šŸŽ™ Deep Dive - Ali Abdaal x Tiago Forte


Live Blog (Reverse Chronological)

Psychedelics

"They have such important effects on our emotional healing, sense of self, on our open mindedness, our creativity. Iā€™ve written about my experiences and I think when psychedelics go mainstream, I think it will be the most important thing that happened since the invention of psychology".

"There are ways of accessing those states that donā€™t involve substances ā€“ one of which is holotropic breathing. Another is meditation if you go deep enough. But for actual psychedelics, MDMA therapy is emerging as something that is actually having results for people who have been having therapy for decadesā€.

Meditation

ā€œMeditation has been fundamental to my life. Iā€™m naturally prone to being neurotic, OCD and worry. I discovered meditation through a book called Mindfulness and it was an approach to meditation that was completely free of the ā€˜wooā€™ part. It was like reading a user manual for your mind. Each chapter presents an experiment and over a period of a week or two I saw such a dramatic improvement in my sleep, in my worrying, in my relationships and in my creativity. Another book that influenced me was the Untethered Soul ā€“ itā€™s like the big picture of what mindfulness is, why we meditate and what itā€™s doing to our mind. And the third thing I did was go on a Vipassana retreat ā€“ I explored parts of my mind and my psyche and my soul that I didnā€™t even know existed. The whole retreat is just silent meditation the whole time ā€“ it was like pulling back the curtain on who I am as a human being in a way that I have never doneā€.

Task Management

ā€œTasks are the thing that change the fastest. On a daily basis, there might be changes to tasks, new tasks, completed tasks and new information. But you need to differentiate between actionable information and reference information. 'Actionable Information' is temporary, transient and constantly changing and therefore should be managed on the personal level with something like Things, whereas 'Reference Information' should be managed in a more structured tool like Notionā€.

ā€œOur brains are very good at knowing when something needs to be thought about. I think thatā€™s the evolutionary reason for why we worry. Itā€™s basically your brain saying this needs some attention. If itā€™s on your mind then definitely write it down and capture it".

Weekly + Daily Reviews

ā€œGTD was my productivity education and I took it from there. David Allen was the first advocate of weekly reviews and I took it and moulded it slightly. It shouldnā€™t be a rigid checklist ā€“ it comes back to the fluidity point, you have to personalise it. My review is more like a series of reminders not a rigid structure. It gives you that sense of security in the background that nothing is falling through the cracks. By the time something becomes an emergency, itā€™s ten times harder to deal withā€.

The Design of a Weekly Review by Tiago Forte

ā€œThere are hundreds of things that you could potentially do but thatā€™s not your to-do list. I do no more than 8 tasks per day ā€“ these are small tasks but thatā€™s because most of the day is taken up by things that just come up. I have a rule that Iā€™m not allowed more than 10 things in my task manager otherwise I know Iā€™ll just finish the day with a sense of defeatā€.

Design Thinking

ā€œDesign thinking was a philosophy that came out of the Stanford Design School but was championed by IDEO. Design thinking is just the idea that creating something new is a process and that process is iterative ā€“ itā€™s not just that you do your research, you make something and you finish ā€“ itā€™s more that you put it out and you get feedback which feeds back into the loop and you iterate and continue to improve. It's kind of familiar now but it was the first thing to really introduce this thinking into companies because at the time companies were not used to doing thatā€.

Balancing Creation with Consumption

ā€œIf you followed me around with a camera, 99% of my life wouldnā€™t look any different. Iā€™m spending as much time as everyone else on their computers but Iā€™m not quite doing the same thing. Iā€™m not just consuming ā€“ Iā€™m saving, exporting and transferring into my notes app. Itā€™s just taking the stuff you are already consuming and saving itā€

ā€œPeople are always wondering what you should take notes on. You should note things that resonate with you. If you make this into a framework, that is incredibly taxing ā€“ you don't want to be using your mental energy on making those decisions analytically, you need to just make them intuitively, if it moves you. Donā€™t take notes on things you agree with or already knowā€.

Consumption vs Creation

ā€œWhen I decide to make a blog post on something that Iā€™ve read or consumed, my vision sharpens. Itā€™s no longer just passive. I know that I'm going to be responsible. I'm going to be putting my reputation on the line. Just knowing that Iā€™m going to create something makes me more rigorous, makes me pay closer attention, makes me question things more and it accelerates your learning".

Principles not Prescriptions

ā€œI noticed in the productivity world that itā€™s all about prescriptions. These extremely overly simplistic formulas were based on correlation not causation, itā€™s just not the case. There are no formulas and in a course like my own, where I present a principle or a set of principles and then we split up into break out sessions and in it's in those sessions that the learning really happen. It's not me delivering the truth to you, it's more like I'm sparking an idea and introducing a concept or principle and then the collective intelligence, what I sometimes refer to as the Third Brain, comes around it and figures out all the implications and the applications and the implementations. That's the power of it - you can't do any of that in a self-taught courseā€.

The Value of the Course

ā€œIā€™ve sold courses at every price point from zero to corporate trainings where we charge 25-30,000 dollars. I really wish it wasnā€™t the case but at the lower price points, what I would see is that there is such a clear correlation between how much they pay and the results they get. At the sub $100 price points, itā€™s pretty unlikely that someone will finish. When you have an inexpensive course, I cannot support you. As an instructor Iā€™m not able to add the value that I want to add or provide the coaching that I want to offer. At one point I made a decision to build a company which means that I hired an entire team and thereā€™s a teaching staff of 30 people and thereā€™s between 10-25 calls with me and there are 100 Alumni workshops. If you really scroll to the part of the page about what you get, and compare it to a university or a coach, itā€™s actually quite reasonableā€.

Structure and Fluidity

ā€œStructure can be informal. I have Brazilian heritage and Brazilian culture is all about fluidity ā€“ communities, ethnicity, timeā€¦everything is fluid and so Iā€™m a big believer in fluidity because Iā€™ve seen how it works. Brazilian has itā€™s problems and could do with a bit more structure but the US and the West could learn a lot from Brazil and introduce more fluidity into our culture".

"It all comes down to range ā€“ the larger your range the more you will be able to benefit from all the joys and colour of lifeā€.

ā€œThere is not a one size fits all perspective but breakthroughs come when you realise that there is a different way of operating in the world than what you're used to and you can learn fromā€

How should we think about goals?

ā€œThey are tools in the toolbox. There are certain things where we do need metrics like when working in a team. But in our personal lives, some of the most rewarding parts of life are not subject to rules, guidelines and structures and if you try to impose them you could be in a lot of trouble!ā€

Productive Randomness

ā€œA system needs randomness. Seeing Like A State talks about how we tried to make everything ordered and systematised in the nineteenth and twentieth century. In the twenty first century we have come out of that mindset and we appreciate randomness BUT in the world of productivity we are still in the old way of thinking. If you think about how to perfectly manageable life, youā€™ll end up with a life that needs to be managed but thatā€™s not the life you want".

"Serendipity is what gives life its colour. If you knew what was going to happen in life it would just be like you were following a script like a robot. We want just enough structure so that we can move forwards but not so much that your life becomes a drill routineā€.

Containers vs Streams

ā€œThis is one of the more philosophical points. We have come from a world of containers. We put a box round everything - age, jobs, careers - everything used to be put within containers and walls but now all these boundaries are breaking down and they are breaking down into streams. There are obvious examples in terms of social media but also our lives ā€“ there are no clear boundaries, no clear edges which is incredibly anxiety inducing. We need to learn to ā€˜playā€™ in these streams. Rather than being overwhelmed by the sudden lack of boundaries and containers, we need to learn to survive and play within these streams".

ā€œThe old container way of thinking is based on a scarcity mindset which said that more is better. It also said that you have to preserve everything because you were always scared that there's not enough. It made sense in the container world because you could consume everything in the container. In the stream environment, you canā€™t consume it all. It's like trying to fit a river into a swimming pool - it just won't go in there. This mindset of abundance is all about dipping in but not trying to get the whole flow of the internet but just to have a section where you keep the parts that you wantā€.

ā€œYou can tell someone to have an abundance mindset but you canā€™t just flick a switch. There is a piece of infrastructure that you need to make that switch and thatā€™s what a second brain is. Itā€™s this thing that makes this abundance manageableā€.

Getting Ideas Out There

ā€œIdeas emerge in society broadly ā€“ itā€™s usually not one person who has the idea. Calculus emerged simultaneously; smallpox vaccine was developed at the same time on opposite sides of the world at the same time. So if you have an idea, you have to get it out into the world relatively quickly because that window will passā€.

Slow Burns vs Heavy Lifts

ā€œHeavy lifts is the idea that there is some situation where you have to do a heavy lift ā€“ like a heavy project lift where you need to block off a couple of hours just to get something significant done. But as you get older you have fewer and fewer three/four/five hour blocks of time ā€“ I can do maybe a quarter of the heavy lifts that I could do ten years ago. But I donā€™t want to scale back my ambitions so using my Second Brain I started discovering a different way of working which is the slow burn. Think of cooking ā€“ some of the best food is made through simmering for hours and hours. And you can ONLY do a slow burn with a Second Brain ā€“ your physical brain just canā€™t keep that information for the same length of time. Your own brain is designed for heavy lifting, your Second Brain is ideal for slow burnsā€

Which app should people use for a Second Brain? Is there a perfect app?

ā€œPeople make this decision over which app to use as if itā€™s like a once in a lifetime decision ā€“ but thatā€™s not the case. Even just the decade that Iā€™ve been doing digital note taking Iā€™ve moved through a number of different apps and platforms. We're now seeing a fragmentation of thinking tools ā€“ tools are getting so specialised that we need to start using a whole toolkitā€.

ā€œI came across a tweet by Anne-Laure Le Cunff who distilled a three part categorisation about the three main apps that people seem to use in BASB. She said that Evernote is for librarians, Roam research is for gardeners who want to plant things, and then Notion is for architects ā€“ people who want a grand vision, a highly designed thing that they are going to conceive of and then construct on the Notion app. These are the three leading contenders and you just need to pick one of those"

"I've historically used Evernote but that was the only one available really. The division I use now is that Evernote for personal note taking but everything we do as a team is on Notion. And then Roam I am just starting to get into and I've got a new YouTube series coming out with videos of me just getting to grips with the app for the first time".

Ali's Summary of the 3 Benefits of BASB

How do you explain the BASB concept to people who arenā€™t in the content creation niche?

ā€œItā€™s taken hold in a few communities ā€“ content creators, writers, entrepreneurs, software engineers ā€“ but what those groups are doing now, everyone else is going to be doing in 10 years and so enrolling in BASB allows you to be on that frontier with us. But secondly even the most basic things of daily life are so information intensive. For example, owning a house ā€“ there are so many small details that we have to deal with. Even if you donā€™t publish things, the everyday demands of life can be made easier with a Second Brainā€.

What's the point of BASB?

ā€œItā€™s about creating a body of knowledge, a treasure chest of wisdom so youā€™re learning isnā€™t just for the moment, itā€™s so that it lasts months and years ā€“ for goals far into the future that you canā€™t even imagine. Itā€™s about building up and enriching that knowledge that you are already consuming. If youā€™ve spent 5/10 hours reading a book, why not save the best bits.ā€

ā€œItā€™s like investing. People say the most important thing is that you start early. But unlike investing where you sort of need some money to start, knowledge is free or very inexpensive and you get to experience the same compounding growth. It builds on itself over time. At any age, itā€™s never too late ā€“ we had a guy who was 92 on my course and he found a way of organising his research so he could publish his book that heā€™d been working on for decadesā€

What is a "Second Brain"?

ā€œA Second Brain is my term for a system of knowledge management that lives outside of your head. What that means is basically digital note taking from everything and anything in your life. We are constantly taking in so much information but with digital note taking you can save all your notes in one central place and synchronise it across platforms. You used to need a whole staff of specialists but now itā€™s just apps that work for you 24/7. I donā€™t think weā€™ve come to terms with how prolific just one person can be when you have the most powerful software that has ever been invented right at our fingertipsā€

Tiago's Productivity Definition

ā€œDoing your lifeā€™s work as efficiently and effectively as possibleā€

ā€œProductivity is so much deeper than people realise ā€“ itā€™s creativity, its intuition, its doing your lifeā€™s work, its shaping your moods, your emotions and your environment. Every year what productivity 'is' expands further for meā€

šŸ‘ØšŸ»ā€šŸ’¼ Tiago

Tiago is one of the world's foremost experts on productivity. Through online courses and live workshops, he has taught more than 20,000 knowledge workers around the world how to revolutionise their productivity and personal effectiveness using technology.

šŸŽ¬YouTube / šŸ¤Twitter / šŸ“øInstagram / šŸ„©Medium / šŸŽ™Podcast / šŸ–„Website


šŸ‘ØšŸ¼ā€āš•ļø Ali

Ali is a doctor, YouTuber and podcaster. His day job used to involve saving lives, but as of this week he's making videos about productivity, tech, education and lifestyle stuff.

šŸŽ¬YouTube / šŸŽ™Podcast / šŸ’» Website / šŸ¤Twitter / šŸ“øInstagram


Books Mentioned

Seeing Like A State by James Scott

The Source by James Michener

Poland: A Novel by James Michener

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

Hyperion by Dan Simmons

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer

Tiago's Sci-Fi List


Timestamps

00:30 Introduction to Tiago and Productivity

01:55 Defining Productivity

03:30 What is a Second Brain?

06:15 What's the point of building a Second Brain?

11:30 How to explain the intrinsic value of a Second Brain?

15:00 The Three Useful Categories of Creating a Second Brain

18:00 Which app should we use for our Second Brain?

26:55 Slow Burns vs Heavy Lifts

36:25 Containers vs Streams

43:25 Productive Randomness

47:05 Thinking About Goals

50:10 Structure and Fluidity

52:55 The Value of the Course

01:00:10 Principles not Prescriptions

01:02:10 Creation over Consumption

01:03:55 Balancing Creation with Consumption

01:06:45 Recommended Fiction Reading

01:14:00 Design Thinking

01:16:45 Weekly + Daily Reviews

01:24:30 Task Management

01:33:25 Meditation

01:39:40 Psychedelics

01:44:00 Closing Thoughts