Confronting my Productivity Guru - Tiago Forte

1. 0:00 – 1:44

   Intro

   1. TFTiago Forte0:00

      You only have, say, 90 minutes in a workday. What actually is going to make a difference? What is going to move the needle in my career, in my business? And often it's, it's a very different answer than you'd expect. It's this moment of truth where you have to, you have to look yourself in the mirror and just be so honest. As long as I thought that money was evil, business was bad, everything in that world was bad, those are some of the most powerful forces in the world. I was like a, you know, someone in the desert finding water. I saw and I studied. I really looked into the numbers, like, what actually makes a difference in people's lives? And honestly, you can boil it down to one thing.

   2. AAAli Abdaal0:35

      Hey, friends, and welcome back to Deep Dive, the ongoing podcast where every week I sit down with inspiring authors, creators, entrepreneurs, and other inspiring people. Uh, inspiring, I said that twice. It doesn't matter. Uh, and we talk about strategies and tools that can help us live our best lives, and we talk about their journeys and how they got to where they are. This conversation that you're about to hear is a conversation between me and my internet friend, and now real life friend, Tiago Forte. Tiago is one of the world's foremost experts on productivity, apparently, and has written a book, which I've got here somewhere, called Building a Second Brain. It's a book that's just come out fairly recently, but actually I took his course, Building A Second Brain, in 2019, and it completely changed my life, I would say. It changed the way I approach my business or the way I approach my life and content creation and my YouTube channel and all the things. My brother jokes that, like, just like I am the productivity guru for various people on the internet, Tiago is my personal productivity guru. We talk about a bunch of things like life organization and productivity and about the concept of money and how is- how to think about navigating what you actually want to do with your life. We talk a bunch about, like, misunderstandings around what it means to actually be productive, and then we do a deep dive into the methodology of building a second brain that will help you hopefully organize your life and organize your creative output, whether that's in your work or in your personal life. So I hope you enjoy this conversation between me and Tiago Forte.

2. 1:44 – 6:01

   How has having a child has impacted your productivity?

   1. AAAli Abdaal1:45

      This is gonna be an interesting conversation. So this is the first time you and I are meeting in the flesh.

   2. TFTiago Forte1:49

      Yes.

   3. AAAli Abdaal1:49

      And I've been following your stuff for the last three years now.

   4. TFTiago Forte1:52

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AAAli Abdaal1:52

      And I remember the moment where I discovered you.

   6. TFTiago Forte1:54

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AAAli Abdaal1:54

      It was my brother who actually recommended your stuff to me-

   8. TFTiago Forte1:57

      Mm-hmm

   9. AAAli Abdaal1:57

      ... saying that, "Look, Ali, you know how you are the productivity guru for all these people on your YouTube channel?"

   10. TFTiago Forte2:01

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   11. AAAli Abdaal2:02

       "Tiago should be your productivity guru."

   12. TFTiago Forte2:03

       [laughs]

   13. AAAli Abdaal2:04

       And I was like, "Cool." I went on Forte Labs.

   14. TFTiago Forte2:06

       [laughs]

   15. AAAli Abdaal2:06

       Kind of binged all of the blog posts and all that stuff. Took the course, Building A Second Brain.

   16. TFTiago Forte2:10

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AAAli Abdaal2:10

       And then we've been kind of friends on Twitter for the last, like, three years.

   18. TFTiago Forte2:13

       Yeah.

   19. AAAli Abdaal2:14

       Um, and on various Zoom calls here and there.

   20. TFTiago Forte2:16

       Mm.

   21. AAAli Abdaal2:16

       Uh, so much stuff to talk to you about. I think your journey's pretty inspiring. We'll talk about the blog.

   22. TFTiago Forte2:20

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AAAli Abdaal2:20

       We'll talk about productivity and creativity.

   24. TFTiago Forte2:22

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   25. AAAli Abdaal2:22

       But the place I wanted to start it with is that you recently became a dad.

   26. TFTiago Forte2:26

       Yes.

   27. AAAli Abdaal2:26

       And you have another child on the way, and I cannot imagine what, quote, like, par- being a parent does and, like, stress tests your time management and, like, productivity systems. So, like, how did... I guess y- you were a productivity bro before being a dad, and now-

   28. TFTiago Forte2:42

       Mm-hmm

   29. AAAli Abdaal2:42

       ... you're a productivity bro meets a dad.

   30. TFTiago Forte2:44

       [laughs]
3. 6:01 – 12:05

   How did you become one of the world's foremost experts on productivity?

   1. AAAli Abdaal6:01

      what was the journey?

   2. TFTiago Forte6:02

      Yeah, I mean, first of all, I just, I just wrote that. [laughs]

   3. AAAli Abdaal6:05

      [laughs]

   4. TFTiago Forte6:06

      Uh, I just, you know, almost aspirationally, in fact, very aspirationally, maybe three or four years ago said, "Who, who do I want to be? How do I wanna present myself to the world?" And I wrote that. It wasn't true at the time, but it's something funny about kind of credibility and expertise. If certain people say it, it's true.

   5. AAAli Abdaal6:24

      Mm.

   6. TFTiago Forte6:25

      And that's true of something like one of the world's foremost experts. Now that it's... That's been printed in The New York Times, in the Harvard Business Review, on radio shows, and podcasts, and different YouTube channels. It's kind of, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Um, but how that happened, I don't know. How, how far back do you wanna go? [laughs]

   7. AAAli Abdaal6:41

      So what did you do at, uh, after school?

   8. TFTiago Forte6:45

      Yes, let's see. I studied business. Um, so I graduated in 2009.

   9. AAAli Abdaal6:51

      Okay.

   10. TFTiago Forte6:51

       2000... End of 2008, 2009, which if you remember, in the US was the financial meltdown, the financial implosion, so there were no jobs. There were no possibilities. I had no particular skill. I really... Like, I, I'm not just saying this. I really had no particular thing that I was uniquely good at. I'd studied business, which is kinda just like the standard thing to do. Uh, and so I joined the Peace Corps.

   11. AAAli Abdaal7:12

       Oh, okay.

   12. TFTiago Forte7:13

       Are you familiar with the Peace Corps?

   13. AAAli Abdaal7:14

       No. What is that? I've heard of it, but...

   14. TFTiago Forte7:16

       Yeah, it's a, it's a US government agency basically, uh, that's existed since the '70s or late '60s that basically pays US volunteers of all ages to go to usually developing countries and serve for two year... I was there two years and three months. So I went to Eastern Ukraine-

   15. AAAli Abdaal7:33

       Hmm

   16. TFTiago Forte7:33

       ... the far eastern portion of Ukraine near the Russian border. And this is very random, but I was an English teacher there at a, at a high school, combined middle school/high school, uh, for two years when I was in my early 20s, mid-20s.

   17. AAAli Abdaal7:46

       Okay.

   18. TFTiago Forte7:46

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AAAli Abdaal7:46

       So it's like you were at this point where you didn't really know what to do with your life.

   20. TFTiago Forte7:49

       Exactly.

   21. AAAli Abdaal7:49

       You're like, "Let's do this thing."

   22. TFTiago Forte7:50

       Yeah.

   23. AAAli Abdaal7:50

       It seems kinda cool. So what, what happened next?

   24. TFTiago Forte7:53

       That's exactly what it was.

   25. AAAli Abdaal7:54

       Yeah.

   26. TFTiago Forte7:54

       I had no idea what I wanted to do. There was nothing that seemed particularly appealing, and so I just thought, "How can I, how can I extend the student lifestyle-

   27. AAAli Abdaal8:01

       Yeah

   28. TFTiago Forte8:01

       ... where someone just tells me what to do [laughs] for a couple more years?" That, that's what the Peace Corps was.

   29. AAAli Abdaal8:06

       Okay.

   30. TFTiago Forte8:07

       Um, and it was an, it was an amazing experience. It was challenging. I mean, you have those Siberian-style winters. You know, I'm from California. To me, before Ukraine, a cold winter was like, oh, it's in the 50s, 50s Fahrenheit. I d- don't know what that is Celsius. Um, but I, I had no experience of real winters, so that was challenging. Um, I was in the town completely by myself. The Peace Corps doesn't want Americans to be in the same place 'cause then they just hang out together all the time.
4. 12:05 – 17:20

   How to keep up with managing information flows

   1. AAAli Abdaal12:05

      It is that kind of knowledge work-

   2. TFTiago Forte12:07

      Mm-hmm

   3. AAAli Abdaal12:07

      ... where really there's information flying at you from all angles.

   4. TFTiago Forte12:10

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AAAli Abdaal12:10

      Even, even in medicine, to be honest. Like, a big chunk of the way I operated as a doctor was using productivity principles-

   6. TFTiago Forte12:16

      Mm

   7. AAAli Abdaal12:16

      ... to figure out, like, prioritization and to-do list management-

   8. TFTiago Forte12:19

      Mm-hmm

   9. AAAli Abdaal12:19

      ... and figuring out my schedule for the day.

   10. TFTiago Forte12:20

       Yeah.

   11. AAAli Abdaal12:20

       Being like, "Okay, from 1:00 till 2:00 I've got a teaching block."

   12. TFTiago Forte12:22

       Yeah.

   13. AAAli Abdaal12:22

       I know the ward round is from 8:00 till 11:00, so between 11:00 and 1:00 I need to do this list of jobs. Let's figure out the ones that rely on other people being a bottleneck, like-

   14. TFTiago Forte12:30

       Yes

   15. AAAli Abdaal12:30

       ... getting radiology to approve my scan request first. And okay, cool, let's do the stuff that requires waiting on things.

   16. TFTiago Forte12:35

       Yeah.

   17. AAAli Abdaal12:35

       And so I'd almost have, like, a waiting for list on my little page.

   18. TFTiago Forte12:39

       Yeah.

   19. AAAli Abdaal12:39

       Um, started using the iPad. People would always be like, "Oh, you're using your iPad. What's that like?"

   20. TFTiago Forte12:43

       Yeah.

   21. AAAli Abdaal12:43

       Um, and it seems like more and more jobs are actually about managing knowledge and managing information flows.

   22. TFTiago Forte12:50

       I think that's, that's mostly what jobs are these days, is you're... If you boil it down to the most basic elements, you have inputs, you process those inputs, and turn them into outputs.

   23. AAAli Abdaal13:00

       Mm.

   24. TFTiago Forte13:00

       And you can map this to, to literally any, any job, any kind of work. Which is cool, because once you, you, you sort of boil it down to that level, you can learn from anyone. You can look at chefs, and I've, I've learned a tremendous amount from chefs. You can look at construction. My brother's a construction manager, a contractor. I learn things from him.

   25. AAAli Abdaal13:19

       Mm.

   26. TFTiago Forte13:19

       I've talked to truck drivers, musicians, comedians. At w- at the most basic level of inputs and outputs, we're all doing the exact same thing, and therefore we can all learn from each other.

   27. AAAli Abdaal13:27

       Mm-hmm. Yeah. It re- it reminds me th- this, um, y- uh, Bertrand Russell has an essay, In Praise of Idleness.

   28. TFTiago Forte13:33

       Mm.

   29. AAAli Abdaal13:34

       Where he talks about, um, how... And he, he wrote this in, like, the 1930s or something like that.

   30. TFTiago Forte13:38

       Mm.
5. 17:20 – 23:24

   Is the world moving away from productivity?

   1. AAAli Abdaal17:20

      the concept of productivity.

   2. TFTiago Forte17:22

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AAAli Abdaal17:22

      Because in a way, uh, you know, and, and I guess you and I are very sort of plugged into this particular ecosystem, and so we can maybe see the trend, but it seems like-

   4. TFTiago Forte17:31

      Mm

   5. AAAli Abdaal17:32

      ... the world has, or at least the people we follow on Twitter, has sort of moved away from productivity.

   6. TFTiago Forte17:36

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AAAli Abdaal17:37

      And now I feel a little bit like, ugh, when, you know, I was, I was interviewed on a podcast and they told the, they called me a productivity expert.

   8. TFTiago Forte17:43

      Yeah.

   9. AAAli Abdaal17:44

      I was like, "Oh, I guess I'm... Okay, fine. Fair enough."

   10. TFTiago Forte17:45

       Now I am. [laughs]

   11. AAAli Abdaal17:46

       Now I'm a, I guess I'm a productivity expert. But also a lot of people seem to be like, "Oh, well, what's the point of productivity?"

   12. TFTiago Forte17:50

       Yeah.

   13. AAAli Abdaal17:51

       Like, life is about more than just productivity-

   14. TFTiago Forte17:52

       Yeah

   15. AAAli Abdaal17:52

       ... kind of, kind of thing.

   16. TFTiago Forte17:53

       Yeah.

   17. AAAli Abdaal17:53

       Like, how, how do you approach the word productivity-

   18. TFTiago Forte17:56

       Yeah

   19. AAAli Abdaal17:56

       ... which I think has industrial age kind of connotations of cranking out more and more widgets?

   20. TFTiago Forte18:00

       Yeah, so a couple things. First, I like industrial age stuff. [laughs] Um, one of my biggest sources of inspiration has been modern manufacturing, uh, the theory of constraints, just-in-time manufacturing, um, you know, high-velocity manufacturing, automated manufacturing. I think sometimes we disparage that stuff to our, you know, to our detriment. Um, mod- manufacturing today is not, you know, like in the 1920s, these dirty, soot-filled, you know, exploitative, um, factories. It is, it is something much different. It's very precise, it's very technology centric, it's very collaborative. Um, so I don't, I don't mind using factories as a kind of metaphor. Um, but to kind of answer your question more directly, I think of productivity as a phase.

   21. AAAli Abdaal18:46

       A phase.

   22. TFTiago Forte18:48

       It's a phase, phase in someone's life.

   23. AAAli Abdaal18:50

       Okay.

   24. TFTiago Forte18:50

       There is a, a phase in your life, or it could recur, so there could be different phases, where you have to think about productivity, and then there's other phases where you think about creativity. I really see productivity and creativity as two sides to the same coin. Uh, and where I learned about this was from my dad. My dad is one of the most creative people I've ever met. Wildly imaginative, creative. But how does that creativity make it out into the world is productivity. So he has these, these very systematic approaches and routines and rules that he uses from, you know, the time of day that he paints from this time to this time, to how long he's gonna spend on each stage of a painting, to the way that he takes notes.

   25. AAAli Abdaal19:29

       Mm.

   26. TFTiago Forte19:29

       And so I see this kind of like pendulum, productivity, creativity, productivity, creativity. And if you go too far o- on either end of the spectrum, you start hitting diminishing returns and you start to get stuck, right? Like, like on both sides. You can get so fixated on productivity, y- your work starts to become formulaic, it starts to become very boring, and it's time to, to kind of go to the other end of the spectrum, creativity. But then you can go too far in creativity. That's when you get too precious. You get too, "Oh, no, that's my art. It has to be this certain way." And, you know, you talk to someone six months later, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm working on my, my one painting for the last six months." That also doesn't work. You're not... You're, you're getting stuck. You're getting, you're getting sort of locked up in your own preciousness. And so I, I really see them as this kind of alternating back and forth pendulum.

   27. AAAli Abdaal20:15

       Nice. Yeah, I had, I had a bit of a thought as, as you were saying that, and I think I've, I've never really thought of the two as being, being separate. I gue- I, I guess, you know, given that a bunch of videos I make happen to be vaguely themed around productivity-

   28. TFTiago Forte20:27

       Mm

   29. AAAli Abdaal20:28

       ... when people ask me, "Oh, what is productivity to you?"

   30. TFTiago Forte20:30

       Mm.
6. 23:24 – 34:11

   What's the meaning of productivity for you?

   1. AAAli Abdaal23:24

      versus personal life, or, like, how, how do you think about it?

   2. TFTiago Forte23:27

      Yeah, you know, I think, you know, being productive is ultimately about having a, a career you love. I mean, you're not gonna get the jobs you want, you're not gonna start the business you want, you're not going to advance if you're not productive. You're just not.

   3. AAAli Abdaal23:42

      Mm.

   4. TFTiago Forte23:42

      It's wishful thinking. And so you have to learn it and then go beyond it. But the way I think of this too is, um, you know, most of my 20s I was working in nonprofits. I worked for a microfinance nonprofit in Columbia, uh, during university as part of my study abroad. I taught English in Brazil and then later in Ukraine. Uh, I worked for the government in the Peace Corps. So, like, a majority of my 20s I was a bleeding heart humanitarian. I was gonna dedicate my life to s- to s- to service, really. It's what I wanted to do. But I, I became disillusioned with that whole idea because I saw and I studied, I really looked into the numbers, like what actually makes a difference in people's lives? What knowledge, what training, what... Sometimes it's called capacity building or whatever it is. And honestly, you can boil it down to one thing If you want to improve someone's life s- life outcomes, all of them, increase their income

   5. AAAli Abdaal24:36

      Hmm

   6. TFTiago Forte24:37

      Increase their income. If you can raise that one dial, the downstream effect that they will take care of all the rest. They'll improve their health. Their family will be healthier. They'll improve their neighborhood. They'll improve their psychology. They'll invest in education. It's almost like people can be trusted. People know what's best for them, but they need the resources. So I made this hard pivot. I, I thought business for years was evil, was bad, I'm not gonna do business. I made this hard pivot from like humanitarian stuff into business 'cause I just thought, "I'm gonna focus all my attention on helping people have amazing careers and amazing businesses," 'cause that's how they raise their income, and then everything else is gonna be positively impacted

   7. AAAli Abdaal25:17

      Interesting. How did you get to that know- that, that conclusion that the thing that matters is raising people's income? 'Cause that... I've, I've not heard that idea before.

   8. TFTiago Forte25:26

      Mm

   9. AAAli Abdaal25:26

      I've heard like, "Oh, the thing that matters is education for girls-

   10. TFTiago Forte25:28

       Yeah

   11. AAAli Abdaal25:28

       ... in raising the whatever of a, a country, or the thing that matters is sanitation or vaccination or all these things. Like what, what lends you to income?

   12. TFTiago Forte25:36

       Yeah. This might be a bit controversial. I don't even know... I don't know if anyone, if everyone would agree with that. Um, but where it really came from was my research in microfinance. Microfinance is funny because it is... It's not... It's a nonprofit, it's humanitarian, it's, you know, development work, but it's also finance. And all the research that's been done, there's so- there's actually some major problems with microfinance, but there's some very clear research that, you know, people, if they just have loans, like what is more mercenary than loans? What is more like, oh-

   13. AAAli Abdaal26:08

       People. Yeah

   14. TFTiago Forte26:08

       ... like e- oh my gosh, loans that have finance charges and you're charging them interest. And yet for a lot of people, microfinance has had a tremendous impact. Uh, I guess it just comes from seeing that in action. You know, I worked for a, a nonprofit in Colombia in the coastal region of Cartagena, which is the poorest part of Colombia and one of the poorest parts of Latin America. And our loans were like $50, $100, few hundred dollars. They just needed a little... Like by our standards, like we spend that much on a dinner or like a lunch, right? And they would make investments. They would buy, you know, a cart for their business. They would send their kids to school, uh, for a month or two. They would, they would make these little changes that then had cascading effects. Um, and I guess it's just something I observed that, that increasing your... Like it's, I think, very well established that hi- higher incomes are correlated and I think causal from all these other things, right? Like how are you going to improve your health if you don't have money? If you have zero financial resources, what, what are you gonna do? Like you just don't have that many options.

   15. AAAli Abdaal27:09

       I love that. That's great. Like I've, uh, you know, since... O- over the last year or two, my YouTube channel has taken a soft pivot rather than a hard pivot-

   16. TFTiago Forte27:18

       Mm

   17. AAAli Abdaal27:18

       ... or a lot towards talking about like business and entrepreneurship and making money.

   18. TFTiago Forte27:21

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AAAli Abdaal27:21

       And I will occasionally get comments from people being like, "I liked your YouTube channel when you were talking about how to study for your exams."

   20. TFTiago Forte27:28

       Yeah.

   21. AAAli Abdaal27:28

       "But now all you talk about is how to make money."

   22. TFTiago Forte27:30

       Yeah.

   23. AAAli Abdaal27:30

       "This is bad."

   24. TFTiago Forte27:31

       Yeah.

   25. AAAli Abdaal27:31

       And I've always kind of thought that like they're right in that that is now the thing that I talk about. But like the way I see it, that, you know, I'm, I'm all about kind of helping people to live their best lives-

   26. TFTiago Forte27:42

       Yeah

   27. AAAli Abdaal27:42

       ... and me trying to do that myself and hopefully-

   28. TFTiago Forte27:44

       Yeah

   29. AAAli Abdaal27:44

       ... trying to be a sort of a documentarian of what I'm doing to live my best life-

   30. TFTiago Forte27:47

       Yeah
7. 34:11 – 58:31

   Getting interested in business and making money

   1. AAAli Abdaal34:11

      we were in the process of your journey, so you've, so you joined San Fr- went, went back to San Francisco.

   2. TFTiago Forte34:16

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AAAli Abdaal34:16

      Let's say you're in your sort of early to late 20s, and you said that you made this hard pivot from the humanitarian stuff to the business stuff.

   4. TFTiago Forte34:24

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AAAli Abdaal34:24

      What was the story behind that pivot? How did that happen?

   6. TFTiago Forte34:26

      I had, like I said, no business in money, investing, uh, productivity, business, none of this. But my mom gave me one night, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

   7. AAAli Abdaal34:36

      Oh, yep.

   8. TFTiago Forte34:37

      Rich Dad, Poor Dad changed everything because it was my first exposure. I was like a, I was like a s- you know, someone in the desert finding water. I didn't know that's what I was missing. I, I was missing a relationship to, in that case, money, coming back to the subject of money, which was a relationship of abundance. You know, as long as I thought that money was evil, business was bad, everything in that world was bad, I was... Those are some of the most pow- my, like most powerful forces in the world, right? And so I read that book. I read the whole book in one night. I couldn't sleep the entire night. Read it through the night. And I just kind of was in a daze, and I just thought, "Oh my gosh, business." This is what I realized from reading it. Business can be the vehicle for everything that I wanna create in the world, for the impact, the positive impact I wanna have, the people I wanna help, the education I want to create, the life outcomes for people that I wanna, I wanna change. Business can be my friend instead of my enemy, and I made a complete life pivot. Uh, went, went from, from studying, uh, international development in school to studying international business. Uh, started, you know, writing, uh, started writing and, and publishing my first little bits of content online. I really just chose business as my means for, for having the impact I wanted to have.

   9. AAAli Abdaal35:54

      Why do so many people seemingly, at least the ones who are active on Twitter, uh, why do they feel so like anti-business?

   10. TFTiago Forte36:02

       I think it's our, it's our conditioning.

   11. AAAli Abdaal36:03

       Yeah.

   12. TFTiago Forte36:03

       It's what we were taught.

   13. AAAli Abdaal36:05

       Mm.

   14. TFTiago Forte36:05

       Yeah, that making money... People have so many, I'm sure you see this all the time, so many limiting beliefs around making money. Um, you know, making money means you are compromising your integrity. Making money means you're taking advantage of people. Making money means you are losing yourself and not being authentic. Like, there's some belief... And, and we all have these.

   15. AAAli Abdaal36:24

       Yeah.

   16. TFTiago Forte36:24

       We never actually completely let go of all those beliefs. They're lurking back here in our psychology. Um, but those things, you know, they have truth in them, but they're not the truth.

   17. AAAli Abdaal36:33

       Yeah, like money is the root of all evil-

   18. TFTiago Forte36:35

       Yeah

   19. AAAli Abdaal36:35

       ... that kind of stuff.

   20. TFTiago Forte36:36

       Yeah.

   21. AAAli Abdaal36:37

       All right. Yeah, I, I remember two years ago now, or a year and a half ago, uh, I had a call with you and our mutual friend David about-

   22. TFTiago Forte36:43

       [laughs]

   23. AAAli Abdaal36:43

       ... uh, this course that I was, I was gonna start-

   24. TFTiago Forte36:45

       [laughs]

   25. AAAli Abdaal36:45

       ... the Part-Time YouTuber Academy, and I was thinking, "Oh, you know, I'll do it as a prerecorded thing."

   26. TFTiago Forte36:50

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AAAli Abdaal36:50

       "I'll sell it for, like, $200."

   28. TFTiago Forte36:51

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AAAli Abdaal36:51

       "Why don't we partner up on it?"

   30. TFTiago Forte36:52

       Mm-hmm.
8. 58:31 – 1:03:14

   Your new book

   1. AAAli Abdaal58:31

      some of the concepts in the book. You mentioned something in earlier in our conversation, the idea of just in time.

   2. TFTiago Forte58:36

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AAAli Abdaal58:36

      Can you expand on that? What, what does, what does just in time mean for productivity?

   4. TFTiago Forte58:40

      Yeah. So this goes back to manufacturing. This is ... I mean, just-in-time manufacturing completely changed the entire world. We ... To, to an extent that we don't realize.

   5. AAAli Abdaal58:48

      Mm.

   6. TFTiago Forte58:51

      Not a lot of people know this history, but Toyota, uh, Motor Company, the, you know, the maker of cars, they introduced this way of building cars which was instead of stockpiling all the resources you need, you know, all the, the parts and the rubber and all the different things, you know, I don't know, on the factory floor, they would have this network of suppliers where they would decide what car they're gonna produce and then just in time, just days or even hours before, they would just pull. They would bring all the parts into the factory, produce it right then, and ship it off, which sounds like this weird esoteric ... Like, why does that matter? It matters tremendously. By using things just in time, using resources just in time, you not only improve speed, which is nice, you improve, uh, efficiency, which is great, but an unexpected thing with that is you improve quality.

   7. AAAli Abdaal59:40

      Okay.

   8. TFTiago Forte59:41

      Quality gets radically higher.

   9. AAAli Abdaal59:42

      Why?

   10. TFTiago Forte59:44

       It's, it's kind of hard to explain. It's interesting. It's basically ... Think about ... [clears throat] Let's take auto manufacturing. If you have a bunch of, I don't know, tires, right? That you've stockpiled 1,000 or 10,000 tires, and then you start putting them onto the production line. You find an error. You find a mistake, a defect. What do you do? If you've stockpiled 1,000 or 10,000 tires, you just keep quiet and you just let them all go through.

   11. AAAli Abdaal1:00:08

       Mm-hmm.

   12. TFTiago Forte1:00:08

       'Cause what are you gonna do? You can't return them. That, that one defect has been replicated 1,000 or 10,000 times. Uh, and so by keeping ... Another way of saying this is keeping inventories low. You don't want a lot of work in process. Work in process is anything that is, like, in, in operation, in process, that, that is ongoing currently. Uh, and then applying this to knowledge work, it's interesting. We also wanna keep work in process low.

   13. AAAli Abdaal1:00:31

       Okay.

   14. TFTiago Forte1:00:32

       When you're doing too many things at once, I mean, this is just basic time management. When you have 25 projects at once, quality's gonna suffer. Efficiency is gonna suffer. Time is gonna be wasted.

   15. AAAli Abdaal1:00:41

       Yeah.

   16. TFTiago Forte1:00:41

       So you wanna work on few things at once.

   17. AAAli Abdaal1:00:43

       Yeah, 'cause I guess working on 10 things at once rather than, in a way, one thing at a time, there's, there's not a linear relationship between-

   18. TFTiago Forte1:00:51

       Mm-hmm

   19. AAAli Abdaal1:00:51

       ... I have 10 projects, therefore it takes You know, I can do 10 things with a 10th of the time in the same amount. I like it. There's, there's some efficiency that you lose out on by having so many bits in progress.

   20. TFTiago Forte1:01:02

       Yes.

   21. AAAli Abdaal1:01:02

       But similarly, I think just doing things one at a time is also, for me, not the sweet spot-

   22. TFTiago Forte1:01:06

       Uh-huh

   23. AAAli Abdaal1:01:06

       ... because sometimes my energy is like, "Oh, I actually wanna work on this thing." Or-

   24. TFTiago Forte1:01:08

       Yeah

   25. AAAli Abdaal1:01:08

       ... I can be less of a bottleneck in thing X if I focus on thing Y.

   26. TFTiago Forte1:01:12

       Yeah.

   27. AAAli Abdaal1:01:13

       Or words to that effect.

   28. TFTiago Forte1:01:13

       Yeah.

   29. AAAli Abdaal1:01:14

       Um, so how does that, like, just, this idea of just in time versus just in case, how does, how does that relate to, I guess, personal productivity for us in our kind of work and personal lives?

   30. TFTiago Forte1:01:25

       Yeah. So I would say just in case is how we were kind of educated, which is you do everything way in advance. You do it as perfectly as possible, as earl- as soon as possible, uh, which is okay if you know what's gonna happen, right? If you're taking a class in school, you know I need to study each lesson, each unit, each paper, each reading assignment is important simply because the professor has said, you know, "Study this."
9. 1:03:14 – 1:14:31

   What is a second brain and why does it help you organise your life?

   1. AAAli Abdaal1:03:14

      Method to Organize Your Digital Life-

   2. TFTiago Forte1:03:15

      Hmm

   3. AAAli Abdaal1:03:16

      ... and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Um, I, this is, I, a thing that we probably should've addressed earlier-

   4. TFTiago Forte1:03:21

      Yeah

   5. AAAli Abdaal1:03:21

      ... but, like, what the hell is a second brain-

   6. TFTiago Forte1:03:23

      [laughs]

   7. AAAli Abdaal1:03:23

      ... and why is it, why does it help you organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential? [laughs]

   8. TFTiago Forte1:03:29

      Yeah. Yeah, it's a great question. Uh, a second brain, think of it, think of things you already do. So you might have a journal or a diary. Imagine if everything you wrote in that journal or diary was saved forever, was searchable, that you could actually derive insights from it. You could go ask it a question. What have I thought about money in the past? What have I thought about personal growth? How have my dates been in the past? What did I learn? You could actually mine the insights from that. That's a journal or diary. Now imagine, uh, notes you took from books or articles. Now imagine even practical things like grocery lists, uh, packing lists, travel itineraries. Okay. Now add bookmarks for, that you've saved from the web. Now add any kind of document that you've created from the past. All these things are things we largely already do to some capacity, but now imagine getting all of that material, which like we said is just data. All of that stuff is just information, and you, you save it. You centralize it all in one single central place where you know will be preserved forever. You know you can always search for things. You know you can, once it's saved in the same place, start to link things together, start to tag it, start to organize it. What would be the value? What would be the, you know, what would be the value of the, the aggregated sum of all that material? That's your second brain.

   9. AAAli Abdaal1:04:47

      Okay. So a cynic would say that, well, what is the value of that?

   10. TFTiago Forte1:04:51

       Yeah.

   11. AAAli Abdaal1:04:51

       Why do I care if my... Like, surely it, isn't it a bad thing if my private journal is in one place for some cor- evil corporation to access forever?

   12. TFTiago Forte1:04:57

       [laughs]

   13. AAAli Abdaal1:04:58

       Like, why do I need to care about my shopping lists?

   14. TFTiago Forte1:05:00

       Yeah.

   15. AAAli Abdaal1:05:00

       Yeah, books I've read. I've read a few fiction. I've read Twilight.

   16. TFTiago Forte1:05:02

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   17. AAAli Abdaal1:05:02

       I've read Fifty Shades of Grey.

   18. TFTiago Forte1:05:03

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   19. AAAli Abdaal1:05:03

       In addition to getting things done, why does it matter if it's all in one place?

   20. TFTiago Forte1:05:07

       Yeah. I would say a few things. If you make anything, and I'd say more of us are makers or creators than you would think, right? If you're writing long emails, if you're writing reports, memos, analyses, project plans, like most knowledge workers have some, virtually all knowledge workers have some kind of output. You can't just sit down and make something from scratch. Or if you do, it won't be very good. You won't have a lot of kind of interesting ideas to add to it. You need, as a creative person, some repository, some store of ideas and insights to draw from, or else you're gonna be doing that classic thing that we wanna avoid, which is looking at the blank page or looking at the b- blank screen, right, and trying to come up with an idea-

   21. AAAli Abdaal1:05:49

       Yeah

   22. TFTiago Forte1:05:49

       ... which is one of the h- the worst experiences. I would say even broader than making things, think about decisions. A decision is something that you, in a sense, create, right? You take into account all this information, all these inputs, what your team thinks, what your colleagues think, how the economy is doing, what people in your industry say. You are incorporating all of those inputs into a decision. I would say that is something that you need to draw on existing material. Uh, any kind of outcome, right? Like, it's, it's difficult to, to go out into, into the world sort of naked-

   23. AAAli Abdaal1:06:20

       Hmm

   24. TFTiago Forte1:06:21

       ... in idea terms and make things happen without any research, without any creative raw material, without any planning.

   25. AAAli Abdaal1:06:28

       Yeah.

   26. TFTiago Forte1:06:29

       It's, it's just hard to do.

   27. AAAli Abdaal1:06:30

       Okay. Yeah, s- so the way that I kind of, you know, w- when people ask me, "Oh, what's the deal with the second brain thing?" I'm like, it's basically a, you know, a d- digital note-taking system-

   28. TFTiago Forte1:06:41

       Mm-hmm

   29. AAAli Abdaal1:06:41

       ... that you can put anything into-

   30. TFTiago Forte1:06:43

       Mm-hmm
10. 1:14:31 – 1:27:28

    The principles of building a second brain

    1. TFTiago Forte1:14:31

       Mm-hmm.

    2. AAAli Abdaal1:14:31

       But I wonder if you can do a quick whistle stop tour through, um, the principles of the Second Brain and tell people-

    3. TFTiago Forte1:14:36

       Mm-hmm

    4. AAAli Abdaal1:14:36

       ... where they might be able to find out more if they're interested.

    5. TFTiago Forte1:14:39

       Yeah, so basically the book is really built around four, four pillars, which are the stages of the creative process. I think the creative process is the most important part of people's productivity these days. How do you take inputs and process them in some creative way and turn them into outputs like we've talked about? Uh, and what I really sought to do is say everyone has special things, everyone has exceptions, everyone has some unique things, but what is, what is the part of the creative process that is timeless? Like, we can go back to the ancient Greeks, we can go back to Roman times, we can go back to the Renaissance, the Enlightenment. What are they doing that we're still doing? Because if I can find some things, that's likely that we're gonna b- keep doing those in the future. They're timeless, right? And I boil that down, it's, it's amazing how long this took, uh, into four steps: capture, organize, distill, and express, which underlies really all kinds of work. Things have to be captured. They have to be recorded in some way, shape, or form. They have to be organized in some way, categorized, classified, grouped. They have to be distilled. You have to decide what is the takeaway, what is the main point, what is the main message? And then I think the purpose of knowledge is to be shared, is to be expressed. And so the last, uh, stage and the, the letters for that are C-O-D-E for CODE, is express. How do you share it? How do you collaborate with it? How do you apply it? How do you put it into your own words? How do you put it into some form that has a positive impact on you, your family, your career, or your business?

    6. AAAli Abdaal1:16:09

       Nice. [laughs] That's a good summary. [laughs]

    7. TFTiago Forte1:16:11

       Yeah.

    8. AAAli Abdaal1:16:12

       Um, okay, so let's just kind of break these down. So capture, meaning how do I take insights and like highlights and like notes and shopping lists and anything from any aspect of my life and just write it down somewhere?

    9. TFTiago Forte1:16:23

       Yes.

    10. AAAli Abdaal1:16:23

        Organize, now that I've written it down somewhere-

    11. TFTiago Forte1:16:26

        Mm-hmm

    12. AAAli Abdaal1:16:26

        ... where does it go?

    13. TFTiago Forte1:16:27

        Yes.

    14. AAAli Abdaal1:16:27

        Does it get filed away in my folder for Chemistry 1A, or does it get filed away in my bedroom remodel?

    15. TFTiago Forte1:16:33

        Uh-huh.

    16. AAAli Abdaal1:16:33

        Or does it get filed away in my kids' doctor's appointments folder?

    17. TFTiago Forte1:16:36

        Yeah.

    18. AAAli Abdaal1:16:36

        That kind of thing.

    19. TFTiago Forte1:16:37

        Uh-huh.

    20. AAAli Abdaal1:16:37

        Distill is then, I guess, the next step of like for the things that I'm, that are related to my kind of creative output-

    21. TFTiago Forte1:16:43

        Mm-hmm

    22. AAAli Abdaal1:16:43

        ... whether it's a presentation for my work, 'cause I work as a management consultant-

    23. TFTiago Forte1:16:46

        Mm-hmm

    24. AAAli Abdaal1:16:46

        ... whether it's a poster for a scientific conference I'm working on-

    25. TFTiago Forte1:16:49

        Mm-hmm

    26. AAAli Abdaal1:16:49

        ... or a paper for this journal submission-

    27. TFTiago Forte1:16:52

        Mm-hmm

    28. AAAli Abdaal1:16:52

        ... 'cause I'm a doctor or a scientist-

    29. TFTiago Forte1:16:53

        Mm-hmm

    30. AAAli Abdaal1:16:53

        ... whether it's a YouTube video 'cause I'm a YouTuber, whether it's a blog post 'cause I'm a writer, or a podcast episode 'cause I'm a podca- like, whatever the thing is-

Episode duration: 1:27:28