Nick Milo | From Note Taking to Note Making: The Key to Unlocking Your Creative Potential

Srini Rao

Nick, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Nick Milo

Okay?

Nick Milo

So happy to be here.

Srini Rao

Yeah, so I actually have heard of your name repeatedly from clients who took my Maximize Your Output course. Also, Tiago Forte recommended you and you had been on my list of people to reach out to for a long time as somebody who I know has a very transformative way of looking at how we deal with information in the world that we live in today. But before we get into that, I wanted to start by asking you what social group were you a part of in high school and what impact has that ended up having on where you've ended up and what you've ended up doing with your career?

Nick Milo

Ooh, great question. Hey, thank you. And I'm just so, so honored to be here. I would say, this is actually really particular. So I was a part of, you know, like the jocks. I was a part of the jocks, but I was never happy with that. And it was actually in sixth grade that my oldest brother, he was a senior in high school at that time, and he had a birthday party. And at that time, my whole life is sports. All I care about is the NBA, the NFL. And he brought over these kids, and some of them didn't play sports.

And it kind of blew my sixth grader mind. And I said, Steve, you have friends that don't play sports. I know this seems kind of ridiculous, but at the time, it really did. And he goes, yeah, all your friends don't have to play sports. And just Steve as a role model then, I always tried to bake that into my relationship. So yeah, I mentioned the jock group, but I also had the Halo club. And so I'd go over to Curtis's house and we'd sit down stairs on the giant bean bag and we'd be playing Halo split screen, the original.

And, uh, you know, just trying to get into different groups. And then there was another group that I wouldn't say it was my normal club, but when everyone recognized that, Hey, you're only five, nine, you can't shoot. You shouldn't be playing basketball anymore. All I could do is wear short shorts and play intense defense. That's all I had. Um, but then they're like, you should wrestle. And I was like, I know I should, but I don't want to. So I, um, chose to join speech and debate, which is, you know,

Srini Rao

I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Nick Milo

way out of left field, nothing that anyone in my family had done. Um, well, let me end actually, no, again, that's because my oldest brother Steve did so he planted a seed that I could do something else. So I ended up doing speech and debate, um, making a lot of great friends, opening a lot of new like avenues about thinking. So, uh, just naturally it was the jock group because I was into sports. I love sports and I took that very seriously. It was a joy.

But at the same time, I wanted to make sure to have different social groups.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, let's talk about sports for a bit. Because like I was one of those people who high school sports was just kind of off the table for me because I grew up in Texas and in seventh grade, there, you know, people the size of grown men. After getting a hell beat out of me on the football field for an entire season, I came to the conclusion that I was not destined for any sort of athleticism in high school. I was in marching band, which you get sport PE credit for. And it is a tremendous amount of exercise if you carry out a 50 pound tuba. But.

Nick Milo

Hehehe

Srini Rao

One of the things I find pretty repeatedly with the guests I've had is this theme of people who are in high school sports teams and the things that they have learned having a profound impact later on. Like Tim Ferriss references his high school wrestling coach as one of the most influential people in his life. And he said everybody from that team went on to do amazing things like the founder of what is that educational nonprofit. Not Khan Academy. I remember.

Nick Milo

uh, Khan Academy, maybe?

Srini Rao

DonorsChoose.org, Charles Best, was on Tim Ferriss's high school wrestling team. So what is it about high school sports? Like for you, what were the things that you learned that you think have been sort of timeless that you've brought forward?

Nick Milo

Oh, oh.

Nick Milo

Yeah, absolutely. Let's take it back to eighth grade. So, or maybe even seventh grade. I was kind of middle of the pack and then going from seventh to eighth grade, I started to jog from my house to the high school old gym weight room and lift with the high schoolers. And my buddy and I, we'd meet there, we're both, you know, these seventh graders going into eighth grade and we could barely lift at all or anything, but we just started.

putting in the work. And so that was the entire summer. And then in eighth grade, I saw the fruits of that labor immediately. Like, okay, now all of a sudden I was the starting tailback for one of the middle school teams. And so basically what that did right out of the gates, especially when you're young, you have all the testosterone and everything. So you see results. So it instills a growth mindset out of the get-go. It's like, okay, I want something, I can work at it. I see immediate results. Isn't this great? So...

And just to track back a little bit, I grew up in a military family. My dad was an airport Air Force pilot. And so we had structures and rigidity in place that I was not even aware of at the time. It was just what I knew. So I was well aligned to work well with teams in a sporting capacity, knowing my role, knowing to listen to the coach. Now, there was a really important pivot point in the eighth grade, though, because

My buddy and I, for whatever reason, we decided to play hooky on track practice, like skip practice, but still stay on the school grounds. And then we were hiding. I don't know what we were thinking, but eventually one of the track coaches saw us. And then we had a report to the big intimidating guy, Coach Egan. And he brought us into the room, he closed the door and he just sighed. And he said, you know,

you're lucky because you're in here and I still care. But if this happens again, there's going to come a time where people stop caring and that's when you know that you're screwed. And I just never forgot that and I was just like, what am I doing? Why am I skipping? And so there's like this inflection point where everything was going right but then I was like kind of flirting, maybe just making things like dangerous to see what that felt like. I was like

Nick Milo

I love this growth path that I'm on. So I just went back into that. And those type of lessons though are, I think what just understanding you can grow from this, you can see the results, and you can learn great lessons about not just how to be a better physical athlete or anything, but how to be a better human and leader of men, hopefully.

Srini Rao

Yeah. You know, I'll tell you what struck me most about what you said was that you saw the fruits of your labor almost immediately. And that's not necessarily the case with most things in adult life. I mean, take sort of the life of an entrepreneur, creative or knowledge worker, right? Our careers don't work that way. Adult life doesn't work that way. And that's that bridge, like having that sort of patience to wait to see the fruits of your labor. I mean, shit, I'm going through it right now with my own knowledge management and AI work.

Nick Milo

No.

Srini Rao

that I've been basically putting in work, you know, publishing videos and I'm like, okay, you know, where is the, you know, where are the fruits of the labor? I mean, they're there but not to the degree I'd like them to be. And I wonder, you know, when you think about this now as an adult, how do you think about that idea?

Nick Milo

Absolutely, I feel that we are on the rails through most high school and college experiences. I recognize that college is a little bit different in today's generation than it was even back in the early to mid aughts for me. But

We're on rails. There's a set of rules to follow, structured. And all that vanishes once you're done with education, whatever that level is. And you have to go into the real world. And that plays by a different set of rules. The problem with these rules are, like you were mentioning, they're not clear. They're not obvious.

They're not just, oh, I do this, and then I immediately see that. They're kind of there. They're fuzzy. And there are so many of them. It's a complex system that, even when we think we understand it one day, then the next day, we're upside down again, and the world's back on top of us. So I think, yeah, that's where that dynamic really breaks down. But hopefully, some of the habits that were instilled in those years of order and structure and all you have to do is show up, focus, put in the work,

rinse, rather, lather and repeat the next day. You can at least take some of those lessons, I think, into the real world. And where I see that really coming in is with, I think that growth mindset as a belief in adult life, that even if it's not immediate, there's now a belief. I know this can lead to something. I know, you know, kind of touching upon that fail fast mindset, but like, even if it doesn't work,

I know I'm working towards something. And just to button it up, it's the joy of the process. I just love the process. I fell in love with it in any undertaking. Yeah, I like outcome too, don't get me wrong. I love the process.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, let's talk briefly about speech and debate, because I think that'll make a nice tie to bring us to the work that you're doing today. Like, imagine there's some valuable lessons in communication preparation. Talk to me about that and then, you know, connect it to how it leads to where you're at today.

Nick Milo

Yeah, sure. So I was in a honors English class in high school, and that was kind of around that wrestling decision. And some of those guys were like, you should, you know, you should try join us, join Speech and Debate. I was like, hmm, maybe I will. And I gave it some thought. And then the time came and I did that. And so going from kind of being in a way at the top of the food chain in sports to at the bottom in Speech and Debate, it wasn't...

I didn't need to be humbled at that time, but it was really eye-opening. It was kind of like a new challenge. And all of a sudden, you know, my peers in English class were the ones I was looking up to. You know, Chase Mone, he did Extemporaneous, and I joined Extemporaneous too, and he was really good. So Extemporaneous is essentially where you get a topic, and then you have 30 minutes. You don't know.

anything about what this topic is going to be probably something about world events and you have 30 minutes to research it and then you have to deliver speech in five to seven minutes now that research this is you know you don't have a phone I didn't we didn't have phones back then you have to have clip articles from magazines like the economist and Newsweek and hopefully you have an article about the new Zimbabwe president who just

was thrust into power after a coup because if not those five to seven minutes are going to be really painful where you're trying to give a speech about them. So that was just throw into the fire, learn so much, and just really enjoyed that process of not being good. And that finished with the furthest I got was in the final event of the year and I made it to the semi-finals. And that was like the

biggest victory. It was just a small event. There wasn't like two people made it, tons of people made the semi finals. But for me, I was like, wow, like, just to make it out of the first round of cuts was a great victory. So I just really enjoyed everything to do with the speech and debate experience.

Srini Rao

Well, I mean, just from listening to you describe that process of having to research a topic, you know, in a short amount of time with limited resources, no internet, no phone, it makes me think that, okay, there that seems to correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel like this has to have had a profound impact on your thought process and frameworks around synthesizing and processing knowledge to make it useful.

So talk to me about how you arrive at this entire concept of linking your thinking. I feel like just from hearing you describe that, I feel like there has to be a connection between that and linking your thinking.

Nick Milo

That's funny, I haven't really considered that, but it's there for sure. So linking your thinking is essentially, I've been making a lot of notes, and eventually tools came around that you could link notes to other notes, digital notes. And eventually the tools got good enough where you could do that really fast.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

And then so the big breakthrough was in 2020 for me, and I was trying to consolidate all my notes on habits. So I have notes from attending different talks in like Brooklyn, I lived in New York for just a few years, and then, you know, different books, going back to like, you know, Charles Duhigg's Power of Habit, and then, you know, some of the newer ones, and obviously James Clear's, had a few notes in there. And, but I never.

never did this next thing where I grabbed all those notes and put them in the same room together or in this case into a single note. And I didn't have to put all the text in there, I could just put in a link to that note. And then, okay great, so number one that made me feel calm and under control, like I collected all this, all these notes into a single spot. But I wasn't expecting what happened next.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Nick Milo

And that was, it started to force, compel, catalyze me to think and ask questions in a way that I had never been able to systematize before. I was like, how does this note relate to that note? Which one goes first? Should I combine these two? What are they really trying to say? What's missing? And that was a Cambrian explosion of creativity, of generative thinking. And I was like, I am onto something.

Let me go to the rooftops and literally shout at the top of my lungs what this is all about.

Srini Rao

Yeah. So, it's funny, I love the setup for this because when you mentioned this ability to link notes, I found that this was such a hard concept to get people to grasp over and over. Because even when students come into my Maximizer Output course, that one idea is one of the things that it sounds amazing in theory, but in practice it's so difficult because I think that what we don't realize is so often, we've spent our entire lives using

linear structures for nonlinear processes. Like if you think about, for example, you're going through the book proposal process right now. Then the whole idea that we would do this in a linear order actually makes absolutely no sense. Because I'll tell you the thing that unlocked all of this for me was Jennifer Ladin, when she told me that your structure has to be linear or your process doesn't. And like the kinds of tools you're talking about, the kinds of things you're saying actually facilitate that ability at a level we've never had before.

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

But I feel like it's one of those things for people. When you try to describe network thinking and this idea, for you, I came up with a metaphor. I'm curious. I realized it's basically playing mad libs with your personal notes was the best metaphor I could come up with. So tell me, when we look at it in the context of Para and Tiago Forte's second brain, I know there's a much more detailed thought processing framework here behind this.

Nick Milo

Oh, very good. I like that.

Srini Rao

that goes beyond linkability. But explain the value of that linkability to people because I realized that was very difficult to see until you had a certain number of notes. And the idea of going from pure linear structures to nonlinear thinking creates so much cognitive dissonance because we've done everything linearly our whole lives.

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, let's try to explain the value together because it isn't quite easy. First, we need to have experienced pain around knowledge or information overwhelm. And we've had to have had experience that multiple times. Going back to, you know, the high school and for those who take secondary education, college, whatever, you are on guided rails. There's a structure for you.

Once you get into the real world outside of these structures, then information comes in, you don't know what to do with it.

Should I save this? What should I do with that? The feeling over and over again is one of overwhelm. And if we don't figure it out, it's going to be crippling overwhelm. And so a lot of people, they're searching for answers to this overwhelm. Some of them say, become a Luddite, move to the hills, and abscone technology, say no to technology. And then others might have some idea in between.

But there is a way to play well with technology, but it's a little difficult. So I think overall what makes linking difficult is that one, it's new. Like you said, we are used to folders. We're used to boxes, containers, linear thoughts. And now we have a whole new playground to work in that's non-linear thinking. So in editing, um.

They're nonlinear editors. Like I edit in TV. And you can edit scene one, and then go to scene 40, and then scene 15. You can mix and match. You can go all over the place. This is nonlinear editing. Now we have that for our thoughts in a digital form. Zooming out, though, let's just say what it is. This is closer to how we naturally think. Now we just have the tools to make it visible.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

shapeable for us. So yeah, that's a start.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I mean, I, the metaphor is, you know, Mad Libs was a metaphor that I finally, I was able to explain this. I literally used that to frame the exercises in my course because that was the hardest thing to teach was, okay, making connections between ideas. I was like, it's just Mad Libs, but you're doing it with your notes. But the major difference here is that you also are able to capture ideas. Like the, this was one thing I think when you think about networks, one is the notion that your brain is a network, not a hierarchy. Because in your brain.

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Like you said, you have one. So for example, I literally asked you about high school. Think about how easily you could recall all those details. There was no effort in doing that. And I think what linking does is it basically does that for knowledge, but also allows you to retrace the thought process that sparks an idea as opposed to, hey, here's a thought. And then you go back to it a month later, you're like, why the hell did I think this? I don't even know what this is about. Like, funny enough, like you have these placeholders that are completely empty. Like you'd never create a folder with no files in it.

But links are really different in that sense, because to your point, they're mirroring a network, the nodes that are very much like the nodes in your brain.

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm. They are. And it depends what somebody's doing. Not everybody needs, I like to think they would benefit from these cool digital linked systems. I like to call them the ideaverse. Like when you have connected notes, that's your ideaverse. But whatever that is, not everyone needs that. But if you have it, and if you have the needs for that, maybe it's just to overcome information overwhelm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

Maybe it's because, I mean, the reason I really got into it, I told you that story about getting the habits together, but prior to that, I'd come back from, well, I used notes for multiple purposes, but the one right before that was I was editing on TV shows, and after a long 12-hour day, these productions are long, I'd come back, and I would just jump into my notes and make new collections or gatherings of the notes I already had, because I had thousands of notes.

And that was like the most soothing and grounding thing that I was doing. It was like a form of self therapy where I was just trying to like find connections. And again, like for the, for the hyper productivity, um, cultists out there, it'd be like, what, like, where's the output from that? But no, that was, that was the result. You know, that was thinking for the sake of it, for the joy, for the, just.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Nick Milo

there's sense making going on. And so even if it's not obvious what this is going to lead to, it's going to lead to a mind that's able to be more capable of doing whatever it needs to next.

Srini Rao

Yeah. I'll come back to the, not everybody needs this with a counter-argument, but let's first, and I'll tell you my, you know, thesis behind that, because I, it's very related to the age of AI, which I think we'll get to. So explain the framework to me, like as we think about any piece of information, because to your point, like for me, the necessity was I had like the joke I'd always said was, you know, if I could actually put the advice of all my guests into action in my life, I'd be a billionaire with six pack abs and a harem of supermodels and I'm none of those things.

But it just got me thinking about how much advice do we get in, you know, something like a podcast? Like how much useful information do we get that we forget and are never able to apply? So break the framework down for me when we think about it from, say, the context of a book. Break the framework for me down and then let's look at it in different contexts.

Nick Milo

Let's call the framework ARC. So we're going to do three steps. Yes, it's non-linear, but we're just going to break it down to three steps, and then we'll use this framework. ARC stands for add your ideas, relate your ideas, communicate your ideas. Now the reason I say your ideas each time is because that's the crucial difference. We have to immediately, at the point of contact,

to anything that sparks with you, immediately go from collecting to creating, from note taking to note making. That is the key here, is we're trying to make active, engaged individuals. That's what I'm about. And so you say you're listening to this podcast, hopefully, or other ones, and something sparks. So here's what I say. Hmm, that's interesting.

And then immediately the habit that I drill is because. Hmm, that's interesting. Because it makes me think of this. And whatever you say after the because, it doesn't matter. You've now leaned forward, you're now sitting up and you're engaging, wrestling with the idea that you found interesting. So that's it in a nutshell.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I love the fact that you could boil it down to that level of simplicity because just thinking about it. Let's actually talk specifically about your distinction between note making and note taking. And I love that like because piece because I'm like, oh, because what you're doing is you're simplifying the Zettelkasten down to that one sentence. Yeah, in a lot of ways, I think that makes so much sense. But let's talk about this idea of note making versus note taking because I think that's such a critical

distinction. And that is the thing that became so obvious to me from learning how to take smart notes. Like when I went through Sankaran's book and I started applying this stuff, I thought to myself, wow, the amount of information I have that is based on books and based on insights I've gotten from other people written in my own words is like it's thousands and thousands of notes. But I think the other part of that is what it does in terms of sparking your own original insight based on standalone insight based on reading. So

Talk to me about the importance of that, because I think in our education system, we don't learn that. Nobody taught me ever how to take notes like that or use it to study. So give me the rundown. When we look at it from a standpoint of the utility of information, why is that aspect of this so critical?

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

Yeah, I mean, let's zoom out. Since we could write throughout 90% of written history, we had note makers. We had people making notes, writing down their ideas. Yeah, you had the monks and the people who were transcribing great works as part of their rituals. Let's put them aside because that was like their job to do that. For the most part, we have people who are...

reading other people's work throughout history, and there was no way to easily capture or clip entire articles or books, so they had to write out some section of it and transform it into their own words. The best example of this is like Charles Darwin. How did he come up with his theory of natural selection? He was a note maker, and he was looking in all sorts of different fields.

from his brother-in-law, who was the leader of a philology, a language institute in England. And so he learned that, oh, this is an established theory, language evolution, and it's well accepted by people. So, hmm, maybe I can use a bit of that in how I explain my theory. Oh, what's this about variations of roses or variations of pigeons? I can use that. What's this about population?

being a selecting factor from Malthus. So he was taking all these different enterprises, all these different fields and domains and making notes around that. And it was only at a specific time that all this stuff that was compiling finally emerged into the theory that he would share.

So this is idea emergence really. And that's what I, one of the things I'll kind of stand up and say is I know there's like this idea that.

Nick Milo

Oh, you know, you want to write a book, so you have ideas that diverge and then you converge. It's like, well, maybe. But if you really zoom out, what's happening is we're in this primordial soup of ideas. We encounter so many and some of them continue to inform us. Like my speech and debate example that you brought up, that's still informing me today. And that one thing might somehow be a thread, a through line into some of my greatest works,

are some cool things. And that's the emergence of ideas. So just to put a pin on it, that's note making. People throughout history...

putting down their own thoughts and not just copying, collecting, capturing the thoughts of others. But at the point of contact, they're putting down their own thoughts on why they're saving something. It's only since the Industrial Revolution, and particularly since the information age, that we've gone from a society of note makers to a society of note takers. And it's kind of like the obesity epidemic, but in this case, we can call it like the over collection or over consuming epidemic.

Srini Rao

Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned convergence, divergence, because like I'm thinking about Tiago, our mutual friend and how, like when I looked at that whole chapter, when he described that concept of code, right, it was capture, organize, distill and express. I looked at it and I realized I was like, the thing that people are going to do is they're going to interpret it as I do this in this order. And I was like, actually, no, this all is a cycle. Every one of these things infuses the other.

Nick Milo

Yeah, that's the thing. And that's what's so great about the richness of the knowledge management space is we might have different takes on something similar. And both takes can be completely, can both work for, depending on what somebody's attempting to do. And I think that process is a bit more linear and a little bit more output oriented and achieves great results. And I think this more emergent, linked-based process

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

can still be output driven, but doesn't have to be. So it's a more non-linear, it probably speaks to creative projects and a little bit more complex projects where it really helps people out.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, let's actually take this arc idea. And we talked about the adding piece. Talk to me about the R and the C pieces of it. And then what I want to do is start to actually apply it to specific real world scenarios.

Nick Milo

Oh, I love that. Okay, so, Ark, so we kind of talked, add your ideas, like at the point of contact, try to say because. It doesn't matter what you say next, but now we might say you're moving from spark to remark. Now, once you have that remark, the next thing is to relate it, so remark to relate. And so there, one, when we make a remark, like we are already relating it. But now we're trying to think, like, what does this relate to?

why is this important to me? Well, we can ask a bunch of, I would call them like entry level note making prompts. Mad Libs that you're talking about. Like we're going to make this our own. We're gonna write it in our own words and we're going to answer these prompts. Now, one of those might be, what is this a part of? And then you might link to a higher order note that we might call a map of content.

And that's going to be that place where we can gather related ideas. And that's where it gets interesting. So that's that relate phase. And the best shorthand for that I have is CNC, which is Collect and Cluster. And this is the simplest way to make the magic happen with linked notes.

First, we feel overwhelmed. Let's call it the mental squeeze point. What do we do? Spin up a map, make a map, and we throw all that stuff into a single spot. Now all we have to remember is that single spot, that map. Okay, now we go there. Later, the next day, next week, next month, and we start, now that everything's collected, we can start clustering things, grouping them into tightly, tight clusters.

And that's where the magic happens, because just like a bunch of people trying to file into an elevator, there's tension. Or like any good story, there's tension. And what does tension require? It requires resolution.

Nick Milo

And so once we see those clusters, our mind goes on overdrive because it's like, I need to resolve this. That shouldn't be before that. That's driving me nuts. You mentioned your ADHD, I believe. And I'm not sure if you're serious or not. But it's like, hey, that's.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Yeah, I am. I mean, network thinking is a goldmine for somebody with ADHD. It's like the best thing ever.

Nick Milo

Okay, and but sometimes then like if you see something and I might be speaking out of turn, but you might be like Ah, that's so out of place. I have to move it above the other note or there's something that goes in between So it is forcing compelling those great thoughts to happen just the cluster itself So that's part one of the cluster and then I'll just finish with the clustering with this part Is that between those clusters there's negative space there's tension there and that's where we can map that gap

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Nick Milo

and then generate new insights, the bridge between different clusters of thought. And then we're off to the races.

Srini Rao

Let's, it's funny because somebody mentioned this MOC idea to me, one of my own clients. So when you call this a map of content, is it, so for example, let's actually use a practical example. So I have a, you know, like interviews with people who've written books on decision making. I have their books on decision making, so I have their transcripts, I have interviews and then all the other books I've read and then probably hundreds of related notes. So let's just using that as an example, is a map of content topic based? Is it project based? How does that?

look in terms of like, you know, when we actually put it into practice.

Nick Milo

I would say it skews to be more topic-based. So you might start by collecting all that stuff, and you might say to yourself, well, what's the difference between a map of content and a regular index? And sometimes they're going to look similar. The difference, though, with how fast these tools are nowadays is that it's not just a map of content. It is a mapping note. Means that we do our thinking in that note now.

we're moving the links to other notes around.

We're annotating, we're saying should this be before that, and we're asking all those great questions again. So the map of content allows us to do three things, which is we gather ideas, we develop ideas, and then we can connect those ideas to our broader holistic knowledge-based system, like the ideaverse, your knowledge management, your second brain, whatever it is. But you can connect that stuff to a broader picture. So that middle chunk though is the part

Again, I have to shout at the top of the rooftops. Or I have to go up there and say, it's not just an index. And the problem, the reason I have to say that so much is because when I show it visually online, people just see what appears to kind of look like an index. They don't see the work that's being done. And so I have to go to extra effort to be like, it looked like this, and then it was this, and then I did this, this spark happened, this was generated, and then this. And so they can see, oh, whoa, it's a thinking tool. And so that's...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Hit.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

So.

Nick Milo

That's one of the big things, the big unlocks I try to help people with.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about this in terms of my own notes. Like I'm just thinking about that decision making idea. It's like, oh, so basically, even though I have hundreds of notes on decision making, the map of content would be sort of like the central pub where all the other notes are also connected to it.

Nick Milo

And how fun would that be? Seriously, if you gathered all those notes there and used that as your synthesis chamber, you're just like, okay, I'm going to make sense of all these notes and put them into a structure that makes sense for me, and then I can come back to this months, years later, and I'll know exactly where I need to go, and just about a minute, I'll remember everything I need to. It's so much fun. It's thinking for the sake of it.

Srini Rao

Yeah, I mean, I'm thinking about this like, it's like, oh, wow, if I had a map of content dedicated entirely to knowledge management, anytime we wanted to reference notes specific to, you know, something for my course or tutorial ideas, I wouldn't have to basically search through the other notes, I'd have that one note as the sort of hub of all.

Nick Milo

That's true. And there are a couple best practices there. And so one that people then think is, oh, wait, do now is this a manual thing I have to upkeep? That doesn't sound like fun. Do I have to always, always like add the link to this map or else I won't find it? No. There are a couple reasons why. Why not? When you have a good map and again, with these tools, all you need is for that random note to point to the map.

And then what we do is, and you know this, and I'll do my best to articulate it out loud, but then when you go to that map note, you can look into a section called back links or linked mentions, and it will show you everything that points to the map. And so again, you have your single source of truth, that one hub that you just go to and you know you'll find that thing.

Srini Rao

So let's do one more thing with this linking piece, because I'll tell you, this was the game changer for me. And it made me realize a couple of things. Sanka Ahrens had talked about this linking idea of Smart Notes in the Zettelkast. And he said, yeah, it's fun to link all this stuff together. He said, but the real power starts to come in when you're able to embed the title of a note in a sentence in another note.

And that completely changed. I was like, oh my God, I'm like literally inside of a network, there's nothing more important than how you title a note. Because then even empty notes. So I had a note titled make connections between your ideas. That was literally linked to hundreds of other notes and it had nothing in it. So that, you know, I think that that's, that's one of the things, because I think that the temptation for a lot of people is, Hey, let me just, you know, collect links and add links to this thing. It's about, I think that, you know,

Nick Milo

Yeah.

Srini Rao

The temptation is like, oh, it's just connecting notes to each other, but it's really not. It's more about connecting ideas than it is connecting notes.

Nick Milo

Yes, absolutely. Those are some really good points that are easy to miss that you brought up. And it is connecting ideas and what it's doing is it's forcing us... Oops, hold on. Can you still hear me okay? Okay, my screen went asleep. It's forcing us to...

to just be so active in our thinking. Like we are there, we're the sculptor, we're the person leaning forward, we're making the most of our mind. And that's because we're connecting the ideas, like you said. But yeah, a couple things there is you can link to a note without having to create it. And we need to give ourselves that permission. And it's like a little dot out there.

in this wide constellation that we're making, and it means something to us. It's like a reference point, a tiny little pillar maybe in the ocean, and we can navigate around that. And when we're ready, yeah, then we can formalize creating that placeholder note into a real note, and we'll see, whoa, looks like I already have all these 20 links, 100 links. I can now write something out of this if I wanted to. It looks like it's earned its existence.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. So it sounds like we've covered the A, which is sort of the, the ad phase. We've covered the remark phase, which I think is creating the map of content. So where do we go from here? Like what's the next piece of this? Like, how does this get used? And then we'll, we'll look at a very like tangible example.

Nick Milo

Yeah, so after the relate phase, I'd like to say relate to communicate. And the way that we pull that off is for one, when you have a map, when you've been working in this higher order note, you're 80% of the way there. What there is, is up to you. It's like, what are you trying to do? You might not know it yet, but when you're ready for that thing, you're 80% of the way there. Now it's just about finding the forcing function.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

So what's going to force you into an output? Now a lot of people will be like, oh, I already know what I want to do. Great, that's your output. But that's not always clear. And I would like to stress that it shouldn't always be clear. But this is kind of a way to, I don't know, hedge your bets, build optionality. You're building intellectual assets that you don't know how you're going to apply. But when you're ready,

You're like, oh, I know. Now I'm going to do this thing. OK, you're 80% of the way there with your map. Now find that forcing function. You're going to do this. Next one is fit the form. So fit the form. What is that form? Do you know what it looks like? If it's a newsletter, email newsletter, there's a certain form to that. Or if it's a tweet, there's a certain form. A YouTube video essay, that has a certain form.

So you can go from that map, which is your intellectual capital, and then you can convert, transform that into the form that it needs to fit. And then along with that is move to the medium. So with that last 10%, I move to the actual medium of expression.

And so if that is again the email newsletter, I'm not writing the whole thing in my tool of choice, which is Obsidian. I'm not writing it in the note to a hundred percent because that's not the form, that's not the medium of expression. It's going to be an email that other people read. So I need to go to that. Like the comedian's not going to write, you know, not going to deliver.

their presentation in Obsidian. They're going to go on stage. So moving to the medium is truly important. And then there are a couple next level things with Communicate, but those are really the main ones that help people go from the abstract into the delivered.

Srini Rao

Right.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, so you've mentioned a phrase over and over again, which is this idea of intellectual capital. So before you, and I want to come back to that because it ties to my counter-argument to not everybody needs this. I think that's not going to be the case more and more, and I'll tell you why. But let's look at this through one, say, practical example. Let's do two. One, taking notes on a book and then

basically using your intellectual capital to write a blog post maybe. So how does that work when you're looking at it in this process?

Nick Milo

I will talk first about the common process and say that there's nothing wrong about that process at face level and then talk about why there is something wrong about it. Yeah, and then I'll say why it sucks. And then I'll propose a different way to go about it. And then listeners, you figure out your balance between the two because there's probably is a balance. Okay, the normal approach is I'm going to read this book from front to back.

Srini Rao

Why it actually sucks.

Nick Milo

I'm going to, let's imagine it's digital. I'm going to take highlights. I'm going to use the service read wise. Then I'll have all those highlights and I'll go back through and I'll, um, I'll progressively narrow down the highlights and then I'll just summarize that work. Great. You and thousands of others can do that process and it's going to look eerily similar and you'll have a summary of somebody else's book.

That is not valuable. So what I'm trying to say is there's a lot there's still value to that. It depends on what your goals are. But all those goals I'm going to argue with the other method can be enhanced even further. Hey, let's say your goals just to learn. It's going to be enhanced further by this next method. If your goals are to reach more people is going to be enhanced further by this next method because it's

going to be more unique. So the other method is that what we've been talking about, as early in the game as possible, you go from just taking that note, because that's what a highlight is, to making a note, making a comment and insight. Now, you can still make a highlight, but right next to that, how often are you able to add a comment?

which ReadWise as a service also allows for, and so do many others. But how often are you adding your thoughts on the spot?

And I'm not saying that we're writing paragraphs. That's not sustainable. You have to get through a 400 page book. You can't write a paragraph for each highlight you make. But something that's shorthand, that is helping you actually engage and say why your interest, maybe just disagree. Like you bracket something and you say, disagree. You can come back to that later. But the goal is that we want to start working with these ideas.

Nick Milo

Because when we do, we're going to start generating our own thoughts using the note making prompts and those map making prompts that we talked about. We're going to say this really, this reminds me of blank. This relates to blank. It's important to me because of this. We're asking all these because questions and some other like fancy fun ones, mad lib related. Like one I like is called the primal shout. If this concept, this inanimate concept could shout.

utter single line or phrase, what would it say? So for like anti-fragility, which is a hard concept to kind of grasp, then for me, I say stronger from stressors. That's what it would shout, stronger from stressors. Kind of like house words in Game of Thrones. And that's a really fun way for us to sense make around the material that we're using. Is that the only thing? No, we're actually learning the material better. We're making deep neural connections.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

deep neural connections that are going to help us remember, recall. Now we can actually start to apply these things. Isn't that why we read nonfiction? I mean usually it's not the story. It's usually we want to apply and use something. So the more that we can engage in this material, the more it's going to become a part of us. And now we can use that. And then I'll just finish by this.

That means that when we get to communicating the last part of ARC, because we've done all the adding our own ideas, we've been relating these ideas, which spark new ideas and we relate those ideas, now when we communicate, that's going to be from you, that's going to be from Srini, that's going to be from Nick. It's going to be a unique perspective that I fucking care about.

not just another stupid ass summary, like, sorry, I'm getting a little riled up, but like that's where it's like we don't need more regurgitators in the world. We need the U-est you out there. And that's what note making allows to be drawn out, to be coaxed out and center stage the entire process.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, let's talk about this idea of intellectual capital because earlier than conversation, you said not everybody needs this and I'm going to make a counter argument for why. So I ended up writing this actually as a blog post on medium titled the most valuable resource that creators have in the, you know, in the AI era. And I don't think this applies only to creators anymore. And it's basically a blend of a lot of what you've said, you know, Tiago Forte's ideas. And it was

The idea is what I call the theory of personal knowledge capital. And the core idea of it is that in the era of AI, having a large repository of accessible knowledge is a massive competitive advantage because AI depends on human input and data. And in a network based system, you know, what you call intellectual knowledge. And basically the way I think about what we call personal knowledge capital is a combination of accessible knowledge.

personal insight and individualized expertise that basically is generated as a result of all of this. The more of this you have, the more effectively you're gonna be able to leverage it and the capabilities of AI without just producing derivative, sounding AI generated content. That in my mind is why this isn't just a thing that is relevant to people who are creators or writers.

In my mind, basically what this intellectual capital or personal knowledge capital is for the individual, it's what data is to huge companies.

Nick Milo

Hmm. Yeah, that well, that is a really, that is good argument because at the we can then I mean, if the AI, like the best way that I'm preparing for AI, I guess to respond to what you're saying is I'm writing a lot. Because then my AI, my AI friends can come along and say, Nick, you wrote about this here, it relates to this. And they can help spur my memories and recollections. Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yep.

Srini Rao

Exactly. Yes, you hit the nail on the head. The higher the quality of the input that you put into an AI system, the better it's going to be in terms of you being able to use its capabilities. Because it depends entirely on the data it has access to. And basically what you put in terms of your notes is that data.

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm. That's true. Yeah. No notes. You know, what do you have there? It's like, yeah, so it was sometimes people like, I can't make a map of content. And then we find out, oh, they only have like five notes in their new knowledge management system. It's like, you don't have the content. You can't make the map.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it basically in my mind underscores the importance of knowledge acquisition. It let you know, because I think that there's this idea that, oh, this is going to basically eliminate the need for us to learn and do things. And I'm like, no, it actually tremendously enhances the importance of all of this in so many ways that we are honestly, in my mind, just overlooking completely.

Nick Milo

You know, I agree with that and I think we may be somewhat of a similar age and I feel grateful for that age just to kind of see because I'm a little worried about Gen Z because they might get the wrong. They might pick up the wrong habits around this and they might not see the knowledge acquisition. They'll see the Google search. They'll be like, oh, I can write my paper this way. They'll they'll see the shortcuts.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yep.

Nick Milo

and not recognize the deeper value that you've been talking about here with personal knowledge capital.

Srini Rao

Well, I think that the other thing, particularly in a system that is linked is that your intellectual capital or personal knowledge capital acquires, like it operates on the principles of compound interest. And that especially as it relates to the AI ability, like I can't, you know, that's something I've just hit over and over. But you mentioned, let's talk about education briefly, because I think this is something when I recently talked to Tiago about the para method, the second book that he did.

Nick Milo

Yeah.

Srini Rao

He told me they had third graders using para. So I'm guessing you've had educators in your course. Like what do they say about this? Like how does it transform our both ability to educate? I think we've kind of hit on learning, but I think for students in particular, this is really important.

Nick Milo

It is. And you know, the good news is there's still a bountiful frontier for us to progress on here. Now, obviously, well, maybe not obviously, but I teach workshops and the education part of this with live teaching, kind of a multimedia experience. Some of them are live Zoom sessions, some of them are online curriculum.

community engagement. So that's a way for this learning experience to come alive. But there is a bit of a learning curve to this because we come from a world of that top-down folder structure. And that makes sense. So you can set up those four folders. And that's pretty simple. That's simple and gets people going. Whereas when we need to use technology and links...

We're so on the frontier. It's ridiculous. So the best practices for teaching and everything are going to take several years to trickle down and trickle across into colleges first, and then high schools, and then elementary. Not to say it's going to be linear, but just in how the upkeep is going.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Nick Milo

One thing that I think will help there, Srini, is your metaphor of mad libs and my efforts around note making exercises as easy things that you can do at any time. It's like you're walking around in the world, you recognize when you go, huh, or hmm, or whatever that thing is that you do, your tick, when you find something interesting, and then literally say, oh, that's interesting because...

That becomes one of these note making exercises. If we can habitualize, it's going to give students a leg up. So long story short, it's going to take several years, I think, for the institutions to really figure out best practices, the trickle down of how to teach to young kids and everything. But we can also just start. We can just start by figuring out how to get people to engage and then to write that down and make a link. And then the rest will start to take care of itself.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think this is also ties to sort of my own AI experiences have really been different in that. I think that in a lot of ways, people do use AI as either a better Google or a glorified word processor. It's like, hey, extract all the quotes from this. And what I realized that was actually a thousand times more valuable was to engage in a discussion. Like, so for example, one of the things I'll do is I'll take a set of books or, you know, I came up with this idea of what I called the unstructured deep work session.

where I basically had the AI generate a template for me to initiate this. And the idea was on the days that I don't know what I want to write about, I want you to basically at random, pull information from the knowledge base. Don't tell me what it is, don't write about it. Ask me questions to engage with it. And even when I do my daily reviews with that, I built a custom GPT model that helps me like track progress towards my goal. And I do it all via

Nick Milo

Hmm.

Srini Rao

voice, which is a whole other dynamic that has turned into two and a half hour conversations, like with a custom GPT model that has led and went in all sorts of directions. And I think having it ask you questions, because like I was, you know, I had it prepare a brief for my interview with you. And I was like, wait a minute, the questions you're asking me about Nick and to explore are very relevant to my own work. Let's discuss these.

Nick Milo

Why?

Nick Milo

Mm-hmm.

Nick Milo

Hm.

Srini Rao

But yeah, I mean, I think that in my mind is the ship. Because right now I think the dynamic is very sort of one sided and command and control. We see it as a tool, not a part.

Nick Milo

Hmm. Yeah, I think you're onto something. And what's funny is I think it's baked into the name. It's chat GPT. But that doesn't mean that's how it's being used or thought about. Because if we do engage in that conversation, then and that's the most beautiful thing, obviously, you've okay, so you've taken it to another level, I think my level that I'm pretty happy with already is just that.

When I have to formulate the question, that forces me to understand so much more deeply the thing I'm even trying to ask. And then it's like, OK, that in itself is the victory. And then whatever comes back, great. Hopefully we can continue that conversation. But yeah, you took it to the other level with having it prompt you with questions to go, so it's a two-way street.

Srini Rao
not only that, it turns out that it's a rapid on ramp into flow because like I looked at it and I was like, wait a minute. I remember I'll like, I got done. And then immediately, like I went back to the conversation I was having either with the chat, and I was like, wait a minute, you gave me three questions to answer, I just wrote for 45 minutes. An introduction to an article. I'm like, I've never been able to do that with that much, that less effort. It's like, why did the questions work? Which is ironic. I'm in an interview where I spend my time asking questions. And I was like, and

Basically, it was like, let's look at the cognitive benefits of being asked questions. Like, so when I do outlines now, I literally even if I have AI outline it, I don't have it write it for me or stress topics. I'm like, just ask, you know, come up with a list of questions for me to answer.

Nick Milo 
Mm-hmm. That's really good. And one thing I continually noodle on is, like, if I'm going to make something into a question or if I'm going to make something into a prompt. Subtle difference. So one would be like, you know, why is that interesting to you? And then the other would be, this is interesting to me because. So like for note making, I kind of skew towards the prompt, but outside of that,


It's typically the question. But I just find that something fun that I'm playing with.

Srini Rao 
Yeah, I mean, it's funny. I feel like even, you know, when I was talking to Tiago, actually, this will be a good way to kind of wrap things up. Tell me, where do you see the overlap between building a second brain and what you do? And where does it differ? Like, in what ways is it different?


Nick Milo 
Yeah, so I think, let's see, there are probably few angles. One is, his is definitely project first, and then mine is idea first. So I'd say building a second brain is the, because there's the concept of second brain, but then there's his methodologies. So his methodologies are project first, and then a minor idea first. with linking your thinking. That being said, it's not like his method doesn't come up with fantastic ideas, and it's not like mine doesn't help with projects and efforts. So it's just, that's number one. I think it could be summed up with that method is more about progressive summarization, mine is more about progressive ideation. One will get you results, is focused on like...

outward results and I think mine might be a little bit more about inward results. Kind of the idea that let's think for the joy of it. Oh and guess what from all that joyful thinking you've been doing you're actually generating your best work, the most valuable contributions to others. So it's kind of a long game approach to outcome. I think what's the other there's probably another differentiation. I mean linear or nonlinear. I think that's a bit more of a linear approach and I think linking your thinking, well it is way more nonlinear.

Srini Rao 
Yeah, I remember I told Tiago I was like you realize you left one huge chunk out of this book, right? He was like, I know the network thinking piece. Like, yeah, like because the book I think while he was writing it all this was evolving so rapidly.


Nick Milo 
And, you know, he's kind of lucky in that way because the network linking piece is so difficult. It's so difficult to articulate, to talk about what are the universal patterns. This is my endless obsession. And what is like something that the tool is doing that's going to maybe be outdated, like a specific tool versus, you know, what is going to be what's going to transcend the tool. But it's about the link. It's about the.

the network, the non-hierarchical systems, what are those truths? And then how can those be communicated to others in a way that's helpful towards them, for them? So, I think in many ways, I think he's kind of lucky to miss that because we're on the forefront of it right now. That's like my huge goal with my book is to popularize linking one's thinking. So yeah.



Srini Rao 
Yeah. Well, I mean, I think, you know, like I said, it's such a the amount of cognitive dissonance creates is so like, it's funny because I understand everything you're saying, because I've actually experienced it. And it's really hard to grasp it. I think when people are hearing it or just reading about it, it's one of those things you literally have to see, not even seeing it really. I think you have to experience it for yourself.

Nick Milo 
That's the difficulty. So I think it starts with the pain. Maybe with the elementary student level kids, maybe we can find a way to start with the joy. But I think when you're an adult, it starts with, I'm feeling so much pain when it comes to information, so much overwhelm, so much almost shame because I've been stopped on another project. I gave up on it. I feel bad about it.

and maybe there's a different method out there that works more for me. So that's the adult perspective. But I do think to some of the questions that you brought up, there is a way to lead with the joy when it comes to younger students. They're not going to be clamoring for it, but it can be brought to them and it can be more of that mad libs approach, perhaps.

Srini Rao 
Amazing. Well, I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at the Unmistakable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Nick Milo
Yeah, I mean, you have to, I think, go to Dr. Seuss. He had that happy birthday poem. Happy birthday to you. Today you are youer than you. No one alive. Today you are you. There is no one alive who is. Today you are you. That is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you. I think what makes someone unmistakable is that they can tap into their you-ness.

And if they can be their USU, that's when they're going to come alive, and they'll be unmistakably them.

Srini Rao 
Beautiful. Well, I could have talked to you for hours about this. So I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and sharing your wisdom and your insights with us. Where can people find out more about you, your work, and everything else that you're up to?

Nick Milo 
The easiest way is link You can also try that on YouTube and you'll see some videos that can introduce some of these link-based concepts in the tool that I typically use called Obsidian. Those would be the places.

Srini Rao 
And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. Awesome. That was fantastic, man.

Nick Milo (01:07:38.806)
So much fun.