Flow Archives - Forte Labs

The 5 Pillars of My Writing Process

In the second part of this blog series, I shared how I treated my book as a series of small projects culminating in a final product. The same was true for each of the 10 chapters it contained: each one was its own project, with a deadline and a goal for what that chapter was trying to achieve. Each chapter had its own project folder (according to my PARA Method), where I collected everything I would draw on – notes, sources, supporting materials, stories, action steps, and key details.

Divergence and Convergence: The Two Fundamental Stages of the Creative Process

Imagine you sit down to work at your computer determined to really get things done. You brew a strong cup of coffee, turn off your phone, put on your favorite playlist, and resolve to not get up before you’ve made real progress on your most important tasks. Even if you already know what your top…

Becoming Superhuman: Unlock Your Productive Potential with Email

We’re supposed to hate email and everything it represents. But I have a confession to make. I love email. (Scandalous, I know.) When it comes to email, I always think about the alternative: What would I do if there was no email at all? Write letters? Telegrams? Or most terrifying of all… get on the phone…

Dan Charnas on Working Clean: An Interview on the Power of Mise en Place

I recently hosted Dan Charnas, author of the book Work Clean: The Life-Changing Power of Mise-en-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind (affiliate link), for an in-depth conversation about the most interesting, impactful principles from his work. Dan takes us on a fascinating journey through his career in the music business, as one of the first…

Mise-en-Place for Knowledge Workers: 6 Practices for Working Clean

Knowledge work is unique among skilled professions in that we lack a culture of systematic improvement. Other skilled trades – from carpenters to welders to nurses to pilots – have been around long enough and are repeatable enough that the best practices are widely understood. How to frame a door, how to weld a seam,…

Feminine Energy: What Productivity is Missing

There is no perfect algorithm that will tell you how to maximize your time for the things you most care about. You need to rely on your intuition. You need self-awareness to know what is truly important and understand what is actually stopping you from getting something done. But this perspective is often missing because…

Time Budgeting: What I’ve Learned from Doing 364 Weekly Reviews

I rage quit my consulting job in June of 2013. I had had enough of the consulting world. Enough of the overwork and burnout, enough of the lack of guidance and support, and enough of working on other people’s goals instead of my own. A couple weeks later, on my first day newly unemployed, I…

Tiago Forte on the Sources & Methods Podcast

I recently sat down with Alex Strick van Linschoten and Matt Trevithick on their podcast Sources and Methods, for an hour-long chat about my latest thinking on methods for organizing knowledge work, and the weaknesses of the ‘deep work’ trend. Click here to visit the Sources & Methods website for the audio recording, or listen below:

The Heart is the Bottleneck

I’m proud to announce my new book, The Heart is the Bottleneck. In this book, I explore and dissect a wide range of topics related to productivity and personal effectiveness. From note-taking and writing, to creativity and curation, to being a digital nomad and working with a virtual assistant. Tying together these topics is the…

Venture Stories Podcast with Erik Torenberg

I recently joined Erik Torenberg on the Venture Stories podcast. We had a very wide-ranging conversation including: Why productivity is not an end in and of itself Why content creation (not just consumption) is integral to your career How to better deal with the 11 hours of media a day that the average person consumes…

What It Feels Like to Have a Second Brain

How does it feel to have a Second Brain? It feels like raw power. Like energy coursing into my mind and body from every source of information I have access to. Like the world is made of ideas, and I have a key to its underlying reality. It feels like I am the master of…

Pleasure as an Organizing Principle

This essay was originally posted on the Ribbonfarm blog. The organizing principle of the modern world is pain. Avoiding it, yes. But also trading in it, taking refuge in it, and using it to justify our actions. Pain has so many uses. Why would you ever give up such a versatile tool? We trade in…

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