The Forte Labs Blog

Dedicated to Exploring the Frontier of Modern Productivity

The Secret Power of ‘Read It Later’ Apps

At the end of 2014 I received an email informing me that I had read over a million words in the ‘read it later’ app Pocket over the course of the year. This number by itself isn’t impressive, considering our daily intake of information is equivalent to 34 gigabytes, 100,000 words, or 174 newspapers, depending…

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How to Use Evernote for Your Creative Workflow

By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs This post was republished on the Evernote blog. To learn more, check out our online bootcamp on Personal Knowledge Management, Building a Second Brain. Let’s imagine how you would use Evernote if you had a brain. I previously explained how the standard tag-based approach basically contradicts everything we know…

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Design-Driven Productivity

By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs In the past, organizations managed change through top-down strategies: new policies and procedures, structured planning processes, and redrawn organizational charts were typical responses. But we’ve reached an inflection point, and organizational transformation is no longer fast enough or deep enough to cope with the pace of change. What we…

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What I Learned in 7 Years of Tracking Gratitude

By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs For the past 7 years, I’ve kept a list of everything I’m thankful for. I started the list in 2008, on New Year’s Eve, on a beach in Brazil. Thinking back over a year of studying abroad, feeling overwhelmed with gratitude for the experiences it brought me, I just…

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A Crash Course in Culture Design

A Few Non-Obvious Things I Learned at Culture Summit By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs On Friday I attended the inaugural Culture Summit in San Francisco. Hung Pham and the team at MTCA put on a great event, with speakers, sponsors, vendors, and attendees from some of the most influential companies in the Bay. Hung Pham…

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The Habit Graph

Mapping my habits using network theory By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs The modern science of network theory can be traced directly back to Königsberg, the prosperous 16th century capital of the Duchy of Prussia. Specifically, it can be traced to its seven bridges, which connected two islands in the river Pregel to each other and…

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Tagging is Broken

Why the tagging concept in Evernote and everywhere else sucks By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs This post was republished on the Evernote blog There is an axiom in the productivity world that goes something like this: “Tags are inherently superior to folders” The reasons seem compelling at first glance: Tagging allows the same files/notes/items to exist…

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What’s Wrong with “Productivity”

By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs I once promised myself that if I was deceived into clicking on one more sensationalistic headline promising “10 Magical Productivity Tricks to Change Your LIFE OMG!!!”, I would immediately launch a scorched earth campaign against the productivity industry. That was 11 minutes ago. So here we go… Here are…

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The Top 5 Misconceptions Keeping You From Creating an Online Class

Teaching is not the last stop on your learning journey — it’s the first. By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs This post originally appeared on the Skillshare blog. I created an online Skillshare class on productivity last year that has enrolled more than 8,000 students, and since then have become very passionate about helping others do the…

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10 Days of Vipassana

By Tiago Forte of Forte Labs 10 days, 11 hours of meditation per day. No talking or communication of any kind, not even hand gestures or eye contact. No reading or writing materials of any kind. No exercise, no entertainment, no physical contact, no leaving the grounds, no food or drink besides what was provided….

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