## Design Your Work ### Design Your Work  #### Metadata * Author: [[Tiago Forte]] * Full Title: Design Your Work * Category: #books #### Highlights * Not paying attention to what you were doing. And it didn't matter if the thing you were thinking about was more positive or negative than what you were doing. Just the fact of not being present was the cause. Now think of the implications for a society where none of us is truly paying attention to anything we do. (Location 237) * I've noticed that many things that once seemed so enticing have lost much of their appeal — caffeine, sugar, alcohol, television, social media, junk food. (Location 272) * Does [habit A] directly and unequivocally make [habit B] more likely to happen? For example, "Does waking up by 8am directly and unequivocally make meditation more likely to happen?" If the answer was yes (based on my subjective experience), this was counted as a positive one-way relationship. (Location 747) * Just as a doctor starts every consultation by examining the physiological terrain on which he will be working, behavior designers would begin their intervention efforts by understanding the behavioral terrain. (Location 783) * No system can directly replace this kind of thinking through "hard links," so the only option is to make the process of creating "soft links" on the fly as easy as possible, thus conserving the amount of attention applied. The Wikipedia article on systems thinking explains why soft systems are preferable to hard systems in this situation. Soft systems are ideal for: "Systems involving people holding multiple and conflicting frames of reference. (Location 1089) * Returning to Cal Newport: "…Unlike every other skilled labor class in the history of skilled labor, [knowledge workers] lack a culture of systematic improvement." (Location 1111) * Affordance (n.): a relation between an object and an organism that, through a collection of stimuli, affords the opportunity for that organism to perform an action. (Location 1336) ^c8d49d * only some of which you want to read, only some of which are meant to be read. Actionable info ≠ Reference info ≠ Reading material Ergo, Task manager ≠ Evernote ≠ Pocket (Location 1384) * Procrastination is the most powerful force in the universe. It will find a way. I have a different approach: waiting periods. Every time I come across something I may want to read/watch, I'm totally allowed to. No limits! The only requirement is I have to save it to Pocket, and then choose to consume it at a later time. (Location 1397) * So instead I just command-click every link I'm interested in (or right-click > Open link in new tab), which opens each link in a separate tab without taking me to that tab. Here's what a typical Monday morning link-fest looks like, just from email: Then, because I'm still in collection mode, not in read mode, I cycle through each tab one at a time (shift-command-} or control-tab), saving each one to Pocket using the shortcut I set up: command-p (chosen for irony and to avoid inadvertent printing). There's only one rule: NO READING OR (Location 1401) * One solution is to tag problematic items with "desktop" so you know that these need to be read/viewed on your computer. (Location 1433) * The key to Inbox Zero, the practice of regularly getting your email inbox to empty, is to "touch each email only once." (Location 1494) * Forward all your email accounts to Gmail, or whatever service you have to use for work (Location 1509) * You are essentially developing a rapid placeholding ability, delegating each task you identify — do this, store this, read this, delete this — to a future time and place that is perfectly suited for that task. It is a division of labor across time and space instead of people, so that YOU are choosing what work to do at any given time, instead of reacting to whatever's in front of you in isolation. (Location 1651) * "The ability to placehold rapidly is the key to allowing interruptions to not derail you" -Theo Compernolle (Location 1654) * Much of your time in email is spent performing a small handful of operations. Turn on keyboard shortcuts and you'll be able to process a dozen emails at a time without touching your mouse, using only: compose: c reply: r reply-all: a forward: f archive: e send: cmd-enter (Location 1666) * I suggest processing emails in chronological order from oldest to newest because your craving to get to the new stuff will motivate you to power through the old stuff. Turning on conversation threads allows you to see more recent replies to group messages in the same place, so you don't accidentally respond to an old message. (Location 1673) * In case I was too subtle, notice that, in every case, without exception, you finish processing each email by archiving it, which removes it from your inbox while keeping a backup copy. You never "put it back into inbox." You never "leave it for later." (Location 1700) * The sign that you've changed, that the system is working, will be the day you receive a hysterical Very Important Email, with Urgent Deadlines and Scary Consequences, and you will feel nothing as it gets mundanely processed in just the same way as any other email. You won't react — you will decide to act. You will start to understand that a red High Priority label is just a theory — someone else's theory about the meaning of an action and its relationship to a goal. Theories (Location 1717) * A given state of mind is difficult to reproduce even for someone who's experienced it in the past, often requiring elaborate rituals or particular experiences (or drugs). They often elude those who seek them for purely instrumental ends. Long meditation sessions can produce some highly useful states (for example, enhanced focus ability), but reaching that state is terribly expensive in terms of time investment. This is why you'll be disappointed if you do meditation only for specific outcomes like "increased attention span" or "Big Picture thinking." It only makes sense as a more fundamental firmware hack, with any side benefits counted as lucky bonuses. (Location 1784) * Mood-first productivity may even seem disheartening, like we are slaves to our emotions. But I think states of mind can shed new light on an old idea: that we are actually different selves across time, and reaching our goals requires getting them to cooperate. The main difference between these selves is not information content. It is in their respective states of mind — how they feel about themselves and their place in the world. (Location 1846) * In other words, the true purpose of note-taking is transporting states of mind (not just information) through time. This is why pictures, sketches, and diagrams often work better than text. We don't usually think of them as notes, (Location 1889) * There is one bright side to all this hard work: the only way to crystallize a state of mind is to use affective triggers to decide what to take notes on and keep. Instead of making a mini-outline of each book and article and podcast you consume, trying to preserve the logical structure of the argument, just wait in low-power mode for reactions like surprise, delight, intrigue, and outrage. This System 1 processing is much faster, less energy intensive, and more intuitive than the more analytical System 2. To take this approach means your notes will not be neat and ordered, like a Dewey Decimal system for the mind. They will be dominated by the contrarian, by paradoxes, by the inexplicable. Which is exactly the point. Contrarianism is the fastest method for discovering the paradox at the heart of every inexplicable phenomenon. (Location 1896) * Companies realize this, and they're making an effort to fix it. But somewhere along the way, innovation became a matter of rearranging office furniture. Cubicle farms have given way to vast open floor plans, prolific Post-Its, beanbag chairs, and ping-pong. Startups are doing it, so it must be innovative, right? (Location 1975) * The purpose of companies is to build a culture that supports their people. Not to formulate a 5-year plan and dictate every last task to every person. Not to codify an abstract Mission and ram it down everyone's throats. And definitely not to force everyone to "be creative," as if creativity is programmable like a computer. (Location 2000) * For example, Google utilizes a previously "wasted" resource — the few seconds of people's attention used to decipher captchas and prove they're not a computer — for a very useful purpose: deciphering the street addresses captured by its Street View vehicles. (Location 2157) * The smart approach is to use surplus and spillover effects: to fill the vessel with enough hyper-reactive chemicals and catalysts to maximize the chances that it will boil over with interesting compounds. If you're lucky it will become auto-catalytic, feeding itself through cycles of growth and decay. If you're really lucky you'll be standing by to benefit from the compounds that emerge, not controlling but feeding the reaction. (Location 2185) * By reframing the black-and-white choice as a menu of options tailored to any level of effort you're willing to expend, it calls attention to the fact that the most difficult step is 0 to 1, not 1 to n. (Location 2261) * 10x our level, it must require 10x the willpower. But this ignores the critical fact that they enjoy doing it. It doesn't take willpower for a hard-core runner to get up at 5 in the morning. It takes willpower for them not to. The hard truth is that no one really does anything they don't enjoy for long. At most, they focus their efforts on finding the elusive intersection between what they enjoy and what they must do. (Location 2289) * important factor in selecting athletic footwear is comfort, and a major reason interval training is more effective is that it is simply more enjoyable. These conclusions seem radical because they contradict one of the deepest models many of us seem to hold in common: that the more positive and impactful the change, the more painful it must be. (Location 2296) * In other words, the voice of dopamine is not "That felt good!" It is "If you do this, then you'll feel good." Which explains that "one more…" (Location 2315) * after. The "reward" associated with anticipating the experience is far more powerful than the experience itself. (Location 2318) * presents us with a promising possibility: making new habits enjoyable not through visceral pleasure, but through finding new ways to be curious about them. Curiosity is a powerful phenomenon: it is a motivated state of mind that taps directly into our need for novelty, which Gregory Berns claims in Satisfaction is the most fundamental source of life satisfaction. (Location 2322) * Josh Waitzkin's "self-created earthquakes" that high performers call upon for creative inspiration. (Location 2399) * I'd like to propose a framework for this type of learning that is both feasible and focused on the individual: experimental habit formation. I believe it can help resolve one of the fundamental paradoxes of modern life — how to balance our need for stability and routine with our thirst for novelty and exploration. Experimental habit formation is a gateway to behavior change. The (Location 2446) * well-documented lived experiences: The Quantified Self movement. QS is a global movement of people who measure various aspects of their bodies and lives — from their exercise to their productivity to their diet and far beyond — seeking to better understand themselves and their performance through quantification, broadly defined. QSers, as they're known, attend meetup groups in cities around the world, where they tell their stories in a "show & tell" format. These short presentations answer three questions: "What did you do?" (i.e. Which aspect of yourself did you measure?), "How did you do it?" (i.e. Which tools or methods or procedures did you use to do so?), and "What did you learn?" I happen to believe that almost nobody appreciates the true implications of The Quantified Self movement, not even its most avid practitioners. It's (Location 2455) * The first question we need to address is, "Why are habits good vehicles for behavioral experimentation?" Why not just try new things once or twice when it strikes your fancy? (Location 2464) * Essentially, because habits are MVBs — Minimum Viable Behaviors. They have a clear beginning, middle, and end (cue, behavior, reward), making them easy to define and identify when they appear. The good ones tend to be internally coherent and inherently rewarding, thus self-sustaining. They are situated in a physical and social context, which makes them socially acceptable and integrate relatively seamlessly into daily life. Perhaps above all, they align with human neurobiology. (Location 2465) * Let's start by defining terms. An "experiment" in this context is any attempt at measuring any aspect of one's life. There is no distinction between "observation" and "intervention" when the same person is both the researcher and the subject, because any attempt to measure the behavior inevitably changes it. As I'll explain later, this is a feature, not a bug. So the more specific question is, what is the value in using some degree of formal experimental structure in trying new habits, even for laypeople? (Location 2475) * We could look to the well-developed field of Single-Subject Experiment Design to make a case for such studies. But I think the real answer is that the value of scientific thinking extends far beyond strict adherence to the scientific method. (Location 2484) * This highlights an experience many self-experimenters have reported: that the self-awareness they gained in the process of self-tracking was the real reward. (Location 2503) * It was a reward they received regardless of what their data ultimately showed. Self-tracking enhances self-awareness by providing a concrete mechanism for self-reflection: the act of recording. (Location 2504) * Instead of self-awareness being something to ponder during intense meditation sessions on Nepalese mountaintops, it is manifested in something much more mundane: manual data entry. Both methods, it turns out, are capable of generating reveries of conscious attention. (Location 2506) * Which makes the conclusion that project creator Matt Killingworth came to after analyzing many thousands of participants' data (as told on this NPR podcast) especially intriguing and personally relevant: the single factor with the highest correlation with unhappiness across the entire study was mind-wandering. The more someone had their mind on something other than what they were doing, regardless of whether they were thinking about something more pleasant or less pleasant than what they were doing, the more unhappy they were likely to be both while mind-wandering and in general. This is powerful evidence for the importance of what crunchy types would call "presence." It's also difficult to imagine how such a conclusion could be reached without random sampling via mobile devices. (Location 2516) # Design Your Work  ## Metadata - Author: [[Tiago Forte]] - Full Title: Design Your Work - Category: #books ## Highlights - Not paying attention to what you were doing. And it didn’t matter if the thing you were thinking about was more positive or negative than what you were doing. Just the fact of not being present was the cause. Now think of the implications for a society where none of us is truly paying attention to anything we do. (Location 237) - I’ve noticed that many things that once seemed so enticing have lost much of their appeal — caffeine, sugar, alcohol, television, social media, junk food. (Location 272) - Does [habit A] directly and unequivocally make [habit B] more likely to happen? For example, “Does waking up by 8am directly and unequivocally make meditation more likely to happen?” If the answer was yes (based on my subjective experience), this was counted as a positive one-way relationship. (Location 747) - Just as a doctor starts every consultation by examining the physiological terrain on which he will be working, behavior designers would begin their intervention efforts by understanding the behavioral terrain. (Location 783) - No system can directly replace this kind of thinking through “hard links,” so the only option is to make the process of creating “soft links” on the fly as easy as possible, thus conserving the amount of attention applied. The Wikipedia article on systems thinking explains why soft systems are preferable to hard systems in this situation. Soft systems are ideal for: “Systems involving people holding multiple and conflicting frames of reference. (Location 1089) - Returning to Cal Newport: “…Unlike every other skilled labor class in the history of skilled labor, [knowledge workers] lack a culture of systematic improvement.” (Location 1111) - Affordance (n.): a relation between an object and an organism that, through a collection of stimuli, affords the opportunity for that organism to perform an action. (Location 1336) - only some of which you want to read, only some of which are meant to be read. Actionable info ≠ Reference info ≠ Reading material Ergo, Task manager ≠ Evernote ≠ Pocket (Location 1384) - Procrastination is the most powerful force in the universe. It will find a way. I have a different approach: waiting periods. Every time I come across something I may want to read/watch, I’m totally allowed to. No limits! The only requirement is I have to save it to Pocket, and then choose to consume it at a later time. (Location 1397) - So instead I just command-click every link I’m interested in (or right-click > Open link in new tab), which opens each link in a separate tab without taking me to that tab. Here’s what a typical Monday morning link-fest looks like, just from email: Then, because I’m still in collection mode, not in read mode, I cycle through each tab one at a time (shift-command-} or control-tab), saving each one to Pocket using the shortcut I set up: command-p (chosen for irony and to avoid inadvertent printing). There’s only one rule: NO READING OR (Location 1401) - One solution is to tag problematic items with “desktop” so you know that these need to be read/viewed on your computer. (Location 1433) - The key to Inbox Zero, the practice of regularly getting your email inbox to empty, is to “touch each email only once.” (Location 1494) - Forward all your email accounts to Gmail, or whatever service you have to use for work (Location 1509) - You are essentially developing a rapid placeholding ability, delegating each task you identify — do this, store this, read this, delete this — to a future time and place that is perfectly suited for that task. It is a division of labor across time and space instead of people, so that YOU are choosing what work to do at any given time, instead of reacting to whatever’s in front of you in isolation. (Location 1651) - “The ability to placehold rapidly is the key to allowing interruptions to not derail you” -Theo Compernolle (Location 1654) - Much of your time in email is spent performing a small handful of operations. Turn on keyboard shortcuts and you’ll be able to process a dozen emails at a time without touching your mouse, using only: compose: c reply: r reply-all: a forward: f archive: e send: cmd-enter (Location 1666) - I suggest processing emails in chronological order from oldest to newest because your craving to get to the new stuff will motivate you to power through the old stuff. Turning on conversation threads allows you to see more recent replies to group messages in the same place, so you don’t accidentally respond to an old message. (Location 1673) - In case I was too subtle, notice that, in every case, without exception, you finish processing each email by archiving it, which removes it from your inbox while keeping a backup copy. You never “put it back into inbox.” You never “leave it for later.” (Location 1700) - The sign that you’ve changed, that the system is working, will be the day you receive a hysterical Very Important Email, with Urgent Deadlines and Scary Consequences, and you will feel nothing as it gets mundanely processed in just the same way as any other email. You won’t react — you will decide to act. You will start to understand that a red High Priority label is just a theory — someone else’s theory about the meaning of an action and its relationship to a goal. Theories (Location 1717) - A given state of mind is difficult to reproduce even for someone who’s experienced it in the past, often requiring elaborate rituals or particular experiences (or drugs). They often elude those who seek them for purely instrumental ends. Long meditation sessions can produce some highly useful states (for example, enhanced focus ability), but reaching that state is terribly expensive in terms of time investment. This is why you’ll be disappointed if you do meditation only for specific outcomes like “increased attention span” or “Big Picture thinking.” It only makes sense as a more fundamental firmware hack, with any side benefits counted as lucky bonuses. (Location 1784) - Mood-first productivity may even seem disheartening, like we are slaves to our emotions. But I think states of mind can shed new light on an old idea: that we are actually different selves across time, and reaching our goals requires getting them to cooperate. The main difference between these selves is not information content. It is in their respective states of mind — how they feel about themselves and their place in the world. (Location 1846) - In other words, the true purpose of note-taking is transporting states of mind (not just information) through time. This is why pictures, sketches, and diagrams often work better than text. We don’t usually think of them as notes, (Location 1889) - There is one bright side to all this hard work: the only way to crystallize a state of mind is to use affective triggers to decide what to take notes on and keep. Instead of making a mini-outline of each book and article and podcast you consume, trying to preserve the logical structure of the argument, just wait in low-power mode for reactions like surprise, delight, intrigue, and outrage. This System 1 processing is much faster, less energy intensive, and more intuitive than the more analytical System 2. To take this approach means your notes will not be neat and ordered, like a Dewey Decimal system for the mind. They will be dominated by the contrarian, by paradoxes, by the inexplicable. Which is exactly the point. Contrarianism is the fastest method for discovering the paradox at the heart of every inexplicable phenomenon. (Location 1896) - Companies realize this, and they’re making an effort to fix it. But somewhere along the way, innovation became a matter of rearranging office furniture. Cubicle farms have given way to vast open floor plans, prolific Post-Its, beanbag chairs, and ping-pong. Startups are doing it, so it must be innovative, right? (Location 1975) - The purpose of companies is to build a culture that supports their people. Not to formulate a 5-year plan and dictate every last task to every person. Not to codify an abstract Mission and ram it down everyone’s throats. And definitely not to force everyone to “be creative,” as if creativity is programmable like a computer. (Location 2000) - For example, Google utilizes a previously “wasted” resource — the few seconds of people’s attention used to decipher captchas and prove they’re not a computer — for a very useful purpose: deciphering the street addresses captured by its Street View vehicles. (Location 2157) - The smart approach is to use surplus and spillover effects: to fill the vessel with enough hyper-reactive chemicals and catalysts to maximize the chances that it will boil over with interesting compounds. If you’re lucky it will become auto-catalytic, feeding itself through cycles of growth and decay. If you’re really lucky you’ll be standing by to benefit from the compounds that emerge, not controlling but feeding the reaction. (Location 2185) - By reframing the black-and-white choice as a menu of options tailored to any level of effort you’re willing to expend, it calls attention to the fact that the most difficult step is 0 to 1, not 1 to n. (Location 2261) - 10x our level, it must require 10x the willpower. But this ignores the critical fact that they enjoy doing it. It doesn’t take willpower for a hard-core runner to get up at 5 in the morning. It takes willpower for them not to. The hard truth is that no one really does anything they don’t enjoy for long. At most, they focus their efforts on finding the elusive intersection between what they enjoy and what they must do. (Location 2289) - important factor in selecting athletic footwear is comfort, and a major reason interval training is more effective is that it is simply more enjoyable. These conclusions seem radical because they contradict one of the deepest models many of us seem to hold in common: that the more positive and impactful the change, the more painful it must be. (Location 2296) - In other words, the voice of dopamine is not “That felt good!” It is “If you do this, then you’ll feel good.” Which explains that “one more…” (Location 2315) - after. The “reward” associated with anticipating the experience is far more powerful than the experience itself. (Location 2318) - presents us with a promising possibility: making new habits enjoyable not through visceral pleasure, but through finding new ways to be curious about them. Curiosity is a powerful phenomenon: it is a motivated state of mind that taps directly into our need for novelty, which Gregory Berns claims in Satisfaction is the most fundamental source of life satisfaction. (Location 2322) - Josh Waitzkin’s “self-created earthquakes” that high performers call upon for creative inspiration. (Location 2399) - I’d like to propose a framework for this type of learning that is both feasible and focused on the individual: experimental habit formation. I believe it can help resolve one of the fundamental paradoxes of modern life — how to balance our need for stability and routine with our thirst for novelty and exploration. Experimental habit formation is a gateway to behavior change. The (Location 2446) - well-documented lived experiences: The Quantified Self movement. QS is a global movement of people who measure various aspects of their bodies and lives — from their exercise to their productivity to their diet and far beyond — seeking to better understand themselves and their performance through quantification, broadly defined. QSers, as they’re known, attend meetup groups in cities around the world, where they tell their stories in a “show & tell” format. These short presentations answer three questions: “What did you do?” (i.e. Which aspect of yourself did you measure?), “How did you do it?” (i.e. Which tools or methods or procedures did you use to do so?), and “What did you learn?” I happen to believe that almost nobody appreciates the true implications of The Quantified Self movement, not even its most avid practitioners. It’s (Location 2455) - The first question we need to address is, “Why are habits good vehicles for behavioral experimentation?” Why not just try new things once or twice when it strikes your fancy? (Location 2464) - Essentially, because habits are MVBs — Minimum Viable Behaviors. They have a clear beginning, middle, and end (cue, behavior, reward), making them easy to define and identify when they appear. The good ones tend to be internally coherent and inherently rewarding, thus self-sustaining. They are situated in a physical and social context, which makes them socially acceptable and integrate relatively seamlessly into daily life. Perhaps above all, they align with human neurobiology. (Location 2465) - Let’s start by defining terms. An “experiment” in this context is any attempt at measuring any aspect of one’s life. There is no distinction between “observation” and “intervention” when the same person is both the researcher and the subject, because any attempt to measure the behavior inevitably changes it. As I’ll explain later, this is a feature, not a bug. So the more specific question is, what is the value in using some degree of formal experimental structure in trying new habits, even for laypeople? (Location 2475) - We could look to the well-developed field of Single-Subject Experiment Design to make a case for such studies. But I think the real answer is that the value of scientific thinking extends far beyond strict adherence to the scientific method. (Location 2484) - This highlights an experience many self-experimenters have reported: that the self-awareness they gained in the process of self-tracking was the real reward. (Location 2503) - It was a reward they received regardless of what their data ultimately showed. Self-tracking enhances self-awareness by providing a concrete mechanism for self-reflection: the act of recording. (Location 2504) - Instead of self-awareness being something to ponder during intense meditation sessions on Nepalese mountaintops, it is manifested in something much more mundane: manual data entry. Both methods, it turns out, are capable of generating reveries of conscious attention. (Location 2506) - Which makes the conclusion that project creator Matt Killingworth came to after analyzing many thousands of participants’ data (as told on this NPR podcast) especially intriguing and personally relevant: the single factor with the highest correlation with unhappiness across the entire study was mind-wandering. The more someone had their mind on something other than what they were doing, regardless of whether they were thinking about something more pleasant or less pleasant than what they were doing, the more unhappy they were likely to be both while mind-wandering and in general. This is powerful evidence for the importance of what crunchy types would call “presence.” It’s also difficult to imagine how such a conclusion could be reached without random sampling via mobile devices. (Location 2516)