Tiago Forte | Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Potential

Srini Rao

Tiago, welcome back to the Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.

Tiago Forte

Okay, cool.

Tiago Forte

Thank you Srini Rao , it's a real pleasure to be here.

Srini Rao

Oh, I have been looking forward to this conversation for so long. You have a new book out, Building a Second Brain, which I am happy to say I made the introduction to my literary agent. And I did that entirely for selfish reasons, because I wanted you to write this book for me. Fortunately, lots of other people have benefited from this book. But before we get into Second Brain, I want to start by asking a question that has absolutely nothing to do with that. What social group were you a part of in high school?

and what impact did that end up having on your life and your career.

Tiago Forte

Wow, that's an interesting one. And actually, I think it does explain a lot. I wasn't really part of any one group. I think that's largely because for various reasons, I went to five different schools five years in a row. For six, seventh, eighth, ninth, six, no, five, six, seventh, eighth, and ninth, five grades in a row. I either switched like from elementary to middle and then middle to high school.

Srini Rao

Wow.

Tiago Forte

or I was switching from public school to private school, which I tried out for a year, or I was switching from the US to Brazil, where I spent the eighth grade. And so I kind of came in high school just having all of my established social circles obliterated, which meant I had to just be this kind of chameleon. I had friends, my best friend was in student government, but then I had a girlfriend who was in cross country track and field.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

And then I had other friends who were in French club and chess club who were nerds. I kind of had to cross multiple social circles.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, it's funny because I don't know if you know this by me. I had the same experience, but I lived in the same town. We just changed schools every year. So I was in a different school every year from fifth until 10th grade.

Tiago Forte

super similar.

Srini Rao

Yeah, yeah. I mean, minus the living abroad in Brazil. So, you know, when you started working, I mean, I know that you didn't start out really in this field. And I think the last time we spoke, you and I were talking about the fact that you had spent some time in Peace Corps. What did your parents?

teach you about making your way in the world and, you know, career advice. Cause I know you're partially Brazilian. Like, you know, with Indians, we have this sort of cultural narrative, doctoral or engineer, that's the path. Um, and really, I mean, you and I both have careers that couldn't have even been possible prior, you know, to the existence of the internet or when we were potentially in high school.

Tiago Forte

Yeah, yeah, again, I think this was a huge influence on me and it was the exact opposite of what you just described. My dad is an artist, a painter, has been his entire life. And my mom is from Brazil, so she kind of has that alternative cultural perspective and she's a musician. And so we grew up in a family of artists. I think if I had become a doctor or lawyer, it would have been like the biggest disappointment to my parents.

Srini Rao

Hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, that is literally something you would never hear from an Indian parent. It's like, oh, my son's such a disappointment because he became a doctor.

Tiago Forte

Yeah, that's the sense I get, it's the exact opposite. I was to become a poet or artist or dancer. Those were the, I mean, my parents tried to be very open and they encouraged basically whatever we were interested in, but the subtext was a really powerful message to pursue what made me feel alive, what expressed my unique talents, what would give me a meaningful career, not just a profitable one.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I wish that narrative was more prevalent. So talk to me about what started to shape this perspective on the concept of a second brain. Because I have, you know, having read the book, I know where it started. But for our listeners, can you share kind of what the impetus was for starting to think about organizing our digital lives in this way?

Tiago Forte

Yeah, you know, the story that I tell in my book, as sort of an origin story, is my chronic medical condition that I had. But since, because of the questions you're asking, it's kind of priming me to kind of realize that it actually started way before then. The medical condition was just sort of this, like, this kind of shock. But I think it really goes back to just my temperament and my personality.

I love to collect things. I always have collected baseball cards, POGs, Star Wars cards, leaves from the ground. Like I'm just a natural collector. I'm also a huge nerd. I just love, I've always loved from the youngest age of the world of ideas, sci-fi books, fiction, historical fiction, big kind of big picture ideas. And then also I'm kind of neurotic.

kind of OCD, I want to need a certain level of order in my surroundings, in my life, in my thinking. And so that kind of has always led me to naturally organize. Like one story from my youth, my parents always scratched their heads that I seem to organize Legos more than I played with Legos. Which is totally right. And to me, it was playing. I found there's something about order.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm. Ha ha ha! Yeah.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

about structure that is so elegant and beautiful to me. It's like, it's so fascinating to create categories and principles and patterns and to shift them around and move them and try different things, that to me, that was just as fun as, you know, building things.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Well, I mean, it's funny that we use Legos as a metaphor because I think it's such an apt metaphor for thinking about how we build things out of knowledge, you know, in ways that we never thought before. Because I think that was really kind of what struck me in the book was this ability to create one in spurts, regardless of how much time that we have.

Srini Rao

people's opinions about what we should do, how we should think, and how we should live.

but make comparatively little effort applying that knowledge and making it our own. So much of the time we're information hoarders, stockpiling endless amounts of well-intentioned content that only ends up increasing our anxiety. And, you know, I just remember, you know, reading that thinking, yeah, this is kind of like a summary of, you know, the joke that I always make that if I could actually implement the advice from every podcast guest I've ever interviewed and, you know, the books that I've read,

supermodels and I'm none of those things. But, you know, how did we end up here? How did we end up in this mess? Because technology to me seems kind of like a double edged sword in that if it's used properly it can lead to beautiful things, but it also has led us into a state of disarray in a lot of ways.

Tiago Forte

Yeah.

Tiago Forte

Yes, I see it the same way. It's a double-edged sword. It's not inherently good or bad, right or wrong. It is just how you use it. Gosh, there's so many causes for that. There's so many things from the way the internet has evolved to the fact that we're in a knowledge-based economy that values knowledge to the way that software has made it, and hardware has made it so easy to create content, so now everyone is creating content.

to even things like politics and society becoming more divided and more controversial. All these things drive people to seek, to consume, to acquire information, which feels great for a while. We have all these scarcity, we have such scarcity-based psychology where it's like more, acquire, just collect and stockpile as much stuff as you can.

I always observe that in the physical world of goods and services, we've started to realize, wait a minute, endless acquisition of consumer goods doesn't actually make our lives better. We're just starting as a culture to have that realization, but in the digital world, we haven't even started. We haven't even started. I guess there's digital minimalism, but most people haven't turned the corner and started to realize, oh, it's actually about being very selective.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

and mindful and intentional about the information that I let into my life. And then it's what I do, how I use that information that actually determines its value.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, I mean, I think the thing that makes digital spaces so unique, and I've said this before, I wrote this article about the disadvantage of using folders for personal knowledge management in relation to why I like mem. And I said, the problem is that, you know, in the digital realm, your storage spaces are like closets with infinite space. Yeah. And that I think is what contributes to this problem. So you do absolutely have to be much more mindful and intentional. And, you know, I.

Tiago Forte

Yeah.

Srini Rao

I remember writing in an article somewhere, I told somebody once, I bet if you deleted 90% of the things on your computer, you wouldn't miss a beat and your life would go on with no problem.

Tiago Forte

Yeah. In fact, you know, I don't know if you've ever, or your listeners have ever lost a computer or like completely lost it, like a large amount of data, like a hard drive or a backup or something. It's a really interesting moment to me, having had that experience of, you feel a tremendous sense of loss, almost grief, like you've lost this asset, this treasure. But you're right, in a way,

You know, when this happened to me, I lost a computer when I was traveling overseas. I felt a sense of loss and grief, but at the same time, I was like, well, what do I actually care about is like the memories, the places I traveled, the people I met with, experiences I had, the food I ate, which I keep. No one can really take away those experiences for me. And I think that's one thing that has led me to this focus on action ability. It's really not about the endless

you know, acquisition of these information assets. It's what, you know, singular, unforgettable experiences and outcomes and results come out of them. That's what you keep.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, I mean, I think that, you know, initially people view, you know, what you teach as a method for organizing information. And I realize that it's that that's kind of the sort of surface level of everything that you do after reading this book. But there are a couple of things that, you know, struck me in particular that I want to talk to you about. You say that.

Tiago Forte

Yes.

Srini Rao

Information is the fundamental building block of everything you do. Anything you might want to accomplish, executing a project or getting a new job, learning a new skill, starting a business requires finding and putting to use the right information. Your professional success and the quality of life depend directly on your ability to manage information effectively. And then you go on to say that research from Microsoft shows that the average U.S. employee spends 76 hours per year looking for misplaced notes, items or files.

And that just struck me as like 76 hours is a shitload of time in which you could accomplish something.

Tiago Forte

Yeah, it really is.

Srini Rao

Yeah, so you know, you talk about the fact that the world is moving faster. So how do you balance this sort of, you know, evolution of information? Because I think we are producing and consuming information at a pace unlike any other time in history. And the funny thing is that that's not going to decrease. It's only going to increase.

Tiago Forte

Oh absolutely, it's increasing every day. And it's not gonna stop, it's just not.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Yeah, so one thing that, you know, I want to talk about and then we'll start to get into the tactical aspects of this was.

You know, the more I dove into your work, the more time I spent in mem, the more I started to really explore this idea of network thinking. I realized we've basically had people write all these books like deep work, like digital minimalism, uh, world of that email. Not that I'm picking on Cal because I love Yal Newport. It's one of my favorite people in the world. And we've built all these distraction blockers. We've come up with all these productivity hacks. And yet the thing that I realized is not a single one of them.

addresses the root cause of all these problems. They all alleviate symptoms because after going through your book and spending a lot of time really thinking about this, I realized the root cause of all these issues is how we organize information.

Tiago Forte

I totally agree.

Srini Rao

And yet, that is the one thing nobody has ever tried to really solve. They've just put Band-Aids on all these problems.

Tiago Forte

Oh yeah, the thinking has been that it's not possible. That there is no, it's like give up, it's hopeless, there is no way to organize your own information and thus the solution becomes outsource it to Google, to Facebook, someone else has to come in and save you. And I think that's just, you need to have agency and empowerment to do it for yourself, to have a place that you truly control.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

that is not just Google or something.

Srini Rao

Well, let's talk about what a second brain is. Let's assume that somebody who has never heard on Mistakeable 4 doesn't know who you are, is like, what the hell is a second brain? Describe the actual definition of a second brain.

Tiago Forte

Yeah, so the broadest definition is really just a trusted place outside your head that you keep and make use of the most important information in your life. And that can be paper, I tend to prefer software and that's what my book is about. But it's really, you know, the same way that you have this first brain, this biological brain that is the repository of what you know and have experienced, well, there's certain things to remember and things to memorize that your first brain is really not suited to.

memorizing details is pretty much the worst thing that your brain does, the thing that it's worst at. And so, you know, software is still kind of rudimentary in many ways. It's nowhere close to artificial intelligence, but it can take over. You can delegate the very easiest task, which is remembering things.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, you know, I think that it's fascinating because I had said, it was like using your brain to store information is like buying a Ferrari and then driving it through, you know, a school, school zone, where the speed limit is 25 miles an hour. You're basically wasting its power. And so.

Tiago Forte

I love it, yeah. Yes.

Srini Rao

Let's get into what you call the four essential capabilities that we can rely on for the second brain to perform for us. Making ideas concrete, revealing new associations between ideas, incubating our ideas over time and sharpening our unique perspectives. How does the second brain do that?

Tiago Forte

Yes, so these are really four things that your brain, your first brain is not good at, that software can do easily. Do you wanna go through them one at a time?

Sure, so first one is kind of the, I mean it's the starting point of all the rest. You have to make your ideas concrete, right? As long as they're in your head, they're sort of these vague, mystical, ambiguous concepts and by writing them down, you know, the ancient timeless practice of writing them down, suddenly they are an objective artifact outside of your subjective mind.

which means once they're concrete, you can play with them. You can edit them, you can annotate them, you can connect them together, you can combine them and build something bigger. All those capabilities depend on first having them be in a concrete place outside your head.

Srini Rao

So let's go into the other pieces.

Tiago Forte

Yes, so the second, remind me the second one again. My first brain has atrophied at this point, so I can't, yeah, so this is sort of building on that first one. We know that connectivity of ideas is extremely important. We know that associations, especially like unexpected associations, unusual associations is important. But that is also a thing that's hard to do in our first brain.

Srini Rao

revealing new associations between ideas.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tiago Forte

You might be able to connect two ideas at any given time, but then you shift your attention to think about some other third thing and that first connection kind of dissolves. It's like our working memory is so tiny. We can only remember basically like a few items at any given time. And so if you want the links and associations that you've discovered to last, basically, you want them to be preserved over time, you have to make those linkages somewhere outside of your head, such as in a piece of software.

Srini Rao

No. And then let's talk finally about incubating and sharpening perspectives.

Tiago Forte

Yeah, so the third one is really just that preservation thing. You know, you could, I don't know if you've ever had just a crazy, I'm sure you've had many, you know, kind of crazy caffeine-fueled brainstorming sessions, either by yourself or with a group of people. And it's amazing, it's fun. You just discover these incredible new ways of looking at the world, but then you reach your biological limits. You get tired, you get hungry. And it's almost like when you step away from that brainstorming session, unless there's a,

a lasting record of it. It's like a sandcastle getting dissolved by the ocean waves. You are basically just letting it all, you know, flutter away into the wind. So that the next time you come back, it's like, what did we talk about in that brainstorm? Does anyone remember? Like, it's kind of funny. And so it's just about letting things last so that they can slowly organically kind of develop and build and evolve over time.

Srini Rao

Well, I mean, you know, we were, I know you and I talked about Ryan Holiday last time we spoke and I still to this day remember when he told me that he wrote down the idea for the obstacles away on a note card four years before he wrote the book. And that book went on to sell a million copies. And he told me, he said most of these notes lead to nothing, but one of them is enough to build a career off of.

Tiago Forte

You know, I love that so much because I think that's true of everyone. You know, I think anyone listening to this, you have almost incalculable value just sitting in your, in terms of knowledge, sitting in your email inbox, sitting in your documents folder, sitting in your notes app. I mean, it doesn't have to be the most world-changing insight about theoretical physics or something. It can just be something that could help someone else.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Tiago Forte

Like there's no way that you don't have a ton of knowledge that someone somewhere in the world could just benefit from so much. And it's just kind of sitting on our hard drives and our cloud drives. What it's waiting for is us to actually kind of take ownership of it and turn it into something new, which kind of brings us to the perspective point.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, it's funny that you've talked about revealing new associations between ideas because Neil, we've mentioned Ryan Holliday. So, you know, if you ask Ryan about his writing process, he'll tell you. Believe it or not. He said, often the next book is basically a extension of a idea in a previous book or a chapter from a previous book. And then, you know, recently Steven Pressfield had a new book come out called put your ass, you know, where your heart wants to be.

Tiago Forte

Yes.

Srini Rao

Wait a minute, Stephen Pressfield literally took one word, one sentence from the War of Art, and he turned that into a whole new book. And what I realized was like, there's so many seeds for what you should create next in what you've already created, but it's very difficult to see that if you haven't externalized what you're talking about.

Tiago Forte

Exactly, oh I love this point Serene, this is so good. So I think people often think, oh I'm going to create something. And they think they have to like go into the workshop or the cave and just hammer out this singular perfect, you know, perfect diamond of a creative work. Which of course is impossible and they'll just be there forever and kind of tinkering away. That's just not how creativity works, especially in the internet age. It's iterative.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

It's so iterative. You put something out and then people say, okay, 90% is so-so, it's really about this 10%. And then you double down on that 10% and then they give you another 10%. You just keep doubling down on what I think of as the signal. The signal, there's always a signal and there's always noise. If you can just find that signal, and honestly, the best way of finding it is having other people find it for you. Right, it's almost like by working in public, you are outsourcing so much of the work to other people.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

You're actually drawing on their intelligence and their perspective rather than trying to do all that effort yourself.

Srini Rao

It's funny you say that because my friend Gareth and I, we co-host this weekly segment of the podcast called the Unmistakable Creativity Hour. And every idea we have for the next episode is almost always based on something he says in the previous one. And I usually just take a note while we're talking inside of Mem. And like...

because I have like 8,000 notes in here at this point, or 7,000 plus notes, like literally it takes me two minutes to plan the episode using, you know, what you're talking about just because we have so much content at our disposal, but literally he says one thing and I'm like, okay, cool. And sometimes I don't have an idea 15 minutes before I'm like, what are we gonna talk about? And then I look and I'm like, oh, okay, let's just use that.

Tiago Forte

Yeah.

Tiago Forte

It's something that I think that works across mediums. There's these little moments, you know, in this conversation, people will listen back and there will be this one little thing we say that will be the most important point in the whole, in the whole conversation. There's always just this like 80-20 momentary spark that if you can just listen for that, that spark can become, like you said, the next thing, and then the next thing, and the next thing. And it almost becomes like this, you're kind of following, I think of it like a river.

The river is flowing where it wants to flow, right? The water always follows the path of least resistance. You can try to force a river to go somewhere else, but it'll be just an unimaginable amount of effort and won't work. So it's much better to just follow where your own creativity wants to flow rather than try to force it. And it's also much more fun and much easier.

Srini Rao

Nah. Well, I think that makes a perfect segue into talking about this concept that you call code, which I know stands for capture, organize, distill, and express. So explain this to our listeners.

Tiago Forte

Yes, so, you know, as I was writing the book, this was actually a relatively late edition and it became the very core of the entire book, which is kind of surprising. I basically realized at some point through writing and speaking and teaching my course that there's no such thing as a second brain apart from simply the tools that you use to execute your projects. Like I think people think, okay, let me build this contraption, this one machine.

And then once it's totally done and perfect, then I'll start to use it to get things done. And that doesn't make any sense. That doesn't make any sense. It's like someone spending six months perfectly outfitting the most ultimate commercial kitchen, buying every appliance and every knife and everything, and they don't even boil an egg or make a pot of rice. It's like, that doesn't make sense. How do you know what appliances you need? How do you know the best way to lay out the kitchen? How do you know where things should be stored?

The decisions about how to build your second brain have to come from the daily reality of simply just moving forward your projects and your goals. And what that process looks like, and this is why I made it the core of the book, is four steps, which is the creative process. You capture information, that's the C. Then you organize what you've captured, which is the O. Then you distill what you've organized, which is the D. And then finally you express

your voice, your message, your story, your idea, not out of the blue or on a blank slate, but drawing from and compiling together all the little building blocks that you've gathered from the previous three steps. That is code.

Srini Rao

Yeah. You know, it's funny because when I read that, I realized, you know, for 90% of people at myself included prior to really understanding, you know, your work and the work of Sanka Ahrens and really taking it to another level that for 90% of people captures where

knowledge management kind of comes to an end. It's like they save a bunch of quotes to read wise or whatever and then they don't do anything with it. They might refer to it in a conversation like, that was kind of the extent of it for me, but when I started rewriting stuff in my own words, which was distillation, it just took on a whole other level. And then when I combined both smart notes and progressive summarization, the results were mind boggling to me.

Tiago Forte

Yes.

Tiago Forte

Absolutely, it's so true. Yeah, I think you know capture for eons was the hardest part Because we I mean what you had to use scrolls or vellum or I eventually paper I mean There was so many obstacles to surmount that no taking essentially just became just the taking like you said just You could just get it down. Oh my gosh, that's success

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

But now with capture tools, which is what I call them, digital capture tools, you can just snap a photo with your phone and then use live text feature on iOS to copy a string of text and paste it into your notes. You can just hit a button and speak into Otter AI and have your voice transcribed. You can have something like Readwise, which automatically detects, highlighted in an ebook or an article and saves it in your notes. These are, we're starting to be able to create notes with

little or even no effort, which then it solves one problem, but then it creates another problem, which is the problem of over-capture, over-accumulation.

Srini Rao

Yeah. Well, let's talk about your four capture criteria, because I think that was really, you know, sort of a good way to get people to be much more deliberate about how they go about this.

Tiago Forte

Absolutely.

Could you remind me what they are?

Srini Rao

Yeah, that's hilarious. Cause now I know this book better than you do even though you wrote it. But don't worry. Cause like I, I actually, it's because they've been living and breathing the concepts day in and day out, mainly because I've been writing this guide. Like if you asked me five months from now, I'd probably have to look it up. It's, um, you know, personal surprising, inspiring, like it was inspiring, uh, useful, personal and surprising.

Tiago Forte

Yes, so these are the four criteria. You know, the way that I came up with these is basically, there's the most frequent objection that people always have, which is always, why don't I just do a search on Google? Right? I mean, that's essentially the extent of most people's knowledge management. They need to know something, they do a search. And it's a great question, because honestly, Google has taken over a vast swath of knowledge seeking.

Right, think about in the past if you wanted to know, you know, what was the population of South Africa? How would you even, you'd have to like walk, you know, go down to the library or have an encyclopedia or something. Now it's an instantaneous search away. And so it's like Google replaced maybe like 60 or 70% of our knowledge seeking activities, but there's still this 30 or 40% that Google can't do at all. And that's the four criteria. So one is information that's surprising, or I'm sorry.

One of them is information that is inspiring. I always say you can Google the answer to a question, but you can't Google a feeling. You can't Google a state of mind. You can't Google a perspective or a lens that makes you see things a certain way. And so one way of thinking of your second brain is just a, it's like a motivational treasure chest. It is like a, it is an archive of everything that moves you, inspires you, makes you feel passion.

makes you feel interested. And those could be quotes, stories, could include images, could include memories from your past. Those are things that Google simply cannot surface for you as an individual.

Srini Rao

Wow. And then.

Yeah, I mean, that's true. You're absolutely right. Because having those capture criteria, I think, really leads to a lot more discernment in the way that you pick up things from books. Because I noticed myself sort of highlighting less. And I figured it out finally. I thought to myself, OK, I've written two nonfiction books. And I explain this to people before. It's like, if you look at every single nonfiction book, it follows a very similar structure. The author basically will make a key point in the opening of a chapter. Then he'll support that key point

Tiago Forte

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

with a couple of examples, maybe you'll keep one, two, you know, as a point of reference, and then they will give you the key takeaway. And I'm like, other than the key takeaway and the key point, you don't really need to capture anything else.

Tiago Forte

It's so true. Your behavior around highlighting and saving excerpts really changes when you start systematically keeping them and then reviewing them and then using them. You know, you start to, one thing I love to do is write book summaries. When I really want to understand the book, when I'm like, okay, this book could be a major milestone in my own journey, it's not enough to passively sit there and just read it or even review the highlights. I have to write. I have to put it into my own words.

Srini Rao

No.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, if you saw the number of, you know, notes that I rewrote in my own words for your book, I, you know, I literally used all of them to write the ultimate guide to building a second Graham brain and mem in less than, you know, a week.

Tiago Forte

And what I've, yeah.

Tiago Forte

That's why you know the book better than me at this point.

Srini Rao

Well, I mean, that's the thing, right? Is that when you rewrite stuff in your own words, and I learned this from Sankya Arends, is that it reinforces, you know, one year understanding. Because I think for me, that book made one thing, it made it clear why I got bad grades in college. Because if you think about high school versus college and, you know, knowledge consumption and, you know, knowledge testing in high school.

You don't have to be smart to get good grades. You have to be good at memorizing shit and regurgitating information. You don't actually have to understand anything. And I realized this, you know, after reading the Wealth of Nations where, you know, I got to see in economics in college and I was terrible. And what I realized was that often what will happen is you're presented a concept, but then you're tested on that concept in a context that you've never seen before.

Tiago Forte

Yes.

Srini Rao

And that is really, I think, the true test of whether you understand something is that can you take this knowledge and understand it in another context than the one in which you acquired it?

Tiago Forte

Exactly. That's really it. And for me, that's what expression is. It's implementation, application, it's trial and error, whatever word you use, it's like, you hear an idea, you're like, wow, that idea is fascinating. You have no idea if that idea has any value. It could be complete 100% BS. In fact, you have to assume it is.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

Right? Like imagine a sci- I always like to make the comparison to science. Imagine a scientist just, you know, sitting back in their chair and thinking of a new theory and going, ah yes, this is the truth. This is a fact. This thing that I just thought of just now. You know, that's ridiculous. You're not allowed to call that a fact. You have to create an experiment, write a hypothesis. You have to test it. Then the results have to be replicated. We have...

such a rigorous process for what we call science that's empirical. And maybe in our personal lives, you know, someone gives you, I don't know, a health tip or an exercise routine. You don't need to go to that extent, but there's gotta be some experiment. Like you can't just take it on faith that this thing is good advice. You have to test it or try it in some way.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Well, yeah, I'm this is why I, you know, I've been joking and kind of teasing out a book I've been working on titled Everybody's Full of Shit, Including Me, which is about the fact that all prescriptive advice is context dependent. So the same advice that works for one person could royally screw up another person's life.

Tiago Forte

There's so many things. It could be wrong, it could be dangerous. Or maybe it's just, it works for certain personality types, but not others. Maybe, I mean, in fact, I would bet, this is true of all advice, it works given some assumptions, right, under certain circumstances, but not others. Or it depends on your stage of life. Or it depends what you're trying to achieve. Or it depends what resources you have. Like every piece of advice in the universe has some, it depends. Some...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

you know, limitations or conditions under which it's true. There's no such thing as universal advice. And so part of testing is just exactly what you said, determining whether you fit the criteria for that advice to make sense for you.

Srini Rao

Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, let's talk about para because, you know, I think that like you said, I mean, I para was something that I embraced right after our first conversation. But when I understood it through the lens of your book.

It was just a whole other level of clarity and execution speed that I yet to experience. So explain para for people who are unfamiliar with your work or don't know anything because I think the thing that really struck me that you say is that you'll always need to use multiple platforms to use your projects for no single platform can do everything. The intention here is not to use a single software program but to use a single organizing system one that provides consistency.

between apps and many times per day.

Tiago Forte

Yes, yeah, so I always use the word system. And a lot of the times people assume I'm referring to a software program, like one software program, and I'm really not. The system transcends any particular piece of software. It's manifested partially in a piece of software and various ones, but I really, I don't know, I've just been burned too many times by identifying too closely with one app.

I mean, I can cite lots of examples for one reason or another, my loyalty was punished. And so I've sort of arrived at a platform agnostic approach and system that, you know, if any single company, if any single app went out of business or turned evil or decided to sell my data or whatever it was, I, you know, I might be a little sad or disappointed and might have to do some work to transition.

But there always needs to be an exit plan, basically. There always needs to be a way for you to take your data with you and not have it kind of go down with the ship.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think I re read the book one more time just for the sake of our conversation, just to kind of, you know, get some ideas. And I remember you talking about Twyla Thorpe and this whole idea of project containers and how, you know, the nice thing about having everything as containers, you can move it without losing any of the content. So what, what does para stand for, for the people who don't know? Because what I, like I said, to me, once you start organizing every app with this same structure, it does the reduction on your cognitive load is fucking amazing.

Tiago Forte

You know, that's the hidden theme. I don't even know if I actually directly mentioned it throughout the entire book. The whole thing we're trying to do is reduce the cognitive load on your brain. That is the overarching thesis. Every little decision is made through that lens. And Para is a great example. So Para is the way that I recommend people perform the organized step, which is the second step that the O encode. And it's actually...

the probably, in fact, definitely the single most, by far the single most popular technique that I've ever taught, it was kind of how everything started, was with the problem of organization. Like you said, that's where most people are kind of stuck. They've captured some notes, written some things down, they have some files, but it's like, what is the structure that allows me to make sense of all this? And it's simply four letters. I'm a huge fan of four-letter frameworks. I love four letters.

which stand for the four categories into which all information, and I mean all information from all sources and all formats can be placed which is projects that you're working on, which is the P Areas of responsibility, which is the A Resources that you're keeping track of which is the R and then archives that are no longer active which is the A and We can go through those one by one if you'd like

Srini Rao

Yeah, let's do that.

Tiago Forte

So the operating principle, you could say the organizational, the organizing principle of PARA, is instead of organizing information by these very broad subjects, which is what most people do because it's what they've seen in the library, right? You know, like psychology, you know, science, architecture, you know, biology, as if it's like your class notebooks in school.

The problem with that approach is, you know, when you have 15 minutes in between meetings in the middle of a workday, you will not have time to look through a gigantic folder or tag called psychology. It's simply too vast. It's too not specific. And so what I have people do is organize according to horizons of actionability. So how actionable is something? And typically what that looks like is...

Projects are just generally the most actionable thing. They have a deadline, they're happening now, there's people waiting on you, there's milestones to meet. So really most of your attention should be going to your active projects, which is why the projects category is first. Then you have a slightly less actionable category, which is your areas of responsibility, which is not projects, but kind of.

aspects or domains of your life or your work that you have to manage and keep track of over time. So things like in your personal life, your finances, your health, your friendships, your spouse, your dog, your car, right? It's not like, oh, I have a deadline in three days. It's more just like an ongoing kind of management. And then resources is all the other things you're learning about, things you're researching, reading you're doing, highlights from books, kind of like everything else.

And then archives is simply anything from the previous three categories that is no longer active. You don't wanna delete it, right? Like in the digital world, pretty much there's no longer ever any reason to delete anything. You can just keep it all. Don't even have to make that decision. But you do not want it front and center crowding and cluttering your attention, your workspace. So the archive, I think of it as like the deep freezer like down in the basement. I can stick something in there.

Tiago Forte

It's preserved exactly as it is forever. And if I want it, I can go find it, but in the meantime, it's kind of out of sight, out of mind.

Srini Rao

Yeah, well, you know, it's funny because I, you know, when we did the first most recent Maximize Your Apple with Mem Launch, one of the things I had advised people to do was to start by archiving everything.

Tiago Forte

Yes.

Srini Rao

And because then you get this sort of level of clarity, because I mean, you know, just the sheer overwhelm that people were feeling was mind boggling to me. And to watch the way they work. And the way, the metaphor that I came up with when I was trying to describe this is that the way that most people manage knowledge day to day is a bit like going to different grocery stores to buy every item on the list when all you wanna do is make a fucking peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Tiago Forte

That's such a great analogy, yeah.

Srini Rao

And yet, you know, it's kind of amazing because I think that once people see this and I think the thing that frustrates me is that this is really hard to describe verbally and it's so much easier to see visually.

Tiago Forte

Oh yeah, this is the big challenge of all this. It's so abstract. We're talking about information and categories and associations and patterns. Before consumer technology really took off, I mean, the only people that even thought about the stuff were information scientists and information theorists. Now it's like we each have to be an information scientist just to get through our day-to-day lives.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Well.

So one other thing that you say, and I think this really was the thing that stood out to me when I started to understand, you know, what made this so powerful was that you say, parrot isn't a filing system. It's a production system. It's no use trying to find the perfect place where a note belongs. There isn't one. The whole system is constantly shifting and changing in sync with our constantly changing life. And that's what I realized was like, I'm like, yeah. And so, you know, it's funny because as I've been working with mem, I said, you know, the whole term personal knowledge.

management is nonsensical because none of us want to manage knowledge. We want to generate knowledge. And so I was like, we need a new term to describe this and it's personal knowledge generation, which is why I think I like mem because it doesn't just manage knowledge. It generates knowledge.

Tiago Forte

This is such an important perspective. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the purpose of all this is to create. It really is. I would even say it's not really worth all this effort if you're not creating anything. Now the distinction though is, so today many people who are into, you know, knowledge management systems and whatever are content creators. They're writers, bloggers, podcasters, YouTubers. That's sort of been like the...

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

many of the early adopters. But I sincerely believe that is just the very leading edge of the first wave. Content creators are just a little bit ahead of the curve because that's their profession. But when I work with people who work in even the largest, biggest traditional organizations, to me, they're creators too. I mean, they're writing dozens of emails a day, they're giving presentations, they're writing memos and reports, they're creating deliverables and presenting them to clients.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Tiago Forte

even something like a decision. Like let's say you're a senior executive and you're not doing much execution. To me, even making a decision is such a creative act. You know, in a world of infinite possibility for you to arrive at a subtle, quality, effective decision to me is on par with like a ballet or an orchestra or a painting.

It requires so much deep thinking and innovation and sensitivity. And so I really, when I look out on the world, I just see nothing but creators. If there's any job that a human is still doing, I always say, it's because it has an element of creativity in it somewhere.

Srini Rao

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it's funny because the first time we spoke, I remember you walking me through the concept of the archipelago ideas, which I think really makes a nice way to talk about sort of moving a project forward. And when I saw how it was explained in the book, I was like, holy shit.

And I mean, you know, you just got a glimpse of, you know, how I planned the ultimate guide to building a second brain and mem. And, you know, for those of you who want to know how I did it, you can go actually watch the YouTube video that I did about Tiago's book. But walk us through this, this idea of the archipelago of ideas and how people use it. Because when I saw that, I was like, wait a minute, this literally changes your ability to create content in a way that you never could before. And I mean, it speeds up the process.

I already thought I had figured out a way to get really fast with Mem when I saw this. It was just like, oh my God.

Tiago Forte

That makes me so happy. I mean, you're already such an incredibly prolific creator. So if it has something to offer you, then I feel confident in it.

Srini Rao

Oh, you should trust me. What I mean, you saw what I said about the book and we'll share that with our listeners towards the end. But explain this concept really quick.

Tiago Forte

Yeah, you know, it comes from a book by Steven Johnson. I think it's called Where Good Ideas Come From. And I think I even have quite a lengthy quote from him right in the book to cite where it came from. And it's really just this idea that if you're gonna create something new, whether it's a well-reasoned email all the way to a book.

You don't have to sit down and just like furrow your brow and clench up your fists and then just all at once in one gigantic, what I call a heavy lift, kind of just like get it out there. That is really difficult and it's stressful and it's not sustainable. And you don't actually come up with something that great because you're only drawing on the ideas that you can think of right in that moment. So essentially archipelago of ideas is a very second brain approach to creating new things which is

you lay out essentially an outline. Like you lay out bullet points or even links to a series of different notes in a sequence that makes sense, right? In the order and in the sequence that you're going to present it in the final version. So that, I mean, the clearest example here is writing. Every time I sit down to write, to actually do the writing, virtually 100% of the time, on the left side of my screen, I have my outline, my archipelago.

archipelago of ideas. So I've already done all the thinking. There's no new research. I don't open one new browser tab. I don't go find any new article, nothing. All the research has been done. So all I have to do is translate this outline of a logical point-by-point argument or message or story or whatever it is, translate it from outline format on the left of my screen to the right side of my screen where I have like a Google Doc.

basically translating it from outline format into prose. And so it's easy. The final step of writing, which people describe as like torture, like it's so hard and so painful. When you have a second brain becomes the easiest. You're just snapping together a collection of Legos that you've already found, already decided the Legos you're gonna use. And you even have like one of those instructional pamphlets for how to put them together.

Srini Rao

No, it's truly it's a game changer. I mean, I like I said, I think people really need to see this in action to see how it works and how powerful it is. But, you know, if there's any testament, you know, that I can think the book like I remember telling my roommate, my old roommate, Matt, I said, tell you what I'd like by the book. And if you don't think it was worth your money. And by the way, this is not an offer I'm making to everybody listening just as an FYI. I told him I was like, I will give you the twenty dollars for the book.

if you don't think it's valuable. And he sent me a text saying, after reading the first chapter, I think you got to the first part and he's like, holy shit, I'm like, yeah. I was like, when it comes to books, Matt, I'm always right. You know, not that, you know, that's entirely true. But I was like, I've never given him a book recommendation where he didn't end up, you know, finding it to be an absolute game changer. When it comes to organizing our lives, there are books that I would put at the top of my list.

Tiago Forte

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

Srini Rao

Um, and this is going to go into that list and writer Carol's bullet journal is the book that I've gifted the most, the one that I've purchased on Amazon for people and yours is going to be added to that as you know, the combo of the two. It's going to be like, I'm sending you these two books, read both of them. Um, because they together, I mean, they're, you know, they're life changing, like I can't think of one person who I introduced the bullet journal to who didn't say.

I don't understand how I lived without this before.

Tiago Forte

I know. First of all, thank you so much. I mean, you've been really, I'm really not sure this book would exist without you. You know, your introduction to, you know, our shared literary agent, but also just as importantly, I mean, I could find an agent, but you're just belief. You know, being on your podcast, I don't know if you even know this, was really one of my biggest breaks.

Srini Rao

Well...

Srini Rao

Wow.

Tiago Forte

Like I can remember back, I think more people have said that they first discovered me through the Unmistakable Creative Podcast than I think, and it's not even the biggest podcast I've been on, but there was something about the combination between your audience, your passion and support, the timing, you know, quite early on that felt like lighting a fuse under what today is building a second brain. So thank you.

Srini Rao

Yeah.

Srini Rao

Mm-hmm.

Srini Rao

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, like I said, I am just blown away by this. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews. And I'm curious to see how you'll answer this after having written this book. And, you know, I think almost three or four years later, what do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable?

Tiago Forte

Gosh, I think it comes back to that idea of perspective. Every single person has a unique perspective. It's kind of a mathematical fact. No one has had the exact set of life experiences and learned the exact lessons in the same order in the exact same way. And we're taught in school and elsewhere that our perspective limits us, that we have blind spots and biases and we miss things, which is completely true.

But there's another side of that coin, which is our perspective also allows us to see things that no one else can see. And this is the reason I think everyone can be a creator, is a creator, should be a creator, is if you don't communicate to even one person what you see through that unique lens of yours, I think the world has lost something forever. I think that it's inherently unmistakable.

to share something that you see uniquely through your own lens. And that's why we need everyone. We really need everyone on the planet capitalizing on the value of their ideas, taking ownership of their story and their message. We really can't get enough because the world has a lot of problems and we really just need everyone's contributions to them.

Srini Rao

Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story, your wisdom and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book and everything you're up to?

Tiago Forte

They can find everything at buildingasecondbrain.com, including the book, the course, the podcast, the blog. It's all part of the second brain extended universe.

Srini Rao

Awesome. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that.