hello everyone and welcome to the keep productive youtube channel i'm very lucky
to have thiago forte it's like been ages since uh we've been uh some talking online and things
like that and um we're gonna talk a little bit about the apps and workflows that you use so
welcome and uh and then tell us a little bit more about the new book that's coming out
very soon yeah yeah it's great to be here i'm a long time fan so it feels very
uh very gratifying to be here with you um it's a four year long project that i've been working
on to just get everything that i know about knowledge management and digital notetaking
and put it into a book that you'll be able to buy on any uh online retailer most bookstores
paperback hardcover audiobook it's really everything that i know about how to build
a second brand it's gonna be so weird like going into there's like a uk store called waterstones
going into waterstones and seeing it be there i know right it's gonna be insane i'll be like
i know that guy i know we're going mainstream we're going from the you know the weird niches
of the internet to the to the bookstores it's good though and thiago's also doing a lot on youtube so
he's got a video we're doing collaborations as well today so i'll be over on his channel
doing some fun stuff yeah um but we're going to talk about a little bit of the way that you use
apps because obviously we talk a lot about apps on this channel and i think like from your experience
um especially with second brain and and having that knowledge i think it's nice to see inside
like how you tend to organize yourself even if it's like an opportunity for people to cherry-pick
some nice stuff so um how do you take your notes i think that's a good starting point yeah sure so uh
i've been on evernote for 10 years april 6th 2020 2022 was the 10-year anniversary of my evernote
usage i've used it continuously that entire time wow i've used evernote for a long time it's just
the easiest default place without having to make a bunch of decisions without having to decide where
it goes that i can just route i mean virtually all kinds of information in my life from quotes
to excerpts from books or articles excerpts from podcasts uh research that i do
online bookmarks web clips random ideas it all goes one place which is there lovely and
so how do you blend notion into that as well like what's that stage look like for you yeah so to me
notion is getting information and kind of taking it a step further right evernote excels at capture
right that initial just getting it into digital form right
and that is an important job like until it's captured in some form you can't do anything else
the thing with notion is it takes more work it just takes more it takes me putting on my designer
hat i have to start making decisions like what do i want the icon to be in the little profile
pic thing yeah what do i want the cover image to be what are the what are the sections what
are the columns what are the database whatever and so i'm i'm picky and i wait until i know
how i'm going to use information to usually what happens is i get it from evernote and
just put it into notion where i can create all those things fantastic and in terms of
we've talked about it we actually did a segment on it a while ago use things free for your tasks yes
um how do you use it and i guess why do you use it above say another app
i just love the same thing i've been using things probably for a decade i just love that it doesn't
change they're not constantly trying to force new fancy features on me that aren't ready that
are in beta uh they're very stable the fastest app never has bugs never hangs you never see the
wheel of death it is like a hammer like you just expect a hammer to work in exactly the same way
each time that's what things is for me fantastic yeah it's uh it's one of those apps that's like
so beautifully built yeah it's like minimal perfection yes um and and calendar like what
made you go with busy cow because it's completely boring and utilitarian you can see the theme here
it's like a it's like a 2012 stack it is a good way no it's totally stable you know i tried i
tried fantastical that had some new more advanced features but the the natural language thing where
you could say like friday at 3 p.m always seemed to just not work quite right for me uh and then
for a time i used one called woven which was going to be the new of love but then it shut down that's
what i'm saying it's like every time i adopt some beta app i get burned because they get acquired
they get shut down they run out of money they i don't know something happens like the attachment
issue but it's a real attachment i i hold my uh apps like a teddy bear i want the same teddy
bear that i had when i was a little kid it's good though because i always advocate on the channel
like if you can stay with an app for a long period of time that would only be good and that's
like a prime example of that which is good you know how i think of it is i always ask myself
what is the bottleneck to my creativity what is the bottleneck right now to my creative output
and it's never it has literally never been oh this one particular feature of my software yeah no the
bottleneck is always usually my own psychology yeah it's my own courage it's my own honesty
with myself it's my boldness it is my comfort with uncertainty it's my ability to take risks
yeah and so um one way that i i just manifest that is by keeping my my tool set very conservative so
that i can take risks when it comes to the actual public work that i share yeah that's a good idea i
i respect that and um sort of those assisting apps you use so what do you and your team use right now
yeah so now that i've said all that there's a big exception
which is uh just the past you know two years out of the nine eight or nine years i've had
my business uh we started hiring really when the pandemic started we we started building a team
so i've had to learn how to be a manager and how to be a ceo and a leader and it turns out surprise
surprise that different people want to use different apps and they often want to use a more
modern more recent kind of app and so i had to kind of loosen my grip and drop the zimmer frame
yes yes exactly um and the ones that they they really brought to us to me were click up yeah
for tasks and notion for for documents in general i'm brilliant so you like reference everything
in notion yeah it's like the silo location yes exactly that's kind of our shared second brain
and click up is our shared project management app brilliant and other assisting apps for yourself
um superhuman is that something that you came across recently or actually that one that one
is also more recent maybe three four years ago i think 2019. okay that's quite a long time for
click uh for some cpu it was it was pretty early it was pretty early in fact it was kind of a cool
story the founder of superhuman reached out to me and he said one of their biggest inspirations for
the design of their whole app was my inbox zero article oh sweet he said they they would give that
article to new staff that was joining the company yeah uh which was very flattering of course but
also i opened up the app and i'm like oh every single one of my principles and ideas perfectly
manifested in this software how can i say no yeah well you need to make software now right oh no
i love it and um you use um insta paper for capture of articles right yep do you find that
like do you find you save yourself saving like articles or tweets like is it like your podcast as
well or how do you go about yeah so instapaper is often called a relator app but content is content
right whether you are reading it in terms in the case of text listening to it in the case of audio
or watching it in the case of video that can all go to that one place right so i save yeah podcasts
uh that i want to read ebooks that i want to download articles i want to read it all goes
and again i always like one single central place yeah i might move it from there elsewhere yeah but
without that single default place if i even have to make the decision does it go in a location or b
location i'm already lost i'm already over it yeah yeah yeah it's gone the time's gone yeah and my
curio my question is like so when you i'm guessing you don't wake up and you plan what's on your day
do you do that in a couple of days in advance or a week in advance or how do you go about doing
that during my weekly review okay so what day is that one normally you know it's funny i've
never stuck to a single day in a single time okay i do it based on how quickly things are changing
all right okay so like some weeks every hour yeah the environment changes every hour every
couple hours there's new information and so i'll often do my whole weekly review which includes
reviewing my calendar clearing my email inbox clearing my task manager inbox clearing my
notes inbox like i'm basically going through and clearing yeah and processing each of the places
where information comes in uh i'll do that i might do that every day yeah really crazy week but then
there's other times if i'm saying writing yeah when you're writing a book the last thing you
want to do is oh let me stop writing when i'm in the flow and go do my weekly review no so in
that case i might do it once a week or even once every two weeks i kind of vary it based on what's
going on and then during that week review you like plot out a week in advance then like just
or do you have things going like where you're like i know what task i have in a month
um i'd say the so the last step in my weekly review is making a list of tasks okay but it's
not really a daily to-do list it's more like a week to-do list right yeah because i think
of the week as this is very david allen there's a hard landscape right there's specific meetings and
appointments which go on the calendar yeah and so my to-do list is simply the the the backlog
of things that will fill in all the gaps yeah between all those meetings and appointments and
calls yeah so as soon as i finish a meeting right i don't want to go to my i think most people go to
their email or see text messages they go to their communication channels i really try to avoid that
yeah because i want to prioritize what i've already decided is important yeah not what
the next person messaged me about yeah and so i just look straight at that to-do list which is
more or less sorted by priority and i just do the first thing yeah or if i can't do the first thing
just go down the list until there's something that i can do okay and what do you do in those
situations when because like it's something that is a question that i get all the time in comments
i don't know the answer um it's more like when when somebody wants your time in an urgent thing
but you want to protect your time how do you go about approaching that is it that you manage it
through the calendar or you just simply don't let it happen yeah i mean this is this is like
the hidden this is the elephant in the room i feel like a productivity
is you have to learn to have boundaries it's really comes down to personal boundaries i think
if you don't have good boundaries and you allow people to put things on your plate no productivity
app or system or framework is going to save you no you're just lost yeah right because if
you accept things without without pushing back without filtering people will just continuously
you'll become the person oh yeah give it to francesco he always has free time yeah yeah
is that classic like say no philosophy you have to you have to learn and over time you know i've just
become more and more direct i used to really kind of waffle oh yeah maybe i'll get to that
or i would just not respond to their email because hopefully they'll forget about it yeah all these
really passive aggressive kind of like avoidant ways of communicating yeah i've just realized that
being direct and just brutally honest often is a real gift to them it's more honest to just say no
i can't do that yeah my plate is full i don't have the bandwidth that's not a priority right now like
you learn these phrases it's good advice yeah i i probably need some of this as well yeah just like
a like that that limit yeah and of course things slip through i say yes to things i shouldn't
uh sometimes i say no to something that later on i realized oh shoot i should have said yes to that
yeah but this is an infinite game yeah always learning and refining and changing based on
the season of your life yeah when we had our kid my no had to become like a like a hammer
absolutely no yeah yeah yeah because you just your time's slim it's so limited
but i love that tweet that you said about the kid is the ultimate pomodori yes that is yes perfect
it's true you can't negotiate that's no you can't that's one that's one customer that will
you can't negotiate will not take any other answer they want just like a dictator yes
totalitarian tiago it's be great to have you thank you so much
for coming on keep productive absolutely where can everyone uh find you after this video youtube
all the other places yeah you can find me at buildingasecondbrain.com is probably the
best place you can find the upcoming book the course that we teach all of
our free content which includes the blog the podcast all the usual things all at building a
secondbrain.com lovely jobly well thank you very much everyone for watching uh feel free to leave
any comments uh below and any questions and i'm sure we'll jump into them anyway thanks everyone
you