ATHLLC7028110306

00:00:00.000 | A quick word from our sponsor today.

00:00:01.740 | Hello and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:06.700 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:09.440 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins,

00:00:10.540 | and each week I sit down with the world's best experts

00:00:13.340 | to learn the strategies, tactics, and frameworks

00:00:15.440 | that have shaped their success.

00:00:17.040 | There's a common expression

00:00:18.440 | called drinking from the fire hose

00:00:19.840 | that sums up the way many of us experience information

00:00:22.840 | in today's world.

00:00:24.140 | There's just way too much content to consume,

00:00:26.340 | whether it's videos, movies, podcasts, articles,

00:00:29.240 | blogs, books, it keeps going.

00:00:31.400 | And what do we do with all of this?

00:00:33.100 | How are we supposed to remember

00:00:34.500 | and use all of this information?

00:00:36.700 | David Allen, creator of Getting Things Done,

00:00:39.040 | is famous for saying, "Your mind is for having ideas,

00:00:41.460 | "not for holding them."

00:00:42.440 | But how do we do that?

00:00:44.300 | So today I'm talking with Tiago Forte,

00:00:46.600 | who's got a way for us to get those ideas out of our brain

00:00:49.740 | and into a reliable system for retrieval,

00:00:52.240 | what he calls a second brain.

00:00:54.240 | Tiago's become one of the world's foremost experts

00:00:56.340 | on productivity, teaching cohort-based courses

00:00:58.900 | on building a second brain for years.

00:01:00.740 | And now he put that information into a new book

00:01:03.000 | that I loved called "Building a Second Brain,

00:01:05.500 | "A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life

00:01:07.640 | "and Unlock Your Creative Potential."

00:01:09.840 | We're gonna talk about the four steps

00:01:11.100 | to having a highly effective second brain,

00:01:13.260 | why it's important to become more of a maker than a consumer,

00:01:16.640 | why the most common way people categorize information

00:01:19.000 | might not be best,

00:01:20.300 | why you might not need to change the tools you're using

00:01:22.400 | to get started, and a whole lot more.

00:01:24.800 | So let's get started.

00:01:27.240 | Tiago, welcome to the show, and thanks for being here.

00:01:30.440 | - Thank you, good to be here, Chris.

00:01:32.600 | - So I already know that I'm a suboptimal note-taker,

00:01:35.440 | but I did just scroll through my Evernote history

00:01:37.640 | this morning, and it looks like I've been doing it wrong

00:01:39.840 | since about July 4th, 2010.

00:01:42.200 | So needless to say, I am very excited

00:01:44.140 | about this conversation, as much work as might be

00:01:46.740 | on the back half of this to try to put in a better system.

00:01:49.640 | - Let's talk.

00:01:50.480 | That's kind of how this all started.

00:01:52.180 | In the early years, it wasn't about building a business,

00:01:55.680 | it wasn't about writing a book,

00:01:56.800 | even having a course, it was just one very specific problem,

00:02:00.100 | which is what do you do with all this stuff

00:02:02.100 | in your Evernote inbox?

00:02:03.280 | That was like the very, very first problem

00:02:05.880 | I was trying to solve.

00:02:07.380 | - But before we get started, I just have to ask,

00:02:09.600 | you worked with Kevin Chin on your studio, correct?

00:02:12.300 | - Yes.

00:02:13.180 | - It looks great.

00:02:14.080 | For anyone unfamiliar, the Kevin we're discussing

00:02:16.040 | started this company called Dream Studio Course.

00:02:18.640 | They have a course and optional hands-on support

00:02:21.100 | to help you build your home office into a studio

00:02:24.040 | that looks like Tiago's, it looks and sounds incredible,

00:02:26.680 | on video calls or meetings.

00:02:28.380 | In fact, I'm about to swap offices

00:02:30.100 | with another room in our house,

00:02:31.580 | and I'm gonna use the course that Kevin created

00:02:33.300 | to make my setup 10 times better.

00:02:35.300 | So if you're watching on YouTube,

00:02:36.780 | hopefully you'll see that upgrade in the future.

00:02:38.780 | And if that's interesting,

00:02:39.840 | you should definitely check it out, DreamStudioCourse.com.

00:02:43.900 | But I wanna start by sharing

00:02:45.700 | one of my favorite takeaways from the book.

00:02:47.700 | You said, "To be able to make use

00:02:49.240 | "of the information we value,

00:02:50.480 | "you need a way to package it up

00:02:51.980 | "and send it through time to our future self."

00:02:54.540 | So I think we're gonna talk a lot about the tactics,

00:02:56.840 | but to kick us off, I'd love to talk about the why

00:02:59.300 | behind a second brain and what it might unlock

00:03:01.600 | for those future selves.

00:03:03.240 | - Yeah, there's sort of three stages

00:03:05.500 | that people move through.

00:03:06.640 | In the first one, they're just trying to solve a problem,

00:03:08.600 | and that problem is called information overload.

00:03:11.040 | It's like a crisis, it's like a survival thing.

00:03:14.340 | They are just trying to keep their head above water.

00:03:16.800 | They're getting more emails, messages,

00:03:20.100 | seeing more social media posts,

00:03:22.540 | listening to more podcasts than they can even make sense of.

00:03:25.980 | It's, like you said, drinking from a fire hose.

00:03:28.240 | And it is affecting their mental health,

00:03:31.180 | their ability to focus, their attention span,

00:03:34.100 | even their relationships, their career prospects.

00:03:36.980 | It's like a real problem.

00:03:38.640 | That is the beginning point, but not the end point.

00:03:40.500 | That's just like the gateway.

00:03:41.540 | That's like the doorway that leads to everything.

00:03:43.840 | The other two stages, basically,

00:03:45.580 | they move on from there

00:03:46.700 | to just wanting to do their best work.

00:03:49.640 | Once the background noise and the static

00:03:51.980 | of information overload starts to subside,

00:03:54.540 | well, what do you do with this newfound freedom,

00:03:56.600 | this newfound bandwidth?

00:03:58.380 | You wanna do work that is more persuasive,

00:04:01.280 | impactful, original, effective, profitable.

00:04:05.800 | Like, whatever dimension you're measuring

00:04:08.240 | the quality of your work on, you wanna increase it.

00:04:10.040 | And that's where having notes starts to become

00:04:11.940 | not just a way to offload stuff from your mind,

00:04:14.380 | but then to selectively re-onload,

00:04:17.400 | like take back some of the knowledge,

00:04:19.640 | some of the ideas that you actually wanna use

00:04:21.880 | to create things, to build, to write,

00:04:24.280 | to speak, to create.

00:04:26.780 | And then eventually, when they really start to leverage

00:04:30.300 | and start to feel the second brain

00:04:31.840 | almost as like a cognitive exoskeleton,

00:04:34.340 | I almost think of like a mech warrior.

00:04:36.240 | You get up in it, you put your feet in the boots,

00:04:38.640 | and then you put your hands into the exoskeleton arms,

00:04:41.500 | and you're like, "Oh my gosh, the power!"

00:04:43.540 | Then what they really start to do

00:04:44.780 | is to advance their most important projects and goals,

00:04:48.040 | like things that they say

00:04:49.640 | they've been wanting to do for a long time,

00:04:51.540 | goals that they've said they've been working on for years,

00:04:54.140 | but not really making any progress.

00:04:55.640 | They start to make serious progress on those things.

00:04:58.040 | That's the arc, the three-part arc

00:05:00.040 | that I see people move through as they build a second brain.

00:05:03.780 | - Promise this whole thing isn't me reading a quote.

00:05:05.840 | I actually just have two,

00:05:06.940 | but I'm gonna read the second one.

00:05:08.200 | And I think this sets the framework up for all of this.

00:05:10.300 | You said the consumerist attitude towards information,

00:05:12.440 | that more is better, that we never have enough,

00:05:14.400 | and that what we already have isn't good enough,

00:05:16.240 | is at the heart of people's dissatisfaction

00:05:18.080 | with how they spend time online.

00:05:19.800 | Instead of trying to find the best content,

00:05:21.640 | I recommend instead switching your focus to making things,

00:05:24.280 | which is far more satisfying.

00:05:26.240 | There's a lot to unpack there,

00:05:27.800 | but if I take what you just said and that,

00:05:30.900 | I have to wonder how much of this is valuable

00:05:34.640 | as a superpower for bloggers and podcasters and creators,

00:05:38.540 | or how much of that creation

00:05:40.000 | is something that applies to anyone in any profession?

00:05:43.140 | - Such a good question.

00:05:44.480 | I think those groups you mentioned,

00:05:46.840 | who I'll just call content creators, are the leading edge.

00:05:50.400 | They're the leading edge.

00:05:51.380 | They're the ones that they hear about a system like this one,

00:05:53.540 | they go, "Oh my gosh, this is what I needed yesterday."

00:05:55.980 | They're more aware.

00:05:57.000 | They're more sensitive to what this would do for them.

00:06:00.040 | But I guess my assertion, my hypothesis,

00:06:02.920 | is that it's gonna spread.

00:06:04.920 | That those are just the early adopters.

00:06:06.520 | Those are the frontier people.

00:06:08.040 | But that essentially the category of content creator,

00:06:11.200 | I think in the near future is gonna be meaningless.

00:06:13.460 | Everyone is going to be a content creator.

00:06:15.260 | Even the category of freelancer or entrepreneur

00:06:17.680 | is gonna start to become meaningless.

00:06:19.960 | Even people in big organizations

00:06:21.740 | are gonna need the agency, the autonomy,

00:06:23.820 | the sort of self-determination

00:06:25.700 | that today entrepreneurs have.

00:06:27.420 | I guess that's my view of the future,

00:06:28.940 | is a lot of these categories that we fit into today

00:06:31.420 | are gonna dissolve.

00:06:32.860 | What I'm confident of is that we're gonna need

00:06:35.020 | to intake information, filter and curate it,

00:06:38.860 | the parts that actually enrich our lives and make us better,

00:06:41.320 | and then use it to either tell a story,

00:06:44.560 | send a message, create a document or a product or service.

00:06:48.720 | I had this quote in my book too.

00:06:49.680 | I think the process of creation

00:06:51.200 | is actually timeless and fundamentally human.

00:06:54.040 | The medium changes.

00:06:55.120 | Like today it's podcasting, tomorrow it's YouTube,

00:06:57.520 | the next day it's TikTok.

00:06:58.960 | But all humans are creators.

00:07:00.440 | All humans are inherently creative, I think.

00:07:02.880 | And eventually we're all going to use technology

00:07:05.840 | to do that more effectively.

00:07:07.320 | - It's funny, as you were talking,

00:07:08.320 | I was just thinking, okay,

00:07:10.000 | before I was officially a creator as a podcaster,

00:07:13.240 | I can think of all kinds of things from,

00:07:15.800 | I put together a slide show

00:07:17.320 | at my grandparents' like 50th anniversary.

00:07:20.160 | And it's like, that was something

00:07:21.300 | that was a collection of memories and emails and stories

00:07:24.160 | that I'd been collecting over time, but no organized way.

00:07:27.520 | Or I've had professional jobs

00:07:29.520 | where you've given presentations

00:07:31.560 | about things that you've become an expert on.

00:07:33.800 | When I was an investor, I became the ed tech investor

00:07:36.200 | 'cause I'd invested in a handful of education tech companies.

00:07:38.400 | And there were blog posts, there were articles

00:07:40.640 | that only later I had to go back and be like,

00:07:42.640 | where was that thing that was so interesting?

00:07:44.400 | Because the partners were like,

00:07:46.160 | hey, can you talk about that industry?

00:07:47.560 | So it made me realize there's full-time creator

00:07:50.680 | where creating content is the sole thing

00:07:53.720 | that is your income.

00:07:55.080 | And then there's, I have a job to do X, Y, or Z,

00:07:58.220 | but within that job, I'm creating content,

00:08:00.520 | whether it's a sales pitch

00:08:02.160 | or whether it's a presentation to other employees.

00:08:05.000 | I started realizing that

00:08:06.320 | even when I wasn't a creator per se,

00:08:08.800 | I actually was in many areas of life

00:08:11.000 | and it would have been way more beneficial

00:08:12.960 | for me to have thought, where is this note?

00:08:15.320 | Where is this line from this book that I read?

00:08:17.400 | Where is this blog post or email going to go

00:08:19.840 | so that I can make the most value of it in the future?

00:08:22.040 | Sometimes known and sometimes unknown.

00:08:23.880 | - Couldn't have said it better myself.

00:08:25.080 | That's exactly how I think.

00:08:26.280 | If you've ever given a presentation,

00:08:27.760 | made a PowerPoint and presented it to a few people,

00:08:31.440 | to me, right in that very common situation

00:08:34.320 | that almost everyone has faced,

00:08:36.000 | all the elements are there.

00:08:37.160 | You had to capture, you had to organize information,

00:08:40.160 | you had to distill it into a message, a point, an argument.

00:08:43.440 | You had to express it, you had to present it.

00:08:45.520 | Even if that was the only context

00:08:47.520 | that you ever used any of this,

00:08:49.560 | if your presentations to other people

00:08:52.320 | were 10 times more effective,

00:08:54.040 | wouldn't that make a difference?

00:08:55.280 | Wouldn't that lead to better outcomes

00:08:57.240 | in whatever you happen to be doing?

00:08:58.280 | I can't imagine it wouldn't, it has to.

00:09:00.560 | I really try to remove the emphasis on,

00:09:02.560 | yeah, like you said,

00:09:03.400 | full-time professional content creators.

00:09:05.560 | Those are very few in numbers

00:09:06.840 | and I wouldn't even recommend it to most people.

00:09:09.440 | But we are all expressing ourselves.

00:09:11.080 | That's the fundamental thing is self-expression.

00:09:13.280 | - A big concept in the book is this code framework

00:09:15.440 | that you just glazed over very quickly.

00:09:17.520 | But can we maybe walk through those four steps

00:09:20.240 | and maybe just start by just defining

00:09:22.560 | how you think of the definition of a second brain

00:09:24.680 | so people can have that before we step through it?

00:09:26.840 | - Sure.

00:09:27.680 | Yeah, code is really the heart and soul

00:09:29.520 | of the building a second brain world.

00:09:31.360 | It describes the creative process.

00:09:32.720 | That's really what we're talking about here

00:09:33.960 | is your creative process

00:09:35.240 | and making it digital and technological.

00:09:37.800 | Code was a discovery.

00:09:40.160 | Like I remember I was in my apartment in Mexico City

00:09:42.800 | where I was living with my wife at the time

00:09:45.000 | and I wasn't even trying to like fit it into an acronym

00:09:48.720 | or into a word.

00:09:49.560 | I was just like on a big sketch pad,

00:09:51.200 | I was just like writing different words

00:09:53.040 | and moving them around

00:09:53.880 | and then I suddenly saw code just pop out at me.

00:09:57.160 | And I was like, oh wow, like it seemed to emerge.

00:10:00.400 | And in my work it basically describes

00:10:02.800 | what is universal about the creative process.

00:10:04.760 | A lot is particular.

00:10:06.280 | There's a lot that changes person to person.

00:10:08.720 | But any creative medium, any creative profession,

00:10:11.600 | any creative output that I see

00:10:13.720 | in some shape or form does four things

00:10:15.680 | which are the four letters of code.

00:10:16.880 | Capturing information, which just means writing it down,

00:10:20.280 | documenting it, organizing it,

00:10:22.560 | which simply means adding some structure,

00:10:24.800 | some prioritization, some container.

00:10:27.240 | Distilling, which just means boiling it down,

00:10:30.080 | refining it to its essence, to the takeaway,

00:10:33.360 | to the action steps, to the punchline

00:10:36.440 | and then expressing it through writing, through speaking,

00:10:39.440 | through designing, through art, through music,

00:10:42.320 | some form of putting it back out into the world

00:10:44.720 | as your own interpretation.

00:10:46.040 | - I have a bunch of questions on each of them.

00:10:47.800 | But if we start in Capture,

00:10:49.320 | one of the things that I found fascinating

00:10:51.200 | when I first came across your work,

00:10:52.640 | I was like, oh, I am sure that Tiago's gonna have a,

00:10:57.120 | if you wanna capture, you've gotta use this tool.

00:10:59.680 | And I was, I would say, pleasantly surprised

00:11:01.880 | that you said there's not a perfect app

00:11:03.360 | or software system that works

00:11:04.720 | and people shouldn't even necessarily maintain

00:11:07.120 | everything in one place.

00:11:09.040 | That makes me think, okay, well, that's great

00:11:10.840 | because I probably have some already

00:11:12.360 | and it doesn't mean I'm doing it totally wrong.

00:11:14.000 | But I think it can also be hard for someone listening

00:11:16.120 | to say, okay, I wanna do this.

00:11:17.960 | I want a second brain.

00:11:19.080 | What should I do?

00:11:19.920 | And it's kinda like, well, you can kinda pick and choose.

00:11:21.600 | So maybe we start off with someone

00:11:23.400 | who's never really thought about this.

00:11:24.920 | They've got a couple notes in Apple Notes

00:11:26.640 | or a Google Doc here or there.

00:11:28.280 | And they're like, okay, I want a place to store information

00:11:31.840 | that I can access and benefit from

00:11:33.800 | through creative processes in the future.

00:11:36.000 | Where do I start if I haven't even thought

00:11:37.760 | through this process in terms of tools?

00:11:40.120 | It doesn't have to be a specific one,

00:11:41.440 | but it seems it almost would be easier

00:11:43.640 | if you were like, the answer is download

00:11:45.520 | the Building a Second Brain note-taking app and here it is.

00:11:48.760 | - I wish I could just say, you just download this app.

00:11:51.280 | Now you have a second brain.

00:11:52.400 | You don't even need to read the book.

00:11:53.600 | Maybe one day we'll get there.

00:11:54.680 | But yeah, with Capture.

00:11:56.800 | I think the main thing here is people, for some reason,

00:12:01.000 | always think about Capture as doing something new.

00:12:04.080 | Okay, what is the new, new thing I'm going to do?

00:12:07.080 | But everything that I recommend that I teach, it's empirical.

00:12:11.000 | It doesn't come from academia.

00:12:12.080 | It doesn't come from a theory.

00:12:13.360 | It doesn't start with sort of a concept.

00:12:15.600 | It starts from coaching.

00:12:17.280 | I just coach people, sit with them, talk with them,

00:12:19.720 | see what they're already doing that works.

00:12:21.560 | And we sort of make small tweaks and changes and bottom up.

00:12:25.800 | Instead of me coming in with this top-down framework

00:12:28.280 | saying you need to follow the framework.

00:12:30.040 | And so what I would really recommend people do

00:12:31.880 | is just please look at the content you're already consuming.

00:12:36.880 | If you changed nothing, how could you simply Capture,

00:12:41.960 | save the 1% most insightful ideas, quotes, takeaways,

00:12:46.960 | thoughts from what you're already consuming?

00:12:50.240 | Like no change.

00:12:51.280 | Like what are you doing?

00:12:52.120 | Do you read books?

00:12:52.960 | Do you read articles, podcasts, audio books,

00:12:55.920 | conversations with people?

00:12:57.240 | You are consuming,

00:12:58.760 | even if you're the most anti-tech person ever,

00:13:01.280 | you have no social media accounts, you're a recluse.

00:13:03.640 | You are consuming gigabytes of data per day in some way.

00:13:07.960 | Capture that, start there.

00:13:09.440 | And honestly, most people can stop there.

00:13:11.560 | It's like the sheer volume is already so high of consumption.

00:13:15.280 | You can just focus on capturing the 1%

00:13:17.560 | and never add any consumption ever.

00:13:20.080 | In fact, most people should reduce it.

00:13:21.560 | - It's interesting because I've heard you talk before

00:13:24.280 | and someone might listen to this and say, "Oh man."

00:13:26.520 | So Tiago is probably sitting there

00:13:27.840 | and throughout an entire day

00:13:28.960 | generating 10,000 notes of everything.

00:13:31.080 | And I actually feel like you might capture less notes

00:13:34.400 | than many people doing this.

00:13:36.280 | So how do you decide what is relevant enough

00:13:39.320 | or important enough to store?

00:13:41.560 | Because like you said,

00:13:42.760 | if we're all being exposed to gigabytes of information a day,

00:13:46.720 | it could be very easy to take that book you read

00:13:49.640 | and store a thousand quotes.

00:13:51.200 | It could be very easy to take every post you read

00:13:53.560 | and store that.

00:13:54.720 | Which I think honestly, looking back at my old Evernote,

00:13:58.040 | I was scrolling through it.

00:13:58.880 | I was like, "Gosh, every time I read an article,

00:14:00.640 | I would clip the whole article."

00:14:02.200 | And I would just save this article to Evernote.

00:14:04.040 | And then I just had a database of articles.

00:14:05.600 | I didn't know what they were for.

00:14:06.960 | And I think I was probably overzealous

00:14:09.040 | in my storing of information.

00:14:10.960 | In an early day where like,

00:14:12.240 | "Oh, I didn't even know this was possible."

00:14:13.960 | For some reason, I guess in 2010,

00:14:16.040 | maybe I thought the article would be gone in the future.

00:14:18.120 | So yeah, how do you decide what is relevant

00:14:20.080 | to put in a second brain?

00:14:21.440 | Because I guess the storage capacity is infinite.

00:14:24.520 | So you could put everything.

00:14:26.160 | - This is a real issue.

00:14:27.160 | For the kind of person who is prone

00:14:29.040 | to this kind of behavior in the first place,

00:14:31.280 | they far more likely are saving far too much.

00:14:35.320 | They're digital hoarding.

00:14:36.800 | They're doing the digital equivalent

00:14:38.400 | of like those hoarding TV shows

00:14:41.120 | where you can't even open the front door

00:14:42.760 | because there's pizza boxes

00:14:44.200 | and just like crap piled in every spare place.

00:14:47.960 | What's interesting is in the physical world,

00:14:49.760 | there's clear negative impacts

00:14:51.200 | like the ones I just mentioned.

00:14:52.320 | In the digital world, you can actually convince yourself,

00:14:54.240 | "No, this is good.

00:14:55.520 | "I'm creating value.

00:14:56.800 | "I'm acquiring real evergreen assets."

00:14:59.800 | You're not, you're just like stockpiling a resource

00:15:03.800 | that the more you stockpile when it comes to information,

00:15:07.080 | the less valuable it is 'cause you can't find anything.

00:15:09.600 | What is the point of 1,000 terabytes of data

00:15:12.960 | if you can't even make use of it,

00:15:14.960 | if it's all just an endless sea of stuff?

00:15:18.120 | And so most of my techniques and my rules of thumb

00:15:21.160 | that I teach people are how to capture less,

00:15:23.440 | how to capture less, be more discerning, more picky.

00:15:27.120 | Most people don't have a high enough standard.

00:15:28.800 | They read something that sounds halfway interesting

00:15:31.000 | and they save it.

00:15:32.120 | I try to save, and this is the end of a long journey.

00:15:34.400 | I went through a period of hoarding

00:15:35.840 | and I think that's actually probably good.

00:15:37.480 | Try to capture all the stuff.

00:15:38.600 | See how that goes for you.

00:15:39.800 | (laughs)

00:15:41.560 | When you discover, as I did,

00:15:42.920 | that it's hurting more than it's helping,

00:15:45.480 | you start to become so picky

00:15:47.240 | where I'll be reading a book and I'm like,

00:15:48.560 | is this a life-changing idea?

00:15:51.360 | Does this quote shatter my conceptions

00:15:54.720 | of how the world works?

00:15:56.560 | That is a high bar.

00:15:58.200 | But the great result of that is I'll read an entire book,

00:16:00.560 | I'll think the book is great.

00:16:01.560 | Five stars on Amazon, I'll have like five quotes from it.

00:16:03.840 | That's how it should be.

00:16:05.000 | The quotes are not everything

00:16:06.600 | that was even a little bit good in the book.

00:16:08.600 | The quotes are just like a bookmark.

00:16:10.360 | They're the digital equivalent

00:16:11.480 | of like having a book on your shelf.

00:16:13.120 | I have one over here where there's like a little Post-it

00:16:15.880 | and you go, hey, I think there's something in that book

00:16:18.280 | because you can always go back to the book

00:16:19.880 | and then have all the details there.

00:16:22.160 | All the notes, the quotes that you're saving,

00:16:24.480 | the only problem those are trying to solve

00:16:26.560 | is discoverability, is helping you rediscover

00:16:29.800 | and even remember that you once read a book about this.

00:16:33.880 | On my same computer, as I'm working,

00:16:35.760 | I'll just do Spotlight, open up the Kindle app,

00:16:39.080 | go straight to that book,

00:16:40.280 | open the passage that I'm looking at

00:16:41.920 | and go right back to where I read that book

00:16:43.800 | like five years in the past

00:16:45.360 | and pick up where I left off five years later.

00:16:47.480 | - One thing I obviously think I did poorly

00:16:49.040 | was saving articles.

00:16:50.280 | I imagine if you're reading a blog post

00:16:51.960 | that's really life-changing, let's say,

00:16:54.080 | it would be save the quote, not the whole thing.

00:16:56.440 | - Yes.

00:16:57.280 | - And you can link back to the quote.

00:16:58.320 | What are the tools, whether they're platform agnostic,

00:17:01.760 | meaning where the information's stored,

00:17:03.000 | but they're just collection tools

00:17:05.120 | or platform tools that you think are

00:17:07.520 | maybe in the consideration set for people to know about?

00:17:10.360 | - I've tried countless capture tools

00:17:13.600 | and I've settled on just a few very simple ones

00:17:16.680 | that have just stood the test of time.

00:17:18.600 | It comes down to paper notebooks.

00:17:21.560 | There's some use cases that they simply can't be beat,

00:17:24.000 | right, but then the second one,

00:17:25.760 | which is also the key to the first one,

00:17:27.160 | is a mobile app, right?

00:17:29.120 | After I take those notes on paper,

00:17:30.720 | at the end of the day or the end of the week,

00:17:32.080 | I use the Evernote mobile app,

00:17:33.800 | which has OCR, optical character recognition,

00:17:36.560 | snap a photo of that page,

00:17:37.960 | and now the paper notes have now become digital notes.

00:17:40.520 | So that part is essential.

00:17:41.640 | The notes app you use has to have a mobile app.

00:17:43.640 | I'd say probably 30 to 40% of the total notes I take

00:17:47.000 | are opening on my iPhone, going into the mobile app,

00:17:50.440 | just typing an idea, typing a thought I had,

00:17:53.040 | typing something I heard in a conversation.

00:17:55.400 | A third one is if you can automate,

00:17:57.760 | especially like long form reading is really powerful.

00:18:00.960 | I use an app called Readwise.

00:18:02.520 | Do you know Readwise?

00:18:03.680 | - I do.

00:18:04.520 | It's funny 'cause I sometimes have read

00:18:07.080 | all across different platforms

00:18:08.520 | and it's not the best until you're like,

00:18:10.400 | Readwise is actually the first reason I said,

00:18:11.920 | you know what, I should just only read in the Kindle app.

00:18:14.720 | - It's amazing.

00:18:15.560 | I mean, nothing like this existed when I started.

00:18:17.560 | Now it's a virtually completely automated solution.

00:18:21.080 | It's like a connector,

00:18:22.080 | like a bridge for anyone who doesn't know.

00:18:24.000 | I'm reading on my Kindle on any device, by the way.

00:18:27.120 | Sometimes I'm reading on the Kindle app on my phone,

00:18:29.560 | Kindle app on my iPad or an actual Kindle device.

00:18:32.240 | I have three Kindles.

00:18:33.400 | Anywhere that I make a single highlight within minutes,

00:18:35.960 | that highlight is routed.

00:18:37.960 | It's imported from the book into my notes

00:18:40.520 | with no further action on my part.

00:18:41.800 | It's like a miracle.

00:18:42.640 | It's amazing.

00:18:43.480 | And then that Readwise also works with the fourth one

00:18:46.080 | I was gonna mention, which is a Read Later app,

00:18:48.680 | which is really, really key.

00:18:50.240 | This is kind of a surprise for people.

00:18:51.680 | You do not wanna save anything to your second brain

00:18:54.520 | that you haven't consumed,

00:18:55.600 | that you haven't actually paid attention to,

00:18:57.680 | read and digested.

00:18:59.040 | And the reason for that is when you encounter it later,

00:19:01.160 | you don't wanna come across a thing you'd say to be like,

00:19:03.520 | what the heck is this?

00:19:04.360 | I've never seen this in my life.

00:19:05.960 | You wanna have a preexisting familiarity.

00:19:08.520 | So what you wanna do is almost have like

00:19:10.120 | a little waiting room, like a little holding area

00:19:12.960 | before things get to your second brain.

00:19:15.040 | And that is your Read Later app.

00:19:16.440 | Something where you can keep a reading list

00:19:18.040 | of everything you say you wanna consume

00:19:19.560 | for later consumption.

00:19:21.000 | - One of the ways I've done this,

00:19:22.240 | and I just implemented half of it this morning.

00:19:24.320 | The first half was just bookmarking things on Twitter

00:19:26.400 | if I found something I wanted to follow up on,

00:19:28.280 | but I didn't wanna read now.

00:19:29.700 | Now I have bookmark it to follow up on it

00:19:32.600 | and then like it.

00:19:34.120 | And then I just set up a Zapier Zap

00:19:36.920 | that if I like something,

00:19:38.080 | it will auto import it into a database in Notion

00:19:40.160 | where I store a lot of my personal information.

00:19:42.200 | I was like, getting ready for this interview.

00:19:44.100 | I set this thing up this morning,

00:19:45.360 | I hit the like button.

00:19:46.480 | And then all of a sudden I was like, ooh.

00:19:47.880 | And I was like, now I need to go process all the old ones.

00:19:49.800 | 'Cause a lot of my likes are things

00:19:51.420 | that I wanna follow up on and go back and see in the future.

00:19:53.960 | So second process, I can't remember the browser.

00:19:56.600 | There's a Chrome extension.

00:19:58.560 | I wanna call it like Twittler or something

00:20:01.760 | that lets you basically download your likes on Twitter

00:20:05.280 | or your tweets as a CSV for importing somewhere.

00:20:08.800 | So a lot of these tools work great in the future,

00:20:11.960 | but they don't work great for history.

00:20:13.320 | So that was one that I found.

00:20:15.520 | I wouldn't say it's like the most professional product,

00:20:17.560 | but it worked for exporting my likes into a CSV.

00:20:20.200 | So I love that.

00:20:21.020 | Yeah, Readwise is something that I feel like I need to adopt

00:20:23.200 | after thinking more heavily about this.

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00:23:00.960 | - Is your second brain Evernote

00:23:03.900 | or is Evernote a component of it?

00:23:05.620 | I think it's an interesting distinction

00:23:07.380 | between is one place the brain

00:23:10.220 | or is the brain the concept that has many pieces?

00:23:13.320 | - Your second brain

00:23:14.300 | is the complete ecosystem of apps that you use.

00:23:17.980 | I think that is an important distinction.

00:23:19.540 | There never has been, never will be one app to rule them all.

00:23:23.380 | It's just simply not realistic,

00:23:25.680 | and I don't think ever will be.

00:23:26.620 | In fact, over time, both on an individual level

00:23:31.620 | and a society level,

00:23:32.940 | I think we're using ever more specialized tools.

00:23:35.540 | As technology advances,

00:23:37.060 | you wanna use the right tool for the job.

00:23:38.720 | Every tool is just a download in an app store away,

00:23:41.980 | so I think we're gonna use more things over time, not less.

00:23:45.100 | So the technical definition,

00:23:46.900 | I almost think of it like a solar system.

00:23:49.040 | The sun is your Notes app.

00:23:51.140 | That is the central, the neural center.

00:23:53.660 | That is the gold mine.

00:23:55.220 | That is where the long-term repository

00:23:58.420 | of the most interesting, high-potential ideas.

00:24:01.580 | But then orbiting the Notes app might be any number.

00:24:04.400 | You might have task managers, cloud storage drives,

00:24:08.060 | drawing apps, voice memo apps like Otter.ai.

00:24:11.700 | There's a whole ever-evolving cast of characters,

00:24:15.860 | but I would say your Notes app is the central one.

00:24:18.760 | - You just mentioned Otter, which is a fantastic app.

00:24:21.580 | Open it up, turn on transcription,

00:24:23.760 | it basically records and transcribes

00:24:25.780 | everything you're talking about.

00:24:26.700 | Obviously, maybe depending on your state,

00:24:28.460 | but I would encourage you to let everyone know

00:24:30.260 | that you're recording them

00:24:31.260 | and you might legally be required to,

00:24:32.860 | but it's been really valuable in a lot of cases for me.

00:24:36.340 | Are there other apps that you've found

00:24:37.900 | that maybe not everyone knows about

00:24:39.380 | that are like, look, you might not need this,

00:24:41.500 | but ReadWise Otter, worth sharing

00:24:43.960 | because it kind of is an unlock

00:24:45.940 | that most people haven't tried before.

00:24:48.460 | - Yeah, there is.

00:24:49.300 | We have on our website a free,

00:24:50.740 | I think it's called the Second Brain Resource Guide

00:24:52.940 | that has this little embedded Airtable database

00:24:55.400 | with like all the apps that we like.

00:24:57.500 | And it's by category.

00:24:58.540 | So you can filter like show me only read later apps,

00:25:00.980 | show me only database apps like Airtable.

00:25:03.100 | You can kind of filter it.

00:25:04.100 | But let's see a few that I use.

00:25:05.520 | Otter is a great one.

00:25:06.900 | Air, A-I-R-R for capturing snippets of podcasts

00:25:11.220 | is another excellent one.

00:25:12.220 | I really like Miro, which is a mind map.

00:25:15.940 | It's a mind map app that also has collaboration features.

00:25:18.500 | So like once you've created your mind map

00:25:20.260 | and you wanna just share it, it's like two clicks.

00:25:22.460 | Let's see what else.

00:25:23.300 | Procreate, I really like to draw,

00:25:25.100 | but I like to draw digitally so that I can save it.

00:25:27.420 | Procreate is like the most powerful,

00:25:29.460 | full feature drawing app for the iPad.

00:25:31.340 | I think it works primarily with the Apple Pencil.

00:25:33.460 | I think if I made the full list,

00:25:34.660 | there's probably like 25 apps

00:25:37.180 | that are in the knowledge management category that I use,

00:25:40.260 | which is kind of wild.

00:25:41.300 | That may sound like a lot,

00:25:42.300 | but go through those multiple screens of your iPhone,

00:25:46.020 | look in the applications folder of your computer,

00:25:48.780 | and most people listening to this

00:25:50.420 | are probably not far off from that.

00:25:51.940 | - I'll definitely link to that page

00:25:53.580 | in the show notes for sure.

00:25:54.620 | Are there any tools you've found

00:25:56.900 | that make it easy to search across these?

00:25:59.300 | I've got Evernote, I've got Google Drive.

00:26:01.980 | A friend of mine started this company

00:26:03.380 | and then very quickly ended up getting acquired somewhere

00:26:06.060 | and it didn't go anywhere.

00:26:06.900 | But it's like, gosh, I got these Dropbox files,

00:26:08.940 | I've got Apple Notes.

00:26:10.100 | Is there any way to find things amongst all of them?

00:26:13.420 | - So this is one of the longest standing kind of needs.

00:26:18.100 | And what's so interesting about it

00:26:19.420 | is there's been a number of very strong contenders.

00:26:22.420 | There was one called Found that I really liked

00:26:25.180 | 'cause basically you hit a shortcut on your keyboard,

00:26:28.220 | this panel slid in from the left side of your screen,

00:26:33.140 | and then you could connect.

00:26:34.180 | It was like Evernote, Google Drive, Gmail, Dropbox.

00:26:37.660 | You know, at the time, all the things I was using.

00:26:39.580 | And then with one search, it was kind of like Spotlight,

00:26:41.820 | but for your entire digital life.

00:26:43.340 | But they got shut down.

00:26:44.820 | Then there was another one called CloudHQ

00:26:46.780 | that got like acquired.

00:26:48.500 | It's like there's been this series of things.

00:26:50.140 | I think the issue with it is

00:26:51.460 | it's so dependent on other apps.

00:26:54.180 | It's the webbing, it's the missing links between them

00:26:57.660 | that is what this tool is adding.

00:26:59.460 | I think for that reason, they have trouble raising funding.

00:27:01.820 | They have trouble building a real business behind it.

00:27:04.580 | It kind of stays as this like background utility

00:27:08.900 | that is super useful for a small number of people

00:27:11.740 | that actually care about things like knowledge management,

00:27:14.660 | but it never quite seems to take off.

00:27:17.540 | - The one I just looked up that a friend of mine started

00:27:19.220 | was called Command E.

00:27:20.780 | And that was like his vision was like building an Alfred

00:27:23.580 | or a Spotlight search for everything.

00:27:25.380 | And then they were acquired by Dropbox.

00:27:27.100 | And it says they might relaunch soon.

00:27:29.860 | I hope they do.

00:27:30.700 | I will say one that's worked not across everything,

00:27:33.780 | but I found that the Apple Files app on the iPhone,

00:27:38.260 | you can actually, I think sync to Google Drive and Dropbox.

00:27:41.900 | So in the Files app, you can authorize the Files app

00:27:44.860 | to load into Google Drive and Dropbox.

00:27:46.820 | I can't remember how well the search works

00:27:48.580 | because if you wanna attach a file on your iPhone,

00:27:51.300 | it's like you go through the Files interface

00:27:53.300 | and the Files interface can interface with other services

00:27:56.300 | and search amongst them.

00:27:57.900 | But it doesn't search within Notes and within Evernote

00:28:01.820 | and within all these things.

00:28:03.100 | So there's not a perfect solution.

00:28:04.660 | If anyone listening wants to start that company,

00:28:06.500 | let me know, I would love to be involved.

00:28:08.380 | It sounds like Tiago would love this to exist as well.

00:28:10.700 | How do you feel about in this kind of new world

00:28:13.300 | where you said in the future, we'll have people that,

00:28:16.100 | you're not gonna call yourself an entrepreneur

00:28:17.700 | because everyone will have that component of their life

00:28:20.340 | or a creator, merging business and personal knowledge.

00:28:25.140 | Do you keep separate personal and work emails,

00:28:27.660 | separate personal and work notes,

00:28:29.220 | or are they all merged together

00:28:30.620 | become kind of one second brain or two?

00:28:32.940 | - Yeah, they're mostly merged together,

00:28:35.180 | but there is what I would call sort of a porous border.

00:28:38.940 | There is a little bit of separation.

00:28:40.940 | It's not because there's anything so sensitive or anything,

00:28:43.140 | it's just so that I can be in a different state of mind.

00:28:45.140 | What I really think of is the areas of responsibility,

00:28:47.300 | which is one of the organizational categories I have.

00:28:49.940 | I'm in such a different state of mind

00:28:51.380 | when I'm looking at the areas of the business,

00:28:53.900 | finance, legal, marketing, operations,

00:28:57.960 | versus the areas of my life,

00:29:00.220 | which are like the dog, the kid, the wife,

00:29:04.220 | health, personal finances.

00:29:06.280 | They're similar in that they're like the departments

00:29:08.100 | of the business versus the departments of life,

00:29:10.500 | but I just wanna be in very different places.

00:29:12.060 | The only thing I do is I just add a little FL,

00:29:13.980 | which is Forte Labs, the name of my company,

00:29:16.660 | as a little prefix before the business areas.

00:29:19.880 | And that just serves as a signal to me

00:29:21.900 | that if I'm in personal life mode, I just ignore those.

00:29:25.140 | And if I'm in business mindset, I just ignore everything else.

00:29:29.160 | - And that brings me to another question,

00:29:30.340 | which is about the way you organize this.

00:29:32.140 | I think one of the things that makes my notes,

00:29:34.340 | and I saw, I think it was you and Ali Abdaal

00:29:36.420 | were talking about your systems,

00:29:38.180 | and I think you were going through his second brain,

00:29:41.280 | which included a bunch of folders on Apple Notes.

00:29:43.660 | And I was like, oh my gosh,

00:29:45.100 | it never even crossed my mind to create folders.

00:29:47.500 | And that led me down this,

00:29:48.700 | okay, my new thing is I need to start organizing better.

00:29:51.500 | And you mentioned how a library

00:29:53.820 | is often organizing their books by subject,

00:29:56.340 | and that that's probably not the most optimal way

00:29:58.660 | to organize the information you're collecting.

00:30:00.800 | Talk me through the optimal way,

00:30:02.440 | or at least a optimal way

00:30:03.900 | to organize information you are collecting.

00:30:06.140 | And I guess that's the O.

00:30:07.600 | - Yeah, this is the O.

00:30:08.660 | So my solution, my recommendation

00:30:11.580 | for how to do the O, organize, is called PARA.

00:30:14.480 | It's P-A-R-A.

00:30:16.000 | I'm a big fan of four letter frameworks, as you can see,

00:30:19.320 | which is really the heart and soul

00:30:21.480 | of the building of second brain methodology,

00:30:23.520 | like how this all started.

00:30:24.620 | The first thing that I created,

00:30:26.360 | the first technique that really did well, was PARA,

00:30:29.560 | which is a solution to how to organize,

00:30:31.500 | at the time, Evernote, and since then has expanded

00:30:34.500 | to how to organize really any digital place,

00:30:37.280 | any digital location.

00:30:38.720 | We can get into those letters if you want,

00:30:40.200 | but the main principle is what you said.

00:30:42.260 | For some reason, I think it's because of our exposure

00:30:44.520 | to libraries or to school,

00:30:46.760 | where you organize things in notebooks,

00:30:48.200 | like history, English, French, by subject.

00:30:53.080 | When we enter the professional world

00:30:54.920 | and we go to organize information,

00:30:56.180 | that's what we do.

00:30:57.020 | A big insight that I had was that that is pointless.

00:30:59.680 | There's really no point to that.

00:31:01.680 | What is the point to categorizing

00:31:03.440 | hundreds of things you've read about psychology?

00:31:06.760 | Psychology is far too vast.

00:31:09.600 | It makes sense in a library.

00:31:10.880 | There's a few rows on the shelf that are psychology,

00:31:13.760 | but in your personal life,

00:31:15.000 | that is far too broad of a category to be useful.

00:31:17.660 | You have to be more narrow.

00:31:19.100 | You have to be more use-specific.

00:31:22.320 | And it turns out the context of use

00:31:24.640 | that is most relevant to most people is projects,

00:31:27.080 | project-based work.

00:31:28.120 | That's the future that we're all heading towards

00:31:30.480 | as a society, as an economy, is project-based work.

00:31:33.120 | So I say organize your notes and files digitally

00:31:37.080 | according to your active projects.

00:31:39.440 | - The A is areas.

00:31:40.580 | Would an area be a place where you're not yet sure

00:31:42.680 | if there's a project, like my kids?

00:31:45.000 | It's like, I don't necessarily have a project.

00:31:46.280 | I know one of the things that I enjoyed reading

00:31:47.760 | was you gave an example of your second brain.

00:31:49.460 | I'll even link to this in the show notes,

00:31:50.960 | as it related to sleep training.

00:31:52.960 | And it's funny because in preparation,

00:31:54.280 | I was researching this and while I'm reading it,

00:31:56.280 | my wife's texting me and she's like,

00:31:57.440 | we need to start sleep training our second daughter.

00:31:59.680 | And I tried to play it off.

00:32:00.640 | Like, I was like, oh, I'm actually reading

00:32:01.760 | about sleep training right now.

00:32:03.280 | It turns out I'm actually preparing for an interview,

00:32:05.200 | but I'm doing two things at the same time.

00:32:07.200 | Would parenting be an area

00:32:09.320 | or would you try to create a project like sleep training

00:32:12.600 | or can you start with one and then branch off within it?

00:32:15.520 | - That's exactly right.

00:32:16.560 | Projects don't really emerge from nothing.

00:32:19.400 | They don't just like appear out of the blue.

00:32:21.300 | They tend to emerge from areas of like interest

00:32:24.000 | or activity in your life.

00:32:25.560 | You have just things going on.

00:32:27.840 | You're kind of paying attention to some aspect of your life

00:32:30.280 | or your job or your business,

00:32:32.280 | and then a project emerges, right?

00:32:34.120 | You realize, oh, we need to do X.

00:32:36.260 | We need to accomplish X.

00:32:38.640 | And that's the moment that you need

00:32:39.920 | a little bit more structure.

00:32:41.280 | You need a little bit of scaffolding

00:32:43.040 | to actually produce an outcome.

00:32:45.100 | And that is when a project emerges,

00:32:46.560 | like you said, from ongoing areas of your life.

00:32:49.360 | - I don't wanna spend too much time on everything

00:32:50.960 | 'cause there's an entire book and it's really good.

00:32:53.140 | So just hit quickly maybe on resources and archives.

00:32:56.160 | I actually have a question about archives,

00:32:57.500 | but I feel like if we're gonna mention all three,

00:32:59.240 | we should just at least explain the other one.

00:33:01.120 | So resources and archives.

00:33:02.960 | - So projects and areas,

00:33:04.240 | the P and the first A of Para are all about your life.

00:33:07.280 | Those are completely mapping

00:33:09.120 | to what matters to you right now.

00:33:10.760 | The resources is kind of everything else.

00:33:13.280 | It's like almost like miscellaneous.

00:33:14.760 | Everything you are just reading about,

00:33:16.840 | learning about, topics you're exploring,

00:33:18.800 | things you're keeping an eye on, trends.

00:33:21.100 | It's like I'm proactively saying all of that matters,

00:33:23.720 | keep it, but it is third place.

00:33:26.680 | It is third priority after both your projects and your areas.

00:33:30.000 | So it could be topics, coffee, gardening,

00:33:32.920 | artificial intelligence, productivity, just anything.

00:33:35.880 | And then the archives is like the cold storage.

00:33:38.080 | It's like the basement.

00:33:39.520 | Anything from the previous three categories

00:33:41.400 | that is no longer active, that is no longer relevant,

00:33:43.760 | don't delete it.

00:33:45.160 | You have effectively infinite storage space these days.

00:33:47.380 | You never need to delete anything,

00:33:48.760 | but you don't want it cluttering

00:33:50.040 | and confusing your active priorities.

00:33:52.240 | So just demote it all the way down to archives,

00:33:54.680 | which you never look at

00:33:56.160 | unless you specifically want to see something.

00:33:58.600 | - I was going through Evernote and I was like,

00:33:59.920 | gosh, what are all these notes?

00:34:01.020 | Over a thousand notes, what are they?

00:34:02.280 | And I came across, I think it was like maybe 2014,

00:34:05.360 | which is a window of time in my life

00:34:06.880 | where someone asked me to join a fantasy football team,

00:34:09.420 | which was a huge mistake

00:34:10.720 | for someone who loves spreadsheets and optimization.

00:34:13.000 | And for two years, every time football season rolled around,

00:34:16.040 | I was like, I could not consume enough content.

00:34:19.560 | I didn't actually care about any of the teams,

00:34:21.960 | whether they won, whether they lost, it didn't matter.

00:34:24.440 | But I was interested in every aspect of fantasy football.

00:34:27.880 | I'd be sitting down with my father-in-law

00:34:29.760 | who loves football, not for fantasy sake.

00:34:32.420 | And I'd be like, oh, this is so awesome.

00:34:34.640 | And then he'd be like, yeah, that's great.

00:34:35.800 | And then like the next minute,

00:34:36.620 | the other team would do something.

00:34:37.880 | I'm like, this is awesome too.

00:34:38.880 | He's like, I don't understand what's going on.

00:34:40.560 | You're rooting for both teams.

00:34:41.840 | I'm like, I just care that this guy catches this ball.

00:34:44.800 | Everything else in the game is useless.

00:34:47.040 | That needs to be in the archives,

00:34:48.960 | which is all I could think of scrolling through Evernote

00:34:50.760 | was that I didn't have it organized in any place.

00:34:53.020 | And at the time it was a project

00:34:54.840 | and now it needs to be set off in cold storage.

00:34:58.200 | Is there a process by which you go through all of this,

00:35:01.440 | maybe weekly, monthly, annually to try to decide,

00:35:04.040 | okay, this needs to move around.

00:35:05.480 | Is there a way you maintain things

00:35:07.480 | before going on to any other projects?

00:35:10.200 | - There is, yeah.

00:35:11.240 | There's almost like second brain maintenance,

00:35:13.280 | the same way you scheduled maintenance for your car

00:35:15.880 | to keep it operating.

00:35:17.120 | There is similar things you should do for your second brain.

00:35:20.440 | There's different ways we could approach it.

00:35:22.080 | Some of those are on the calendar, like scheduled.

00:35:25.560 | Weekly review, I think is a fundamental practice

00:35:27.960 | that everyone needs to just maintain perspective

00:35:29.960 | on their week.

00:35:30.800 | Something like a monthly review or an annual review

00:35:32.880 | where you're like zooming out to the big picture,

00:35:35.160 | long-term goals, values, your why, your mission,

00:35:38.000 | things like that.

00:35:38.840 | So that's part of it.

00:35:39.720 | That also predates second brain stuff, right?

00:35:41.840 | That goes back 20, 30 years,

00:35:43.480 | the idea of a weekly review.

00:35:44.520 | Most of the actual maintenance of let's say para

00:35:47.080 | in your second brain comes down

00:35:48.400 | to just how you manage projects.

00:35:50.000 | To me, projects really are the first class citizen.

00:35:52.480 | So when do you create that project folder

00:35:54.560 | that is gonna contain all the project-related material?

00:35:57.480 | When the project starts.

00:35:59.040 | Then you execute it.

00:35:59.920 | When does that get archived?

00:36:01.040 | When the project ends.

00:36:02.440 | I have these kind of two moments in time.

00:36:04.280 | What's so nice about projects

00:36:05.480 | is that they beginning and end, right?

00:36:07.880 | Areas, resources, and archives are kind of,

00:36:09.960 | it's fuzzy, their relationship to time.

00:36:12.400 | Projects are discrete.

00:36:13.720 | They're like sprints.

00:36:14.960 | You start, you do, you end.

00:36:17.480 | And therefore, I like to link

00:36:19.200 | and sort of schedule most of my maintenance activities

00:36:22.280 | to when projects begin and when they end.

00:36:24.400 | Which by the way, also is how I justify the effort.

00:36:27.560 | It's like the return on investment,

00:36:29.220 | your ability to justify going in

00:36:31.000 | and just reorganizing stuff,

00:36:32.740 | that's not a very good use of your time.

00:36:34.760 | But if I'm going in specifically to manage a project,

00:36:37.840 | suddenly that time is very easily justifiable

00:36:40.520 | and is actually part of the project itself.

00:36:43.080 | - If someone's hearing this and thinking,

00:36:44.960 | I have a horrible organization system,

00:36:47.080 | maybe it would make sense in an upfront way

00:36:49.440 | to kind of organize everything.

00:36:51.000 | But on an ongoing basis, it's like,

00:36:52.780 | maybe don't get too crazy about organizing it.

00:36:55.280 | But right now I'm like,

00:36:56.120 | gotta get these fantasy football notes.

00:36:57.480 | I gotta get them to the archives, which doesn't exist yet.

00:37:00.800 | - Anyone listening to this, you included,

00:37:02.640 | I really do not recommend going in

00:37:05.080 | and sort of implementing para by trying to move

00:37:09.000 | hundreds or even thousands of files individually.

00:37:12.080 | Just treat the past as the past.

00:37:14.680 | Get every single thing, every single note,

00:37:18.160 | in Evernote or wherever you've kept things,

00:37:20.640 | put it in one single folder called archive and today's date.

00:37:24.320 | That is the past.

00:37:25.560 | That is everything that happened before now.

00:37:27.680 | And then start over, start with a clean slate

00:37:31.080 | with just the P.

00:37:32.720 | Just create a folder for each of your active projects

00:37:35.080 | and be honest about what is active,

00:37:37.120 | not things you wish are active

00:37:38.680 | or that you're pretending are active.

00:37:40.400 | Most people really don't have more

00:37:42.080 | than about five to 10 active projects.

00:37:44.520 | So create a folder for each one of those.

00:37:46.200 | Then from this point, only going forward,

00:37:48.360 | start putting the notes that you create into those folders.

00:37:51.600 | - Where does email fit into this?

00:37:53.900 | I have like an email folder that's saved

00:37:55.840 | and it's like, oh, someone sent me this thing,

00:37:57.480 | it's super valuable.

00:37:59.120 | Is your inbox part of your second brain

00:38:01.160 | or do you take emails out of your inbox

00:38:03.400 | and put them somewhere else?

00:38:04.800 | - Yeah, so the way I think about this

00:38:06.680 | is you have in your life several inboxes.

00:38:09.200 | Email is kind of the most obvious one,

00:38:11.160 | but you have a notes inbox probably.

00:38:13.040 | You have a task manager or to-do list

00:38:15.000 | where things get recorded.

00:38:16.680 | You have even a mailbox, which is just another,

00:38:18.640 | like there's probably five to eight separate inboxes.

00:38:22.440 | So when you think about a weekly review,

00:38:24.120 | often people think, oh, weekly review,

00:38:25.560 | I have to like review and evaluate my entire life.

00:38:28.960 | What are my goals?

00:38:30.120 | What is my purpose in life?

00:38:31.320 | These like huge questions.

00:38:32.520 | That's not what it's for.

00:38:34.000 | I only do that like once a year, if that, right?

00:38:37.180 | That is really a lot of time and effort.

00:38:40.520 | All a weekly review is for me

00:38:42.120 | is just going through my inboxes one at a time,

00:38:45.440 | deciding what can be deleted, what can be archived,

00:38:48.840 | or just like put somewhere,

00:38:50.840 | and what needs to be taken action on.

00:38:52.280 | That is all a weekly review is

00:38:54.200 | and how a weekly review takes no more

00:38:56.220 | than about 15 or 20 minutes every time.

00:38:58.440 | - Let me ask you a very, very practical example.

00:39:00.880 | I have a gift card that someone sent me

00:39:03.200 | for an online retailer

00:39:04.520 | that I'm not ready to buy anything from me now.

00:39:07.280 | Is that something that if you got that in your email,

00:39:09.280 | you would leave it as an email in some place

00:39:12.240 | or would save it somewhere else?

00:39:14.080 | Or what would you do with your own system,

00:39:15.720 | which may not be the best for me,

00:39:17.200 | but it's an example of something that I'm like,

00:39:18.880 | I feel like it's the kind of thing

00:39:19.920 | that always sits in someone's inbox

00:39:21.600 | and no one ever knows what to do with it.

00:39:23.560 | - So great example.

00:39:25.120 | The first question I always ask,

00:39:26.400 | is this actionable or not actionable?

00:39:28.980 | So that is actually actionable.

00:39:30.920 | When you think to the future time

00:39:32.480 | that you are actually acting on this,

00:39:34.120 | it is something you're doing.

00:39:35.180 | You're going and spending the gift card on something.

00:39:37.740 | What that tells me is

00:39:38.960 | there's always one of two places it can go,

00:39:40.760 | either Evernote or Things, which is my task manager.

00:39:43.760 | So I know that's an action, so it's gonna go with Things.

00:39:46.560 | And then the key feature of Things

00:39:48.320 | that is honestly, it's like the greatest,

00:39:51.400 | best kept secret in like the productivity world.

00:39:54.760 | By far the most important feature of any task manager

00:39:58.480 | is a keyboard shortcut.

00:40:00.080 | So on Things, it's control option space bar.

00:40:03.080 | It pops up a little window,

00:40:05.280 | like a tiny little window where I can write a task

00:40:07.640 | with a link to that specific email

00:40:10.480 | in the little comment section.

00:40:12.160 | That little tiny thing is life changing

00:40:15.420 | because what I write in the task is spend $15 at Target,

00:40:20.420 | hit enter, that goes into my task manager.

00:40:23.880 | And then I hit E on the keyboard,

00:40:25.640 | the email's archived forever.

00:40:27.200 | I never need to organize it, sort it, do anything.

00:40:30.720 | That is now something that I'm going to find again

00:40:33.040 | through my task manager, not through email.

00:40:35.000 | - I'm not sure whether I like that system more

00:40:36.960 | or I'm more impressed that the email in my inbox

00:40:39.780 | is you've got a Target eGift card for $15.

00:40:42.360 | I feel like we're on like a magic show

00:40:43.960 | where you're like, ah, I figured it out.

00:40:45.320 | That's actually the gift card that I have sitting in my inbox.

00:40:47.560 | - Really?

00:40:48.400 | - Yeah, it's literally a $15 Target gift card.

00:40:50.920 | - No way.

00:40:53.480 | - There was a promotion last night.

00:40:55.000 | We forgot to buy diapers.

00:40:56.400 | My wife was like, "Hey, we only have four diapers right now,"

00:40:59.480 | which is a problem.

00:41:00.640 | And so fun hack for anyone listening,

00:41:03.080 | there's a product called Shipt, S-H-I-P-T,

00:41:06.160 | and you get a free membership as a Chase card holder.

00:41:09.120 | I put in my Chase information.

00:41:10.400 | I got a membership through December, 2024.

00:41:12.920 | And with Shipt, you get free home delivery from Target.

00:41:16.420 | And we ordered at like 5 p.m.

00:41:18.120 | and we had diapers by 7 p.m.

00:41:19.520 | And the delivery was free.

00:41:20.480 | And it was buy two types of diapers.

00:41:22.680 | So I just bought two orders of diapers

00:41:24.560 | and you get a free $15 gift card,

00:41:26.040 | which is why I have the $15 Target gift card.

00:41:28.080 | So hack for free delivery.

00:41:30.360 | - I think I have a $15 Target gift card

00:41:32.280 | around here somewhere.

00:41:33.120 | That's why that came to mind.

00:41:34.520 | - I don't know if you're buying diapers,

00:41:36.600 | but that was mine. - Oh, I am, I am.

00:41:38.700 | - So little derailed there, but that is helpful.

00:41:41.600 | I feel like my to-do process

00:41:43.800 | is probably the next upgrade.

00:41:45.080 | Right now, I'm like a keep one note

00:41:47.320 | with a list of bullets for to-dos.

00:41:48.840 | I haven't really gotten serious about that.

00:41:50.440 | I know Things is an Apple only app,

00:41:52.880 | but I've heard great things.

00:41:55.120 | Being a parent can be scary,

00:41:56.960 | whether it's watching your toddler

00:41:58.480 | jump on your new couch naked during potty training

00:42:01.360 | or the indescribable pain of stepping

00:42:03.600 | on tiny plastic dinosaurs in your bare feet,

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00:44:17.820 | I just wanna thank you, Quik,

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00:44:36.900 | I wanna come back to one random macro question,

00:44:40.020 | which is there's this book called "Wayfinding,"

00:44:42.460 | where the author Maura O'Connor says

00:44:44.160 | that over-reliance on GPS, for example,

00:44:46.400 | has made us less able to navigate the world.

00:44:49.560 | Do you have any concerns about over-reliance

00:44:52.260 | on a second brain and what that might do

00:44:54.660 | to our primary brain?

00:44:56.260 | Or are there times where it's like,

00:44:58.320 | you know what, this is something for not offloading?

00:45:01.300 | - I don't have concerns.

00:45:02.860 | I don't have concerns.

00:45:03.700 | When I go back and read in ancient Greek times,

00:45:06.860 | pundits basically saying,

00:45:08.160 | "Oh, writing has corrupted the youth.

00:45:10.780 | Their memory is now atrophied

00:45:12.420 | because this darned new invention of writing

00:45:15.400 | is going to lead to the downfall of society."

00:45:17.460 | I'm just like, this has been going on forever

00:45:19.120 | and will always go on.

00:45:20.200 | The story of civilization is us offloading

00:45:22.360 | what used to require our bodies and minds to technology.

00:45:25.200 | So I don't have concerns on that front.

00:45:27.040 | But for the second part,

00:45:28.480 | part of what you're doing with a second brain

00:45:30.080 | is simply vacating your first brain of trivia,

00:45:35.080 | just mundane, mindless details

00:45:39.600 | that you are keeping track of.

00:45:40.960 | Think about things you're supposed to buy

00:45:42.200 | at the grocery store today,

00:45:43.680 | things on your to-do list,

00:45:45.040 | details of a project you're working on.

00:45:46.740 | I think most of the time,

00:45:48.020 | most people's minds are just filled

00:45:50.080 | with stuff that can be offloaded,

00:45:52.360 | that can be remembered far more precisely

00:45:54.760 | for far longer by machines than the human mind.

00:45:58.320 | So I'm always thinking,

00:45:59.700 | if a job can be done by machines, it should be.

00:46:02.200 | That intellect is free.

00:46:04.700 | I have this vast intellect called software at my disposal.

00:46:08.360 | Why not use it?

00:46:09.680 | Why not just give away that job?

00:46:11.900 | And I find over time that leaves space in my first brain

00:46:14.660 | for things that only the human mind can do.

00:46:17.280 | That includes creativity, includes intuition,

00:46:19.640 | includes relationships, includes having novel experiences.

00:46:23.880 | Like the average person is underwater.

00:46:25.680 | The average person has no bandwidth.

00:46:27.200 | So if you wanna make any change in your life whatsoever,

00:46:30.400 | where you have to start is by offloading something.

00:46:33.520 | Because there's no space to even consider a new option

00:46:36.420 | until you offload that stuff.

00:46:38.040 | (laughs)

00:46:39.560 | - It reminds me of in grade school,

00:46:42.120 | you like memorize things.

00:46:43.400 | Let's memorize this poem.

00:46:45.120 | I still have a French poem that I could recite

00:46:47.680 | in like record speed because I had to memorize it.

00:46:50.080 | Is there any benefit for that kind of memorized knowledge

00:46:53.320 | or does that find its way departing out of society

00:46:56.560 | as technology becomes more pervasive

00:46:59.220 | through educational practice?

00:47:00.960 | - There's ever less use cases for that.

00:47:03.920 | Sometimes people bring up,

00:47:05.160 | oh, how about learning a language?

00:47:07.360 | I lived in Ukraine for two years in the Peace Corps,

00:47:09.600 | served in the Peace Corps.

00:47:11.080 | And I studied Russian 'cause I was in the East.

00:47:13.840 | And I did spaced repetition.

00:47:15.760 | One of the most research-based,

00:47:18.880 | evidence-based ways to memorize something.

00:47:21.320 | I had like several thousand Russian flashcards.

00:47:24.280 | And I thought I was learning the language

00:47:26.360 | by just, you know, in a systematic way

00:47:29.180 | where you like review flashcards

00:47:31.040 | until you can memorize them

00:47:32.360 | and then you review them less and less.

00:47:34.320 | Looking back, I wish I had spent zero time on that.

00:47:37.680 | It would have been such a superior use of my time

00:47:40.960 | to just go do things, go out into the community,

00:47:44.240 | go grocery shopping, go to my students' dachas

00:47:47.560 | and just like hang out with their babushka.

00:47:49.900 | Even in the case of language learning,

00:47:51.320 | which might be the prime example of first brain memory,

00:47:54.480 | doing, acting is superior, I think, to rote memorization.

00:47:58.120 | The memorization of the words

00:48:00.160 | should better come as a side effect of just living,

00:48:03.720 | having interesting experiences

00:48:05.000 | rather than trying to cram things into your first brain.

00:48:07.540 | - I guess that's a great tee up

00:48:08.920 | for what are the primary use cases

00:48:11.880 | for someone to be thinking about for their first brain?

00:48:14.120 | - So it's a funny thing because

00:48:15.800 | this book is in the self-improvement category or business,

00:48:19.240 | but you might think, "Oh, this is about optimizing."

00:48:21.400 | Like, you know, a word you use a lot,

00:48:23.080 | optimizing productivity efficiency,

00:48:25.120 | but I really see it as the exact opposite.

00:48:27.200 | When I think about my life, my first brain, myself,

00:48:30.060 | I want to be ever less optimized over time.

00:48:33.140 | I don't want to have any structure.

00:48:34.640 | I want to have less and less routine.

00:48:36.640 | I want to just follow my curiosity and my passion

00:48:39.600 | completely spontaneously with no preconception,

00:48:43.160 | but I have responsibilities

00:48:45.520 | and things that I have to manage in the world.

00:48:47.400 | So it's almost like I spend my time

00:48:49.560 | optimizing my second brain,

00:48:51.640 | making it this well-oiled machine

00:48:53.760 | so that my first brain can be almost like a child.

00:48:56.440 | I look at my two-year-old.

00:48:57.520 | I'm like, I aspire to be like this kid.

00:49:00.200 | He just goes after what he wants and what he loves

00:49:03.820 | like 100% of the time.

00:49:06.060 | He's just so carefree, so spontaneous,

00:49:08.700 | so enlivened, so present.

00:49:12.180 | That's the kind of stuff that I aspire to over time,

00:49:14.500 | and I can get away with it

00:49:15.460 | because I have my second brain over here.

00:49:18.260 | - Well, that's a perfect segue.

00:49:19.660 | I know you've talked about, you know,

00:49:20.940 | we each have two-year-olds.

00:49:22.060 | That really changes the way you operate and function.

00:49:25.620 | As someone who plays in this space,

00:49:27.860 | even if you don't necessarily want to optimize your time

00:49:30.100 | in the way maybe I often think about doing,

00:49:33.280 | have you found ways or have you approached your day

00:49:36.620 | or how you get things done differently

00:49:38.640 | now that you probably, I'm guessing,

00:49:40.980 | have a big chunk of free time

00:49:43.020 | that you used to be able to spend working and doing things

00:49:45.320 | that you want to spend differently with your family?

00:49:47.920 | How has that changed?

00:49:49.200 | - Honestly, not much has changed

00:49:50.840 | because in a sense, I had already prepared for it.

00:49:53.760 | When I look at what has changed for me having a kid

00:49:58.160 | is that the capabilities of this first brain,

00:50:01.640 | I don't know how else to put it,

00:50:02.660 | but have just seriously deteriorated.

00:50:05.180 | There's no other way to put it.

00:50:08.500 | Just my memory, my ability to focus,

00:50:11.300 | my attention span, my endurance, all of it.

00:50:14.920 | I feel like in the past two years since having a kid

00:50:17.880 | is like less than half of what it was.

00:50:20.200 | I hate to say that, but it's just true.

00:50:22.440 | This is a common thing with smart people.

00:50:23.780 | It's sort of like their intellect,

00:50:25.580 | their mind is the hammer with which

00:50:28.100 | they approach everything like a nail.

00:50:30.300 | Everything is about the intellect.

00:50:31.580 | They're just hammering in every problem

00:50:33.540 | in their life with the intellect,

00:50:34.720 | which is fine until the intellect fails.

00:50:36.980 | I had this experience about 15 years ago

00:50:38.780 | with a chronic illness, the medication for which

00:50:41.400 | seriously hampered my short-term memory.

00:50:43.500 | Looking back, that was almost like a gift.

00:50:45.880 | I had like a window into what it would be like

00:50:48.460 | when my mind failed me, and I had that

00:50:50.780 | starting when I was 22, so I didn't have the option

00:50:53.460 | of relying too much on my intellect.

00:50:55.060 | I had to very early on find kind of an external system,

00:50:58.900 | and the result of that is I didn't have to change much

00:51:01.740 | once the kid arrived.

00:51:03.020 | I just relied ever more on these kind of external systems.

00:51:06.540 | - Well, I know you have a second kid coming,

00:51:08.060 | and I have some unfortunate news for you

00:51:10.060 | that whatever deterioration I felt after child one

00:51:13.500 | now feels like nothing compared

00:51:15.940 | to the second child deterioration.

00:51:18.020 | You are very fortunate that you have put together

00:51:20.200 | your second brain to prepare for this,

00:51:22.300 | but if that comes and you find a way to do anything,

00:51:25.040 | let's do a follow-up.

00:51:26.220 | We're kind of running out of time,

00:51:27.220 | so I wanna jump on two or three quick things

00:51:30.020 | to just close us out.

00:51:31.380 | While we're still on family,

00:51:33.020 | there was something you posted the other day.

00:51:34.460 | You shared an acknowledgement hack you use

00:51:36.700 | to avoid fights in your relationship,

00:51:38.940 | and I would love to just have you share that

00:51:41.100 | because I read it and I was like,

00:51:42.300 | I'm gonna start doing this.

00:51:43.780 | - Yeah, my wife and I have done a lot of programs

00:51:46.700 | and courses.

00:51:47.520 | We're kind of course junkies.

00:51:49.280 | We did a couples retreat, the first one ever,

00:51:51.440 | about maybe 18 months ago,

00:51:53.300 | and I'm just kind of amazed how many useful tools there are,

00:51:58.220 | which you would never hear about.

00:51:59.320 | No one ever told me about these things.

00:52:00.920 | Definitely not my parents, not my friends,

00:52:03.240 | haven't seen it modeled in culture, in TV, movies.

00:52:06.680 | In fact, most of those sources

00:52:08.280 | were sort of negative influences,

00:52:10.160 | but we practice this at our couples retreat.

00:52:12.040 | You can just go up to your spouse,

00:52:14.400 | look them in the eye and say,

00:52:16.000 | I want to be acknowledged for doing the dishes

00:52:19.160 | last night when I was tired,

00:52:21.080 | and the other person can say,

00:52:22.820 | oh, look you in the eyes,

00:52:25.300 | I acknowledge you for doing the dishes last night,

00:52:28.180 | even when you were tired,

00:52:29.440 | and the commitment that it shows

00:52:31.560 | to the cleanliness, safety, and health of our family,

00:52:35.460 | and you just have a little moment,

00:52:36.740 | and that's it, and it's done,

00:52:38.180 | and as the receiver of that,

00:52:40.060 | the assumption is asking for it cheapens it.

00:52:42.620 | They're like, oh, they should just notice.

00:52:44.460 | It should spontaneously occur to them.

00:52:46.020 | First of all, it won't,

00:52:47.620 | 'cause they're doing their own things

00:52:48.680 | that then they want to be acknowledged for,

00:52:50.180 | but somehow asking for it does not in any way,

00:52:52.840 | in fact, it even lessens the experience,

00:52:55.080 | 'cause you're simply asking for what you need

00:52:56.520 | and receiving it right then and there.

00:52:58.360 | - Yeah, so I love that,

00:52:59.280 | and it's only been a few days since I've seen it,

00:53:01.000 | so I don't have a ton of evidence yet of how it's worked,

00:53:03.800 | but I'm very excited to put that into use.

00:53:05.400 | Any other things you've learned in those processes

00:53:07.480 | in your relationship that, you know,

00:53:09.580 | you said you wish that more were shared?

00:53:12.360 | - So much, so much.

00:53:14.640 | The person who ran that couples retreat,

00:53:17.760 | his name is Joe Hudson.

00:53:18.840 | He's become a great friend and mentor of mine,

00:53:20.980 | so much so that I helped him launch his own online course,

00:53:23.960 | because I took his program

00:53:25.080 | in this random house in San Francisco,

00:53:27.120 | and that was the only way to access it.

00:53:29.120 | You had to like be in this one room in this one city,

00:53:32.460 | and I partnered with him to launch it to the world.

00:53:34.820 | It's called The Art of Accomplishment.

00:53:36.180 | It's a cohort-based live course that you can sign up for,

00:53:38.820 | but I believe his work,

00:53:40.260 | which has to do with couples and relationships,

00:53:42.100 | but also emotional fluency and self-awareness

00:53:45.820 | is the category that I would put it in.

00:53:47.540 | It's so rich, so subtle and complex.

00:53:51.020 | It's all about treating emotions

00:53:53.420 | as just important signals of information,

00:53:57.940 | as opportunities to learn and grow,

00:53:59.580 | rather than as these annoying sort of internal forces

00:54:03.460 | to avoid and suppress.

00:54:05.320 | It's like the tweet-sized version of what he does.

00:54:08.420 | - I'll share that in the show notes.

00:54:10.540 | Earlier, we talked about going back to the Greek times

00:54:12.620 | about productivity and knowledge management.

00:54:14.820 | If we fast forward,

00:54:16.380 | what role do you think AI might end up playing

00:54:20.100 | in our second brains,

00:54:21.680 | and do you think it has a big impact on all this?

00:54:23.660 | - It does, yeah.

00:54:24.580 | The way I see it is it's going to automate

00:54:27.140 | and substitute almost different links in the chain, right?

00:54:30.380 | So if you think of the creative process of code

00:54:32.900 | as like a supply chain, it's really a supply chain.

00:54:35.820 | There's raw materials, which is like quotes,

00:54:38.980 | passages, images that you get from the outside world

00:54:41.260 | or the internal world,

00:54:42.700 | and then just like a manufacturing line,

00:54:45.060 | it gets refined, processed, enriched,

00:54:49.140 | manipulated in some way to become like a finished product.

00:54:52.900 | What AI is going to do,

00:54:54.120 | just as all kinds of technology has always done,

00:54:56.340 | is come in, get like one at a time

00:54:58.980 | different links in that chain

00:55:00.240 | that human minds previously had to do,

00:55:02.420 | and then just substitute it with machines.

00:55:04.460 | And I think, honestly,

00:55:05.580 | that will be a boon to human creativity.

00:55:08.380 | It will allow us to move faster,

00:55:09.820 | spend more time on more value-added things,

00:55:12.820 | and ultimately just create better work faster.

00:55:17.340 | I guess I'm a huge techno-optimist.

00:55:19.260 | (laughs)

00:55:20.260 | - I threw an episode I did last week

00:55:22.460 | into this AI chapter summarization tool.

00:55:26.220 | I uploaded the audio,

00:55:27.500 | and in a couple of minutes, it produced chapters.

00:55:30.380 | The summaries of those chapters

00:55:31.820 | was not something I want to publish,

00:55:35.140 | but it, in two minutes, took an hour-long conversation

00:55:39.020 | and gave me the highlights

00:55:40.620 | of the key moments of the conversation,

00:55:42.700 | and it blew my mind.

00:55:44.040 | (laughs)

00:55:44.880 | It was called assembly.ai, I think.

00:55:46.860 | And I was just like, "This is crazy."

00:55:48.780 | Now, it's not ready to be published,

00:55:50.780 | but if I were sitting here trying to think...

00:55:52.900 | Let's take example.

00:55:53.740 | If I, at the end of the year,

00:55:54.560 | I want to do top lessons from 2022,

00:55:57.540 | I could, in an hour, run 52 episodes through,

00:56:00.980 | get the highlights of all the summaries of all of them,

00:56:03.860 | and start to pull things together.

00:56:05.260 | So I'm very optimistic,

00:56:06.900 | especially as it comes to distilling a lot of content

00:56:10.520 | that you have into even quicker things,

00:56:13.620 | and who knows where it goes from there.

00:56:15.940 | - Incredible. I love that.

00:56:17.300 | Yeah, why should humans spend their time creating chapters?

00:56:20.920 | Like, let's give these jobs to machines, please.

00:56:24.340 | (laughs)

00:56:25.180 | - So the last thing, I should have prepared you,

00:56:26.740 | so you're gonna be on the spot.

00:56:27.860 | I always like to ask people,

00:56:29.500 | is there a city that you're really familiar with

00:56:32.140 | that, if anyone listening,

00:56:33.740 | is gonna adventure to sometime in the next few years,

00:56:36.980 | where you have some recommendations

00:56:38.320 | of either a place to eat, a thing to do,

00:56:40.540 | favorite place to grab a drink that they can check out?

00:56:43.380 | - I do, yeah.

00:56:44.220 | It's become super trendy now about Mexico City.

00:56:46.540 | My wife and I lived there all of 2019,

00:56:48.580 | just before the pandemic.

00:56:49.940 | We thought it was popular then.

00:56:51.100 | Now, there was just a New York Times article

00:56:53.060 | how Americans are overrunning Mexico City.

00:56:55.380 | It is just a gem.

00:56:56.620 | The way I describe it is it's the best of Latin America,

00:56:59.820 | North America, and Europe, all in one city.

00:57:02.380 | And in terms of where to go,

00:57:03.540 | so in a year there,

00:57:05.060 | we tried a stupid number of restaurants.

00:57:07.720 | Our favorite one, and I almost hesitate to give this away,

00:57:10.380 | because I feel like a semi-undiscovered secret.

00:57:13.300 | It's actually a hotel restaurant.

00:57:14.980 | It's the restaurant in the Hotel Carlotta,

00:57:17.300 | which is up there.

00:57:18.140 | I forget which neighborhood,

00:57:18.960 | but if you just Google Hotel Carlotta,

00:57:21.340 | there is a chef there that we actually got to know

00:57:24.500 | who makes food that I just haven't experienced

00:57:27.100 | anywhere else.

00:57:27.940 | It's our number one recommendation for Mexico City.

00:57:30.620 | - I love it.

00:57:31.440 | Maybe I'll leave it out of the show notes.

00:57:32.780 | You can only get it

00:57:33.620 | if you make it to the end of the episode.

00:57:35.220 | And now I'm ready to take another trip to Mexico City

00:57:37.660 | and check it out.

00:57:38.500 | Tiago, thank you so much for being here.

00:57:40.280 | I thought I was gonna come in and leave with a lot of work.

00:57:42.540 | Now I have a simple job of throwing everything

00:57:44.940 | in the archive and a work of just creating a few projects

00:57:48.780 | and kind of starting anew.

00:57:49.980 | So I feel much less overwhelmed about something

00:57:53.740 | that I'm very excited to make practice in my life.

00:57:56.040 | So thank you so much for being here

00:57:57.380 | and sharing everything with all the listeners.

00:57:59.380 | - It's my pleasure.

00:58:00.200 | Thank you so much.

00:58:01.040 | It was a great conversation, great questions.

00:58:03.240 | - I really hope you enjoyed this episode.

00:58:06.260 | Thank you so much for listening.

00:58:08.020 | If you haven't already left a rating and a review

00:58:10.140 | for the show in Apple Podcasts or Spotify,

00:58:12.900 | I would really appreciate it.

00:58:14.620 | And if you have any feedback on the show,

00:58:16.060 | questions for me, or just wanna say hi,

00:58:18.460 | I'm chris@allthehacks.com or @hutchins on Twitter.

00:58:22.700 | That's it for this week.

00:58:23.780 | I'll see you next week.

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