Over the years I have highlighted the work of Tiago Forte whose signature course, Building a Second Brain, will be a major book release. In anticipation of this event, Tiago has posted The Second Brain Manifesto. This document expresses the core reasons why we should all improve our digital note taking skills.
At the core of the manifesto is the notion that ideas are the new currency. The manifesto starts with the following:
We believe that ideas represent one of the most powerful forces in the world today
Ideas are not mere playthings. They are the building blocks of the modern world. Ideas inform our thinking and behavior every day. We depend on new ideas to improve our health, productivity, and relationships. To understand culture, politics, science, and history. New ideas breathe fresh life into how we view the world.
The human brain remains one of the deepest mysteries in biology. It is the most important part of our body, but even with all the advances in neuroscience we still don’t fully understand how it works. In productivity circles it is often assumed that better knowledge of brain function might improve efficiency and creativity.
The brain’s most important job is not thinking or seeing or feeling or doing any of the things that we think of as being important for being human. Its main job is running a budget for your body—to keep you alive, to keep you healthy. So every thought you have, every emotion you feel, every action you take is ultimately in the service of regulating your body. We don’t experience mental life this way, but this is what is happening under the hood.
Meetings are vital to a successful workplace, but at the same time they can be a bane to all involved. When a meeting has no clear objective, is run poorly, or has become a weekly routine it ceases to add value. Yet we also know that meetings can be important to ensure unity on projects, clear the air of misunderstandings, or keep people connected. So what are the secrets to holding good meetings?
“A Clarizen/Harris Poll survey reveals that the average American worker spends 4.5 hours in general status meetings each week, and workers spend even longer (4.6 hours) just preparing for those meetings. Almost half of the survey respondents stated that they would rather perform some type of unpleasant activity—including visits to the dentist or nightmarishly-long commutes—than attend a status meeting. “
So how do we hold good meetings to ensure everyone’s time is well spent? The first step is to understand the purpose of the meeting before even scheduling it. Williams identifies five types of meetings:
Problem Solving
Decision-Making
Planning
Status Reporting/Information Sharing
Feedback
In her article she highlights the best practices for each type of meeting. However, in all cases meeting improve substantially when there is an agenda in place with clear objectives, participants don’t get sidetracked to non-essential items, and the meeting starts on time.
Of course if you don’t want to go through all the trouble to prepare for meetings, or are stuck in one that is going no where, it is not a total loss. You can still do your best to look smart at these meetings by using the techniques of comedian Sarah Cooper. One of her most famous satirical pieces is the 10 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. For a good laugh click over and see if any of them are familiar. I have personally done this one:
#7 – Pace Around the Room “Whenever someone get up from the table and walks around, don’t you immediately respect them? I know I do. Walk around. Go tot he corner and lean against the wall. Take a deep contemplative sigh. Everyone will be freaking out wondering what you’re thinking.”
Public libraries have survived many ups and downs over the past century. Throughout it all they are remained core institutions in communities large and small. However, their survival going forward is not guaranteed. Right now COVID-19 is the biggest challenge facing libraries today, but even after a vaccine is widely distributed other problems await.
In an article from last year, Mark Smith of the Texas State Library wrote about the top ten challenges facing libraries going forward. The very first one listed has been on prominent display the past few years: a growing distrust in government.
As a unit of government, typically at the municipal or county level, it should be of concern to public libraries that the percentage of Americans who mistrust government is rising sharply. In 1958, 73 percent of Americans said they trusted the federal government to “do what is right” just about always or most of the time. In 2015, that figure was 19 percent (Pew Research Center 2015 “Beyond Distrust”). This appears to be a trend across demographic and ideological lines even as it shifts along partisan lines depending on who is in power in Washington (Pew Research Center 2017). … Currently, the public library is the rare public institution that bucks this trend. … As managers and workers of public-sector organizations, this trend should strike us as deeply alarming.
Developing great habits is one way to succeed at life. Whether it is being productive, healthy, or financially free, our habits drive our daily behavior towards the longer term goals that inspire us. However, there are many days, especially this year, where sticking to good habits is a struggle. Whether it is the temptation to watch TV instead of work, eat a big bowl of ice cream, or splurge on a fancy new toy, it is easy to slip out of our desired habits. When they happen should we feel guilty about these indulgences?
In a recent blog post, Darius Foroux argues that we should stop worrying about missed habits. Being too strict around them is actually counter productive. He writes:
We humans have this tendency to take everything to the extreme. And when it comes to habits, I found that majority of my friends, family, readers, and students have an all or nothing mentality.
You either work out every day or you do nothing. You either write every day or you do nothing. Why so serious? The reason for this is negative self-talk. We assume that we messed up if we miss our habits for a few days.
Darius Foroux
Foroux advises that we not worry about missing one day of a habit.
If you practice true mindfulness, there are no streaks. There’s only now. You shouldn’t care about what you did yesterday. Only care about what you’re doing today. And always try to make the best of it.
Every day is a new day that has nothing to do with yesterday.
I was speaking with a colleague recently who confessed that he was lacking ambition. This is a man recently promoted to a challenging position and very active in his profession. Yet now he was wondering if it was time get a new job. As we talked it occurred to me that his true problem had nothing to do with ambition, it was all about being stuck in perpetual crisis.
The COVID-19 pandemic presented leaders across the country with a new type of challenge. Normally when we face a crisis there is a limited time frame in which it happens. For example when a hurricane threatens there are stages of events from tracking the storm, boarding up, hunkering down as it passes, then cleaning up afterwards. Due to the short term duration of most crisis we often move on shortly afterward with our longer term goals secure.
However, when a crisis persists we face a different struggle. COVID-19 is a long term problem that has placed many aspects of our lives on hold indefinitely. Vacations, conferences, social events, and more have been replaced by virtual meetings which provide limited appeal. Long term disruptions force us to place our ambitions off to the side while we handle the slow day to day grind of survival. When we lose focus on long term goals, the short term needs become a path to burnout and dissatisfaction.
Is there a secret to staying ambitious in the face of a long term crisis? For me, I realized that it is okay to let long term goals lie fallow for a while. In fact, it is a good test to see they were really wanted in the first place. The crisis can serve as a reflection point to see if the direction you are heading is still one worth traveling. Our goals may still be desirable, but we have to practice flexibility to keep them alive. For example, as a seminar presenter I no longer have the option of in person training. However, virtual presentations allow me to keep my toes in the water. In fact it provides valuable experience so that down the road when in person events resume I will be able to offer more training options than before.
2020 has been a very long year. It is okay if your ambitions and goals have been set aside. With 2021 closing you may want to be kind to yourself and allow your goals to lie fallow for the rest of the year. Even COVID-19 will pass, allowing for a restitution of normal to take hold and a long term perspective to return. Crisis leads us to reevaluate our lives. Allow yourself the freedom to explore new opportunities with the lessons learned from this year. That will help make 2021 the best year yet!
I love to build LEGO sets with my daughter. One of my favorites was the TARDIS control room from Doctor Who and right now the Razor Crest from the Mandalorian. The reason why LEGOs are such a successful toy is that any piece has the ability to connect to any other piece. This means that the combinations are endless, limited only by the imagination.
Recently Tiago Forte of Forte Labs wrote a post on his web site that showed why notes, especially digital ones, are the basic building blocks of knowledge work. He proposed a new definition of a digital note:
A digital note is a “knowledge building block” – a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head.
In his post, Tiago illustrates a different perspective on how to view digital notes. They are the LEGOs of knowledge work.
Like a LEGO block, a knowledge building block stands on its own and has intrinsic value. Yet each block can also be combined with others into greater works – a report, an essay, a website, or a video for example.
And just like LEGOs, these building blocks are reusable. You only need to put in the effort to create a note once, and then it can be mixed and matched with other notes again and again for any kind of project you work on, now or in the future.
As a librarian I naturally appreciate the value of a personal library of books at home. While my daughter was growing up we bought many classic and favorite books to supplement the ones I borrowed from the library. This lead her to become a proficient read and excellent student. While my daughter clearly benefited from a robust home library, it raises the question about the impact that access to books at home has on children across the population.
In a Smithsonian Magazine article, reporter Brigit Katz points to a study that “suggests that exposure to large home libraries may have a long-term impact on proficiency in three key areas.”
The study, published recently in Social Science Research, assessed data from 160,000 adults from 31 countries, including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Turkey, Japan and Chile. Participants filled out surveys with the Programme for the International Assessment of Competencies, which measures proficiency in three categories: literacy, numeracy (using mathematical concepts in everyday life) and information communication technology, (using digital technology to communicate with other people, and to gather and analyze information).
Learn more about the results of the study on the impact of home libraries on children’s development by reading the rest of the article.
Have you ever made a decision you quickly regretted? We have all made choices in our life that seemed well thought out at first, only to have the results turn out sour. Decision making is something we do every day, but very few people take the time to examine their decision making process. Even fewer attempt to understand the hidden factors that effect our cognitive process and cloud our view of the world.
In a recent workshop for PCI Webinars I explored the role that fallacies and probability play in our decision making process. I started out the webinar with a quote from former US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld that demonstrates the complexities of our ability to understand the world.
“Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.” – Donald Rumsfeld – US Secretary of Defense – 2001-2006
Efficient Librarian 