[00:03:05] Tiago Forte: Which is just far beyond what the human brain is capable of – far beyond. I always joke that our minds and brains have not been upgraded in 200,000 years, so we’re using 200,000-year-old hardware and trying to run a complex 21st-century life. If you have any feeling of stress and anxiety, any feeling like you have too much on your plate, any balls in the air, maybe it’s not because you are not smart enough or not productive enough, it’s that your brain was just not designed to handle the load that it’s trying to carry. So instead of trying to improve our memory or change our biology, which is very hard, we’re just outsourcing. We’re offloading the job of remembering and connecting and reflecting. A lot of the thinking tasks can now be done by software.

[00:03:59] Tiago Forte: So why not let software that runs 24/7, never sleeps, never forgets anything, is practically free, do those jobs instead of trying to do them ourselves? 

[00:04:10] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, I’ve just found it so interesting reading your book, and I’ve been implementing some of the practices, which we’re going to get into. But first I am wondering, what would you say is the distinction between what a first brain should do then and what a Second brain should do for someone who’s trying to be the most productive, efficient, and creative as possible?

[00:04:31] Tiago Forte: Yeah, I think about this a lot. I think it really depends on each person, and what you have to ask yourself is: what are the kinds of thinking that only I can do, right? That takes advantage of my unique experience, my perspective, my skills, my education, that add the most value, that are actually contributions to my career or my company, or my…

[00:04:57] Tiago Forte: And which thinking activities can be done by anyone? Just think about your day. How much of the thinking that you did today could not one other human being in the entire world do? I think, for most of us, if we’re honest, we’d say like 10% or something, or 5%. And if you think about that attention, that mental bandwidth is your biggest asset.

[00:05:23] Tiago Forte: Like your number one resource that you have to spend every day. You can’t be spending it on things that are the same as what anyone else would do. You really have to keep doubling down and focusing more and more of your attention on the thinking and the decisions and the results that only you can produce.

[00:05:47] Rebecca Hotsko: And what I really liked about this, and when reading your book, you talk about how once you start to offload all this information, it’s not necessarily useless information, but it’s information that doesn’t need to be in your memory, in  your brain. It could be offloaded into your digital note app or you can recall it later, but you don’t have to keep it all in your brain.

[00:06:07] Rebecca Hotsko: And instead that could free up room for you to be more creative and for you to be more productive and. I’m wondering if you can talk a little bit about how that actually works. 

[00:06:18] Tiago Forte: Yeah, I think there’s this tension where modern knowledge works depending on the details You need to know. You sometimes read like there’s the book Essentialism or the one thing, and it’s like all about, okay, what is your central priority?

[00:06:31] Tiago Forte: Forget everything else. You can’t forget everything else. You know, try ignoring yourself. Your emails and see what happens after a few days, try ignoring your, you know, your chat messages. Try ignoring the small stuff for a while, and it will suddenly, it will eventually become an emergency and become a big thing, right?

[00:06:47] Tiago Forte: You have to keep track of details. There’s no way around it. There’s absolutely no way around it, but you don’t have to personally remember those details. That is the perfect use case for notes, right Notes, remembering numbers, details about a client, a little excerpts from a, like an investment report, an an analysis report.

[00:07:04] Tiago Forte: You’re reading, you know, wisdom from a mentor on how to invest better quotes from a book you’re reading about a, you know, a famous investor that you want to model. Like it’s, you have to remember these details, but you really can’t keep them in mind. And so I really think of a second brain as just this knowledge bank.

[00:07:19] Tiago Forte: It’s like this vault of all the details that I want to fuel my, my work and my life. It’s like I can just step away, not have to worry about them, stress about them, think about them for one second longer than I have to just set them aside and access them, you know, basically as needed. 

[00:07:35] Rebecca Hotsko: And so I guess just to get into it a little bit, you talk about how important and the first step to really building a second brain is writing things down, and this is digital note taking, ideally, because then it’s always with you.

[00:07:48] Rebecca Hotsko: And so that just helps us, I guess, offload them, but then recall them when we need them so we don’t have to rely on our memory. But this was just really interesting to me. I’ve always been a big fan of note taking, but I don’t think I’ve [00:08:00] always done it in the most efficient way. So can you talk to us a little bit about your process of note taking and just maybe why this is so powerful in the first place?

[00:08:10] Tiago Forte: Yeah, I think there’s this tension where modern knowledge works depending on details you need to know. You sometimes read like there’s the book Essentialism or The One Thing, and it’s all about, okay, what is your central priority? Forget everything else. You can’t forget everything else. You know, try ignoring your emails and see what happens after a few days, try ignoring your chat messages. Try ignoring the small stuff for a while, and it will suddenly become an emergency and become a big thing, right?

[00:08:45] Tiago Forte: You have to keep track of details. There’s no way around it. There’s absolutely no way around it, but you don’t have to personally remember those details. That is the perfect use case for notes, right? Notes, remembering numbers, details about a client, a little excerpt from an investment report, an analysis report. You’re reading wisdom from a mentor on how to invest better, quotes from a book you’re reading about a famous investor that you want to model.

[00:09:16] Tiago Forte: Like it’s, you have to remember these details, but you really can’t keep them in mind. And so I really think of a second brain as just this knowledge bank. It’s like this vault of all the details that I want to fuel my work and my life. It’s like I can just step away, not have to worry about them, stress about them, think about them for one second longer than I have to, just set them aside and access them, you know, basically as needed.

[00:09:51] Rebecca Hotsko: And I’ll say ever since I started implementing this, one thing that has really helped me though since I’ve read your book, is I have to consume a lot of information for this role as a podcast host. And so a lot of the time , when I’m listening to, say, another podcast, if I found something interesting, I would take a mental note of it, but then if I ever wanted to really remember what was said, sometimes I had to go back and listen to the whole episode again.

[00:10:16] Rebecca Hotsko: And that is just so inefficient. And so I. This really helps with productivity because then you write things down at the time you’re doing them, and then you can just go back to your notes instead of having to maybe reread a chapter or have to re-listen to a podcast or whatever it is. It just makes your life more efficient because you don’t have to spend extra time redoing something.

[00:10:38] Tiago Forte: That’s such a good way to think about it. Think about it. I almost think like, yeah, it’s like once you’ve done some mental effort, I think often we don’t think of thinking as mental labor. But it is, it takes real energy to like something, even to read something. It’s like you are burning calories, you’re using neurochemicals to read that thing.

[00:10:57] Tiago Forte: I always use the term invested. That time. It’s like you invested, you want to return on that investment. You can get that return on the investment simply by saving just a few of the key points. It’s just incredible to me that people don’t do this, they throw away or they just give their attention to something with no expectation that it will have any return, any practical effect, any improvement to anything.

[00:11:19] Tiago Forte: It’s just kind of like that information is in one ear out the other. And really this is just, this isn’t a way to do more reading or more learning or more information consumption. It’s just capitalizing on the mental labor you’re already doing. It’s a perfect way to think about it. 

[00:11:34] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, and I will say it’s really helped me and it’s something that I’m going to continue to do going forward.

[00:11:40] Rebecca Hotsko: But I am wondering, because you also talk about in the book how this can help us really deal with information overload, which I think everyone experiences at some points in their life, whether it’s just with investing or in your career. We’re constantly bombarded with information all day, and so how can this really help us manage that issue?

[00:12:03] Tiago Forte: Yeah, you know, the information overload, it’s the million dollar question. It’s kind of the question of our time. You know, I, I cited in my book that by one measure, the amount of information consumption that the average person takes in on an average day is like five times what it was in 1986. A fivefold increase.

[00:12:19] Tiago Forte: It’s like the equivalent of reading, war and Peace, the book, war and Peace, every single day. So first of all, there’s not one solution. We’re talking about a civilization level problem. It’s not like, oh, just do this one thing. You really need, like, a whole suite of solutions. Some of those are things like just turning off your device.

[00:12:37] Tiago Forte: You know, digital minimalism is part of the solution for sure, but I feel like I’m offering a different kind of solution, which is not stepping back from the internet and technology because you don’t want to abstain from the internet. Okay. The internet is like the future. It’s the very center of our civilization.

[00:12:53] Tiago Forte: It’s where everything is happening, in the world it is online, so you don’t want to like, Move to your Walden, you know, cabin in the woods and just say, forget all this. Just because you know, there’s too many notifications on your phone. You can’t abstain, you really can’t. But there’s a way where you can be on the internet in the chaos, in the storm of information, get that information and just instead of taking it in through your eyeballs, into your brain, you just redirect it.

[00:13:19] Tiago Forte: It’s kinda like getting the storm and going, okay, I’m going to take you in, but then you go over here, you know, with some steps to secure it and distill it. And that way, you know, I almost think of the internet, like a storm. You wouldn’t go out in, in a storm without any protection, you know, without any buffer, without any anything between you and the stuff hitting you.

[00:13:36] Tiago Forte: The same is true in an information storm. You need a barrier, a buffer, so you can take things in a way that you control them and you can use them, but don’t actually directly affect your physiology honestly. Like if you don’t have that buffer in between you and the internet, every news flash and update and notification, it hits your brain just.

[00:13:56] Tiago Forte: It’s like a slap and it’s honestly very anxiety inducing, not good for your mental health. Makes it hard to sleep if you’re feeling any of those symptoms. Maybe you just need, you know, the equivalent of like a, a heavy coat to protect you from the weather. . 

[00:14:11] Rebecca Hotsko: I’m curious to know, so you’ve been doing this for such a long time.

[00:14:15] Rebecca Hotsko: Where did this idea stem from? 

[00:14:18] Tiago Forte: Yeah, it was really a chronic health condition. You know, it was a chronic health condition that none of my doctors could figure out. It was like a chronic pain in my neck and my throat, and for years I just kind of went from one doctor to another looking for some magic pill or treatment or you know, medicine.

[00:14:37] Tiago Forte: Thinking that I could just find this magic bullet and then it would, it would be gone. And eventually it became clear that it wasn’t like a virus or an infection, it was a, what’s called a functional condition, which is when basically you don’t take care of your body well enough and it starts to not work.

[00:14:52] Tiago Forte: Right. And it’s, it’s interesting because at the time I felt so alone. I felt like, you know, no one has a problem like this one today. As I’ve talked about this more, almost everyone has something like this. Like a, a, you know, a, a pain in, in a joint, you know, recurring rash, an allergy, some tension in their lower back.

[00:15:11] Tiago Forte: Like we all have some little recurring thing that is not an illness to be cured, but is more like how to just care for your body in a better way. But I had to discover that. I had to discover it was a functional condition. And I did that by taking notes every doctor did. Everything that I tried changes to my diet, my nutrition, my exercise, my mental health, my sleep, my habits.

[00:15:32] Tiago Forte: I just documented everything and what emerged from this, basically like self-researching, I was researching myself. I suddenly saw patterns that, oh, if I change this, this, this, and this, just small everyday habits, somehow my condition results itself, or at least gets much. And these days, I often ask people like, what recurring problem, whether it’s in your health or or something else, what recurring problem are you pretty sure the answers are out there?

[00:15:57] Tiago Forte: Like there are solutions, people have faced this before It’s just a question of you proactively going out, finding that information, bringing it somewhere you control, organizing it and making sense of it, drying out patterns and then just implementing it. I think almost, almost every problem, there’s very few problems that no human has ever faced before.

[00:16:17] Rebecca Hotsko: Very true. Yeah, no, that is such a great story because I think, again, everyone just struggles with their own way of managing all this information. A lot of people probably don’t even know they’re struggling with this, and so you had a purpose to figure out what was wrong with you. And so I guess really to hit the point home, One of the benefits of building a second brain is just this productivity aspect offload, so we don’t have to rely on our memory.

[00:16:43] Rebecca Hotsko: But perhaps beyond that, what are some of the bigger and maybe more important things that it could really just help us achieve? 

[00:16:50] Tiago Forte: You know, it’s funny because for me, productivity is part of everything. You know, anything that you want to change, create influence, persuade, produce, like those are all actions.

[00:17:02] Tiago Forte: Right. Those are all you taking ownership and agency deciding something is going to be different than what would happen anyway, and then taking that action. So to me, productivity is just the art and science of making those actions effective. Right. So I mean, it’s almost hard to wrap your head around the variety of use cases.

[00:17:22] Tiago Forte: You know, when I want to improve my relationship with my wife, one example you might think that has nothing to do, like productivity, efficiency, knowledge management, nothing could be more different, but everything in life comes down to information, right? Like, if you think about it, we only access to anything in our reality is through our senses and what our senses, but just nerve impulses firing, right?

[00:17:42] Tiago Forte: So like with my wife, I’ll do everything from write down things that I know she likes. Right, instead of waiting until my usual habit of, you know, waiting till Christmas Eve or the day before our birthday, and then, oh shoot, what can I get? I actually now keep a running list of when she says she likes that food or she likes that color, or whatever it is, I can just jot down a note and then when the time comes for her birthday or Christmas, I look like the most thoughtful husband in the world because I’ve referenced my notes

[00:18:08] Tiago Forte: That’s very smart. Right. I haven’t actually become more thoughtful, but I can appear more thoughtful by relying on my notes . 

[00:18:16] Rebecca Hotsko: That’s brilliant. 

[00:18:18] Tiago Forte: There are even things like, you know, our, like our car maintenance. That’s not like the creative, super advanced use case, but you know, I have a folder on my computer with all the notes related to the car, the VIN number, the mileage, what kind of oil it needs, the repairs that have happened.

[00:18:33] Tiago Forte: So when that time comes to do the car maintenance, I’m not like, oh my gosh, like what year is the car? What is the ID number? All these things, struggling to find all this information dissipated, all these different. There’s always just one place to look, which means the car maintenance is less painful and difficult, which means it happens faster, which means it happens more regularly, which means our cars are maintained and ready to go at all times, right?

[00:18:59] Tiago Forte: Like there’s a cascading effect. By taking care of these little seemingly mundane details, they’ve kind of flowed downstream to create eventually more peace of mind, less stress, more free time, right? Like every little bit of productivity that I achieve. Means I finish work 10 minutes earlier, 20 minutes earlier, an hour earlier, and have more time to spend with my kids.

[00:19:21] Tiago Forte: That is the ultimate, most meaningful impact of productivity for me. 

[00:19:26] Rebecca Hotsko: I’ve also heard you talk about how, just on the topic of productivity, beyond building a second brain, what are some ways that people can find a better way to manage and tackle their to-do lists and a long list of priorities that people are faced with during a day and think about how to do it in the most productive way.

[00:19:49] Tiago Forte: Yeah, so I’ve noticed I’ve worked, you know, in, in the productivity field for a long time, and also as a productivity coach, and I’ve noticed, I always try to pay attention to what are the tasks that people put on their to-do list that just, they’re like zombie tasks. They just sit there neither getting finished, like no progress being made.

[00:20:07] Tiago Forte: But nor do they get deleted and archived. They just kinda like sitting there taking up time, taking up space. Every time you see them, you feel this pang of guilt. You know, like, oh, why? I said I wanted to get to that this week. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t you, you, you go down this shame spiral. Like, gosh, I can’t even, it’s funny.

[00:20:23] Tiago Forte: It’s usually something very simple. It’s like calling the doctor’s. And somehow week after week after week passes and you’re just like, what is wrong with me? I’m an adult. Why can I not do this simple thing? And honestly, there can be a few different reasons for that. But one of them is that hiding within that task is a bunch of little tasks.

[00:20:41] Tiago Forte: So often those tasks are really projects. We think, oh, it’s just a simple little action. But actually if you unpack it, you know, like something like calling the doctor’s office, which happened to me recently. I had to update the insurance, find my insurance ID number, which required creating a login on the insurance website.

[00:20:57] Tiago Forte: Then I had to look up all the doctors in my area. Then I had to compare schedules with my wife to see who was going to take care of the kids. Then I had to make sure I had it. A dozen different little subtasks that I had to do in order to make a doctor’s appointment. And this is where notes come in handy, right?

[00:21:11] Tiago Forte: Like, like right in that task, like underneath the task on your to-do list. You need to write those out. You need to take notes. What is the doctor’s phone number? What is your insurance id? What are the substeps? What did you talk about in your last doctor’s appointment? Like, Basically, there’s information that you have to have in mind in order to complete that task, and that is the very information that you want to store in your notes, not try to remember all those contextual details for each and every task on your to-do list, which is just a recipe for overwhelming burnout.

[00:21:40] Rebecca Hotsko: I can definitely relate to what you just said. I’m sure a lot of people can, there are certain things that you just keep moving over to the next day’s to-do list. And I guess just on that topic, I am wondering, are you a fan of to-do lists in general and I guess what is perhaps the better way to implement, to-do list?

[00:22:00] Tiago Forte: Yeah, you know, I follow a methodology called GTD Getting Things Done, which is a kind of the OG productivity philosophy from, I think it was first published 20 years ago, which is just, it’s funny, it’s become kind of almost common sense things like, write everything down, don’t try to keep what are called open loops running on your head.

[00:22:18] Tiago Forte: Write everything down, write tasks in terms of the next action instead of like step number five. What is just the very next physical step that you’ll take and things like horizons of action abilities. So think about near term, medium term, long-term and focus on one horizon at a time. Really difficult to do short-term and long-term things at the same time.

[00:22:40] Tiago Forte: And so to just think about it in those, those buckets. I really just adopted wholesale. David Allen’s, you know, GTD methodology. His work deals with actionable information tasks. Mine deals with all the other kinds of information, which is notes and references. And if you think about it, those are the only two kinds of information, actionable and non-actionable.

[00:22:59] Tiago Forte: Those two categories cover all information in the universe. 

[00:23:04] Rebecca Hotsko: And then I guess in terms of tackling your list of to-dos that you’ve written, would you say that it’s wise to write them down in order of the time or the way that you want to actually implement them? So it’s, I know number one is the most important, and then number five is the least important so that you don’t end up pushing off, I guess, the thing that you’re not looking forward to doing in a day.

[00:23:29] Tiago Forte: Yeah, I think it is important. I mean, there’s all these little constraints that you can create, you know, one is what you said, prioritizing. I mean, if you just start your day by often, it’s as simple as re sorting that list, right? Like just moving this one up a couple notches, this one down. If you start your day with a prioritized list from most to least important, you just made your day so much easier and.

[00:23:54] Tiago Forte: Right. Instead of every time you finish one thing, having to turn back to that list, make a decision, which is the hardest thing for humans, is making decisions, trying to reevaluate this entire list every single moment throughout the day. You’re going to have all this work to do. It’s a really powerful way.

[00:24:08] Tiago Forte: Another thing is to limit the size of the list, right? Like try. Often people add like 15 things on their to-do list, which they. They know in their heart that there is not a snowball’s chance in hell that they’re going to do all those things, or even half of them. Well, what do we do? We know this, and yet day after day, oh, this day will be different.

[00:24:28] Tiago Forte: We’re like eternal optimists. No. This will be the magical day that I actually get everything done. But if you’re just honest with yourself, I find for me, if I get three or four things done in a day, amidst all the meetings and other just email and other things that are kind of built into the day, that’s a productive day.

[00:24:43] Tiago Forte: What if you really just forced yourself at the beginning of the day or the night before to just say, what were the three things? Or even what were the two things or the one thing? Wouldn’t that be a productive day if you got your absolute most important thing done? I think a lot of times people know these things.

[00:24:57] Tiago Forte: We just don’t appreciate the importance of actually adding these constraints to our to-do list. We think they don’t matter or we think it’s not worth the time to sort of plan and strategize. But all I can say is absolutely. 

[00:25:11] Rebecca Hotsko: I agree, and I think that’s something that’s just really helped me during the day is writing my top.

[00:25:17] Rebecca Hotsko: It’s like a maximum of five things I usually try to do because I don’t write down the more normal things like meetings. So it’s like, what are the five most important things I have to do every day? Then you’re not overwhelmed. And then usually those are things that yeah, are very manageable in a day. I’ve found that extremely helpful for just feeling more organized during the day and again, just productive so that you’re not redoing things and you’re not pushing things off.

[00:25:43] Rebecca Hotsko: And I guess the other thing that I wanted to ask you about is lots of people reaching out to you because they aren’t making progress on their goals as perhaps as fast or efficiently as they want. And so what are some of the common pitfalls you see individuals make that hold them back from reaching their goals?

[00:26:02] Tiago Forte: It’s kinda like health. Everyone has their own situation, their own diagnosis. But gosh, I feel like the biggest, if I had to say, what is the bottleneck in most people’s ability to move forward, the things that matter to them, it’s really self-awareness. It’s really knowing themselves. Which includes everything from, you know, do you know the way your mind works, right?

[00:26:23] Tiago Forte: Like, like a lot of experience as you move through your career and gain more experience is just knowing in what situations you thrive, in what situations you just go down in flames, what kind of people you work well with, which ones bring the worst out of you. What kinds of tools, what kind of environments, what kind of systems, what kind of software, what kind of computer, like there’s all these little details that maybe no single little detail of your working environment like is decisive, but together they’re completely decisive.

[00:26:51] Tiago Forte: And once you know those things about yourself, if you just continuously put yourself in situations that are best for you, that support the way your mind works, you’re just going to be so much more successful. I think self-awareness also very much has to do with the emotional side. And to me, this is the, this is like the black sheep or the elephant in the room of the whole productivity world is that.

[00:27:11] Tiago Forte: Very often when people say, I want to be more productive, or I want to learn about productivity, what they’re actually seeking is emotional regulation. They’re actually trying to find a way to regulate or just sort of deal with and handle these emotions, which we all have. We all have emotions about the work we’re doing, right?

[00:27:29] Tiago Forte: We have fear, we have anxiety, we have aversion, we have attraction, we have desire for, for certain goals and aversion to others. We have uncertainty. We have. All these different emotions that just simmer underneath the surface that we often think, oh, I, I just need to set those aside and just do my job.

[00:27:47] Tiago Forte: Right. And yet, emotions are information, like bringing this back to the second brain, emotions might be the most potent source of information. It’s your subconscious, which if you think about it, is so much more vast than your conscious. It’s kind of like your, your conscious mind is like a little ship in the ocean, just the very, very top level.

[00:28:06] Tiago Forte: And your subconscious is all those depths of the ocean. So let’s say if you start working with a collaborator, you know, at work and you feel that uneasiness, we’ve all felt it. The sense that, oh, I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something off about this person, that source of intuition. Is the most potent source of wisdom for you to listen to.

[00:28:25] Tiago Forte: There is something to that for you. You may, you may still have to work with them, right? But learning to listen to these kinds of subterranean feelings, it’s the difference, I think, between leaders and people who are more junior in their careers, like you think, you look at these leaders or executives or founders than you.

[00:28:40] Tiago Forte: Kind of emulate and you think, oh, they have this skill and that skill. Often they’re just more connected to themselves emotionally. They’re more in touch with their intuition. They’re more in touch with their inner world, their psychology, their mind, and that’s the difference between a career, between one career and, and a different one.

[00:28:56] Tiago Forte: It’s something that’s not a talked a lot about in my field, but I think is is just crucial. 

[00:29:02] Rebecca Hotsko: I definitely think building a second brain, as we talked about in the beginning, can just really help you stay on track with your goals and help you meet them. But I’ve also heard you talk about something very interesting and what I guess holds some people back from reaching their goals and it’s that they don’t have a project attached to that.

[00:29:20] Rebecca Hotsko: So can you talk a little bit about that? I found it very, very interesting. 

[00:29:26] Tiago Forte: Yeah. I really love projects. I just think projects not only are, it’s like they’re the best unit of work for modern work, you know, it’s like in the past, I don’t know, in the 1950s, you could make a five year plan. You could have these long-term goals, but it’s like the world is now changing so fast, there’s so much uncertainty that making long-term plans and long-term goals just doesn’t make sense anymore.

[00:29:51] Tiago Forte: Have you noticed, it’s like by the time I’ve arrived, I arrive at that far off time. Everything will have changed. I’ll probably be in a different job at a different organization. I might have a completely different career, right? So long-term planning makes less and less sense the faster the world changes. At the same time.

[00:30:08] Tiago Forte: You don’t, you don’t just want to be at the level of tasks, right? Because like you need to know where things are going. You need to know what it’s leading to, what you’re trying to achieve. So you need something to aim for. But what I like about a project is like, I actually tend to advise people to make small projects that take place over like two to four weeks.

[00:30:25] Tiago Forte: Two to four weeks to me is the best kind of time horizon, right? It’s long enough that you can really accomplish something meaningful. You can really do something amazing in two to four weeks, but it’s not so long that you end up getting kind of bogged down in months and months of just grinding work and losing sight of where you’re going.

[00:30:42] Tiago Forte: And so, in fact, we just did this in the course that I teach. I have people make a project list. Just make a list of the concrete specific projects that you’re working on right now. And for most people when they do that, it’s the first time they’ve ever done it and they find it tremendously. You know, once you make a project list, you can prioritize them.

[00:30:59] Tiago Forte: Well, what is my most important project? Second most important, third most important, they can put them into groups. These are my personal projects, my work projects, my side projects. They can delegate some or automate them, or postpone them or redesign them. It’s like you, you can really only sort of design your productive life once you have this complete inventory of everything you’re working on.

[00:31:18] Tiago Forte: And to me, the best way to really document what you’re working on is in terms of a project. 

[00:31:23] Rebecca Hotsko: And so would you say then that a project always has to be attached to an overarching goal, or what is a project, I guess, without a goal then? 

[00:31:34] Tiago Forte: Yeah, I would say it needs an outcome. I like the term outcome because it’s very kind of practical concrete.

[00:31:40] Tiago Forte: Sometimes when you ask people to write goals, they’re like, ah, my goals, yes. You know, they’re like, they create these kinds of fanciful, imaginative, you know, build my own boat and sail the Caribbean with my family, you know, and never return home. They come up with these visions, where there is a place.

[00:31:57] Tiago Forte: Like visioning, imagining, manifesting. That is one thing, but with a project, I just ask people, what do you want to happen? It’s incredible to me how often we don’t do this. Like, okay, this project that you’re putting tons of time and energy into, if you could wave a magic wand and have something happen at the end, what would that be like?

[00:32:14] Tiago Forte: What would happen in the, in the real world? And they have to go, oh, I don’t know. Often what they’ll say is just the project is finished. Right, but I’ll say the project finishing can’t be the outcome because you could finish your own out by just saying, I’m done with it. Like, what does the project finishing cause to exist?

[00:32:31] Tiago Forte: What does the project finishing make? That wasn’t real before? And they often really have to think about it. But once you think of that outcome suddenly, and essentially you know where you’re headed, all these pathways to achieve it, start to reveal themselves. We start to realize that I’ve been walking down this one path, but there’s this, there’s this other.

[00:32:49] Tiago Forte: And another path. And another path. There’s so many ways to produce any given outcome, and that’s where creativity comes into play. That’s where imagination comes into play. Like it takes imagination to really visualize all the different ways to achieve, you know, a certain outcome. 

[00:33:04] Rebecca Hotsko: I think this has just a lot of applications too for investors who are managing their own money, doing it themselves, and how they can, I guess, create a framework to make it into more manageable steps.

[00:33:18] Rebecca Hotsko: Because I think that’s a common problem among everyone where it’s how do I take this thing and put it into daily manageable steps, and I think this is a great process. Helps you identify what you actually want to do, because every investor’s goal is going to be different. So what you want your outcome to be, and then the projects would be how do you get there?

[00:33:38] Rebecca Hotsko: Is that the right way to think of it? 

[00:33:41] Tiago Forte: Yeah, so there’s a very interesting application here to investing because you know, when I was developing this whole framework, I was in Silicon Valley in San Francisco, and there’s a lot of investors you know, that you just met. There’s VCs, there’s like VC associates, other investors, institutional investors, and there’s something funny where it’s like if you’re a project manager and a big organization, it’s pretty cool, pretty clear what the project is like.

[00:34:02] Tiago Forte: It’s what your boss asks you to do. It’s what the department said was, you know, the main priority for that quarter, whatever. But as an investor, similar to freelancers, entrepreneurs, independent contractors, anyone whose work is not given to them by someone else, you kind of have to make up your own projects, right?

[00:34:19] Tiago Forte: No one gives them to you. You have to just decide, like, what am I going to learn? What am I going to build? What am I going to create? What am I going to write? And that is so true of investing. Like you could just kind of want like, it’s funny, there’s a trend now of like, On TikTok of like a day in the life of a vc. I dunno if you’ve seen this, but a lot of VCs are going like, oh, this is my daily routine.

[00:34:40] Tiago Forte: And then they show, hour by hour, what they do throughout the day. And I think one reason people are interested in that is like a lot of people wonder what do investors do all day? Like they just account for their money. They just like to research stuff on the internet. Like it’s very unclear. But I think investors very much do have projects.

[00:34:54] Tiago Forte: Things. They’re trying to learn skills, they’re trying to develop industries, they’re trying to research companies. They’re trying to do due diligence on, there’s reports, they’re writing presentations, they’re making, I don’t know partners, they’re recruiting. Each of those things that I just named, like eight of them are projects.

[00:35:10] Tiago Forte: There’s a start date. There’s an end date, and there’s a certain outcome that you’re trying to achieve. 

[00:35:15] Rebecca Hotsko: And I guess just on that point, so when someone has a ton of different tasks to do during the day and they perhaps require different and analytical versus a creative aspect, how do you approach tackling these tasks that require different parts of our brain?

[00:35:33] Rebecca Hotsko: Because I find personally it’s very hard to switch from doing a creative task like editing a video, a podcast episode, to. Going and researching what to talk about with a guest or researching investments and stuff. 

[00:35:46] Tiago Forte: Yeah, that’s such a good point. I think this is another one of the big kinds of things about the modern condition: we have so many hats we wear.

[00:35:54] Tiago Forte: So many hats we wear. We are, you know, we’re a spouse or a parent or like  even in our jobs, like just strictly work. You have someone you report to. You might have people that report to you. You’re all like, depending on the meeting, you might be an advisor and just providing your input. You might be the decision maker, you might be the person doing the research and presenting it.

[00:36:14] Tiago Forte: You might just be the person taking notes on the, like in every single meeting, we play a slightly different role. So I think one of the things that we have to get good at is compartmentalization. You have to know how to, it’s almost like acting like in this meeting or this with this client or in this project or this situation, I’m going to play this role.

[00:36:34] Tiago Forte: To take notes from that point of view, from that lens, take in all this information, save it in your notes, but then the minute that meeting is done, just get those notes and all those documents and files and just set them aside because in the very next meeting, you might have a completely different role to play, or in the next conversation, or with the next project.

[00:36:53] Tiago Forte: That is really hard to do with your first. Right. Like have you ever, you know, like walked away from a conversation? It’s like you’re still processing everything that went on, just swirling around your head, and then you have to pivot into a completely different state of mind and you’re like, whoa, you have like mental whiplash.

[00:37:07] Tiago Forte: One of the few ways that I found to do that more easily is by taking notes because I can just get those notes and literally save them. Put them to the side on my computer and turn to the next thing. Yeah, a second brain is a way to almost like save your place in a video game, set aside that progress, turn to something else, and be able to come back and sort of boot up that state of mind once again and continue right where you left off.

[00:37:32] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, that’s super interesting. One thing that I’ve been thinking about doing after I’ve been writing my own notes after, say, a podcast episode I listen to, I’ll keep going back to that, where I write down, say it’s an investment that I’m interested in or something they said. It made me want to look into that further.

[00:37:51] Rebecca Hotsko: And I was thinking about the episodes I produce. Is there any merit, do you think, to sharing my key takeaways with [00:38:00] listeners? Because often if we have an episode, some of them can be, I guess, very dense with information and you might leave it being like, that was a great episode, but then you kind of forget maybe the takeaways.

[00:38:11] Rebecca Hotsko: And so what I’ve been doing now since reading your book is almost saying, Not only the things that I like, but what am I, what are the actionable takeaways from each episode? And I was wondering then, have you ever used the second Brain Notes as something that you share with others? 

[00:38:27] Tiago Forte: Oh yeah. That’s one of the main use cases.

[00:38:30] Tiago Forte: Is, yeah, it’s like every time you, you know, you watch a slide presentation, if you just write down three bullet points, those three bullet points, I call this distillation. They’re like the distilled essence of that slide presentation. Often people like, I’m sure you see this every day, people will say, they’ll recommend content to you.

[00:38:47] Tiago Forte: Oh, watch this slide presentation or read this book. Or watch this documentary, right? I can just tell you from long experience, that is not effective. No one is going to spend 10 hours reading a book, or very few [00:39:00] people will spend 10 hours reading a book just because

 you casually mentioned it, right? But if you send them a little one page or just not even a one page, just like a paragraph with some bullet points of a summary, they are infinitely more likely to sort of glance over.

[00:39:15] Tiago Forte: Those key points that you’ve sent them, and then they can decide, maybe they’ll decide, this has no relevance to my current interest. I’m not going to read it. But there’s a much higher chance that if they’re, they are relevant, they will then read that thing. Right? This is so effective that I’ve essentially stopped recommending content.

[00:39:30] Tiago Forte: I’ve only, I only share summaries. All I’m trying to do is help that person decide if this piece of content, this, this work, whatever it is, is worth the investment of their time to really consume or. And whether they like whichever one they choose, it’s valuable to them, right? Like them deciding, no, this is not relevant, is in a way just as valuable.

[00:39:50] Tiago Forte: Because now they’ve not spent all those hours consuming something that is not relevant. And why does that matter? If you become that person that people expect, oh, Rebecca, you know, she always is just very succinct to the point and respects my time and attention to give me a recommendation with a summary that I can actually act on.

[00:40:08] Tiago Forte: Your reputation gets better. They value their relationship more. They’re more likely to send interesting things to you. They’re more likely to read other kinds of messages, you know, like investment pitches or whatever it is that you send. It’s like if you become this kind of hub of knowledge in, in succinct distilled form, you’re going to start to create value in your network like you just wouldn’t believe.

[00:40:29] Rebecca Hotsko: Mm-hmm. . I totally agree. Okay. I’m glad that that is something that you do too, because I do get messages from listeners saying, how are you applying this? Or What do you think of this investment? And so I think it would be cool to have that sharing note platform. And so I guess I’m wondering, do you have any that you recommend?

[00:40:45] Rebecca Hotsko: I know that you have some in your book, but even for the purposes of sharing, is there maybe a better one? 

[00:40:51] Tiago Forte: Yeah. I have a YouTube video. It’s, I think, the most popular YouTube video we’ve ever done with four note taking archetypes. So I basically explained in the  video how you are an architect note taker.

[00:41:03] Tiago Forte: A librarian note taker, a gardener note taker, or a student note taker. And then depending on which archetype you are, I then recommend specific products to you. But some of the most common, just generally from that framework are like Evernote, obsidian, and Apple Notes. Those are probably the foremost common and those correspond to each of the four archetypes.

[00:41:24] Rebecca Hotsko: And I guess just for our listeners, what would you say is a great first step that they can take that’s something actionable they can do after listening to this episode today? 

[00:41:35] Tiago Forte: Yeah. Here’s what I would recommend they do. Don’t even download a new app, right? Like you don’t know if this is for you. You don’t know if this is something you’re going to be committed to.

[00:41:43] Tiago Forte: So just do a test drive, open up whatever is the pre-installed default app on your. If you’re on iOS, it’s probably Apple Notes. If you’re on Android, it might be Google Keep, or depending on which version of Android, you’ll have something else. But I guarantee you there is some basic note-taking app and just take one note a day for 30 days.

[00:42:02] Tiago Forte: Personally, you know, my long-term average I found is two notes a day. That’s it. And a note is not this big document. It’s like one quote, one image, one idea, one theory, right? It’s like, can be one sentence, take one note a day for 30 days. It’ll take a minute a day, right? Save them in the note taking app.

[00:42:22] Tiago Forte: That’s the important part. At the end of 30 days, just. Open up that app. Look through these at least 30 notes and think about how you might leverage those notes to become more productive, more effective, and more creative. Right? Just, I won’t even suggest how that might be, but just ask yourself, if you don’t look inside that application and find ways that you can use 30 notes that you’ve taken one note a day.

[00:42:45] Tiago Forte: Nothing else that I say will convince you. You really have to convince yourself, but the best way to do that is. Try it as a habit for 30 days. You can put it on your calendar, set a reminder on your phone. I think the big barrier that people have to overcome is they, they actually, in their heart of hearts, don’t believe that they have access to good enough ideas, whether they’re own or ones in, in the outer world that they encounter to be worth this effort to be worth taking notes on.

[00:43:09] Tiago Forte: So the first thing you have to do is prove to yourself through this little 30 day experiment that you do, because what happens for most people is they look at these 30 notes and they realize, oh my gosh, I have access to so much know. So much wisdom. I’m intaking every day, so many insights from podcasts and YouTube videos and articles and books and, you know, shows like this.

[00:43:29] Tiago Forte: Once that light bulb turns on and you really start believing in the power of the ideas that you have access to, everything else is going to come naturally at that point. Go to my YouTube channel, go to my blog, read my book, follow other creators, and you know, content creators who write on this stuff.

[00:43:43] Tiago Forte: Like there’s so much out there, but the initial spark of wanting to do this and believing in it is the thing that you have to do first. 

[00:43:51] Rebecca Hotsko: Yeah, I think that was such a great tip for everyone to start with if they don’t already take notes. And I guess just for someone who is completely new to note taking  and they’re not even really sure what they should be taking notes on, should, I guess, the criteria, be it something they want to, they find interesting, something they want to learn more about.

[00:44:10] Rebecca Hotsko: Maybe it’s related. It doesn’t have to be related to their job. It could just be interesting. What’s a framework or criteria you kind of use? 

[00:44:18] Tiago Forte: Yeah. You know, often people, they really take notes through the lens of should, right? I think it’s because that’s what we were taught in school, right? What would the teacher say?

[00:44:27] Tiago Forte: You should take notes on this because it will be on the test. You should take notes on this because you’ll need it to complete your homework. Or to get a good grade or to graduate, like there was always this, you know, this carrot that we were going after and we didn’t actually want to take notes. We just had to in order to get to that thing.

[00:44:45] Tiago Forte: But once you leave school, it’s very different. You know, no one is telling you to take notes or telling you what to take notes on. No one is grading you or giving you any kind of evaluation. Like really in your professional life. No one cares if you take notes. They only care if you produce results. Right.

[00:45:02] Tiago Forte: So you have to be very, this is where self-awareness comes in. Really ask yourself, you know, if you take notes through the lens of should the stuff you keep is going to be stuff that seems like it would be useful, but it’s not. Because there’s no gravitational pull. It’s like an obligation, it’s a burden, right?

[00:45:18] Tiago Forte: You really have to take your personal notes based on. On passion, what interests you? I often say what resonates with you? You know, when you’re reading a book or an article or listening to a podcast and something you hear or read something that just, you just have that feeling, I have to hold onto this.

[00:45:34] Tiago Forte: This somehow matters to me. It’s important for my future self. Remember this. It’s, it’s, it’s really a feeling like the hair will stand up on the, on your arm or the back of your neck. You’ll get goosebumps. Your heart will beat a little faster, your pupils will widen like yours, your subconscious mind. Your body will actually have a reaction to information that is the perfect indicator that that is something you should write down in your notes. 

[00:46:00] Rebecca Hotsko: And just tying it back to investing because this is one thing that I’ve started doing for each day’s stock. Every company that I’m interested in, I have a little note that I write things on, whether it’s important things from the earnings call or that I’ve listened to someone say, I’ll write down a little tidbit.

[00:46:18] Rebecca Hotsko: And then it’s kind of interesting because I found I can create connections or. These two people are saying opposite things, so then it’s something that I will explore further. And so it just goes back to, it’s something so simple, but it helps you create connections between things that you might not have otherwise because it was just in your memory, but in your, when it’s just in your mind, you’re not really connecting all those dots together.

[00:46:40] Rebecca Hotsko: Whereas I could see them on my note. 

[00:46:43] Tiago Forte: Exactly. Once you can really only, like you said, notice patterns, make connections, edit things, annotate them when they’re outside your head, right? Like how could you do any of those things in the vague, kind of the vagueness of your own mind? It’s just impossible. You can have ideas.

[00:46:59] Tiago Forte: They can arise. But if you don’t externalize them and document them, they’re basically like a vapor, like one minute they’re here and then you turn to something else and it’s gone. To really work with ideas to manipulate them as if they’re like ingredients that you’re cooking with. All of that can only happen if they’re, if they exist in some form outside of your head.

[00:47:19] Rebecca Hotsko: Well, that was super helpful. You gave us lots to implement after this. I know that I’m going to keep doing it, and hopefully, I’ll get some shared notes going soon for our community here. But before I let you go today, where can the audience go to learn more about everything that you do and everything that you put out?

[00:47:38] Tiago Forte: Yeah, it’s been a pleasure. You can go to building a second brain.com, which has all the information, and my book is there. My course is there, my podcast, my YouTube channel. We produce a lot of second brain-related, instructional how-to content, and it can all be found at building a second brain.com. Thank you again.

[00:48:00] Rebecca Hotsko: So much for coming on today, Tiago. 

[00:48:02] Tiago Forte: Absolutely. Thank you. 

[00:48:05] Rebecca Hotsko: All right. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. Make sure to follow the show on your favorite podcast app so that you never miss a new episode. And if you’ve been enjoying the podcast, I would really appreciate it if you left a rating or review.

[00:48:20] Rebecca Hotsko: This really helps support us and is the best way to help new people discover the show. And if you haven’t already, make sure to sign up for our free newsletter. We Study Markets which go out daily and we’ll help you understand what’s going on in the markets in just a few minutes. So with that all said, I will see you again next time. 

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