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…
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…
In 1969, studio executives at Paramount Pictures were desperate to find a film director for a new movie they had purchased the rights to. It was to be a crime drama based on the New York Mafia. One after another, all the top directors of the era turned the project down. They all found it…
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,…
This guide is also available in Spanish. In 2016, I read 57 books. I read like I was running out of time. It felt like an achievement, yet by the end of the year, I could scarcely recall even one useful idea from each book. That moment was a turning point. I realized very little…
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…
There is a secret to radically improving your productivity – it’s called a Weekly Review. It’s not a very secret secret. It’s a secret hiding in plain sight. We’ve all heard countless times that we should take some time each week to review our schedule and priorities for the week. We’ve all heard it, but…
By Marie-Pier Corbeil, Vice President and Lead Designer at RVE (Recharge Véhicule Électrique), working on solutions for EV charger installation in multi-unit residential buildings To use progressive summarization with PDFs, here’s what I do: 1. I highlight and comment passages in PDF Expert (which is my layer 1): 2. I export my highlights…
By Dr. Roberto A. Leon Ferre, Oncologist, Mayo Clinic Here is a typical (hypothetical) clinical note for a breast cancer patient in a busy oncology clinic such as my own: A 35-year-old premenopausal female with recently diagnosed breast cancer presents today for recommendations regarding treatment. Her oncologic history is as follows: August 15, 2016: patient…
Watch the full recording of the online workshop How To Take A Digital Note, by personal productivity and digital note-taking expert Tiago Forte. In this workshop I share the best practices I’ve discovered for using digital notes to save your ideas, organize your learning, and share your best work with the world, including what to save, how to…
On Thursday, March 19, at 9am ET, I will be interviewing Sönke Ahrens, author of the breakout book How To Take Smart Notes. This is your chance to ask him your burning questions on note-taking and non-fiction writing. Ahrens is a Lecturer in Philosophy of Education at the University of Duisburg-Essen and also coaches students,…
I long ago stopped reading books on note-taking. They were always too vague and boring, full of platitudes that had little to do with the world outside academia. I especially avoided “how-to” style books on the subject. They would often list dozens of tips and tricks that had little to do with each other. There…
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