The Forte Labs Blog

Dedicated to Exploring the Frontier of Modern Productivity

The Design of a Weekly Review

The most important practice that I recommend everyone adopt for their personal productivity is a Weekly Review – a regular reflection on their priorities and goals designed to give them a sense of clarity for the upcoming week. Whether you adopt the Getting Things Done method or something else isn’t important. It doesn’t matter whether you…

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The Forte Labs Staff Retreat, 2018

In mid-August we held our first ever staff retreat, gathering 10 people in a house in the Oakland Hills to set the direction of the company for the next year. It was an opportunity to begin to answer the question: what is it that we stand for? What is Forte Labs’ role to play in…

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Emergent Strategy: Organizing for Social Justice

When I moved from San Francisco to Oakland in 2014, I was just trying to pay cheaper rent. I never expected to be influenced by the movements that flow through Oakland’s veins: the movements for social justice, for environmental justice, and for black liberation. I’ve since had the privilege of working with some of the…

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The Personal Narrative Vision

In my previous article on how I perform my Annual Review, I briefly discussed the Personal Narrative Vision (PNV) exercise. I’ve developed the PNV by drawing on many other visualization exercises I’ve encountered over the years, synthesizing them into a simple yet profound writing exercise. The PNV is one of the most important but also…

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New Book: Extend Your Mind

I recently published my new ebook, a compilation of 19 Praxis posts from 2017, on the Amazon Kindle store. Click here to view it on Amazon (Affiliate Link) Read the Foreword below Foreword from Extend Your Mind This book is made up of 19 essays (or long-form blog posts) published in 2017 on the blog. 2017…

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The Case for Digital Notes

In our course Building a Second Brain, we teach people how to capture, organize, and share their most valuable knowledge and know-how using technology. We call this practice Personal Knowledge Management, or PKM. One of the most common questions I am asked is “Why digital notes?” This article will explain why, out of all the…

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The 5 Challenges of Becoming a Digital Nomad

In Part 1 of the Going Nomad series, I explained why my partner Lauren and I are moving to Mexico at the end of the year. In Part 2, I’ll tell you what I see as our top five challenges in making the transition to remote work. These challenges seem to be fairly common for…

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You Need a Budget: 13 Parallels Between Money and Productivity

I recently read and took notes on You Need a Budget (YNAB-Affiliate Link), a popular book on personal finance and budgeting (with accompanying software for managing budgets) by Jesse Mecham. My interest in this book is three-fold: I’m terrible at budgeting and need help I want to borrow principles and methods for managing money to help people…

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Why I’m Moving to Mexico

My partner Lauren and I are moving to Mexico City later this year. This post explains why, both to clarify for myself, and to be able to share with others. We’ve been able to identify 5 reasons for why we’re moving. I’ll elaborate on them below, from most to least important. 1. It’s time for…

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The Future of Ebooks

I’ve published a few ebooks over the past year, and have plans for a couple more before the end of the year. In contrast to fears about the “end of reading,” my self-publishing experiences have led me to believe that we’re in the midst of a transformational revolution in reading. But it remains to be…

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