The Forte Labs Blog

Dedicated to Exploring the Frontier of Modern Productivity

A Manifesto of Human-Centered Work

Links lead to articles on the topic. Some of them require an active membership to view, which you can learn more about here. I believe in work. As a means of income generation, sure. But also as a means to continuous learning, to reaching one’s potential, and to a peaceful and just society. The capacity to…

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Praxis Town Hall #1: A 6-Month Retrospective

This morning I was joined by about 25 Praxis members for our first-ever Town Hall. The goal of the retrospective was to look back on the first 6 months of membership, tell you what I learned and changes I’m planning to make, and get your feedback on all of the above. Below you can find…

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The Weekly Review is an Operating System

In his book Getting Things Done, David Allen calls the Weekly Review the “Master Key to GTD.” He claims it is the single most critical habit one must adopt to capture open loops, manage commitments on an ongoing basis, and maintain a “mind like water.” Yet it is also the most difficult habit to maintain….

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Mood as Extrapolation Engine: Using Emotions to Generate Momentum

I believe that moods (or less colloquially, states of mind) can be used not just defensively, making the best of whatever mood you’re in (as I described in Productivity for Precious Snowflakes). They can also be used offensively, to proactively create the conditions for rapid acceleration and value creation. Let’s begin with a simple question:…

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Breaking Paradigms: Khe Hy interviews Tiago Forte

I recently recorded an hour-long interview with Khe Hy of RadReads, on a wide range of topics related to productivity, my background, GTD, Personal Knowledge Management, creativity, email overload, and trends in the future of work. Listen to the recording below, or check out the full description over at RadReads.

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Theory of Constraints 111: Elevating the Constraint

A SERIES OF 5-MINUTE POSTS ON APPLYING PRINCIPLES OF FLOW TO KNOWLEDGE WORK
If I asked you to tell me how many minutes it takes you to get to work, what would you say?

The number you thought of is probably an average. Sometimes it takes less, sometimes more, but most days it’s clustered around the middle. Let’s say it’s 30 minutes:

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Theory of Constraints 110: Subordinating Non-Constraints

A SERIES OF 5-MINUTE POSTS ON APPLYING PRINCIPLES OF FLOW TO KNOWLEDGE WORK
Previously, I described how to go about subordinating the non-constraints of an organization in order to maximize its throughput. The next step, #4 in the Five Focusing Steps, is to elevate (or relieve) the constraint itself:

Identify the constraint
Optimize the constraint

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A Theory of Unlearning: Ecstasis, Anamnesis, Kenosis

A year ago in Productivity for Precious Snowflakes, I introduced the idea of Mood-First Productivity — that our moods, or unique states of mind, are fundamental drivers of creative knowledge work. But something was missing: how does one advance in the practice of Mood-First Productivity, besides noticing what mood you’re in at any given time, and trying…

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Getting Things Done + Personal Knowledge Management

An Integrated Total Life Management System By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs To learn more, check out our online bootcamp on Personal Knowledge Management, Building a Second Brain. One of the key insights of Getting Things Done, the book on personal productivity by David Allen that spawned the worldwide movement known as GTD, was that…

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The Throughput of Learning

Learning in the 21st century is not about acquiring more information, knowledge, or even insights. The goal is to maximize the throughput of invalidated assumptions. But you have to get there one step at a time. When you first start learning, early in life, there is a bottleneck in the amount of information you have…

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