:18 those will be completed when they're adults.
1100. 00:48:20 But otherwise that's kind of the whole point
1101. 00:48:22 of the favorite problems is that
1102. 00:48:25 this will mean something when you read it once
1103. 00:48:28 and oh I know exactly how to apply this
1104. 00:48:32 and then that thing is done
1105. 00:48:33 and then you find a new way to apply it in the future.
1106. 00:48:37 Yes and now I feel like I want to do this.
1107. 00:48:41 Running it down.
1108. 00:48:42 All right, action item.
1109. 00:48:43 I'll take this on.
1110. 00:48:44 Yep, I'll take it on.
1111. 00:48:46 It just sounds like it would be super helpful
1112. 00:48:48 just to have these, I guess how often do you review these?
1113. 00:48:52 That would be a question for you.
1114. 00:48:53 Goal is weekly.
1115. 00:48:55 But I've only had them for a week.
1116. 00:48:58 So I've done it once.
1117. 00:48:59 See, I don't know.
1118. 00:49:01 Once.
1119. 00:49:02 Nice work.
1120. 00:49:05 That would be the question is like I know that
1121. 00:49:10 the goal with this is to have them fresh enough
1122. 00:49:12 in your mind that they are a lens of sorts
1123. 00:49:16 that you see things through.
1124. 00:49:18 And if you're not reviewing them,
1125. 00:49:22 probably weekly, at least every other week,
1126. 00:49:24 I would think they would get to the point
1127. 00:49:26 where they're not on the front of your mind.
1128. 00:49:29 So then it doesn't work.
1129. 00:49:30 Like the problem doesn't follow through, I guess.
1130. 00:49:34 Could be.
1131. 00:49:35 I think this is a lot like the core values
1132. 00:49:40 or anything that you want to ingrain
1133. 00:49:43 in your day to day living.
1134. 00:49:46 Like the core values, I have them framed
1135. 00:49:48 and printed on the living room wall.
1136. 00:49:50 So I see them all the time.
1137. 00:49:52 I'm not gonna frame my 12 favorite problems.
1138. 00:49:55 But if I really wanted to make them top of mind
1139. 00:49:59 all the time, I could make them my desktop wallpaper.
1140. 00:50:02 Or I could put them on my lock screen on my phone
1141. 00:50:05 or something like that.
1142. 00:50:07 I think for me personally, reviewing them once a week
1143. 00:50:10 is gonna be enough once I get in the habit of it
1144. 00:50:12 to kind of ingrain these and give me the value
1145. 00:50:15 from creating them.
1146. 00:50:17 But your mileage may vary.
1147. 00:50:19 Okay, I'm gonna rabbit trail here for a second.
1148. 00:50:23 When people put images of their questions
1149. 00:50:26 or things that they want to be reminded of regularly
1150. 00:50:28 on their wallpaper, why?
1151. 00:50:33 Because it's always covered.
1152. 00:50:34 If you're a rational working person on your computer,
1153. 00:50:39 it's always covered.
1154. 00:50:40 Maybe that's just me.
1155. 00:50:42 I don't know, that's weird.
1156. 00:50:43 Like I could have something on my wallpaper
1157. 00:50:46 but I would never see it.
1158. 00:50:48 - Sure. - Yeah.
1159. 00:50:49 - There's no point in me doing that.
1160. 00:50:50 Anyway, I don't know why, I don't understand that.
1161. 00:50:52 Do you see yours?
1162. 00:50:53 I feel like this is, maybe I'm just strange.
1163. 00:50:56 - Mine is a cool moods wallpaper by Matt Burchler.
1164. 00:51:01 So I don't need to see it all the time.
1165. 00:51:04 - Sure, sure.
1166. 00:51:06 I don't know, this diversion, that's what that was.
1167. 00:51:12 Okay, unless there's something you wanna see on Capture,
1168. 00:51:15 I feel like we should go to organize
1169. 00:51:16 'cause this one's gonna cause us some
1170. 00:51:18 consternation potentially.
1171. 00:51:20 - All right, let's do it.
1172. 00:51:21 - So let's go on to organize,
1173. 00:51:23 save for actionability.
1174. 00:51:26 And in this, there are a lot of things.
1175. 00:51:31 I'm like, where do I even wanna start here?
1176. 00:51:36 So let's just jump into the one
1177. 00:51:38 that everybody knows about, PARA, P-A-R-A,
1178. 00:51:42 if you don't know that.
1179. 00:51:44 It stands for projects, areas, resources, and archives.
1180. 00:51:48 This is his recommendation for how you store notes.
1181. 00:51:53 Like, again, we're working our way
1182. 00:51:55 into the tactical side of this.
1183. 00:51:57 And his recommendation is you have a folder.
1184. 00:52:01 This could be in mail, your email,
1185. 00:52:03 it could be in our case, like obsidian,
1186. 00:52:06 in your documents folder everywhere.
1187. 00:52:09 You have a folder for projects,
1188. 00:52:11 you have a folder for areas,
1189. 00:52:12 you have a folder for resources,
1190. 00:52:14 and you have a folder for archives.
1191. 00:52:16 And if I can explain this correctly,
1192. 00:52:18 anytime you have a project,
1193. 00:52:20 it's a time bound work that you're doing.
1194. 00:52:22 You're creating that project folder in all of those.
1195. 00:52:26 Okay?
1196. 00:52:27 You also have areas, these are things
1197. 00:52:28 that are not time bound, health, finances,
1198. 00:52:31 faith, husband, father, et cetera, et cetera, right?
1199. 00:52:35 Your work life, like those are your areas with goals,
1200. 00:52:39 like in games that you're working towards.
1201. 00:52:41 Again, you have those in all of your places.
1202. 00:52:43 You have resources, these are topics of interest
1203. 00:52:46 that you just wanna collect the information on.
1204. 00:52:49 Maybe you'll use it in the future, maybe you won't,
1205. 00:52:51 but it's of interest to you, hobbies, you know,
1206. 00:52:55 all that sort of thing, manuals, maybe.
1207. 00:52:57 Those are things that you're collecting,
1208. 00:52:58 they end up in resources.
1209. 00:52:59 And then archives is the collection of things
1210. 00:53:03 from the other three categories
1211. 00:53:04 that you're no longer actively working on, right?
1212. 00:53:08 And the part of this, there's a term for this,
1213. 00:53:11 and I forgot it,
1214. 00:53:12 but the point of this is that when you work from projects
1215. 00:53:16 to areas, to resources, to archives,
1216. 00:53:19 it's a progression of actionability.
1217. 00:53:22 So the entire structure is built on action
1218. 00:53:25 and driven towards movement forward.
1219. 00:53:28 So projects are your most action worthy, I guess.
1220. 00:53:33 Areas are your second, resources, your third,
1221. 00:53:36 archives are cold storage, right?
1222. 00:53:39 So they're not actioned at all.
1223. 00:53:41 That's the concept there.
1224. 00:53:43 And I know that you likely have strong opinions on this.
1225. 00:53:47 I've actually gone through the process
1226. 00:53:49 of experimenting with this in the past
1227. 00:53:52 and have kind of some mixed reviews on it.
1228. 00:53:57 Having read this,
1229. 00:53:58 I kind of have a better understanding
1230. 00:54:00 of what was intended with it.
1231. 00:54:03 What are your thoughts, Mike?
1232. 00:54:05 Do you do this?
1233. 00:54:06 I'm guessing the answer is no,
1234. 00:54:08 I'm not entirely certain why I think that.
1235. 00:54:11 No, I do not do this.
1236. 00:54:13 (laughs)
1237. 00:54:15 I think the goal of this system I agree with,
1238. 00:54:20 'cause he mentions that PAR is not a filing system,
1239. 00:54:23 it's a production system.
1240. 00:54:24 What people really care about
1241. 00:54:25 is the ability to create something new.
1242. 00:54:28 And that manifests differently for me than it does
1243. 00:54:32 for an engineer.
1244. 00:54:33 But I think that if you were gonna start by project,
1245. 00:54:40 the things that have a start and end date
1246. 00:54:43 and have a clear outcome,
1247. 00:54:45 that provides the clarity that you need
1248. 00:54:47 to actually do something with the rest of the information
1249. 00:54:50 that you collect.
1250. 00:54:51 So I agree with it in principle.
1251. 00:54:54 I just don't feel like I need this.
1252. 00:54:59 I feel my system at the moment
1253. 00:55:02 is very much working for me
1254. 00:55:07 in terms of helping me to create.
1255. 00:55:11 So I have been looking for ways to,
1256. 00:55:14 rather than implement PARRA,
1257. 00:55:16 implement some of the ideas and refine
1258. 00:55:19 what I currently have going.
1259. 00:55:21 Like I said, I basically got my five C's of creativity
1260. 00:55:25 that I do instead,
1261. 00:55:26 which is to capture, to curate.
1262. 00:55:29 I think I didn't go through the rest of them,
1263. 00:55:32 but cultivate, and that's basically the,
1264. 00:55:36 it's in my system
1265. 00:55:38 and I'm going to continue to grow it
1266. 00:55:41 and connect it with the fourth one.
1267. 00:55:43 So once I understand what the idea is in isolation,
1268. 00:55:45 then I compare it with some of the other things
1269. 00:55:48 in my collection.
1270. 00:55:50 Very a la, how to read a book,
1271. 00:55:53 syntopical reading.
1272. 00:55:55 And then the last part is the Create Express,
1273. 00:55:59 what this means to me.
1274. 00:56:01 Now I don't have a book to sell you, but.
1275. 00:56:04 (laughs)
1276. 00:56:05 - Yeah.
1277. 00:56:06 - That's the one that resonates with me
1278. 00:56:07 more than code or even PARRA.
1279. 00:56:11 But I do think a lot of what I just described
1280. 00:56:14 exists inside of code.
1281. 00:56:16 I feel like PARRA for the right person
1282. 00:56:18 is how code gets implemented.
1283. 00:56:20 I think it's also, for me, specifically the area
1284. 00:56:23 where there is not as much overlap
1285. 00:56:27 with the stuff that's important to me.
1286. 00:56:30 - Yeah, this is,
1287. 00:56:30 so I guess the five C's of creativity,
1288. 00:56:35 do you use that to organize files and such?
1289. 00:56:37 'Cause I feel like that's ultimately what he's getting at.
1290. 00:56:39 It's like, how do you organize this stuff?
1291. 00:56:41 I know, let's ignore PKM world, right?
1292. 00:56:46 - Yep.
1293. 00:56:47 - Knowing that that is something separate
1294. 00:56:50 'cause I texted you about that in this week.
1295. 00:56:52 And I have thoughts on that one
1296. 00:56:53 that I wanna get into here in a second.
1297. 00:56:55 But as far as like file storage systems,
1298. 00:56:57 he's recommending this PARRA method.
1299. 00:57:00 Does your five C's translate into that?
1300. 00:57:02 - I guess maybe I'm asking a weird question.
1301. 00:57:04 - I know because I don't want it to.
1302. 00:57:05 (laughs)
1303. 00:57:07 - Sure.
1304. 00:57:08 - So, and that's fair.
1305. 00:57:08 - I mean, this is why I kind of judged
1306. 00:57:13 the last section on tagging
1307. 00:57:16 because I know that Tiago uses Evernote
1308. 00:57:19 and I know that with Evernote specifically,
1309. 00:57:21 there are a couple of mechanisms you can use
1310. 00:57:24 to group things together.
1311. 00:57:26 Why do you want to group things together
1312. 00:57:28 because I wanna consider them in certain scenarios,
1313. 00:57:31 certain situations.
1314. 00:57:33 It's the same sort of thing with a task manager.
1315. 00:57:35 If you're using a task manager the right way,
1316. 00:57:37 what it does is you dump everything in there
1317. 00:57:40 and then it surfaces at the right time,
1318. 00:57:42 the things that you should be paying attention to.
1319. 00:57:43 So you don't have to sort through everything else
1320. 00:57:45 and figure out what is the thing that is really important
1321. 00:57:48 that I should be paying attention to at this moment.
1322. 00:57:51 So PARRA is basically a folder-based structure
1323. 00:57:55 or a tag-based structure that you can use
1324. 00:57:58 to group and clump things together.
1325. 00:58:01 But you know what's better than both of those
1326. 00:58:02 in my opinion, bi-directional linking.
1327. 00:58:05 - But I can't do that with Photoshop files.
1328. 00:58:09 - Sure, that's fine.
1329. 00:58:10 - Do that with, so that's why I was saying
1330. 00:58:13 if I leave the PKM piece out of this, right?
1331. 00:58:16 - I don't think Photoshop files are really ideas.
1332. 00:58:20 They are something that you create
1333. 00:58:22 as the expression of an idea,
1334. 00:58:24 but as you're doing the rest of the process with the idea,
1335. 00:58:28 that's not existing most likely as a Photoshop file.
1336. 00:58:32 That's probably text in some way, shape, or form.
1337. 00:58:35 - Yeah, so here's an example.
1338. 00:58:38 I'm in the middle of recording a bunch of video interviews
1339. 00:58:42 for a consolidated video that I'm working on
1340. 00:58:45 for a Sunday morning service, right?
1341. 00:58:47 I have eight different interviews on recording,
1342. 00:58:50 which means I'm gonna end up with three video files
1343. 00:58:54 and one, two, three, four, five, six audio files
1344. 00:58:58 for every interview, right?
1345. 00:59:00 So all of that has to get consolidated somehow in one place.
1346. 00:59:04 So like somehow I have to keep track of all those.
1347. 00:59:08 This is where the projects thing comes in handy
1348. 00:59:09 'cause I can create the folder for the project
1349. 00:59:11 and it all goes there.
1350. 00:59:13 Now, I would also have a text file that corresponds to that
1351. 00:59:18 to help me understand some of my notes around that,
1352. 00:59:20 but I still have to store those files somewhere.
1353. 00:59:22 Like I can't throw that into Obsidian cleanly.
1354. 00:59:26 That's just painful.
1355. 00:59:28 I've looked at people trying to do that before
1356. 00:59:29 and I'm like, just don't do that.
1357. 00:59:32 (laughs)
1358. 00:59:33 It's a bad idea.
1359. 00:59:34 So I guess that's the part that doesn't add up there.
1360. 00:59:38 - Yeah.
1361. 00:59:40 I mean, it depends what you're trying to do.
1362. 00:59:45 I have one version of that,
1363. 00:59:48 but none of my stuff is Photoshop files
1364. 00:59:50 that I do dump inside of Obsidian.
1365. 00:59:53 An example would be notes.faithbaseproactivity.com,
1366. 00:59:58 which I showed with you, my cross-reference library
1367. 01:00:01 for my sermon sketch notes,
1368. 01:00:02 which is a combination of images that I've drawn
1369. 01:00:04 in good notes plus the plain text files
1370. 01:00:07 for each individual verse.
1371. 01:00:08 And if you go to that URL, it's public.
1372. 01:00:12 You can kind of navigate around my sermon sketch notes
1373. 01:00:15 and see how like verse referenced here
1374. 01:00:17 was also referenced in other places.
1375. 01:00:20 That's the real value of that kind of stuff for me.
1376. 01:00:23 How do I fit something like that into Para?
1377. 01:00:26 I could probably figure out a way to do it,
1378. 01:00:27 but I just don't want to.
1379. 01:00:30 Now you could also,
1380. 01:00:31 even your Para system inside of your Notes app,
1381. 01:00:35 you could probably link to a Photoshop file
1382. 01:00:38 or something that you are working on,
1383. 01:00:41 or a video file or things like that.
1384. 01:00:43 I tried to do video inside of Obsidian for a while.
1385. 01:00:45 I was collecting my guitar lessons,
1386. 01:00:47 which I would always get these little videos
1387. 01:00:48 on like what I'm supposed to work on
1388. 01:00:50 and dump them in there, but it just got too big.
1389. 01:00:53 So there are limitations with it.
1390. 01:00:56 And I think that's okay.
1391. 01:00:58 You don't really want a single app that does everything.
1392. 01:01:02 JARO kind of talks about that in the first section, actually.
1393. 01:01:05 See if I can find that.
1394. 01:01:06 He mentions that the perfect app doesn't exist,
1395. 01:01:10 but what you want is a reliable set of tools.
1396. 01:01:15 So everyone's set of tools are gonna be different
1397. 01:01:20 based on the types of knowledge and information
1398. 01:01:23 that you're trying to manage.
1399. 01:01:24 And however you're going to create and express that,
1400. 01:01:27 that's fine if you gotta jump over to a different tool.
1401. 01:01:32 But, and I think if you're talking about files
1402. 01:01:35 that exist across a bunch of different tools,
1403. 01:01:37 then having a folder based Para structure
1404. 01:01:41 on your computer makes a ton of sense.
1405. 01:01:43 It just doesn't work for me.
1406. 01:01:46 - Yeah, I will say that,
1407. 01:01:48 and this is an action item for me,
1408. 01:01:50 I'm gonna do a Para experiment.
1409. 01:01:52 I've done this before without fully understanding it.
1410. 01:01:56 And it didn't go well.
1411. 01:01:58 Now that said, part of the reason I'm interested
1412. 01:02:01 in doing this, and I've currently got this set up,
1413. 01:02:04 so I know how that structure can go,
1414. 01:02:07 but for years now I have operated under the process
1415. 01:02:12 of having a folder for projects
1416. 01:02:14 that then get moved into an archive.
1417. 01:02:16 Like I've done that for a long time.
1418. 01:02:18 And then outside of that I've had folders
1419. 01:02:22 for like areas of my life and in like work areas,
1420. 01:02:27 alongside like hobby type folders.
1421. 01:02:31 Like I've done that for a very long time.
1422. 01:02:34 Reading this made me realize that I've kind of done Para
1423. 01:02:38 for a long time, just in a different layout.
1424. 01:02:42 And the one part of it that doesn't add up,
1425. 01:02:46 and I texted you about this,
1426. 01:02:47 it's like the thing that does work really well
1427. 01:02:50 is like if I'm in Finder,
1428. 01:02:51 or well I don't even do this in my email stuff,
1429. 01:02:54 email just goes on one folder, I'm terrible.
1430. 01:02:57 Maybe it's not terrible, maybe it's genius, I don't know.
1431. 01:02:59 It's one of the two.
1432. 01:03:00 And I have kept things in folder structures
1433. 01:03:05 that mimic something similar to this for quite a while.
1434. 01:03:09 The part that doesn't add up is when you get to like PKM world,
1435. 01:03:13 and you're trying to categorize,
1436. 01:03:16 I guess it was the way to say it different notes.
1437. 01:03:19 Like when you get into just the text notes side of it,
1438. 01:03:23 that part didn't add up.
1439. 01:03:25 But I say that, and yet I've got a script
1440. 01:03:29 and I use this weekly, at least if not more than,
1441. 01:03:34 for creating a note for a project in a project's folder
1442. 01:03:39 in Obsidian, that also creates the folder in Finder for me,
1443. 01:03:44 and then creates links between the two.
1444. 01:03:46 So that I can get to one or the other from either place.
1445. 01:03:49 I've done that for a while now.
1446. 01:03:52 So I just maintain that,
1447. 01:03:54 'cause I did go ahead and try to set up Para in Obsidian,
1448. 01:03:58 and I think I found something that works well,
1449. 01:03:59 at least given the structure that I already had.
1450. 01:04:02 Keeping my projects like I had before,
1451. 01:04:04 I already got the folder.
1452. 01:04:05 The areas actually acts kind of like the maps piece,
1453. 01:04:10 because I realized that I was kind of doing that.
1454. 01:04:12 I could see that already in Obsidian,
1455. 01:04:14 so it kind of translates to that.
1456. 01:04:16 So it's not folders of notes for areas.
1457. 01:04:19 It's one folder that has notes of, I guess, maps,
1458. 01:04:24 would be what to call it.
1459. 01:04:26 And then the resources piece has like your assets folder.
1460. 01:04:30 Like everybody seems to have a folder for where,
1461. 01:04:32 if you drag and drop a picture in there,
1462. 01:04:34 it's gotta go somewhere, right?
1463. 01:04:35 The picture file has to go somewhere.
1464. 01:04:37 Templates, dated, like daily notes and stuff,
1465. 01:04:40 like those types of folders are under there.
1466. 01:04:42 That's really it.
1467. 01:04:43 I don't keep folders under the rest of the resources piece
1468. 01:04:47 at all.
1469. 01:04:48 That's kind of like having the notes piece
1470. 01:04:50 that's like everything thrown in one spot.
1471. 01:04:52 That's what ends up going in resources.
1472. 01:04:54 And then the archive is the same as it always has been for me.
1473. 01:04:57 It's like that's where the done projects and done areas go.
1474. 01:05:02 But outside of that, I've got what I call a zero note.
1475. 01:05:05 A lot of people have these like the starting note,
1476. 01:05:09 where you can jump off of from into a bunch of different areas.
1477. 01:05:14 All I really did, 'cause I had my set up,
1478. 01:05:19 which is I think was somewhat similar to yours, Mike,
1479. 01:05:21 where most everything was kind of in one spot
1480. 01:05:23 and you had notes with links that got you
1481. 01:05:26 a lot of different places.
1482. 01:05:28 It's still kind of the same for me.
1483. 01:05:31 It's just laid out differently.
1484. 01:05:33 Yes.
1485. 01:05:34 The way you jump from thing to thing is all the same.
1486. 01:05:36 I don't know that this is gonna work long term,
1487. 01:05:39 but it's at least a starting off point.
1488. 01:05:41 I just wanna kind of see how it plays out,
1489. 01:05:43 'cause so far it hasn't changed much at all for me.
1490. 01:05:46 So I don't know, we'll see.
1491. 01:05:48 That's the thing about Para, to be honest,
1492. 01:05:50 is I don't think it's a simple,
1493. 01:05:54 just apply this structure everywhere.
1494. 01:05:58 And I think in the past, maybe it was,
1495. 01:06:02 but the real value of applying the principles
1496. 01:06:05 that Tagos talking about as it pertains to Para,
1497. 01:06:09 this can look very different nowadays.
1498. 01:06:13 And it should look very different as you figure out
1499. 01:06:17 what is the right way to apply this for yourself.
1500. 01:06:20 I came across a quote in The Road Less Stupid
1501. 01:06:24 by Keith Cunningham.
1502. 01:06:25 He talks about beware of people selling Kool-Aid.
1503. 01:06:30 And he uses examples of like Warren Buffett
1504. 01:06:34 who took him nine years to make his first
1505. 01:06:36 $10 million on the stock market.
1506. 01:06:37 He's like, "No one's gonna buy a book
1507. 01:06:39 "how to make $10 million in nine years."
1508. 01:06:41 (laughs)
1509. 01:06:42 Yeah, right.
1510. 01:06:43 But that's what success looks like.
1511. 01:06:45 Is it slow and it's methodical.
1512. 01:06:47 And so the people who are like,
1513. 01:06:49 "Hey, I did this and it blew up and just do this thing.
1514. 01:06:51 "Those are the people you gotta be wary of."
1515. 01:06:54 And there's a quote in there that said,
1516. 01:06:56 "Consultants have a recipe,
1517. 01:07:00 "but masters have a cookbook."
1518. 01:07:03 And I was thinking about that as it pertains
1519. 01:07:06 to the productivity space and the types of things
1520. 01:07:08 that we read, the different systems that we hear about.
1521. 01:07:11 And I feel like Tiago is not selling a recipe.
1522. 01:07:15 He is providing you a cookbook, a whole bunch of principles
1523. 01:07:18 that if you really wrestle with and grapple
1524. 01:07:21 and understand the arguments,
1525. 01:07:24 then you will find how to express these for yourself
1526. 01:07:27 in a way, but for me, if you're asking me,
1527. 01:07:29 do I use PARRA, I've taken the principles
1528. 01:07:33 and morphed them so much from the original
1529. 01:07:36 that I can't in good faith say, "Yes, I do this."
1530. 01:07:38 (laughs)
1531. 01:07:39 Right, right.
1532. 01:07:40 But everybody does this in some way, shape or form,
1533. 01:07:42 if they're into the whole personal knowledge management idea.
1534. 01:07:46 Yeah, it's totally true.
1535. 01:07:48 I think some of what, and you can see that
1536. 01:07:50 based on what I just explained,
1537. 01:07:52 these are things that I've kind of done already.
1538. 01:07:55 Just haven't organized them in that way.
1539. 01:07:58 That said, the concept of organizing it
1540. 01:08:01 for most actionable to least actionable,
1541. 01:08:04 one of the things that I personally struggle with
1542. 01:08:08 is knowing what to work on next.
1543. 01:08:10 That's forever the thing that I find myself fighting.
1544. 01:08:13 It's like, okay, I have these six things or 400 things,
1545. 01:08:17 and I wanna know which of those 200
1546. 01:08:21 that I need to put above the other 200.
1547. 01:08:24 Within that, I gotta figure out
1548. 01:08:26 where in the hierarchy do things land.
1549. 01:08:30 It's very easy for me to take something that's a hobby
1550. 01:08:32 and put it over something I have to get done today.
1551. 01:08:34 I have no idea why I have to fight this battle
1552. 01:08:36 every single day, but here we are.
1553. 01:08:38 And so knowing that I already struggle
1554. 01:08:42 with the actionability and knowing what comes next,
1555. 01:08:45 organizing things in a way that automatically puts it
1556. 01:08:49 in order for me is extremely helpful.
1557. 01:08:53 So--
1558. 01:08:54 Mission accomplished.
1559. 01:08:55 Right, you've got a little bit of structure,
1560. 01:08:56 which makes what you gotta do easier.
1561. 01:08:58 You don't have to try to bend it and,
1562. 01:09:00 oh, I gotta follow it exactly.
1563. 01:09:02 Get the value and move on, right?
1564. 01:09:04 Correct, yep.
1565. 01:09:06 So that's, that's, that concept is one that I didn't have
1566. 01:09:11 in the back of my head when I first started
1567. 01:09:13 this PARA experiment, but had slowly been working
1568. 01:09:17 my way towards something similar to that.
1569. 01:09:19 So I think maybe that's why I'm interested in this.
1570. 01:09:24 I don't think I'm gonna end up keeping the terminology
1571. 01:09:27 over time, but the concept of actionability,
1572. 01:09:30 like that one I get.
1573. 01:09:31 So that's partly why I wanna do this experiment,
1574. 01:09:35 'cause I know that that's something I struggle with
1575. 01:09:36 and it feels like this is, at least in my short term,
1576. 01:09:39 stint of using it, it seems to help.
1577. 01:09:43 But as anyone who listens to the bookworm knows,
1578. 01:09:47 long term for Joe is always the trick, right?
1579. 01:09:50 That's, that's forever the thing that I have a challenge with.
1580. 01:09:53 So like that I wanna know, how does it handle six months
1581. 01:09:58 or now am I still using that type of structure?
1582. 01:10:00 We'll see.
1583. 01:10:01 The goal of the structure in this chapter is to place things
1584. 01:10:06 where they will be useful the soonest.
1585. 01:10:09 So if PARA helps you recognize where things
1586. 01:10:14 will be useful the soonest, go ahead and use it.
1587. 01:10:18 For me, that's not where they're gonna be useful
1588. 01:10:21 for the soonest.
1589. 01:10:22 I know exactly what that looks like for me though.
1590. 01:10:24 And so if you have no idea where to start,
1591. 01:10:27 I have no problem starting with PARA.
1592. 01:10:30 I have morphed my system into something
1593. 01:10:34 that no longer resembles it though.
1594. 01:10:36 - Yeah, yeah, for sure.
1595. 01:10:39 Let's go on to the next section.
1596. 01:10:42 I think this is one that we're both kind of excited about.
1597. 01:10:45 I know especially you are putting words in your mouth again.
1598. 01:10:49 Distill, find the essence.
1599. 01:10:53 And there's one core piece inside of this
1600. 01:10:58 that I think is absolutely the most important.
1601. 01:11:01 I think we maybe mentioned the term earlier.
1602. 01:11:04 And that is the progressive summarization technique.
1603. 01:11:08 And just as a, by way of example, what this is
1604. 01:11:13 and maybe get into the importance of it.
1605. 01:11:16 But let's say that you have an article that you find online
1606. 01:11:21 that is super helpful.
1607. 01:11:23 Like you found an article on tuning the carburetor
1608. 01:11:28 for a chainsaw.
1609. 01:11:29 I bring that up 'cause it's something I had to do here recently.
1610. 01:11:32 And that's got a lot of information in it.
1611. 01:11:36 There's a whole bunch of stuff in it
1612. 01:11:37 that might be helpful, might not.
1613. 01:11:40 But regardless, you're pulling the Evernote mindset
1614. 01:11:44 and you saved the whole thing, right?
1615. 01:11:47 Tiago would probably not be thrilled with you
1616. 01:11:48 that you saved the whole thing.
1617. 01:11:49 So you go through and you grab the parts
1618. 01:11:53 that are most important that you're gonna hold onto in that.
1619. 01:11:56 You get rid of the ones you don't.
1620. 01:11:58 Once you've done that, then you have this process of,
1621. 01:12:01 what is it, four steps?
1622. 01:12:03 Yeah, you've got the capturing piece that you start with.
1623. 01:12:06 Then you go through, I'm gonna use the way
1624. 01:12:08 that he recommends it.
1625. 01:12:09 You bold the sections or the components within that
1626. 01:12:13 that are the most important.
1627. 01:12:15 Then within those bold pieces,
1628. 01:12:17 you highlight the pieces that are even more important
1629. 01:12:20 that are like the core of those bolded sections.
1630. 01:12:24 And then beyond that, the fourth step is writing
1631. 01:12:27 in an executive summary that summarizes the entire piece.
1632. 01:12:32 So then you've taken what started off as a pretty long,
1633. 01:12:36 maybe a two or three paragraph excerpt
1634. 01:12:39 and you've got it distilled down into maybe a one
1635. 01:12:41 or two sentence summary.
1636. 01:12:44 That's what he's referring to as a progressive
1637. 01:12:47 summarization technique.
1638. 01:12:48 Now, that said, this is not something you do immediately.
1639. 01:12:52 You can, but he's not saying that you have to.
1640. 01:12:56 It's an as needed basis.
1641. 01:12:58 Like you come back onto this note six months from now
1642. 01:13:02 and you've got a meeting where you're gonna be talking
1643. 01:13:04 about some of the things in it.
1644. 01:13:05 Well, that's a good time to go through and bold
1645. 01:13:08 all the important parts and maybe highlight on top of that.
1646. 01:13:12 And then you've got a talk you're gonna give,
1647. 01:13:14 write your summary for it.
1648. 01:13:16 Like you don't have to do these all at once,
1649. 01:13:18 but it's that process of moving it from one step to the next.
1650. 01:13:21 So you can get down to the essence as he calls it
1651. 01:13:24 of that section.
1652. 01:13:25 How'd I do?
1653. 01:13:26 Did I tell it well?
1654. 01:13:28 - You did?
1655. 01:13:28 Do you do this?
1656. 01:13:30 - Not yet.
1657. 01:13:31 - You gonna do it?
1658. 01:13:32 - Maybe.
1659. 01:13:33 In theory, it's a great idea.
1660. 01:13:35 It seems like an awful lot of work.
1661. 01:13:37 But I think that's the point, right?
1662. 01:13:39 - So as you were describing that,
1663. 01:13:42 I got the revelation that I do this already.
1664. 01:13:46 - Yeah.
1665. 01:13:48 Do you do it in the same form or do you have different
1666. 01:13:50 ways of doing it?
1667. 01:13:51 - Nope, I don't do it in the same form.
1668. 01:13:52 So I published something on my blog years ago
1669. 01:13:57 on how and why I take notes in the books that I read.
1670. 01:14:00 But let's just walk through these four different levels though,
1671. 01:14:04 right?
1672. 01:14:05 So you've got the original work, right?
1673. 01:14:11 That's the books that we read.
1674. 01:14:14 And then you want to distill that down into just
1675. 01:14:19 the important pieces, right?
1676. 01:14:22 So that's what I do with the Mind Node files.
1677. 01:14:25 And then from there,
1678. 01:14:27 so that's kind of like bolding things, I guess.
1679. 01:14:29 And then you've got the highlighted passages.
1680. 01:14:33 So all the stuff that's bold with everything
1681. 01:14:35 that's in the Mind Node file,
1682. 01:14:36 I have an emoji system for calling out specific things.
1683. 01:14:41 Anichi emoji means a different thing.
1684. 01:14:42 So it's not as simple as a highlighted.
1685. 01:14:44 And essentially I've got several different emoji-based
1686. 01:14:46 highlighters.
1687. 01:14:48 And then when I bring it all into Obsidian,
1688. 01:14:50 I force myself at the top of the book note
1689. 01:14:53 to write a three-sentence summary of the book itself.
1690. 01:14:56 So I follow this point-by-point.
1691. 01:15:00 But only for super long-form things that I read
1692. 01:15:06 that are hundreds of pages long.
1693. 01:15:08 Could I do this for a lot of the other things
1694. 01:15:11 that articles that I read and things like that?
1695. 01:15:14 Yeah, I could.
1696. 01:15:15 I'm not going to.
1697. 01:15:16 And I think that's okay because I feel like
1698. 01:15:20 with all of this stuff, you gotta figure out,
1699. 01:15:22 I've said this over and over again today,
1700. 01:15:23 but you gotta figure out what parts of this system
1701. 01:15:26 work for you and how to make it your own.
1702. 01:15:28 And I think if Tiago were here,
1703. 01:15:29 he would say the same thing.
1704. 01:15:31 So for me, I'm gonna implement this with my book notes.
1705. 01:15:35 I'm not gonna worry about it for anything else.
1706. 01:15:36 And somebody else is gonna be like,
1707. 01:15:37 "Oh, I can't believe you're not doing it
1708. 01:15:38 with this other thing."
1709. 01:15:39 And they're gonna just implement it in that arena.
1710. 01:15:42 And that's gonna be fine as well.
1711. 01:15:45 But the idea itself, obviously I agree with it.
1712. 01:15:48 And obviously I think it has value
1713. 01:15:50 because I've been doing it even though
1714. 01:15:51 I didn't realize it for the last several years.
1715. 01:15:54 Yeah, which is similar to my experience
1716. 01:15:59 with the Para thing, right?
1717. 01:16:00 Realizing, oh yeah, I'm doing a lot of this already.
1718. 01:16:03 Just hadn't termed it quite like that.
1719. 01:16:06 And it's slightly different.
1720. 01:16:07 Yeah, I get you.
1721. 01:16:10 So yes, I know that this is something that I don't do
1722. 01:16:14 currently.
1723. 01:16:15 One of the reasons for that is I've never,
1724. 01:16:19 I shouldn't say never.
1725. 01:16:20 I have not found myself capturing
1726. 01:16:25 longer like paragraphs of articles
1727. 01:16:30 or segments of a YouTube video or podcast clips.
1728. 01:16:34 Like I've not done that.
1729. 01:16:36 I'll grab the URL sometimes and then be done there,
1730. 01:16:40 which he talks about at one point during the capture piece.
1731. 01:16:43 He's like, "No, don't do that.
1732. 01:16:44 "Grab the part that matters."
1733. 01:16:46 Yep.
1734. 01:16:47 And like that was something that was super impactful for me
1735. 01:16:52 because I don't do that.
1736. 01:16:54 Which then means like I'm regularly going back
1737. 01:16:56 and redoing searches without realizing
1738. 01:16:59 that that's what I'm doing.
1739. 01:17:00 I could not have told you that I do that until I read this.
1740. 01:17:03 I didn't know that it was something that I did.
1741. 01:17:06 So to get to the point where I'm starting to process my,
1742. 01:17:11 like grabbing those components
1743. 01:17:13 and then doing that distillation,
1744. 01:17:16 like that I understand.
1745. 01:17:17 Now to use the books piece,
1746. 01:17:19 because this is the one arena that's a little weird,
1747. 01:17:22 I shouldn't say weird.
1748. 01:17:23 That's maybe got me in some of that.
1749. 01:17:27 Not all of those steps though.
1750. 01:17:29 So obviously we have the book itself, right?
1751. 01:17:32 I do the process of underlining
1752. 01:17:35 and creating an index in the back of the book.
1753. 01:17:38 I realize I don't talk about this a whole lot.
1754. 01:17:40 So I will underline or like put brackets around things
1755. 01:17:43 on the outside margins.
1756. 01:17:45 Ever once I'll write a note in the margins.
1757. 01:17:47 But then at the back, I regularly create,
1758. 01:17:50 and this one's actually kind of long,
1759. 01:17:52 an index of terms or action items and stuff
1760. 01:17:55 in the back of the book with the page number next to it.
1761. 01:17:58 So like that's kind of like the bolding component.
1762. 01:18:03 And then from there, what happens is I'll grab,
1763. 01:18:06 like especially in this case,
1764. 01:18:08 like this is my choice of a book, right?
1765. 01:18:10 I will grab the parts within that index
1766. 01:18:13 that I wanna talk about on bookworm.
1767. 01:18:16 That's kind of like the highlighting piece, right?
1768. 01:18:18 They go into the show notes for us to follow for the book.
1769. 01:18:23 Now, they kind of gets morphed into the outline for the book,
1770. 01:18:27 the table of contents,
1771. 01:18:29 like it kind of goes hand in hand once it hits the show notes,
1772. 01:18:34 but not entirely.
1773. 01:18:36 But from there, it kind of stops at us recording the podcast.
1774. 01:18:40 And then I'm done.
1775. 01:18:41 I move on to the next thing and frequently fail
1776. 01:18:46 to do the action items that I collected from those things.
1777. 01:18:49 So that is a thing that happens as well.
1778. 01:18:51 - Tiago might argue is the result of it
1779. 01:18:53 not getting into a digital commonplace book.
1780. 01:18:56 - Correct.
1781. 01:18:57 - Yes. - Which is why--
1782. 01:18:57 - You would probably make that argument.
1783. 01:18:58 - Yeah. - He's not necessarily wrong either.
1784. 01:19:01 - No, I was gonna say one of the things
1785. 01:19:02 that I have amended when I started bringing things
1786. 01:19:05 into Obsidian was in addition to the mind map
1787. 01:19:08 that I dumped into the file,
1788. 01:19:10 I also, because I do it all in my note,
1789. 01:19:11 I can export that as Markdown,
1790. 01:19:13 I copy and paste the text of the mind map
1791. 01:19:15 in the note file as well.
1792. 01:19:18 And that gives me the ability to link the text
1793. 01:19:21 through the bidirectional linking and things like that,
1794. 01:19:24 which we're gonna get into in the next chapter, hopefully.
1795. 01:19:27 (laughs)
1796. 01:19:28 - Yeah. - But I think that's valuable.
1797. 01:19:32 And I think even like the building a second brain concept,
1798. 01:19:36 you probably don't have to go all in
1799. 01:19:38 with just digital tools.
1800. 01:19:40 What you're doing, I think,
1801. 01:19:41 fits the definition of a second brain
1802. 01:19:44 and the description of the organization
1803. 01:19:46 that you're talking about here
1804. 01:19:47 in terms of distilling things down into your key ideas
1805. 01:19:50 in the back of a book.
1806. 01:19:51 That is an analog version
1807. 01:19:52 of this progressive summarization, I would argue.
1808. 01:19:55 I'm not sure if Tiago would agree with that part.
1809. 01:19:57 He may say you need to make it digital
1810. 01:19:59 in order to get the benefit of connecting the things
1811. 01:20:01 different ways, but.
1812. 01:20:03 - Yeah, well, let's go on to this last piece.
1813. 01:20:06 So the E here, capture organize to still express.
1814. 01:20:11 Okay, now the tag line here is show your work.
1815. 01:20:16 And in this, there's essentially a few things
1816. 01:20:21 that you're going to be doing.
1817. 01:20:23 So once you have notes that are distilled,
1818. 01:20:27 you've created like major notes for your own thoughts,
1819. 01:20:30 you've distilled the ones that you've captured,
1820. 01:20:33 you end up with what he calls intermediate packets.
1821. 01:20:37 - Pockets? - Yep.
1822. 01:20:39 - Intermediate packets, basically small little snippets
1823. 01:20:42 that can then be consolidated in a lot of different ways
1824. 01:20:46 or retrieved in a lot of different ways.
1825. 01:20:49 And he talks about the power of thinking small
1826. 01:20:52 and it has a whole bunch of examples
1827. 01:20:54 like betas and software, prototypes and car,
1828. 01:20:56 design, like people do this regularly.
1829. 01:20:59 You start with a minimum viable
1830. 01:21:01 and then you build up from there.
1831. 01:21:04 And he's referring to this as like an intermediate packet,
1832. 01:21:07 a small thing that is then put together
1833. 01:21:09 kind of like Lego blocks.
1834. 01:21:11 - Now, just call them brain Legos or something like that.
1835. 01:21:15 I actually-- - Yeah, totally.
1836. 01:21:16 - I actually have, so spoiler alert, I guess,
1837. 01:21:19 from my max stock talk, I'm going to be talking about
1838. 01:21:21 those five C's of creativity.
1839. 01:21:23 And PKM workflows associated with those.
1840. 01:21:26 And all of my slides are using images
1841. 01:21:29 that I drew in good notes.
1842. 01:21:31 And I have one which talks about ideas as Lego building blocks.
1843. 01:21:36 I was hoping we get to this point,
1844. 01:21:38 these intermediate packets,
1845. 01:21:39 these are individual building blocks
1846. 01:21:40 that make up your work.
1847. 01:21:42 But the whole term of intermediate packets,
1848. 01:21:43 that probably, maybe that resonates different for you
1849. 01:21:46 because developer, right?
1850. 01:21:48 But you lost me there.
1851. 01:21:50 I feel like there's a much more approachable term
1852. 01:21:53 that could be used there,
1853. 01:21:55 but the idea itself I really agree with.
1854. 01:21:57 - Sure, yeah, it didn't even,
1855. 01:22:00 I didn't even bat an eye when he said intermediate packets,
1856. 01:22:03 like, oh, yeah, it's the stuff
1857. 01:22:04 between the beginning and the end.
1858. 01:22:06 - Okay. - Like immediately,
1859. 01:22:08 my brain just jumped to that instantly.
1860. 01:22:10 - Atomic notes, I would call them.
1861. 01:22:12 - No. - Yeah.
1862. 01:22:13 - Okay, what was it?
1863. 01:22:14 - Atomic notes.
1864. 01:22:15 So-- - Atomic notes, okay.
1865. 01:22:17 - The whole idea of like the definition of atomic
1866. 01:22:19 from atomic habits, where it's the smallest part of a thing.
1867. 01:22:24 And then I argue that those are the types of notes
1868. 01:22:26 that you should create,
1869. 01:22:28 because then you can take those notes
1870. 01:22:30 and you can build them and combine your ideas
1871. 01:22:33 in cool and interesting ways.
1872. 01:22:34 It's the whole basis of the cross-referencing
1873. 01:22:37 that I shared earlier.
1874. 01:22:38 If you don't break it down into those
1875. 01:22:40 tiny little individual notes, it doesn't work.
1876. 01:22:43 - Yep, yeah, and then once you have those atomic notes,
1877. 01:22:48 intermediate packets, IPs, I'm gonna call them IPs,
1878. 01:22:52 it makes sense to me. (laughs)
1879. 01:22:54 Once you have these little tiny bits that you've distilled,
1880. 01:22:58 you can start putting them together,
1881. 01:23:00 but the important part is how do you retrieve those?
1882. 01:23:03 Like what are the methods by which you can retrieve those,
1883. 01:23:06 which is kind of what I think you're itching to get to here.
1884. 01:23:09 But the four, he has four methods here.
1885. 01:23:12 One is through search, which is probably people's first,
1886. 01:23:16 you know, easy one. - Yeah.
1887. 01:23:17 - Then browsing, just finding your way through.
1888. 01:23:20 I wanna come back to that one.
1889. 01:23:22 Three is tags, and he's got a bonus chapter we'll maybe talk
1890. 01:23:26 about later with that.
1891. 01:23:28 And then four are serendipity, just randomly shows up.
1892. 01:23:31 Like just out of nowhere.
1893. 01:23:32 That's kind of the way I took that.
1894. 01:23:34 Now, before you jump in, I wanna come back
1895. 01:23:37 to the browsing piece because he did not intend it this way,
1896. 01:23:42 but he's talking about how like when you're just working
1897. 01:23:47 through your folders, you'll run across things.
1898. 01:23:50 But I only got to the point where I understood
1899. 01:23:53 that that's what he meant, and after I read his section on it.
1900. 01:23:56 When he first mentioned it, what I thought he was gonna get
1901. 01:23:59 into, my expectation of where we were gonna go,
1902. 01:24:03 was that you can use folders, you could use tags,
1903. 01:24:05 you could use links, you could use all sorts of methods
1904. 01:24:10 to find your way around from note to note.
1905. 01:24:12 That's what I thought he was gonna say, that he didn't.
1906. 01:24:15 He focused on the folders piece.
1907. 01:24:17 - Yeah. - Okay, so just wanna point that out,
1908. 01:24:19 'cause I feel like that my original intention
1909. 01:24:22 would get us to where I think you're wanting to go.
1910. 01:24:25 But I think that's not what he originally would have said.
1911. 01:24:30 At least when he wrote this.
1912. 01:24:33 - Yeah, so knowing that building a second brain
1913. 01:24:37 has been around for a while, this feels like a historical
1914. 01:24:42 model that just hasn't been updated yet.
1915. 01:24:46 And I have no disagreements with any of the things
1916. 01:24:50 on this list, but you're right,
1917. 01:24:52 bi-directional linking is missing.
1918. 01:24:54 - Yes. - And it's an obvious one,
1919. 01:24:57 given our current landscape, right?
1920. 01:24:59 - Correct, it's also understandable why it's not in the list
1921. 01:25:02 when you understand that the author is using Evernote,
1922. 01:25:05 because it's missing from Evernote.
1923. 01:25:07 And so I'm going to read between the lines here
1924. 01:25:11 and say that Tiago would wholeheartedly endorse
1925. 01:25:15 that as another retrieval method.
1926. 01:25:17 But he is not gonna speak to it
1927. 01:25:19 because he has no experience with it.
1928. 01:25:22 And that's just understanding the basic ideas
1929. 01:25:26 that he's trying to communicate through this code framework,
1930. 01:25:28 which I completely agree with up until this point.
1931. 01:25:32 What about the bi-directional links?
1932. 01:25:34 So yeah, obviously for me, that's a big part
1933. 01:25:39 of how I express things.
1934. 01:25:42 I would argue that for me, bi-directional links
1935. 01:25:45 is more than just a retrieval mechanism though.
1936. 01:25:49 It's also part of the organization,
1937. 01:25:52 which I guess actually the first three of these tags,
1938. 01:25:55 browsing, maybe not search, although yeah, I don't know.
1939. 01:25:59 These all are all based off of like where you put something
1940. 01:26:02 and how you classified something.
1941. 01:26:05 So there's organizational aspects of these as well.
1942. 01:26:09 I feel like organization and expression are tied together
1943. 01:26:13 with how you would, how you organize determines
1944. 01:26:18 how you express things.
1945. 01:26:21 And really the real point of emphasis
1946. 01:26:24 and the place where the value is to be had here
1947. 01:26:26 is to put some thought into how you're gonna organize things
1948. 01:26:29 so that you can create more of those serendipitous moments
1949. 01:26:33 where you happen to be in a folder
1950. 01:26:35 or you happen to be looking at a note
1951. 01:26:37 and you see something that's linked to it
1952. 01:26:39 and oh, I get it now.
1953. 01:26:41 That's what we're really going after.
1954. 01:26:43 However you wanna do that is fine.
1955. 01:26:45 - Yeah, 'cause I think that the search piece,
1956. 01:26:49 like you're saying, the organization piece
1957. 01:26:50 and the express piece can be tied.
1958. 01:26:53 I think what he's getting at,
1959. 01:26:56 like if I try to capture the basis of what he's saying
1960. 01:27:01 in express is that the way that you've done everything
1961. 01:27:05 up to this point allows you to start putting things together.
1962. 01:27:08 Like the expression piece,
1963. 01:27:09 like I can connect all these dots.
1964. 01:27:11 Like that's what he's trying to get to
1965. 01:27:13 is how you do that here.
1966. 01:27:15 And the search component here,
1967. 01:27:18 like yes, that's his first one,
1968. 01:27:20 but at the same time,
1969. 01:27:22 like I find that messy because there's such a thing
1970. 01:27:27 as like a saved search or a query in there.
1971. 01:27:31 And then the question is, well, okay, well,
1972. 01:27:32 where does that actually fit?
1973. 01:27:34 And when you have something like a saved search combined
1974. 01:27:37 with something like links between things
1975. 01:27:41 and those two can coexist in one set,
1976. 01:27:45 like in one note,
1977. 01:27:48 this all gets super messy, super fast.
1978. 01:27:50 Right? - Yep, so agreed.
1979. 01:27:51 - I like that tools are now allowing us
1980. 01:27:55 to do that sort of thing.
1981. 01:27:57 Like this can be superfluid and help us surface things.
1982. 01:28:00 So I just think that like you're saying,
1983. 01:28:03 like Evernote's world doesn't really step into any of that.
1984. 01:28:06 And I know we're ripping on Evernote a little bit,
1985. 01:28:09 but I think that's okay.
1986. 01:28:12 I'm okay with it.
1987. 01:28:13 So just knowing that it does mean that it's a little dated.
1988. 01:28:17 Yeah, what else?
1989. 01:28:20 We got part three here.
1990. 01:28:21 - That's it. - Let's go to part three.
1991. 01:28:23 - Okay, the part three is called the shift,
1992. 01:28:26 making things happen.
1993. 01:28:28 Inside of this,
1994. 01:28:29 he starts to like make the shift from
1995. 01:28:34 how do you manage things to what's the results of managing it?
1996. 01:28:39 Like it starts to kind of get back into the promise
1997. 01:28:42 of a second brain, like what can become from this.
1998. 01:28:46 And inside this first chapter,
1999. 01:28:48 there's the concept of divergence and convergence
2000. 01:28:51 where you have an idea and then you want to collect
2001. 01:28:55 a whole bunch, like you're starting to widen the gates
2002. 01:28:57 on what you're collecting around an idea,
2003. 01:28:59 which as he spells out,
2004. 01:29:01 is kind of like the capture and organize piece.
2005. 01:29:03 Like you're broadening, trying to capture
2006. 01:29:05 and collect a bunch of things.
2007. 01:29:07 And then you reach a point
2008. 01:29:08 where then you start to diverge
2009. 01:29:10 and you come back together.
2010. 01:29:12 And at that point, you're starting to distill things,
2011. 01:29:14 you're starting to cull things.
2012. 01:29:15 And then you get to the expression point
2013. 01:29:16 where you have your final product.
2014. 01:29:18 So you do widen out and then come back together.
2015. 01:29:21 I've done really visualized it that way,
2016. 01:29:23 but it did kind of help me to understand it.
2017. 01:29:25 It's not really anything groundbreaking,
2018. 01:29:27 but kind of cool.
2019. 01:29:28 - I think it's potentially groundbreaking to be honest
2020. 01:29:31 because I feel, he says convergence
2021. 01:29:33 is where many people struggle
2022. 01:29:34 because you find something new and shiny,
2023. 01:29:38 something that might be important.
2024. 01:29:40 And then you see a whole bunch of ancillary things
2025. 01:29:42 that are related to it.
2026. 01:29:43 And so people have no problem widening,
2027. 01:29:46 but they have a lot of trouble eliminating options
2028. 01:29:50 and focusing on one thing.
2029. 01:29:52 You got to decide for yourself what is really important.
2030. 01:29:55 So the convergence part is the most important.
2031. 01:29:58 I feel if you do the convergence,
2032. 01:29:59 it's easy to express things at the end.
2033. 01:30:02 And I feel like this visual,
2034. 01:30:04 this very clearly communicates why
2035. 01:30:08 you may have trouble expressing something at the end
2036. 01:30:11 or creating something if you're going back
2037. 01:30:13 to my five C's of creativity.
2038. 01:30:16 Same idea.
2039. 01:30:18 If you have trouble creating a tangible asset at the end,
2040. 01:30:20 whether that's a published post, a video
2041. 01:30:22 or just a simple note, I'm like,
2042. 01:30:23 this is what I think, a couple of sentences even,
2043. 01:30:27 then you probably are scared to start converging
2044. 01:30:32 on this idea.
2045. 01:30:33 And you got to ask yourself why.
2046. 01:30:35 - I just feel like that's,
2047. 01:30:37 maybe this is me being someone who's dealt
2048. 01:30:40 with a huge volume of ideas for a long time.
2049. 01:30:43 Like that doesn't seem like it's that big a deal.
2050. 01:30:45 Like, yeah, of course you have tons of ideas
2051. 01:30:47 and at some point you have to narrow them down.
2052. 01:30:48 Like that's something I've had to deal with
2053. 01:30:49 for a long time and I'm terrible at it,
2054. 01:30:51 but it is still something that I need to do.
2055. 01:30:53 So I just don't think of that as something as groundbreaking,
2056. 01:30:55 but maybe I'm wrong on that.
2057. 01:30:57 I'd be glad to be wrong on that.
2058. 01:30:59 (laughs)
2059. 01:31:00 So anyway, he has that concept,
2060. 01:31:03 divergence that leads you up and then convergence
2061. 01:31:05 that brings you back down as far as volume of things
2062. 01:31:07 going into a final work.
2063. 01:31:10 But then he has these three strategies
2064. 01:31:14 that he uses to bring creative work together
2065. 01:31:16 is the way that he puts it.
2066. 01:31:18 So essentially what he's got is three different methods
2067. 01:31:23 that he uses to keep momentum moving forward
2068. 01:31:28 or to connect things.
2069. 01:31:30 The first of which is what he calls the,
2070. 01:31:32 I can never say this word, archipelago.
2071. 01:31:34 Archipelago.
2072. 01:31:35 Archipelago, I can never get that right.
2073. 01:31:38 I always say it the wrong way.
2074. 01:31:40 Give yourself stepping stones, right?
2075. 01:31:42 So it's a way of giving yourself,
2076. 01:31:46 how do I say this?
2077. 01:31:48 Giving yourself a whole bunch of things in front of you
2078. 01:31:50 that you can then build on.
2079. 01:31:52 But I think we talked about this not so long ago
2080. 01:31:54 where like if you want to come up with ideas
2081. 01:31:56 for your next blog post,
2082. 01:31:59 go read a bunch of articles.
2083. 01:32:01 Like have a bunch of things already in front of you
2084. 01:32:03 that you can work from and build off of.
2085. 01:32:07 So that's the first one.
2086. 01:32:09 The second one is the Hemingway Bridge
2087. 01:32:12 using yesterday's momentum today.
2088. 01:32:14 Hemingway was known for whenever he would
2089. 01:32:18 wrap up his writing for the day.
2090. 01:32:20 He wouldn't stop until he knew the next point in the plot
2091. 01:32:24 where he knew where he was gonna go next.
2092. 01:32:26 Then he would quit.
2093. 01:32:27 That way when he got there tomorrow,
2094. 01:32:30 he would know where to start writing right away.
2095. 01:32:32 And it could get the mindset going
2096. 01:32:35 where he wanted them to go.
2097. 01:32:38 And then the last one is to dial down the scope,
2098. 01:32:41 ship something small and concrete.
2099. 01:32:44 This is something that I know a lot of people
2100. 01:32:46 are starting to recommend and do regular.
2101. 01:32:50 Like share small snippets quickly and regularly
2102. 01:32:54 as opposed to waiting for something longer
2103. 01:32:56 and bigger to be released.
2104. 01:32:58 I know you have a secret project you're doing
2105. 01:33:00 that's similar to this.
2106. 01:33:01 And I know that there's a lot of people
2107. 01:33:02 who do stuff like that where they've got these smaller bits
2108. 01:33:06 that they're going to release regularly.
2109. 01:33:09 I don't know what that means for me.
2110. 01:33:11 I feel like it's something I should do,
2111. 01:33:12 but it's still fascinating to me.
2112. 01:33:14 Anyway, these are all ways that he has
2113. 01:33:16 for trying to pull things together
2114. 01:33:18 and get things shipped to say that.
2115. 01:33:21 I guess to get things out the door.
2116. 01:33:23 - Yeah, I didn't really jot down a whole lot of notes
2117. 01:33:27 on these different strategies.
2118. 01:33:29 I guess I see where they could be useful,
2119. 01:33:32 but I feel like if you just follow the part two
2120. 01:33:37 and you figure out how to make it work for yourself,
2121. 01:33:41 then you kind of don't have to worry about these.
2122. 01:33:44 - Yeah, I know that this is,
2123. 01:33:47 some of these are just standard practice for a lot of people.
2124. 01:33:51 Like these are kind of like your tips and tricks
2125. 01:33:53 for how to keep going.
2126. 01:33:54 - Yeah, exactly.
2127. 01:33:54 - Really? - Exactly.
2128. 01:33:55 That's essentially what they are.
2129. 01:33:57 That said, let's go to the next one
2130. 01:33:59 'cause I'm quite certain,
2131. 01:34:01 at least I have opinions on this one.
2132. 01:34:03 The essential habits of digital organizers.
2133. 01:34:06 There's three, I believe.
2134. 01:34:10 - This is Tiago's system.
2135. 01:34:12 - Yes, this is Tiago's deal.
2136. 01:34:14 So the three pieces, project checklists,
2137. 01:34:20 one for the beginning and end of a project,
2138. 01:34:23 weekly and monthly reviews,
2139. 01:34:25 I know we're both super excited about that.
2140. 01:34:27 And then noticing habits,
2141. 01:34:29 like the habit of noticing things.
2142. 01:34:32 Which of these are your favorites
2143. 01:34:33 that you're gonna implement, Mike?
2144. 01:34:34 - I'm not gonna do any of these as he's outlined them,
2145. 01:34:37 but surprise, surprise.
2146. 01:34:40 - Yeah, I don't need project checklists.
2147. 01:34:43 My projects are typically podcast episodes
2148. 01:34:47 or videos or things,
2149. 01:34:49 and I know what the flywheel looks like
2150. 01:34:53 for making that stuff.
2151. 01:34:54 - Yep.
2152. 01:34:56 - So the whole idea of the structure
2153. 01:34:58 is to eliminate the friction,
2154. 01:35:00 but at some point there's diminishing returns
2155. 01:35:03 and more structure actually adds more friction.
2156. 01:35:06 So not gonna do those.
2157. 01:35:08 I do have a form of a weekly review,
2158. 01:35:11 and I guess you could say I don't have a formal monthly review,
2159. 01:35:14 but I do have a formal quarterly review
2160. 01:35:16 in the personal retreats.
2161. 01:35:18 So again, I'm doing the concepts,
2162. 01:35:20 but I'm not doing them this way.
2163. 01:35:22 Although if you were to just start,
2164. 01:35:25 if you're coming to this new,
2165. 01:35:27 and you're like, where should I begin,
2166. 01:35:28 I would have no trouble saying,
2167. 01:35:30 hey, start with the things
2168. 01:35:32 that Tiago has recommended here.
2169. 01:35:34 - What about the noticing habits?
2170. 01:35:36 - Oh, you mean journaling?
2171. 01:35:37 - I'm telling you to notice things.
2172. 01:35:39 Sure, that's how it comes out, sure.
2173. 01:35:42 - Yeah, I don't know.
2174. 01:35:43 When I hear opportunistic habits or noticing habits,
2175. 01:35:46 I immediately think of just reflection.
2176. 01:35:49 And I've mentioned my three questions
2177. 01:35:52 that I use everywhere.
2178. 01:35:54 What should I start doing, stop doing, keep doing?
2179. 01:35:56 Those are my opportunistic habits.
2180. 01:35:58 - Yeah, I'm with you.
2181. 01:36:01 There's so much of this I don't wanna do.
2182. 01:36:03 I'm not gonna do project checklist.
2183. 01:36:05 My stuff is regularly different,
2184. 01:36:08 but it's so obvious what done is
2185. 01:36:13 and what is success that it's just not worth.
2186. 01:36:15 It's not worth going through checklists to start and end them.
2187. 01:36:20 That doesn't make sense to me.
2188. 01:36:21 - Yeah, if you've read a lot of the books that we've read,
2189. 01:36:25 at this point in the book,
2190. 01:36:26 you can feel free to put it down.
2191. 01:36:28 - Yeah, it's really close.
2192. 01:36:30 Yeah, and I think even if you go to,
2193. 01:36:34 in the next chapter,
2194. 01:36:35 there's the only piece of it that I found
2195. 01:36:39 maybe helpful for people is starting on page 239.
2196. 01:36:45 So the last chapter is called
2197. 01:36:47 The Path of Self-Expression.
2198. 01:36:49 Basically, it's a get started chapter
2199. 01:36:52 and he has these 12 steps for getting the whole system
2200. 01:36:57 up and running.
2201. 01:37:02 If you wanted to implement this to the letter,
2202. 01:37:06 he's got a checklist for you on how to do that.
2203. 01:37:09 I don't think I'm going to do this in any capacity, really.
2204. 01:37:14 There's components of the whole thing I'll implement,
2205. 01:37:17 but not like this.
2206. 01:37:19 So yeah, if you wanted something to help you get going,
2207. 01:37:22 that's actually where he ends the formal book
2208. 01:37:25 is with those steps.
2209. 01:37:27 So. - Yep.
2210. 01:37:29 I did not jot these down.
2211. 01:37:30 I jotted down a couple of things,
2212. 01:37:31 which stood out to me from this chapter,
2213. 01:37:33 like the fact that information is abundant
2214. 01:37:35 and it's been scarce for most of human history.
2215. 01:37:37 What we do with our brains is more important now
2216. 01:37:41 for a lot of people than what we do with our hands.
2217. 01:37:43 Some powerful ideas there,
2218. 01:37:45 but I'm not going through any checklists, sorry.
2219. 01:37:48 - Yeah, yeah, I'm not going to either.
2220. 01:37:51 That leaves us with a bonus chapter about tagging.
2221. 01:37:55 And if you read this chapter, like Mike did.
2222. 01:38:01 - I actually think I did actually read this chapter,
2223. 01:38:05 but I did not write anything down from it.
2224. 01:38:08 (both laughing)
2225. 01:38:10 - Okay.
2226. 01:38:11 So you don't know if you read it.
2227. 01:38:14 - 'Cause initially my first thought was,
2228. 01:38:16 well, this wasn't in the first run version that I had,
2229. 01:38:20 but I did look and it was.
2230. 01:38:23 So I did look at this. - Okay.
2231. 01:38:24 - I read through it, but I did not write anything down.
2232. 01:38:28 - Yeah, basically he doesn't like tagging is my takeaway.
2233. 01:38:33 That might not be a hundred percent true,
2234. 01:38:37 but he recommends tags to indicate status of a note.
2235. 01:38:45 - Nope, it's probably the clean way to say that.
2236. 01:38:46 - Not gonna do it.
2237. 01:38:47 - So work in progress, done with the editor.
2238. 01:38:52 Like those are the types of tags that he would recommend.
2239. 01:38:57 Seems very odd to me to limit it to something like that.
2240. 01:39:02 I say that knowing I'm not a big tagger.
2241. 01:39:04 Like I'm not somebody that's big on tagging,
2242. 01:39:06 but I know that it's something
2243. 01:39:09 that a lot of people absolutely adore.
2244. 01:39:11 So not gonna diss on anybody who does that,
2245. 01:39:15 but I'm not gonna pick it up anytime soon.
2246. 01:39:18 - You probably do a version of this though, I would guess,
2247. 01:39:21 because I know you're into DataView,
2248. 01:39:22 and if you're into DataView,
2249. 01:39:24 you're probably use YAML metadata.
2250. 01:39:26 And YAML metadata is a form of tagging, I would argue.
2251. 01:39:28 It's a better form of tagging.
2252. 01:39:30 And I do use some of the things that he describes
2253. 01:39:33 in the YAML metadata section.
2254. 01:39:35 Like I have a status for all the articles that I write.
2255. 01:39:38 And if it's in progress, it stays in the folder,
2256. 01:39:42 but the minute I'm done with it,
2257. 01:39:43 I change it status to published,
2258. 01:39:46 and Hazel takes that file,
2259. 01:39:48 moves it to an archive folder for me.
2260. 01:39:50 - Sure.
2261. 01:39:51 - So am I doing Para?
2262. 01:39:53 I don't know, I've got the archive folder.
2263. 01:39:54 I've got the tags, quote unquote, being updated.
2264. 01:39:59 And then an automation that's triggered based on that,
2265. 01:40:01 but I don't view it that way,
2266. 01:40:04 because I've made it my own, I guess.
2267. 01:40:07 But yeah, and even like the DataView stuff,
2268. 01:40:09 I don't really think of that as tagging though,
2269. 01:40:11 because it's giving it a value within the value.
2270. 01:40:16 Like it's a table cell scenario.
2271. 01:40:21 It's not a binary scenario.
2272. 01:40:24 So it's not a yes or no Boolean at all times.
2273. 01:40:27 It's, I've got a data field for link,
2274. 01:40:32 and I'm putting in the link for the article when it's done.
2275. 01:40:35 Well, I can use that in a lot of different ways,
2276. 01:40:37 but it's not a yes or no, per se.
2277. 01:40:41 - Sure.
2278. 01:40:42 - It can be, but it's not in most cases,
2279. 01:40:44 at least for me, for some people I'm sure it is.
2280. 01:40:46 - But that's the thing is like,
2281. 01:40:48 if you're gonna try to teach me a tagging system,
2282. 01:40:51 I've already lost me,
2283. 01:40:54 because the beauty of tags is that they are so flexible,
2284. 01:40:57 and whatever you decide to do with yours
2285. 01:40:59 is not the way that other people
2286. 01:41:00 should implement their tagging systems.
2287. 01:41:03 - Yep.
2288. 01:41:04 Yeah, I struggle with tags and have for a long time
2289. 01:41:08 because I've had my spells with using them for everything,
2290. 01:41:11 and it ends up in a scenario where it's just too hard
2291. 01:41:15 to get it converted into a new system later.
2292. 01:41:18 Like whenever I wanna change the way I'm using them.
2293. 01:41:21 So like, that's always the part that makes a chance.
2294. 01:41:23 So anyway, long story short,
2295. 01:41:25 I'm not using Tiago's system for tagging, not at all.
2296. 01:41:28 - All right.
2297. 01:41:30 - All right, Mike, that brings us to action items.
2298. 01:41:33 - Let's do it.
2299. 01:41:33 - Something else you wanna cover, but.
2300. 01:41:35 - Nope.
2301. 01:41:36 - I have two carryovers from last time,
2302. 01:41:39 writing my eulogy and my daily plan type thingy.
2303. 01:41:42 And then I have three new ones for this time.
2304. 01:41:47 One I wanna write out my 12 favorite problems,
2305. 01:41:50 which sounds like it could be interesting.
2306. 01:41:53 I'm gonna do this Para Experiment,
2307. 01:41:55 which I'm in the middle of now,
2308. 01:41:57 so I'm just gonna keep what I have,
2309. 01:41:58 and we'll see how that pans out.
2310. 01:42:01 And then the last one that I wrote down here was,
2311. 01:42:05 I need to, I have a lot of ways of capturing things
2312. 01:42:10 in their entirety.
2313. 01:42:13 I don't have a lot of ways of capturing segments of things.
2314. 01:42:17 You follow me?
2315. 01:42:19 So grabbing like a paragraph from an article,
2316. 01:42:22 and then getting that into drafts
2317. 01:42:25 with the link to the article.
2318. 01:42:26 Like I don't have clean ways of doing it.
2319. 01:42:28 And I know that this is something,
2320. 01:42:29 it's just a matter of like building series shortcuts
2321. 01:42:31 and tying into drafts and such.
2322. 01:42:33 Like there are easy ways to do this.
2323. 01:42:34 I just don't have them right now.
2324. 01:42:37 So I need to build some of that stuff out,
2325. 01:42:39 and I've got four or five things written down here
2326. 01:42:41 that I wanna do for that.
2327. 01:42:43 Those actually might be shareable,
2328. 01:42:45 now that I say that when they're done.
2329. 01:42:48 I'll look into that.
2330. 01:42:49 - So is that kind of like a progressive summarization
2331. 01:42:51 sort of a thing, or what specifically are you getting?
2332. 01:42:55 - On the capture side,
2333. 01:42:56 like the beginnings of progressive summarization.
2334. 01:42:59 - I'm having trouble defining this action item for you.
2335. 01:43:01 (laughs)
2336. 01:43:02 - The way I wrote it was to develop ways
2337. 01:43:06 to capture segments of content.
2338. 01:43:09 That's the way I wrote it down.
2339. 01:43:11 If that helps you.
2340. 01:43:13 - All right.
2341. 01:43:14 - So that's what I got.
2342. 01:43:15 How about you, sir?
2343. 01:43:16 - Cool.
2344. 01:43:17 Believe it or not, I have no action items from this book.
2345. 01:43:22 - What?
2346. 01:43:23 - This book is like chock full of things
2347. 01:43:26 that could be action items.
2348. 01:43:27 - Well, I did the 12 favorite problems already.
2349. 01:43:31 - And four.
2350. 01:43:32 - So yeah, I'll justify my lack of action items
2351. 01:43:37 in the style and rating section, but.
2352. 01:43:39 - I'm very surprised by that.
2353. 01:43:42 - A lot of this stuff that's in here,
2354. 01:43:43 I have implemented already in the way that I want to.
2355. 01:43:47 And there was nothing in here that I was like,
2356. 01:43:49 "Aha, I need to change how I do something."
2357. 01:43:52 This reinforced a lot of things,
2358. 01:43:54 and it brought new excitement and motivation
2359. 01:43:56 to some of the stuff that I was bouncing around
2360. 01:43:59 in my brain is like,
2361. 01:44:00 "This is what I think works for me."
2362. 01:44:02 I have more confidence that,
2363. 01:44:03 "Yes, this is the way that these things work for me
2364. 01:44:05 "at the moment."
2365. 01:44:06 But there was nothing in here that I was like,
2366. 01:44:09 "I want to do this."
2367. 01:44:12 - Wow.
2368. 01:44:13 - Sorry to shack you.
2369. 01:44:14 - I don't know what I am.
2370. 01:44:15 I'm a bit speechless on that one.
2371. 01:44:17 Okay. (laughing)
2372. 01:44:19 I guess we'll just keep going.
2373. 01:44:20 So style and rating, I'll go first here.
2374. 01:44:22 I will say,
2375. 01:44:24 Tiago does a good job of telling stories in places.
2376. 01:44:30 He does get a little long-winded sometimes I found
2377. 01:44:33 whenever he would get to the parts
2378. 01:44:35 where he was trying to introduce a topic.
2379. 01:44:37 There were times when I wanted him to tell a story
2380. 01:44:40 in order to get the point across
2381. 01:44:41 as opposed to just trying to tell us the point.
2382. 01:44:44 So I did notice that.
2383. 01:44:45 There's also some discrepancies in
2384. 01:44:48 how he poses one view versus another,
2385. 01:44:52 the versus thing,
2386. 01:44:54 because he has,
2387. 01:44:55 especially towards the beginning,
2388. 01:44:57 there's a section of,
2389. 01:44:58 it's basically a story of two brains,
2390. 01:45:01 somebody who does it with their one and only brain
2391. 01:45:05 and somebody who does it with their second brain.
2392. 01:45:07 And in the one where it's someone without a second brain,
2393. 01:45:11 he gives them a name,
2394. 01:45:12 he gives them a background,
2395. 01:45:14 he tells the whole story of how things work
2396. 01:45:16 for them throughout their day.
2397. 01:45:18 When he gets into the story about somebody
2398. 01:45:19 with a second brain,
2399. 01:45:21 they don't have a name,
2400. 01:45:22 they don't have a background,
2401. 01:45:23 it's just all philosophical.
2402. 01:45:25 It's like there's no actual story there.
2403. 01:45:28 To me, that was a very stark contrast
2404. 01:45:30 and he didn't do a good job of making those two sides
2405. 01:45:33 seem equal, I guess, in the way that he presented him.
2406. 01:45:38 There were a handful of these things
2407. 01:45:40 that happened throughout the book
2408. 01:45:42 that I noticed these things coming about like that.
2409. 01:45:45 I think that some of that is purely choice
2410. 01:45:48 in how he put the book together.
2411. 01:45:52 And I wish he hadn't made those choices.
2412. 01:45:56 So anyway, that's a say.
2413. 01:45:57 I think he could improve his writing ability,
2414. 01:46:01 but he does do a good job.
2415. 01:46:02 It's not like this is a hard book to read,
2416. 01:46:03 I'm just being particular with it.
2417. 01:46:06 As far as a rating goes
2418. 01:46:08 and takeaways from this goes,
2419. 01:46:11 I feel like this is probably,
2420. 01:46:14 and folks who have followed me for a while know
2421. 01:46:18 that I have not been super receptive to the PKM world
2422. 01:46:23 nor the terms that come with it, right?
2423. 01:46:25 Maps of content and such.
2424. 01:46:27 Blake's always trying to help me find different ways
2425. 01:46:29 to interpret MOCs.
2426. 01:46:30 So there's a lot of stuff with it
2427. 01:46:33 that I've been very resistant to.
2428. 01:46:36 And some of that I think is purely
2429. 01:46:39 because I haven't fully understood some of the benefits
2430. 01:46:44 and knowing that my brain is super fast paced.
2431. 01:46:48 It gets difficult for me to figure out
2432. 01:46:50 how to use something like this
2433. 01:46:52 and get that to slow down to a point where it's tolerable.
2434. 01:46:56 So I say that and I put that preface in there
2435. 01:46:59 because I feel like this is the first time
2436. 01:47:00 I've been able to kind of get my head around
2437. 01:47:03 the details of something like a PKM
2438. 01:47:05 or to use his term,
2439. 01:47:09 a second brain, a way of externalizing thoughts.
2440. 01:47:12 Like I haven't been able to get my head around it very well.
2441. 01:47:14 This is probably the first time I've felt like,
2442. 01:47:17 okay, yeah, I think I'm ready to give this a full run.
2443. 01:47:21 Now I don't have an action item of do PKM
2444. 01:47:25 or build a second brain.
2445. 01:47:26 I don't have that 'cause I've kind of been
2446. 01:47:28 on some of that journey already.
2447. 01:47:30 Just trying to get my head around it.
2448. 01:47:32 So that said, he's done a very good job
2449. 01:47:35 of showing me the case for that.
2450. 01:47:37 And that's something that I know you have tried to do
2451. 01:47:40 a number of times Mike.
2452. 01:47:41 At some point I feel like you and I are close enough
2453. 01:47:45 that I tend to not listen sometimes.
2454. 01:47:49 So there is that component as well.
2455. 01:47:54 So that said, like I think as far as a rating goes,
2456. 01:47:57 I'm gonna put this at a 4.0,
2457. 01:47:59 knowing that there's a lot of really good stuff here.
2458. 01:48:03 And I've been able to have some pretty big takeaways
2459. 01:48:07 from it, I feel, but have some pretty big qualms
2460. 01:48:11 with the way he's pitching some of this.
2461. 01:48:14 And then also like there's some,
2462. 01:48:16 I don't need weekly reviews.
2463. 01:48:18 Like I'm not doing it.
2464. 01:48:19 Those are things that you do because you love GTD.
2465. 01:48:22 I'm not doing that.
2466. 01:48:23 It's just not a thing I'm gonna do.
2467. 01:48:26 So anyway, thanks for the MOC translations in the chat guys.
2468. 01:48:31 You guys are doing God's work right there.
2469. 01:48:33 - So you just justified my lack of action items.
2470. 01:48:37 I'm not sure if you recognize that.
2471. 01:48:39 You mentioned that you were on this PKM journey
2472. 01:48:44 and implemented some of this stuff already.
2473. 01:48:46 So I've been on this journey for the last couple of years.
2474. 01:48:51 And I feel like every other action item
2475. 01:48:54 that could have been associated with the stuff
2476. 01:48:56 that I would have read in this book,
2477. 01:48:59 I have implemented in some way, shape, or form.
2478. 01:49:01 As evidenced by the number of links of things
2479. 01:49:04 that I have made that have aligned with the topics
2480. 01:49:07 that we've discussed here today.
2481. 01:49:09 This is the first time.
2482. 01:49:10 - I was watching you grab links in the chat.
2483. 01:49:11 - Yeah, this is the first time I've got like four
2484. 01:49:13 or five different links.
2485. 01:49:13 It's like, "Hey, I already wrote this up over here."
2486. 01:49:16 (laughs)
2487. 01:49:17 That's never happened before.
2488. 01:49:19 - Now that being said,
2489. 01:49:21 I feel like the personal knowledge management stuff
2490. 01:49:23 and building a second brain stuff there
2491. 01:49:25 is a lot of overlap there.
2492. 01:49:27 They are kind of the same thing in a lot of ways.
2493. 01:49:30 But I'm 100% behind this idea.
2494. 01:49:35 I feel like the message in this book
2495. 01:49:39 is much better than honestly I thought it was going to be
2496. 01:49:42 because I had an idea building a second brain
2497. 01:49:45 previously of this is what it is.
2498. 01:49:49 And actually that started to change
2499. 01:49:50 once I went through the course.
2500. 01:49:52 But reading the book specifically,
2501. 01:49:54 there was a whole bunch of stuff in my notes here
2502. 01:49:56 that some of it we covered,
2503. 01:49:57 some of it we didn't, there was a lot of things that spoke
2504. 01:50:00 to me, resonated to me.
2505. 01:50:01 That's a word that comes up all the time
2506. 01:50:03 in the focus episode.
2507. 01:50:03 Tiago talks about that term because his dad was a musician.
2508. 01:50:07 They have other musicians over for dinner
2509. 01:50:08 and they'd look at art and be like,
2510. 01:50:09 "Oh, that really resonates with me."
2511. 01:50:11 And I really like that idea.
2512. 01:50:12 It's like something goes off inside of you.
2513. 01:50:14 Resonance is like a reverberation.
2514. 01:50:16 So it's like a reverberation in your soul.
2515. 01:50:18 You can tell when you look at something,
2516. 01:50:20 "Oh, I should keep this."
2517. 01:50:22 And that's totally different than the anxious pressure
2518. 01:50:26 of like, "I better keep this just in case I need this later
2519. 01:50:30 "so I don't get burned."
2520. 01:50:32 That's how I used Evernote for a really long time.
2521. 01:50:35 That's how a lot of people will use
2522. 01:50:37 a digital filing cabinet.
2523. 01:50:39 And I feel like building a second brain
2524. 01:50:41 with the emphasis on the creativity.
2525. 01:50:43 This is an idea whose time has come.
2526. 01:50:47 He talks about the very end, last chapter,
2527. 01:50:49 how when you implement this stuff,
2528. 01:50:50 your brain will shift from consuming to creating.
2529. 01:50:53 And that's where the real value is, create not consume.
2530. 01:50:56 It's on my lock screen because I want to,
2531. 01:50:59 whenever my home screens,
2532. 01:51:01 because when I open up my phone,
2533. 01:51:03 I want a couple of apps when I first look at it.
2534. 01:51:06 And it is a big message, create not consume as a reminder,
2535. 01:51:08 just a gentle nudge, like,
2536. 01:51:10 "Hey, don't just go consume things.
2537. 01:51:11 "Don't dip into the infinity pools,
2538. 01:51:13 "but do something positive,
2539. 01:51:15 "do something intentional with this technology."
2540. 01:51:17 With great power comes great responsibility.
2541. 01:51:20 Building a second brain shines a spotlight on
2542. 01:51:22 like how you can actually use this for your benefit.
2543. 01:51:27 And I feel like that's really, really important.
2544. 01:51:30 It's really, really powerful.
2545. 01:51:33 And the book itself, I feel like,
2546. 01:51:35 is a great entry point into this topic for people.
2547. 01:51:39 I don't know of a whole lot of other
2548. 01:51:40 like personal knowledge management or PKM type books.
2549. 01:51:44 I know courses, I know YouTube channels,
2550. 01:51:47 like Nick Milo, thinking you're thinking,
2551. 01:51:49 I love the stuff that he does,
2552. 01:51:51 but I don't know of another book I could recommend
2553. 01:51:56 to somebody to, "Hey, you're interested in PKM,
2554. 01:51:58 "this is the place to start."
2555. 01:52:00 I 100% recommend building a second brain.
2556. 01:52:05 This book is great.
2557. 01:52:07 And for me, the value kind of ended getting into part three,
2558. 01:52:12 but I can totally see how for somebody who is
2559. 01:52:15 beginning out on their PKM journey,
2560. 01:52:17 there's some revolutionary stuff in there
2561. 01:52:19 that compliments very well the things
2562. 01:52:20 that he's talking about in part one and part two.
2563. 01:52:24 Part two itself, I went into it thinking,
2564. 01:52:27 "Oh boy, a system.
2565. 01:52:29 "I'm not gonna get a whole lot out of this
2566. 01:52:31 "because I'm not gonna agree with the system."
2567. 01:52:33 Well, guess what, I don't agree with the system
2568. 01:52:36 as it's codified, but I agree with all of the principles
2569. 01:52:39 that the system is based upon.
2570. 01:52:40 - Right.
2571. 01:52:42 - So once I wrestle with that myself
2572. 01:52:46 and I realized that, you know what?
2573. 01:52:48 You have a lot more in common here than you have differences.
2574. 01:52:53 I view building a second brain not as like a contrary
2575. 01:52:58 system of a competing idea.
2576. 01:53:00 This is very much the exact same thing
2577. 01:53:02 that I'm doing with my five Cs of creativity.
2578. 01:53:04 We're allies, we're speaking the same language,
2579. 01:53:06 we're preaching the same message here.
2580. 01:53:09 And having met Tiago, I also feel that I,
2581. 01:53:14 my impression of him is he is a very authentic person.
2582. 01:53:19 This is not, he is not one of those snake oil salesmen.
2583. 01:53:23 I am happy to see the success that is happening right now
2584. 01:53:28 around this whole idea building a second brain
2585. 01:53:31 and the book itself I think is at the top
2586. 01:53:33 of the New York Times bestsellers list or something.
2587. 01:53:35 He tweeted something about that recently.
2588. 01:53:38 I think it's great that he's having all this success with it
2589. 01:53:41 because I think that this can help a lot of people.
2590. 01:53:44 Now, I'm trying to be more picky with my 5.0s.
2591. 01:53:49 So I'm not gonna rate it 5.0,
2592. 01:53:51 but I am gonna rate it 4.5 because even for me,
2593. 01:53:55 someone who had their system already,
2594. 01:53:58 and I could make the argument that there's nothing new here
2595. 01:54:01 for me because on one level,
2596. 01:54:03 a lot of these things have implemented in different ways,
2597. 01:54:06 but I still feel like reading through this,
2598. 01:54:08 Tiago brought a whole bunch of information
2599. 01:54:11 and kind of filled in a lot of my knowledge gaps.
2600. 01:54:13 He filled in a lot of the blank spaces
2601. 01:54:15 with what I thought about these things.
2602. 01:54:16 So as I think about what happened to me
2603. 01:54:19 as a result of reading this book,
2604. 01:54:21 like I said, I've got a lot more confidence
2605. 01:54:23 in the system that I have created.
2606. 01:54:26 So I think it's a really good book.
2607. 01:54:28 I'd recommend it to absolutely everybody.
2608. 01:54:30 If you're looking for something that's gonna say,
2609. 01:54:32 do this exactly in this specific tool,
2610. 01:54:35 that's not what you're gonna get.
2611. 01:54:37 But if you're okay with that, then it's a great read.
2612. 01:54:41 - All right, let's put it on the shelf. What's next, Mike?
2613. 01:54:44 - Next is "Love and Work" by Marcus Buckingham.
2614. 01:54:49 We are going to do what we love, Joe.
2615. 01:54:52 - Okay.
2616. 01:54:53 - Or something.
2617. 01:54:54 - Let's see how this goes.
2618. 01:54:55 (laughing)
2619. 01:54:57 Do what you love.
2620. 01:54:58 Well, following that, I put two in the outline,
2621. 01:55:00 but I'm gonna pick one here.
2622. 01:55:01 Do the hard things first by Scott Allen.
2623. 01:55:07 I feel like I'm someone who likes to do
2624. 01:55:09 the easy things first or the fun things first.
2625. 01:55:11 So I'm curious the thoughts on doing hard things first.
2626. 01:55:14 Has a lot of reviews and a lot of people
2627. 01:55:16 who seem to like it.
2628. 01:55:17 So seems like it would be a good fit.
2629. 01:55:20 We'll give it a shot.
2630. 01:55:21 Do the hard things first by Scott Allen.
2631. 01:55:23 How about a gap book, Mike?
2632. 01:55:25 - All right, I got one.
2633. 01:55:26 I read "Back of the napkin" by Dan Rome,
2634. 01:55:31 which is a follow up to the pencil pirates course
2635. 01:55:34 that I was doing communicating your ideas visually.
2636. 01:55:38 I've got a my notepad for this one,
2637. 01:55:39 which I will put up in the club,
2638. 01:55:41 which by the way, if you haven't checked that recently,
2639. 01:55:42 I dumped a whole bunch of them last week.
2640. 01:55:44 I was a little bit behind, but it is up to date now.
2641. 01:55:47 - Nice, nice work.
2642. 01:55:50 Don't have a gap book.
2643. 01:55:51 Was busy building a tree house last week,
2644. 01:55:53 but I have a couple. - Sure, sure.
2645. 01:55:55 - The old ones, actually, that I started one of.
2646. 01:55:58 I can tell you what it is to humdum with it.
2647. 01:55:59 - Okay, that's fine.
2648. 01:56:01 - It'd be super fun.
2649. 01:56:02 So I have started one, but I haven't finished it yet.
2650. 01:56:04 So I'll tell you when it's done.
2651. 01:56:05 That said, and like Mike mentioned,
2652. 01:56:08 if you haven't already joined the club,
2653. 01:56:10 club.bookworm.fm, and specifically club.bookworm.fm/membership,
2654. 01:56:15 if you want access to all of Mike's mine node files,
2655. 01:56:18 which he now has updated,
2656. 01:56:20 super cool group of people who are there
2657. 01:56:22 that support us and support the show,
2658. 01:56:25 help us keep the lights on.
2659. 01:56:26 So big thanks to you who have done that.
2660. 01:56:28 Simple five bucks a month.
2661. 01:56:30 And we're grateful to have you guys on board,
2662. 01:56:33 especially those of you who have joined us live here today.
2663. 01:56:35 We got quite a crew in the chat today.
2664. 01:56:37 So thanks for joining us on the YouTube.
2665. 01:56:39 If you're interested in joining us there,
2666. 01:56:41 I always sweet out a link from the bookworm Twitter account
2667. 01:56:45 once we've got that stream scheduled and set up.
2668. 01:56:48 So if you're interested in joining us live,
2669. 01:56:49 we'd love to have you here as well.
2670. 01:56:51 So thanks again, team.
2671. 01:56:52 - All right, if you're reading along with us,
2672. 01:56:54 which you totally should,
2673. 01:56:56 then pick up Love and Work by Marcus Buckingham.
2674. 01:56:58 And we'll talk to you in a couple of weeks.