Thriving on Overload: Recent Episodes
Ross Dawson
Harold Jarche has been an independent consultant for almost two decades, working with individuals, organizations, and public policy influencers to to improve collaboration, knowledge sharing, and sensemaking. He is author of the Seeking Perpetual Beta ebook series and has been running the very popular Personal Knowledge Mastery online workshop for many years.
Leslie Shannon is the Head of Ecosystem and Trend Scouting for Nokia, based in Silicon Valley. Her work involves examining new technologies and how they will converge in this decade. She was also a five-time undefeated winner on the US game show Jeopardy! and racked up many successes on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?
“I have this wish that more people will come forward to collaborate in building up some infrastructure for what we know, that we might use together to make better sense of the world.”– Jerry Michalski
About Jerry MichalskiOn this episode we learn from the incredible connector Jerry Michalski. His fascinating career is hard to summarise, playing a central role in the emerging digital economy as long time managing editor of Esther Dyson’s Release 1.0 newsletter. He is now leader at the Relation Economy Expedition (REX) as well as an advisor facilitator and speaker at the Institute For The Future with a deep focus on trust and relationships
Website: jerrymichalski.com
Medium: Jerry Michalski
LinkedIn: Jerry Michalski
Twitter: Jerry Michalski
YouTube: Jerry Michalski
What you will learn How the word consumer started his journey to collaboration (03:52) * He still uses a 23 year old software called TheBrain (07:16) * Why he is sharing his brain… (19:18) * …and it’s the only asset he will pass on. (21:32) * How and why he’s building a more collaborative brain (22:57) * Delicious still has no successor (25:25) * What information sources does Jerry use (28:49) * In spite of all his information, he feels less overwhelm (33:07) * On connections and serendipity (35:22) * His routines and structures (37:32) * He has a collection of mental models and thinking frameworks (40:25) * OODA loops and virtous circles (43:43) * Being a pattern hound (45:35) * Using dialogue to enhance his and collective models (49:27) Episode resources TheBrain * Open Global Mind * Kumu * Miro * Nassim Taleb * Henry Molaison * Nicklas Luhmann * Delicious * David Allen GTD * Connections TV series * Farnam Street * John Boyd * OODA Loop Episode imagesThe images below are referenced during the conversation with Jerry.Contrarians Who Make (or Made) Sense https://bra.in/4jrdQpDavid Bohm (1917-1992) https://bra.in/9jrB85Virtuous Circles and Vicious Circles https://bra.in/5vB5JaOODA Loop (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) https://bra.in/7pDkZnUseful Thinking Frameworks and Mental Models https://bra.in/8vPM9pDesign from Trust (DfT) https://bra.in/9jYPAqTypes of Accident https://bra.in/8vm7QZTranscriptRoss Dawson: Jerry, it’s a great pleasure to have you on the show, Thriving on Overload.Jerry Michalski: It is a great pleasure to be here, and it’s nice to have a chance to talk with you as well.
Ross: Yes, it’s been too long. I’ve got to say you’re certainly one of the very first people that sprung to mind when I thought about people who are excellent at thriving on overload.
Jerry: I love that. Thank you.
Ross: We’ll try to go through in a little bit of the frame we have around Thriving on Overload; firstly around purpose. In a world of information, how have you developed the clarity of filtering information, or how do you find what’s relevant to you? Where does that come from for you?
Jerry: I can point to two things. One of them is an insight, and the other one is an accident. A long time ago, both of the events happened within a couple of years in the mid-90s, when I was a tech industry trends analyst; not a Wall Street analyst, I don’t care what next quarter’s earnings are going to be, but is AI going to kill us or save us? Or where should we apply neural networks? Those were the things I was looking into back then.
The thing that was an insight was one day, there were a couple of briefings I can point to when I suddenly realized that I didn’t like the word consumer. At the time, I was working for Esther Dyson, who was the doyen of the tech industry. I said, Hey, this word bothers me, and she said it’s just a term of art in the ad business. My little inner voice, which I’ve learned to listen to a lot, said, Hey, no, there’s something much more profound going on here. Word consumer is a symptom of a much deeper problem. This is my advice to young people, pay attention to that little inner voice, because really often it’s giving you a very good clue.
For me, it gave me the clue that we’ve consumerized our world that involved the whole series of breaches of trust, and that whole mission took me deep into the notion of trust. I have a whole bunch of things I’ve thought about, which are weirdly about institutional design around trust. If you wanted to create a high-performance, high-trust team, I can point you to other people; that’s not my issue, but really, why did we design our whole world around mistrust, is the question. That was the insight that led to a quest, to a path of inquiry for me that is rich and live to this day.
Then the accident, the serendipity was that back then I was writing Esther’s newsletter, and I decided to write about bookmark management & mind mapping. I’m not sure why I picked those two things. This was back in the early days of the web, and browsers, and all that. Even back then everybody knew that the bookmark feature in your browser sucks, and nobody uses it, so what else might we do to save the breadcrumbs of where we’ve been. I’m halfway done writing the issue, I’m unhappy with everything I’m seeing, and this little company had booked a visit, the company had a piece of software called TheBrain. I remember making the appointment with a little eye-roll, going, TheBrain? It turns out that this piece of software was exactly how my brain worked.
I wrote about them, I invited them to our conference, and I started using their software, not knowing that 23 years later, I’d still be using their software, really not knowing that 23 years later, I would be curating the same data file that I started the very first day I started using it. My path to being able to cope with information is highly unusual, arguably unique, and has a lot to do with my passion combined with this weird tool that lets me collect up what I see and hang it in the right place, almost like ornaments on a Christmas tree, or pieces of a puzzle. The world’s largest puzzle is how does the world work? I’m busy snapping little pieces in place, which gives me a little oxytocin hit, which causes the lather, rinse, repeat addiction response to kick in. The time that other people would spend maybe putting a link in a spreadsheet or somewhere, I put adding a link to this one curated mind map.
Ross: It’s probably a good time to tell us what is TheBrain?
Jerry: TheBrain is a mind mapping piece of software. The easiest way to show you is to share my screen.
Ross: Some people will just be listening to the podcast, so can you describe that?
Jerry: Okay, I’ll describe it as a football announcer. The mind map has a blue background and words or phrases, mostly phrases, linked by lines. The color scheme that I use is the color scheme that this thing shipped with 23 years ago, a dark blue background with a little bit of fading at each side, a little bit of gradient, words mostly in white on this dark background, lines in a light blue, and occasionally, I use the colors yellow or purple as highlights. I just took us to a thought because it’s called TheBrain, every node is called a thought. I just took us to a thought I called Lessons from my Brain. Under here are a whole bunch of different thoughts, one of my favorites, because it’s an unusual insight, is that we are an amnesic society.
What I mean by this is that, because we’re not storing things in a way that we can refer to them with each other, we’re stupider than we normally would be. We have cultural amnesia. Gore Vidal famously once said that America is an amnesic nation, we have no memory, we don’t care about history, all of that. I’ve got this little tool where, for example, I’ve been tracking the Trumpocalypse, and everything from Trump before he started running for office, all the way through the campaign, his presidency, the January 6 insurrection, and all that, I’m a little bit of a newshound, so all those events are sequenced in this little memory, except everything you’re seeing in this Brain I put in by hand, and it’s just me with this weird little artifact, and I’m dying to be collaborating with other people to create a shared memory, except the tool doesn’t really do shared memory very well.
My passion project right now is called Open Global Mind, and we’ll get into that. Open Global Mind answers the question. What if there was an open collaborative thing like this, but also like Kumu, Miro, and other tools that help you visualize and analyze information? I’ve been hacking this tool a little bit, to do things that are different than unusual, like storytelling, or gathering evidence, or simple things. An easy way to demonstrate it, if you want to go there, is I was a tech industry trends analyst, and I needed to know who competes with whom, who founded what company, who funded what company, what PR companies represented them, and all of that; I can cruise through that information in this tool easier than any database I’ve ever seen, and easier than anything else. It just snapped in place at the right moment for me. Different people have different representational schemes. My wife has a calendric memory. It’s like she’s flipping through the calendar in her head, and I don’t know what I did last week, without the aid of my artificial calendar. This thing happens to really fit how I represent things.
Ross: Would it be accurate to describe this as a mind map where each of the element clicks is a hyperlink to another mind map?
Jerry: This is actually one big mind map. We have an amnesic society. Amnesia is under memory. There’s also elective memory loss, then there’s institutionalized amnesia, organizational amnesia, social amnesia, a whole bunch of different kinds of things. Apparently, Henry Gustav Molaison was studying amnesia. He had students named Brenda Milner and Suzanne Corkin. Molaison wrote about patient H.M. who had a traumatic brain injury, etc. You see that I’m basically making these links. All these little links between the thoughts, I’ve put in by hand, because these things are related to each other.
Ross: This gets to a really fundamental point. Let’s say you have a new piece of information, you find an article or resource, how in your mind do you go through the process of working out where that fits in your Brain?
Jerry: It’s really simple. Before we go forward, I just want to correct myself, Molaison wasn’t a scientist, he, in fact, was an accidental research subject because he had a lobotomy after a traumatic brain injury, and suddenly things happened to his memory that changed everything, so here’s a couple of articles titled “The brain that changed everything”. Sorry about that. Do you see anything in the flow of information in your day that’s worth remembering?
Ross: Yes.
Jerry: Me too. It turns out that I probably see 50 or 60 things every day that are really worth remembering. Then there’s a lot of flotsam and jetsam that I let go by. The first decision is, is this worth remembering? The second decision is where would it go? I’m curious about everything. I was just on YouTube, and right there on the side, there was an explanation and simulation of the ExxonMobil Refinery Explosion in Torrance, California, in 2015. I clicked on it and started going there. Then I decided, that’s interesting. I already had a couple of refinery accidents. One, I had the attack in Saudi Arabia, and then I had a Texas City one, so I added the animation that I just watched. I just dragged it into my Brain, creating this thought in the meantime, under Refinery Accidents and Incidents, which is under Oil Refineries and Types of Accidents.
Just to illustrate, here are types of accidents, which are GPS accidents, ice skating falls, roadkill, satellite accidents, wardrobe malfunctions, remember Janet Jackson? That’s an accident, or maybe not. Then just to show you how absurd this gets when you start doing it for a long time, one day, I realized I had a lot of types of thoughts, so I created an Uber thought called Types. Here are types of abuse, types of accident, types of activism, types of addiction, types of advertising, types of age, aircraft, alcohol, and anarchy. At this level, it’s just fun to wander around. This is not a useful thought for me.
We’ve just gotten to the seas here, types of capital, this is a scroll bar down here, so you can see that there’s an awful lot of collections of types, some of which are really interesting, like, variants of capitalism is really interesting. How many different ways that people titled capitalism, both destructive capitalism and attempts to reform capitalism, I collect all that stuff, which means that later when I find a new article about the same thing, I’m actually putting it into the same context and making that part of my Brain richer and better. I publish my Brain openly online, so anybody can go browse through it.
Ross: Coming back to purpose, what is it that makes something you want to keep in your Brain or not?
Jerry: When I first started using this, I was a tech industry trends analyst. The company Edify, for example, I don’t have much around them because they are all around an interactive voice response, they got some money from Greylock management. Then if I click on Greylock management, we’ll see that they also invested in Dig, Crunch Fund, and Coda. These lists are out of date. I don’t make any claim that these lists are complete. But obviously, there was a purpose for my use of this tool for my job immediately back in 1998,1999, 2000. Then, I was like, I can store everything here.
As I said, I’m on this quest around the word consumer and trust but I’m curious about everything. I then started arranging this slowly over time. You know how when you’re a blogger or a podcaster, you suddenly realize, Oh, I have to have fresh content for the blog. There’s never been a day in my last 23 years, when I was like, Oh, I must add something to my Brain today because there was no reason to, but every day, naturally, 10 to 50 things showed up that were worth remembering.
I would then get into this quick habit of adding something to my Brain, which is really a quick act; it can be under a minute. I can take something, an article worth remembering, and just drop it in. Over time because there’s a part of me that’s trying to digest how the world works, and then transform that into insights, I have a process that I call Design from Trust, that I’m trying to stand up as a practice, where the assumption is we lost trust in humans, but then we went and designed all of our institutions from the basis of mistrust of the average person; if we flip that equation, what does that look like? That’s all here in TheBrain. I’ve got it all cataloged here, I just haven’t written the book about it.
Ross: Do you ever use paper or any other visual tools outside TheBrain?
Jerry: I have next to me a little Squirrel pad. I use it rarely. I can only write on graph paper, on Squirrel paper, only on one side of the page, this is an old habit from 30 years ago, and only with the pen; I can’t use a pencil anymore. I have a little metal clipboard that I love. Then I have an iPad, and I use a drawing app on it. But I use them all occasionally.
Ross: Essentially, this is where you capture and organize your thoughts?
Jerry: Exactly. Now, I don’t do outlining for an article. Let’s say I’m writing a post somewhere, I would have a link to the post here in my Brain but the outline for the post would be in Google Docs, or medium, or wherever it is I’m writing the piece. I don’t use TheBrain for outlining. You easily could and many people do. I just don’t do that, partly because I feel like I’m serving two audiences. One is just me and my idiosyncratic use of this tool to remember stuff, but because I’ve been publishing my Brain online for a really long time, at least 15 years, I have a second audience which is whoever trips across this thing and decides to try to use it, for which, thank you very much, but I want to make this clear enough that people can find their way through and run into stuff that’s actually very useful to them. I have a thought that people are generally more trustworthy than we think they are, which is one of my beliefs. I have a thought called My Beliefs right here.
I think this is really interesting and useful, and I can show you why I think this, and who said it, I’ll let you know. I was at South by Southwest years ago, and Craig Newark and Jimmy Wales interviewed each other. They said this sentence basically twice within the 90 minutes that they were talking because both Craigslist and Wikipedia are designed from the trust. That’s what got me started thinking about how these things all click together. I won’t claim that this curating has given me the different kinds of ideas that I now have, but it sure has helped. It really helped, so when I’m trying to remember what was that article I saw 10 years ago, and chances are that Google has forgotten about the article because Google loves things that have fresh inbound links. PageRank is like who is linking to this piece, and if a piece wasn’t popular, or was long ago, it’s probably fallen off of Google’s memory. Thank God, the Internet Archive has the Wayback Machine, because I use that all the time to basically do CPR on dead web links.
I don’t get rid of broken links in my Brain, partly because as Nassim Taleb tells us, we don’t hear from the graveyard often enough. One of the things I can do is somebody shows up and says, Hey, we have a cool new group calendaring app, and I can say to them, you want to see the couple 100 companies that have died trying to do this? Can I show you who tried and died? Maybe we can talk about what special secret sauce do you have that’s going to make sure you survive?
Ross: Just want a comment on the point of saying, alright, I’m going to open this up for the whole world to see the inside of my Brain.
Jerry: First, there was no reason not to. I can check a little box, so if I click on a link, it gives me a little dialog box. Then over here, there’s a little lock symbol; if I click on the lock, it makes this particular thought private. Now and then as I synchronize to the cloud, to TheBrain’s web servers, whenever I sync, that refreshes, and I do that several times a day, which puts the most up-to-date version on the cloud. Anything I marked as private, nobody else gets to see it. I can protect the things that I care to protect, and I don’t protect very much. I’ll give a speech inside a company that nobody outside the company is meant to know about, that thought is private. But the people I meet who are employees of the company, I attach them to the company, and I make them publicly visible. Nobody needs to know where we met, that linking thought is for me. My notion of the benefits of publishing this publicly has obviously grown over time, as this has become a bigger asset, as I’ve done more thinking about what it means to work like this in public, etc. I’m a little bit vulnerable for doing this, so I do have that thought called My Beliefs.
You can very easily infer my political stance and a bunch of other things from how I arrange things in my Brain. My intentions there are to actually have conversations of other people who’ve done something similar. I’m anxiously looking forward to a conversation with a QAnon fan, who has done some curating not necessarily in TheBrain, but somewhere, to try to build a factual argument for any piece of what they believe. Okay, so pedophiles are in charge of the government, great, where’s your evidence? And how does it fit together? Or anti-vaxxers? Or just conservatives? I’m more on the liberal side but I have plenty of critique of liberal beliefs. I’m using this to sort through what do I believe? And then not just what do I believe, but why?
Ross: That’s wonderful. You have shared extensively on social media at various times in various channels over the years, so this is perhaps the biggest sharing, you’re sharing TheBrain and everything with your Brain marking. How does this relate then to your other social sharing?
Jerry: It’s funny, I’m Twitter user number 509. Ed Williams is a friend, but a different friend of mine basically said, Hey, try this when it was still just an SMS service. I don’t have a zillion followers, but I’ve been on Twitter since it was born, and I’ve used other social media, but I have no large audience anyplace. My wife and I recently were doing our wills, and the only asset I have that matters to me when I pass on is this thing. The only asset I have that matters is my Brain. It’s easy to fund a server still being alive to serve up TheBrain contents frozen on the day of my death. Okay. But a really interesting question is, how might there be other people who then pick up and start using this as a sourdough starter, and then keep going? The project I’m doing now Open Global Mind, one small motive for that project is to get me out into a more open collaborative tool with other humans doing this so that what I’ve done is just a starter for some new layer. Think of this as on top of Wikipedia, but different.
Ross: Tell us about the tool, where that’s at, and where it’s going?
Jerry: OGM, Open Global Mind isn’t actually trying to build a tool, we’re trying to first look around for open source products that exist. There’s a thing called Graphviz, which does visualization; there are a few other bodies of open source code. We’re also trying to motivate existing vendors to write toward each other so that their tools can interoperate, and to separate themselves from their proprietary data formats. Almost everybody has seen Minority Report, and they have that Tom Cruise scene where he’s doing the analysis and flipping things around, isn’t that cool? Some of our geek friends were actually advisors on that movie, so it’s a really good simulation. Although I’m not a huge fan of VR gloves, and all that stuff but imagine a conversation between people using different kinds of tools for memory, and connecting ideas, and building arguments, who weren’t just trapped in little rectangles with a chat on the side but instead were in idea land, and when you showed me something you believed in an argument that I really liked, I could grab it and link it into mine, and say, for this topic, refer to this thing Ross just did.
I already have referred to you in my Brain, I’ve got a bunch of stuff around you and things you’ve written in posts, and that’s an interesting start. But what does this look like at the next level when we’re starting to think together? And when we’re starting to set up experiments or arguments to try to convince other people to do something? So heading down that road.
Ross: I sometimes think that the defining theme of where my life is going is collective intelligence.
Jerry: That’s fabulous. Collective intelligence, collaborative sense-making, hive mind, whatever term you want, that’s the place where we’re aiming. Then there’s a whole bunch of small subgroups. There’s a bunch of people who are fans of subtle custom, which was a system developed by Niklas Luhmann with index cards and a coding scheme, and they’re emulating that in software. Then there’s the cult of Rome research, which is doing backlink key outlines; then there’s a bunch of others, and none of us are connected to each other. Each of these is like its own frothy little cult. I’m really interested in what does it look like when a heavy Rome user, who’s done a lot of this work, and I talked to one another? And what can we build together?
Ross: One of the things that hopped off for me is actually social bookmarking and Delicious, and so on, which was a big loss when that disappeared. Is there anything now that you feel in terms of social bookmarking or other things that are useful?
Jerry: I was not a Delicious user, because I was already a Brain user, but Delicious was the closest thing to TheBrain without any of the visual aspects, but certainly the social side of it was more than TheBrain, the shared links, the hash-tagging, a bunch of other interesting stuff, and I regret the day Yahoo bought them. I, even more, regret the day that they went under, and Joshua Schachter is now driving sports cars. I’m like dude, couldn’t you have just funded this thing to stay up as a server? A lot of old Delicious users wound up on Pinboard, which is a mediocre substitute. Then there are a couple of other tools that are picking up some of that but don’t quite have the magic or the community because, for example, C19, as a hashtag on Delicious, was a rallying cry for historians who cared about the 19th century.
They were using a C19 to share what they knew in a beautiful way. I totally agree, Delicious was a huge loss when it went away. We need a lot more things like that, that can play nicely with things like this Brain tool, with Graphviz, with Kumu, and with other kinds of tools. I don’t know why more people aren’t interested in that space where we can enrich the way we communicate.
Ross: Yes, it does seem that there’s less happening now than there was, unfortunately.
Jerry: Yes and no, because the little cults that I talked about are new. A lot of those are new, frothy, and interesting. Whether it’s personal knowledge management, or personal knowledge graphs, or network knowledge graphs, there’s a whole bunch of subcategories, I’ve got most of them named in my Brain and collected up. They’re all trying hard to figure this thing out, and many of these people are really good bloggers or chroniclers of their activities, on whatever medium you want. If you want to get in those conversations, they’re openly available; but you’re right, in another way, a lot of this stuff has died off, and there isn’t a great deal of interest.
Ross: I will have a look at your Brain to find those references.
Jerry: I’m happy to send you links or whatever. A nice thing is that I can send a shortened link to any particular thought, any specific thought in my Brain to anybody. That’s easier than going to Jerrysbrain.com, clicking on launch Jerry’s Brain, and then trying to use the search function, which is okay, but slow. You can get around that way but it’s so much easier if I send you someplace directly in the middle of TheBrain.
Ross: Actually, that would be awesome to get the direct links for where you were referring to earlier in the podcast so that people can track our conversation and to delve into what we’ve just been chatting about.
Jerry: We can add them to the comments, no problem.
Ross: What are your information sources? The things that you use regularly? How do you choose those sources? How do you find broader sources beyond that? What is your structure for finding and using your sources?
Jerry: I’m no scientist or information technologist about this stuff. It’s been a pretty organic thing. I love the New York Times because I lived in New York for five years and got really used to it and its writing style. For example, there have been plenty of controversies about its agendas and whatnot over the last couple of election cycles, but I have a lot of references there, and that’s the only paper that I will regularly go look at. I only look at it online, I don’t get anything delivered on paper anymore at all. Then I subscribed to a bunch of different newsletters most recently, probably Heather Cox Richardson, the historian, who’s doing political commentary, no opinion. There’s a whole bunch of people, and I’ll turn them off once they’re less relevant for me, so I’ll unsubscribe.
I spend a bunch of time trying to unsubscribe from things because I get way too much mail. I also know way too many humans who are interesting, and every now and then they’ll throw something overboard. But for me, the social network is the source of my best links. I’ve been careful about curating who I follow on Twitter. If you treat Twitter like Facebook, and you just follow your friends, your Twitter feed will be trashy, it’ll be awful, and you’ll be like, God, Twitter’s just terrible. But if you’re careful about who you follow, then I see world news hits first in my Twitter feed before CNN gets it, before I hear it anywhere else. If I happen to be looking over at Twitter, and there’s an earthquake somewhere or an explosion somewhere, or something, it’ll start there.
I rely on Twitter for contemporary newsy stuff. I rely on my social network, that’s just lots of people and a few newsletters for the bulk of things. I don’t really subscribe to many publications, summaries like ZDNet, or The Economist, or whoever, they’ll send out, Hey, here is a bit, and I’m like if there was a good article in your publication today, I will hear about it some other way. I don’t subscribe because every organization is going to send you 20 great things every day, and that’s just way too much, that’s overload. I do get the feeling of overload periodically in doing what I’m doing. In particular, I will add, because I’ve been obsessive about this Brain thing and trying to figure out how to digest the world at the expense of making a normal income, and all those kinds of things, I’m devoting a lot of time to doing this, even though it’s a quick act to add something new to it, and only a couple of times I’ve sat down and thought, Oh, crap, I’m having a feeling of overwhelm.
That’s happened a couple of times during lockdown, but really only twice. At those moments, I’d got way too many tabs open that I wanted to filter into my Brain, I just came up with three great conversations, I’m done, I’m spent. Also this little feeling of maybe I’ve just lost a grip on what’s happening in the world. I don’t usually get to the point of I should just give up. I fall short of just throwing my hands up and deciding to give up, but trying to be a little coral polyp on the reef filtering the nutrients that go by is an ongoing act. You’re always wafting with the current picking up like, oh, that’s good. I wish many more people did this because what I see that’s important, and pick out depends on my filters, my worldview, and how I think the world works, and I’m really interested in other people’s worldview, and the tools like this make it really easy to model, explain, elaborate and then show your worldview. I find that to be really important.
Ross: You’re getting to the essence of what this is all about. I’ve got to say, if you had that feeling of overwhelm only a couple of times, then you’re doing better than most people.
Jerry: I think I feel less overwhelmed than most because I have a very productive way to put things in a place where I know I’ll find them again. David Allen is the Getting Things Done guy; he says, you have a whole bunch of open loops in your head, you need to put them in a system that is reliable, where you know, where you don’t have this worry that you’re going to miss a loop and drop something. He helps you design a reliable system. I’m terrible at GTD, although I took a couple of David’s workshops.
I’m terrible at GTD but I’m really good at knowing that what I’ve put something in TheBrain and then linked it up a little bit thoughtfully, and I failed to go through the rest of my logics for when I put things in TheBrain, that I’ll find that again, that it’s now more useful than it was before, and that it’s in its context. It’s like it has found its little home. Going back a moment ago. First, is it worth remembering? Second, what is it part of? What does it connect to? I’ve got enough things in my Brain that there’s almost always a place I can go to, so I go there. I don’t know if you noticed, but I have my screen always set up where TheBrain is flush right and the browser is flush left, and there’s an inch gap. The only reason I do that is that the easiest way to add something to TheBrain is to grab the URL, the little icon next to the URL, I grab that and I drag it across into the blue background of TheBrain.
TheBrain goes, Oh, you’re adding a thought, under the current thought, I should pick up the name of the file and whatever URL you’ve got, and create a new thought. That’s what it does, and 80% of the time, it does a pretty darn good job of that, and I’m done adding the thought; but the other 20% of the time, I have to go clean it up, edit it, move around the text, which is easy to do. Then I sit down and I think what else should I connect this to? Because this isn’t a hierarchy, TheBrain is not just like top-down. It’s a multi-directed graph of some sort. I know nothing about graph theory, but TheBrain doesn’t care if I make circular references, or if I over link or whatever, so I’m really interested in connecting things to things that are similar. My Brain is a very happy pattern finder. I do lots and lots of patterns over matching and linking up which means then when I come in to find something, I’m like, who was that woman who did the paper on whatever? I can usually find my way to it.
Ross: You mentioned serendipity before. When you’re out exploring or finding, is there any way in which serendipity is more likely to happen in what you discover?
Jerry: Serendipity, curiosity, and innovation are not things that I worry about, I have no scarcity of any of those. There are a lot of reasons why. One of them is that I keep a bunch of open channels, and I have a bunch of friends who will send me stuff. Another one is that I’m curious about everything, and I’m always nosing in corners looking for stuff. Years ago, when I was 35 years old, I finally read my first good history book, and that gave me the nose for Oh, wait a minute, history doesn’t have to be about there was this battle on this date, and here’s who won; you can actually peel back the curtain and see what was going on; isn’t that cool?
That led me to a different form of inquiry that helps me go through and connect things up. One of the big motivators for me was James Burke’s series Connections, which aired on PBS here in the US, but then it was a book as well. It was all about serendipity, and connections. So someone used Limelight, which was made popular in theaters as a way of lighting the stage, and turned it into a signaling system between the semaphore stations. Then suddenly you have the Saturn V rocket, remember that episode? My mind works a lot like that. Also, I have successfully preserved a child’s curiosity and openness to finding new stuff. I’m busy trying to figure out how other people think.
I want to know why people voted for Trump. I don’t think they were all misogynist, racist, homophobic assholes. I think a lot of them, for example, wanted to break the system. They really wanted to shatter a system that was nonfunctional for them. They were like, this guy with his bull in the china shop approach is very likely to break the system enough that we’re going to have to get a new system. That’s a logic to me. That makes a lot of sense because I think the system is broken, too. I just would fix it a different way, but look how far I’ve gotten.
Ross: Do you have any routines or structures during the day or the week? Are there times of day when you scan sources, or think about things, or do deep dives?
Jerry: This is a great and painful question to answer. The thing I should be doing is I should eat the frog, as they say, every morning. The night before, I should set up with the one most important thing I could do the next day, and then just do that and ignore everything else for the first couple of hours, and my life would be very different had I figured out how to do that. Instead, I try to get through my email and I start following things. Before you know it, I’m curating my Brain, adding stuff in, which is beneficial in the sense of these were all little pieces of the puzzle, but not great in the sense of, I probably should have sent that email today.
I think I’m overly in the dig, click, connect, and weave mode. I think of TheBrain as a modern loom. I think of this as me weaving information together because the little lines between thoughts are very much like the warp and weft of a fabric. Weaving is one of the earliest technologies. The only problem is everything that was woven rotted and went away, and the people who made large stone monuments to themselves survived because the stone is more durable than fabric, which is a shame. Because the weaving was really important, it was how we stayed alive to carry stuff, to get dressed, and whatever else. The pyramids served no particular useful purpose I can see.
Metaphorically, similarly, I’m really interested in how we might together weave what we know together, so we don’t have to keep having the same stupid arguments over and over again. I apologize to go back to Trump for a second, but if the American press corps had agreed with some memory device, and said, hey, these six lies that he’s been saying over and over again, let’s all agree that the next time he utters that lie, any one of these six, there’s just 6/3 real things, we will turn off the camera, stand up and walk out of the room together. Can we just agree on that? Okay, good.
I don’t know that that would have solved the problem but it would have been a little bit of animal conditioning, to show Trump that his assumption that the news media could not shut its eye and leave might be wrong. Having a shared memory for journalists might have been a good thing. For me, the idea that we don’t have a shared memory makes us much easier to spend, makes us stupider than we actually are as humans, means that we’re perfectly happy to go watch TikTok videos till the cows come home, because hey, it’s only a minute, and it’s got some cute music, and somebody did something light-hearted. Wait a minute, we have five major crises in front of us. Wouldn’t you do something fruitful toward any of them? Or if you don’t want to try to fend off crises, wouldn’t you do something positive that helps people?
Ross: You’ve been implicitly talking about mental models throughout, about how you’re building your way of seeing the world, to be able to build it and collaborate around that and to refine and make it better. Your repository is TheBrain but it is not in the software literally, it is inside your mind. What’s the relationship between what you are thinking in your mind and the external resource of TheBrain or anything else? How are you continuing refining and developing?
Jerry: Farnam Street famously has published a couple of books about mental models, but I’ve been collecting mental models for years. I see yellow as an attractor that says hey, there’s a lot of stuff under here; so these yellow things are OR tools, dynamic programming, linear programming, Monte Carlo, nonlinear programming, queuing theory, etc. That’s just one little subsection of useful thinking frameworks. The Cynefin framework is in here from Dave Snowden, brainstorming techniques, etc. I have a massive collection of mental models here that aren’t curated toward each other, meaning somebody who took this collection and went down another level with it could actually say, this one is like this one, here’s how they’re different; somebody could front end this collection with, if you’re stuck in this kind of a situation, here’s how to find your way to a useful mental model or thinking framework. I think that it would be terrific work to do.
Then some of these thinking frameworks are proprietary. I don’t like good ideas that are locked behind an IP gate. Apparently, in our culture, smart people write books, and they put their best ideas in books. Then we protect books with digital rights management. We make it really hard to use the information in books, and then we expect culture to move forward. Seriously people? What we want to do is have creative people make a living, let’s solve for that, and let’s solve for that around walking away the content. I’m a huge fan of open source, open content, open as much as you possibly can.
There are business models that are successful, where much of what is done is actually open. Then the secret sauce or the proprietary data is not, and that layer is protected. That’s fine too. But we have way too many people who are over protecting intellectual property, hiding ideas from one another when we actually need to work together.
Ross: Synthesis is one of the key frames through my life. It’s bringing together disparate ideas and making them one. TheBrain shows connections but there’s this vast amount which you cover through your voracious curiosity, what is the process where you synthesize, pull things together to make sense from these things, and coalesce all of this array of different resources you’ve discovered?
Jerry: Let me show you two examples. One is the OODA loop. John Boyd, Air Force Colonel, a crazy guy who used to call his associates at 2 am and say, I’ve got an idea. He invents this brilliant thing, which was used by Dick Cheney. In John Boyd’s biography, the author credits and acknowledges that. Dick Cheney is a big fan of Boyd, so I wrote a piece that I didn’t actually publish. Back when John Kerry was running, I wrote neocons are inside the democrats’ OODA loop. Because everybody on the far right understands OODA, nobody on the left understood it. When there was swiftboating, flip-flopping, and all the things that kept John Kerry off balance were being done because this was political use of OODA. That’s just one little piece of synthesis. This one, I understood by myself and got into it.
Another one is virtuous circles. One day, I was trying to learn more about Brian Arthur and virtuous circles, and all that. In doing so, in my Brain, I suddenly realized that vicious cycles are what happens to everybody else in a virtuous circle. One of the examples of a virtuous circle is Microsoft bundles up Excel, Word, and Access, and sells that as the Office suite. The other vendors don’t really have as good an Office suite, and all of a sudden, everybody decides we have to use Microsoft, and there’s a virtuous cycle that lifts Microsoft to market leadership, which is a vicious cycle for Novell, Lotus, and everybody else. That came to me from sitting here and looking at basically cycle, circles, making these connections in here, feedback loops, positive feedback, negative feedback, all of that.
These insights don’t happen that often directly while using TheBrain but they happen to me all the time because I’m a pattern hound. When I get them, I try to represent them in this Brain. What’s interesting is that this Brain isn’t just a collection of companies that sell products, that have people in them, that were funded by Venture Capital firms, that live under categories, there’s a piece of my Brain where I’m doing that, but I’m also trying to think out loud, think with whoever else wants to play, about all these topics and make sense of the world.
Ross: You’ve mentioned that word pattern hound more than once, what does that mean? How do you sniff out patterns, find them, or articulate them?
Jerry: A big piece of pattern recognition is I curate the world’s largest published Brain with 460,000 thoughts, 850,000 links, and 23 plus years now. This idea that when you look from one place to another, there are things that are really parallel to each other, really works for me. I have a thought that’s really important to me, which is going to look messy, my apologies, but it’s contrarians who make or made sense. Years ago, when I was starting to figure out about trust and all that stuff, I discovered that I had a bunch of heroes, David Bohm, who invented the dialogue process, Alice Miller, who did the unresolved childhood trauma, and a bunch of stuff around family systems thinking, Christopher Alexander, the cranky urban planner, and architect. These people are all on this list.
Then I realized one day that all these people shared something that none of them would have called by this name, that’s when I came up with this idea of design from trust. I saw the pattern that all of these people were saying, in my discipline, education, architecture, urban planning, finance, self-image, health, whatever, we don’t trust humans anymore, so we built these really coercive institutions that control people, and really have screwed up. We screwed up how to do policing, for example. Each of these people also then suggested a positive way to fix that.
Christopher Alexander invents pattern languages, which are a way of distilling wisdom in any discipline so that ordinary muggles can come in and perform much higher levels of design, discussion and make more intelligent choices because they have distilled wisdom at hand, like light from two sides, make small niches for children, and how to cite a home on a lot. How do we do this for every domain? This is one of the major patterns that I’ve found. I think if we all tried to design from trust, a book I need to write, we might actually solve a lot of the world’s problems because design from trust is cheaper, it reconnects us in the community, and it actually seems to solve problems. Design from trust is really scary and counterintuitive.
I wrote an essay called the Two Oh Shits, which is in here, which basically says, when you hit a system designed from trust, like Wikipedia is designed from trust, your first reaction is, Oh, shit, this couldn’t possibly work. What moron invented a system where anyone on earth can come change any page? Then you bounce around in there, try a couple of pages, look at something that you know a lot about, and the second Oh, shit is like, Oh, shit, this seems to be really working. What makes it work? What is the secret sauce here? How do I get more? That process to me is super fascinating because I think that’s the direction we need to go to fix what ails us.
Ross: Just one thread there was David Bohm’s dialogue.
Jerry: Yes.
Ross: WikiHow is a wonderful and often neglected resource. This is a little implicit in what you’ve been sharing, but how do you use dialogue? How do you engage in dialogue to be able to enhance your models, or other people’s models, or collective models?
Jerry: It’s funny because I’m a facilitator. I’m a convener; I have meetings that I pull together of different kinds, and Open Global Mind right now is mostly a community of practice that is busy working on these different kinds of things. When I lived in Manhattan, I attended several Bohm dialogue sessions, and I was really struck by how subtle the whole process is because we would show up, we would take our coats off, we would sit down and start talking, and before we knew that there was a special something in between us, that the place we were in, the conversation we were having had grown to feel different. That’s a piece of what dialogue is. It’s not about trying to convince anybody of anything. It’s not for therapy, but it might feel like it.
I try to incorporate some of that in the conversations that I host. I’m trying to listen with care to what people bring to the conversation, and unpack it. I’m probably a little too directive as a facilitator but I feel the safe space in which to say things that matter to you, is really important for civilization to move forward, and also for companies to make good decisions, to make wiser decisions. We don’t have a lot of those safe spaces. We don’t listen well. Another thought I have is that we’re in an epidemic of not listening to each other. We’re all busy ready to say things, and not that ready to stop, sit and actually listen to other people. In fact, one of the safest, easiest ways to bridge the cultural divide is to listen respectfully to other people. It’s crazy how well that works.
Bohm is a small piece of that puzzle for me in the middle here, but he was a super interesting fellow. By the way, Bohm’s ideas were met with silence and derision. It is a thought here in my Brain.
Ross: Not by everyone.
Jerry: Not by everyone; some things come around later, and make a lot of sense later.
Ross: Yes, that’s perennials. You are really an exemplar of thriving on overload. You’ve pointed a path through what you’ve done, a unique path, and you’ve pushed it out further than anyone else. I really hope your project succeeds in being able to provide a more collective frame for this filtering, gathering, and sense-making. Is there anything else to share from your insights and experience on how other people can learn from that to thrive themselves on overload?
Jerry: Yes, many small pieces of advice. One of them is, you can browse my Brain for free at Jerrysbrain.com. I would love for anybody to join the conversation and the actions at Openglobalmind.com, the same sort of thing. A thing for young people, in particular, is to pay attention to your little inner voice, because many people have a lot of trouble finding their purpose in life, like, what is my purpose? Doing stuff without a real purpose is not nearly as much fun as having a purpose. Although sometimes having a purpose is really frustrating because if your purpose is to stop the earth from melting because of climate change, man, we are in a lot of trouble right now around that.
I’m in Portland, Oregon, where we just had the three hottest days on record, the last three days. Today’s normal, it’s still way above normal for June averages, but we just had Portland’s highest temperature ever by a lot, by five or six degrees. Find something that irks you, and chances are that irritation is the source of something the world actually needs. Because younger children are really brutally frank, but they’re actually seeing things as they ought to be. Then we teach them, we basically socialize all that wisdom out of them. One of my beliefs is that we’re born pretty connected to the world, to each other, and to the earth, and we don’t figure out what to do.
I have a lot of things to say to younger people and I have this wish that more people will come forward, to collaborate in building up some infrastructure for what we know, that we might use together to make better sense of the world, to bridge those divides that are being widened intentionally, we weren’t always this far apart on everything, there’s this kind of a wave, where every now and then mostly politicians figure out that if they pump fear and mistrust, and undermine facts in science, they can drive a wedge and win some elections. That’s where we are.
One way to combat that is by sharing what we know. Another way to combat that is just through listening and safety and has nothing to do with technology. I don’t want to say that if we only all curated TheBrain, we would solve the world’s problems. I actually want to say, if we listened respectfully to each other and went out for a beer, we might actually solve more problems, but then we might want to sit down and decide to express what we know, share it better, and build on it. That’s the piece I’ve been working on for a while here.
Ross, thank you for the invitation here. I love your questions. I love your quest. Thriving on overload is important. My wife just finished writing a book Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change. Your books are very allied, and we’ll probably see each other on the road on a book tour.
Ross: Oh, fantastic. Thank you so much, Jerry. It’s been really insightful. I look forward to speaking again sometime for long.
Jerry: Thank you very much.
Ross: Take care. Thanks.
“If you don’t want something in your head, don’t take it in to start with. You become what you think about and you create what you feel is your focus.”– Elizabeth Gould
About Elizabeth GouldElizabeth is a high performance coach and the bestselling author of three books including most recently Feeling Forwards, which has been endorsed by the likes of Tony Robbins. She is a founding member of the Randi Zuckerberg’s leadership school at the Zuckerberg Institute, and host of the Feeling Forwards podcast. Elizabeth appears frequently in the media, including on NBC, Fox and Office Hours Live.
*Website:* Elizabeth Gould
*LinkedIn:* Elizabeth Gould
*Instagram:* Elizabeth Gould
*Facebook:* Elizabeth Gould
What you will learn How the reward circuit of the brain plays a crucial role in consuming words and information (03:43) * Choosing the right information for better memory retention (05:23) * Having a clear purpose and goal in writing books (07:54) * How the book, Writing for Impact goes beyond just writing (09:03) * The first S’s for amplifying cognition and making information easier to absorb and comprehend (12:49) * Using metaphors to make a subject more engaging (14:03) * Using surprising data and story to make a subject more engaging (14:33) * How using specifics aids comprehension and drives the reward circuit (16:27) * Importance of using emotion in writing (20:23) * Keeping the writing seductive, smart, and insightful to make the piece more effective and engaging (22:30) * How powerful finding an “aha” moment on your own is (25:07) * Nurturing the unconscious or subconscious mind to initiate insights (26:01) * How the brain brings about dim and distant ideas (27:50) * Keeping the writing social and story-driven to make the piece more effective and engaging (29:46) * How people process the meaning of words across languages, across mediums (31:18) Episode resourcesBooks*
- Feeling Forwards: How to become the person who has the life you want by Elizabeth Gould
- The Art of Acting by Stella Adler TranscriptRoss Dawson: Elizabeth, it’s a true delight to have you on the show.
Elizabeth Gould: Thank you, Ross. We had a blast when we recorded the interview earlier in the week on my podcast, and I was so intrigued by your ideas. I’m very honored that you’ve had me on your show.
Ross: The premise is that we live in a world of accelerating change, and it’s challenging. I’d love to get your insights on how it is that we can cope, we can manage, we can thrive, we can succeed, and act better in a world of just moving faster and faster and faster?
Elizabeth: I love that concept of overload. Just to share with you, an overload of information to me is like conscious thoughts whereas overwhelm is like emotional overload. I loved the tweak to that which I heard once which is actually overwhelm is an abundance of what you asked for. If you’re an entrepreneur, and you want customers or orders or your widget or your app to be downloaded, you get overwhelmed when it actually all starts to happen. I love that tweak on your language and the work that you do. But I think the most important thing in a world of overload and sometimes overwhelm is to be able to find your path forwards because that’s getting increasingly difficult. The amount of information, as you will know that we have available to us, particularly in the high-performance and self-development space is incredible. There’s a new best-selling book telling you how to think, feel, work, and start your business, coming out every day, every week, at least, if you look at even just the New York Times bestselling list.
What I like to do with my work, which is contained in my latest book, Feeling Forwards, but really take a step back. Because I think personal development and how you cope and succeed in life has been a little bit hijacked in terms of it’s all about thinking. It’s positive thinking, it’s our thinking patterns; But if you strip that back, you can’t think of hope and confidence. That’s an emotional reaction. It’s almost a physical gut reaction as well. What I do with my work Feeling Forwards and also the Success Maximizer method is take it back and like, Okay, let’s start with the fundamentals. What is your aim? Then we build on that to what’s your inner justification for that? Then what are the behaviors?
The example I love to use is elite athletes understand that success is backward and also success is very emotional. An elite athlete will train, sleep, eat, think, and believe like a champion, probably five or six years before they’ve won a major race. But at the moment, we have an avalanche of information, I see that particularly with entrepreneurs that they get 55 ways to scale their business plan and everything else. They say, Okay, I have to do all this stuff, and once I’ve achieved a level of success, then I will get a finance guy to sort out my finances, then I will lose the 20 kilos, then I will get eight hours of sleep. It doesn’t work that way, success is actually backward. For me Feeling Forwards is cutting through the clutter. Starting with, Okay, where am I? Where do I want to go? How can I bring the future into my present to make that happen?
Ross: I think that the distinction between the emotion and the pragmatics of it is valuable. Again, this echoes quite a bit the messages in my book, you start with purpose, and then it’s around what behaviors you enact. Digging into that, let’s start from the aim when you’re discussing that. How is it that we can find that? One of the challenges today is that everyone’s saying purpose, purpose, purpose. So if everyone says, oh, what’s my purpose? Part of my framing is that it’s a journey. It’s not as if we find it and it’s there, necessarily, but I’d love to first get your insights into how it is we can uncover our aim, which can then shape our behaviors.
Elizabeth: I love that in your work, you use the word purpose rather than goal. It’s seen as quite controversial when I say, look, you set an aim, not a goal. I started down that journey in a bit of an unusual way when in my previous corporate life, I interviewed the head of human resources for the Sydney Olympics, who was an incredible man, and we were talking through his career, I was in executive recruitment at that time, and I said, What do you think was the greatest achievement in your role? He said, no one killed themselves. I went Okay. Then he explained that in every modern Olympics, until the Sydney 2000 Olympics, at the end of the Olympics, or shortly thereafter, sadly, one of the management team or more than one had killed themselves. He got the role of HR director and learned of this pretty horrific statistic, and thought, what can I do? From the very moment, anyone joined the Olympic organization for the Sydney Olympics, everyone talked about what was going to happen after the Olympics. So Okay, this is great. This is your role, but what are you looking for beyond that? His was the first Olympics where no one did actually kill themselves.
It got me thinking because, at the same time, I’ve always been fascinated in my work with elite athletes. So many athletes, it wasn’t Michael Phelps initially but some Australian swimmers came out and talked about how they battled with depression. Then Michael Phelps came out and talked about sliding into depression while he was standing on the podium getting his gold medal. Instead of me thinking, okay, there are a couple of really interesting links here. Because we know elite athletes encourage so heavily to visualize that moment, to visualize getting the gold medal every time they get to the pool, every time they run a race, I thought, Okay, so what’s missing from this? A little bit, like your purpose. I thought what if we swapped that for an aim?
If you think of a goal as running through a dark tunnel, and there’s a light at the end, and all you’re doing your whole life is focused on getting to that light at the end with firstly, no thought of what’s beyond that light, but also whether or not you’re actually going to make it, I thought, what if we could have an aim? Instead of that picture, have a picture of running along a track, but there’s an open field on either side. When I talk, in retrospect, to someone about their aim is like, Oh, I really wanted to get into med school, but I failed. I didn’t get into med school. I’m like, let’s go back, let’s look at the golden thread of all the decisions and the interests you had up to that point. Were you interested in finding a cancer cure? Were you interested in helping people? Were you interested in the mind-body connection? And starting to unpack that. Then they get to a point where they realize, Well, actually, maybe it was that it was broader than just being a doctor. I don’t have to have that sense of failure. I can actually go back and revisit why I was even interested in this area in the first place.
Then if you apply that same principle of running through an open field instead of a dark, skinny tunnel, and you think, Okay, we’ll know as we get older, we have family issues, financial issues, health crises, COVID, that can really knock our careers and what we want to do, of course, so if you think of heading toward an aim, and there’s a concept I use, called the Golden Thread, if you look back over the decisions you made, even as a child, did you come to play outside or did you stay inside and read a book, really basic stuff. If you join all the things that you chose to do, you do see a golden thread weaving through your life, once you find that, it’s much easier to make a decision on what my purpose is or what my aim could be. If it changes, there’s not that same sense of failure as if you haven’t reached a goal.
Ross: That’s one of the things where if you target something specific, then either you don’t achieve it, or you do achieve it. In either case, you’re kind of lost. Whereas if you are understanding what it is that motivates you, or where the direction comes from, and I sometimes wish that when I was a child growing up that I’d made a list of all the things I wanted to be when I grew up, to discover what was a little bit of that thread of who I was and who I was becoming. I have kept a journal since I was 16. I do refer back to my late teens and early 20s Journal very often to say, am I on track from who I was then, would I be proud of myself from that perspective?
Elizabeth: Oh, I love that. That would be so interesting, because so often, every kind of high performer, whether it’s an athlete, an entrepreneur, or a philanthropist, has a view that when they get to a particular point of success, however that’s represented, whether it’s financial, or big house, or whatever, that they are going to become some magical different person. I say it doesn’t matter how many bestsellers I write, I know, I hate rollercoaster rides, I have to have my plate heated so my dinner is hot, I like to have a bath at the end of the day, that’s not going to change, you’re going to be the same person. It’s not that you don’t become a future self as a different person. You embrace different behaviors that get you there. But you’re still the same person. That would be so fascinating to go back and read those journals.
Ross: Having uncovered aim or the Golden Thread in your life, how is it that you identify the behaviors which will support that aim or direction? And even harder, how do you enact those behaviors?
Elizabeth: I love that you’ve asked this question. That is a great question. One I was grappling with when I wrote Feeling Forwards. But what I did, I had a couple of clues, I actually dove into what is still the acting Bible, called The Art of Acting by Stella Adler. Method acting is another word for it. Let’s say, for example, if there’s a scene in which you were supposed to cry, she said, “Don’t think of when your grandparent died, or your cat died, or whatever, you have to be the character and be sad as the character for that event happening.” Around the same time, I came across a quote by the fabulous Cary Grant, who if someone’s not familiar, was the Hollywood man, think the George Clooney of 50 years ago, debonair, dashing, and fabulous. But when he arrived in Hollywood, his name was Archie Leach. He was the son of alcoholic parents, he had nothing. But he had a quote about how he approached his success, which was, “I decided to become someone until I became him or he became me.”
I thought, Okay. I developed a framework of every kind of category of behavior you can think of, what are you reading? What are you eating? What time you’re getting up? Who are you hanging out with? There are about 17 of them. Then I do an exercise in my high-performance coaching, which is Okay, imagine you have achieved the transformation you want to achieve. Let’s not worry about how you got there right now because if we all knew how our life was going to turn out, we’d just give up. We don’t have a crystal ball, it doesn’t come with us. Forget about how but say to yourself and remind yourself during the day, Okay, if I was, as you are, an incredibly successful internationally acclaimed speaker and futurist, would I be watching this crap on Netflix right now? Or would I have something to prepare? Or would I be reading an article for my speech or if I wanted to be on morning television and I was getting up at three or four o’clock every morning, would I be going to bed at 11 PM? It’s a Cary Grant principle. Once you can emotionally connect, once your imagination gets going, then you just catapult yourself so much more quickly to getting where you want to go.
Ross: Yes, absolutely. This goes to the concept of congruence, which is essentially, that you act on what you say, and hopefully, what you think and what you do are aligned. Somebody can look at you and say, the way they behave, it’s the same as the way that they speak what they’re speaking. You can tell that people are incongruent sometimes, they say some things and do something else completely different. You think about that congruence, this alignment of who you think you are, who you say you are, and what you do, it comes down to being integral. Because if not, you’re a divided self. Part of you is doing one thing or saying one thing and part of you is doing that other so it is ultimately about integrity – becoming a single, being whole, rather than divided between what it is you say or what you think and what it is that you actually do?
Elizabeth: Yes, I agree, and I love the word congruence. I think that is a much more powerful word than authenticity. I don’t think authenticity reaches where congruence does. Just as Aussies, I need to do a shout-out. You see people such as Hugh Jackman that embody that. He’s completely consistent in his behavior on and off-screen. We can all think of several athletes or public figures. We can also equally think of several athletes, public figures, and dare I say, politicians who present one way and then have it illustrated in a very public way that they’re not quite the way they would like to seem.
Ross: Indeed. What you’re saying is that having an idea of who it is you want to become or the successful You, then being able to look across these different categories of behaviors and see what behaviors would align with the You you want to be or you aspire to be or you think you can be? From there, how do you make the shift from your current behaviors to those more enabling behaviors?
Elizabeth: You’ve uncovered the missing piece in the middle, which is your inner justification. It’s really interesting. I balanced these three elements out in a formula and when a high performer comes to me and says, I’m working hard, but it’s just not working. We look at these three elements. Okay, let’s go back to what your aim has been. What’s your inner justification? And what are your behaviors? They invariably say, Oh, look, it’s my behavior, I really want to get up at four o’clock and do that. You know the image of the highly successful entrepreneur, they hustle, they get up at four o’clock, go to the gym, etc., which is not particularly realistic. But they say there’s something I want to achieve, but I’m self-sabotaging, or I have these destructive habits. Yes, that may well be true, but it’s like, it’s not actually your habits and behaviors you need to work on. Because your inner justification was so strong, you wouldn’t indulge in those habits or behaviors to start with, so let’s peel it back. Let’s go back to your aim first because as we move through life and become more or less successful, the aim can vary, particularly without emotional family lives as well. But what’s your inner justification?
I’ve been fascinated by the story of Tom Brady. I’m a huge fan of his discipline and his regime and his excellence. He’s come to the end of his career and he’s had an unfortunate final year and an unfortunate personal year. I think, well, what was your inner justification? Did you tweak that? Because if your inner justification is to be the best in the world at anything, there is inevitably a point where there’s physical or mental decline, or someone else, younger, faster, whatever comes up. That also has to move. If your inner justification has that flexibility to I’m going to be the greatest of all time, then that has to shift to I’m going to be the greatest of all time and then demonstrate or then support people below, that are coming up or would be the best example of my ethnicity in this particular area or through being the greatest of all time, I’m going to do this. Because then once you have that inner justification that sometimes does need to be tweaked, then sometimes you’ve got new behaviors and habits that have to fall.
Ross: Can you give me a short definition of inner justification? What does that mean?
Elizabeth: Your aim is what you want to achieve, or how you want your life to turn out. But then a justification is why? Feeling Forwards can be used for good and not so good if you like. You can feel forwards and create a life of the person you want to become for your own benefit. You may want to make as much money as possible, and you don’t care about anyone else, and that drives you forward. We see that being driven forward a lot, but your inner justification might be I want to overcome the challenging background I had, I want to repay my parents; one of mine is my parents sacrificed, and were unskilled migrants who came here, who sacrificed everything from my education. I have a very strong drive to create a life that pays respect to that.
But one of my favorite examples is there was a reporter who heard of twins. I love stories about twins because obviously, they’re people of the same age, at the same time have been brought up in exactly the same environment. But twins are different in terms of their personalities, and how they blossom. One twin was homeless, and one twin was a successful business person, just what made them interesting. The reporter decided to interview and ask them both the same question. He interviewed the homeless twin first and said, to what do you attribute how your life has turned out? The homeless twin said Well, I had no choice. My father was an abusive alcoholic, I had no choice to be but this way. Then the reporter went to the successful business person and said, To what do you attribute how your life has turned out? This twin said I had no choice. My father was an abusive alcoholic, I had no choice but to be successful.
Ross: Yes, it is all in our response.
Elizabeth: It’s very personal, it’s in your soul. It’s like, you know that if you don’t take a certain path, however, that works out, you realize that it’s your time, you either regret it or you celebrate how far you’ve come.
Ross: It really is the why or the reason for your life?
Elizabeth: Exactly. It’s what gets you out of bed in the morning, what keeps you striving. You’ve had an extraordinary career. You’ve done so many different things to enable you to become a futurist. If you look back at the sum of that and what drove you forward, you could have settled at a whole number of points for less than you do now. You could have not tried as hard, you could have flunked a bit on preparing for speeches or whatever. But you’ve had inner justification that kept you going forward.
Ross: Yes, absolutely. That’s exactly right. One of the reasons why life has been so difficult, in a positive way, is that there were lots of places where I could have stopped off on the way. Oh, here’s a decent business, I can just keep on doing this business for a while. But I just was never satisfied with that. I was just wanting to just keep on saying, Oh, I want to go on to the next thing. I want to go to the next thing. Which makes it hard, got to say, But I wouldn’t have been happy.
Elizabeth: But that’s the biggest danger, isn’t it? Because you do as you just said, you get to that, it’s a good business, and then the worst thing you can get isb comfortable.
Ross: Yes, I can safely say I haven’t been too comfortable. But I still think there’s this gap. There’s still this thing. Let’s say somebody finds their inner justification, their Why, their reason, what is it they’re trying to do, that’s the single strongest thing that will get people across to be able to say, all right, yes, I will get up earlier or do my exercise or whatever it may be. But there are still so many blocks. I mentioned before this idea of the divide itself. There are two parts, you always say, Oh, well, do I really want to or actually, I wouldn’t mind a beer, or whatever it may be. Digging into the trenches of that daily life, how do you continue to keep yourself on track even when you lose the power of that justification at moments?
Elizabeth: You are the master of follow-through questions. I’m so glad you asked that because that unlocks the other part of my work. I work in neuroscience and I’ve just become part of a global neuroplasticion’s hub and my particular area of expertise is the language in the brain. The example I use is 4 AM. 4 AM isn’t a particularly comfortable time to get up. Let’s say you have to get up at 4 AM because you’re concerned that you haven’t prepared enough or you need to work on one of your upcoming London or US speeches. You imagine, yeah, the alarm will go off, and you’ve got a strong reason to get up, and you probably do get up at 4 AM because you’re a committed person, but you may not bound out of bed like a bunny rabbit. But let’s say you were getting up at 4 AM to catch a flight because you had one, and all-expenses-paid first-class travel holiday to the Caribbean for seven nights. You probably would burn out a bit like a bunny rabbit.
What’s the difference, because you’re still getting up at 4 AM? The difference is the language you use to yourself. You don’t wake up at two o’clock and think, oh, gosh, I’ve only got two more hours sleep, then I’m going to have to get up and do this speech, you wake up at 2 AM, and think, oh, wow, two more hours, and I’ll start getting ready for the holiday. Language is so so powerful, and how it literally shapes the brain is quite incredible. I do a lot of work on self-talk, I’m not talking about chanting and incantations. Because what happens when a subconscious or an emotion then transfers across to the conscious brain is then you end up in the survival brain because the brain isn’t designed to improve you, the brain is designed to keep you safe, to run away from the woolly mammoth, not eat the bright berries, and not fall into a hole, and all those sorts of things.
I read a couple of very interesting comments, I’m not sure whether it was David Goggins but someone was that was an instructor from the Marines, the US Marines. You may have or your listeners may have heard about a Hell Week which comes right at the end, which is extraordinary physical endurance, you get virtually no sleep, you’re running, you’re swimming in the middle of the ocean, it’s very, very hard. And at any time during Hell Week, if you want to leave, you just go up and ring a bell and you just leave, it’s just not for you. This is the last day of hell week and this is when all the physical stuff has stopped.
Before lunch on the last day, it would be very triggering, as I’m not going to say what the video shows, but the Marines are shown a video of what could happen to them when they’re captured. Then they go to lunch. Now, not surprisingly, after that event, a lot of people go up and ring the bell, but the instructor was saying he always noticed as a shift because right during Hell Week, he knows all the guys are thinking, really? What was I thinking? Am I really sure? But he said as soon as they articulate the thought, that’s the point they give up. He had a friend or someone he knew that was going through Hell Week and he was standing, he made it to lunch and then someone else was around the be;;, but the guy was standing there with his tray, and he said I don’t think I’m up for this.
Coincidentally, I was watching Noemi Asaka, a documentary yesterday. She was having some challenges when she was defending her US Open title, which she didn’t. She was being interviewed after and she said, and I saw her face change. I don’t think I have the champion mindset yet. I think oh, you said it, don’t say it. So much of our day and our psyche is driven by this constant self-talk. Once you stop and listen to it, that’s actually the secret sauce. Let’s go back to my example of springing out of bed for your Caribbean holiday, take out the Caribbean holiday, and just say I’m really excited about getting up in the morning, I’m really excited about tomorrow, I’m just excited because it actually does change your physiology.
There was this brilliant experiment done by Harvard psychology Professor Ellen Lena, and she did it about sleep. There were three groups of people, all sleepy, these college students. One went to bed at the regular clock, regular time, they woke up during the night and looked at the clock. One group had the clock set an hour faster, and one group had the clock set an hour slower. The people that woke up at that hour where the clock was faster, they thought they actually had got one hour’s sleep more than they thought. Their physical biometrics were the same as if they had had an hour’s more sleep. They told themselves, Oh, well, I’ve had all this sleep, but they hadn’t, they had an hour less, but their body reflected what they told themselves.
Ross: Absolutely, yes, we shape our reality in many ways. To round out, you’ve written many books around this. There’s a wealth of material in there, but I want to just put you on the spot, and to just give a few recommendations for those who are experiencing overload or in a world of accelerating change, what are a few things that they can do to thrive, to prosper, to create the results that they want?
Elizabeth: I’m actually going to echo a lot of what you say, Ross, and that is, if you don’t want something in your head, don’t take it in to start with. You become what you think about and you create what you feel is your focus. If you have a path, and I’m not saying that a high-performing, high-achieving path is the road to happiness, if it is for you, great. If you’re very happy with letting your life unfold, just be careful what you let into your mind. Because I remember when my children were younger, and they used to watch stuff, they used to want to watch something and I’d say, you realize you can’t unsee it, and you can’t unread it. Have that in mind before you even start. What you focus on creates your life and creates your future and you can create your future. One of my favorite sayings is what Abraham Lincoln said, “If you want to predict your future, create it, and what you notice and what you focus on will create that future for better or worse”.
Ross: Where can people find out more about your work and your books?
Elizabeth: Yes, please go to elizabethgould.com. My books are on Amazon. I’m very grateful that Tony Robbins endorsed Feeling Forwards. He’s been such a great mentor for me. My LinkedIn profile and my Instagram is ElizabethGould_ and that should get you pretty much everything.
Ross: Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing your insights, Elizabeth, it’s been a wonderful conversation.
Elizabeth: Thank you so much, Ross. The questions were amazing.
“Whether people are listening or reading, they process the meaning of the words in the same part of the brain. It doesn’t make any difference.”– Bill Birchard
About Bill BirchardBill is a writing coach to leading thinkers and the author of many books, most recently the just-released Writing for Impact: 8 Secrets from Science That Will Fire Up Your Readers’ Brains, published by Harper Collins.
*Website:* Bill Birchard
*LinkedIn:* Bill Birchard
*Twitter:* @billbirchard
What you will learn How the reward circuit of the brain plays a crucial role in consuming words and information (03:43) * Choosing the right information for better memory retention (05:23) * Having a clear purpose and goal in writing books (07:54) * How the book, Writing for Impact goes beyond just writing (09:03) * The first S’s for amplifying cognition and making information easier to absorb and comprehend (12:49) * Using metaphors to make a subject more engaging (14:03) * Using surprising data and story to make a subject more engaging (14:33) * How using specifics aids comprehension and drives the reward circuit (16:27) * Importance of using emotion in writing (20:23) * Keeping the writing seductive, smart, and insightful to make the piece more effective and engaging (22:30) * How powerful finding an “aha” moment on your own is (25:07) * Nurturing the unconscious or subconscious mind to initiate insights (26:01) * How the brain brings about dim and distant ideas (27:50) * Keeping the writing social and story-driven to make the piece more effective and engaging (29:46) * How people process the meaning of words across languages, across mediums (31:18) Episode resourcesBooks*
- Writing for Impact: 8 Secrets from Science That Will Fire Up Your Readers’ Brains by Bill Birchard
- The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the Sea by Sebastian Junger
- The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell TranscriptRoss Dawson: Bill, it’s awesome to have you on the show.Bill Birchard: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Ross: Your recent book, Writing for Impact, tells us about how we can write so that it actually registers.
Bill: That’s right!
Ross: The corollary of that is if you can write well then people can read better. It’s interesting, just how much of the useful information we get comes in through words. We’d love to hear the backstory. How did you come to write this book?
Bill: I’ve been writing my whole life. I started though, with a biology degree and never used it. It was a phonological circling back toward the latter part of my career to say, what does science say about writing; I poked around a little bit and one thing led to another. It turned out there’s this mountain of research that looks at how the mind reacts to language. How does it react to a metaphor? Does it react to simple versus complex sentences? Does it react to a story? And quickly, I started to see that from that you could infer how to write better.
Ross: Fantastic! You’ve been digging into neuroscience, how our brains function, and at a higher level, probably one of your early realizations was this is around motivation.
Bill: Right.
Ross: When you are writing, what are you trying to achieve in the mind of your reader?
Bill: In my formulation, as I’ve explained in the book, I’m trying to help readers move from being informed and educated to moving up a level to be engaged. And that is as it ends up being defined, being motivated. It turns out that everything that we respond to, every stimulus in our life, whether it’s food or drink, or it’s sex, new friends or shelter, it’s all evaluated in this part of the brain called The Reward Circuit, and that circuit sees a stimulus, it assesses it for value, it decides whether it wants to pursue it, if it consumes it and it’s pleased, then you get a little shot of natural opioids from that, and that encourages you to do it again. It turns out that principle is applicable not just to the motivation of people to get them to do the right things when it comes to eating, drinking, and so on but it applies as well to getting them to consume words. So, consuming words and information is very similar to consuming food.
Ross: Throughout I’d like to take both sides, the reader’s perspective and the writer’s perspective. What’s the lesson for a reader from that insight around the reward mechanism of reading? If you’re reading, is there a way for example, if things are not written well then you can make it more rewarding, or there are ways in which you can approach your reading so that it is more stimulating to you?
Bill: Yes, absolutely. The lesson here is choose your reading carefully. If you want to remember, if you want to have information have an impact on you, you have to choose information that’s surprising, that simplifies something, the author gets at the gist, so it has a story to it. All the techniques that are important in writing to engage are also important to make sure that you absorb that information. In my book, I have eight strategies on how to write to engage readers. It turns out that almost all of those have been shown by research to be more memorable for the reader. It’s pretty much a lesson if you want to choose your information carefully. You can choose pretty dry stuff, who wants to read that anyway. But the interesting thing is, if you read the real dry stuff, you’re not going to remember as well. That’s in part because the author didn’t drive your reward circuit, didn’t get the dopamine flowing, didn’t get the natural opioids flowing, they didn’t get you psyched, they didn’t get you hooked on a story. If you’re not hooked, then your ability to remember that is going to go downhill.
Ross: I’d like to dig down into a teaser of those eight strategies in a moment, but just to come back to that pen. As you say, you choose those who write better to essentially take that information in but can we as a reader, perhaps imbue our own excitement or surprise, or are there things to make some things that are drier to read better whatever the quality of the writing?
Bill: That’s a question of why you’re reading it. You’ve talked many times before about making sure you have a purpose and then having all these filters, etc., and framing to decide what you’re looking for. I can tell you I was very engaged in over 400 science articles to get this book written. Why was I engaged? Because I knew what those contributed to the understanding I needed to write for readers. If you know what you’re looking for, then very dry writing absolutely can be engaging. I would say that’s the major lesson there.
Ross: Is there any advice or other techniques just to be able to keep that purpose in mind as you’re reading to be able to make it more engaging?
Bill: Yes. For the last 25 years, I’ve been writing books, my own and for others, and I think that it does, it goes back to the purpose. The books are a big project. They have a broad scope, they have a big message, you have to have a purpose for those, you have to have a goal for those, you have to have buckets of information that you’re looking for at least. In the beginning, you have a thesis and you say I can break the thesis into six, eight, or ten parts, and then you’re going to be looking, it’s a treasure hunt. You’re out there looking for the stuff to fill all those pockets, and that then becomes very motivational.
Ross: I love to research because I’m always curious, always wanting to learn. But when I’m trying to learn about a particular thing, there’s a wealth of information there. It’s like, how deep do I go? How quickly can I skim? I’ve always been just sort of searching for the nuggets, as you use that metaphor of treasure hunting as you’re engaged in reading.
Bill: Yes. The next step in order to jump where my book takes us. My book is Writing for Impact. But when I was writing it, when I got to the second draft, I went through three major drafts, so when I got the second one, I had four friends and colleagues read it, and one of them came back to me and said “You know what? About two-thirds of the way through the book, I realized the book is more about thinking than it is about writing”, which is a bit of an overstatement, but you get the point. How do you think so that you make it easier for your readers to be engaged?
In the book, I have a lot of different techniques that if you use them, you are going to transform these buckets of information that you’re taking in, what I like to think of as a bucket full of scrap lead and transmuted into gold nuggets. There are a bunch of different techniques, and I use these all the time with clients that I work with on books. The first one, for example, is “Hey, we gotta get this simple”. We have to figure out what the simple one-liner is. I know that sounds very old, like the elevator pitch, but you have to winnow it, you have to take away some of the clutter. You probably have two or three ideas that are all glommed together, how do you pull them apart and say which one am I going to focus on?
For my book, Writing for Impact, in the end, what was my message? My message is three words: “Reward your reader.” But I’ll give you another example. I wrote a book 10 years ago and it was a book on how to write books, focusing pretty much on the steps you need to go through, the research, the drafts, the development of the idea, and so forth. My working thesis for a long time was practice makes perfect. Okay, that’s sort of a cliché, but that was my working thesis, you have the set of steps, you keep practicing them, you keep iterating them, and eventually, you’re going to get the book to where you want it to be.
But hey, I was on the spinning bike one morning and I realized that that really wasn’t accurate enough. You’ve got to say if practice makes perfect isn’t right, what is right? It dawned on me that seems like such a small thing but has a huge impact on how you process the information and give insights to readers. I decided it was “process makes perfect”. It’s the process that you had to go through. Follow that process, that would make the book perfect. All of a sudden, I could transform everything I was saying, all of those buckets had a new gloss over them. The reason I’m talking about each of these issues say research or outlining or first drafting etc. is because I’m explaining the process to you to make this happen. That’s the first thing to simplify.
Ross: Yes, as in my book, I point out that many people have said, write in order to think better. But in fact, you have to write well in order to think better. That’s to the point of your book, if you’re writing for impact, then clearly you are thinking well, you must have structured your thinking in a way that can have an impact.
Bill: At least by the third draft.
Ross: Yes. That’s it. It takes work. It’s not as if we immediately necessarily have crystal clear thinking. We have to go through that process of getting ourselves to thinking, which brings us to better writing.
Bill: Exactly.
Ross: Can we spin through your eight recommendations or give a teaser to what they’ll find in your book?
Bill: We certainly can. I would say by looking at the areas of your interest and your listener’s interest, I think all of these are about amplifying cognition. How do these A – help you think better and B – allow people to absorb the information to comprehend better? They all begin with an S, they are my eight S’s to hopefully help people remember them. But the first one is to keep it simple – shorter words, shorter sentences, shorter ideas, stripped of all the ornamentation. The second one is to keep it specific, get some specifics in there so that people have a concrete idea of what you’re saying. I’ve got some great examples of that. The third one is to keep it surprising – novelty, that’s really important. Sometimes when you’re trying to educate people about a subject, you forget that you also have to make it surprising, as you’re writing about something that they might already know a lot about.
Ross: Just on the surprising one. Let’s say you’re trying to find something surprising because then that means it’s useful and interesting. But let’s say it is something more mundane. How can you bring surprise into that?
Bill: One of the ways you can do it is to apply a metaphor to it. How about the book, The Perfect Storm, or the book, The Black Swan, or the book, Tipping Point, when you dig down, these aren’t altogether new subjects, they’re treated in a contemporary, deeper way that applies to all of us today. But all of a sudden, you tag them with a new form of looking at it and that’s a surprise. That’s absolutely one way to do it.
The other thing is surprising data, a surprising story, a surprising combination of two words, one that I put in my book that I happen to like, maybe it’s just me, I visited a battlefield in the western United States, and they were characterizing the nature of the soldier’s life just after the US Civil War. How did they characterize it? They called it Glittering Misery. When do you ever put glittering and misery together? But when you put them together, you get an idea of what that means. A surprise can just be in word combination, and anybody, particularly in a second draft, can say, wait a minute, this is just not quite doing it for me, can I apply one of these S’s? And that’s one of them. Can I apply one of these, just some word combination or a metaphor, etc.? Can I do that and then, therefore, engage my readers to get them to comprehend it better?
Ross: Just one thing, pulling back, I presume it’s relevant to quite a few of your points is around a metaphor, the power of metaphor in our thinking. That’s something which I’d like to dig into more myself. It’s something that I’ve touched on in Thriving on Overload, but there’s so much that we can do to improve our thinking, as well as to communicate that thinking to draw in the right metaphors and finding the right metaphors is a quest. You’ve got to find the right one. Every metaphor is wrong because they are different things, but you’re trying to bring out what evokes something useful out of that. Can you comment on that metaphor in that bigger frame of what you’re doing?
Bill: Yes. I knew it’s important when I started as a writer, but it became more apparent with the research just how powerful metaphor is. Some research shows that simple sentences with metaphors in it, I wish I could cite one from the research but simple sentences with a metaphor that says the same thing as a literal phrase are understood X percent better than those with literal phrases. What this states to us is, us being children, everything we learned in language, we learned hands-on. From the time before we could talk, we were mouthing things, we were handling things, everything was hands-on, and ultimately when we started to learn words not just metaphors, they all were connected to the parts of the brain that had to do with handling and experiencing things.
When I talk about keeping it specific, why do you want to keep it specific? Because when you keep it specific, not only the language processing part of the brain activates, which is just along the left temple, just on the left side, not bilateral, like so many brain functions, but the components for the motor circuits activate which are like a hairband across the top of your head, the sensory circuits activate, another hairband just to the rear of the motor circuits, the auditory, the olfactory, the visual circuits in the back of your head, when you engage all those senses, the brain as I like to say goes into a full brain buzz. Not only that but the specifics can activate the muscles as well. You can have an activation by using specifics instead of dry abstract wording; you’ve got the language circuits running, you’ve got the motor and sensory circuits running, and you even have the tissues and the muscles running.
In one example, I’ll just give you one experiment on this that I can remember off the top of my head. John Stins and a global team of scientists asked people to read sentences, while they were standing on a force plate. This force plate is like a bathroom scale and measured the pressure of their stance. For example, they gave them three sentences, low effort, no effort, and high effort. One was the nurse admiring a patient, no effort. Another one was the nurse lifting the patient, high effort. A third one was the nurse lifting the plant, low effort. And what happened with all these people standing on the force plate, they actually shifted their stance, forward, backward, and sideward in proportion to the effort implied in those sentences. When you use specifics, you are translating for people into a very tangible feeling, what you’re saying, and it does wonders to aid comprehension, it also happens to drive the reward circuit quite handily.
Ross: In a way that’s also about the thinking is in our body. Essentially, it’s not just our brain, that we are enacting that in the full extent of our body and how we express that.
Bill: Yes. That’s a perfect segue to the fourth essence, just keep it stirring. When people experience emotion, they usually experience it in the body, it’s in the brain as well, but they experience it in the body, and they react to that in the body, so emotion is very important. In a lot of serious business subjects, you think, I shouldn’t use emotion in that case but emotion is integral to most words, except the most basic words. You need to use that to your advantage and choose the right words so you have the right emotion. One experiment that is fascinating on this is that some researchers had people read about a fictional city called Addison that was having a crime problem. In one case, these were identical write-ups about 150 words long and they had the statistics of murders, etc. In one case, they refer to the crime wave as a beast.
And in the other case, they refer to the crime wave as a virus and then they ask people to recommend interventions to deal with the crime. What happened is, most of the people who read the version with the beast suggested more policing and more enforcement, and most of the people who read the version with a virus suggested more intervention to prevent crime, to begin with. In other words, dealing with social pathologies. That was true even after looking at people’s political affiliation, in other words, it was the metaphor and the emotion attached to that metaphor that determined how people made decisions. If you are writing and you want people to make a decision, you can see the room for manipulation here but let’s assume you have high integrity and want to present it forthrightly, you want to choose the right word, the right metaphor, and the right emotion so that you accurately portray what the situation is to make a decision on.
Ross: It’s a great story.
Bill: Yeah, let me run through the rest of them.
Ross: Please.
Bill: The next one is keep it seductive, which is not what you initially think, seductive in an alluring way, anticipation is what that means. Build anticipation, which of course is integral to fiction, suspense, and anticipation. This is funny, even the most basic writing can build anticipation, and how do you do that? You use a good topic sentence. I thought, “Oh, my goodness, the English teachers are vindicated! Topic sentences are important.” It’s not just because it helps you integrate the following information with an overall introduction to that information but it’s because you set up a little bit of anticipation, you promise something, and then you give the payoff. That, in fact, is rewarding in the brain, believe it or not, there’s a dopamine release from that. They’ve actually measured it.
Then the next one is keeping it smart and insightful, leaps of insight. There’s a huge amount of research that’s gone on about what happens when people have, what scientists call, an “aha” moment, they actually call it that. What happens is that a whole part of the right side of the brain lights up that is unique, and there’s a surge of action in the reward circuit. In other words, we like bright ideas. If you’re writing and you want to communicate, you want to aspire to those brighter ideas. People are going to be turned on by that. Of course, we can’t have one in every sentence, but we want to aspire to that.
Ross: Just on that, you might be referring to the same research that I wrote about in Thriving on Overload by Mark which is fascinating in terms of trying to uncover some of the ways we can see in the brain, how we reach that “aha” moment.
Bill: Exactly!
Ross: Just thinking about how to actually bring that to bear in writing. One way, just musing out loud, would be to set up the clues which then the person could uncover and labeling to make their own discovery process. I’m actually interested in how would you set that up. How do you bring that “aha” moment? Because this is smart, this is a great insight, which I’m presenting to you but do you try to evoke the ‘aha’ moment for the reader?
Bill: The first thing, which I found very interesting, the research shows that when you come to an “aha” on your own, which is quite powerful when you’re reading and you have an ‘aha’ on your own, something about in your community, even though you’re reading about someone else’s community, or you’re reading about some family issue, or whatever, by analogy, you come to your own insight about something, that’s very powerful. But it turns out, they’ve actually had people also go through experiments where they reveal an insight and show that even when you reveal an insight to somebody, when there’s a leap of intuition that goes on, even when you present it to people and don’t allow them to come to it on their own, there still is a surge of reward, not as much. That’s the key thing.
What you’re touching on is back to Thinking for Impact. For me, the insights come through nurturing the unconscious or the subconscious, nurturing not what’s on your mind. I know you’ve written about this but meditation, I’m a meditator, exercise, and sleep. Let’s take meditation for example, in my mind, there’s a quieting that goes on in meditation and then the key thing that is quieting is of the conscious thoughts. All these thoughts have just got their hooks into you because of the knotty problem you’re trying to deal with when you’re writing or trying to express, you’re trying to engage others. Where does the insight come from?
The insight comes from, I interviewed Mark for my book, he calls from the dim and distant connections. I love his metaphor. You might have read about it in the book, his metaphor was, it’s like looking for a very faint star at night. How do you see the faintest stars out there? You can’t see them by looking directly for them. Why is that? Because it’s only the corner of your eye that has the cones necessary to absorb very dim light. He said the analogy is the same when you’re talking about thinking, it’s how do you find an insight in the corner of your mind? You don’t look directly for it, you have to allow the dim and distant to come out. I believe that comes out when you acquire all the conscious thinking where you’ve been going through the permutations, you’ve been going through the analysis, you’ve been setting up your matrices, etc.
All of that’s terrific, but what’s the power of the brain, this is the power over AI today, what is the remaining power? And that is the dim and distant coming together in absolutely surprising ways, but they only surface when you’re not looking at them. There’s a whole other example of this, stop me if I go on too long for each of these S’s, but there’s a whole other example that I like, there was a study done probably 15 years ago, where a bunch of students were asked to assess which apartment of four apartments was the best that they would like to live in. It was rigged so that two of the apartments were in the middle of the road, one was clearly better and one was clearly the worst.
There were a lot of complicated factors, and they were given 12 factors, like noise level, convenience to the bakery, etc. to evaluate those apartments. What did we find out? There were three groups, a control group, I can’t remember exactly how they were structured, but then there was a group that was allowed to work on that problem for 10 minutes, they could look at the 12 factors, they could try to weigh them, one against the other, and then come up with what the best apartment was.
And then there was a group that was completely distracted for those 10 minutes, they had to do math problems and they couldn’t think a thing about those 12 factors or four apartments. Who do you think got all the apartment choices right? It was the people who were distracted for 10 minutes. In other words, their brain had worked on that unconsciously and had come to the rice of solution, it had sorted that out. I’m a big believer in that letting your brain sort things out. Sleep in the morning, meditation, and exercise, all of those are ways to nurture the unconscious. To me, that’s where the insights come from. Because that’s your job translating and absorbing into the gold nugget.
Let’s see, I got two more S’s, one is keep it social and that’s put some humanity in it, just to put it briefly. And the last one is keep it story-driven. There’s an awful lot written on how important it is to write stories to translate what you’re saying into a cause-effect, situation that has humans in it that are trying to do things and struggle that come to realizations, etc. That is extremely powerful. But what I like to say is that’s like the symphony of all the techniques you want to use, to communicate or engage with others. There are seven other things you can do that all pretty much go into a great story and each one of those on their own can be very powerful, just keeping it simple, or keeping it specific as we were discussing earlier, all those things can be very powerful. They allow you in a more stepwise framework to apply. In that second draft when you go, “God, it’s just not quite there!”. Yeah, story would be a great idea. But what if you don’t have a story? You’ve got seven other essentials that you can amplify people’s cognition with.
Ross: Fantastic, because they are one of the things that I’m thinking, since one of my roles as a professional speaker, that everything all applies to speaking as well.
Bill: Absolutely.
Ross: You’ve said we’re writing for impact, but speaking for impact, will everything be just as applicable?
Bill: Yes. I think what you’re referring to is the part in the book where I learned, this is fortuitous for me, that whether people listen, or whether they’re reading, they process the meaning of the words in the same part of the brain, it doesn’t make any difference. And the other thing is it translates across languages, people in every language process, the same kinds of stuff in the same places in the brain. All this applies not just to people writing English but to any language, and it applies to any subject.
Ross: Those are fantastic lessons, Bill. It’s really valuable to get those condensed. I believe very much in the value of studying neuroscience so that we can get actually get some proper insights into how we work. It’s a real service to have dug into that, to enable us to write for impact, which I suggested early of means that we do have to be thinking better. I presume you can get it as the saying goes, at any good bookstore.
Bill: That’s right.
Ross: How else can people find you online, Bill?
Bill: Yeah, at billbirchard.com. You can find me there. There’s a sort of what you might call a cliff notes version of what’s in the book right there online. If people buy the book and they send me their sales receipt, I also have a workbook that has a bit more color and a few more diagrams. It’s fun. I’m happy to email people that too.
Ross: Fantastic! Thank you so much for your time, Bill.
Bill: Yes, my pleasure, Ross.
“It is important that you are bold and visionary enough, not just to formulate to-dos for the next six weeks or so, but to really identify the transformational visionary goal that we want to achieve.”– Jens Monsees
About Jens MonseesJens is Chief Executive Officer of Infomedia, a leading global provider of data and software for the automotive ecosystem used by over 250,000 industry professionals. He was previously CEO of WPP A/NZ and Chief Digital Officer of BMW Group.
*LinkedIn:* Jens Monsees
*Website:* Infomedia
*Twitter:* @jens_monsees
What you will learn Leveraging data for personalized and relevant customer conversations (03:26) * Importance of collecting and processing relevant data for making informed decisions (5:07) * Role of emotions in the car buying decision process (06:52) * Three dimensions that a CEO needs to consider when developing organizational strategies (09:52) * Strategies to consolidate information and prevent silos (17:49) * Qualities of a an effective and efficient leader (19:01) * Emotional quotient’s as a factor in decision making (20:12) * Importance of reflecting and remaining open to new perspectives (23:01) * Comparing generations about purpose and focus (24:00) * Importance of breaking out of peer groups and gaining different perspectives (26:12) * Book recommendations for practical perspectives (31:15) Episode resources ChatGPT
Books
- Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan
- A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari TranscriptRoss Dawson: Jens, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.
Jens Monsees: Yes, Ross, good to see you.
Ross: Infomedia is a company that deals with information in automotive, and there’s a lot of information, and there’s a lot of interesting decisions. Two of the ones which stand out to me are the car buying decision, and it’s one of the big decisions in people’s lives, they’ve got lots of information, lots of people giving them data, and they’ve got to make a decision from all that information; and one of the other really interesting rising ones is the connected car, where it looks like we’re going to get more and more information inside the car. I’d love to hear what your insights are on how we can better serve individuals in buying cars or inside cars, or in the automotive experience, and maybe even what, as consumers, can we do to be able to better interface with the information.
Jens: Yes, it’s a very good question, Ross. I think we have to understand, nowadays, we are not into one-to-many communication anymore like we were 20 years ago in mass communications. Everything is now individualized. Everything, every communication is data-informed. That’s why Infomedia is so strong, because we know, from 1 billion cars on the road, when were they serviced, what parts are in there, what are the owners doing, when do they need a new car, when they have to come to service, and now with the connected car, as you mentioned, we would also then know what is wrong with the car, are the brake pads down, do they have a flat tire, what is the battery status, and all of these information we can use to have a meaningful and relevant conversation. Not just saying, oh it’s wintertime, come on and change to winter tires. That’s one-to-many.
But we could say, look, your brake pads are down, and you need to come in the next two months; actually, we see with your connected car, you’re driving every morning to work on this route. Our next dealership is 10 minutes away. We already have the new parts here, so you don’t have to wait. We also see that Julie’s contract is almost over so we don’t order you an Uber this time, we order you a test drive for the test car, our newest hottest model, and then you can drive to work with that car, and then in the evening, you come back and all your service is done. This is what I think we can leverage data for. I’m really a numbers and data-driven person.
And then the decision process of the car owners, the decision process in the dealerships, what is the next one that I put on the hoist, is my queue in order, do I have the right technicians at the right resources, and then from an OEM perspective, also, from an analytics point of view, how are my dealerships performing, do they have a high loyalty degree or a low one, do we have customer satisfaction, do we have a high convenience so we have a good customer experience, all together is basically based on collecting, processing relevant, and that’s the point, relevant data, don’t do like big data, boil the ocean, and you are more confused on a higher level, relevant information and then relevant communication to your customers, and that is what Infomedia is providing globally to the dealerships and to the OEs.
Ross: Let’s think about it from an individual perspective, I have a car, and I might be considering buying a new car because I have a connected car, the manufacturer is able to provide me with information that supports me staying with the same manufacturer, but then I can look at advertisements, I can search the web, there’s a whole array of different information that is available to me in buying a car and, as you suggest, when I service, how I service and so on. From a consumer perspective, what are ways that we can best access the scope of information that allows us to make the best decisions?
Jens: Yes, I think every human decision is still based to a very high degree on emotions. That’s why we are also sometimes making crazy decisions and sometimes we are looking for premium cars, for big horsepowers, or for a show-off model in a way, so as consumers, we need to search for ourselves what is important to us and be honest with ourselves. I always start every decision process with—What are my goals? What do I try to achieve? Do I want to have a show-off? Is design important for me? Is quality important to me? Is CO2 important to me? Do I want to have an electric vehicle? What is the distance that I’m driving in my commute but also on the weekend? How many people do I want to transport? Are they big? Are they small? Do I go skiing? Do I go surfing? I think many people in their decision-making process are not clear with their goals.
It’s actually the start of everything like, what do I really want here? Then you can check certain dimensions, and you can say, oh, this model is fulfilling 80% of what I want and this other model is fulfilling 90% of what I want. What we still observe with every human is that when the goals are not clear what you’re really after, then you might go to a dealership and come out with a very emotional decision. You have a car, and then you have fun for two days, and then you say, Oh, my God, what have I done? Because I’m not clear about the goals that I actually wanted to achieve.
Ross: Yes. As I was writing my book “Thriving on Overload”, you start with purpose. What is it that you want to achieve? Or is there one in my life? Then you can start to look for the information that serves you so you can assess that appropriately. We might want to come back to that. But other very relevant types of decisions that are made are those by corporates, yourself as a CEO of a large organization. We’d like to hear about, just as a high level initially, what is your process for looking across the information, across the technology worlds, information worlds, data worlds, automotive worlds, competitors, and so on, across the planet. How do you find all the information that’s relevant to your thinking and your decision-making and pull that together into your understanding of the landscape?
Jens: Yes, I would say there are three dimensions that we need to look at. I would be a very stupid CEO if I think I know exactly what the strategy should look like for the next five years. When I normally come into a new organization or a new business, then I call my 10-20 strongest leaders, and I try to listen, and I try to structure my questions in the right way. I would then like to have diversity; I hear from the Americas, I hear from Asia, I hear from product, I hear from engineering, I hear from HR, from people and culture, from finance. Then you get different points of view. If you have a very strong culture, and you created that level of trust, and people talk freely, and they are also not afraid of any conflicts, and conflicts in a way, I see it like this, you see it like that, I think that’s very vital. Then you can debate and you can go deeper with your team and have that discussion. Then you construct basically with your team the strategy for the next three to five years.
It is important that you are bold and visionary enough, and not just formulate to-dos for the next six weeks or so but really what is the transformational visionary goal we want to achieve, and to formulate this in a very diversified and broad team approach. I’m a strong believer that when you have that north star, it always gives you direction then in day-to-day work, Okay, this is a vision, that is the strategy we have aligned, is that next step or that next decision aligned with the north star and the overall strategic direction, that’s one.
The second is a lot of discipline. As a CEO, I see one-third that I spend my time is with the team. One-third of my time is spent with clients and listening to clients. I just had two client meetings yesterday, asking them, how does it go, what do you like about our products, where we need to improve, what are the challenges that you are facing, and what opportunities do you see? Then the third part is the investors, so what do they expect, are we aligned on what the company can deliver in terms of gross profit, new channels, and new geo regions to conquer, and do you have the funding then available as well?
I think the first thing is having a north star, a long-term vision. The second thing is being very disciplined. I plan the year and, maybe that sounds very German, but I really know where I want to be. I know, two times in Japan, two times in the US, two to three times in Europe. You have a plan, and then you also flex on that plan. These are all the board meetings that are coming. At this board meeting, I can take that step or milestone in our strategy. And then you also want to be disciplined in the evenings when you are not in the office and when you’re not with clients, and you read.
I still have a lot of newsletters, and news flashers in my Google profile. I look at LinkedIn. I know what the German newspapers, the Australian newspapers, and the American media are saying about the automotive market, I look at the big car shows, I read the financials, the Financial Review is good, and The Australian is good; you need to be disciplined and you need to also be targeted in your own information gathering. As a CEO or decision maker, you tend obviously to direct in a certain direction but you need to listen, you need to say what can I do better, what did you see, what is working, and what is not working, and always have that dialogue with your team, I think that’s very important.
We just implemented here a feedback culture in Infomedia. You get so much back from your team, knowing what you have to work on, and it’s a constant learning process. Even as a 53-year-old CEO, you cannot say, oh, no, I know it all, I know I do like I always did, we should not fall into this trap, we should always challenge ourselves and say, really? Is that still the right way of dealing with these things or do I have to change myself again? For example, we are now doing a lot of tests on AI, on chatGPT on how we can do our coding and our internal information gathering more efficiently and more effectively. It’s a new challenge. I’m learning a lot again.
Ross: It keeps life interesting.
Jens: Yes. I don’t know if everything is good or bad, but it’s for sure a fascinating new way of working and another dimension. I think that especially AI for the next five years will disrupt and improve several of our business models in the macroeconomic environment.
Ross: Fabulous. I want to dig into a few things there. One of the interesting things there was you laid out some of your information sources and the fact you block out the time to be able to make sure that you’re keeping across that, obviously fundamental, you talked about the questions, so asking the questions of your team, of your clients, being able to surface issues, and then from all of those, seeing if everyone agrees, then you’ve probably headed in the right direction, but where there is a difference of opinion that you have an issue to debate, so you can then dig into that and see where does the evidence lie or what’s the foundation for moving forward. But I think one of the things often missing from these discussions is that, okay, you have the strategy, but in between surfacing those ideas and the strategy is a mental model or framework or a way of describing, saying, this is the landscape or these are our assumptions or this is where the way that we see the world fitting and this is the way that we can agree that we understand the same way. Is there any way either in your mind or with your team that you are laying out the landscape on which the strategy is built?
Jens: Yes. For example, we are having now, every three months, a discussion on our product roadmaps. The vital thing is now it’s not just the product managers talking about their product roadmaps, it’s the three regions that actually are in daily client contact, giving feedback to these roadmaps and giving market insights, observations, and again, data about there’s a big opportunity, or this is a nice idea but you can never commercialize it, or this cost you 10 million of R&D funding to get it over the line. I think in a leadership, in a vital leadership way, you need to put these points of conjunction and consolidation into the year and into the team, otherwise, you have different silos, different camps that are not understanding each other or not working together effectively and efficiently.
The other thing is, also as a leader, you have to allow yourself to sometimes be wrong. We are putting out a bold vision, and then we are working on it, and then maybe we see, in reality, this is working, and this is not so we have to also flex, we need to constantly reflect is that still the right thing?
Ross: Are there practices you have for sensitizing yourself to those signals, or saying that this, for example, would be an indicator that we might need to change things? Are there any specific practices to help you surface and be more aware of the things that suggested change, of course, might be useful?
Jens: Yes, there’s an internal one. I showed that I’m very confident and I lead the team, but I’m constantly reflecting. Every evening, every ride to work, or when I have some time, I’m reflecting. Really Jens? Is that still the right thing? What are your assumptions based on? Are there any new data points that we have to look at and flex on the strategy? There’s also then an EQ element of emotional factors that are coming into consideration. It’s not only all rational, and especially our own emotions are sometimes playing games with us so we should always come back to reflecting.
I have very good friends, I have a very strong board, where I can have a walk here at fresh water or lake and look, I have this decision to make or this challenge, or this problem, or this opportunity, my assumptions are A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and, then tell me where I’m wrong, asking really where I’m wrong and being challenged, that gives me a totally different point of view. I do this a lot with my partner, with my wife as well. She is giving me a different point of view, and it’s helpful as long as you take it in and you’re not immediately deflecting and just defending your idea. That is where leaders never should get into arrogance or a routine, you always have to stay curious. What do you think? What do you suggest? What is your point of view? I think that these are the questions to ask. Then you also have to have discipline, you have to challenge yourself, learn something new, learn a different point of view, and hopefully, then you’re open enough and you stay open for a long time. Even when you are 70 or 80, you still can learn and this is one of my philosophies or principle, lifelong learning, putting yourself in different situations, and then you see how it goes.
Ross: Now that’s fabulous. I think one of the things I see not nearly enough of is stating assumptions, simply that practice of saying all right, this is what I think and this is the assumption that underlies that and that simple practice of simply being able to say this, alright, what underlies this is this assumption and this assumption, this assumption, and that’s when you can then go to somebody. Because you’re stating them are not assumptions as opposed to saying this is set in stone, and this is what underlies it, that gives you then the flexibility to listen, to bounce it off, and to develop it. I think that’s fantastic, and something I don’t see as much of in major decision-making as there should be.
Jens: It’s hard because as older you get the more experience you have, and you learned over your life, over your career, these decisions or this behavior was helping me in the past, but it’s not always a given that this behavior and this pattern that you applied will help you for the future. I think that is a big learning that you always have to reflect and flex in new situations. Sometimes I also feel in some of the big leaders of politics, of companies, that they had like 30, sometimes 40 years to get to the top of an organization, and they came there by applying certain methods that were right at the time, but who is telling us now for the future, that these are the right decision-making processes still?
I would say that Generation X was very much focused on commercial outcomes, on wealths and company growth, and we did amazing, but we probably didn’t engage enough in environment protection, distribution of wealth also to poorer countries, mitigating conflicts, we are now having huge situations, and Europe was at a war with huge inflation because we were living over the edge, that means we were consuming more than actually we were producing, and we need to also reflect on these kind of things, did we always have the right focus and the right purpose in our leadership roles. I think, there, we definitely need to get better. My secret sauce is a lot of talking to younger people in the organization, to my kids, to the friends of my kids, what do you think, what do you see, and they give you a totally different point of view of many things. If you’re open enough to listen to them, and not just coming with your experience in your life, then you can still flex and take different points of view than you would have in the past. That’s where I think we are missing out big time in today’s world.
Ross: Yes, it is probably the nature of the big decisions that are made today are made by groups, essentially, small groups of not-so-young people, and often the decision-making processes sound good, but the reality is, there’s just a conversation out of which a decision comes. Bringing in as much diversity as you can bring into that, whatever that method is, is going to lead to better outcomes.
Jens: Yes, I think one thing is very important here. It is very hard. You are in a certain peer group and your peer group has normally very similar opinions and patterns of thinking as you have, and to break out of these peer groups and to travel to have a different point of view, to meet other people that you normally don’t meet and/or the algorithms that are currently feeding you with always the same information because you clicked on something. We know that the whole media business is a business, it is not just information that is neutral and unbiased, they’re very biased, because with every click, with every eyeball, I get more revenue. Often I also put the cookies off and force myself into the other camp. What are all these people thinking that are electing Trump? What are they thinking? Can I try to understand their point of view?
There might be some good things in that that we would never discover if we would not go into the other camp. That should normally happen also with Ukraine or Russia. It’s really interesting how sometimes media is very one-sided, and we fall into the trap of listening long enough to the same stories, and then we believe in them, and we are building certain patterns, and it’s not always reality. If you force yourself at the moment to watch and don’t say, that’s right, but if you watch some Russian news, then you go into some Fox News, and then you go into some German news, and then you go into some Australian news, then you hear totally different realities. But then you are more informed and you can form your own point of view, and just not follow some algorithms or some patterns of your peer group.
I think that’s very important as well, stepping out of your seat. In my case, and Infomedia, talk to a technician and a dealership, what are they struggling with? What are they happy with, and what not? Talk to a car owner that has to drive his car into service, normally a very painful exercise, and you can learn from it, and you can make that experience much better. That’s, I think, what real leadership is about.
Ross: Absolutely, I describe it as having an information portfolio. In the same way as a financial portfolio, you need diversification. If you’re in a single asset or a single place, then you could get in big trouble whereas if you have as broad uncorrelated assets or information coming in, that’s when you can make sense of it and that’s when you can have the richest perspectives. You do have to make the assessment and judgment and make up your mind but you can’t do that unless you have sufficient diversity of input.
Jens: Yes. Ross, that brings us to the very first point of our discussion, what are my goals, and you can even weigh them? Normally, when they’re big strategic decisions, I write down a list of goals. Then I say this is most important, let’s give it a 40%. This is a bit less important but still important, let’s give it a 20%. Then you see what options you have and you can overlay the options with your goals and you can say, this is a 70% fit, this is an 80% fit, or this is just a 20% fit. Some of them are hygiene, so you need to hit them and others are other dimensions of goals that may be nice to have, but not necessary. I think that that’s where it all starts by having a good goal and decision grid of what we want to achieve here. Then you are much more firm in your decision-making. That’s what I call the north star that gives you the vision and also the broader view of where you are striving for and what your purpose is.
Ross: Absolutely. Are there any books or people or references which you found, that have informed your ways of thinking around this or aligned with the way you think about these issues?
Jens: Yes, like I said, I’m using many news feeds from different parts of the world, from different media, and different stakeholders. That’s one point.
Ross: But in terms of the process, the way you think about it, the way you act as the leader.
Jens: Yes. I like very much the three books of Harari, where he’s talking about the evolution of mankind, and why everybody has a green garden. There’s so much deeper thinking into our emotional patterns, and they make you aware of how you make decisions. I think these books at a certain point, are repetitive as everything, but to get into it and reflect on yourself is good. Then there’s another book Search Inside Yourself, which I like because that’s a curiosity, of always reflecting what are your deeper beliefs, why you are thinking like this or like that, and why you always come to this conclusion and not go the other way. I think it’s about the consciousness of how you’re doing all these unconscious decisions as well, and how you interact with humans. Are you aware of what you’re radiating, and how you communicate, and how does it land into the other? I think this is very important.
Then there are some German books. I won’t tell you the titles because it would not matter. But there are also in our language, they can be indefinitely or it can be very vague. I’m more on the data and definite side of things. For example, in a client discussion, you can say, I believe, there’s not much more that we can do on price, that’s very, very open. If you have a good procurement manager, you would immediately dig into it. Or you say, this is all I can do on price. It sounds like the same message, but it’s totally different. Our language and our communication needs often to be more conscious and more prepared for what we really want to say and what we really want to achieve.
One of our secrets here is we always write the minutes first before we go to a meeting. The question I always ask my team when we go into something is what is victory here? What do we really want to achieve? Because it sharpens your mind and it gives you focus, and it drives better outcomes if you are clear on what you want to achieve and what your goals are. If you write it down, it’s even stronger. Then maybe the discussion with a client is totally different. Then you have to adjust your minutes that you want to send out but you sent them out before in your mind and you draft them before in your mind because then it’s guiding your thinking and it’s guiding the goals that you want to make, and I think that’s very important as well. Again, it costs a lot of discipline. But it works very well if you are knowing what you are striving for, and when you have a clear focus on purpose.
Ross: Yes. The book dimension was Search Inside Yourself by Chade-Meng Tan and Yuval Noah Harari’s three books, A Brief History of Humankind just for the listeners who might not have been aware of this. That’s fantastic. Thank you so much for your insights, Jens. I think there’s so much of what you do in that openness, which to ideas and perspectives and insights, which we all need to be learning in a very rapidly moving world. Thank you for your time and your insights.
Jens: Yes, Ross. Thanks a lot. Yes, let’s stay curious. That’s my mind driver. Thank you. Take care.
“It’s about respecting the other person’s process. When you’re talking to somebody, if you don’t respect where they came from, their process, and how they got to where they are, you’re not going to have a good conversation.’’– Rachel HappeAbout Rachel HappeRachel is the Founder of professional firm Engaged Organizations. She co-founded the Community Roundtable in 2009 and produced The State of Community Management Report for over a decade. Her work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including Harvard Business Review.LinkedIn: Rachel Happe
Website: Engaged Organizations
Twitter: @rhappe
Instagram: @rhappe
What you will learn Significance of metacognition in communication (02:42) * Developing metacognition through cultural exposure (03:40) * Practicing empathy and curiosity can help people better understand others’ perspectives and improve communication (06:40) * The lack of metacognition among people in positions of power and privilege (08:20) * Respecting others’ processes in communication (09:41) * How community’s collective beliefs and values shape one’s thinking and behavior (12:35) * Difference between online social media and community (14:05) * The benefits of digital communities of practice for companies (17:13) * Incremental learning in communities and the benefits of transparency for organizations (21:11) * Building personal knowledge networks and participating in communities (22:57) * How people with ADHD love complex problems and synthesis and stress over boredom (26:54) * Sensemaking and pattern recognition (29:26) * Leadership vs management (31:37) * Three pieces of advice on navigating a world of information overload (33:31) TranscriptRoss Dawson: Rachel, it’s a delight to have you on the show.Rachel Happe:* Hi, Ross, it’s great to talk to you. It’s been a while.
Ross: It has been too long. You talk about metacognition, actually, a word that I love as well. I’d love to hear what does that mean? And how do you do it?
Rachel: Those are two really different things. But what it is, is being aware of how you think and how it’s different from the way other people think.
Ross: How do you apply that?
Rachel: A lot of people don’t have a lot of metacognition. They really feel the way they think about things is the way everybody thinks about things because they’re in their own heads; so getting metacognition is a little harder than just knowing what it is. Because that means you can instinctively understand that when you use a word, the person that’s listening to you may not have the same experience of that word, or be coming from a different context or different power position or different anything. They might be coming from a different event that totally stressed them out as you’re having a conversation.
There are so many things that can change how they’re thinking in the moment and overall. The way I developed metacognition was that my dad was a very intellectual minister. He didn’t talk about metacognition, but it was constantly a conversation growing up, and I wouldn’t have known the word necessarily, but again, lots of diversity, and lots of conversation about that growing up. But then, when I was in high school, I did an exchange year in Germany, my junior year, so when I was 16, I was in Germany with a host family all year.
And that experience is one of the best. Being in another culture and understanding another culture is one of the best ways to understand that people just don’t think about things the same way. And if you look at the language… I used to laugh because Germans have 20 ways to say you’re an idiot. The French have 20 ways to say I love you. The Danish have 20 words for snow. That tells you something about their culture; so you get that sensibility.
Then when you come back, like when I came back to the US, the US is enormous. Other people in other countries do not understand. The Europeans are like, “Oh, you’re all American”. My friends used to wear cowboy boots and raincoats, the Burberry-type raincoat. I’d be like, “that’s New York and Texas, what are you doing?” They’re like, we’re American. I’m like, nobody in America wears those two things together. That doesn’t happen.
That’s an example. You come back and you realize you’re all speaking English, but you’re not talking about the same thing. There are all these different cultures here. We think we’re talking to each other and understand each other. But often, we really don’t. The only way to interrogate that is to have a conversation with somebody.
Ross: The first instance is understanding that people think differently, and so that informs your communication, how it is you’re taking what they are saying, how it is you phrase or rephrase or adapt what you’re saying, or how you’re communicating to be able to reach a common point. Pulling this to the information, we’ve got a lot of information, and part of that is we’ve got written, we’ve got videos, and a very, very important part of it is in conversation. In terms of how it is we take in information better from the world, and make sense of the world better, how does metacognition help us?
Rachel: It makes us more open to how someone got to the position they’re in. One of the things when I’m talking to somebody, or actually, it’s a game I play with myself too. When I hear something I don’t like, I’m like, how is that the right conclusion for the person who’s making it? How did that happen that they reached this conclusion, and I reached a very different one? That allows you to have a better conversation because you’re suspending the… I would never make that decision because it’s idiotic to what’s going on in their world that’s driving them to see the situation that way. It makes you curious.
Ross: Yeah, for me, one of the implications of that is what I call Richer mental models, how do we have more richness to our models of the world and how it works and how it forms our decisions, and rather than having that singular that we can make it richer by having more facets to that, which includes being able to see how other people look at things, and in which there might be some validity.
Rachel: The layer on top of that, that’s interesting. I studied politics way back. I think of everything in terms of power. People in positions of power and privilege are the least likely to have metacognition. Because they don’t have to live by anybody else’s rules so they’re a bit naive. If you’ve always gotten to walk through the world, saying declarative sentences, and have that taken as fact, why would you believe anyone thinks differently?
Ross: Other than in arguing as in other people think differently, but they’re wrong and you’re right. I think that there is a very tiny minority of, as you say, those in positions of power, who do have that ability. That’s the Gregory Bateson’s multiple perspectives bring wisdom. There are some people in positions of power that have that, and hopefully, a few more than we used to have in the past..
Rachel: Listening to argument, certainly, you have that. It’s very compassionate.
Ross: But I think we can, wherever, whoever we are, we can all learn about… that we can be wiser by being able to appreciate those multiple perspectives.
Rachel: Also it’s not even wiser to me. It’s not. It is about learning, you learn things, but it’s about respecting the other person’s process. When you’re talking to somebody, if you don’t respect where they came from, their process, and how they got to where they are, you’re not going to have a good conversation.
And so being open about that, and knowing your ignorance of that, when you first meet somebody is really helpful, because you don’t lay your expectations on them and you don’t immediately get into an argument.
Ross: In my conversations and interviews for the book, Thriving on Overload, it really came out how much knowledge creation is in conversation. In fact, just right now. I’ve just had some conversations recently and yes, that’s where I have felt that I’ve learned the most. Part of it is listening to what I say as well as what the other person says. But if it wasn’t for the conversation that wouldn’t come out.
Rachel: It’s because you’re meeting each other where you are. You’re asking a question, that’s where you are. I can answer that question to where you are right now. You asked me a question that’s never been asked of me before. Sometimes I think out loud, and I’m like, yes, I think that’s right. But I’ve never articulated it, because nobody’s ever asked before. That’s kind of that mechanic.
Ross: Yeah, and bouncing off each other’s ideas as in oh, that’s an interesting idea. But in fact, that actually brings out my own idea. But this idea of conversational knowledge creation is almost more in conversation than anything else brings us to a community. Your whole career has been based on community.
Rachel: I had a whole career before the community.
Ross: Oh, right.
Rachel: I was in innovation management and product management. But yes.
Ross: But the fact that you got, I think that’s telling that you move from innovation, management to community because I would suggest that communities is in fact, where the most innovation happens.
Rachel: They are the engines of innovation actually.
Ross: So love to hear just any high-level of reflections around the community, as an engine for knowledge creation, or innovation. How we can engage, and how we should be thinking about community or communities to get better at creating our knowledge.
Rachel: So I’ll link it to metacognition, which is, if you live and remain in one community, it’s very unlikely you’re going to have metacognition because they are going to create your truth. Whether it’s true or not, they’re going to create your reality, the way that collective community thinks, really shapes your thinking and your behavior. I think about it as the health of your community is your floor and ceiling, to potential, if they can’t imagine something better than exists in your community today.
That’s what you’re going to aspire to. If their floor is very low, you’re not going to see anything wrong with going down that. You may see something wrong, but it won’t be completely out of bounds. Anyway, that’s fundamentally why I think communities are so important, and knowing how to strengthen communities is really important because learning happens in calm, trusting environments.
This is something people get wrong all the time. Because the interface can look very similar to social media and the emotional reality is completely different. Social media is triggering, it’s anxiety-provoking, and that’s what everybody’s geared toward. In communities, things are calm, and you are calmer. Because you know people trust you, you’re not ready to be attacked or attack somebody. You’re comfortable there. You’ve got a degree of safety. There’s a good community and a bad community. That’s not the case. But assuming it’s a strong community, you’re calm, and being in that community, with that community, calms you down. You can’t learn if you’re anxious. Your brain doesn’t work.
Ross: One aspect of this is communities of practice, which we both know of, since at least the 90s. We’re essentially those who practice and have expertise in a particular domain, together share and learn. There are a couple of aspects to this; one is that we can join communities of practice, be it the inside organizations or outside, or we can even form our own, and try to catalyze our own. I’d just love to hear about this idea of saying, okay, for those who have an area of expertise, how it is that they might nurture or get into communities of practice to help them.
Rachel: I’ve been working with very large organizations for the last two years, building a digitally enabled community of practice network for exactly those reasons, to spread and norm what the organization knows across its employee base, and integrate communities into the flow of work. The only way you can do that is digitally. You can’t come to a conference room every time you have a question, because you may not even be in the same country. It just logistically doesn’t happen so they have to be digitally enabled.
I think digital communities in a practice are the biggest opportunity companies have that they have no idea they have because people are used to email, now they have chat tools, so team chat. The team chat interface may look very similar to a community interface. They’re like, what’s the difference? I don’t know. It’s all chat. But communities of practice allow conversation around a disciplinary. The other thing that it does, and this is often bumpy, is in a lot of companies run by innovation or technology or expertise, the subject matter experts are almost seen as gods, they’re the last word on things; think of surgeons, think of PhDs, think of your architect, your software engineering architects, they’re the ones that are like the final word.
However, the person that’s been at the organization doing work for a couple of years, is going to learn very little about how to do their work from those people. Not because they don’t have anything to teach, obviously, they do, but they have forgotten what it’s like to be two years into the discipline. They tend to answer questions much more esoterically than that person can handle. I run into this problem. I answer questions, and people are like, no, no, I just wanted to know how to set up a discussion or whatever it is, I just need the practical thing.
The best person to teach someone is the person right ahead of them on the path. They’re very good at teaching the person right behind them. Everyone has something to learn and something to teach. But that’s not how, culturally, we view knowledge. It’s very stratified. Communities are almost like matching engines for expertise and learning because someone can ask a question, and again, using the scenario of a younger person early on their path, ask a question, the subject matter expert isn’t even going to spend any time there. It’s not an interesting question for them. They’re going to sail on by.
The person who’s going to answer it is someone who’s like, I remember being frustrated by that, and how I got over that, and they’ll answer. You’ll get the perfect pairing but it’ll be emergent, not planned. That’s a hard dynamic for organizations to get used to as well.
Ross: Yes. For a long time, I think of it as peer learning, where you learn with your peers, rather than from the experts. This is very much the case for the experts as in all of the Uber experts say we’re on the leading edge or want to learn with and from each other and those are their peers and there are people who are earlier in the journey, and they should be learning from each other because they’re learning. They’re able to share how their learning is what they’re learning.
Rachel: The other aspect of learning, and we did it in really big chunks in the past because of physical limitations, we have to go to a school or to a room or to whatever, people learn much better incrementally in the moment they have the need, and they learn much better when they’ve asked for the information rather than being told you need to learn this. Okay, it’s not what I’m thinking about, but okay, right? It really accelerates the ability to learn. In communities, they should be transparent to the rest of the organization. If you ask enterprise search, or you ask somewhere, you ask the AI machine, you will find that expertise and so you’re not having the organization relearn and relearn and relearn the same thing, and so innovation compounds a lot faster.
Ross: In the book, I talk about personal information networks, and perhaps I should have called them personal knowledge networks because it is not so much, well, this has happened, and that’s part of what a network is good for to tell you, oh, did you hear about this? But perhaps more of it is to learn together and we can share it. If you’re an individual not sitting in an organization or sitting in an organization that doesn’t do it, how would you go about building your own personal knowledge network that would support your growth?
Rachel: Before I answer that, I do want to differentiate between a personal knowledge network and the community. Because one, they’re both valuable, but they’re different. One is a hub and spoke, and one is like a mixed scenario where you build truth, you build collective trust, collective truth. It’s more scalable in that way, everybody’s moving along the path together, which doesn’t mean new people don’t come in and out but it’s not centralized in quite the same way.
For me, I’ve been on social technologies for a long, long time. And I’m curious, so it’s a natural fit. I’m curious about a lot of things. I think if somebody followed me on certain networks, they’d be like, what is she talking about? I am here for the community news. That’s part of who I am. But I have a lot of interests. I find innovation is at the overlap of different areas, and the overlap in the Venn diagram is where the spark happens. You need a diverse network.
I follow people who I think are interesting, and I don’t follow people or accounts that just share transactionally. I don’t follow media accounts. I have lists that have media accounts. If I want to know what’s going on in the news, they’re where I go. But that’s not what I’m in a personal knowledge network to do, to just read. I do read plenty. The recommendation and sharing from my network helps point me to things that I find interesting and relevant. But I’m there for conversation as much as I am for just reading content and hearing about things and building relationships.
If you were on Twitter in the early days, that’s probably your experience. If you came on in the last five years, that’s absolutely not your experience. That’s essentially, letting my curiosity lead. The other thing that I do, is unfollow people. If I’m seeing a bunch of stuff in my feed, it could be my best friend, I don’t care. On certain networks, I will stay connected to my best friends but if I’m there to learn, like my Twitter network, and I’m not finding value in somebody’s stuff, I’ll unfollow them because it’s just filling my screen with noise. That’s not interesting. It’s constantly weeding it, adding people that are sharing interesting things or somebody in my network is talking with, and weeding out what’s no longer relevant or interesting to me.
Ross: That does digitally lead us to another topic, which is ADHD. In our previous conversations, you said, you discovered you have that, and as I’ve had with other guests, I’d love for you to share what you have learned which you think might be useful to other people.
Rachel: A couple of things about ADHD is that boredom is stressful. If I’m bored, I’m stressed which people, I don’t think, get. I didn’t get that boredom could be stressful until I read it, and I was like, oh, yeah. It’s not thought of that way. I didn’t think of it that way. But not digging into things causes me stress, doing things repetitively, that’s not my strong suit. I love complex problems. I love synthesis. I’m voracious. I have strong interests, and I can’t pay attention to things I’m not interested in.
I’ve got to be engaged in a topic. When I’m engaged, I’m very engaged. But it’s a little bimodal. I’m either bored, or I’m engaged. In the middle, it can be harder or take more energy to follow up. It’s not that I don’t ever, but it takes a little more energy to do accounting, for example. I still do accounting, but it takes a little more energy to just buckle down.
A lot of people get very annoyed. I’m like a constant idea generator. It’s driven my teams in the past crazy. I know it’s not actually helpful to them because they’re trying to get work done, and I’m like, what about this? What about that? They’re like, no, no, I haven’t finished the first thing. I use my social networks a lot to just play with ideas because my mind is constantly chewing on things. That’s an outlet so that I’m not bothering people who don’t want to be bothered. It’s opt-in. If people don’t like the volume of things that I share or the range of things that I share, they don’t have to follow me. That’s one aspect of it.
The other aspect of it is the things I’m really good at, like synthesis. The more I see, and the broader I pull from, the easier it is for me to see patterns. I’ve gotten to the point where I have a spidey sense about seeing something new that doesn’t fit a pattern. The analyst in me goes, that’s interesting. I’ll bookmark that, and if it happens again, that might be a trend and I go investigate a little bit. I have a very intuitive way of absorbing. It’s almost like the back of my mind is working and all of a sudden, things come together in gel, and I’m like, ah, now I know what’s going on.
Ross: Yes, that’s really an apt description of the synthesis again, as I described in the book. But to your point about boredom being stressful, and you’ve put it admirably fantastically, is the antidote to boredom is not superficial, it’s going deep. I think that the real problem is that people get bored, and then they’re just skimming, skimming, skimming, skimming whereas the real antidote to the boredom is alright, here’s something I can just dive into, and it has to be something that I am passionate about.
Rachel: It’s interesting. I’m not at the Community Roundtable any longer because I had a big hairy problem when I started. It was a hypothesis. I was looking at it and saying, given technology, given organizations, I was a management consultant for a while, and the power dynamics, this is going to disrupt organizational structures entirely, and nobody knows how to manage in this way.
And these community managers online who don’t have any structural control over the people in their community but are accomplishing big things have the answer to that management dilemma, or that it’s really a leadership dilemma. I mean, depends on where you parse out management and leadership.
I mentioned, my dad was a minister. He was a minister in the church that can hire and fire its ministers. He had a very community-centric leadership style. He couldn’t piss people off, and he couldn’t tell people what to do. He had to lead rather than manage in an old-school way. Anyway, I did over a decade of annual research, and it was qualitative initially, and then I got quantitative, and then I was able to benchmark it. I got that done. I spent a few more years there, and I just started getting really bored. I was like, I am done with this big hairy problem. I’ve satisfied the hypothesis that I started this organization for. I’m at this juncture of what’s the next big problem I solve. And I haven’t quite figured that out yet.
Ross: I’ve just been through almost the same process of finding what it is I must dive into. Just to round out, what are three things from your experience that you would suggest to people to help them thrive in a world of massive information overload?
Rachel: Just three things, okay.
Ross: It doesn’t need to be three.
Rachel: I would say, in a world of details, start with a hypothesis or intent. If you work up from the details, you’ll never get anywhere. Hypothesis and an intent can be purpose. What’s the purpose of your interrogations? What are you driving at, figure out what that is. That’s not easy. That’s one.
Two, I think you can’t worry too much about making every second count. You’ve got to be willing to explore. Because the new stuff is in stuff you can’t process yet. And, it’s the trade-off between extrinsic getting something done, and intrinsic learning something. And everybody has a different level of trade-off. But if you’re trying to grow and learn, you need to spend, you need to put some time aside and just explore, without too much direction.
And the third thing is paying attention to feelings and building relationships. I talk about feelings a lot because if you ask people how they feel about something, it really helps. You’re in conflict with them, you see something differently than they do. Asking how they feel about something will more quickly get you to the root cause than just ping-ponging back and forth, or listing the 10 reasons why I believe this.
Say, what do you feel is the right thing to do? Why do you feel that way? Why are you frustrated? What is it about that, that makes you frustrated? And if both parties do that, you can narrow in on the nugget and stop arguing about the big thing, which is much harder to solve. That goes hand in hand with building relationships, so really being attuned to somebody else, being generous with other people, being generous with your time, people are always like Oho, I’m taking up your time and I’m like, I don’t know what’s going to happen. If this falls flat, I probably won’t talk to you again. But I’m open to seeing where it takes us. Because of that I have a huge network of people that I have very trusting relationships with, and I learn things, they tell me things that they would not tell me otherwise, which is also a way to learn.
Ross: Yes, absolutely. That’s fantastic. You’re very strongly aligned around the things I go about the thriving and the synthesis, and the value in the interaction. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, Rachel, it has been a real delight.
Rachel: Thank you for having me. It was fun to chat with you and I think I learned something.
‘’Determining what information is important to you starts with your values.’’– Nir Eyal
About Nir EyalOn this episode we learn from Nir Eyal, who writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He is the author of two bestselling books, Hooked: has sold over a quarter of a million copies and heavily influenced the tech industry and Indistractable which has been named best business book of the year, among other accolades.
Website: nirandfar.com
Facebook: Nir Eyal
LinkedIn: Nir Eyal
Twitter: @nireyal
Instagram: @neyal99
Books
Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention And Choose Your Life
Hooked: How To Build Habit-Forming Products
What you will learn How to turn your values into time (05:15) * You absolutely can multitask as long as you multi-channel multitask (09:50) * A process to make sense of all the information that you consume using Pocket, emailing yourself, and Evernote (10:25) * Use tags to efficiently file ideas (15:50) * Any endeavour is hard work, and you can’t wait for inspiration to strike (18:12) * Once your schedule is set, follow it (20:39) * The opposite of distraction is traction (21:33) * Being Indistractable means understanding why you got distracted and doing something so it doesn’t distract you in the future (23:58) * Call yourself Indistractible because doing so actually empowers you (24:57) * The 4 steps to becoming Indistractable (26:23) Episode resources SaneBox * Pocket * Evernote TranscriptRoss Dawson: Nir, it is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.Nir Eyal: My pleasure. Thank you so much.
*Ross:* I think you are a wonderful exemplar of thriving on overload. You are able to create wonderful books to gain deep insights into what’s happening in the world. How do you do it?
*Nir:* It’s not easy. I don’t know anyone who says it’s easy, but I will say that I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think we should start, first of all, by reframing this idea that sounds pejorative, information overload as in incredible blessing.
Ross: Absolutely.
Nir: We have the luxury to have information overload. I would much rather live in an age today where the world’s information is at my fingertips than in past generations, where the seat of power and influence was how much information you had access to. Now, we are drowning in information, we have so much information. Now, the scarce commodity is our ability to make sense of all that information, and make sure that it doesn’t divert us and distract us into things that are not congruent with our goals and our values. But starting off, it’s a wonderful thing; that past generations, spent a lot of their time very bored, and we don’t have that problem.
Ross: You’ve got to the entire thesis of what I’m doing.
Nir: Is that right?
Ross: Yes. This is an opportunity.
Nir: Exactly, it is a huge opportunity, but opportunities also present challenges. It’s really the people who are able to rise to this occasion, people who can make the most of all this information are really the people who will succeed in the century to come. This ability to make sure that we harness our time and attention properly is a super skill. A lot of my research is around distraction, and my book “Indistractable” is all about how to control your attention and choose your life. This is definitely something that’s near and dear to my heart.
Ross: I want to dig into what you do. Obviously, we’ve learned what you do quite a bit from your book, and we wanted to hear, and learn from that. But in terms of just information, I think, part of it is scope. What is the purpose? What information is going to be useful and relevant to you? How do you start off by framing that as to what information is going to be relevant to you, and how you seek it and find it, or make it come to you?
Nir: Determining what information is important to you starts with your values. What are values? I define values as attributes of the person you want to become. You have to ask yourself, how would the person I want to become spend their time? That’s how you define your values. Now values, by the way, are very different from things you value. Money is not a value. Why? Because money can be taken away from you. Money is a thing you value, it is not your value. However, the idea of being a dependable person, being honest, being someone who lives with integrity, are the things that can’t be taken away from you; those are values.
We have to start by turning our values into time. When we ask ourselves, how would the person I want to become spend their time, I like to use these three life domains starting out with you. You are at the center of these three life domains. If you can’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of others, you can’t make the world a better place, so you have to start with you.
What I recommend is that we start by asking ourselves, how would the person you want to become spend their time tomorrow? Starting with the very next day, how would a person who lives at your value spend their time in this life domain of taking care of you? If physical health is important to you, do you have time on your calendar for exercise? For rest? We all know how important sleep is. We’ve heard this research to death now. We all know about it, but how many of us have a bedtime? Very few. We yell at our kids and say, you have to have a bedtime, but we’re hypocrites because we don’t have a bedtime.
Making that time for prayer, meditation, video games, whatever is important to you, has to have that time on your calendar. Namely, this time that you spend consuming information, for the vast majority of people, it seeps into whatever cracks of time we have in our day, whenever we feel bored, whenever we feel lonely, whenever work is too hard, that’s our escape. I’m doing something good for myself, I’m reading the news, I’m checking on our newsletter, I’m going through email, and we think that’s something productive, but it is a distraction if it’s not what we plan to do with our time. Remember, the opposite of distraction is not focus, the opposite of distraction is traction.
Traction is any action that moves you towards your goals, towards your values. Distraction is the opposite, anything that moves you away from what you said you were going to do. That’s why it’s so imperative to start with the time that something takes. Dealing with information overload doesn’t start with, what do I want to consume? It starts with, when do I want to consume? When in my calendar, will I make time to consume this information? Now, why do I say that’s so important? Because I’m forcing a constraint. When people say what do I want to do with my time, I want to write a book, I want to have a beautiful family relationship, I want to have a big business, I want to make sure I’m up to date in all the news in the world, you can’t do it all. You only have 24 hours in a day. What you have to do is to make tradeoffs. You can only make tradeoffs when you impose constraints.
By looking at your calendar and saying, okay, I want X amount of hours with my family, I need to do work for this many hours in the day, I want this much time for prayer, meditation, I want this much time for whatever else it is, how much time do I have left to do this important thing that is consuming information? Starting from that constraint, you will have to give something up. There’s no way you can do it all, you only have 24 hours, everybody does. By doing that, you will understand how much time you even have. What you might find is a lot less time than you think. Maybe if you’re lucky, you have an hour or two to consume information. That forces you to be very frugal with your time.
I often say that people are stingy with their money and generous with their time, and it should be the exact opposite. We should be generous with our money, and stingy with our time because we can always make more money, we can’t make more time. You have to start by asking yourself, this is a nonrenewable resource, your time in your day has to be accounted for first. By saying to yourself, hey, look, after all my other priorities and values, I only have 45 minutes in a day to consume information; What can I consume that provides 45 minutes of information that is actually valuable enough to warrant that time allotment? That’s the first place to start, I think.
Ross: For you, what time do you allocate when?
Nir: I typically do it in the morning, where I have time, when I go through my email; I have time booked in my day to go through email, an hour and a half of email per day. I have a separate folder; I use a product called SaneLater, which is a wonderful product that will sort out the important from the less important information; the emails that you need to respond to versus the emails that you simply consume. For about 30 minutes of my day, I have time on my calendar when I go into this folder, and I look through these various new sources and places that I want to consume this information. I use a little trick that I talked about in my book “Indistractable”, that I do believe in multitasking. I know that this is killing a sacred cow, that everybody in the productivity spaces tells you, you can’t multitask, that’s not true; You can absolutely multitask, as long as you multi-channel multitask.
What we can’t do is receive inputs of information on the same channel at the same time. You can’t listen to two podcast episodes, one in each ear, you can’t do two math problems at the same time, you can’t watch two television screens at the same time, because you’re using the same channel. But you absolutely can multi-channel multitask as long as the information is coming through different sources. What I do is I have 30 minutes on my day for deciding what’s worth consuming.
I open up the New York Times, Daily News Digest, I’ve subscribed to several newsletters, I open those up, I don’t read them, I save them. Immediately, when I see an article that I want to read, I have a rule, I never read articles on my web browser. I immediately save them to this wonderful app called “Pocket”. Now Pocket will scrub out the text. Instead of all those linkbaity headlines, all the links, and all the stuff that will distract you, it just gives you the text in the app. Then I use multi-channel multitasking, as the reward for doing something I don’t really want to do. In my case, it’s exercise, to reward myself with these articles read to me.
You can have this app “Pocket” read these articles to you while you’re doing something else. This is called temptation bundling, this comes from the work of Katy Milkman. She has these studies where she finds that you can actually use a reward in one area of your life to help incentivize you to do something else that you don’t really feel like doing in another area of your life. I like exercising, I don’t love it, but it’s an extra boost of motivation to be able to listen to these articles while I’m in the gym exercising, or taking a walk. That becomes how I use this multi-channel multitasking to consume this information while I’m doing something else.
Ross: Are all those articles that you’re consuming in audio?
Nir: Yes, pretty much 100% of them.
Ross: Right. Obviously, it’s not as if you’ve got dozens of articles every day, because…
Nir: No, I get through probably 30-40 articles a day during my exercise session.
Ross: How long does that last?
Nir: About an hour.
Ross: Okay. Do you put it on faster than normal speed?
Nir: Yes, definitely. I use another app called “Voice Dream”, which works with Pocket. It has these great text-to-speech voices that read about 800 words a minute. I can’t listen to 800 words a minute, but I listen to about 600 words a minute. It’s fantastic. You can get through a ton. Many articles are fluff. You’ve got the opening, you’ve got the closing, the summary. But to get the new information, you can listen to it pretty quickly.
Ross: This takes us in a way to sense-making, which you talked about at the beginning. Yes, we got a wealth of information; we can carve out some time to be able to pull out what’s relevant or interesting to us. Is there a process for you to make sense of the world from all of this information? Do you take any notes? Do you do anything visually? Do you build any frameworks in your mind? Do you do it simply by writing? Blog posts or books? What is the process by which it makes sense?
Nir: The first pass will be to just listen to these articles, as we just described. But if it’s something that I feel like I want to dive deeper into, if it’s a particularly good article, that maybe it’s relevant to something I’m actually working on at the moment, or something I think I might work another moment, I email that article back to myself. It goes from, let’s say, this email newsletter, I just read the headline, and I immediately send it to Pocket.
I don’t read the article itself. I listen to the article later on. If I say, Wow, that was really good; maybe one out of 20 things I listen to, I’ll say, Wow, that’s really insightful. I want to remember to come back to that, I’ll email it back to myself. Then when I have time in my schedule to do that type of work, to do the work that requires me to look through these articles, and think through these and extract the value in accordance to what I’m working on, that’s when I’ll do it.
I’ll open up these articles, and then if it’s something that I’m working on directly, if I’m writing an article, then that goes straight to the Google Doc, where I’m working on that article. If it’s not something that I’m working on, right this minute, but I think I might work on it at some point, I file it into Evernote. I just save it into Evernote. I’ve got 100 different book ideas and article ideas, I just tag it based on that subject. Then I’ve got this nice file in Ever note, I can just type in the topic and I’ve got 20-30, maybe 100 different articles that I’ve saved over the years around this particular topic.
It makes for a very rich source of reading, to get up to speed on a topic that when I’m ready to write about it, is there. Then in terms of how do I add something new? How do I not just consume but actually create? That’s where writing comes into practice. For me, I can’t remember who said it, but I remember this quote that you can’t write clearly without thinking clearly. Writing is really my process to understand new ideas. By processing these ideas, and thinking through them, and chewing on them, and then presenting them to others, that’s how I get to the truth.
Ross: I think one of the interesting nuances in what you described is choosing those tags. You’ve got like 100 tags; this could be a book idea, or this theme, or this topic, or this idea. How is it that you have developed that particular array of tags that you can attach meaning to the content you’re getting?
Nir: It just comes through the years of thinking about… that’s an interesting topic. It’s unanswered questions. It’s the mysteries. What drives my writing is curiosity. I think it was Dorothy Parker, who said, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity”. It’s really about the unknown, that’s what drives me. What do I not really understand? What do I want to get clear in my own head? Those tags come from these areas of interest. I have hundreds of different tags of things that I’m still curious about, that I don’t quite understand, so I file them under those tags.
Ross: Do you relate these back in any way to your values, or is this just something which has just emerged in terms of… this is interesting.
Nir: Yes, usually it’s in terms of either topic areas, or sometimes like a book title. If I have a book title in my head that maybe I’ll write someday, then I’ll have to file it under that title. Sometimes it’s just vague categories, race relations, or neuroplasticity or behavioral design or there might be broader categories, and most of them I’ll probably never dive back into, but should I need them, they’re there.
Ross: In “Indistractable”, you talk about moving beyond distraction to traction. In that sense of traction, I think that there are different levels of focus or different types of focus, so you can have your deep dive where you close the world off. There are others where you may be consuming information or writing, or it could be less immerse things where you may be exploring for things. Within this world of traction, do you think about different types, or levels, or kinds of focus, or traction?
Nir: There are times where the topic might be easier to write about, and you feel more focused. If it’s a subject, I’ve chewed on a lot, and maybe I’ve spoken about, and digested, and shared with others, and I’ve come to some conclusions, then, of course, the writing is much easier. Other times, when it’s a brand new topic, sometimes it’s a slog. I really have to think through things, and thinking is hard. Many times we believe that we can just spout out ideas on a page, and I don’t know how to do that. Thinking is really hard work. To come up with anything interesting and novel, that you’re proud of, takes a lot of time, takes a lot of thought. That requires sitting down and doing the work.
I try not to put a burden on myself to think that I have to reach this cloud-nine level of focus and flow. I’m not a big fan of flow. This concept by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I think it’s really great if you can get it, but it’s not a requirement. This concept of flow that time moves quickly, and you feel like it’s effortless, I think that’s great for some of the things that Csikszentmihalyi talks about in his book; Basketball players playing basketball, and surfers surfing… okay, great, you got into the flow because it’s fun. What happens when the task is not fun? Many times when I’m writing, it is not fun. It sucks. It’s really hard work. Yet, I want to do it because it’s a hard type of fun, but it’s certainly not the flow.
I don’t try and put those requirements of “oh, I’m not focused enough”. Steven Pressfield talks about this a lot as well in his book, “The War of Art”. A professional does the work. A professional doesn’t wait for the muse to strike. A professional doesn’t wait to be in a state of flow. A professional doesn’t wait to be focused. A professional puts their butt in the chair and does the work. That’s why it’s so important to be Indistractable, because Indistractable teaches you the skills to do this at the drop of the hat, to sit down and do the work, whether you feel like it or not.
That’s really where we can live the life we want. It’s not just about work. It’s not just about productive stuff. It’s about being fully present with people you love. It’s about exercising when you say you will, eating healthfully when you say you will. It’s about following through. I try not to attach any requirements that I’m at a certain level to do in order to do the work. I just do the work.
Ross: Right. But if it is going to be the harder work, as in the book writing, would you put that out for a certain minimum time of day, at a particular time of day that works best for you?
Nir: Yes. Right now, I do it in the afternoon. I do it right after lunch. I like to write from a coffee shop typically. I like a little bit of ambient noise while I’m writing. But I’ve played around with it. I used to write first thing in the morning. Then I moved to Singapore, and I needed to take calls in the morning, so I don’t write first thing in the morning anymore. Now I write in the afternoon. I’ve moved my schedule around. The important thing is that once my schedule is set, and it might change from day to day, once my schedule is set, I follow it. Once you’ve made that schedule, and you said this is what I want to do, now that is traction. Whatever it is you said you were going to do, that’s in your calendar, that’s traction, everything else is a distraction.
Ross: There’s a distinction. People talk about focus a lot, whereas your theme is around being Indistractable. Do you draw a distinction there? What is the theme of “Indistractable” which people who haven’t read the book or already, can benefit from in understanding perhaps that distinction?
Nir: Focus is something you can do with your attention but it doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be… it’s not the end goal. The end goal is to do what you say you’re going to do. If you want to divert your attention, let’s say you want to watch a movie, play a video game, play with your kids, be spontaneous, awesome, you can do that. There’s nothing that says that focus is the pinnacle of our existence. It’s alright to let yourself divert your attention from one thing to another. That’s fine, but don’t regret doing it. The way we minimize regret is to decide in advance what we will do. That’s the difference between traction and distraction.
Both words come from the same Latin root “Trahere”, which means to pull. You’ll notice both words end in the same six letters “ACTION”, which spells action. Traction is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do, things that you do with intent. The opposite of traction is distraction. Distraction is any action that pulls you further away from what you plan to do. It’s all about intent. It’s all about deciding in advance, this is what I’m going to do, even if it’s something fun, frivolous even, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with scrolling Instagram or playing a video game or being silly with your kids. That’s great. That’s wonderful. But do it on your schedule and according to your values, not someone else’s. If what you want to do with your time is to be focused on your writing, wonderful. But that’s not necessarily the requirement, which is why I don’t think that the opposite of distraction is focused. The opposite of distraction is traction.
Ross: “Indistractable”, I think a key part of that is identity, as in understanding and believing yourself is Indistractable, being able to get traction in whatever it is you’re doing. But there’s a whole series of tools or techniques in order to enable you to align your actions with the belief that you are Indistractable and able to be there, doing what you’re planning to do.
Nir: Absolutely, yes. This is why I titled the book “Indistractable”. “Indistractable”, it’s a made-up word. I made it up so I could define it in any way I like. Being Indistractable doesn’t mean you never get distracted. Even I get distracted from time to time. Being Indistractable means you understand why you got distracted and you do something about it so you don’t get distracted by the same thing in the future. Paulo Coelho has a wonderful quote, he said, “A mistake repeated more than once is a decision”.
How many people go through life constantly complaining about how they didn’t get this done? And they got distracted from that, and they had this goal and this thing on their to-do lists, and they didn’t finish it? How many times do we keep getting distracted by the same thing again and again before we say, enough, I’m going to do something about it? A distractible person chooses to be distracted because they don’t do anything about the problem. An Indistractable person says, okay, you got me once, now I’m going to do something about it.
What I teach in the book “Indistractable” is this model around knowing exactly why you got distracted and using this toolkit to prevent it from happening again in the future. Once you become that person, that person who strives to do what they say they’re going to do, the person who strives to live with personal integrity, you are Indistractable. It doesn’t matter if you read the book or not, if you’re listening to my voice right now on this podcast, you can call yourself Indistractable, because doing so actually empowers you to change.
We know that monikers have a huge impact on our behavior. If you look at the psychology of religion, when devout Muslims call themselves Muslims, they don’t have to use willpower to do certain behaviors. A devout Muslim doesn’t wake up in the morning and say, I wonder if I’ll have some alcohol today? No, a devout Muslim doesn’t drink alcohol. It is who they are. A vegetarian doesn’t wake up and say, I wonder if I’ll have a bacon sandwich for breakfast? No, they don’t eat meat. It is who they are. They are vegetarian. You are now Indistractable. Indistractable sounds like indestructible, it’s a superpower. It’s who you are. It’s your identity. You’re the person who strives to do as they say they’re going to do, someone who lives with personal integrity, and who is as honest with themselves as they are with others.
Ross: To round out, what would be your advice beyond anything which we’ve already covered to someone who’s saying, this is a lot of information, I’m trying to work out what to do. What are the steps which I should take? How can I thrive in this world?
Nir: The four steps to becoming Indistractable are pretty simple. They took me five years to uncover, but these are the four basic steps that are the four pillars, the strategies that we have to use. Strategies are why we do something, tactics are what we do. It’s much more important to understand the strategy than just the tactics. But if you follow these four steps, number one, mastering your internal triggers, understanding where distractions come from, that’s step one. Step number two is, make time for traction. What we talked about earlier, planning out your day, understanding what you define as traction so that you can know what is distraction. You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what it distracted you from.
Step number three is, hack back the external triggers. Removing all the pings, dings, and rings in your outside environment that can lead you towards distraction. Finally, prevent distraction with Packs. Packs are the last line of defense. They’re the firewall against distraction. We use them as this barrier when we fall off track. After we’ve tried the other three strategies, we use them as the last line of defense. When we use these four strategies in concert, this is how we become Indistractable. There’s a lot in the book, but really, it boils down to these four basic strategies that anyone can master.
Ross: Given the world we’re into, I think that there are many people that are very distracted and could benefit a lot from being able to take your advice. In a way, that’s the future of where we are, it is to the degree to which we become a distracted race, or something else. This is a bit of a pivotal moment in human history, isn’t that?
Nir: This is very autobiographical. They say, “research is mesearch”. I wrote this book for me more than anyone else; because I found I was incredibly distracted. It was because the world is such an interesting place. There are limitless videos to watch. Now with these amazing technologies, like the one we’re using right now, you can speak with people all over the world, and things you can learn, and incredible things you can see and do. But the price of progress, the price of these amazing technologies that we have at our fingertips today is you know what, you got to learn some new methods, you got to upgrade your own skillset to make sure that you can live in this modern world, and use these tools to your advantage, to use them as opposed to letting them use you.
It’s not that hard. This isn’t rocket science. Simple things like planning your day, understanding your internal triggers, turning off the external triggers, simple stuff, we can all do it, if we stop complaining about it long enough to take action. Many of us, all we do is whine and moan about the crazy world these days but we don’t do anything about it. I really think the world is bifurcating into two types of people, people who let their time and attention be manipulated and controlled by others, and people who stand up and say, no, I decide how I will control my time and attention. I will control my life. I am Indistractable.
Ross: Absolutely agree, Nir. It’s fantastic to get your insights on thriving on overload. I’m sure many people will benefit from them. Thanks so much.
Nir: My pleasure. Thank you.
“For me, decision-making is not just a company making decisions in a certain way but it’s also what they are enabling with the world, society, businesses, organizations, and countries, what decisions they are allowing them to make to be more resilient.* “*– Roger Spitz
About Roger SpitzRoger is an international bestselling author of the four book collection “The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption”, the President of Techistential, which works on Climate & Foresight Strategy, the Chair of the Disruptive Futures Institute, and a frequent keynote speaker globally. Roger was previously Global Head of Technology M&A with BNP Paribas, and has two decades of leading investment banking and venture capital businesses.
Websites:
Thriving on Disruption
Disruptive Futures Institute
Book: The Definitive Guide to Thriving on Disruption (4 book series)
Instagram: @disrupt_futures
Twitter: @disrupt_futures
What you will learn Tech Existentialism and how it’s changing the nature of decision-making (03:09) * Value chain of decision-making and how it progresses from descriptive to prescriptive (03:50) * Highlighting the difference between complicated and complex systems (05:45) * The impact of social media and information on decision-making (06:58) * Potential risks of over-reliance on machines (07:45) * The cost of making wrong assumptions and what has to be done (13:13) * The need to take a step back from information overload (15:11) * Growing interest and demand for capacity building in areas related to foresight and resilience (19:26) * Importance of having strategic and emergent agility (24:52) * Introduction to Climate Intelligence and its impact on decision-making (26:41) * Three important things when spotting weak signals (32:35) TranscriptRoss Dawson: Roger, delighted to have you on the show.Roger Spitz:* Amazing to be with you, Ross.
*Ross:* One of our many common areas of interest is the future of strategic decision-making. Why do we need to be thinking about the future of strategic decision-making?
Roger: That’s a very fine point. What’s changing? Because we’re humans. We have a brain. We make decisions. There are a lot of things that I know you’re also very tuned into. For the anecdote, before I answer thriving on disruption is meeting thriving on overload. Those two elements disruption and overload are contributing in a way to having to consider decision-making differently. We box it into a few things. Firstly, it’s simply that the exclusivity of decision-making is no longer necessarily just for humans. Insofar as computers can make decisions, whether they understand the decisions, whether they’re imitating the brain, it’s almost a separate debate, insofar as the outcomes of what they might do have implications on decisions that may not be taken by humans. So the first thing is really that; the delegated authority, which we call Tech Existentialism. What is technology and existentialism? What is that world where we no longer have that exclusivity?
The second thing is the decision-making value chain itself, if you think of getting information, like the OODA loop, you get information, you get signals, that’s kind of descriptive. The computers analyze, it’s data analytics, computers have been doing this for decades, fine. And then there’s a bit more predictive. That’s algorithm-augmented, machine learning, pattern recognition, and you can process tons of drug discovery, all the things you know. You can test and process millions and billions of things and decide what could make sense for a particular drug and that which humans cannot do. So that’s predictive, it’s supporting decision-making. Now, the thing that interests me most is that value chain where decision-making is moving to prescriptive by machines. That prescriptive is really deciding the preferred option. It’s having that agency or at least authority with action triggers to make autonomous decisions.
Now your focus, Thriving on Overload, how much information is to process? Do you need support for that? How good is the support you’re getting with computers? That’s two elements, the exclusivity that’s being delegated, and the moving up the value chain. We quite like to look at the framework which is obviously very helpful for sense-making and responses to different environments: Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework.
Ross: Yes.
Roger: He divides, for your listeners, what is complicated? And what responses were complicated? So complicated, you can rely on experts, you have known and unknowns, it’s a more linear predictable environment, and cause and effect can be anticipated. Then complex, it’s different. It’s nonlinear, so it’s less predictable or not predictable at all, like the Amazon River. If you change something, how does it affect everything else? Complicated examples are, how you send a probe to Mars and all that. You can do the calculations and get expertise on how to fix a plane on that. In this complex environment, cause and effect can’t be necessarily determined, it’s an emergent discovery mode, trial and error. Cause and Effect can’t be established necessarily, as we said, it’s nonlinear. The multiple drivers of change cannot necessarily establish it’s just A or B, etc.
That’s a lot of the real world and then more and more in a world that is hyper-connected, which is technological, where things are basically very much playing off each other and can be self-reinforcing, the speed of which can be extraordinary. If you look at Silicon Valley Bank, one of the interesting aspects to it, and we can put aside the many aspects of the hundreds of case studies in the post-mortem, but one specifically, I think is interesting to our discussion, is it’s probably the first time that social media and information is the way it is, we didn’t have that in the 2008 crisis, where instantaneously, if one VC mentioned something to a customer, or startup, or whatever, that was pretty much amplified within minutes to 10s if not hundreds of millions or potentially billions of people.
That instantaneity, warp speed of many, many things basically mean that the decision-making and the person in that complex environment is different. When you add all that together, my worry and my concern, in terms of what it means for the future of decision making is that machines will continue their course and will hopefully have improved ethics and safeguards and make the most of it for the augmentation, because there are benefits as well to AI. But putting that aside, my worry is that the focus is so much on the machines that we forget humanity, what we as humans need to do so that decision-making remains effective.
What are humans good at in decision-making? And then we’ll kind of wrap up, I don’t want to monopolize it, I’d love to get your thoughts as well, and reactions, but kinesthetic intelligence; you use a temporal lobe, timing your senses and all that. Emotional intelligence, we have instinct, we have intuition, feeling, self-awareness, consciousness, and you don’t need algorithms, it’s not the prefrontal cortex where you have that emotional intelligence. Now, the one thing with what we’re talking about, though, is, for strategic decision making, which is our topic, complex systems in that quadrant of David Snowden’s Cynefin Framework, where there are those known, unknowns, computers aren’t that good yet at the complex because it’s nonlinear, because there’s no data, and the future is unpredictable because cause and effect does not determine it, etc. But with natural language processing and machine learning, it’s emergent, it’s quite good at being emergent because everything immediately is taken into account.
The machines are learning fast and potentially encroaching, or even if they’re not, are being delegated the authority to process things and make decisions even when it should really be that the humans keep the edge. The problem is that if humans are not upgrading themselves to the reality of our nonlinear complex, unpredictable world, if we’re not changing the way leadership teams and our minds are cabled, if we’re not changing the educational systems, we’re not good at making sense of complex, we’re not good at processing and making decisions in those environments because we’re linear, we’re just not capable like that. Long story short, when I think about the future of decision-making, I think more about what humans need to do the upgrade their capabilities into the context of Tech Existentialism, where we don’t have exclusivity to decision-making, where we’re de-skilling, by delegating authority to machines, and where those machines are moving up the value chain and learning every day.
Ross: Yes.
Roger: Are we?
Ross: Yes, it’s an extraordinary time to be looking at that. Let’s unpack that. I completely agree that this has to be about augmenting human cognition, and the augmentation of human cognition could be partly in terms of delegation where irrelevant. But it comes back to in a way, the prescriptive that you described where the analysis is provided by machines. But prescriptive isn’t delegation, it is prescribing something, but you can still choose whether or not to take that medicine.
Roger: If you’re capable of making that decision.
Ross: Yes. That’s the nub of that is that precisely when we start to have, for example. This is probably a sequencing issue, where you say, first of all, AI provides a recommendation, hopefully with justification or some kind of parameters on, then humans say yes or no or with modification. Now there are various other sequences, ones where humans provide analysis and then get AI to assess different scenarios or things like that. But what’s the nub? What is the best way or ways in which we can then take that prescriptive approach where you can get some rich multivariate analysis by AI, but where it still remains ultimately a human decision?
Roger: I completely agree with you, prescriptive is not taking autonomously a decision, it’s providing the options to make a decision. Where I would add nuances is we’re less good at bluffing than machines are. Several things can happen with that prescriptive, which theoretically, is not the decision making but which can quickly become a proxy for decision making. Number one is are we overwhelmed by the complexity? And are we understanding what the machine has done, what the machine is prescribing, and what to do with it, and our situational awareness and understanding to make a decision?
We can see it every day; when it was a pandemic, when there were a lot of recent geopolitical events, when we are in this environment, which is the reality of the world that is nonlinear, unpredictable, and complex, it’s just that the cost of making the assumptions, of relying on assumptions is going through the roof. We used to make the wrong assumptions all the time, but the cost of those assumptions was less severe. Now, the issue is, the cost of making the assumptions of the narrative are wrong, we, therefore, have to have a different mode, and acknowledging the real nature of our worlds, including in our decision-making, are we able to, are we changing the incentive, the governance structures, the educational systems to allow us sufficiently to understand what machines are doing, their limitations, whether it’s garbage coming out to understand the situations well enough? And are we delegating sometimes things we may not be better able to make decisions based on the answers than the machines but even machines themselves can make mistakes or can be wrong with the algorithms, God knows what happens then.
I’m not dismissive of technology or AI. Because there are a lot of miracles that are happening through that. Often, it’s the tensions and dualities, and paradoxes. But if we move to your question about how does one manage that decision-making? And what do humans do? We can unpack that. For me, I do use technology constantly. I guess that’s what you’re driving at. There are uses where technology augments us whether it’s note-taking, or translations with machine learning, or transcriptions, or indirectly drug discovery because the farmers are using the platform today. Yes, indirectly, one benefits when you use it every day, at the personal level, at the societal level, etc.
What I then try and do is really focus a lot on, and this is where I think humanity needs to do, is what we call the AAA, which is how to be more anticipatory and think about the future because we need to imagine broader scenarios and we need the time to think of things differently to unwind.
We need to take a breath. There’s a lot of noise and overload as your book correctly points out. You need to isolate the time to think about different things or think differently from the linear approach. I think foresight and futures is a good way of doing that. It’s quite broad in that. You need to isolate the mind, sometimes even spending time doing other things, to just invest 10-20% of your time to connect the dots and see things differently, because that same way of looking at things and developing more expertise compared to being T shaped or benefiting from the compound role of investing in the time, you have to isolate your time, you have to isolate the breathing and the thinking differently whether it’s Eastern philosophy with Shoshin – Beginner’s Mind, whether it’s meditation, and then you need imagination, inspiration to accept that the world may not be as it is, and to be able to challenge that. But this is very different from the educational system leadership, governance structures, and incentives that we’re determined to do which give you a carrot to learn things for which they are ready-made solutions and answers.
Ross: Let’s get into the real world. These are all important topics. And I think unpacking them as you have in your books, I think is really valuable. You and I both work with boards and executive teams. You get personalities, you get more or greater or lesser openness to different ideas or to new technologies. What’s the reality? Have you seen any boards or executive teams which have superior, or advanced, or better, or interesting processes of decision-making? Or have you encountered any interesting anecdotes to recount about how you have tried to get groups to adopt better decision-making processes?
Roger: Yes, you’re right, there’s a lot to unpack. I like the provocation around getting real. A few things, first of all, it’s hard. You’re talking about changing mindsets, always going against how we’re cabled to think maybe more linearly. It’s hard, no doubt about that. That’s why these are complex challenges. That’s why we’ve deferred them for decades, even though we knew the consequences for some. No doubt about the challenges. The second element is that I think that at present, unfortunately, quite a lot of organizations, countries, institutions are still in Business as Usual operating mode in terms of writing on the usual assumptions and everything, treating the world as a controllable, predictable, and linear.
Having said all that, I find that there are more countries that are beefing up things they’re not bad at already, in terms of being anticipatory; Singapore, Canada, and Scandinavian countries on that, and those who aren’t are starting to realize the importance of that and being more intentional around them. US, maybe to a degree, and others.
Ross: Is this around policy?
Roger: Yes, around policy; and organizations, likewise, around capacity building for better resilience, for foresight strategy, and I see it myself, one of the reasons I’m able to do what I do today, which five years ago would have been maybe a bit more esoteric, not that they weren’t futurists or very bright people like you have been doing this for a long time but coming out of nowhere, out of 20 years of M&A to be able to fit myself and get traction, for capacity building, for anticipatory governance, for resilience, for strategic foresight, I’m not sure that these kind of topics had more demand. You’ve always had a very small number of organizations that were cabled on that. I’m finding, there’s more interest in these and more and more, not just keynote talks, but executive programs or pathways to capacity building.
It’s not easy, just because you do a good session, even if you’re effective, and people are well-intentioned, that is easy. But I’m finding a lot of interest in that. I’m even finding the same for education for that matter. I’m seeing private groups who have educators who are asking me to do sessions for them to think about how to better allow their students to be capable with these topics. If you take the leverage points and Donella Meadows when you’re dealing with education, and then policy, and then the corporates, little by little, you’re doing a lot with the value chain around the drivers for change. It does have come back to a question. Being anticipatory, which is one of our triple A’s, and strategic foresight and those capabilities, I’m seeing more and more demand for, it’s better to have the awareness and the demands than not. I think we’re less and less relying on some well-known institutions who have their DNA in terms of this way of being anticipatory. I think it’s becoming more relevant to more people.
Ross: One of the challenges with foresight is anticipation. You can be in a mindset of anticipation and you can get foresight methodologies internally or get some great people externally and so on. Always originally, the whole thing was scenarios to strategy. We got some great scenarios, how do we turn those into strategy? That’s something I’m interested in. Also, the strategy is, again, around the decisions and I think there are plenty of organizations again, that go out and get some insights around the world far more than other organizations and leaders do so they’re more open and they look for things and they get help and they build foresight teams and so on, but still, how does that flow through to an actual decision? And so that’s still the snub where you’ve introduced more complexity, you evaded harder in a way because you’re bringing in more complexity. But that’s still, from that anticipatory frame or the actions you take, how does that then flow through into a decision-making process? And a decision at the end of that?
Roger: That’s one of the reasons why we don’t focus. For us, the capacity building is not just foresight strategy, or capabilities, because, to your point, you need to think about the outcomes. The simple answer is incentives determine outcomes. That’s not me, it’s Munger, of course. But ultimately, there are certain things in terms of the way the leaderships are cabled, the type of things to achieve alignment, the way of achieving certain outcomes that come through incentives and other means. If an organization is serious about changing how people think and behave and is more outcome-focused, then tick the box we have a team that does with foresight or whatever. Clearly, you go to the core of it. That’s where we think about things.
Anticipatory is more this kind of foresight, futures thinking, we then add anti-fragile, borrowed from Nassim Taleb, but the way we look at what is the organization. How rigid is it? How are the decisions made? How resilient to shocks is it? How does risk management work in terms of asymmetries? Are people still thinking that if it’s just 1%, it’s fine but if the 1% ends the world or your company, it’s an existential question, you need to look at the asymmetrical risk. Anti-fragility, which includes ways of having skin in the game, and it’s linked to decision-making, and it’s linked to incentives, actually has very important elements, which we unpack quite considerably in our frameworks in volume two. Even though we didn’t invent anti-fragility, I think we applied it quite well as to how it ties in with anticipatory and futures thinking. Then the third piece is, again, decision-making, scenario analysis, and all that is very important, everything is to inform decision-making today.
Coming back to the emergence, if you take the complexity, everything is emergent, though today and the reality exists, so how do you constantly zoom in, and zoom out? And what strategic and emergent agility do you have to zoom in from your longer-term envisioning and all that to emergence today, and that, again, has different elements that organizations can take on in terms of decision making, decentralization, training of people, or the right incentives. There’s no quick fix. But I do personally believe that if you have certain incentives that are focused on the right outcomes, that if people are more aware of it, that you bring in talent that’s more susceptible to adopters, that you have an understanding of being anticipatory, anti-fragile, and the agility to emerge with decision making today, reconciling long-term objectives as opposed to constant firefighting, because you’re anticipating it, you’re seeing the world differently, etc., those combinations of things with agency and then alignment are more likely than not to help. But yes, it’s not easy and not everybody is prepared to go through an understanding of the different facets.
Ross: Can you give an example? Let’s talk specifics. Presumably, either something you’ve seen where there’s public information, or if there’s a client where you can disguise the details, just some facet of whether it worked or hasn’t worked of how organizations or leadership teams can change, or improve. What are the specifics of how this has happened and how we’ve seen shifting in decision-making?
Roger: Let’s take something concrete. I’m, for instance, on the Climate Intelligence Council of a startup called Cervest, which is an AI company, which is focused on climate intelligence. What’s climate intelligence? Climate intelligence is allowing you to make decisions today on specific assets or investments based on very long-term uncertainties. What the state of climate and the weather and resilience needed might be in 5, 10, 15, 20 years. It’s in the long term, it’s uncertain and basically, you need to make decisions today in that. It fits quite well with the different parameters. They basically have 100-plus climate scientists, they’ve developed AI software. It’s open source, and they spend a lot of time educating clients, the world in many different ways, people like me, support, and others, around what are the world views, and understanding what’s happening.
They are then supporting with the disclosures, with understanding what’s happening with the regulators in terms of future disclosures that would provide feedback loops, what are good disclosures, bad disclosures, they’re helping companies themselves prepare for the accounts and all that with the required disclosures. As part of that, they are evaluating and giving a dashboard, which helps you, without predicting because we don’t have the certainty, but it helps to map out and plan the different possibilities for your assets over the next 5, 10, 15 years for the different possible climate eventualities, and see what your competitors are doing, what your assets are doing.
If you’re a hotel chain with 200 hotels, you need to decide, today, you need to understand, we all understand that mitigation is not enough for climate, we need to make our asset base in our lives more resilient and adaptable. What does that mean if I have a supply chain, if I am a city and I have the infrastructure, if I’m a hotel that I have 200 hotels, if I’m about to make an acquisition, basically, that hits. I think if you take leverage points and Donella Meadows in a complex systemic world, it’s looking at all the different facets because you’re a CEO or board or whatever management team, you’re looking and you can see, okay, I can see the different exposures and different risks, I understand that it’s not 100% sure that that will happen, but a lot of information and things that can be processed and mapped out in that, I see the different scenarios, you can decide how to make yourself resilient or not resilient for the different eventualities, etc. That might sound a bit basic, it’s just investments, but actually, it’s huge, because of the resilience of the world.
If there’s flooding, we’ve had big winds in San Francisco, suddenly even Salesforce tower and all these buildings that are built with the best architects and engineers in the world realized that you have glass falling through 80-story buildings or 30-story buildings because of how strong the wind is, and leaks everywhere, things collapsing, and this is California, there are places where there’s more extreme weather, so if you multiply that across the world for insurance, for decisions, for companies, it’s trillions of dollars, potentially, that are exposed, not to mention the number of lives and all that.
For me, decision-making is not just a company making decisions in a certain way but it’s also what they are enabling with the world, society, businesses, organizations, and countries, what decisions they are allowing them to make to be more resilient. I think this is quite a good example. Because I’m not pushing for them. I’m rooting for them, but I’m not lobbying for them in that sense. But it really hits the different elements of long-term uncertainty, emergent decisions today that need to be concrete, building resiliency into our systems and thinking if you have the information, the mindset and you can see, you’re able to make the decisions, you’re getting the data to then decide what decisions to make. It’s not a kind of black box in terms of what information is provided, etc. I think, as an example, that I think, is not a bad example.
Ross: Yes, certainly, in terms of climate, there’s a lot of uncertainty, massive impacts, and decisions now are critical. I think as you suggest, I’m in terms of having both the right sorts of information and the frameworks to assess it, I think it can be extraordinarily valuable, and the scope of information is critical. To round out, you obviously, I would say Thrive on Overload, you soak in lots of information, you make sense of it, you are a foresight practitioner amongst other things, so what are three things that you do in your practices and how you work with information that you think might be useful for other people to consider in how they interface with information.
Roger: When I saw your work, I was very interested because first of all, the thriving on was something I had approached as well. But it’s probably one of the biggest challenges today irrespective of how one uses AI to support or not, just simply the noise from the rest. To your point, as you professionalize foresight and then futures, the trick is that you’re seeing even more things. Because you want to go abroad, you’re going to be on the fringe and everything you know.
I would say the three things are the following for me, personally. Number one is when I’m looking to spot the weak signals is to just start allowing the themes to connect the shifting dots. Serendipity has a big role to play with that, which is why for the wonders of AI, serendipity is often where I get the greatest ideas from, I find them great, whether the outside world does is another matter. But the idea is I’m proud and happy about often come from serendipity. That’s just scanning a heck of a log and seeing things, it’s what patterns come, what clusters, not in a kind of AI, I’ve processed the million random things, but, in terms of you, Ross, or Sarah, or me, Roger, connecting the shifting dots.
The next thing and that is broad, we’re going outside of our fields of expertise and everything we know, we’re going wide, deep, etc. The second thing is thinking about what are the next thought implications of that, at that point, I’m almost intentionally trying to drop the information not to be overloaded. I’m trying to intentionally isolate myself whether it’s through meditation or Beginner’s Mind, Shoshin, and Eastern philosophy, or how do I get a blank page to imagine and be inspired by the multiple possibilities and think about the next thought implications of what that means. There is no data on the future. That is important for me. That is where I think humans, to our earlier discussion, need to enhance our capabilities of imagining the next thought implications to avoid, to enhance preparation, and then avoid the surprise of things that are necessarily rushed or unprepared.
The third thing is scanning continuously in a way to evaluate and compare how things are changing. Again, it’s very subjective. Sometimes it’s inspiration even, it’s not necessarily just monitoring data and creating feedback loops from what the computer says, it’s thinking about how new do things feel, how might they compound, how might they impact which then links to the next thought implication. For me, it’s connecting the shifting dots, imagining the next thought implications, and thinking about that in a dynamic world, because constantly, the world is updating itself, so our ideas and our thoughts and our perspectives of the world also need to be emergent and constantly updated.
Ross: Yes, that’s great. As I was referring to before, the humanity; this is what humans are good at, the way our brains work is around the cognition. I think that’s fantastic to pull out from this is the way our minds can bring things together. Thanks so much for your time and your insights today, Roger, it’s fantastic. Just to round out, where should people go if they want to find out more about your work?
Roger: Thanks a lot for that. So to follow all the content, it’s basically whether it’s LinkedIn, YouTube, etc., Disruptive Futures Institute, so follow the Disruptive Futures Institute and the handles on Twitter and Instagram @disrupt_futures, but Google us and you’ll be fine, Disruptive Future Institute. If you’re specifically interested in learning more about the books, there’s a dedicated website thrivingondisruption.com. We also have detailed articles on every single one of the volumes to know what’s in it as well as podcasts and a lot of other information. The dedicated books, thrivingondisruption.com for the guidebooks, and then just generally follow the institute, Disruptive Futures Institute. We’re trying to beef up how much is free and available for anybody.
Ross: Fabulous, great resources; that’ll all be in the show notes. Thank you, Roger.
Roger: My pleasure, Ross. Have a good rest of the day. Enjoy it.
“AI will allow us to triage increasing amounts of information so that we can identify what we should dive into in more detail and extract value from.”– Sam Barton
About Sam BartonSam is a product manager, a personal knowledge management expert, host of the deep dive podcast Talk of Today, and also a product manager for two major products in Ross Dawson’s startup Informivity.
*Website:* Sam H Barton
*Twitter:* @Samhbarton
*Apple Podcast:* Talk of Today
*Spotify:* Talk of Today
*YouTube:* Talk of Today
What you will learn Utilizing technology for efficient note-taking (02:28) * Personal knowledge management with Roam, Notion, Logseq, and Obsidian (03:47) * Using Readwise and Todoist for workflow and note-taking (04:59) * Exploring connected note-taking apps – comparing Obsidian and Notion (10:09) * The power of externalizing thoughts through knowledge management tools and AI (12:46) * The future of personal knowledge management (13:32) * Externalizing knowledge to make it accessible and effective (15:20) * The potential of digital assistants and notetakers to assist in managing information and improving productivity (15:45) * How generative AI helps users dive into more beneficial information (17:24) * Features of the “Ideal Tool” that provides automatic AI summaries for sources (18:38) * The need for the ability to discern authorship and authenticity (22:47) * The probable emergence of personal tutors and new forms of libraries (24:13) * Tool recommendations to thrive on information overload (27:20) Episode resources Roam Research * Notion * Logseq * Obsidian * Readwise * Todoist TranscriptRoss Dawson: Sam, it’s awesome to have you on the show.Sam Barton: Hey, great to be here, Ross.
Ross: You are passionate about trying to work well with lots of information and manage your knowledge and so on. How come? Where did all this start for you?
*Sam:* I’ve always loved technology. I’ve always tried to keep abreast of all of the latest updates and just check out new tools and how they work. I think I stumbled into it in a way because I was using all of these different tools, and they had all of these capabilities, and as a consequence of using these tools, I started amassing a collection of notes rather easily because of the automation that some of these tools made available. Suddenly, I had lots of data to work with and I thought, this data can be put to use in a way.I was working on various different things. I always work on various different things, for better or for worse, so having a way of going through the information that I have and organizing it in such ways that it’s actually useful. I was running a podcast, I was studying, I was working, so I had lots of balls in the air and I needed to find a way to keep those balls in the air.
Ross: What was the first software that you found useful on that journey?
Sam: That’s a good question. Roam Research captured my imagination. It got me very excited for this world of personal knowledge management, though it wasn’t as useful as I was expecting it to be. Notion is an app that I have been using consistently for the past few years. Even though it hasn’t gripped me in the same way, as some of these other tools, I have found myself using it the most for getting work done and tracking things. In the past, and currently, I use tools like Roam, or if not Roam, now Logseq or Obsidian. We can get into those later if you want. I’ve been using those for managing notes like book notes, podcast questions, and a whole array of things. Basically, stuff that I capture online, and then Notion is where the production happens.
Ross: How about in terms of the idea captures? You always come across something cool or interesting, which is stimulating, but you don’t necessarily know where or how, then where would you put it?
Sam: My workflow at the moment is I take advantage of Readwise. Readwise is an app that does a variety of different things. It’s evolved recently. The big thing is it allows you to capture content in the various areas that you come across it online, on Kindle, and elsewhere. It deposits that information automatically into a note-taking app of your choice or in the Readwise app itself. I had a Twitter addiction, I deleted it recently. That was a good and bad move, I think, because I’m less plugged in. But what I would do is if I came across anything interesting, I would just send it to Readwise, and I would have it tagged with #inbox so that I would know when I go into my notetaking app, I need to process this, I need to put this in an area that makes sense. I’ve also used Todoist to play that role as well. If I come across something, I would just throw it quickly into Todoist and tag it with the relative tags: work, podcast, or whatever, and I’d get to it later. I will say that my process is not perfect and it definitely needs a bit of work.
Ross: Nobody’s process is perfect.
Sam: Yes, I still have lots of frustrations with mine. For one, remembering to process your inbox is a chore. Maybe it’s one of those things that you just have to do.
Ross: Where’s the inbox?
Sam: My inbox was Logseq. Logseq is an open-source free version of Roam Research. That was where I was initially. I’ve moved to Obsidian recently because with these connected notetaking apps, you can hashtag or link items, do a quick search, and filter for many different things, and that’s one way of organizing and getting access to content. But folders are still very useful I’ve come to discover. Being able to just put something in a folder and access it in some hierarchical manner is very useful. From what I’ve learned, or from the research that I’ve done, Obsidian is the best app that allows you to make the most of both worlds.You can organize things hierarchically in folders, but you can also, with tags, surface things when you need them. I’ve started moving to Obsidian. I do have some gripes with it but it’s high customizability and getting into the weeds and owning your data. I contrast it with Notion, where everything’s set up in a very structured way, but you don’t own your data so it’s not as future-proof. I’m currently in that space of tossing up whether or not I stick with Obsidian and just let that be my home for everything or I just bite the bullet and go with Notion because the returns initially will be greater. But in the future, having complete control over my data is the way to go.
Ross: I use Obsidian, Notion, and Google Docs amongst other things. That’s always one of the issues, either you’re choosing a central platform, a single platform for everything or you’re making a decision about what goes where. At the moment, there’s a logic as in Obsidian is for me more of the idea. Here’s the idea, this little snippet, a reference or an image, or something which I can go, organize and get access to whereas Notion is where the structure happens. As you talked about Notion being that place where work gets done. I don’t think Obsidian is a work-getting-done tool. Though I’m sure some people put it to a good effect in that way. Just working out the boundaries as to if no one told us at all, then how do you continuously rebalance what goes where?
Sam: It frustrates me because having everything in one place is very powerful, just being able to manage, let’s say, all of your resources, reference notes, and everything, and then just being able to seamlessly integrate that. Let’s say I’m writing an essay, a workflow for me would be to read various books or PDFs and highlight them. My workflow allows for all of those highlights to be automatically added to my second brain, so Obsidian or Logseq. A really useful workflow is just being able to take all those highlights and then just put them into my working document, so that I can write with all of the content right there. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. I end up having to get all those notes there, and then move to Notion, and then port everything over there and try reworking it.The reason why that’s a problem. It doesn’t sound like a problem. That’s normal and that’s how it normally happens. But the benefit of these connected notetaking apps is that you can see the providence. Where did that note or insight come from? If I’ve got a highlight, this highlight came from this book in this section, and it’s really easy to reference and look at later. In the future, I could say, where are all the places that I have referenced this highlight in all my work? And maybe there are 10 places. Now that’s very useful because you have the graph of knowledge that expands across time and becomes more useful. There’s this positive feedback loop between data. But when you just move it over to the workspace, you lose all of that. I would really like Obsidian to play that role for me. I see it as a niche hacker-ish tool. It’s a tool for hackers, and people who like to tweak things, and it’s not user-friendly enough for the sorts of things that I would like to do with it, given the amount of time that I have, but I do think that it’s in the right direction.
Ross: I recently gave a keynote to 250 innovation professionals and I asked at one point, ‘Who’s heard of Rome Research or Obsidian?’, and one person put their hand up. She’s an avid user.It’s interesting that these are, as I’ve referred to them before, geek tools, and that’s the challenge, is that they are great for geeks, but we need tools that are more accessible to others that don’t necessarily like going into the weeds like that. But pulling back, we’ve used the phrase ‘personal knowledge management.’ For me, these note-taking tools, I think of them as knowledge development tools. As in, how do they help us be more knowledgeable, to build our mental models, to understand better? I’d love to just pull back from the specific tools around thinking how is it that you, as your knowledge, your insight, your perspectives, what is the big frame for you in being able to support that, being more knowledgeable, essentially?”
Sam: Yeah, it’s a great question. I don’t have a very good answer for it because my brain still acts as the main brain.
Ross: Yes, as it should be.
Sam: Though I do have a strong desire to externalize a lot of it so that it’s accessible not only to me; but, especially today with the rise of generative AI tools, the more I can get out of my head and digitized, the more effective my thoughts will be, if that makes sense. Because I’ve taken things that are in here, like things that I’ve found myself, and put them into a knowledge management tool, and then I can work with the AI to explore all of these ideas and refine them and do all that stuff. The frame that I have around this at the moment is we’re just at the beginning. We’re still at step one. Maybe like pen and paper was 0.1, Microsoft Word was 0.2. We’re still at the very beginnings of personal knowledge management and working with external technologies to really amplify. Amplify might not be the right word but to immerse ourselves in this information and work with it in a more collaboratively way so it’s not just my brain throwing things, and arguments happening in my brain, but I’m having a conversation with the knowledge that I have come across, but also have synthesized and put together in my own words. I don’t know if that’s an answer to your question, but that’s how I am thinking about it at the moment.
Ross: No, I think that’s a really important point as the times when I’ve gained the most insight is being in conversations. Sometimes things I said, not what the other person said, were what we both said. I say things like, ‘Oh, wow, I’m interested in what I just said,’ or then indeed you’re having a conversation with someone else, and they’re saying something else, and you get a refinement or addition. When you’re sitting and reading and making notes and pulling things together, yes, that’s valuable. But in a way, most of the really big insights happen in a conversational frame. As you say, now that we have AI that can potentially play that role well, that could be an extraordinary tool for knowledge development.
Sam: Yes, just on that point, something that I’ve been thinking about; I’m very talkative, and I love talking to people. One of the reasons I started the podcast was like, “Oh, well, maybe I can make a living just chatting with people.” That sounds spectacular, chatting about ideas. I’m not very good at sitting down and writing notes and doing all sorts of things but I love chatting about things like this. With the rise of generative AI and transcriptions and all that, we could actually have conversations like this, the transcript gets automatically dumped wherever, and maybe in a year or so, the notes that we would have taken manually will just get pulled out by AI and tagged and all sorts of wonderful things would happen to them so that I don’t need to do anything. It reminds me of back in the day, in ancient Greek philosophy days, 2,000 years ago, none of the philosophers, the big dogs, weren’t writing things down. They would have students who would recall things and take notes and everything. They said oh, no, writings, we’re not about that, we’re just going to be talking about it. They didn’t have the patience to write things down. I’m not comparing myself to them, maybe just in terms of my laziness. But now we will have these digital students, or digital notetakers, and digital assistants, who’ll really help us with all that now. I’m here for it.
Ross: Yes. How else have you found the generative AI tools to be useful in your knowledge? The tools are very pragmatic in terms of being able to use them for all kinds of work, but how have you found them useful in terms of thinking better?
Sam: It’s a good question. I would say that they haven’t been as useful yet, though there’s a lot of promise. There are some ways in which I’ve used generative AI to understand things like just copy some text and get the AI to explain it to me in a different way, reframe it, or maybe combine ideas in a certain way. That’s been the most useful way so far. Knowledge is tough, but inputs are easy; if that makes sense. Inputs precede knowledge. But what the AI will do, the benefits that we’ll see is these generative AI will allow us to triage increasing amounts of information so that we can identify what we should dive into in more detail and extract value from. So right now, if I come across something that I want to read later, I would tag it, throw it into my inbox, and maybe read it later. To read it later, I actually have to read it. But now I can click summarize and maybe get a rough summary of it, and have an idea.A tool that I would love to exist right now is something where I could put in all the sources that I would like to keep up to date with, and every time they create something new, let’s say, it’s a blog, every time there’s a new blog or a new podcast, or if it’s a Twitter personality, their Twitter threads, or whatever, if I had an automatic AI summary generated, and I had a feed of summaries that I could then say, ‘Oh, actually, that’s very interesting. I’m going to go and dive further into that,’. Basically, increasing the, I wouldn’t say signal to noise, but just extracting the key insights from each piece of information so that I can process more and dive deeper into things that are worth going, diving more deeply into, because there’s so much information being created today, and it’s a bit overwhelming.
Ross: Essentially saying, you work out what the sources that you think are promising, and then you get the system to provide summaries or just key points and things you’re interested in from each of those so that you can go and follow each of those if you think it’s worth delving deeper into.
Sam: Yes, exactly. One tool that’s doing this better than anything else at the moment is Readwise. Readwise does have a reader app. You can send PDFs, online articles, anything you come across online, Twitter threads, YouTube videos, and podcasts now, and you can read it, view it, and consumes it in the Readwise app. They’ve got something called the Ghostreader. You can just click a button and it generates a summary. That’s a step in the right direction. I just want an interface on top of that, with the summaries already generated so that I can filter information more effectively and dive deeper into things I think are worth exploring.
Ross: Yes, I see that tool to be extremely valuable. But I also wonder it still just provides the text and text summaries. There’s still this brain, the wetware of our minds. Obviously, there are some images and other types of content, but a lot of this is text, and maybe summarize text, we can delve deeper, but there is still this step between how it is the different pieces and elements that we come across, and be able to build a lattice of knowledge from that. It’s a step beyond, again, where we can find the best things, but also then find how it is we pull these together into our lattices of knowledge.
Sam: That just harkens back to the discussion of Obsidian versus Notion, owning your data versus not owning your data because if you have all these summaries, and you have all this information that’s tailored to your desires, to your interests, to your needs, then you can see them all connected together and interact with them in this spatial way. I’m just thinking of the graphs that Obsidian puts out or the Obsidian, Roam, and Logseq, so you can just see all of your different notes connected and how they’re connected. I think that’s a very useful development. But right now, there’s just too much friction involved with that, but probably not for too long; maybe by next week, seeing the pace of this generative AI explosion, we’ll probably be there in not too long.
Ross: Just looking at that broader space, the intersection of personal knowledge management or our ability to make sense of information and build our knowledge with AI, is there anything else, in particular, you’ve found exciting, which you have seen already or where you see the potential of that coming? Where’s the edge of where you see possibilities now and coming up soon?
Sam: I’ve got two answers to this question. The first thing that springs to mind is actually a negative. We now have the capacity to generate very convincing content at scale, and we have no way of discerning facts from fiction. COVID has made this very apparent. Now it’s already happening, but over the next five years or so, we’re going to see deep fakes, generated audio and video, have quite a big impact on people’s worldviews, and collective truth will just become a myth, at least in the near term. What I’m excited in this space is the development of decentralized identity tools, a weld coin is a good example.They’ve been in development for a while but they have led to building a decentralized, privacy-preserving identity solution so that people can prove their humanity. What we need ASAP is the ability to discern; if I’m reading someone on Twitter, if I’m seeing a post from someone on Twitter, I know that they’re a person and I know through some cryptographic key that they’ve signed authorship through some cryptographic signature, they were indeed the origins of that post. That’s something that I’m excited about. Well, excited is not the right word, I see that that’s something at the front of my mind.
Ross: It is what you’re excited about?
Sam: Yes. It’s communities of people who have shared interests coming together to create libraries on certain topics. An example that springs to mind is the whole John Vervaeke space, the Meaning crisis, philosophy, and civilization. There’s a lot of conversation happening in a distributed way on Twitter and YouTube about our collective stage, the challenges that we face, and what sorts of changes, in the way that we operate individually and collectively, maybe we need to undertake to be able to deal with the challenges that we face. There’s no Wikipedia page for it. There’s no ongoing collection of information that I can go into and just review that’s been updated in real time so that I can keep abreast of the developments there. These tools, with some curators, we’ll see new forms of libraries appear with people who are paid librarians, who are AI wizards, who will update these knowledge resources, these libraries in real-time using artificial intelligence. There’ll be digital gardens that tend to themselves in a way and emerge. That’s something very wonderful and exciting. The other thing is personal tutors. That’s the other thing, just being able to have a tutor on anything and it being tailored to myself. I can’t wait for that.
Ross: Just on the point around the curated gardens of knowledge, I think the last episode with Ida Josefina, with their product Sane, which is not yet publicly launched, but looks very much to the intent of what you are describing and it looks very promising and interesting. That human curation element is very interesting, sane.io, I believe. Pulling back, you have been very effective. One thing about you, Sam, is you keep on trying lots of tools all the time and learning what is best, which is not just what the software is, but how you use that. There are plenty of other people that don’t either have the time or spend the time to go and explore and try things and see how they work. I’d love to pull back to just get your recommendations for anybody that’s immersed in a world of information and looking to build their knowledge effectively. Not just talking about software, but just more generally, what are your recommendations? What are the things you would advise to someone to thrive in a world of overload, to amplify their cognition?
Sam: Yes, the first one is Readwise, particularly if you read eBooks, because you can just easily capture highlights seamlessly, and they just get saved. My recommendations are largely based on minimum effort.
Ross: That’s a good principle.
Sam: I would say, a recording app. You can choose whichever one you want. Otter.ai is one example or the Google Recorder, basically, an app that allows you to, whenever you have a thought, just click a button and capture the thought in real-time. Just speak and have a transcription generated so that you can leverage that later. The reason why that’s useful, particularly today, is if you have an idea, and you get it out, and it’s machine-readable, so you get the transcript; with generative AI, you can turn that into whatever. You could turn it into a blog post, meeting notes, or an outline for a book, you’re just limited by your capacity to work with these tools. It’s all about capturing useful information, so Readwise, a recording app; I would say a tool that integrates.Let’s say capturing is finished, the last set of tools I recommend relating to curation. I have used Notion extensively and it’s continuing to get better and better, particularly with the integration of AI. I would recommend using a tool that allows you to integrate generative AI into your workflows seamlessly. Because we now live in an age where you can be 10 times more effective than your peers, if you’re a knowledge worker, this isn’t just being a programmer, it’s not about just being a 10x programmer now. If you know your way around tools, around this generative AI space, you can literally be 10 times more productive than your peers or 100 times if you’re incredibly strategic and creative. I would say find a tool, I think Notion is one of the best examples of that at the moment that you can just use to do what you do normally but throw some AI in there as well. Coda is another one to I would say.I would love to know Coda in more detail. But I’ve spent enough time with Notion that I might just wait for them to catch up. But if you’re just starting out, I would look into both. Consider what your needs are, and then make a decision. Just look at a YouTube video Coda versus Notion and make the decision. Those would be my top things.
Ross: Just beyond technology, any attitudes, habits, behaviors, or anything else which you think is important?
Sam: Yes, openness. So, if you can cultivate an open mind and a propensity to try new things. We are in the most atypical time in human history, possibly. We are going through a massive change literally as the days go by things are changing and it’s not just generative AI, we’re all very excited by that, but we have this confluence of technologies coming together that are all accelerating at a relatively exponential rate and they all feedback on each other. This is a positive feedback loop. That’s why I call it the Law of Accelerating Returns, returns to something. Things are going to be changing very quickly, they are, and they are going to continue to change. To be able to engage with this turbulent world effectively and not going to not get overwhelmed, we need to try to not be rigid. We need to try to be as flexible as possible but within reason. That’s my advice, just be open to new things.
Ross: Open but not too open.
Sam: Yes.
Ross: One of the problems with openness is that you can be open to all sorts of incorrect information, for example, but that’s in Thriving on Overload. That was one of the key points I made that openness is not just extraordinarily valuable. It is something that we can cultivate in ourselves, and it pays off in spades in a fast-moving world.
Sam: Yes, definitely.
Ross: Anywhere where people can go to find out more about what you do?
Sam: Yes. I only really use Twitter these days. I’m @Samhbarton on Twitter, and my website is the same thing: samhbarton.com.
Ross: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time and your insights, Sam.
Sam: Alright, thanks for having me, Ross.
“Jump in there really be an active participant in the industry, because it’s also about that. How are you becoming a voice, an active participant in the idea sharing and everything that’s being built?*“*– Cathy Hackl
About Cathy HacklOn this episode we learn from Cathy Hackl, a leading tech futurist and globally recognized business leader specializing in augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), & spatial computing. She is the CEO of Futures Intelligence Group, a futures research & consulting firm that works with clients in tech, fashion, media, government, and defense. BigThink named Cathy “one of the top 10 most influential women in tech in 2020”.
Business Website: Futures Intelligence Group
Personal Website: www.cathyhackl.com
LinkedIn: Cathy Hackl
Facebook: Cathy Hackl
Instagram: Cathy Hackl
Twitter: @CathyHackl
Books
The Augmented Workforce: How AI, AR and 5G Will Impact Every Dollar You Make
Marketing New Realities: An Introduction to Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality Marketing, Branding & Communications
What you will learn Cathy is a voracious consumer of information and loves conversations (03:08) * But all that information is constantly refined (06:35) * It starts with keywords (08:51) * And being selective (10:01) * Tagging is it, especially high level topics (10:50) * She has developed her thought process over time (13:02) * Asking the right questions… (16:08) * …then hypnagoia (19:00) * Blocking time on her calendar and turning off distractions (21:40) * How Cathy became the metaverse expert (24:17) * When is the right time to share an idea (32:51) Episode resources Feedly * Leo * Medium * Diigo * Google Docs TranscriptRoss Dawson: Cathy, it is awesome to have you on the Thriving on Overload show.
Cathy Hackl: Awesome. Happy to be here.
Ross: Cathy, you keep across the edge of emerging technologies. There’s a lot of information to keep across, a lot of new things. How do you do it?
Cathy: It’s interesting because when I was looking at some of the questions that you sent over for this, I started to really try to think about, “How do I organize this? How am I doing this?” I’m a voracious consumer of information like a lot of folks are in our industry. How do you organize everything? How do you make sense of all of it?
How do I do it? I would say I wake up, I read a huge amount of news—mostly focused on technology, because that is kind of where I spend most of my time. I consider myself a tech futurist. I’m very much focused on the technology, having been working in this space inside these companies for several years now.
Definitely, start reading a lot of different information. If there’s something really interesting, I’ll flag it with different services that I use. Sometimes I’ll forward it to one of my assistants and ask them to put it in different programs. We have Google Docs right now—to be honest, as simple as that—on metaverse things. I’m very focused on the metaverse.
Back in January, you didn’t have that many metaverse headlines. Now, it’s like every single headline in tech is a metaverse headline or something like that. We used to have a Google Doc where we used to keep those a little bit. Now, it’s getting a little bit more complicated. We use tools like Diigo, for example, to keep things organized. I have a very well-organized Feedly to also keep tabs of things and keep organized, kind of know what are the sources I want to get information from.
I mean, lots of scanning, lots of reading lots. I will say a lot of information that I do get, I also get from conversations, especially right now with the metaverse becoming such a hot topic and lots of people wanting to talk to me about it. Sometimes it might be as simple as like, “I’m launching the X project.” Before, I might have been like, “I don’t have time.” But now, I want to hear what they’re doing. What is it that they’re doing in the space?
Sometimes those conversations, not always, they don’t lead to anything. But sometimes I’ll find out something I didn’t know, or I’ll know this is interesting. This brand’s thinking of doing this. That’s gonna be happening, what does that mean? What is that a signal of? It’s a bit of a process. Especially in my field because it’s evolving so fast, it’s hard to keep up. What was new yesterday might be old by today in the technology space, because it’s moving so fast.
Another thing I do is I publish a weekly column in Forbes called Metaverse Weekly. That forces me as well to always keep on top and try to make sure that I have the freshest news and the most relevant news and those sorts of things. Sometimes I do get that information via a PR pitch; it’s not my preferred way. So, it’s a combination of all these different sources of information. I don’t have one place I go, it’s a multitude of places and sources.
Ross: You say in the morning you scan and you look around. You mentioned you use Feedly. Essentially, you’re choosing feeds to go into your Feedly, and that’s been curated over some time I guess? Do you continue to refine or add?
Cathy: I continue to refine all the time. They’ve got some interesting AI tools called Leo that you can use to help you as well, make it more tailored. But I don’t only do that. I use my Feedly, but I also go into Google News. I go into Apple News. I like to see how the different algorithms and everything presents the news to me. Of the different things, there might be something I missed.
When I go, for example, into Apple News or Google News, I tend to always go to the technology tab because you know they’ve got headlines. I tend to always go to business or tech. But I force myself to go to international or go to other ones, even though that’s not necessarily my main interest. But I’m forcing myself to go to these other tabs because there might be something I’m missing here. There might be something happening in X country that I was not aware of that could impact X. So, forcing myself like that.
I’m very lucky that I have a team. I also have my team finding news and curating those. I have them send me a small metaverse review of the of the Daily News, things that could be of interest to me. They’ll send me something on a daily basis. It will be like a headline, small summary, and then the link if I want to read more. So, I also have that added bonus of having a team that also helps me with this.
Ross: When you’re scanning and you see all of these articles, some of them you say, “I want to bookmark that, I want to put it in a list.” What is it that makes it something which is worth seeing? What switches the trigger to say, “This goes in my database” or “I got to pay attention to this?”
Cathy: It starts with keywords, especially with the metaverse. It started with the keyword “metaverse.” Now that there’s a lot more metaverse content, we have to be a little bit more selective. What is the actual topic here? Who’s actually interviewed? Who’s actually saying this?
There’s an article a couple weeks ago when you had Mark Zuckerberg say that Facebook was going to go from being a social media company to a metaverse company. You pay attention to that, right? That’s something you save. Satya Nadella in an earnings call saying the metaverse is one of our goals, you save that article because that is a significant statement by significant figure.
I think it started off with a keyword, just anything metaverse, because we didn’t have that much metaverse coverage. Now that there’s a lot more, it’s being a little bit more selective. Who’s interviewed? What’s really the topic? I love going, for example to Medium, to find maybe some new voices. But it doesn’t mean that every single article on Medium that uses the term metaverse is relevant to me or that is a well- thought out article. Be very selective on the sources. Who wrote this?
It’s interesting because I’ve seen the evolution with the metaverse on who is writing about it, who’s writing about it now, what is the context. Are they just using it for clicks in the headline nowadays? It evolved. Whereas before, you might have metaverse in your in your headline and it wasn’t necessarily something that people would click on. Now, a lot of people are putting it in the headline because people will click on it. It’s been interesting to see this evolution on how I’ve been tracking metaverse as a general mega trend.
Ross: When you put in Diigo or Google Doc or whatever, what happens to that then? Is that for later reference? Do you have some tags to that? You’re accumulating all of this, when do you refer back to that, or how does that help you build that bigger picture?
Cathy: When we’re doing Metaverse Weekly, sometimes we’ll tag Metaverse Weekly, so we know we got to pull this in, and at least I know some of the stories that I’ve organized for Metaverse Weekly in Forbes. I’m writing a book. I got an international book deal.
Ross: Congratulations.
Cathy: I’m very happy about that. It’s on the metaverse.
Ross: Surprise, surprise.
Cathy: Of course. I’m saving things there as well, tagging it in the book, whatever we’re putting there. Definitely tagging with different things, and it’s going depend on what I’m doing. I’m working, for example, on an article on defense in the metaverse, working with it with Lieutenant Colonel Jake Sotiriadis who’s widely known in strategic foresight. I’m keeping tabs on that so that when he and I have to actually sit down and write the article, I can just pull that information.
Sometimes those links just live there. Sometimes I won’t do anything with them, sometime I will. You just really never know in the tech space, to be honest. Something could happen tomorrow where I might have tagged something, synthetic humanoid robot, for example. Then Elon Musk’s goes on stage and talks about his Tesla AI, and everyone’s like, “What is this synthetic humanoid robot?” Sometimes they’ll live there, nothing will happen. But sometimes something will just happen in technology, and of a sudden I have all this research already done on some of these things.
Ross: You build up your own tag taxonomy or structure? Do you virtually tag a book or just high-level topics?
Cathy: High-level topics. But they’re high level topics to me, right? Synthetic humanoid robots is a topic for me because I’ve been writing about it for a while. That seems pretty specific for someone else, it’s not just robots.
Ross: What always intrigues me about this is we got this wealth of information. You’re obviously understanding the space, as well as anyone else in the world. Does that all just happen in the gray matter in your brain? Do you do some mapping to draw correlations? Do you draw out themes, or does it all just happen as you’re writing your weekly articles and your books? What is that process of taking all of those sources, those inputs, “I already know that, that’s new, that’s another angle?” How does that add to the comprehension that you have?
Cathy: I think it’s something that you build through the years, to be honest. I started off my career as a journalist, right? When you’re a journalist, you got to keep your sources straight. You got to keep all that information. I think it comes from having been a journalist and having kept things organized in my mind, as you write the story and as you report on the story, especially if it’s something that takes you months to report on. It’s interesting, it definitely brings some of that things I learned from journalism into the space. I would say it’s something that you’ve built through the years when you start to see some of the things.
For me, it’s a little bit strange because I do get a chance to try a lot of things that a lot of people don’t get to try or get to see, a lot of things that people have never seen or will see in a couple years. I can’t necessarily store that somewhere because there’s NDAs and stuff, so I can’t just be storing it. But I’ll keep it in my head. Eventually, if I see something else I’m like, “That’s how that’s going work,” or “That’s related to that specific thing that I saw the other day.”
I think it’s a lot of mental models in some way. Sometimes it’s something that I’ve seen, that I’ve written an NDA and I can’t really go write about it or share it. I just kind of start it, I guess, in my mind. That has happened, I would say, in a lot of some of the things that I’ve been able to demo and see. Eventually I’ll see something, a startup or something, and I’ll be like, “That startup is related to this other thing to this.” I think it’s a lot of mental maps for me. I’m probably very different than some of the people you interviewed because my work is a little bit different. Sometimes I can’t even put it down on paper. There’s way too many in the AI side, and I just have to store it here. I would say it’s about mental mapping, for me.
A lot of it comes from the conversations I have, the questions I ask when I’m demoing a new piece of tech or things like that. It might be different to some of the folks that you speak to, because I do have to keep some of these things stored in my mind without being able to publicly speak about some of the things—or even writing things down.
Ross: In the questions you ask or the conversations you have, I suppose part of those questions then are trying to uncover what is new, which is different, whether it fits or not with your existing models?
Cathy: Most of the things I’m trying are different and are new. Whatever question I ask is going to be new. Even though I’m not necessarily the most technical person, sometimes there will be technical questions, because I do have a grasp of some of the technical things that go into building some of these devices of the future.
Sometimes I’ll try something that is so new that I’m just quiet, I’m just in awe. I’m like, “How did you build this?” My question won’t be as informed or technical. Sometimes when it’s something that is exciting but it’s something that isn’t as new—new to me—I’ll have more technical questions. I’ll pull them and be like, “I had demoed X other device, how is this different?” I can pull those questions.
But sometimes when something is so, so new and you don’t have a frame of reference for this something new, you’re just trying to make sense of what this is. Some of the questions might be more elemental, not as informed. But I love what I do because it’s so exciting and it’s so fresh. Sometimes it doesn’t always happen. But sometimes I’ll demo something and I’ll just be like, “What was that,” just trying to, in my mind, to make sense of it, let alone the rest of the population.
Once again, to that point, I feel like my experience is going to be very different than a lot of other folks. I’m very hands on, very tech focused, and I get to demo some of these things years before anyone does.
Ross: Anyone that’s familiar with your LinkedIn feed, for example, and imagining some of the things which you can’t share—which are even beyond that—they’ll know you’ve seen some pretty amazing stuff.
Cathy: If someone were to hack my brain, I think they’d have a lot of information. So, don’t do it people, please don’t.
Ross: The problem, I suppose, is the synthesis. Is there a state of mind? Do you find that sometimes when you get these “ahas” you sort of get this into perspectives and to framing things? Is there anything which makes that more likely to happen? Can you design those times when you get those insights?
Cathy: I tend to have really some of those moments. I think there were a couple of times that I know I have those moments. Something I learned from Amy Webb is brown noise. She uses it a lot to concentrate. I’ve started to use it, and that really, really helps me get to that next level and really focus, when I need to be very focused and very productive. That’s one little thing. I’ll have those moments, right? It’s kind of a state of flow where your mind is just in it, and eventually this connects and this connects. So, I have that.
Other times—and this happens to me all the time, my husband hates it—is right when I’m about to fall asleep, I’m trying to calm my mind—which is not calm—it will come to me. It will just come to me and I’ll make a connection of it, this and this, and then grab my phone and write something, grab a piece of paper or something, He hates it. Everyone’s trying to go to sleep at home and I’m like, “No, but I have an idea and I need to do this.” I’ll have those moments that happens sometimes, and it’s usually at that time. I’m trying to calm my brain. I’m trying to disconnect from the world. All of a sudden, boom, it’s there and connection is made; I totally understand, and I see something I didn’t see before.
If it’s me wanting to have that time to really kind of start to make some of these connections, it’s focused time, brown noise—really very focused and studious. Sometimes it’s just that, I’m at a point where I’m relaxing, I’m getting rid of all the craziness of the day. I’ve got three kids, it’s one of those things, I’m getting rid of the craziness of the day. All of a sudden, boom, there it is. Sometimes it’s deliberate, the brown noise time. But sometimes it’s just like this moment where, boom, it just happens.
Ross: It’s called hypnagogia, the time between sleep and waking. Thomas Edison, amongst others, used to use that and have some notes ready, so that when he when he was falling asleep he could jot down his latest invention.
Cathy: I’m not necessarily inventing things, but it comes to me at times.
Ross: It’s inside.
Cathy: “I get it, I totally see it now.”
Ross: You talked about these focus times, there are times when you block out. How do you block that out? When do you block that out? The brown noises are usually interesting, how do you how do you organize your focus time?
Cathy: I’ll put blocks in my calendar on a weekly basis, it doesn’t mean they happen.
Ross: The world happens.
Cathy: Kids happen, pets happen, lots of other stuff happens during those block times sometimes, pediatricians or whatever it is. I have blocks, but it doesn’t necessarily mean they happen. I have two blocks on my calendar, and it bothers me every single time I look at them. I’m like, “Am I really sticking to this block? I don’t know like. Friday afternoons I’m trying to block off to do those sorts of things, it just ends up being something like, “Mommy, take me to the pool.” So, I’m trying.
Sometimes, even though they’re blocked on my calendar, it might be something that just happens. I’ve got an hour in between calls, let me do some of that now. I’m not maybe as structured or as rigid as some folks with their calendar, in that sense. I have blocks for it, it doesn’t always happen though. Sometimes it will just be I’ve got an hour, like I said, between calls, let me focus and really get this project done or this research done.
Ross: Do you turn off social e-mail distractions during that time, or do you have any other rituals which gets you into that space?
Cathy: I would say my LinkedIn, I close my LinkedIn. If I’m on my desktop or laptop, I have to close my LinkedIn. That’s my most active network, so I don’t want it pinging me every five seconds. DMs, I get way too many dams. LinkedIn, I have to immediately close it. I know that it’s just going to start pinging and pinging. I’m not as bothered by Slack or other stuff. But when it’s LinkedIn, I have to close it. So, I would say that’s one of the things I definitely do.
I always keep my phone around. It’s never something where I don’t look at my phone, just because I do have three children. That, for me, is just not an option, and one of them has got some food allergies and stuff. For me, it’s just not an option to turn off my phone. I’ll have it on the side and I won’t look at it, or I’ll cover it up. But I’ll make sure I have it where I can actually hear it ring, or whatever it is that that needs to happen. But I would say my biggest distraction when I’m doing something like this is LinkedIn, for sure.
Ross: Changing tack a little bit, I think one of the most important things is to find your area of expertise. You can be the world-class expert and know what it is you’re doing. I’d love to hear the story of how you’ve ended up in your area of expertise at the moment. What was that journey? How did you find your calling as it were and what you’re an expert on?
Cathy: I kind of have to trace everything, and it all kind of comes together at some point. The way I explain it to people, the reason I got into the immersive technologies and the metaverse and all the things I’m working on, I would have to trace it back to 2004. I was working at CNN, and part of my job there was to look at all the raw footage that was coming in from the war in Iraq. As you can imagine, not pleasant things. It wasn’t the only thing I did, but it was one of the things I did.
I always joke in some way and say I was a Facebook moderator before there were Facebook moderators. When you have a type of role where you have to see this type of content and that’s your job, you have to turn your humanity dial or humanity switch off a little bit or turn it to the side, just to kind of get through the day and go home and have regular life. It was about seven years ago, I went to a conference, and I got invited to put a virtual reality headset on. I put the VR headset on, and I was put into this 6 x 9 very tiny, virtual solitary confinement cell and VR where prisoners in solitary confinement spent 90% of their time. Within a couple of minutes, I just felt something. It was claustrophobia, but it was also something else.
I took the headset off and I said, “This is the future of storytelling.” I just saw the future—or whatever that was—and that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life. For me, it was very clear moment. At that moment, it’s like the switch got turned back on. That’s the only way I can describe the feeling. I felt something different. I felt something that made me feel human again. I don’t know what the right term would be, but it was that moment. After that, I was very intentional with my pivot. Everyone thought I was crazy. My friends and my husband were like, “What are you doing? What is this VR thing?”
Fast forward, 2021, I’m very lucky to have worked with some of the top companies. I’m considered one of the people that is very much, I guess, an expert in the field. I’m very much at the center of the conversation and everything that’s happening in this immersive and now metaverse space. I would say it was a very clear moment for me when I knew that’s where I was heading. That’s where I’m going to go. That’s exactly what I want to do. It’s evolved and changed. But, for me, it was a very clear moment.
Ross: You saw it and you recognized it. How did you go about it? Presumably, you weren’t the expert when you put on that VR headset. You took it off and you said, “I’m going to become that.” What was that journey? What did you do to follow that path?
Cathy: I did several things. One of them was voraciously consume absolutely everything there was that I could find that relate to VR and AR. Another thing I did is try to figure out, who are the key players here? Who are the people I need to be paying attention to? Figuring out, what are they saying? How are they saying it? What are they working on? Who are they working with? Going through that and figuring out who are the people that I needed to keep tabs on.
Eventually, I’m very lucky some of them became my mentors. As a woman, as a Latina woman, in tech, I was also very lucky to be able to see two other very strong Latina women leading the way. That, to me, was very helpful in saying there’s a place for me here. I can do this. If you can see it, you can be it. I think that was a big motivator for me as well, when I saw them. I used to admire them from afar, they were my north stars. Now, they’re both my friends.
It’s been an evolution. But I think I got educated, I made connections. I said I’m going to work in this industry, got my first break, and then made everything I could out of it. It’s been great. I worked at HTC Vive, worked at Magic Leap, worked at Amazon Web Services. I mean, I’ve got a pretty solid career track there. For me, it really started with that pivotal moment. How can I educate myself and learn as much as I can, and then go into these companies and really be a part of it?
It’s interesting, as a tech futurist and very much focused on what I do, I’m a little bit different because I’ve actually been inside these companies. I don’t necessarily just read articles, I know these people, I’ve worked on some of these projects. There’s a lot of stuff that I’ve worked behind the scenes on that people don’t necessarily realize. But I know it’s one of my projects or something I had a part in. It’s been quite a journey and exciting one. I’ve been very lucky, I have to say.
Ross: You made it happen.
Cathy: If you can see it, you can be it. There you go.
Ross: What advice would you give to anybody that’s wanting to follow a similar path to you to become the expert? Essentially, in a space of emerging technologies, to keep current, keep ahead, to make sense of it, and become at the center of that, what would your advice be?
Cathy: If you know enough about the technology, if you’re interested in something, for me, it’s about getting to the right place at the right time. It’s almost about recognizing a rocket when you see one. I’m sure many people saw some of the same things I did, but they didn’t see it. They didn’t see the rocket. I saw the rocket and I jumped on it. I’m taking this trip to wherever this is leading, and it’s paid off really well. So, I think it’s about being able to recognize some of those rockets, the new things that are coming.
If people are really excited about a new technology, get in there, jump in there really be an active participant in the industry. It’s also about that, how are you becoming a voice, an active participant, in the idea sharing and everything that’s being built? The metaverse, for example, as a greater vision doesn’t currently exist, we’re building it. But now is the time to start voicing what you believe this metaverse should be, how you think it should be built. That was a time to be a participant and have your voice out there. We’re all slowly building it. I would say those are some of the things.
Making connections, making lots of connections in the industry. Who are the people that you should be paying attention to? Being open to being educated and being open to being teachable, I think that’s very important, especially in my in my space. Another thing I think, specifically, for people that are interested in becoming tech futurist is you can’t know everything about technology and you cannot be an expert in all the technologies. That is way beyond anyone’s capability really. Not even Elon Musk attempts to do that. He has his arms in a lot of different things, but not everything in tech.
Sometimes being a generalist in some other areas might be beneficial. But I think in tech, you have to be kind of focused. And you have to realize, what is it exactly that I’m focused on here? There are some folks that are very focused on artificial intelligence, folks that are very focused on more on the bio science side. It’s trying to figure out exactly what you’re going to focus on.
Ross: You’re obviously wonderful at sharing. One is to actually share ideas. There is the of having the ideas or having the fresh ideas. At what point do you, I suppose, gain the confidence to feel, “I’ve got a fresh idea and want to share it?” Do you do it right away, just sort of throw it out? Do you do sort of develop enough confidence in your own ideas before you start opining on the industry?
Cathy: It’s a slippery slope. The only reason I say that is because I am a woman, and I am a woman in tech. I think it’s a little bit different. I do pause before I tweet, because I know that maybe a guy can tweet what I’m saying and they wouldn’t get the some of the pushback or things that I might get. It doesn’t happen all the time, but I do see it sometimes. As a woman in tech, sometimes I do take a step back and say, “Should I tweet this?”
I remember sharing an article with a friend. I said, “Hey, do you think this is going to make anyone angry?” He’s like, “Why do you care? Someone’s going to get angry somewhere.” It’s true, but I think sometimes as a woman, I think it’s a different game—especially if you’re a woman in technology, in a very male-driven industry.
Ross: To have something solid to share in that case. I think that’s that value.
Cathy: Yes, value. But still, I think that there’s a lot to unpack there.
Ross: I think that’s a whole other conversation.
Cathy: That’s a whole other podcast, issue, book, anything.
Ross: Cathy, it’s been such a delight to talk to you. I so admire what you’re doing and how you’re doing it. Fantastic to get your insights, and I’m sure many other people will really appreciate it. Thanks so much for your time, Cathy.
Cathy: Thank you, Ross. Appreciate it.
“When we’re not self-expressing, and when we’re not sharing, it’s a tool problem, not a human problem, because I do think that all of us have something to say and something to self-express.”– Ida JosefiinaAbout Ida JosefiinaIda Josefiina is a self-described infopunk and the co-founder and CEO of the information social playground Sane. She also hosts the Reverb by Sane podcast.
LinkedIn: Ida Josefiina
*Website:* Sane
What you will learn The alternative way of seeking knowledge (03:25) * Importance of reflecting on existence and thinking about thinking (04:47) * Meditative thinking and focused reading for learning and personal growth (06:57) * Importance of existential risk on the journey toward collective intelligence (09:23) * Introduction of Sane, as a platform that promotes collective intelligence (11:03) * Sane and its features (14:14) * Differences between The Brain and Sane (15:52) * What shapes of knowledge means (19:51) * The difference between knowledge and information (20:55) * Sane’s mission of democratizing access to ideas and knowledge (22:49) * Decentralization of tech platforms through collective media (25:41) * Reflecting on existence as a way to gain motivation for participating in society (27:13) * Book recommendations (28:30) Episode resources Sane * TheBrain * Figma * Miro TranscriptRoss Dawson: Ida, it’s a delight to have you on the show.
Ida Josefiina: Thanks so much for having me on, Ross. Happy to be here.
*Ross:* You have described yourself as an info punk. Tell me, what’s an info punk?
*Ida:* Well, an info punk is… actually, I have to give my co-founder Tina credit for that term. She’s the one who came up with it originally. But I guess the term came up when we were thinking a lot about the type of persona or a way of identifying yourself when you’re interested in thinking about thinking and challenging some traditional information dynamics or architecture and embracing a more alternative approach to seeking knowledge and being in the pursuit of ideas. For me, my background is I’ve never gone to university, so I haven’t had the most traditional educational upbringing in that sense, so I relate to that. The sentiment of an info punk, which is a little bit of a rebel, but very much in the pursuit of ideas and knowledge.
Ross: So alternative ways of seeking knowledge. What are some of those alternatives?
Ida: Honestly, it’s whatever you feel like. I’m not prescriptive about it at all. It just boils down to being curious and being connected with the world, whatever that means to you.
Ross: Following your own instincts?
Ida: Absolutely.
Ross: As opposed to any prescribed courses for information seeking, and so on.
Ida: Exactly. I think that has a lot to do with just being open-minded, and trying to maintain that open-mindedness, which is so much harder than it sounds, and to constantly keep thinking that the world is much bigger than you imagined it to be and there’s so much to discover and explore, etc. So, yes, it just boils down to curiosity; and beyond that, it’s a pretty personal thing.
Ross: No doubt you found in your journeys some interesting ways to seek to find knowledge and information. I hope to get those a little bit. We talked about this thinking about thinking. Thinking tools are part of the vernacular now. We’d just love to hear some of your thoughts about how you think about thinking, and what are some of the frameworks we can apply to how it is we think usefully.
Ida: I’ve always been passionate about trying to find ways in which other people, all kinds of people have some access points or more channels or opportunities to think about thinking because they think thinking about thinking has also to do with reflecting on existence. I think reflecting on existence is so important and so interesting because it makes us somehow very cognizant about how special it is to be alive. When we’re very cognizant of that, it somehow feels, at least to me, quite empowering and something to be very grateful for, and it moves me at least.
Thinking about thinking thing is like… I’ve gone through several different pathways of trying to find mechanisms or ways in which I could pass on these cool, interesting ideas that I’ve somehow discovered or someone’s passed down to me, that has moved me to think about thinking and reflecting on existence. I honestly just don’t think that we have enough of that available for a large group or population of people; they seem to be somehow siloed away, whether it’s in academia or in tools that are quite inaccessible, or out of reach for a lot of people. I think breaking down some of those balls and figuring out different kinds of mechanisms and ways for people to have access to that is really interesting.
Ross: Yes. Recently, I came across some research showing that there are different brain areas involved with metacognition. There are specific parts of the brain that we use for thinking about thinking as opposed to just normal thinking. This also just relates to Socrates who said, “The unexamined life is not worth living”. That’s part of it. You’re thinking about who you are, what it is to be alive, and what it is to think, and that’s something that we don’t have enough of.
Ida: I completely agree. When I had COVID for the first time more than a year ago, and it was in that brain fog of COVID, maybe four or five days in that I was sitting in front of my bookshelf, and I was just staring at all the books, and my mind was working super slowly. I took a book. Instead of reading the book, I decided to just read a page and thought about that for a really long time. I was like meditating on the words rather than reading. It’s the same action as reading because I’m consuming something literary with my mind. But it was different because I let every word sink in. I thought about how I felt. I thought about different things that related to that. I’ve been thinking a lot about the term meditative thinking, and what that also means. If you can practice a different type of thinking by thinking differently. The word “thinking” is going to be mentioned in this podcast probably like 563,000 times. That was an interesting experience. I feel I learned more from studying that one page than I would have by reading 50 pages at that moment in time.
Ross: What that evokes for me is almost the tangibility of words. I mean, a word has a meaning but if you’re spending that time with it as opposed to skimming across million words, a word has something you can touch and feel.
Ida: Yes, exactly. It’s because you can start thinking about how certain phrases or decisions on how someone has decided to structure language, what it makes you think about, and what they could have meant by it. I feel like there’s a whole world to discover on a single page in a book. It’s very interesting.
Ross: Yes, we have the slow food. Instead of fast food, you got slow food, maybe we should go to slow reading as opposed to speed reading.
Ida: Yes.
Ross: You have a company, a very interesting company called Sane. I’d love to hear about the journey. Because it sounds like it has been already a journey and continuing. Perhaps you can start from the beginning; how it started and how that’s evolving?
Ida: The whole journey, if I would summarize, it started when I was 15, and we moved to Finnish Lapland, where I’m originally from California. It was just quite hard for me because I grew up for six years before that in the San Francisco Bay Area in California, and we moved to Lapland, which was quite different. Long story short, I became super existential, I just started thinking a lot about things like, why am I here? This is insane. What is life? Where is everything going? Through that, I discovered the concept or the field of study of existential risks, and I’ve just never stopped thinking about that.
I’ve done a lot of different kinds of things since then. I started my career first working in politics, and then a bit later in tech, and bounced around a lot, moved to China, in different parts of Europe, etc., and then ended up back in Silicon Valley working at a data aggregation software company. I started thinking a lot about the role of data and information in existential threats and the future of humanity, and through that just basically came to the conclusion that collective intelligence or thinking about the foundational problem, above all the other problems, is the most important thing that we should be thinking about because, without that, it’s going to be very difficult for us to solve any individual existential risks such as climate change, or AI alignment, or whatever it may be.
Ross: You said “without that”, what’s that?
Ida: Without finding a better way that we can, as a society, work together, think together, collaborate together, so that we don’t keep coming up with new existential risks, that we heal the foundational layer because it’s quite telling that before 1953, I’m not sure if we had any existential risk. Then we did the first atomic bomb test with Oppenheimer’s Manhattan Project, not knowing 100% for sure that we wouldn’t ignite the entire atmosphere in fire. I think it’s just pretty telling that we’re living in this very much in this age of heightened risk, etc.
I’m not entirely optimistic that even if we solve one of these big threats we’re facing that it’s going to put us into any safer situation when it comes to our future. I’m obsessed with working on what I think is the foundational layer, which is collective intelligence. I see the internet as a massive opportunity, in making a very big difference and significant progress in working on this problem. That’s why, essentially, we’re building Sane, and our mission at Sane is to build the future of how we discover, create, and share ideas and knowledge online.
Ross: That’s awesome. Collective intelligence has been a central theme in almost all my work. The one thing I’d say there is around shared mental models and aligned mental models. I think even in small groups, that can be hard. That becomes harder as you move across cultures and countries and political parties, and so on. But I absolutely agree with you, until we can get aligned to whatever degree or shift towards more common ways of thinking, then yes, the risks are going to be massive.
Ida: Yes. Somehow the way that I’ve started thinking about it, or I guess just my approach to trying to solve the problem is going more toward the indirect ways of contributing to collective intelligence, which I think has a lot to do with just curiosity and creating opportunities and space for people to play with ideas and to fall down interesting rabbit holes, and to feel like they have avenues for self-expression, and that they have something to say that matters. Somehow since the inception of social media, I think it’s the first time in which we don’t really have those spaces because all of these different platforms have become very weird in many ways. I do feel like when we’re not self-expressing, and when we’re not sharing, it’s a tool problem, not a human problem, because I do think that all of us have something to say and something to self-express.
Ross: What is Sane? What is it as a part of someone goes in, goes on? Or how does it look? What do they see? What do they experience?
Ida: Yes, we are in private alpha right now, so people can’t really go and have a look yet, but they can sign up to request early access. But essentially, it’s a social platform, a social knowledge-sharing platform on a spatial interface. People go in Sane to build what we call spaces. In these spaces, you can create these minimalist knowledge graphs to showcase any type of idea or knowledge. One very simple use case of that could be that I could create an About Me space on Sane. It would be like hey, I’m Ida, and a text note like, I really care about the future and I consider myself to be existentially hopeful. I can connect a PDF that talks about existential hope there. I can add a picture of my grandmother’s house in Lapland, where I grew up, and say, this is where I grew up, spent my summers and I started thinking about X and Y. I can combine different images, video, text, audio, PDFs, etc., and visually organize them to show not just what I think but how I think. It’s quite an efficient, and I think, quite dynamic and forgiving way of organizing and creating and curating ideas rather than having to do it in a linear chronological format, where you have to structure ideas in a very specific way.
Ross: What are some of the contrasts with The Brain?
Ida: What do you mean?
Ross: The software product? The Brain? Are you familiar with that?
Ida: Yes, I guess The Brain is like knowledge… First of all, I’ve never used The Brain so I can’t speak in detail about it. But from what I’ve just seen, it’s just like this infinite knowledge graph of everything, and on Sane, it’s more like you’re building quite a minimalist space to showcase some kind of idea. You can create as many spaces as you want. One is maybe I have my About Me space, and maybe I have a space that’s my random collection of research on thinking about thinking and it’s more like a way of blogging that has to do more with curation rather than just creation, and being able to mix media as the central media. It definitely meets the principles and ideas of knowledge management, but with the intention of it being social and as a way of sharing information, collaborating with others, and ultimately publishing.
Ross: You call it spatial, does that mean that it goes beyond two dimensions as an interface?
Ida: Not yet.
Ross: But you’re going to get there?
Ida: I don’t know. It’s something that I’m definitely interested in, just as an idea, but we’re not there yet in terms of a roadmap.
Ross: I’m very, very keen. I actually had a company, a 3D information interface company quite some time ago.
Ida: Oh, wow.
Ross: The very short story there is still astoundingly, in 2023, we’re at just the beginning of exploring the use cases for 3D information, visualization, and interfaces. I thought we would be further along by now. I think part of it is that what seems cool and interesting is not necessarily as functional and as usable as you might think. But there are still some strong use cases. I’ll certainly be trying to play some more in that space.
Ida: I’m still not entirely sure if we’re ready to put on the headsets. That’s something where my resistance comes in with thinking about really doing something in augmented reality. But that being said, if we can get around that or find a more comfortable way of existing in 3D spaces, I’m really interested in that. But I think we’re still a little bit away from that. I think that there’s a lot of building and thinking that we can do in between the 2D and 3D worlds. I think we’re just getting used to like working with spatial interfaces in a 2D environment, thinking about the Figma, Miro, and Sanes of the world, where you are not in this linear chronological model, but you’re in a space, a spatial interface, but it’s not just 3D yet.
Ross: You’ve used the phrase “the shapes of knowledge”. I’d love to hear what you mean by that. What does that mean when you say shapes of knowledge?
Ida: To be honest, I’m bad at giving definitions for any specific term.
Ross: What comes into your mind? What’s in your head when you say that?
Ida: I guess I see this room with different ideas that turn into maybe like a house with different rooms with different ideas and all the rooms feel a little bit different from one another, and they have a certain shape to them because the idea has a certain feeling and sentiment, and then you find all of these different objects that relate with that idea, or in this metaphor, the room, that belong in that room. A friend of mine was asking me if I am a visual thinker, and I said, I don’t really know, I think through feeling and then the feelings turn into something visual as a translation, but it’s not maybe the primary first thing. The shapes of knowledge are maybe just that as well, it feels more like an exploration of different rooms that have different objects that relate to those rooms that then turn into these, in this metaphor, the shapes of knowledge.
I think that there’s something in the word knowledge as well, that’s different than information. We’ve been talking about how we can think about data that turns into information when there’s an added layer in that, information turns into knowledge and knowledge turns into wisdom because you add these components of sensitivity and complexity to it that ultimately turn that data into wisdom when you’ve processed it correctly. I think about that when it comes to knowledge and wisdom, that it’s more than just the data or information, it has this sentiment and context and added layer of human complexity to it.
Ross: It’s almost akin to anesthesia, as you say the feeling for… what I was saying before around tangibility of words or concepts or semantics.
Ida: Yes, exactly.
Ross: But if you’re talking about rooms, though, that is a spatial metaphor. You are imagining moving through space to look at that. We were just chatting before we started recording about how Sane is evolving, and part of it was around that a lot of the thinking tools which are out there at the moment are not for the masses. I’d just love to hear your reflections on how that’s influencing the way Sane is evolving, where thinking tools are today, and where they might need to go more generally.
Ida: Yes, like what I was saying earlier, I just feel really passionate about people that might not so easily always have access to certain cool things. I feel like when I come across certain ideas or concepts, I’m really into thinking about the hard problem of consciousness, for example. When I discovered that as a concept, as an idea, I just was so pissed off that I didn’t know about it before. Because I didn’t go to university, and I feel like I didn’t have certain pathways, that I could have more easily found out some of these ideas that just transformed the way that I relate or think with the world. I just want more people to be able to play with ideas and have access to them. I just think that that doesn’t happen by creating these tools for thinkers or thinkers creating more tools for thinkers. That’s great but it’s not the thing that I want to do or I care about.
I care about finding ways that we can take some of these mechanisms that are available to a certain subset of people, and make them accessible and feel magical and easy to approach so that a lot more people could have these same feelings, realizations, or capabilities, or playing with ideas and knowledge. That’s really the direction that Sane is heading to. I think blogging is a great example of that. It allowed a lot of people to play with it. When I talk about ideas and knowledge, I don’t mean something strictly academic, or intellectually important. I mean, honestly, anything, it’s just like a way of relating with ideas. I think blogging was such a great example of that. When I was 11 or 12, I was really into blogging, and I would just write these stupid blog posts about absolutely nothing like eating ice cream or something like that. But it made me feel good and made me feel like I had something to say, something to communicate.
With Sane, we’re thinking a lot about blogging, and how we can reinvent it and bring it to a modern age, and even further democratized access to those who feel like they can blog. Blogging doesn’t just have to be about writing linear long format text, it could be about curation, about connection, about playing with things like how one idea relates with another, maybe with some very intellectual basis for why that is, or maybe not, maybe it’s just intuition. I think that there’s a lot to explore within this realm of possibilities. That’s what we’re doing with Sane.
Ross: More generally, in the thinking tools, space, or software, or tools, is there anything else that you think is interesting in terms of either products or developments or things which are shifting, which people should be aware of?
Ida: I think that there are a lot of people, a lot of founders who are building in this space that I’m really happy for. I think that the future is going to look a lot less like very big tech, where it’s a concentration of just a couple of platforms that we’re all operating on. It’s going to be a lot more distributed. We worked with this concept called collective media. We launched this initiative with a group of other founders, there are about 14 other founders and companies who are all working within defining the future of social, so we’ve been calling it collective media, and it really stands for having alternative avenues for creating space for play and exploration and doing that with other people on the internet. I feel quite lucky to be sharing this time and space with other people who are building with similar principles in mind.
Ross: I think you’ve pretty fairly expressed in our conversation what an info punk is and your very individual perspective on information, information navigation, and how it is we can align ideas. I’d love to just get some suggestions, recommendations, and thoughts for anyone who’s listening around some habits, some practices, and some things they can try that they might find useful or enlightening as they navigate a world of unlimited information out there.
Ida: I’m really not good at giving tips for habits or things that people should do, because I don’t do anything myself that I probably should. But I think what I would say is that go read writings, books, and ideas that have to do with reflecting on existence. I think that that is so incredibly important. If anything, it’ll probably just make you feel grateful for being here in this period of space and time coexisting with the people that you’re coexisting with. For me, at least, it’s been such a factor of motivation and desire to participate in this society as it is today. That’s something that I would recommend people to do. There’s a great amount of literature that thinks about existence and consciousness and what it means to be and feel. What I mentioned earlier, the hard problem of consciousness, I just loved studying that. If you just Google hard problem of consciousness and read about the literature there, there’s the first paper about what it means to be a bat, that’s a great way to get started on just thinking about all these crazy existential things.
Ross: Can you just suggest a few books that you’ve found useful or enjoyable in that space?
Ida: I mean, go read the paper about what it means to be a bat. I would like this other paper called Sharing the World with Digital Minds by Nick Bostrom. Just because that was also a crazy, mind-bending experience, that’s imagining something so insane, and somehow beautiful and extraordinary. Then if you’re interested in thinking about existential risks and the potential of the future of humanity, I would also recommend reading The Precipice by Toby Ord. The concept of existential hope, for example, is something that he’s written about. He has a paper on that, that just defines the terms. I think those are pretty lovely ones to get started with.
Ross: I’ve been listening to your podcast, which I’ve been greatly enjoying, and can’t remember, Anders Sandberg, I think it was.
Ida: Yes.
Ross: He was talking about the Grand Future, was it?
Ida: Yes. Grand Futures.
Ross: It sounds like existential hope on a bigger scale than you can possibly imagine.
Ida: Exactly. I think he’s writing a book about that now, that should be published in some time, not too distant future. I’m really excited about that one.
Ross: Yes. Any things you’d like to share, advice, thoughts, or requests?
Ida: Yes, I would love it if you guys can all head to sane.fyi and check out what we’re doing over there, request access to our early beta, we’re going to be launching more toward the public-ish in June of this year. I’m excited about getting all kinds of freaky and faux punks on the platform creating spaces about anything and everything interesting. If that’s something that would interest you, happy to also already onboard people now and start creating spaces for those that might be interested, so just visit sane.fyi. Also. I’m available at ida@sane.fyi over email if anyone has any questions, ideas, or thoughts, always happy to spur.
Ross: There are probably a few info punks listening.
Ida: I’m sure.
Ross: Thank you so much for your time. It has been really enjoyable. This exploration, these ideas, and bouncing things around, I’d love to keep in touch and to see what you’re doing with Sane, because I’m very aligned with the mission, and I want to do all I can do to support it.
Ida: Yes, thank you so much, Ross. I really appreciate your time and having me on. A great conversation.
“This is all about Humans plus AI. We can do more together than we can do apart.”– Ross Dawson
About Ross DawsonRoss Dawson is globally recognized as a leading futurist, keynote speaker, entrepreneur, and authority on business strategy. He is Founding Chairman of the Advanced Human Technologies group of companies, and the bestselling author of five books, most recently Thriving on Overload: The 5 Powers for Success in a World of Exponential Information. Strong global demand has seen him deliver keynote speeches to business and government leaders in over 30 countries, while frequent media appearances include CNN, Bloomberg TV, SkyNews, ABC TV, Today and Sunrise shows, The New York Times, and many others.
Website: Ross Dawson
LinkedIn: Ross Dawson, Futurist Keynote Speaker
*Twitter:* @rossdawson
Facebook: Ross Dawson
YouTube: Ross Dawson
Books
Thriving on Overload
Other books
What you will learn The synergy between humans and AI (03:15) * Coping with information overload on the subject of AI (05:18) * The importance of framing and building frameworks for understanding the relationship between humans and AI (06:19) * How AI augments human capabilities by filtering information and helping develop mental models (08:30) * How AI can help with synthesis and higher-order thinking (11:58) * Importance of continuous learning in a changing world (15:46) * Achieving new levels of success in organizations with AI (16:44) * Adopting a mindset of learning and growth with AI (17:21) * Introduction of humansplustechnology.com resource (19:12) Episode resources Thriving on Overload (Book) * humansplustechnology.com * Humans + AI Resources * Humans + AI Cohort Course * Bing * ChatGPT * Claude TranscriptRoss Dawson: This is a bit of a different episode. It’s an interview with me. I’m Ross Dawson, futurist, entrepreneur, and author, most recently of Thriving on Overload. You can find me at rossdawson.com, or on Twitter @RossDawson. I’m sharing mostly on LinkedIn these days. But today I am speaking with my colleague, Ruby.
Ruby Herrera: Yes. Hey, Ross. I am Ruby Herrera, and I’m an entrepreneur myself. I’ve been working with Ross for about a year now. I’ve gotten to witness firsthand and be involved in this whole journey that Thriving on Overload has been through this far. I’m really excited to get to chat with you today, Ross, about the evolution of the podcast and the future plans for the brand. Take us back; You wrote Thriving on Overload, you built a brand around it, including the course and the podcast, and people who follow your work and your LinkedIn might have seen that you’re delving into the world of Humans + AI. Tell us about what you’re doing right now. What work are you doing with Humans + AI?
*Ross:* This is an extraordinary time in human history. I think many other people see the same thing. AI has been developing for quite a while, from the late 50s, and gradually developing. In the last six, or nine months, we’ve had a bit of a leap, where people can appreciate quite how powerful the AI is. My frame around this, or around all technology is how does it help us? How does it augment us? How does it make us better? How does it enable us to achieve more? It’s exactly the same thing with AI.
This is all about Humans + AI, where we can do more together than we could do apart. AI is pretty limited by itself. Humans are pretty amazing, but they can be amplified by AI. The real focus is how specifically can we use AI to be more, to achieve more, to do more. I’ve been sharing and building some frameworks, and thinking, and ideas around Humans + AI over at humansplustechnology.com. I’ve been launching some other resources and delving deep into them. Also, I’ve created a course. This time, we’re doing a cohort course.
Thriving on Overload course is an online course where people go through the process of creating their own information plan. Whereas for Humans + AI, I thought it’d be useful to do a cohort course where everybody is there together, and we’re doing it live. Part of it is that I don’t necessarily have all the answers, we’re all learning together. I can be a guide, having thought deeply about it, and having some frameworks for it. But as a cohort course, we can work together to be able to learn and to be as effective as possible in increasing our productivity with AI.
It’s an extraordinarily exciting time. It feels like the world has come towards me, and a lot of the things that I’ve always believed were possible. A lot of this year, certainly and beyond, I will be focusing on this theme of Humans + AI.
*Ruby:* Something really interesting that you mentioned is this is such a developing and quickly accelerating space. We’re all learning how to use these tools as they develop. You mentioned that you’re also learning, so I’m just curious what are you doing day to day to help you learn more about this space, and to position yourself as an expert in this environment?
Ross: The amount of information coming out right now about AI is pretty intense. I’m not able to keep up, nobody’s able to keep up. What I’ve been applying are the lessons that I shared in Thriving on Overload. Part of it is what I write about in the chapter on filtering, which is getting the right set of sources. Those who are compiling and distilling the best information and newsletters are going to find the right communities, find the right people to share on social media, to be able to be selective around the sources so that I’m able to hone in on what is most useful and interesting and valid information that is created out there; to be able to apply my attention, as I write about in chapter four, and to be able to get blocks of time to really dig into, to explore, to try things, and to experiment.
But the single most valuable part has been the framing. That’s what I write about in chapter two on Thriving on Overload. It’s building frameworks. That’s really the heart of what I’ve been doing, and creating, and sharing, is these frameworks for different aspects of Humans + AI, the language that we use, the different elements that humans and AI can play together. I’ll be sharing some more about the decision structures, and so on. I’m building my own frameworks as much as anything for myself, in being able to frame what is happening, the relationships between what’s happening, and of course, to share that with the world, but also along the journey using AI to develop my thinking.
Part of it’s in research, and it’s been interesting when you go to most of the current generative AI and ask them for what’s the best research, they hallucinate, and makeup research that never existed, but still give you some interesting ideas sometimes. But the most useful is being where I create the beginnings of a framework and I bounce it off the AI to say, can you create some suggestions and variations and differences around that? That helped me refine my thinking, to find better language, to be able to build that. It’s a bit of an interactive process with the AI of developing the framework where yes, I’m doing the hard work of really making sense of it but AI has been really useful in being able to help me build these mental models or frameworks of the Humans + AI space.
Ruby: Yes, that’s so interesting, you’re using the AI to help you learn how to better use the AI. That’s pretty cool. You’ve touched on it just a little bit, but I really would love to dive into it a bit more. To some listeners, this might seem like a bit of an abrupt shift of focus. Just tell us about how this really ties into what you’ve been doing with Thriving on Overload. How this ties into what you’ve been talking about on the podcast in the past?
Ross: Yes, it is only just over six months since Thriving on Overload came out. Now I’m spending a lot of time on Humans + AI. But for me, they fit together completely, it is almost two facets of the same topic. Thriving on Overload is around human cognition. As humans, we take in information, we make sense of that, and we do useful and valuable things, we make decisions, we see opportunities, and we guide our lives. This is challenging because our cognition is finite, our brains are limited, and we live in a world of unlimited information. The quest for Thriving on Overload is how do we get better at cognition when we are overloaded, when there is an unlimited amount of information, where we can take in what information makes the most sense to be able to create the ways of thinking that are useful to us, to act more usefully.
Now, Humans + AI builds on that and amplifies that by saying, how do we take individual human thinking and cognition, and make that better with technology. Part of that is very directly in some ways of filtering information to be able to make sense of that. Part of it is just as I described, being able to suggest to us mental models or ways of thinking to be able to augment us. Part of it is simply applying that in our workflow of what we do every day so that humans can do what they’re best at and the AI can do what it’s best at. But part of that journey is saying, if humans and AI are each doing their role, then we need to be as good as possible at what we do. That’s the Thriving of Overload, it’s being better at the unique human capabilities we have to take in information and make sense of that world.
I think Thriving on Overload and Humans + AI fit together in a way, the Humans + AI without this idea of Thriving on Overload wouldn’t be complete. Because you just can use lots and lots of AI but we need to be better ourselves at what it is we are best at, at that sense-making, at being able to refine our capabilities. In a way, this is a perfect complement of these ideas of Thriving on Overload and amplifying human cognition. Humans + AI is taking that further into a broader space of not just individual humans, but groups of humans and how that’s complemented by technology.
Ruby: That makes a lot of sense. Here’s to get your thoughts on what are some ways listeners can begin to think about using AI to help them thrive?
Ross: That’s what I want to explore from now. Anyway, I’ve been delving, thought deeply, of course, around Thriving on Overload, wrote the book, and built my ideas further since then, now delving into Humans + AI. Now it is the journey to what I’m sharing, what I’m creating, and the podcast of how these fit together. I’ve touched on some of those ideas around this idea of how can we best use AI for filtering, how can we use AI for the framing and the thinking. In the book, I wrote that synthesis is a unique human capability that keeps us out of machines. Now, it’s really interesting that in this generative AI, arguably, it does have the capacity for synthesis, what it is doing is trolling all of the body of work of humans, and making some connections in that, some of which are not obvious to us and some of which are novel to us. I think that’s really interesting.
We’re still the higher order. Part of what AI is doing is pushing us to the higher-order value. In a way that’s to say making us more human, making us go to where it is we are most distinct. There are actually ways in which AI can help us with synthesis to be able to surface, hey, this is a connection which AI perceives, is this a useful perception or not? Humans have the broader context. What does this mean? How does this make sense? What does this impact on who I am as a human? How does this impact society? How does this change organizations? AI is a million miles away from being able to understand, have that level of synthesis. It’s fascinating that AI now actually is able to help us with elements of the synthesis as input.
That’s incredibly exciting, where we can start to get AI to feed into how we are pulling together ideas. That’s no longer the sole domain of humans, it’s still what we do best by far, at a level far beyond what machines can do, but we can start to have AI if we use it well to be a tool for us to synthesize, to move to higher order thinking, to make sense, to view things as systems. Again, the AI can’t do that but it can assist it. Those are a few of the exciting points in how the AI can help us in our journey for thriving in a world of overload.
Ruby: Yes, and I think that’s an interesting point you made. A common misconception about this topic is that AI is going to take over our jobs and replace us but the really idea here is that we’re able to integrate this to amplify our work and accelerate the way we do things and our productivity. That’s a pretty exciting concept that you’re developing.
Just curious to know about how people can identify ways to bring AI into their current workflows. You’ve shared a quote before, people who are not leveraging AI in their day-to-day work will be unemployed, and people who are using AI in their workflows are going to succeed. Just curious to know a little bit more about that quote of yours and how you see this developing in the workplace.
Ross: Part of it is the responsibility of individuals. Part of it is the responsibility of organizations. For anything, not just AI, but other technologies or change, we all have a responsibility for ourselves to learn. This is a changing world, if we don’t keep on learning, we do get left behind, that’s just a reality. This is a very pointed thing where there’s a very strong development of things that do change what it is we can do and how we can work. We do have a responsibility to ourselves and our loved ones, to learn and say, alright, this is something which I might or might not find challenging, difficult, or confronting, but we still need to engage with it. I’m not going to reject this, I’m not going to move away from this, alright, this is something I need to understand more about. That’s part of your life.
Your work is to learn about how can you achieve what you want to achieve, whatever that might be, saving the world or getting more promotions or whatever it is you might want. It’s an opportunity, and something that we need to do is to learn. Organizations need to be very conscious and think very deeply about how they bring this in. For me, the starting point has to be, this is about Humans + AI, this is not about replacing people, forget replacing people, this is not an intention, forget it. Say, all right, look at the wonderful people we’ve got, how can we use them as best as possible, and their roles might change, we might need to educate them, we might need to give them different roles, we might need to find different ways of tapping their potential.
For both individuals and organizations, the first thing is really the mindset of all this changing, we have to learn how to do it. We have to focus on how it is people can do more and be more. This is a journey. It’s every day, there are pretty extraordinary announcements. The course I’m running on AI-powered productivity starts in nine days, and between now and then, there are going to be some big announcements, which are going to change the nature of what’s happening. During that course and beyond, things are going to be changing. We need to be learning the principles. The specifics are interesting and useful. Okay, he has a great tool, let me try to use that.
In a way, rather than being overwhelmed by trying to keep on top of everything, it’s almost like, alright, let’s just try one thing. For example, I’d say try one of the generative AI-Language Tools, Bing, or ChatGPT, or Claude from anthropic, and each day, put in a couple of queries, try to ask it some questions, see if it, gives it something that you’re doing, and see if it can offer any suggestions. That’s just part of that journey. If you’re not playing with it, you can’t learn what it can do.
Ruby: Yes, that makes a ton of sense. You mentioned that you are working on frameworks. You have this course coming up, I just would love to know, what can we expect from you moving forward. What kind of content are you going to be putting out there? Where can we find the resources that you’re creating? And most importantly, what can we expect for the future of the podcast?
Ross: The landing page for resources is humansplustechnology.com. At the moment, it just provides some links to the few things which I’m doing in the space at the moment. That will probably build up over time. That’s just an easy reference point, so humansplustechnology.com. What I’m thinking about deeply at the moment is, should the podcast change its name? Because now I am focused on Thriving on Overload, that’s why the podcast has been, and now I am broadening my work to include Humans + AI.
As I said, these topics fit completely together. But I feel that this frame of the name Thriving on Overload is restricting because there are some guests or some conversations or some topics, which won’t necessarily fit into this frame of Thriving on Overload. It feels a bit restrictive at the moment. I’ve been playing with some different names for Thriving on Overloading podcast.
Top of the list at the moment is Amplifying Cognition. Cognition is how we make sense of the world, how we take information, make sense and create things of value, and that’s done both through the techniques of Thriving and Overload, but also through amplifying ourselves with AI. There are some other names I’ve been playing with. One is Amplifying Humans, which is a bit broader, but maybe too broad. Cognitive Evolution, this idea which I raised in the last chapter of Thriving on Overload, which is saying, this is all about the evolution of our cognition, how do we make it better and develop it. I think that’s a strong frame for it, except it maybe sounds a bit academic almost.
There are other names Amplifying Intelligence or Augmenting Productivity or things like that, which are related but along the same line, so I’d love any listeners if they have any thoughts on that to let me know. I suppose they’ll say, no, don’t change it from Thriving on Overload, or love the idea of Amplifying Cognition or whatever. It’s a big decision to change the name of the podcast that’s been running for a year and a half and have got some wonderful guests. We’ve had some very good listeners. It’s growing. I want to be cautious about suddenly changing the name and the purview of the podcast, but I think, probably, it will need to shift, and probably to this idea of Amplifying Cognition. What do you think?
Ruby: That’s a great question. I’ve been a part of the Thriving on Overload world and brand for a year now. I’m kind of torn. I have that relationship with Thriving on Overload and know that everything underneath that topic umbrella will exist in the podcast, in the course, in the book. But at the same time, I do think it’s limiting, because a lot of the topics that you’d like to explore and begin to be an expert around, don’t fit under that umbrella. I do think it’s about finding the right name, that will help the current listeners continue to be engaged with what you’re putting out there but also allow you to explore this new territory as well and continue to be an expert in that space.
It sounds like nothing’s set in stone yet. But I’m excited to see how this continues to evolve. It’s great that you’re including the listeners and the community in this decision that you’re making. Change can be scary, or confronting, but you always say, if you’re not changing, or you’re not embracing that change, you’re not growing, you’re not helping create a better future if you’re not open to that. It’s very in line with the Ross Dawson mentality and really exciting stuff.
Ross: I think the key point is that it has to be clear that whatever it becomes is still Thriving on Overload plus more. It’s not leaving it behind. It’s not becoming somebody that it wasn’t; just adding to what it was already. Whatever it becomes, whether it’s Amplifying Cognition, whatever, it’s still Thriving on Overload, but with other things as well. We’ll still have some very similar conversations that we already had around the way people’s information habits, how it is that they thrive in a world of overload, but also adding to that many of the incredible possibilities from how technology can augment us. So yes, this episode is about inviting feedback and thoughts from anybody about where we’re going with this.
Ruby: Exciting stuff.
Ross: Right, wonderful to have a conversation with you, Ruby.
Ruby: Wonderful to chat with you, Ross. Thanks for sharing all of these new exciting ideas and the evolution of Thriving on Overload, really excited to see what’s next.
‘’We shape reality by what we notice and choose to pay attention to.’’– Tim O’Reilly
About Tim O’ReillyOn this episode we learn from Tim O’Reilly, definitely one of the most influential people in the development of the Internet as we know it. He is the founder and CEO of technology publishing giant O’Reilly Media, and has played a seminal role in movements including open source software, Web 2.0, maker culture, and government 2.0, and is author of the excellent book WTF: What’s the Future and Why It’s Up to Us.
Website: Tim O’Reilly
Facebook: Tim O’Reilly
LinkedIn: Tim O’Reilly
Twitter: @timoreilly
*Slideshares:* Tim O’Reilly
Books
WTF? What’s The Future and Why It’s Up To Us
Welcome to the 21st Century
What you will learn If information comes by, it must be important (01:51) * Vectors and Bayesian probability in mental models (04:29) * Creativity is noticing what other people don’t (06:48) * If your dog could talk, it would show you a whole new world (08:56) * Only when you have all the pieces can you put the puzzle together… (09:35) * …what is the art behind it… (16:47) * …and does framework help you find the pieces (19:56) * Selfish individuals versus altruistic groups (20:36) * Crypto is not decentralized (22:28) * Tim finds out somebody else built his idea (27:48) * Tim compares himself to Cookie Monster! (28:57) * You will succeed when receptivity and striving are in balance (31:03) * It’s all about tackling the hard things (33:03) Episode resources Lao Tzu * The Way of Life According to Lao Tzu * Wallace Stevens * Eric Raymond * Christine Peterson * John Maynard Keynes * The Man Watching by Rainer Maria Rilke TranscriptRoss Dawson: Tim, it is a great delight to have you on the show.
Tim O’Reilly: Thanks for having me.
Ross: You have lived a life immersed in information and helped others in many ways to point them to, and digest that information. How do you think about that idea? How do you approach unlimited information and being able to make that into something valuable?
Tim: Well, to understand how I think about it, it helps probably to say that I don’t have an approach where I really try to keep track of information, or gather information. It means certainly some ways I do, but my working principle was expressed very well by Tevye, in Fiddler on the Roof, when he said, “Good news will stay, and bad news will refuse to leave”.
In a certain way, my approach is that things come by, and if they keep coming by, they’re probably important, and if they don’t, then maybe they weren’t. But there’s a bigger piece of it, and this is maybe explainable by reference to something like Google Maps, where people follow the map, and they stop noticing where they turn, versus people, who, in the old days, had to learn and observe the world around them to the level of where you think about the South Sea Islanders, who could navigate by watching the ocean currents, and the stars. They were their own GPS, and they were continually taking in information, and noticing how it was different from what they expected or the same as they expected.
I work a lot like that. I have a mental model that I try to build of the world, and that model is inductive. Basically, I’m taking things in and I go, Oh, this is different, this doesn’t fit. A lot of the work that I’ve done over the years has simply been trying to construct a map by looking around. You pay attention to things and the things that start… with a soft focus. This is an idea, I think from hunting and things like that, you watch with a soft focus. Of course, I’m not a hunter, but I once read a book called “The Tracker”, and I took a workshop with one of the founders of this tracking movement. You’re just receptive and you’re open, and then certain things just pop out at you as anomalies. That’s what’s interesting.
Ross: That is the same as my thesis around how it is that we build these models of the world. I think, when people talk about mental models, they often talk about discrete heuristics, in a sense, whereas, a mental model is really, I think, more holistic. It is a mental model of the entire world or the entire world of business, and how that works. How do you frame this mental model that you have built in, are building?
Tim: Well, first of all, I do have a set of frames for it. One, I wrote a little bit about this in a recent piece. I also wrote about it in my book “WTF”, all thinking in vectors. This idea, that there are forces that are moving things along, and a vector has both a direction and a quantity, so what you’re looking for in a certain way is acceleration in a particular direction. You’re looking for how those directions collide with other vectors, and what the resulting outcomes might be. In this piece, “Welcome to the 21st century”, I wrote about one of the big impacts of the pandemic might well be that we never go back to the office and sure enough, that’s turning out to be a possible future.
That’s the other thing, I have a mental model that comes from scenario planning about imagining very different futures. Then when they start to come true, you go, Oh, okay, that one was more right than the other one. You start to solidify. Again, it’s very Bayesian. It’s simply, you have a set… I think part of it would be to say it’s a Bayesian system in which you have multiple overlapping sets of priors that you’re willing to accept, loosely. Then they collapse differentially. I think that’s the thing I don’t think people think enough about in Bayesian probability systems. It’s not just one set of priors. It’s a set of overlapping sets of priors, that could collapse in different directions.
Ross: Ones where you’re, of course, continually chained to the things which don’t fit and could help you modify those frameworks.
Tim: Yeah, I do think a big part of it is building your own map, and there’s a creativity to that. So much of the model of creativity and our culture is, it’s making stuff up. I think creativity is noticing things that other people don’t notice because it’s ultimately a kind of scientific process. Just think about something that we think of as traditionally creative, like music, somebody, they’re making something up because they saw a possibility that wasn’t there before. They didn’t just make it up for the hell of it, they made it up because they were seeing what the new possibilities were in… maybe it’s in an instrument, maybe it’s in a cultural milieu, but basically we shape reality by what we notice and choose to pay attention to.
I’ve always been a huge fan of the poetry of Wallace Stevens because that’s what he’s all about. There’s this underlying reality, and yet, we shape it. He described reality as the quest for supreme fiction, something that we could all agree on. But the contention between people is for visions of the future, and you certainly see that in the political realm, but you also see it in, say, paradigm shifts in technology or physics. Somebody basically convinces other people that this is the right way to think about the world.
Ross: Yeah. I think that way of “we make the world by how we perceive it”.
Tim: That’s right. We have this bit of an illusion in the West, that somehow our quest is towards the one true reality. When I go, Yeah, but tell that to my dog. We’re out there looking at things, and it’s like, what are you people looking at? This is a really good smell here, you’re not paying any attention whatsoever? I think that’s one of the things, of course, in science fiction; It’s like, how do we know that there aren’t completely different and equally valid, and maybe even more productive ways of looking at the world?
Ross: Absolutely. In “WTF”, you mentioned, compiling the pieces of the puzzle, before you put the map together. How do you find those pieces of the puzzle? Or identify them or recognize that they are pieces of the puzzle?
Tim: Let me back up and give you a little bit of color on that analogy. The point is if you imagine doing a puzzle, and all the pieces aren’t there, you can’t actually finish it. Very often, when you’re dealing with something new, the pieces literally aren’t there. I thought of that very vividly around my work with open source software, because I was thinking a lot about the fact… the first thing you think back is, Okay, what did I notice that other people weren’t noticing?
I noticed that the Free Software Foundation didn’t talk about a lot of the software that I was selling really popular books about, they were also free software. They talked about Linux, they talked about the GNU utilities, they don’t really talk about Perl, they don’t talk at all about DNS and BIND, and all these tools out of the Berkeley Software Distribution, because they had a map that was all about the license, and it was particularly our license. I’m going, Wait a minute, they don’t include the worldwide web, which was put into the public domain, something is wrong with this picture, they don’t include Sendmail, they don’t recall the DNS, they don’t include all the TCP/IP protocol suite and implementations of that, so it goes, something is clearly wrong with this picture.
I thought, well, I’m going to bring all these people together to talk about what’s wrong with the picture. At that meeting, Eric Raymond says, Oh Christine Peterson came up with a new term three weeks ago, and she was open source, and we debated it. I was like, I identified a gap. I didn’t know that there would be a new name for it that was going to show up, but it showed up just on time. If I had done my meeting… and I kept going, why am I in… there’s an intuitive part to this, there was a part of me, like, why am I delaying having this meeting? Am I just being a slacker? Then you look at how it worked out, the timing was perfect.
Another one that was a little bit like that was when I started thinking about the licensing wasn’t the key to open source, it was really collaborative software development, it was a way the internet was enabling new kinds of collaboration, including software collaboration, and distributed computing, and things like SETI@home with distributed computation, and Napster with file sharing, they all started talking to me about, there is a new paradigm emerging. I kept following, tugging on that thread, and trying to integrate into some new map that would make sense to me.
I eventually came up with this notion that we’re building an internet operating system and it’s going to be based on data. As a result of that, I launch the Web 2.0 events, but then I launched one called Where 2.0, and I was like, guess what, location is going to be one of the big subsystems of this internet operating system. It was great. We’ve been promoting the event, and a month before we went live, Google approached me and said, Hey, we’re doing this new thing, any chance that we could introduce it at your conference?
That was Google Maps. I saw that there was a logic to this thing. I didn’t know anything. I didn’t have some inner intelligence on what Google was doing. I wasn’t really paying attention to the news, they just showed up because I’d actually built… this is what I mean by the pieces of the puzzle suddenly showing up and you go, Oh, there’s the piece that was missing, and you dock it in place, and everything starts to make sense.
Ross: The word “framework”, I think, is really relevant, because that’s exactly as, for example, the frame of a painting, what goes in and what goes out. The framework is the frame, where you can see what are the pieces, which fit within that frame. In that case, I don’t know whether it is you personally or it came up with the term Web 2.0…
Tim: No I didn’t actually.
Ross: But then there is this name, or is this something where you can have a label or something where you can then communicate about what that frame is?
Tim: Yeah, that’s right. I think that’s absolutely right. The name often… it doesn’t match. Web 2.0 had a lot of baggage. Here, I’m talking about the internet operating system, and it was just too geeky. Then Dale had already come up with the name Web 2.0 in a brainstorm meeting with Craig Klein. They were trying to come up with a way that our two companies could do an event together, and we were thinking, what could we learn from them, somebody else was doing events. Dale was like, well, it was really around the second company of the World Wide Web after the .com bust was what Web 2.0 stood for. Dale had developed a series of things that it was about.
Then I just really fleshed it out with a bunch of the ideas that had previously been calling the internet operating system, and the name took off. There was also an aspirational piece that I think was very interesting about that because Dale and Craig came up with that in 2003… I had been doing this internet operating system stuff since 2001, had this P2P conference, and then that emerged into this thing we call E-tech, the emerging technologies conference, which is really exploring this idea of how the network was changing the way we would all interact. I guess it wasn’t that we had thought everything through but we had a model into which the future shows up and it starts to make more sense.
Again, another analogy I use is a little bit like a hologram. You have the big picture there, but it’s fuzzy. The more data points come in, the clearer it gets.
Ross: You may have already answered this, but if you’ve got the pieces of the puzzle, and you start to see those map out, and then you can see the framework is there, then what is the art of putting the pieces of the puzzle together to form something, which is a whole?
Tim: I think the one piece of the art is patience. Lao Tzu, the author of the “Tao Te Ching” says, he’s talking about the qualities of the wise man, and he has a bunch of them, I say, winter fare on an icy stream, I forget what they all are, but then the last one is… but also this, royal does a torrent. Why royal does a torrent? Because sometimes there’s nothing to do but wait until the stream clears. I think that waiting quality has been a big part of what I’ve done, where I haven’t rushed to try to make a story where there isn’t one.
That progress for me from open source to Web 2.0 was a seven or eight-year process. If you look at the history of the talks I was giving, I was feeling my way towards this new paradigm. Then how did I get from there to the Gov 2.0 stuff, I started thinking about the lessons for the government from technology platforms. It was a set of conversations with people and somebody would show up with a piece of the puzzle and I’d go, yes! I still remember the conversation where I got off on government as a platform, but then continuing down that path that led me to all the work that I’m doing right now about marketplaces and anti-trust. I kinda threw this idea of algorithmic regulation, which is something else that I came up with.
Again, not all of these things catch, but the point isn’t… because I’ve had some things that have really taken off, everything sets the objective. It isn’t really, the objective is, just for me, to make sense of the world.
Ross: Absolutely. I think that’s the same in my own way, I create frameworks myself, and I happen to share them, and sometimes people happen to like them. But that’s the secondary aspect.
Tim: Yeah.
Ross: Coming back a step. Is this some kind of framing purpose that helps you find these pieces of these puzzles, these maps which unfold? Have you framed some way in which there’s an intent or around what it is within your purview of what you are considering?
Tim: Well, I guess there are definitely some big picture things, and they are more values than anything else. Again, I’ve just recently got some interesting new language for this, from evolutionary biology. David Sloan Wilson has been doing a lot of work on what he calls multi-level selection, which he sums up, I guess, it was he and Edward O. Wilson, who was one of his teachers, they’re not related, even though they both have the same last name, Wilson, which is, selfish individuals can outcompete altruistic individuals, but altruistic groups outcompete selfish groups. There’s a lot of fabulous research on these alternating levels of what he calls multi-level selection, where there are certain behaviors that are at the individual level and others that are at the group level.
That notion of the alternation of individual and group actually goes all the way back to some early learning I did in the 70s, in a context that I don’t want to unpack here, but that was very fertile ground for me, but I’ve always thought about cooperation, and what encourages cooperation. We have a metaphor in our society that says it’s about winning, that this capitalism is all about competition, and winner takes all. I guess I have a set of values that I, in some ways, I guess, I’m always trying to explore and justify why that isn’t true, which is why I was attracted, say, to open-source software. I was like, you say, it’s all about competition, but guess what, look over here, Microsoft was so competitive, they killed all the innovation, and all these people went off, and they just started fighting around with the internet and open source, because hey, they could, they could cooperate, there was this new model.
But even looking back, again, I guess, in some ways, one of the big shaping maps of my technology career was watching the alternation, where IBM was dominant. I came in, actually in the tail end of the minicomputer era, not in the PC era, and I watched the PC blow up, because there’s this democratization of access, then I watch Microsoft win, and replay that the tragedy.
Then an explosion of innovation and decentralization gives us the internet, open source, and then you watch Google and Amazon and the like, replay the centralization, and bit by bit abuse of power model, and I go, well, I’ve seen it now three times. I go, so value is going to go somewhere else because I guess, one of the basic… I have this big picture idea that if you take too much of the value, the system breaks down, and people find new niches. That’s actually a fundamentally ecological concept. Again, there’s a lot of analogies that are not exact but help shape your thinking and your map.
Ross: The more analogies you have access to, the more you’re able to perceive things, which can be useful for framing things?
Tim: Right. Oh, this is like that; Oh, that means that this is probably interesting. It can lead you astray. For example, because of my centralization versus decentralization narrative, I’ve probably been more skeptical of cryptocurrencies than I should be. Because everybody was like, Oh, this is all about decentralization, I go, Yeah, it re-centralized faster than any technology in history and it fits exactly the pattern where…
Here’s IBM, that’s got their centralized power of the computer industry by control over hardware. They don’t realize that this changes, when they have commodity hardware, they release the specs for the IBM PC, they don’t think it really matters, software is just something that goes with the hardware, but Microsoft basically makes a new explosion, a new power center, that center on software, they’re all about control of software API’s, they become dominant, they don’t realize this new thing, where software becomes commoditized by open source in the internet, then it’s all about data.
Now we’re in this paradigm shift around AI, we don’t quite know what that means. I see some things that I think are really interesting, where the models that are being released, often by the big companies, I think are going to undermine them in the same way that the PC undermined IBM, and the internet undermined… so I’m aware of that. Everybody was saying no, the next thing is crypto. Maybe, but what I saw was centralization.
Once again, the centralization is not in the original model. The centralization came through energy, not through… so that’s interesting, because of course, that starts to intersect with the whole world problem, the energy is going to be one of the critical pathways that differentiate whether we survive or not. There are some arguments that maybe crypto will accelerate that because people will go oh, well, this is a great way to make lots of money, but we need to have super cheap power in order to do it, but we’re not there yet. But you go, Oh, there’s something interesting though, this repeating pattern, maybe crypto is the way forward, but maybe because it centralized so quickly, that won’t happen.
Ross: Part of it is that the technologies are decentralized, but the economic manifestations of them are centralized.
Tim: Yeah, that’s always the point. The internet was also fundamentally decentralized, but the economic models became centralization. This goes back to this multi-level selection played out in culture, which is that we are seeing this dance between competition and cooperation.
Ross: Which I think is something which can help frame those models and whatever frameworks. Some of the powers of thriving and overload or filtering and focus, I get the sense that… at the beginning, you alluded to essentially allowing the wash to come over you and what comes, what you see, the things that you see are the ones which are the things which are relevant, I mean, are there any…
Tim: Yeah, I think that’s right.
Ross: But are there any particular tools, approaches, routines?
Tim: Well, first off, I will say that there is a real downside to my approach. Because I’m not very goal-directed or my goal is to make interesting things happen for other people, I miss a lot. I have this one very funny experience where there was a startup I heard about, that had been funded by a friend of mine, and I went, holy cow, that’s super interesting. I reached out to the guy who’d given them funding, and I said, Can you introduce me? And he introduced me to the founder and the guy was like, Tim, it was your idea that we built, we came to see you and we had a bad idea, and you didn’t like it, and you told us what we should be doing, and we went and did it. I go, Well, how do I manage to not then have them come back and tell me, we’re doing your thing. I would have invested in it, it would have been a good exit. But I just don’t think that way a lot.
I sometimes laugh about myself, I’m a little bit like this episode, I saw when my kids were little of Sesame Street in which the Cookie Monster won some game show and he’s now at the section where he gets to choose his prize, and behind door number one is a million dollars, behind door number two is a Chateau in France, or something like that, behind door number three is a cookie, and we all know what he chooses. For me, the cookie is just interesting people doing interesting work that seems to make the world go better. That’s why I tend to surround myself with people who pick up on things that I find interesting, and then pursue them methodically because I don’t.
Ross: Yes. Coming back to when I was asking about purpose, I mean, in a way, you’ve framed it just now, and the side effects of that purpose are wonderful.
Tim: Yeah, I just love to have… at my events, I like to connect other people. The things that I get so excited about is hearing that, Oh, you guys met and cooked up something amazing. Again, we did put something, for example, a planet, the satellites, it was sort of formed as a result of our science fruit camp and that led… we did actually invest in it through our venture fund, but it wasn’t because of me, I was just like, hey, let me put these interesting people together. These guys from NASA are making shoe box satellites, that’s super cool. Let’s invite them to this event. There’s a lot of things like that. That’s, as John Maynard Keynes used to say, my jam.
Ross: Yeah. That, as you well understand, is how the future is created.
Tim: Yeah.
Ross: Any final words of advice for anyone who is struggling with far too much information and trying to make sense of it?
Tim: Well, again, maybe I’m spoiled because, of course, I’ve been quite successful, and I’m not there like an early-career person who’s trying to make their mark in the world. But I think we try too hard.
Again, lots of my mentor says let life ripen and then fall, will is not the way at all. This is the wonderful Witter Bynner translation from the 50s or 60s, I’m not sure exactly when it was. But we need to have an attitude of receptivity for any of this stuff to work. That’s not terribly compatible with a certain kind of striving. Now, again, striving really works. I mean, there are people who are way more successful than I am, who are hyper-competitive, and they’re trying to make some particular thing happen, so there’s more than one way to do it. As Larry Wall, the creator of the Perl programming languages used to say, I can’t tell you that, my way is the best way, I can tell you that it’s been good for me, and it helps me align my work life and my personal life.
Again, you’re trying to make something happen, but you’re also trying to listen a lot, and it’s finding the balance between the two. I guess the other thing that’s been very shaping for me, is this wonderful poem of Rilke, called “The Man Watching”, in which she says, this is my rough translation of somebody else’s English translation from German, but saying that, Jacob, in the Old Testament wrestling with the angel, and Rilke says, what we fight with is so small, and when we win, it makes us small, what we want is to be defeated by successively greater beings.
I think there’s certainly a point where everybody thinks that it’s about success, and if you have the perspective that we’re all ultimately defeated, again, Rilke’s phrase, we come away stronger from the fight, you’re going to tackle hard things, and it’s not about winning. Rilke says winning does not tempt that man or that woman. It’s just like, you are about engaging with the world in a way that’s productive in the process, not necessarily in the outcome. Because ultimately, we don’t win. We can just leave things a little better than we found them.
Ross: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely relevant for everyone in these times because there’s no such thing as a win, in a way, as you say that.
Tim: Yeah, and that helps you select what to pay attention to, because you can start to say, Oh, my… if your fundamental goal is to make other people better off, then you value things like cooperation, you value things like making connections that allow people to do things that you wouldn’t be able to do by yourself, you realize that, Oh, you value telling a story that lets other people make sense out and see opportunities that you couldn’t pursue. That’s why at O’Reilly, one of our slogans has been “create more value than you capture”. We put together information that helps other people to do things, and that’s the heart of our O’Reilly online learning platform today still. It’s just like, how do we teach people to follow what they want to do? And it’s not directive, it’s enabling.
Ross: Absolutely. Tim, it has been a delight and an honor to have you sharing your insights. Thank you so much.
Tim: You’re very welcome. I enjoyed talking with you, too.
“Depending on the environment I’m in, whether I’m sitting at my desk here, and I’ve got my two screens in front of me or whether I’m walking the dog on the field, and I’ve got like no internet connection, I don’t want there to be a friction point in any environment that I’m in. I select tools that help me do that.”– Danny Hatcher
About Danny HatcherDanny is a YouTuber, Blogger, Author, and Podcaster helping people be more intentional and organized with their time, and sharing useful insights from the latest in educational science.
Website: Danny Hatcher
YouTube: Danny Hatcher
Podcast: Personal Knowledge Management Podcast
Discord: Educational Science
*LinkedIn:* Danny Hatcher
Twitter: Danny Hatcher
Facebook: Danny Hatcher
Instagram: Danny Hatcher
What you will learn A comprehensive understanding of sports coaching beyond the stereotypical image of a coach with a whistle (02:18) * Introduction to two different perspectives in the educational science field when it comes to learning, memory, and understanding (04:17) * Understanding cognition and learning as part of a dynamical system, and the role of technology in building an extended cognitive environment (06:09) * Emphasis on the importance of visual perception and attention in understanding ecological dynamics in learning and skill acquisition (07:52) * Rereading books for deeper understanding (10:20) * Choosing a productivity tool that offers a seamless and effortless user experience in various settings (11:37) * Using a mind map called a Canvas in Obsidian for mapping out ideas and note-taking (13:35) * Using folders, tags, and links in Obsidian for note-taking and organization (15:59) * Obsidian being the top choice when it comes to retrieving information due to its powerful search functionality and intuitive linking system (20:08) * Differences between Notion and Obsidian (25:17) * The need for a collaborative effort between developers and users with AI integration to enhance the existing tools (30:00) * Following one’s curiosity to enjoy the learning process (33:00) Resources Notion * Zotero * ChatGPT * Obsidian * Roam Research * Canvas * Microsoft Word * Google Docs * Tana * Nimbus Note * Milanote TranscriptRoss Dawson: Danny, it’s a delight to have you on the show.Danny Hatcher: Thank you for having me. I’m excited.
Ross: You are an expert in, let’s call it information productivity, using tools, expanding your knowledge, and being able to be effective. I’d love to just hear the story of the journey. How did you come to be where you are?
Danny: Yes. For a bit of background, my undergraduate degree is in sports coaching. Some people may assume that’s a guy with a whistle on the sideline but that’s far from the truth. Most of my research is in pedagogy, andragogy, epistemology, philosophy, and then all of the other related learning fields inside of a sport, which, are biomechanics, anatomy, and physiology, so it covers essentially every element of human learning, and human development, which has a lot of information, a lot of knowledge.
When I was coming toward the end of my undergraduate degree, I found a tool called Notion. It was in beta right at the very start, it didn’t have any databases, which is what most people are familiar with now. I was a very early adapter. As I went through my master’s degree in strength and conditioning, I carried on using it. It was useful in picking out information. But I was struggling to connect some ideas and link things and I was losing information. I fell into a trap of having to create all of the databases and all the pages and do loads of stuff with Notion. I ended up doing more with Notion than with information. I was building out templates and building out databases, and I forgot what I was actually meant to be working on.
I did a switch from Notion to what I now use, which is Obsidian. My research is in a similar field, I still look at educational science, but it’s much easier and quicker to manage information with the system that I currently have now, which is what I share online, which is on youtube; mainly on youtube. Then I do have a podcast where I talk in-depth about some of the other related concepts, which I’m sure we’ll allude to today.
Ross: Fantastic. Part of it is building your knowledge, part of it is also building your method knowledge as it were, the ability to be more effective at having been able to create and build that.
Danny: Yes. The educational science field is, I wouldn’t say split, but there are two perspectives or paradigms of thought when it comes to learning, memory, and understanding; one being cognitive psychology, which is very popular that encompasses neuroscience, neuropsychology, and all of the, what I would class as, traditional, general population knowledge where people see learning, I have a shorter working memory or my short term memory is bad, that is cognitive psychology. Then the view, the perspective that I personally favor and lean towards is ecological dynamics, which is from ecological psychology.
That takes a different route. It ends at the same point but takes a different perspective. That mainly comes from skill acquisition and motor learning, so learning physical skills; and that’s where a lot of the research is at the moment. My personal approach to using ecological dynamics has changed the way that I use my tools, use Obsidian as my note-taker, as it were. Then I use Zotero, which is a reference manager to bring in all of the..I don’t want to say information because, in ecological dynamics, information isn’t the same as when we’re talking about cognitive psychology information.
Information for me is patterns that I’m seeing in an environment, not just a word, it’s the pattern between the word and the environment, or the environment and the organism, in my case, me. Zotero is my content manager, not necessarily my information manager. Hopefully, that makes sense.
Ross: The ecological you refer to, I think, we could reframe that as the environment and so the idea of the extended mind, where the mind or the learning is then beyond what’s inside our skulls.
Danny: Yes, extended into the environment, I wouldn’t say learning is extended, as in into the environment, I would say the environment is part of cognition, depending on the mark of the cognitive that you choose to use with extended cognition, whether it is everything inside of my brain is cognition, or it’s everything inside of my body, so embodied cognition. I’m counting with my fingers, is that cognition, or is that not quite cognition? And then you have the fully leaning one way where everything is cognition, everything in your environment is which I don’t think that’s true, because then I could say the wall in front of me is part of cognition, which I don’t think it’s logical or rational to think about.
There’s got to be a barrier or a line to say, this is part of my cognition. Inside ecological dynamics, there are parts that build up systems, which is the dynamical systems element. I am a part, my phone is a part, and my computer is a part inside of this system of learning. When my phone is on, it’s part of the system, when it’s off, it’s not part of the system, which is why it’s dynamic. What I do is create an environment using the tech on my computers, so Obsidian is part of our learning environment, Zotero as well. Then with all the tools, now you’ve got AI coming into being, and you’ve got ChatGPT. When I’m using those, they are part of the extended cognitive environment that I’m working in to help me understand the information that I’m seeing from social media, academic articles, blogs, journals, podcasts, videos, and all the content sources.
Ross: This way of thinking, was that informed by the fact that you’ve come from a sports background? Or is that not related?
Danny: I think it’s heavily impacted by my sports background, because ecological dynamics is, as I mentioned earlier, only prevalent inside of skill acquisition research. When you try and find ecological dynamics on the internet, you have to look for ecological dynamics in skill acquisition, otherwise, it will come up with ecology and ecosystems of animals and nature; it’s related, don’t get me wrong, it’s still related because it’s part of dynamic ecosystems. But the ecological dynamics inside of learning is mainly skill acquisition because it comes down to visual perception, what is perception? How does the information… so indirect or direct information? How is that perceived? And then how do we, trying to avoid jargon here, but how do we attune our attention to certain information that we are perceiving from the environment?
I’m using my prior knowledge, which is cognitive psychology, I’m using my memory, instead of using all of the prior knowledge to create a prediction of what can happen, I’m using prospective control. I’m looking at all the information I have inside of the environment, and that’s enough because it’s direct information. I’m still using information that’s not in that exact moment in time because we do have stuff stored. When I’m learning inside of an environment, I’m using the information and perceiving the information straightaway. Then I’m creating the environment, and information or ideas are emerging from the environment I’ve created.
When I’m consuming content online, for example, that’s part of the environment, I’ll pick out, I’ll attune my attention to something that’s notable. That achievement, the metastable attenuation, bringing the jargon, but essentially, the focus that I have, on certain terms will change with my expertise, my bias, and my focus at that point in time. When I’m reading something for the first time, and maybe I’m familiar with it, I’m not that attuned to the information inside of that article. I’ll take out information, and put it in Obsidian. The second time I read it, I may have higher expertise in that field, in that environment, in that idea, I’ve consolidated some thoughts, so now my attention, my attunement of information is slightly different. Now I’m noticing things that I didn’t notice the first time around, which is why I don’t read that many books, I reread books because they’re teaching me something different each time I look at them because my own understanding of whatever the concept they’re talking about has shifted in one way or another.
Ross: This goes to what I frame as knowledge development, the process of knowledge, it accretes, grows, and builds on itself. Sometimes there’s a substitution as replacing existing frameworks, or mental models, but often it is building on or getting greater refinement or doing that. It gets us to this part of your expertise. How it is that we can best capture those elements on which we can build or which can inform us or can make us develop our skills, develop our capabilities? Let’s just start at a conceptual level and then perhaps dig into the tools at the moment. What do you look for in your tools for thinking, and how do you implement it? How do they fit within your cognitional perception or daily life? What is their role? How did they become part of you?
Danny: The easiest way for me to explain this is I want it to be as simple as possible. I don’t want to have to worry about what buttons to push, where to store things, how to save anything, or worry about how the tech is working, I just want to add it, which, simply put, is by pushing a plus button of some sort, typing in whatever it is that I need to type in or speaking, however you capture the information, and then it is stored somewhere that I can find quickly. That’s all I want tech to do is just store it somewhere; capture it easily, store it somewhere that I don’t have to think about, I can just carry on with whatever the train of thought is that I have.
Depending on the environment I’m in, whether I’m sitting at my desk here, and I’ve got my two screens in front of me or whether I’m walking the dog on the field, and I’ve got like no internet connection, I don’t want there to be a friction point in any environment that I’m in. I select tools that help me do that.
Ross: So there’s the capturing, and I think one of the things which you emphasize in your work that I’ve seen is the networks as in what are the connections between the ideas. So…part of it is being able to capture that, then it’s being able to build that connected structure of these ideas as seamlessly as possible, in the way it’s useful to you.
Danny: I think this is the misconception with those familiar with Obsidian and Roam Research with the graph view and how the connectedness is beneficial and useful. I see that graph behind you, it’s great for an overview. But oftentimes, when you’re working and you have expertise in a field, there are so many connections, it’s very difficult to see what’s going on. I personally don’t use the graph view tool inside of Obsidian. I am using a more recent addition to Obsidian called a Canvas, which is essentially just a mind map. But that is specific in the environment I’m working in.
If I’m working on an essay, then I will mind-map stuff out. When I’m capturing information, I’m not thinking about what this can relate to or what this can link to, I’m just consuming the information and going on wherever my mind goes at the time. If I’m listening to a podcast, and I have a question about it, I write the question about the comment that was made inside of the podcast, inside of what I call a source note, a capture note, literature note, you can call it what you want. But it’s just a place to put the information that I can go back to.
The reason it’s a source is because it has got a link back to wherever it came from, whether that be an article or video podcast. That stays a source note, it stays just by itself individualized. I don’t want to edit the source note because I want it to be specific to just that environment, just that thing, so if I do go back to it, I can see where it was, like a checkpoint, as it were. The connections come with sources and then bringing that information into something tangible and useful, which to me is a research note; the logical step as a researcher source and then research.
Ross: A couple of the ways that you have addressed in your work around the connections or the relationships is in tagging. Folders or hierarchies are fixed and structured, and unwieldy tags can be a superior way to be able to have multiple ways of relating or clustering different concepts or notes. How do you use tags or other tools to be able to group things together in a meaningful way?
Danny: I see folders and tags as very structural, they’re less dynamic in the way that you can use them. Because when you tag something, you don’t know exactly why. If for example, I click on a tag and I get 10 notes, I don’t know exactly why note one is related to note three. It is just implicit because it’s in the tag. I would need to open note one and note three and try and work out why it’s linked. Whereas if I create the link inside of the text, and for example, have a sentence saying ecological dynamics is different from information processing, and I have ecological dynamics as a link and information processing as a link.
When I say link, it’s essentially a hyperlink when you click on something, but inside of an application like Obsidian, it takes you to another file inside of the app, that is explicit, I know exactly why ecological dynamics and information processing are linked. You can do the same with a shopping list. Why is an apple on the shopping list? Oh, I don’t have it for today and you can link it to the days when I didn’t have apples in the house at that point in time. It can be expanded in lots of ways. The way I see tags and folders are structures and organization structures.
If you do need to find something, you know roughly where it’s going to be. But because of Obsidian, I very rarely use either of those formatted structures because search is so powerful. I can search any word that’s in a file, I can search any word in the entire folder system of Obsidian because Obsidian is local. It’s like a folder on your computer. I can search for any word inside any file inside that folder. I don’t need to go into folders and look down the tree, I just search for the word, and it will tell me where it is. Or I can search for a file very quickly which in Obsidian is called the Quick Switcher.
If I have a file, for example, on fake news, I can just type in fake news, and then it will show me exactly what that file is. If I was to search for anything, it’s very, very quick. Tags and folders, I use folders for categories of information. I have a research folder for all my research notes, and a source folder for my source notes, but I never open them, I never go into them. They’re just there so they’re stored in some structural way. I only use tags because of a feature, a plug-in inside of Obsidian that allows me to add what’s called metadata or information specific to that type of note. A source I know is going to have a URL, it’s going to have a link back to wherever the source was. But my research note won’t have a URL, because my research note is going to have a variety of sources all over the place.
Essentially, the links are the sources. A tag gives me that information. The tag source says, Okay, you need a URL for this, you need the authors for this, and you need a title for this. But if it’s tagged with research, I don’t want any of that. I want what’s the priority of this research file. What’s the stage of this research file? So I use tags as types of notes to add specific parts of information on that type of note for me that’s beneficial in my research work.
Ross: You mentioned earlier that you started off with Notion as a tool and discovered the potential of being able to capture information in useful ways. You then started using Obsidian. Then at a certain point, I gather you stopped using Notion, with Obsidian being where everything happens. I’d love to hear about that journey, particularly the transition point when you felt that Obsidian could do it all for you.
Danny: Yes, I must admit, to start with, I was all in on Notion. I’d used it for three years by that point. I was completely sold as Notion is the best thing ever. I was deliberately avoiding the issues that I had inside of Notion, which were the databases. Yes, they’re very powerful. But I lost things. I forgot things. The linking was a little bit clunky. I just didn’t accept that that was a problem. When I first saw Obsidian, I saw a lot of code. I saw a lot of marked-downs, hashes, and symbols. I was like, I’m not a developer. I’m sports. I can’t do this tech stuff. They’re talking about code blocks in javascript stuff and I was like, no, not for me.
Then I saw the graph view. I thought that looks cool. Let’s have a play. I had a play. I didn’t like it much. But what I did like was the speed. That immediately got me because Obsidian is local, and it’s extremely quick. It’s like Microsoft Word versus Google Docs. Google Docs is online. If your internet’s a bit slow, or you don’t have internet, Google Docs is slow or unavailable. It’s the same with Notion whereas Obsidian, it’s fast, like, always fast. I have a vault folder in Obsidian that has over 100,000 files in and it’s just as quick as my active vault with about 5000 files. The 100,000 files, well, it was a test file to purely test how Obsidian manages with all the plugins and stuff, but it’s just fast and quick. I thought, okay, I can deal with this, I can manage this.
Obsidian to start with was just like Microsoft Word but gave me the folders, and the folder searches inside the app. That’s how I used it to start with. I just type stuff into a file, just like a Word doc. Then when I wanted to switch files, I just went to the folder system and switch to the file rather than having like seven or eight windows of Word up on my computer trying to navigate which one it was when I was writing essays at uni because you can’t write inside of Notion for an essay because of citation and bibliography formatting, which you can do in Obsidian, which I do. Having experienced the speed, and then the ease of just switching between files, I thought, you know what, I’ll explore this a bit more; two years later and I’m very familiar with the tool now with many of its capabilities.
Ross: Indeed. Most of the things have courses to help people to get started, to build, and to use it well.
Danny: Just as a point, I think something with Obsidian that a lot of people will see, not just Obsidian but a lot of other tech tools, are people using massively complicated spaces because they’ve got all these queries, plugins, community plugins, buttons, and different looks and it’s very hard to see. That doesn’t look like mine because they’ve got a different CSS theme and some different snippets and they’re using some code. You don’t need any of that to use Obsidian. It is, quite simply, files on your system that you type in.
If you come up with a problem, something Obsidian has, Notion doesn’t have, from what I’ve experienced, is there’s a massive community in Obsidian that will just solve your problem. If you can’t do this, use maybe this plugin, or maybe combine these two things together, and you’ll find the answer. I’m yet to find something that you can’t do in Obsidian. But then the question becomes should you do it in Obsidian?
Ross: Notion is essentially a database. It’s a relational database with a lot of lovely stuff on top of it. That’s quite a different frame to Obsidian, which, as you say, is files, texts, links, and connections. Were there any database-style things that you were using on Notion that you’ve been able to put on Obsidian? Or just you weren’t using those tools well, or doing something else for those kinds of data?
Danny: The easy answer is no, no, I don’t use them but you can. If you want a table, you can use a table, if you want a Kanban, you can use a Kanban, you want a gallery, use a gallery. What I found in Notion with the databases, though, was I had loads of databases, loads of link databases, loads of views; I’ve got a gallery, a calendar, and a table all for the same information but I never really used them. All I’ve used was the list. I’ve done this, I’ve done this, I’ve done this, or I need to look at this then I go to the Notion page and then just write.
Even though the databases were nice, I never really used the views to do anything apart from just show me information, which in Obsidian, I can do through search, I don’t need a database view. With the canvas plugin, and core plugin inside of Obsidian, which is a mind map, I now don’t need any database star view, because I can have them all in one. For those that can’t quite visualize this, essentially, it’s a mind map with a table view on one spot, I drag my mouse to another spot, and now I’ve got a gallery view or a Kanban view. Or I could make a Kanban view inside of the Mind Map and it adds the information to the carts. I get all of the database store views with added flexibility with the canvas. But then I get all of the complexity that I want if I want it with Obsidian, which you can have in a Notion database, but you’re slightly restricted.
A technical example inside of Notion is, you may be familiar, you can have a roll-up. A roll-up brings in information from a relation property. But you need the relation property to start with. You then start building out all these properties. You can have a database in Notion with 20-30 properties. But inside of Obsidian, you can do the exact same thing with 4 or 5. Because it’s text-based and it doesn’t require all of the linking between databases to work because Obsidian is just files. That’s something fundamental to Obsidian that makes it fast but makes it very, very easy to customize, edit, and change so the databases aren’t needed. But a lot of people coming from Notion to Obsidian I can understand why they’d be more familiar with that. Yes, you can do it. But I don’t.
Ross: Yes. Certainly, the introduction of Canvas to Obsidian has significantly expanded its usefulness and usability to a lot of people. That’s a whole space where you can play visually, whatever dimensions you want, it adds a lot. Again, this is something that is not there in Notion native but it provides another frame or perspective, which is valuable. One of the things, a lot of people use Notion as a multi-user system, so it’s for companies that can do workflows or social media calendars, or a million other things. I’ve experienced Obsidian very much as a single user. Is that something to consider as Notion? Yes, I don’t think that Notion and Obsidian are that directly comparable but the multiuser thing is one frame on it.
Danny: There are pros and cons. Notions, shareability, yes, it’s easier with Notion hands down. But the privileges that you get with Notion are restricted because you have to give access to your databases. Then you have to work out what database do I give them. What page can I give them? It becomes a bit of a Tetris game of fitting all the pieces together so everyone has the right privileges, and working out what workspace to use. There is a bit of trust you have to have with that. Obsidian, you can share because they are just files, it’s just like sharing a file on any cloud service. You’ve got Google Docs, you’ve got Dropbox, and all those sorts of things.
I personally use collaborative sync, which is using Obsidian sync. But it allows you to add if the other person or other people have sync on their account. They just have a vault on their computer, so a vault folder on a computer that synced, which, for those familiar with Obsidian, is just like the normal sync, where you can sync up your computer with your laptop, with your phone, except the other person’s account is treated as another device. If you have a folder, a vault folder for work, then you can sync it with another person. That’s how I work collaboratively with Obsidian.
The only negative is that because it is synced and it takes a second, maybe two, you can’t do live collaboration as easily out of the box. You can do it but it does require some technical understanding using something like VS code or using the live share plugin which gets technical. If you’re working in a big team, with lots of people editing the same file at the same time, Notion. If you’re a big team, but everyone has their own space, their own thing, you can still use Obsidian. Would I recommend it? Probably not. I think it depends very much on what you’re doing. But for researchers, I think it’s invaluable because you can connect Zotero, which has shared libraries with Obsidian, so you can share your research in Zotero, then share the notes inside of Obsidian and then work together on a manuscript on something rather than having to go backward or forward with Word doc drafts, which is a pain.
Ross: Indeed. We’ve had a massive explosion in thinking tools over the last four years, a bit more maybe, we have the Notion, Roam, Obsidian, a whole array of other tools coming out at the moment. What would you like to see in the next year or two, either with the development of Obsidian or other tools? What’s missing now that you think would really add to what we have in terms of thinking tools?
Danny: I think AI has to play a part because of the way AI is moving forward. The way I see the tools for thought space at the moment is not what I want to see more of but actually what I want to see less of because there are so many tools trying to do the same thing. I wish they would just communicate and work together a bit more. You mentioned Roam, you’ve mentioned Obsidian, but you’ve got things like Tana, Nimbus Note, Milanote, and all of those other tools that are out there trying to do the same thing.
As a youtube creator, I get emails from lots of developers saying we’ve created this new tool. I always respond to them and say, why would I use yours over Obsidian? And I have not found a response yet where they say Oh, well, we can do this that Obsidian can’t. My question is okay, why are you creating a new tool when you could develop and enhance the ones that already work, that we already have? What I would want to see is more of a community effort to build out the tools that we have, rather than building more tools to pick from.
Ross: I think it’s a great point, though, I’m not sure that the world’s gonna listen.
Danny: No, everyone wants their big app to be the one to go to.
Ross: Yes.
Danny: I don’t want to say don’t develop your own app, because obviously, you need to develop the skills as part of learning. There is certainly an issue with adding to the community because of the community plugins in Obsidian, I don’t want to say it’s a meme, but it’s certainly an issue inside of Obsidian where you onboard someone and you say, Okay, have a look at the community plugins, there are almost 1000 now to look through. A lot of them do the same thing. There’s the same problem inside the plugin community.
Then you have the same issue with searching online information, Oh, do I want this plugin? Do I need that plugin? Which one do I use? Which ones don’t I use? Fear of missing out? Do I need to use this one? Everyone else is using that one. I don’t want loads of people to suddenly create loads of plugins and a lot of them do not have much value that then the value is in the eye of the beholder. It may be valuable for 10 people, whereas something like a data view may be valuable for 500,000 people. I would want people to develop, but be cognizant that not everyone can use every plugin at once. But yes, it’s a difficult question inside of the tech industry, and matching, the developers want to add stuff. The consumers want to just do the work.
Ross: Yes. To round out, talking beyond tools specific, just more generally, people who are living in the world of lots of information, they want to develop their knowledge, and keep on top of everything, what’s any high-level advice you would give for people who are on that journey saying, alright, well, what is it that I should do? How do I become more effective at this?
Danny: My go-to, the thing that’s coming to mind first is enjoy the process. When I say that, I don’t mean enjoy the process, as in Oh, yes, I’m watching loads of TikTok videos, I’m enjoying this. I mean, enjoy thinking about something. Everyone, naturally when you’re born, is curious, and you want to learn, children want to learn. That’s why they’re asking why and poking things and making mistakes and failing all the time. Then they go to school, and the education system has some quirks. I just leave it like that. But when you’re enjoying the learning, you follow your curiosity, you follow those questions. That’s what I would urge you to do. If you do get distracted, you’re like, oh, actually, that’s a really interesting question. Find a place to write down the question or write down your thoughts or just record an audio clip on your phone or wherever and just have fun exploring the information and asking questions, because inevitably, you’ll gain expertise just by exploring what you’re interested in.
Ross: I think that’s fabulous advice. I think the human brain is extraordinary. It’s the most amazing thing we know of in the universe. I think we can easily enjoy using it more just by digging into the things that we find and discover and imagine along the way. Thank you so much for your time, Dan. It has been a fantastic conversation.
Danny: Yes, thanks for having me.
“I’m very particular about what information I pull in and what I leave out. I think that is one of the most absolutely critical things that people need to do.”– Thomas Baekdal
About Thomas BaekdalThomas is the founder and publisher of Baekdal Media and a leading media analyst. He is the author of books including The Shift, about the news industry’s transition from print to digital, and advises leading publishers about the evolution of the media industry.
Website: Baekdal Media
Twitter: Thomas Baekdal
Facebook: Thomas Baekdal
LinkedIn: Thomas Baekdal
What you will learn Media analysis requires vast information to understand media and related areas. (00:53) * Efficient information management is crucial for media analysts, and building a tool can help manage information influx. (02:00) * Why Thomas built his tool to manage information overload as a media analyst. (05:01) * A computer science degree is essential for media analysts to handle complex and varied data. (08:31) * Accessing raw data is crucial for deeper understanding and analysis of patterns and inconsistencies. (09:48) * Transforming complex data into practical actions is a significant challenge for media analysts. (16:01) * News importance fades quickly, leading to JOMO and news avoidance for better mental state. (18:05) * Setting up social media filters can manage an individual’s mental space and reduce information overload. (21:27) * Diversity in sources, including gender and expertise, is crucial for a comprehensive understanding of issues. (25:02) * Aggressively selecting sources and maintaining a manageable number of sources is necessary for effective media analysis. (27:45) Resources INMA * Reuters Institute Digital News Report * Notion * Obsidian * FOMO * JOMO * News Avoidance TranscriptRoss Dawson:Thomas, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.Thomas Baekdal: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Ross: You’ve been working, analyzing the media industry for a very long time now looking at the future of media.
Thomas: I started professionally doing this in 2010. It’s been 13 years. But, I worked 10 years before that as a digital media manager for one of the largest fashion companies in my country. That was on the other side of the media, but it was still media. Basically, I’ve been doing this since the year 2000.
Ross: You’re, of course, working in a very rapidly moving landscape following the evolution of media and there’s plenty to follow.
Thomas: Yes.
Ross: But the nature of your choice, you are deeply involved in information and making sense of the world. I’d like to hear a little bit more about the history of your relationship with information.
Thomas: It’s a funny thing because what I do as a media analyst is I try to do all the work that publishers don’t have time for basically, to try to figure out what is happening around the media and around… well, basically, whatever thing, and that requires a tremendous amount of information. You notice as well with your work that if you want to see what’s ahead in the future, you can’t just look at a few studies, you have to be in information all the time on all of it so you can get a bigger picture of it. I spent all my… every day just looking at reports and studies and data and all kinds of things. It can be quite daunting sometimes. Well, it’s fun also.
Ross: I’d love to dig into some of the details. I’m sure there’s not a typical day, but what’s your inflammation day look like? How do you start? What do you look at? Do you have any patterns or structures and what do you spend time on? And where do you look? What does your information day look like?
Thomas: Well, first of all, there is no day that’s the same, it depends on what I’m working on. But one of the things that I have changed for myself because of trying to manage things is I built a tool. I have a tool that is built by myself where I gather all my main sources. That’s all my podcasts or my newsletters, all the reports that I know are coming in. Also, other sources like websites where I know that they’re publishing things I need to know about, for instance, INMA, the news organization; they publish a lot of blog posts. My resource to get us all that up automatically, I have a script, that is waiting every 10 minutes that is looking for if there is something new. What I do when I want to look into things is I start there, I’ve simply built a tool trying to make sense of things.
What this tool is doing—it’s sites are just having all these different sources in one place is and it has a note-taking tool right beside it. If I see a new report, for instance, I can go through it and read it. Then I can take screenshots or take quotes and put them into my note-taking tool right next to it. When I’m working on something, when I’m trying to figure out what is happening, what the trends are, what the things are, that’s what I’m looking at. Then the following days, if I’m working on a specific project for a publisher, or if I’m writing an article, I use that tool to go in and look at what notes I’ve written about things.
In the note-taking tool, I have a search feature. I can say I want to look at what did I write about the subscriptions, for instance, and it will show me a list of the notes with reference to which document was a newsletter and which report it was from. That clearly gives me a very quick, but also very efficient way for me to get that information and organize it if you feel. Then, of course, we have… I mean, when we get into the really very specific, that’s just hard work. I will spend hours, days, maybe even weeks, just looking at things. If I have a question I don’t really know something about, I will just spend tons and tons of time trying to find things and there are no simple ways to do that. It’s Google, it’s all my auto sources, it’s some of the sites that I maybe know, maybe they have some data about it. It’s a mix of everything, but my research tool is my starting point. That has been critical to my information management.
Ross: That’s really interesting. There are many, many tools out there to do parts of what you’ve done. Why have you made the choice to develop your own?
Thomas: Two reasons. First thing is that I happen to know how to code. I learned that back in the 90s. Every single time I’ve looked at one of those standard tools, they are all very impressive, but they don’t necessarily do exactly what I needed to do. In order to optimize it for me, I built this tool so that I could get it to do just what I wanted. I mean, one critical element of it is how it’s doing things automatically. I don’t have to add anything to it. Well, I can add it manually if I want to, but for 99% of it, it is being imported automatically with some scripts and some code and some things.
That really saves some time because the problem is if you have one of the standard tools, not only do you have to use them to figure out what you want, but you also have to spend an enormous amount of time bringing the data in and every single day, I get what 30-40 newsletters alone. If I had to manually put them into a note-taking tool, I also figure out what it was, I will never get that done. Here, I have it into the tool. It is searchable. I can add notes to it if I want to. I just decided to create a tool that for me just was super optimized to the way I work. That was what I found to be the most important thing.
Ross: Fascinating. Have you ever considered putting this out to market?
Thomas: Well, I’ve been asked by several people about it. The problem is it’s not designed for it. It’s designed for me. One of the things I’ve also done, not related to this, but I’ve also built my own site. My site, when people visit that and all the things that are on that, all the code for that is built around, built that too, including the backend system, including the database and the CMS and all that. When I built this resource tool, it’s just built on top of that. Basically, the resource tool took one day to build. It was that quick, but it was only that quick because I built it on top of the system I already have. I can’t sell it without complete reengineering it. People have asked me about it. But yes, I have no plans for it.
Ross: That’s fascinating. It goes to the point that for so much of our lives, we adapt ourselves to technology. It’s nice to be able to say this is what I do, this is what I want to do, in your case to have the capabilities to create the technology to do that.
Thomas: Yes.
Ross: I’ve had many conversations with people who say I like Notion, or I like Obsidian, and I’m going to choose which one is the best one. But it doesn’t have these features, so they’re adapting themselves to the tools.
Thomas: Yes. But I will always say that today, it’s almost necessary to all to be able to do a lot of things because when I do my analysis, for instance, if I want to do some data analysis, I could open Excel and do something but sometimes it’s just easier if I have a really large data set to just build a script for it, and do the analysis that way. It has become just part of the way I work that I have the data in front of me and the report in front of me and if I want to do something, instead of trying to do it the hard way, I can just write some code for it. That makes it efficient once you can do it.
It’s an important thing. The future analysts, I will always say they need a computer science degree because it is so much about how we are able to work with the information we have. The problem is it’s not just data, it’s not just a simple database; most of the data we have is completely chaotic. We have to figure out a way to somehow manipulate that in ways that isn’t just something you can do with Excel. Coding is one way to do it.
I want to clarify here, I don’t just code everything. I have this specific tool and it’s really helping me but 90% of my time, I do the same thing as everyone else is that I look over the text and the reports and those things manually and I try to figure things out. Most graphs and data we get is probably in a PDF file, and we can’t even convert it to data. It’s rather hopeless to work with it as a script.
Ross: Yes, it’s not that difficult to suck in a lot of text and build some structure around it. But one of the interesting points here is that you are pulling it all together at once so there’s a lot of data, a lot of information, as opposed to being very selective about what you incorporate.
Thomas: Another thing that’s also very important is that when it comes to the information that I use, I always try to get the data. One example we recently had is the Reuters Institute, the digital media report, they produce it every year. It’s really great. You go to the website, you will see all the graphs and everything is really amazing. But I went out to Reuters and I said, could you give me the data? And they sent me the data. So I have something like, I think it’s 22 gigabytes of data from Reuters.
I have the ability now to go behind the reports and to look at okay, the thing about all these reports is that they’re picking the things they want to focus on and Reuters is doing a really good job of it. But very often, you want to look behind it and you want to see, okay, what was the question actually when they asked it, and what was the data that they didn’t include? That may also show some kind of pattern so a lot of the time when I try to figure out how to do things for information is simply to get back to that raw source.
It’s the same thing we should talk about, some kind of political analysis. I don’t do that that much. But if I do, I want the raw polls, I don’t want what’s in the newspapers, that’s useless. I want the raw polls, I want to be able to see what they actually asked, and I want to see how they defined it. That is much more helpful.
Ross: Absolutely. It’s fantastic that Reuters has been good enough to share the data with you. In other cases, you can look for the data source and find it yourself.
Thomas: Yes.
Ross: Increasingly, the sharing of data behind the charts is extraordinarily valuable. What are the interesting things that you read in reports, you mentioned that several times, significant information sources. I read reports too, probably not to the same depth as you. What’s amazing is that not many people read reports, because they’re so long. I’d love to hear what’s your process of reading and distilling and digesting and taking what is useful from a good report.
Thomas: Well, it depends a lot on the report. If we were talking about the Reuters Institute report, I’ve spent weeks just looking at that. I probably get a report every day on average, and most of them are about something either very specific or something in an area that I probably can’t use. In those cases, I’m just like everyone else, just glancing over it. I’m not really reading the text in full, I’m just finding the graphs and I’m seeing if there’s something interesting, and if there’s not, I’m moving on. But I would be out of time in no time if I tried to read every single report in there.
But every single time when we come across something where we see, okay, this is really interesting. Like, for instance, how we’ve seen in the media industry, we have this thing called a stop rate. A stop rate is how effective newspapers are at stopping people and asking them to pay. What we found across multiple reports now is that the stop rate is a very strong indicator of how successful newspapers are at converting people into subscribers. Once we started seeing that pattern, that was when I really dug in, and then I read, I go into the report totally, fully read everything to see if I can see something. Then we find other reports and other things.
I did the same thing with news avoidance, another big topic I’ve been focusing on. News avoidance, there are so many reports about it, but they are incredibly inconsistent. To understand what happens with them, you have to dig in to see what are the differences between why is this data saying that it’s 70%? Why is this data saying it’s 40%? And why is this data saying it’s only 15%? You can’t just look at a graph and say, okay, all these different numbers, they don’t add up, you have to go in and figure out what was the reason for this massive difference. Often it’s how they ask the question or the circumstances, all these different things.
Ross: This goes to the point of sense-making, you’re seeing a lot of information, you’re seeing a lot of depth to that information, and your role, of course, is to make sense of that to be able to see the patterns, to be able to pick out what are the directions, what’s meaningful in the evolution of the media landscape. How do you do that? How do you pull all of that into something which is truly at the level of sense-making, or building this model of the bigger picture?
Thomas: Yes, I wish I could say I have some really smart system for that, but I don’t. What I’m basically doing is the same thing that AIs are now doing today. We hear about AIs all the time. What the AIs are doing is they’re just gathering your information. Then through that information as a whole, we start to see a direction and it’s that direction I then cling on to and try to figure out. Take news avoidance, for instance, and news fatigue. I could directly point you to Reuters Institute, and they have a really good report about it. But that’s not the only one.
What I do is I look at all these different reports. The numbers can be all over the place, but there’s usually some kind of pattern, and there’s usually some kind of direction and some kind of momentum in all of them. What I then do is I say, Okay, on the whole, this is the direction things are moving in so that is what I need to focus on and look into more or talk about or write about other things. What I also do, when I get to a point where I don’t really know how to make sense of it is I try to turn it into some kind of action. News avoidance is a really good example of that.
The first article I wrote about news avoidance was back in 2010, so I’ve been talking about this for ages. But I really started looking at it in 2019. What I found back then, was that all these different reports were so inconsistent, I couldn’t really get a sense of it. Instead, I decided to do an experiment. The experiment was that even though I’m a media analyst, I cut myself off from news entirely for months, completely, totally, entirely.I could see the reports, I could see what people who have been answering and people were saying, but I couldn’t see why. By doing that experiment, trying to get the feel for it, suddenly, I discovered a lot of things.
With news avoidance, what I discovered was that it is astonishing how bad news is for you. That is painful for me to say, as a media analyst, because it’s my industry. But once you cut yourself off so completely as I did, you realize that 99.9% of the news you see all the time is completely meaningless. It has no value for you, and it’s just filling up your life. That was a real eye-opener. One of the things I did with that experiment also, because I’m an analyst, I don’t just do the experiment, and then forget about it. I had a system, again, we talked about, there was a bit of coding, but I built a script that automatically took a screenshot of all the newspapers I usually follow. Every single day for that month, it took a screenshot of the front pages. I didn’t look at it at all. But after a month, I went back to it. I started looking at it. My idea was that I will write down all the articles that I had missed that were really important for me to know. What happened was I didn’t write anything down. That actually came as a shock to me.
When I moved into it, my assumption was that I had missed something really important. But it was the opposite that all the news even the thing that was important, there was a terrorist attack and kind of thing, but if you read about it a month later, it’s over. Right? You can’t use it for anything, you can’t do anything with it. That really defined what this trend meant for me. That’s basically what I do. I look at a report and everything and if I don’t understand it completely, I try to do something, try to figure out what it means.
Ross: That’s absolutely fabulous. This goes exactly to Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s quote, which is something like “Spend time reading last week’s newspapers so you realize there’s no real point to anything that you read”.
Thomas: Yes. But you’ll see just today. I don’t know if you’ve read the news this morning. But today, we had Biden going out and saying that the three balloons they shot down in the US over last week were not Chinese, and they were not surveillance. They were probably just private balloons by someone. We have had a week, if not more, of news coverage about these balloons, only to now realize that there was basically no story.
It’s astonishing when you think about how much time have you spent over the past week looking at these things, reading about these stories, and filling up your brain and your life with this kind of information. Always realize you can’t use them for anything. It’s completely meaningless.
Ross: This goes to our human propensities. We do want the novel, we do want to keep on top of the latest. I think it’s hard to transcend that and that’s part of what we need to work on to transcend our propensities for lots of information, which is not necessarily serving us. I think it’s great that you’re doing this kind of experiment to find this out properly for yourself.
Thomas: Exactly. We have a word for it, it’s FOMO, the fear of missing out. In my article about news avoidance back in 2019, I wrote that what I realized after doing that is that we have a new word, and that’s JOMO, the joy of missing out. That’s really what changed things because before, I’m a media analyst so I’m a news junkie. It’s my profession. But it was astonishing, not just in terms of how much it was filling up my life, but also how it felt, in terms of my mental health. I would wake up in the morning, and the news is so negative, so I will always have this negative mood, every single time I finished reading the news. But when you cut yourself off the news for a month, you suddenly don’t wake up being annoyed. That was, I mean, wow. That was a big, big thing to realize.
It has changed. One of the reasons why I have to organize my information this way today is because I’ve realized that just having a constantly flowing information, filling up your life, is not beneficial for you, it’s much more useful for you not just in terms of getting information and being informed, but also in terms of your mental state, to have that information organized in a way that makes more sense.
It’s the same thing about social media, because the way everyone uses social media is you just have this constant feed, and it just flows your way. But one of the things I wrote about a couple of years ago, was that the most important thing people should do on social media is to set up filters. Every single topic that starts to dominate your awareness in ways you can’t use it, needs to be filtered out. That’s not about creating a filter bubble or anything like that. That’s simply about managing how much of any specific topic that starts to fill up your life.
On Twitter, I don’t use actually use Twitter in a while, I have had enough of about Musk, so I dropped Twitter. But on Twitter, I had 200 filters. Obviously, there were things like Trump, that kind of thing where you’re just totally bombarded with it every single day. But every single time you have a topic where you really can’t use the information for anything, it’s just filling up your mental space, I created a filter for it, even if it was something that was basically useful or something that’s interesting, something that didn’t bother me. But if it was dominating me so that I couldn’t focus on other things, I filtered it out.
I want to say… this is very important. When you filter something out on social media, it doesn’t mean it goes away, some people think that, but if, for instance, I filter out Trump, but I probably still see a post about Trump every single day, the difference is that without the filter, I would see it 20 times through a day.
Ross: I’d like to pull back to the big picture, I’m sure you already have some insights on this. What would be, from your experience and your analysis, the most important things that people can do to manage the onslaught, to make sense of things? In addition to what you’ve already talked about, what are the recommendations you would make for people to thrive, to do well, in this world of unlimited information?
Thomas: I have a personal history around this. The history is that I totally and completely collapsed with stress, many years ago. I actually got to a point where I had to change my life, otherwise, I couldn’t get back. What I did back then out of necessity was that I really spent some time thinking about what is important for me, for my health, for my work, for my focus, for all these different things. What I’ve done since then, is that I have been exceptionally aggressive about that.
This is about everything. It’s about when I read the news, it’s about which sources I pick out. If there’s a source that is not useful, it goes away. I’m very particular about what I pull in and what I leave out. I think that is one of the most absolutely critical things that people need to do. The other thing, to put it in the other perspective, is also to have a wider view. One of the things I did a couple of years ago was that I realized that on my Twitter profile, again, I don’t use Twitter anymore, but back then, something like I can’t remember the number anymore but something like 80% of my information was male-dominated, so it came from men about men, all kinds of things.
I sat down and very specifically created a new kind of following, the people I follow, so that it had a better mix. One thing was the gender difference. It was astonishing the difference that makes because suddenly we men, might sound very fancy, but we have a very same way of thinking. Once you really start to bring in a more diverse gender profile, you start to see things that you’re just wow, I didn’t even know this was a problem.
The other thing I also did was that I started looking at more specific sources outside my field of expertise. I’m a media analyst. I’ve been focused on media, and I follow a lot of media people. But I decided to go out and figure out okay, in other areas that influenced the world, about your health, or automotive or other things, how can I follow people in that space that can tell me about patterns and things that are happening that I might not see in the media. The media, generally, I love the media, when I’m a bit critical about it, it’s not because I don’t love it. But the media is itself always in the filter bubble. The media is not very good at changing and thinking about new things and seeing new directions.
It’s really important for me as a media analyst to see all these other things from other people. That’s something I spend a lot of time making sure that I have that kind of information coming into me, and also that it is diverse. I want to say one more thing about diverse, when I say diverse, I mean valuable diverse sources. In the media, when they talk about diverse sources, it means taking the most horrible people, and some not-so-horrible people and mixing them together. That’s not useful. We can use that information for anything.
Ross: That’s a great distinction. I’d say the bigger point here is just to be conscious. What am I actually doing? Is this useful to me? Maybe I need some other sources. Let’s mix this up. Let’s make this work. I think that the meta advice you’re giving is the conscious of what you’re doing and try different things, and see what’s most helpful.
Thomas: Yes, exactly. Seriously, just be extremely aggressive about what you pick and what you don’t pick. Twitter is a good example again. I don’t use it so it’s actually a horrible example. But back then, I only had about 400 things I followed, 400 people or companies or things. Even when I changed my focus and tried to get in more women, tried to get in more other sources, I kept that number at 400. I removed a lot of men I used to follow because they didn’t really add that value I wondered from them. Then I brought in these new sources, but I didn’t increase my total volume. Because if you do that, you just end up being overloaded. I think it’s really important that people be very mindful about how much they bring in and where they bring it in from. I’m not some kind of Guru or expert in this. It’s a constant struggle for me also. I think those two things are really important.
Ross: I think that’s fantastic advice. That’s a great way to end up. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, Thomas, it has been fascinating. We really could talk for a lot longer. We’ll try to get you on another time. Thanks so much.
Thomas: Yes, no problem.
“Centralize and get everything out of your head. Those two things alone, make it incredibly easier to manage your life, especially if you have a lot of things going on.”– Bryan JenksAbout Bryan JenksBryan is an information specialist and data analytics expert who has over 300 certifications in a wide variety of technologies and is always seeking more knowledge. He is also a popular YouTuber with millions of views for his detailed insights on productivity and personal knowledge management.Website: Bryan Jenks
YouTube: Bryan Jenks Tech
Twitter: @tallguyjenks
Instagram: @tallguyjenks
Github: @tallguyjenks
Medium: @tallguyjenks
Discord: @tallguyjenks
LinkedIn: Bryan Jenks
Patreon: Bryan JenksWhat you will learn An introduction to Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and its importance (02:56)
* How neurodivergence and system thinking influence problem-solving approaches (06:55)
* The benefits of approaching everything with a beginner’s mindset (09:56)
* Using neurodivergent tools and processes like time-blocking and centralization in daily life (15:04)
* Strategies for better memory retention, including multiple calendars and color coding (17:24)
* A specific system for organizing physical objects to minimize clutter and increase efficiency (20:15)
* The negative impact of context-switching on productivity and how to minimize it (22:04)
* The advantages of using Obsidian for organizing notes and information (26:48)
* Effectively leveraging tags and links for easier note searching and retrieval (33:38)
Resources Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
* Notion
* Obsidian
* Evernote
* vimwiki
* Joplin
* Connected Papers
* Research Rabbit
* Morgen
* GUI
* Roam Research
TranscriptRoss Dawson: Bryan, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.Bryan Jenks: Wonderful to be here.
Ross: Bryan, I’d love to just hear the story. You’re now sharing all your insights into the structure of how you think and how you take notes, and how you build your knowledge. I want to hear just a bit of the backstory of how you came to be on this path of sharing these resources with the world.
Bryan: Yes, I was already on YouTube for about a year before I even started talking about or doing anything with Obsidian. It was mostly just playing around with Linux on an old laptop and talking about what I was learning there. But my channel and my interests really took off when I started diving into the whole sphere of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM), as it’s commonly called. Specifically using Obsidian, when I first was getting into Obsidian, it was primarily the big player for Roam Research, Notion to a degree, but for the connectivity, bi-directional linking, note, and applications, it was just Rome, and now Obsidian who was really capitalizing on that, and then people who were just also doing stuff in Notion or Evernote, but I was already using some tools like this.
When I was on my Linux computer, it was always plain text in the terminal, super, like bare-bones, I was using vimwiki because I still love vim or the VI-improved command line text editor. I went from using vimwiki to trying out Joplin. That had a command line option, had a GUI, and pretty application options so it was the best of both worlds. Then I saw this Obsidian thing, and it looked nice. I could customize it because I do have coding experience. So I really started getting interested in that and diving into it. It’s just been, oh, it’s been more than two years now. Here we are.
Ross: Take a step back. Presumably, let’s say when you were a teenager, how you came to want the structured thinking, and find the value of the structure of taking notes or pulling your ideas together? What’s the origin story of you as a deep structure thinker?
Bryan: That pretty much was the origin story, when I was a teenager, and even up through my two-year college degree, I didn’t take notes or study for anything. I just listened to the lectures and took the tests and did very well, because the stuff didn’t go at my pace. I was just trying to move faster. I didn’t have any interest in any of that at the time, I didn’t even start touching computers with a more technological perspective until I was probably already 24 or 25, working for my local government.
Ross: It was now when you are moving from just having to pass tests, to get to things that you’re interested in, that you’re to build these structures?
Bryan: Yes. I started getting interested in reading real research papers on various things and looking at how academics were approaching different. How do you connect research papers into coherent information and knowledge and see the landscape of what these papers might cover? How they’re interrelated? Who’s citing who? That whole network diagram of scientific research and academia. This was also before I was ever even exposed to tools like Connected Papers or ResearchRabbit or anything, even vaguely network diagram of citation trees and sources, so I was just looking into how can I take consolidated notes on a topic, but also relate that to the papers that I have? It started as a basic thing from just research papers, but that expanded into all the sources of inputs that I then had, and then how can I figure out ways of effectively taking notes on various types of media, podcasts, videos, books, things that are a little bit more long-form or different kinds of input?
Ross: You were originally that point thinking of it as a network?
Bryan: Sort of. Yes and no. It wasn’t an explicit thought. But just neuro-divergence in general. I will lock myself into this group, predominantly system thinkers. I think in patterns, in systems, like if you say, hey, what do you think of this small little problem here, I usually can’t do much with that until I start seeing how this plugs into the wider system that is potentially affecting this thing. That can also be a detractor as well as a benefit. But bottom-up thinking, I need all these different details and see how they’re connected before I can go up a higher level and give an effective answer or analysis of something. Was I already thinking and approaching it as a system? Yes. But it wasn’t as explicit and self-aware as Ah, yes, this is my system. No, I wasn’t like that aware of what I was approaching or building up to at the time.
Ross: In terms of choosing your areas of expertise, what would you say you are an expert in or choosing to be an expert in or focusing your attention on?
Bryan: I would say, I am an expert at approaching everything with the mindset of a beginner.
Ross: That’s great.
Bryan: But if I had to like say, eh, I think I know a little bit about something, I would probably just say, technology and programming in general, there are certainly plenty of people who are far, far beyond me. But I have enough generalist knowledge and experience with different languages, paradigms, technology, history, and things to make me effective at seeing something and then having several ideas about what could be the potential problem that we’re troubleshooting here. What could potentially lead to a problem? What are the different ways to approach this solution? Technology and then just building systems. It doesn’t have to be specifically technology. But like, if I’m in my garage, and I’m trying to think of the most effective way to cut up all these cardboard boxes and put that into my trash can, I might develop a small system in the moment of, okay, sort them by size, take the biggest box and use that as a cutting table and take the smallest boxes, and then cut those up first, because we want to fill in the small pieces; I’ll develop systems like that, in that vein of thinking, for pretty much anything that I do. Everything I do is systematized and it’s pretty much instinctual.
Ross: So it’s moving to the meta-level. It’s like, how do you do what you’re doing better is the frame.
Bryan: Yes, optimize the hell out of everything.
Ross: I loved what you said about your expertise and good about things, but the beginner’s mind. Is that something that has come completely naturally to you? Or is that something you’ve worked on and helped develop? And if so, how have you helped engender that beginner’s mind frame?
Bryan: I would say it was a little bit developed, but also just something that happens naturally. Obviously, in adolescence, and during puberty, everyone’s a little self-absorbed, because that’s just the nature, that’s just human nature, especially with the hormone profiles we have at that stage of life. But I would say after growing out of that a bit, and then just how I just really open and willing to accept information and knowledge from anywhere. It just developed like that. I don’t like to assume I know more than somebody and just like you can’t teach me anything. I never really ever think that. I might know something and I try to offer things because I like to help and give information. I’d love to share and just give everything that I have and just add it to this pot of information.
You throw in something else. I’m like, ooh, yay, new stuff. I didn’t know that. Add that to my collection. But it’s about sharing. One of my favorite things I like to talk about is this specific example. I was learning and doing Brazilian jujitsu for a little while. Out of interest. I just attended a judo class at the same place on a different day I never go. It’s my first time in a judo class, let alone this class. I don’t know anything. I know less than anything. I go there. They’re warming up and it’s basically monkey see monkey do, so whatever they’re doing, I’m trying to do it. We finish warming up. I’m super exhausted, I’m breathing hard. I’m warmed up, okay, I’m leaning against this wall, just like catching my breath. This, I’m going to just assume, is an 11-year-old boy or something and he walks up and he’s not in the best of shape, he’s a little bit soft or whatever if I have to give a description to add weight to what I’m saying, not because this was a judgment, and he walks up to me, and he’s like, Hey, we don’t lean against the wall when in class, and I’m a full grown adult at this time, I’m over 18, I’m an adult, and this kid is coming up to me and telling me this, and the first thought and the action in my head is not excuse me, or who are you?
The first thought in my head is, oh, then I guess I shouldn’t be against this wall. But he taught me something in this class, we do not do this action. That is the rule here. There was no ego involved. I didn’t think that I knew more, or he needed to respect me. The first thought was, oh, information. We do not lean against walls in this class, I have now learned something and now this behavior will not be repeated. Moving on, there’s no ego involved. That’s pretty much how I approach anything, anybody can teach me something, and everyone always has something to teach, so I like to learn.
Ross: That’s fantastic. This goes to the idea of status, our society is written with status, and different cultures and nations around the world have more structure than others. If you travel, you’ll experience that. But this idea that you have to learn from your superiors, and you teach to those who are below you, and if you just do away with that entirely, saying, well, status is not a thing, it’s just, well, I’m here to learn. It doesn’t matter whether you’re young or old, or inexperienced, or experienced, and that’s a beginner’s mind, you can learn from those people who are beginners, often more than the people that have been doing it forever, and got stuck in their ways.
Bryan: I understand how to establish patterns. They see things in different ways, so you can always be learning.
Ross: Yes, that’s a fabulous thing about that. You have beautifully shared some of your experiences with ADHD and how you’ve dealt with that, and the medication. I think that there are many people who suspect that they have ADHD or ADD, and they may not be diagnoseable, but maybe just that they feel that way that they get distracted, and they aren’t actually normal because everyone gets distracted all the time. But I’d love to just hear what you have learned from your experience that you think others could benefit from, in terms of how to deal with sometimes acute, without going through all the symptoms of ADHD, there are some things that we all experience in terms of distraction and activity and distractibility. What are some of the things which you have learned that others could find useful?
Bryan:: Yes, I talk about that kind of stuff a lot on my channel. I was on just another interview call thing and gave this exact same advice, which is that even if you do not have ADHD, or a neuro divergence, that doesn’t mean any of the tools and processes and systems that help me or people like me, function better, are not applicable. Oftentimes, it’s just, it’s a great system or solution to apply to your life. It could help whether you have a condition or not. Things like time blocking or actually making. People say make a list. But I like to, instead of just saying the bare bones example of make-a-list. Then you have a post-it note over here, an application over there, or a bullet journal somewhere in another room, I’d prefer to just give the general umbrella approach to how I do things is centralize as much as possible, not three to-do lists, you have one place where all lists are, you could have separate lists, but they’re all in one place. It’s not a post-it note and a bullet journal over there and an application. It might be separate lists within your application centralized. Then I try to externalize as much of my cognition and memory as possible, so I don’t think about projects, and I don’t hold all this stuff in my head. I never have to remember anything.
As soon as I need to remember it. I put it into the task management software, or I put it on the calendar. If it’s not there, it does not exist to me. I don’t worry about it. If it’s not in there, I don’t care. It doesn’t exist if I needed to remember this then in the moment, when I’m told about something, hey, we’re having lunch next Thursday. Then immediately, I am making a calendar block for the time for lunch next Thursday. If I need to remember to do something tonight, my phone’s out, I insert the task, done.
That’s where stuff like to-do is NLP, natural language processing, tonight 10 am, 7 pm, do this thing. That’s where it’s super-fast to do that. But that’s why I use those tools. Because, it makes it very quick and easy to facilitate that behavior, centralize and get it out of your head, just get everything out of your head. Those two things alone, make it incredibly easier to manage your life, especially if you have a lot of things going on like I do.
Then my calendar system with Morgen, doesn’t even need to be that particular application, but calendars, having multiple calendars, so that you could have color coding because at least me but many people who have neuro divergence like mine, also tend to be very visual thinkers, and visual type of people I need to see it and it helps me comprehend and understand it better. So color coding, using emojis for different things, I have several calendars some way upwards of 10 or more calendars, because I separate out the colors, the colors mean something to me. If it’s an orange time block on my calendar, it’s a task, if it’s yellow, it’s a work-related thing. I can see that at a glance and see what my day looks like. But then I can also drill into details. Then the last thing I could say is, well, sometimes you’re going to forget stuff like I do, and that’s okay, forgive yourself.
Ross: That’s fantastic. I was just supposed to be good at messages the other morning saying, oh, you’re supposed to be at this meeting. essentially, what had happened was what you were talking about working at a time. I put it in my calendar, and I said, oh, can you put it in, and add me to the calendar invite, it gives me a thumbs up. After that, I forget it completely. He’s like, alright, well, what’s going to be my calendar? He didn’t put it on his calendar until 10 AM that morning and already knew what was on my calendar. I didn’t look at it. It’s like, well, that was my calendar doesn’t exist. I think that’s, that’s a fabulous principle, that externalize as much as possible because human brains are wonderful at some things. But the less burden you put on them, the better you can do what they do.
Bryan: Oh, that was the last point. Thank you, Bryan. That task management philosophy was like an influence, if not heavily shaped by, I can’t remember the name of it. But it was some podcast or book or podcast of a guy who wrote a book about task management that was popular. But that also leads to the final thing, too, that I think is one of the most beneficial things for me, which is don’t put it down, put it away. I’m bad. I’m admittedly horrible with this when it comes to digital things, files, notes, whatever. I developed systems about that. But when it comes to physical objects, if I have to put it down, it goes only where it goes when it’s being put away. My keys, my wallet, and my phone are only in a separate, specific location. I jokingly say this in several of the videos that I know that my car keys are only in three places ever. They’re in the valet tray bowl thing on my entryway table. They’re in my pocket, or they’re in someone’s fridge. Because if I need to remember to bring something back with me from someone’s house, like, some leftover food or something, and I put it in the fridge, then I don’t want to forget it. I can’t leave without my keys and my keys on top of the Tupperware. Those are the only three places my keys will ever be, the valet tray, my pocket, or someone’s fridge.
Ross: Yes, I think that there are many, many, people who can benefit a lot from following that advice. Keep it on losing things. The digging into Oh, yes, so just back on the time blocking. That’s something which I write about in “Thriving on Overload” is like one of these master productivity principles, and part of the thing is around task switching. If you keep on switching tasks, you’re just using brain cycles needlessly, being able to block out time for particular activities, doing one thing for a period of time. Switching is an incredibly effective way of using our capabilities. but what are the principles that you use for the way which you do time blocking, in addition to what you mentioned around color coding and sorting them into categories?
Bryan: Yes, context-switching is horrid. It is the bane of my existence and the bane of my productivity. When it comes to work, which is probably a great example for me, my day job. When I enforced the context switch, I don’t get anything to it. Thankfully, I have some very wonderful and understanding leaders and former managers at the time too, that, for one if I get invited to a meeting, and no one can tell me what the goals are of the meeting, what is their agenda, why do I need to be here, I just don’t go. They learn quickly. Like, if you want me there, then I need to know why I’m there, I’m going to provide the value you need for me, and then I’m done. That’s just phase one.
After I’m in a meeting, usually what I try to do is make sure that the meetings are scheduled in A block, I’d rather have four hours of uninterrupted meetings with no breaks between than have meetings peppered throughout my whole day. First of all, I just try to reduce how many I’m in which thankfully, I’m in very few. After that, I tried to keep them all to a block of time. Then I have the rest of the day to have large swaths of uninterrupted time to do whatever I’m trying to do that day. For more of my personal stuff, when it comes to context switching and time blocking, something I didn’t think too hard about but noticed this morning when I was giving my other interview was that I will sometimes because ADHD individuals, me, other neuro divergents are very poor with understanding time, and the concept and the concept of time.
So I’ll put a time block on my calendar for edit YouTube video for five hours, it’s probably not going to take me that long. It might take me two and a half or three hours, but I don’t know. so I estimate and that’s probably a poor estimation, but I’d rather over than undershoot it. So what I tend to do is I will overbook those tasks which could be a double-edged sword for some people, you could get stressed out by so many things being there or not. It depends. Your mileage may vary. so I will sometimes overbook, so I’ll put a couple of other tasks, sometimes small ones, but directly over the same block of time as the YouTube one, might be smaller blocks, but they’re all overlapping, I can have three things going on at once. Why? Because I will finish the YouTube video editing, maybe two, or three hours, then I will grab that block, and drag it up to its actual end time. Now it’s completed.
But now below that, I will then adjust and reorder the blocks that were overlapping it and fit those in. Because it’s what I wanted to do that day, I wanted to get all these things done. But I might not have had a perfect idea of where it would fit in. It allows me a little bit of maneuverability and flexibility with what I have going on. But I know that I want to do these in the morning, so when I blocked that five hours in the morning for YouTube, I know I’m probably going to have some time left over, so I’m putting those things there as well. But it gives me a little bit of flexibility with getting some of these things done in a sort of ad hoc manner, even though it’s planned ad hoc.
Ross: That’s a great tip. I think it’s a master technique, I think most people got to get their foundations of down blocking, right before they start to use techniques like that. But that’s definitely something because when you’ve got your entire calendar full, then you do need to be able to find some ways to move around, for example, the variability of how long tasks actually take.
I will have in the show notes, and sort of an introduction, we’ll be sharing your links to YouTube in particular, and all of your other resources. so yes, that’s where we can dig in, and people want to learn the details of what you do and how you do and all the wonderful things you can share. But I just like to pull back to the big picture of Obsidian. So you spent some time looking at different tools to be able to choose Obsidian and just like to get that high-level view of that process of how you selected Obsidian as your home and how that fits into your everyday work and how you capture and structure your thoughts.
Bryan: Yes, the choice of Obsidian was very bullet-pointed and fairly straightforward. I’ve tried several other applications and certain things Jive certain things don’t. Notion well, very pretty is just too much, I could get too lost in trying to set it up and get the database stuff connected and everything’s so shiny, I would say, that it just wasn’t working for me, I get too distracted by what’s going on in it, then doing what I’m trying to do. Then there’s also the issue of the more you put into certain applications like that, then the slower they become. So then it becomes more unwieldy. That’s not even getting touching the biggest issue, which I’ll cover last. But then there was the issue of Roam, which was the golden child at the time and had big fanfare, big cult-like following for that one. I mostly just didn’t like Rome, specifically, because of the data storage format. The slow speed when it came to the browser cache, for those people who are nerdy and know what I’m talking about, just didn’t like that.
That and a very high cost, even if you were not a formal academic, it was just very exorbitantly expensive. Ultimately, this pushed and nudged me in the direction of the tools that I did end up using and trying out vimwiki, Joplin, and a couple of other things, which really got me thinking about what I need from an application. What do I really want from it? Obsidian just sitting in the sweet spot of all of these things. It’s not open source, which is probably the only like, detractor I have about it. The only con. But when it comes to this particular tool, I don’t care enough about that to stay away from it.
But it is local first. It has everything using plain text files that live in your system. It’s not JSON data living in Roam’s databases or cached in your browser, there’s no chance for it to go and get corrupted or whatever. These are plain text files that are sitting in a folder on your computer. There are syncing services available, you can apply other technologies without having to pay a dime. I was one of the first few people who set up a Git version control workflow, specifically for Obsidian users to sync our files or plain text files to GitHub, because GitHub code, version control, plain text files, that’s what code is, bam, bam, there you go. Now there are even options built in that you could pay a little bit of money for. But there’s also the publishing site. But even removing all of these, like bell and whistle add-on features. It’s a highly customizable system, you can get all kinds of customizations done to the theming, if theming it exactly how you want, you can customize existing themes, and plain text files and the plugin ecosystem is insane.
There are probably over 500 distinct plugins now. Even then, like I don’t even need more than… I have 30, which I actively use right now. But even then you can probably pare it down. There’s a plugin for everything. if there isn’t just mention it, somebody’s going to jump on it because everyone wants to contribute to the ecosystem. The community is amazing, super welcoming, super helpful, and super knowledgeable. I like to say that, I like to think that everyone has kind of like an approach like mine, everyone wants to help, and everyone wants to share the information. We all just want to be excited about how everyone’s approaching what they’re doing. Then yes, the bi-directional note linking and betting notes content, that’s just the icing on the cake. But that’s also pretty much the biggest thing it is a way of graphically connecting your knowledge, while still giving you the freedom that people from the old Unix computer days would appreciate, plain text files that are accessible for all time and a format that’s not going to just go out of style.
Ross: Yes, for probably a different set of reasons I used Obsidian, very early on compared with you in terms of developing those systems and structures, but two of the things were the customizability of the whole community and as you saved him, we get all sorts of different… there’s an extensible in terms of its capabilities, and also the underlying network structure is more able to be brought out then in some of the other tools and we’re just if you can get a network representation, then that’s, that’s for me a wonderful demonstration of what’s going on in your mind because you know that we are semantic networks underlie our thinking. If we can represent that in the way we capture information that’s really valuable. To round out, what is any summary or advice? This idea of Thriving on overload, we live in a world of far too much information. What are any summary thoughts or things you’d like to share on advice for people who want to be able to be grounded and make sense of that all?
Bryan: I would say I can give probably two pieces of very good bang for your buck kind of knowledge. That would be, to try to adapt to a paradigm of no folders. I mean, even I still use folders, folders do serve a purpose. But try to conceptualize and understand the paradigm of an organic network of notes and information, so that you don’t ever have to ask the question of where should I file this, you don’t have to do the action, and therefore, the overhead of filing something. It doesn’t have to live in two places at once. It doesn’t have to be duplicated, it’s linked to other things it’s connected to. If you ever need to find something, that’s what the search is for. There is a myriad of tools and approaches to effectively name things, find things and search for things.
You’re not going to lose it. Try to adapt to that paradigm, and it will free you up for basically a chaotic organization system if you want to have an idea of what that might look like. Check out YouTube for Amazon’s warehousing strategy, a chaotic organization at its finest, that but for your notes. Then the last thing would be leveraging tags and your links effectively. I have a whole video about it, and a lot of it still pretty much stands up to this day. It’s a little bit dated, but it basically stands up. Everyone likes to just throw tons of tags out there for everything, like I’m going to tag this with exercise and biceps, and then pull up because it’s all three of these things.
That’s a lot. That’s three tags for one note. Well, now you have just a myriad of tags. Instead of just having tags for all these little granular pieces of information, I prefer to use tags as they are an Obsidian hashtag item, as a context lists grouping, so stages of processing or a general swath of information, a grouping of things that might not be related to each other, even remotely. That way I can have insight into everything inside this contextless route. But if I need to know something, and what relates to it in a grouping, that’s why I link things together. It tells me I am linked to these things because we’re related for a particular and intentional purpose. Whereas tags are just a giant umbrella of everything underneath me is this tag. Understanding that key difference will help you leverage a lot of that chaotic organized system. At least that’s what I’ve been finding in my own system for the past two years.
Ross: Fantastic. Thanks so much, Bryan, for your insights, not just on the conversation today, but also on YouTube and all of your other places because there are a lot of fabulous resources and a lot of depth, and a lot of value, so, thank you. Wonderful to talk to you.
Bryan: I’m just glad people find them useful and enjoy them, so, you’re welcome.
“The more connected and participative you’re going to become in your foresight practices, the more useful the effort is, the more meaning it would give. How they recognize change, how you recognize change, and what gaps are there, to understand those, whether it’s an information gap or a knowledge gap, you need to be among those people to create that comprehension.”– Puruesh Chaudhary
About Puruesh ChaudharyPuruesh is Founder and President of the NGO AGAHI, co-founder of Media Development Trust, and Senior Research Fellow at Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad. The global recognition for her work as a futures researcher and strategic narrative professional includes being named as Global Shaper by World Economic Forum, acting as advisor to the World Futures Society, and being on the planning committee of the Millennium Project.
Websites:
AGAHI
Karachi Futures
Foresight Lab
LinkedIn: Puruesh Chaudhary
Twitter: Puruesh Chaudhary
What you will learn How to focus your research effectively (04:55) * How to use data from the past and present to form insights for the future ? (06:33) * How can we be more discerning about the credibility of the media that they choose to consume? (12:38) * What does a typical futurists information day look like (17:11) * How do memes change us, shape our minds? (21:35) * Aside from data, how can social engagement lead to foresight? (26:08) * Why it is crucial to understand our and each other’s perspectives (28:04) TranscriptRoss Dawson: Puruesh, it is a delight to have you on the show.Puruesh Chaudhary:* Ross, thank you so much.
Ross: You are amongst other things extremely well-regarded futurist globally, you work on geopolitical and other very complex topics, and you have a very deep background in journalism and setting standards for journalism. I’d love to just hear your background, what is your relationship with information throughout your life?
Puruesh: I feel the relationship started during the days when my father preferred that I read newspaper headlines. The one reason that he wanted me to do this, and my siblings also at the same time, was to ensure that we don’t lose out on Urdu as a language. In most cases, while reading those headlines, even though to just do it for my father’s sake, I realized that I understood very little from reading those headlines. That’s what my starting point was. But also at the same time, my mother is an ardent reader of all the novels that she must have, so we used to go to the libraries. My connection with reading books, and reading literature was quite ingrained right from the beginning.
How I transformed during my time working as a communications person in different corporate entities was that that translated into reading a lot of research work. From that point, it is then that I actually moved into media, working as a reporter, working in the editorial side, it helped me understand how critical information is, and how important it is to convey the message that people would want to be informed by. That gave me the sense of understanding the work that is important in terms of forming public opinion. But also the energy and the valor required to ensure what you’re taking to the public is something which is of the highest quality in terms of its credibility, in terms of its trustworthiness, and in the process, we in the editorial space are held accountable for what we actually put out there. In a nutshell, that’s what the relationship has been like.
Ross: Another perfect description, as well as a futurist media leader, is, a researcher.
Puruesh: Yes.
Ross: You have this intention for research. That’s worth digging into in terms of what is it that informs how you go about your research.
Puruesh: I recently found out that I’m an entrepreneur because I’ve been working for myself for the last 12 years, and you realize, okay, you’ve never labeled yourself as such, but to make sense to the world, you need a certain vocabulary to put out there. There is this driving curiosity, which becomes your motivation to figure out things, things that do not make sense to you. That’s where the element of research comes in.
When you cannot make sense of something, then what is the question? That question leads you to all sets of possibilities, whether be it consulting scholars, looking, reading out certain research journals, or whether bringing in your sense into how you put together your ideas. Curiosity leads to looking at what the question is, the question helps you figure out what the potential idea could look like. I feel that’s where the research dimension for me comes in.
Ross: When I tried to describe what it is to be a futurist, people say, oh, where’s your data? I say, well, the data is all about the past. That’s one of the interesting things about the futurist role, is you can research and you can find out a lot about the present and the past, but then you have to cast that into some insights which are useful about the future. How do you research to be able to gain insights into the future? If that’s not the bigger question.
Puruesh: I am imagining what is the process that I go through to look at… I do a lot of anticipation and imagination exercises, as an individual also, so I want to visualize the space that I feel needs to be created. To do that, a lot of that has to come through your gut intuition. A lot of times we futurists do not want to rely on certain instincts but those are important too. Whether meditation takes you there, whether being spiritual takes you there, it could be religious, it could be any of those aspects that make you rise above the physical plateau and take you at a meta-level.
To do that, to arrive at that, you have to be fully conscious of who you are, what you’ve become, and where you’ve been coming from. Once you grasp the true essence of your own identity, it helps you place a little better in terms of the future you want to craft. For that craft to become effective, you need to have those ideas backed by certain research elements, then that research elements, if they’re about the past data, it’s about the data you want to create in the future.
Essentially, you’re not even relying on past data, what you’re basically relying on is the vision that you have in the mind. That vision, how do you bring it into reality? What language, and what visuals are required for it, that’s what essentially futurists like ourselves basically do. It’s a very elaborate description. But I feel like that’s what we plug into in terms of the larger discourse, as to where the foresight community is. It may seem practical and vague at this point but wait till things start becoming a regular part of the discourse.
Ross: In this case, you’re describing what is often described as normative scenarios, ones where it is what it is you want to happen as opposed to what it is you think could happen, those are different tangents but imagining that, so you have a scenario which you can envisage, which you think is supported by your intuition as to what is possible, as well as desirable. So how do you then marry that with the research you have today and being able to either point to the directions or to see whether that future is possible or plausible, or, how you would bring that to pass?
Puruesh: I’ll give you one recent example of the research work that I’m currently involved in, in terms of really understanding the dynamics of trust in Pakistani society and what does that mean in an information ecosystem? The hypothesis was and is that the more you suppress human expression, the more spaces for elements of disinformation or mal-information or misinformation practices can actually take place. Expressions can be in different forms and formats. It could also be what another would believe to be slightly misinformed, let’s just put in, but an expression in itself is a way of… individuals dealing with their own context and their own realities.
Now, putting this hypothesis to the test, what are the counter strategies? Although I don’t appreciate the word in itself fully, what are the kinds of strategies for disinformation? To respond to this whole question of what trust looks like in Pakistan came about, you have to understand what those dynamics and underlying factors are to really build. What am I hoping and what I’m envisioning as a desired outcome, is that we need to be able to create an environment where there are more trusting societies as compared to people with a low level of trust, high level of security, safeguarding more of their personal selves.
Then how do you become a society where you trust your institution, the people, and the community you’re with? What are the missing links in the process? How does that research plugin, that’s the desired space that I want to take the research in, but as far as what the present condition looks like is that we live in an era, that a lot of people call a post-truth era. As that takes form in the current circumstances, what does that mean? Are the institutions misleading the public, are the politicians spreading… or other source of disinformation? Are there factors within your society that really want to defame individuals or groups of people by really creating elements of mal-information? When you deal with that, when you grapple with that, you need to have certain answers. I feel that to one degree, this research could give you a glimmer of what that answer could look like potentially.
Ross: In a minute, I want to dig into your information habits and daily practices. But before we get to that, you’ve been involved in creating this media credibility index. That’s pretty relevant today, as probably much or more than ever, there’s a variety in credibility in the media that we access. Some are more obvious than others, and sometimes very established media are not as credible as we might like them to be. Try to pull this into something useful for individuals, how can individuals be thinking about the credibility of the media that they choose to consume?
Puruesh: A lot of that has to do with your biases. What you believe as an individual is credible, basically boils down to what set of values you share with that media entity or media personnel. Although it’s a very transactional relationship in terms of the information we consume, for the individuals to determine what is credible is essentially coming from his/her personal biases. Those biases could be based on certain value sets that they associate with that particular entity.
Yes, credibility is very specific to the needs of that individual. But how can we structure that in a meaningful way where we can make that distinction within the cognition that what you feel is what is credible but is not really credible? These are the parameters that make anything or anyone credible enough.
When they slowly make that distinction, it becomes part of their mental model too. It’s not replacing, it’s making space in the existing mental model for them to really question what is that they think is credible. That element of doubt, that element of curiosity, what if the other person that I’m not watching or I’m not reading has an alternate view, which could be perhaps a much more logical fact-based view, to create that space requires a lot of effort on developing those frameworks.
The media credibility index is that framework that offers an understanding of what is really happening, what is being discussed, who are the players that are discussing those issues, and in terms of how many people are watching those players at the same time. It’s a real mishmash of different indicators put together to make sense of the media environment in the country also.
That is something that I feel at an individual level, it’s very personal, and to make space in that personal mind, the language plays a very important part. I cannot be talking to you in Urdu and expecting you to make space for me in your mental model. You do not understand the language, presumably…
Ross: I don’t.
Puruesh: But had you understood it, perhaps you had paid attention. Attention plays a critical…how do you create that distraction in a language that can be acceptable and palatable to that individual? So not expecting you’re going to hammer the information in but just create enough room so that the attention is paid.
Ross: I’d like to switch to your thing, your work. You do a lot of work on a very macro level in terms of futures at a national and international level, very complex topics, and you work on specific research projects, and no doubt have a whole wealth of interests. What does your day in information look like? If there is a typical day, what information sources do you use? Or what times of day do you use those? How do you pull those together to be able to gather your insights?
Puruesh: I don’t need insight every day. Insights are very subjected to what I want to do in life and who I want to become. Insights are codependent on the platforms that I’m developing. I’m not going to be consuming everything. The bulk of my information is basically infotainment, memes that make me smile, memes that make me think, it’s extraordinary how humans actually can plug in certain information in a format which is practically less than a second, it’s a GIF, and it makes all the difference, and it’s able to trigger that emotion. A lot of the entertainment is content that I’m able to share with my family and friends. That’s what an average day looks like.
Days where I’m engrossed with the researchers that I work with, with the partners that I provide services to, or with the clients, that day particularly boils down to what the ideas are. Much of the time, those ideas are really supplemented, the sort of insight that I would draw in from are leading practitioners in that subject matter.
If it’s a foresight, I would be consulting the leading practitioners in that area, based on the sort of framework that I’m using, the methodology, and the technique. For instance, I would look at the evolution of how foresight methods and techniques are evolved: Who are the new constituents? What are the new constituencies that are contributing to the research work that is required to develop new techniques and methods? A lot of journals focusing on foresight futures, journals that are focused on strategic communications or communication just in general, theory and practices. Those are the elements that I’ll be really looking at, training techniques, how do you engage the public? Different market segments? So really just looking at three or four broad areas that are essentially my core strength, and how do I really be on top of these things?
A day in life would be just memes, entertainment, and content. Professionally, it will basically be research and new books that would interest those sorts of work areas that I’m looking into. But yes, essentially, that would be it. A lot of movies, otherwise. When I feel like I’m brain-dead, I would watch something on repeat, so that I don’t have to think.
A particular area that would interest me in terms of really complementing how I do my work is neuroscience; that really captures my interest. I would really like to learn about how different diseases of the mind are being dealt with, whether it be mental health or whether it be a purely physical form of dementia, Alzheimer’s, ADHD of the mind, all these elements would really interest me because that means that I live in a space where information is abundant, and attention, if it’s a resource and if I get like 10-15 minutes, how do I capture it?
Ross: I’m interested in the memes piece. There are more memes than people on the planet, and always flowing around. I think it’s, yes, some lovely ways of thinking about this whole as a living entity, all of these. Meme was created by Richard Dawkins as this analogy of the gene, so yes, these propagate, some successfully, some others not, a meme can be inspiring, it can be painful, it can educate, it can take many forms, it can make us laugh, of course, which is a lot of what they are, but in laughter, there’s always a nugget of some truth.
Puruesh: I feel memes are very context-dependent. What I may find funny, perhaps you wouldn’t, and vice versa. The context is shaped by our own personal experiences. One particular meme in at least South Asia would probably resonate more with South Asian than compared to people living in the Western end. You have that distinction where memes can be very context-dependent. And, with that, the smart part that I find quite interesting is how uniquely dots connect for certain people. There’s this one meme where a dog has been stuck in a herd of sheep, and that’s a meme for suffocation, if you look at it, it has a very deep meaning to it, and yet it’s just an image. It has a whole language attached to it.
Ross: It evokes things. That leads to my question, which is, how do memes change us? How do they shape our minds? Let’s say there’s somebody that says, alright, I’m only going to read serious things, and another person that gets involved in a world of memes, and they follow their curiosity, and so on, how does spending time with these kinds of memes shape your mind or your outlook or your perspectives or the way you think about the world? Do you have any reflections on that?
Puruesh: From a personal point of view, I feel it relaxes you a little. It creates empathy within yourself. That empathy comes from the fact that you have somehow raised the level of understanding within yourself for the people that you interact with. You’re able to …
Ross: Weave human truths in there?
Puruesh: Yes. I feel that you develop a far more meaningful human connection through it also. Because the one who shares it, and the one who reshares it, it shows that there is some level of association happening there. There is some shared experience that is there. Those shared experiences help you understand, oh, there’s someone else who thinks just like I think, or who feels just the way I feel. That creates a whole space in your mind to allow a different perspective. Otherwise, if you’re stuck in hard research work, I would have very little empathy if I’m going through sets of data from different variables, forecasting those data sets. There is very little human connection in that whole process.
Ross: So then memes are a tool for social cohesion?
Puruesh: I feel that it could be both, it could be for social cohesion, and social unrest, depending on what the political agenda is. It can go both ways.
Ross: Cohesion within subsets perhaps?
Puruesh: Yes. Absolutely.
Ross: Do you ever create memes?
Puruesh: I don’t. I’m a consumer. I consume.
Ross: Calling back to as a leading futurist, what are some of the insights you would share with people around good practices to be able to have the breadth of understanding, to be able to gain insights into a rapidly changing world?
Puruesh: I think to understand charge is very important, and not just to talk about it. You talk about things because you see things, you hear about them, but to truly understand them, you have to be amongst people; you have to be amongst people who are participating in that process to connect the dots, whether they understand that this is not only changing them but changing other people around them.
The more you understand that foresight is a very human-dependent phenomenon. The more you integrate them into your practice, the less you make that effort, the more frustrating your scenarios are going to become, and the more frustrating your outlook is going to be.
My outlook on the whole phenomenon is the more connected and participative you’re going to become in your foresight practices, that’s what I’ve done in Pakistan, the more useful the effort is, the more meaning it would give. How they recognize change, how you recognize change, and what gaps are there, to understand those, whether it’s an information gap or a knowledge gap, you need to be among those people to create that comprehension.
Ross: So it’s foresight through social engagement rather than studying the data.
Puruesh: Oh. Absolutely. Data just gives you a linear view of one thing, what makes it complex is the human factor. That’s what gives you a much more nuanced outlook.
Ross: So then a lot of your work is founded on your social interactions, just the conversation and the ideas. As you say, how people are changing, I think that’s one of the most things, people need to perceive change but they also need to experience change, and their changing in the changing world.
Puruesh: Yes. But you see, a lot of people do not really have that. We’re lucky in the sense that we’ve acquired that level of understanding and education through our experience and exposure to help us do that. But not many people have the ability to do that.
An engineer who’s been taught engineering his whole life and that’s the only… for them to really look at things that are changing, it’s really difficult, it’s really hard for them to do that. You cannot blame them. They just don’t have those frameworks, those techniques, that capability that would make that distinction for them. For them, a broken lamp is, I’m going to fix this lamp. For us, a broken lamp would be something completely different. It’s the context. Would we need this lamp in the next week or not? If we don’t need it, do we still need the light? Our question becomes bigger and our context is very different.
Ross: To round out, any words or any recommendations, tips, ideas, or things to share with the audience that can help them in a world awash with information?
Puruesh: Learn to understand your own true feelings and understand why you’re motivated to act in a certain manner and whether is that good for the community that you’re living in.
Ross: That’s fantastic. It’s like, know yourself. You need to know yourself in order to know what information is relevant to you at the starting point but I love what you’re saying about knowing your community as well. Because we all live in communities of whatever kind, and that’s what makes the information relevant or not relevant to us.
Puruesh: Sure.
Ross: Fantastic, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you, Puruesh, thanks much for your insights and your time.
Puruesh: Thank you, Ross.
“I think a lot of times we want to shortcut and jump to the middle or jump to the end. But there’s so much to be learned by taking a breath and stepping back and going: What am I really trying to do here? Whether it’s going for a walk, or painting or cooking or gardening, give yourself the space.”– Stephanie Barnes
About Stephanie BarnesStephanie is founder and chief chaos organiser of Entelechy, a global network that works with organisations to solve problems in creative and innovative ways. She has a background in knowledge management IT and accounting, and is also a successful artist. She now uses art as a catalyst for helping people do things differently, and empowering individuals, teams and organisations to resolve complex business challenges.
Website: Entelechy
Portfolio: Stephanie Barnes Art
LinkedIn: Stephanie Barnes
Twitter: Stephanie Barnes
What you will learn How is art and knowledge management connected? (02:16) * How can we bring art into our organisation’s learning practices? (07:18) * How do scribble drawings open your mind to form new connections? (10:37) * Will these creative practices work even for those in non-artistic professions? (13:04) * How can we improve our ability to pick what is worth casting our attention to? (15:59) * What are individual knowledge management practices to enhance our knowledge creation? (20:02) * How are mind maps superior for organising information (22:39) * What are radical practices that you can start or experiment on? (28:32) Resources Knowledge Management * Keith Johnstone * John Hagel * Albert Einstein * Mind Maps * Dragon Naturally Speaking TranscriptRoss Dawson: Stephanie it’s wonderful to be talking to you today. Stephanie Barnes: Thank you, Ross, I’m so looking forward to catching up with you.
Ross: So, we encountered each other a very long time ago and what I think were called knowledge management circles at the time, though, I always thought of you as a learning person more than knowledge management, but now you have turned your attention to art. And so I’d love to hear about that journey.
Stephanie: Oh, yeah, arts is a long way from my undergrad in accounting and my MBA in IT that’s for sure. Painting or art came I’m gonna say relatively late in life because it came out of a workshop I was in in 2011, a leadership workshop. But we painted as one of the leadership activities to develop our leadership and I like: Oh, this is fun. How do I do more of this? And I was already self-employed by that point, and had been for, I don’t know, eight years or so. It’s hard to shift your focus when everybody knows you for one thing.
And so it became, how do I bring this into the knowledge management consulting that I was doing? I started just doing little playful, creative interventions, 5 to 10 minutes scribble drawings, and this kind of thing in my workshops. I notice right away, the shift in the energy and the engagement of people from these say stupid little scribble drawings that people throw in the garbage on the way out. But they were so much more excited and engaged in the material. And I got much better responses and more thoughtful responses. And I just kind of went, there’s something here.
And so I just kept pulling that thread and doing the research when I had time and talking to other people that are in that intersection. And that’s one of the great things about moving to Berlin in 2015 was I got connected to a whole bunch more people here in Europe that are in that space. And I painted. I went out the next day after this workshop and bought paint and have painted ever since. So it informs everything: it informs my life, my knowledge management consulting, yeah, it’s part of who I am.
Ross: So this is still part of knowledge management for you. So describe how that is part of knowledge management, or how that evokes the frame of mind for people. How is that connected?
Stephanie: Sure, I call it Radical Knowledge Management. First off, because it’s about going back to the roots of how we learn. In as much as I didn’t think of myself as a learning person when we originally met, I have definitely become a learning person through this process. And so Radical KM and bringing creativity and arts into knowledge management is about learning and reinvigorating how we learn, and going back to those roots.
As children we were playful and creative, and we do all these crazy things, because we don’t know we’re not supposed to. All of that curiosity and iteration in that fearlessness around failure gets educated out of us, and we become very fearful and now it’s got to be the right answer. We got to have the right answer. I’ve worked with so many clients that they’re like, just tell us what the right answer is and we’ll do that. But you have to discover what the right answer is because the right answer just depends on the organisation and the situation and so many factors.
So bringing art and painting, and I love to when I have longer workshops, we can do painting and it really brings that curiosity back and and enlivens people in and helps them engage with things in a different way and in a more meaningful way, and helps them ask different questions about their work about their life sometimes. The painting and the creativity comes in on the knowledge creation side and that learning side of things. It’s good fun and has really opened people’s eyes up to the things that we’ve lost.
Ross: Yes, indeed. So I love the quote from Keith Johnstone, commonly described as the godfather of improvisational theatre saying that children are not undeveloped adults, but adults are atrophied children. And I’ve experienced and seen educational institutions beat out lots of things out of us, including our creativity. But now, of course, we live in a world where we require lifelong learning, we all need to learn for all of our lives.
As John Hagel puts it, the successful organisations are the ones that have not have scalable efficiency, but the ones that have scalable learning. So given the context of the of given around art being an enabler of learning, how do we bring that into our own learning and that of organisations?
Stephanie: Well, for me, it’s about helping get focus on what’s important, and giving some clarity around what I should be learning, what I need to learn, where are the blocks, what are the mindset blocks about? Oh, I can’t do this, so why can’t you do this?
This is what I talked about with my Radical KM stuff: People are like “oh but what if you do this?” Or “what if the organisation is a bunch of lawyers or scientists, and they’re never gonna let me do scribble drawings with them?” I’m like, they’re human beings, give them some credit here. We all need this space, we all need to re energise and help looking at things differently.
I mean, Einstein played the violin, right to give himself space and help reflect on things and look at things differently. So if Einstein was doing it, surely the rest of us could give it a try. It really helps give that focus. Tapping into the intuition, the things that they’re maybe afraid to say, and it gives them some confidence to say, well, this came up, or I thought of this, while I was doing the scribble drawing.
I’ve talked about scribble drawings all the time because I’ve had people have real breakthroughs on problems that they were struggling with. And yet to look at them, the scribble drawing takes five minutes, and you literally scribble on a piece of paper, and you can throw it out at the end. They’re nothing, they’re not going to hang in the Louvre, this is not the point of, of any of this work. But people have these insights and go: “Oh, I’ve been struggling with this problem for four months and couldn’t figure it out. After five minutes of doing a scribble drawing, I’ve got a solution.” This is the power of this stuff.
Ross: So one of the I suppose central powers of capabilities I see in both thriving and overload creating value in this world is synthesis, how it is we pulled together the many disparate strands, the ideas into something which is coherent, and part of the thing is, how do we get into that state of mind? Well, how is it that we create the conditions, whereby those, you know, we have the aha moments, where we connect the dots and so, so it sounds like what you’re describing here is you’re creating the conditions for, you know, the unprepared mind to become a prepared mind, or to crystallise some of these connections.
Stephanie: Absolutely. It’s a process that I’ve used myself, and use myself.
The, one of the best examples and longest examples was, was something that happened in the early stages of the pandemic a couple of years ago. There’s so much going on, and there’s so much, I don’t know, for lack of a better word, chaos, and uncertainty, and, and I have been self employed for just 19 years now, so 17 years then. How do I deal with this, you know, how do I adopt my consulting practice for this?
I ended up painting my consulting practice. And when I started it I’ll paint you know, it’ll take me two or three weeks, I’ll create a painting, I’ll get some insights, you know, I’ll be done. And I’ll be off to the races again, with what I should do with my consulting practice. The reality was, I ended up painting five paintings and it took me till Christmas. So it took me from September 1, like first to September till Christmas, so three and a half months.
But I got all these insights. That’s where the name “Radical Knowledge Management” came out of how I talked about it, how I put the pieces together. All of that came out of painting the process. And I journaled the whole time because I journal and I support people or advocate for people to journal as they paint and keep track of all the things that they’re thinking about, because the mind doesn’t like to rest. So pay attention to it and write it down. And there’s all these insights.
When I started calling it Radical KM, people really engaged with that differently. And yet, I was aware of other people and other Radical things out there and like, how are people going to just think I’m copying? Then I started to get this reaction from people in this engagement from people I’m like, okay, doesn’t matter if they’re speaking to them. It makes sense, because it’s about going back to our roots and listening to our intuition and relearning that creativity.
That three and a half months of painting my consulting practice was really transformative and helped me get focused on how to talk about things.
Ross: I absolutely agree creativity is essential to all of us, and something which we can nurture which brings massive benefits.
But there are quite a few people whose roles means that they are deeply immersed in information, lawyers, or macro investors, or researchers or so on. So you know, there is an irreducible amount of research and reading and finding the right sources. So how can this state of mind or these practices help us to be able to find what’s relevant to be able to incorporate that into our thinking as, as easily or readily as possible?
Stephanie: I think it helps us tap into our intuition, and helps us to ask the question. So having those kinds of roles, those research data intensive roles, they’re important. But what’s more important is knowing the right questions to ask, and being curious. Not just dismissing things when you see an anomaly in that data just going “oh well it’s an anomaly. I’m just going to keep going”, “It’s a one off, it’s not worth looking at” and having the curiosity go, “oh wait, that’s different than I expected?” Why? Is this just a mistake in the data, maybe it is some kind of fluke in the testing or the data collection? but maybe there’s something here that’s different than I thought and it’s worth investigating and pulling that thread and seeing where it goes. So the creativity work comes in to help us be curious and help us not just dismiss things because they don’t match what we were expecting. And so we kind of force fit them to match or ignore them. Because…
Ross: Building openness?
Stephanie: …building openness, building curiosity, connecting to our intuition.
Ross: I certainly believe that openness is a trait that is very much favoured in the current environment. If we’re closed to new ideas and information that’s not going to serve us very well when the world is changing fast. If it’s changing fast, and it’s actually probably useful to be open. So whether it’s our practice or anything else to enable us to do that, that’s incredibly useful,
In terms of intuition being able to guide us, of course, we have a limited amount of information where one of the fundamental choices we have almost at every moment is “is this useful?” Do I put my attention to this or do I not put my attention to this? And I suppose this has to be informed by understanding what it is you want, what your purpose or direction is. So how can we nurture or improve our ability to discern to make, I suppose, pick between what is worth casting our attention to?
Stephanie: This is the thing that I like to work with people on when we do the painting in the workshops. I say hold the tubes of paint in your hand. Pay attention to how that tube of red paint feels versus the tube of black paint. Stand there, don’t rush, just breathe into it, it’s okay. It becomes meditative in a way. And so it’s about paying attention to how things feel in our bodies, not in our heads. There’s so much noise of people and ourselves saying: “this is stupid to stand here with a tube of paint to my hand, this is ridiculous, I’m gonna go make a cup of coffee.”
When you quiet your mind and start to listen, it’s like: Wait, I want to use the red one and not the black or I want to use a blue one or the purple one and not the, whatever the other colours. And so tapping into that and listening to that and learning how that feels with paint, and then transferring that over to when we’re doing the research and going: Hope there’s something about the citation, this author, the title of the article, or the author’s names, there’s something there,
I mean, ultimately, we’re all connected, right? So pay attention to those little serendipitous happenings and go: Look, that words come up again, I feel like I should pay attention to this. This is the fifth time I’ve seen this word in the last few days, the universe is trying to tell me something.
Ross: It sounds in a way like being in tune with yourself.
Stephanie: Absolutely.
Ross: One of the great faculties we need to nurture is saying do I know myself as in saying, well, it is the red that I feel like, or it is this idea, or it is this information or whatever, as opposed to being too routine which is just all happening at a conscious or habitual level.
Stephanie: Or because somebody else told us, because our parents told us, or our partner told us, or one of our colleagues told us, so we just do it because that’s what they said to do. It takes the decision making out of our hands.
Yet it’s really important to know ourselves and to know what’s important. Our parents certainly when we were children have our best interests at heart. But we only know what’s inside of us and as a starting point with our parents and their guidance. But this is part of becoming an adult and listening to what’s important to ourselves, to myself, and going from there, and that’s useful. From all these other people and things and articles, all these things outside of me are important data points, but they’re just data points, and I need to be in touch with myself, and what’s important to me and execute on that, move forward on that way.
Ross: So knowledge management, you know, has always implicitly organisational knowledge management, and, and then the term personal knowledge meant, as we came up with say, as an individual, how do you manage knowledge and I know manage is not a great word to stick in there. But let’s say knowledge and individuals, and you’re working with knowledge management, and you’ve taken this Radical, new approach.
So, let’s say somebody says, “All right, I want to enhance my ability to create knowledge.” What are some of the recommendations you would give? What are the things that you would suggest to them? What are the pathways that they can take?
Stephanie: I always say, get in touch with what’s important to you, what’s your purpose. You’re allowed to talk about purpose and I never really thought about purpose when I started on this journey.
I go back to when I finished my MBA in the late 90s. That was something that I did because everybody said I should do it but it wasn’t something that I really wanted to do. It seemed to be a means to an end certainly but it was because I had all these voices.
So I started to think after that about: “Hold on here, what do I really want for myself in my life” and I just got curious. This is when I started really playing with creativity and different things. If I want to create knowledge for me, it’s about getting in touch with what I want, and then that helps me focus on what kind of knowledge do I want to do, what topic, what areas, what things interest me. The creativity really helps me refine what’s important to me, what I find interesting and has other benefits, certainly too. I would start with that, like getting in touch with me, myself.
My experience has been the more clarity you get around, well the more clarity I’ve gotten around what it is that I want, then the opportunities come up. I meet the people, I make the connections, I get invited to write a journal article, I get invited to do a project, whatever it is, these opportunities come up. So there’s a synchronicity about it, the more in touch and focus that I get the, the more things just kind of fall into place.
Ross: So let’s say you are innovation intensive, you have a clarity around your purpose, you’re scanning lots of information. Is there any particular way that helps in terms of being able to capture that? To be able to draw connections? To be able to make lots of information into, you know, dive in really developing your knowledge? And what are some of the, I suppose, techniques or practices, I suppose to, to really develop knowledge from the information you have, and from the purpose, which, as you say, must be the starting point.
Stephanie: The practice, the other stuff aside, I like is mind maps honestly. I like to go through the bibliographies and references on papers that I have, or books that I’ve found interesting and useful and go: Well, this book that I found really useful, has some really good references. This is one of the things I pay a lot more attention now to than I did, even when I did my MBA. Who are these people referencing and what can I learn from them and go back to that source and create the mind maps.
I have so many mind maps. I like the mind maps, because I can just put things down and organise it all later. When I write lists of things, inevitably, I get stuff that I want to have in two places, or I want to show them the connection. So making some kind of point form list just doesn’t ever work. When I discovered mind maps, that was a big, big deal. I can colour code them and do all kinds of things with the technology that way, because I do use technology and don’t draw them by hand.
Ross: You do mind maps on screens?
Stephanie: Yeah on my laptop or my iPad.
Ross: How do you start? Do you have clarity on what is the central node in the mind map when you begin? Or does that evolve?
Stephanie: I definitely start with something, it does have a tendency to evolve. So I try to start with the question that I’m starting with or the topic. It does evolve, sometimes I go back and edit it, or I create a new one because it goes off in a completely unexpected direction. Or I just start a new mindmap because one of the branches just goes crazy. So just move it all onto another mind map and start over again, or start round two.
That helps, shifting things around and going: “Hang on this, this belongs over here.” Or I need to connect to that because they’re right in the right branches, but there’s a connection between the two. So I like to be able to do that. Some of my mind maps get a little hairy,
But then it’s so easy to go: okay, so now I’ve got this great mind map and all these things. And I’m going to write an article, I’m going to write a book, I’m going to create that knowledge, create a webinar or create a presentation, whatever it is, I’m going to do with it. I’ve got all the framework built out.
I wrote my third Radical KM article this way. I had started with a mind map. I was going to write something like a 500 word blog post. And I end up with this mind map and I thought, you know I’m just going to dictate this article because the voice, the translation, the AI translation tools have gotten way better than they were 10 years ago. I wrote my first book dictated into Dragon Naturally Speaking, and you had to train it and all that stuff. But now, you know, there’s a couple of different tools that I use the AI translation tool, there’s no training involved, they do a really good job.
So I started to start with his mind map, and just dictate this and I’ll have the 500 word article, and I’ll do the little bit of editing that I need to do. By the time I got done, I had I think it was 2500 words and I like: So much for my blog post, who might be interested in publishing this as an article? And I ended up getting it published, because the journal I contacted had an author cancel out, they weren’t gonna be able to publish. And so they were actually kind of glad that I had sort of spontaneously generated this article by accident. I say that it’s by accident, because it started out as it was supposed to be a blog post. So yeah, but so the AI and the mind map and yeah, it’s, it’s a dangerous thing.
Ross: That’s fantastic. I’m personally looking for those enablers of crystallising content. You have taken lots of ideas, have lots of ideas, but it’s getting those out. And I think that’s wonderful that it works for you. But I think that combination, be able to capture ideas in a mind map, and be able to talk and capture some of the ideas and pull those together. That sounds like a wonderful approach.
Stephanie: Yeah that’s gonna be my next book.
Ross: I look forward to that! So to round out from this frame of, you know, what’s your I suppose this Radical approach, which you’re bringing, what are any, I suppose, what are some of your own practices, or that you would suggest to people to potentially try out that they may find useful?
I think what you’ve just talked about, and using the mind map, and the transcription software is wonderful. So what are any other practices or even just ways of thinking that you think that people could sort of try that on to see whether it works for them?
Stephanie: I think a lot of times we want to shortcut and jump to the middle or jump to the end. But there’s so much to be learned by taking a breath and stepping back and going: What am I really trying to do here? And whether it’s going for a walk, or painting or cooking or gardening, give yourself the space.
We’re so engulfed in this I have to be busy and I have to look busy to everybody else, and I have to be doing something all the time. We’re human beings, we need a bit of space to breathe, to relax, to question, to really reflect. Reflection is so important. So don’t try and shortcut it. And don’t go: I’m just going to do this because this is the way I’ve always done it. No, take a step back. What makes sense? The world has changed, we have changed, maybe our decisions need to change too and do things differently. Give yourself permission to take that step back and ask what’s really important.
Ross: That’s fantastic. Advice. I think we all should do exactly what you said. So where can people find more about your work?
Stephanie: The easiest thing maybe is RadicalKM.com. short and easy. They can find me on LinkedIn for sure. My my LinkedIn the end of my LinkedIn profile is Stephanie A Barnes. So either places is good. And certainly you can find me from the web page on LinkedIn. I’m really active or fairly active on LinkedIn with posting and sharing and commenting and things. So that’s definitely a good place to connect to me.
Ross: Fantastic. Thanks so much for your time and your insights Stephanie
Stephanie: Oh, you’re welcome. It was fun. Thanks, Ross.
“It’s more than the Great Resignation, it’s more than the Great Reset, it’s more than Quiet Quitting, this is all about reimagining. It’s an opportunity to create something better, to be better than we were before.”– Bob Johansen
About Bob JohansenBob is Distinguished Fellow and former CEO at the Institute for the Future. He has worked as a professional futurist for nearly 50 years, including in the 1970s exploring the social and organizational implications of ARPANET, which evolved to become what we call the Internet. He is a frequent keynote speaker and the author or co-author of 12 books, including his latest title Office Shock: Creating Better Futures for Working and Living.
LinkedIn: Bob Johansen
Book:
Office Shock (get a 30% discount. Use the code “OFFSHOCK” at checkout)
What you will learn What is the office verse? (02:56) * Where might we prefer physical or remote collaboration in information value creation? (06:28) * What are the factors that drive information productivity? (10:37) * Are there design factors for organisations which drive the ways they create value? (13:23) * How can we augment ourselves to create better organisations? (18:36) * How can we design the work within organisations to be pleasant and avoid overload? (23:39) * What are some practices to create insightful books and guidance for leaders (26:59) * What are practices to engage with information throughout the day ?(31:52) Resources BorgWarner * WalMart * Joseph Press * Future-back * 37signals * ChatGPT * Institute for the Future * DALL-E 2 * Midjourney * Google Glass * ARPANET * Blue Zones Project TranscriptRoss Dawson: Bob, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.Bob Johansen: Great to be here.
Ross: You have a book, just out, Office Shock, which looks at how offices are changing and what they will become. Perhaps you can just give us the thesis in a minute, we can dig into how they can help us to thrive on overload.
Bob: Sure. Office Shock is an abrupt, unsettling change in how, when, where, and even why, even why we work. Office Shock has been invoked, it has been scattering us as a result of COVID.
But it’s much deeper than that and it’s much more than just “when do we go back to the office?” We think this is a historic opportunity to rethink just how work happens and how work is integrated with our private lives.
Ross: One of the ways in which offices are shifting which you describe in the book is the “office verse” which is beyond any particular place, I understand.
Bob: Yes, definitely. The term metaverse has become quite a pop culture term. Those of us in Silicon Valley realize that one big corporation has tried to own the term metaverse.
We’ve decided to coin our own word, the officeverse, and it’s actually a sequence. We think of the office as the place, the buildings, officing as the process, the verb, and officeverse as the way it all fits together, the anytime-anyplace mix of how we work, and indeed how we thrive. I love the title of your book in terms of Thriving on Overload.
The notion of the officeverse is an attempt to create, and it’s not just an attempt, it’s now a requirement to create ways of working anytime, anyplace. We’re futurists, our hope is to create a work environment that’s better than we’ve ever seen.
Ross: I always think that an organization is a set of individuals working together, as you point out in the book as well, with a common purpose and working to be able to achieve that. That’s the context. The officeverse is the space for an organization with an aligned purpose and to be able to create something. Is that the case? Is the officeverse where an organization resides?
Bob: That’s right. Yes. It’s an interesting way to phrase it, where an organization resides, it’s where individuals reside as well, and it’s where we work and live. The opportunity that’s presented now is a historic opportunity to rethink all the basics, where going into COVID, for the past 50 years, there have been efforts at remote work and terms like telecommuting and telework, and all these different options, then, of course, the internet made the connection possible, and the technologies, including the one we’re using right now, they didn’t just happen with COVID, they were developed over a 50 year period and it took roughly 50 years to be an overnight success.
The overnight success was forced by COVID. We were scattered from offices, it wasn’t an option, it was forced. Luckily, the technology was good enough to function in a surprisingly productive way. Even though there was very little preparation for this, it was pretty productive for most organizations. It was actually very productive for some individuals. It was also very unfair. For some individuals that didn’t have a good place to work at home or had little kids around or elders they were caring for, it wasn’t a good thing. But for many people, it was a good thing. It’s more than the Great Resignation, it’s more than the Great Reset, it’s more than Quiet Quitting, this is all about reimagining. It’s an opportunity to create something better, to be better than we were before.
Ross: There are some work environments that you do require to be physically there, the classic assembly line which Ford used to run or there are some people that do need to be on-site for a nuclear power plant. But most people are dealing with information. This can happen physically where you’re next to each other and you’re bouncing ideas around, you may be assisted with the trust or the other things which give you that ability to throw around ideas better, but a lot of that information can also be done virtually.
In that context of physical versus remote and this idea of information being the element which we are using to be able to create value, what are the differences or where might we prefer a physical or remote location in that collaborative information value creation?
Bob: Yes. Great question. To begin with, you’re exactly right, that some things just have to happen in person. When I’m talking to the CEO of BorgWarner, who’s one of our clients, the world’s leading supplier of auto parts, 160 factories around the world, we refer to that as the “factoryverse” because the center of the world for BorgWarner is not the office, the center of the world is the factory. We also work for Walmart, the world’s largest retailer. When I talk to their CEO, I refer to this as the “retailverse” because the center of the world for them is the store and the next most important is the distribution center, so we think of that as the “retailverse.”
Now to come back to the offices, in the officeverse, what we know from research is that in-person meetings, could be at offices or other places. In-person meetings are best for orientation, trust building, renewal, early-stage creativity, and culture building, particularly for young people. When you’re young, you need to travel, you need to visit places, you need to be there in person, cross-generational mentoring is very powerful. In-person is really important. That’s why we should have offices, but we don’t need them all the time, we don’t need them nine to five, and we don’t need them for many other things.
One of the big questions, when I am introducing the Office Shock book to CEOs, I just talked to one last week, I said what I just said to you about the importance of in-person meetings for orientation, trust building, renewal, and early-stage creativity, he looked around and he said, our office isn’t that good for any of those. If that’s the reality, you gotta rethink your offices. My co-author in this book is Joseph Press, who is a Ph.D. in architecture from MIT. He was a workplace architect early in his career and became a digital transformation expert later in his career.
Architecture is so important. Office shock is a shock for commercial real estate. It’s a shock, that says we’ve got to rethink the offices we do have, and almost certainly if you think future-back, which is what we’re doing, almost certainly, we’re going to have fewer traditional offices. Good riddance, they were not that good, to begin with.
Almost certainly, we’re going to have fewer. The offices we do have are going to be different. They’re going to be designed to facilitate early-stage creativity, orientation, trust-building, and the like. The negative scenario is that CEOs pull people back into the office, and they go into their offices, close the door and have zoom meetings. That’s the worst scenario.
Ross: There are of course, many substantial organizations that are completely virtual, or remote-first, whatever terminology they use, in which case, hopefully, they’re enabling good places to work, wherever they are, be there at home or co-working spaces, what it may be.
But this becomes then a purely information-based organization, you’re dealing with technologies to collaborate on documents, to throw around ideas to be able to create outputs, value-generating software or other things, so what are the factors that drive what I describe as information productivity? The information being more productive in this completely virtual context?
Bob: I’m not sure how it’s going to match out in terms of completely virtual, I think most environments are going to be mixed. We’ve got a map in the book about this territory from the office building to the factory to the retail store to the home office to distributed. It really is a question of which medium is good for what.
Leaders and organizations and individuals are going to have to be really graceful in all the different media options. As they’re trying to figure out how to thrive in this information-rich environment, they’re going to have to be able to choose when do we meet in person, and it isn’t always going to be at the office.
There’s this very traditional company we studied in the Midwest, which is pretty much gone all virtual. But three times a year, they bring people into the home center, they call it the homecoming, and they don’t always even meet in offices, sometimes they meet in resorts or hotels or whatever to try to encourage the orientation and the trust building and the renewal. The real challenge is, what’s the mix, what’s the right mix, and that mix can help people thrive in an information-rich environment, can help them be more productive in an information-rich environment, and can also help them avoid being overloaded in an information-rich environment.
Ross: Was that 37signals?
Bob: I wasn’t thinking of them. This was another company that I can’t name at this point. But it’s a large, very conservative company that would surprise you.
Ross: Okay, interesting. So then the times when it comes together are those of trust-making, of building the collaboration, being able to do the things you can’t do virtually?
Bob: Yes.
Ross: But a lot of the work does happen virtually, and that is when these information-based flows. How is it that we can maximize the productivity of organizations beyond the aspects of bringing together the culture, are there design factors for organizations or how they are configured which will drive the ways they can create value?
Bob: Yes, definitely. We’re just learning those ways. I think it’s going to be a mix of in-person and virtual. I’m a public speaker, and I used to be on the road all the time pre-COVID. Now, I’m still a public speaker; I still write books but I’m inviting people into my study. The metaphor here is, I want to be better than if I was on stage so I’m inviting people into my study in a way that I couldn’t if I was on stage. I’ve got VR headsets up there if they want to shift into VR. I’ve got a story around everything in my study. I’ve got a local videographer I work with to produce videos for pre-watching and post-watch. I can be interactive in ways I couldn’t be if I was on stage.
Everybody has to figure out for themselves how to best do that and how to do what their intent is. We talk in the book a lot about purpose and you do in your book too. What we say is, the question that many people are asking today is when do we go back to the office? That’s a legitimate question. But for us, it’s number six in a list of seven questions. The first question is, why do you want an office at all? What’s the purpose of the office? As I said earlier, there are good reasons to meet in person but that should be a question asked, not an assumption made.
That’s what I’m talking about, you have to begin with the purpose. Then in the book Office Shock, we’ve got seven spectrums of choice, which we present in order. The first question is, why do you want an office at all? The second is, what are the outcomes you’re seeking? The third is, the most important outcome over the next decade is climate; if we don’t deal with the climate issue, we’re out of the game in some serious ways; so we focus on climate in the third spectrum.
Then we ask the question of belonging. As you were asking Ross, what are the ways you build a corporate culture? How do you create a sense of belonging? Traditional offices weren’t that good at that. If you walked into a traditional office, everybody looked alike and talked alike and dressed alike, it’s not facing up to the reality of the next decade which is diversity will be everywhere. We’re going to be in a diverse world. That’s not a problem, it’s an opportunity. We ask in the question, how can we be purposely different to create a sense of belonging no matter how different we are?
Then we ask the question of augmentation, number five on our scale. What we’re saying is that if you look future-back 10 years from now, we’ll all be augmented, and the only question is, how will we be augmented? I don’t like the term artificial intelligence. I think that’s quite misleading. We use in the book augmented intelligence.
The key question is, what are the things that humans do best? What do we want to keep for ourselves? Then what are the places where we need to be augmented in? I’m a writer, I write books, and this is my 13th book, I realized that if I’m going to be a big-time writer 10 years from now, I’ve got to be augmented. We use GPT-3, the new chatbot, that was just released a couple of weeks ago. We used an earlier version as we wrote that chapter on augmentation. Writers are going to have to be augmented, it’s just going to be a cost of entry.
Then we face the question of place and time, when do we work? Where do we work? What’s the mix? Then finally, the seventh spectrum is agility. How do we hold it all together? How do we animate our account activity in a way that’s more future-ready?
Ross: Take me into a couple of those. One of them is augmentation.
Bob: Yes.
Ross: One of the spectrums you have in the book is around human to technology, I’d like to think there are many facets or dimensions to how we can augment ourselves. Again, taking this information perspective, humans are information-processing animals, and machines in various guises do the same. In combination, they can do that in a whole variety of, as you say, augmented ways. What are some of the ways in which you see that we may augment ourselves individually or collectively to be able to create more effective organizations?
Bob: That all begins again with purpose. What’s the purpose? What’s your own personal purpose? What’s your own organizational purpose? Then you ask, what are the capabilities of augmentation?
For example, we did a custom forecast a couple of years ago for the world’s largest rental equipment company, United Rentals. They rent large-scale equipment for constructing big buildings and other big projects. If you imagine construction workers 10 years from now, they’ll all be augmented in some way. Exoskeletons will be practical, you see this, particularly in Japan, where you have an aging society, and you want people to be able to work longer without getting hurt. Some of these exoskeletons for construction workers in Japan are just elegant. They’re really nicely designed. The best ones we have in the US are in the military. They’re more for helping injured warriors recover. Sometimes they’re used on the battlefield too. But it depends on your purpose.
Then you ask, well, what are the capabilities? In information companies and for knowledge workers, we have to ask questions like, how can we augment the things that we’re doing? The release of the ChatGPT three weeks ago, that’s a very significant signal. We talk about signals at the Institute for the Future. We refer to the Gibson quote, “The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed”. GPT-3, the Chatbot is a signal of how we’ll be able to interact with augmented resources for information to create pretty good things.
We’ve got a group at Institute for the Future now, we’re the longest-running futures think tank in the world so we’re always questioning our methodology. We’re methodologically agnostic. We’ve got a group at the institute using ChatGPT to do what we do. Basically, we’re pushing ourselves and saying: “Ok, what would it take to have a chatbot do a custom forecast, like what we do at the institute? What are the things we do best? What are the things we may be able to have a chatbot help us do, or even replace us in certain areas?” I think all of us in the information business have to be thinking about that.
The other thing I’m interested in is DALL-E, Midjourney, and the other texts of visualization. We’ve got a visualization in the new book, Office Shock, about the officeverse. We recruited young artists from all around the world to help us tell the stories of these seven spectrums of choice. We weren’t happy with what we were coming up with, with human artists. We pulled in Midjourney. My colleague, Joseph, who is an architect and an artist, worked with Midjourney to create that image.
I think all of us need to be asking that kind of very serious questioning of our own ability and saying: “What do we do best? What do computers do best?” Thinking future-back really helps you do that. That’s a really important element of this book, where most of the talk about offices now is based on the present. But the present is so noisy. If you think future-back, it just gives you a much fresher view. In this case, the fresh view is what do we do best as humans and what do computers do best. How can we partner to become augmented? Because in a real sense for us, 10 years from now, we’re all going to be cyborgs. The only question is, what’s the mix? In a real sense, we’ve already begun that. You and I both wear glasses, 10 years from now, those are going to be souped-up glasses. Google Glass failed, but it failed in an interesting way.
Ross: One way you can think of the offices as an architecture within which we are literal or metaphorical architecture in which we are working. One of the functions and dysfunctions of those is meetings. There are certainly many organizations where particularly in the last few years has been an excess of meetings, this whole back-to-back meeting syndrome, and a whole array of other ways in which we’re working, which contributes to overload. The overload is of information, overload of meetings, overload can be simply people are allocated too much work.
How is it that we can design the work within organizations, wherever that may take place, so that we can avoid, as much as possible, this feeling of overload to be able to be functional, to be able to work in an environment where we have the feeling of going beyond overwhelmed to when we are comfortable, and where we can operate in a place, like, this is a work environment where I’m comfortable and happy, and not overwhelmed by everything is being thrown at me?
Bob: It’s a great question. I think meetings are really critical. We’ve got to figure out a way to do them better.
I’m a sociologist by training. I’ve studied group dynamics my whole career, and a lot of that has been studying group dynamics through electronic media. My Ph.D. is from Northwestern and I was there as the internet was just being born in the days of the ARPANET.
One of the big realizations is meetings or video conference meetings, it’s not a clean, independent variable. If it was a clean, independent variable, then we could say, well, video conferencing is good for this, or in-person meetings are good for that.
The big challenge is the quality of the meetings. It’s rarely too many meetings. It’s badly-run meetings. That’s really a key element. It could be frequency, but more often, it’s quality. Leaders have to be great at running meetings. There are good meetings, there are lousy meetings, and lousy meetings lead to information overload. Well-run meetings mean you’re able to manage complex information much better.
The key question to me is not how many meetings, it’s how good are they. It’s a little similar: you don’t hear a lot of people complaining about Zoom or complaining about Microsoft Teams. I’m sure there’s some relevance to those critiques, but mostly what they’re talking about is badly-run Zoom meetings or badly-run Teams meetings, it’s not the medium, or PowerPoint, you say death by PowerPoint, well, that’s lousy PowerPoints. That’s the fault of the author, the fault of the designer. We have to unpack those things a little more I think and get into not just the medium, but the quality of the use.
Ross: I’d like to turn to you, Bob. You have been looking at the future for a very long time. You are the author of any number of books. I’ve got at least one on my bookshelves around here. I would love to hear in a nutshell, what are some of your practices for thriving on overload, for taking the universe of information that you’re exposed to, to create insightful books and guidance for the leaders you speak to, and your other information outputs?
Bob: Sure, I’m happy to do that. I’ve thought a lot about this. I love what I do. That’s probably the beginning.
The research that came out during COVID by the Blue Zones project, I thought was really instructive. What they found was that purpose-driven people are happier, they’re healthier, and they live up to seven years longer. People who work at purpose-driven companies are happier, healthier, and they live up to 14 years longer. Purpose-driven companies tend to perform better. I’m a purpose-driven person. I became focused on being a futurist in my 20s when I was a Ph.D. student. I went to Divinity School before that, and that was actually where I was introduced to futures thinking. This is very early.
Later in life, I got to interview the management guru, Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker, at that time he was 94 years old, told us at that time, the first half of your life, do many different things and work with many different kinds of people, because you don’t know who you are; the second half of your life, it’s pretty optimistic, he was 94, and he was still going strong, so roughly 50, by the time you’re age 50, you try to figure out what your clarity is. Then you only work with things you’re passionate about and only work with people you love to work with.
I was really lucky. I found what I wanted to do in my 20s. When I joined the Institute for the Future, I joined a community of people I love to work with. The earlier you can find that, the better. I think one of the big personal guides for me is to stay focused on purpose.
The other thing and this is more unique to futurists, I focus my life 10 years ahead. I am not that interested in the present. The present is really noisy. I’m not an expert in the present. Fortunately, in my career, I’ve got people around me who take care of the present for me. I’ve got a calendaring assistant, a human, I’ve got a research assistant, and I’ve got 50 colleagues, who are constantly filtering for me and constantly looking out for me. Then periodically, I’ve got co-authors. Of my 13 books, I think half of them were co-authored, so there’s always that as another filter.
The essence to me is the principle. You want to be very clear about where you’re going but very flexible about how you get there. I’m very clear that I’m focused 10 years ahead. I want to write books. I have chosen to live on an island. During COVID, I moved to Bainbridge Island from Silicon Valley. I’m looking right out at the Puget Sound. I’ve chosen to live in a natural, beautiful environment to figure out how to be better than when I was on stage as a way of pacing myself at this age and continuing to do what I love to do. But everybody needs to do that at some stage. What is your clarity? Then how do you go about pursuing that clarity with flexibility and with humility? Then you build in your values. I value kindness, I’m really seeking out people who are not only good at what they do, they’re doing good things.
Ross: That’s fantastic. I think a lot of people just get lost in information about the present, which is, as you say, probably a very little interested person like you thinking about 10-year’s future but probably very little value to them as well.
Bob: I’m not saying the present is unimportant. I’m just saying I’m not good at it. I’m really good at thinking 10 years ahead.
Ross: You’ve chosen not to be good because you’ve got other priorities. Just in a nutshell, what are your daily information habits in terms of sources, types of content, formats, digestion, or flowing, what are some of the ways in which you choose to engage with information throughout the day?
Bob: Let me just get real personal on this. I think sleep is really important. I sleep more than a lot of people. I sleep maybe eight or nine, sometimes 10 hours a night. But I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ve always got a journal by myself.
One of the ways I filter information is by understanding what keeps me up at night. What keeps me up tonight is often the most profound. Usually, when I’m writing a book, when I’m in the middle of writing a book, I wake up with three or four pages of notes, a few kernels of which are actually useful; not everything is useful in the middle of the night. But I really believe in that notion of sleep.
I also believe in the more ancient concept of second sleep, that you do the first sleep, then you pause, and that’s where the big ideas happen to me, in the middle of the first sleep and the second sleep. I think that’s really important. A lot of the high-powered people I work with don’t sleep nearly as much as I do. I think sleeping is really important. That’s the first thing.
Then I think having people around you who serve as filters, who look for different things than you do, the criteria I use for who I work with is I want to work with people who are different than me in an interesting way. By interesting, that links to my purpose, so people who help me understand the world 10 years out working back those are the people I want to hang around with. I filter out everybody else.
I’m not very social, I’m more introverted than extroverted. I don’t spend a lot of time at parties. I don’t spend a lot of time without reach. I’m quite selective. I’m new to this Island as of two years ago. It’s a very rich Island. There are artists, writers, entrepreneurs, and amazing people, we’re just a ferry ride from Seattle.
What I’ve done is volunteered for groups that I’m interested in, like, there’s a group here doing Bainbridge Island 2035, and a group called Bainbridge Prepares, that’s all about preparation for wildfires, tsunamis, earthquakes, and the like. There’s a group called the Bainbridge Island Land Trust, and I’ve volunteered. I don’t do boards, I’ve tried boards of directors, I just find those not a good use of my time, but I volunteer for them to bring in foresight and to do things. Then I select from that, people I would like to get to know, and I ask if they’d like to go for a walk with me. I’ve developed a handful of really good relationships by selectively meeting people.
I think that’s an important part of information overload. They’ve now become my sources of the kind of information that I want to pay attention to. I don’t make systematic filtering use of a lot of online tools. I have colleagues who do, and I’m close to them. But again, I think that’s partly an age, a skill, and a career decision thing. It works for me, but I’ve got resources that a lot of people don’t have.
Ross: That’s fantastic. I absolutely agree with the sleep thing. I’m a big believer in sleep. Despite the 4 AM mantra, many of the most successful people do sleep a lot.
I think that’s a wonderful description of the specifics of how it is you’re building what I describe as personal information networks, of course, they’re far more than that. It is a community, and personal connection, but they are information networks.
Bob: It is community. I think you’re right. The other thing I didn’t mention but I should is exercise. I think exercise is way more important than most people think it is.
I was a college athlete. I went to college on a basketball scholarship and played Division One at the University of Illinois. I wasn’t great, but I was good enough to get a scholarship. I wasn’t good enough to be a pro. It meant that I had to come up with a new identity when I went to graduate school. But I do think physical exercise and having some kind of exercise routine is critical to every great thinker I know. Yet again, it’s often overlooked.
Ross: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, Bob. Office Shock is an important and insightful book. I think as a leader, you should use it as a resource to get an insight into how they will create the officeverse to achieve their purposes in the organization. Thank you for your insights. It’s been a great pleasure talking to you.
Bob: Thank you, Ross. I really appreciate your book and your effort to help people learn to thrive. We’re both in the thrive business.
“It’s kind of a “sleight-of-head” exercise if you will. Because again, we tend to get very narrowly focused in our way of thinking. I’m sure you’ve heard of confirmation bias and availability bias. We tend to think in very narrow paths, and you need to be able to literally kickstart your head in different directions and this is one creative way to do that.”– Chuck Frey
About Chuck FreyChuck is a PR and online marketing expert who focuses on innovation, creativity, business strategy and visual thinking. He is the founder and publisher of The Mind Mapping Software Blog, and the author of books including Up Your Impact and Creativity Hacks.
Website: Chuck Frey
Blog: Mind Mapping Software
Medium: Chuck Frey
LinkedIn: Chuck Frey
Twitter: Chuck Frey
Newsletter: Catalyst Newsletter
Books:
Power Tips and Strategies for Mind Mapping Software
Up Your Impact
Resources:
Second Brain for Content Creators Course
The Ultimate Guide to Visual Note-Taking Tools
FAST Framework for Effective Mind Mapping Course
What you will learn What are the origins of mind mapping software? (02:20) * What are ways to make mind mapping as useful and valuable as possible? (05:11) * Other than mind maps, what are good alternative visual tools? (07:21) * What are the most interesting recent developments in thinking tools? (09:43) * How do you build up a set of tools to use which works for you? (12:04) * What is a note? Should it be a sentence? A link? A phrase or an idea? (13:52) * What are ways to enhance serendipity thinking for the ideas that we find (17:04) * What is the process to write compelling content on topics outside your area of expertise? (20:52) * How can you connect ideas to create a narrative? (22:56) * What are ways to keep focused attention for long periods of time (25:25) * What are daily practices to improve your information gathering (27:44) Resources Success Magazine * Miro * Mural * Evernote * Notion * Obsidian * SparkNotes * Napkin * ContextMinds * AYOA formerly iMindMap * Roam * Evernote * Notion * MindMeister * Second Brain for Content Creators by Matt Giaro * ThinkerToys by Michael Michalco TranscriptRoss Dawson: Chuck, delighted to have you on the show.Chuck Frey: I’m delighted to be here. Thanks for the invite.
Ross: We have a lot to learn from you. We’ll try to dig in and get as much from you as we can.
We want to start with your backstories. How did you get to this? In 2007, you set up the mind mapping software blog, and that may not have been the beginning. Is this something from when you were a child that you were looking at and thinking of? How did you come to these thinking tools, visual concept mapping, and all of these ways of approaching this?
Chuck: Probably in the late 90s, I came across a handheld brainstorming tool in Success Magazine of all places. I’ll try and make this as quick of a story as I can, because I know we have a lot of ground to cover. I didn’t even know that there was such a thing. I reached out to the developer of it, who was from Chicago, and started doing some publicity for him to help promote it. It opened up a whole world to me of tools and resources and methods to think differently, to think better. It seemed to me that even 20 years ago, the pace of change was accelerating and there was a need for people to know more about this.
My background is in PR and marketing. I had the opportunity to join a trade association to help put them on the web. Eventually, I took what I learned and built my own website focused on creativity and innovation, and just happened to be in the right place at the right time, that grew like crazy, to the point where it was the world’s largest site focused on that. I spent a lot of time on tools, thinking tools. One part of that was mind mapping software, which seemed to be growing rapidly, but nobody was covering it full-time. That splintered off from the innovation tools site. Eventually, innovation tools went away. There’s a bad joint venture involved there. That’s a story for another day.
As we were talking before we got on this call, these tools are very powerful, they’re really useful to knowledge workers who need to be able to gather, organize, distill and share information, and doing that in a visual way helps you connect the dots, helps you to see what you’re missing, helps you to get clarity quicker, make better decisions, and to think at a higher level. Since then, that’s expanded to include other types of visual thinking tools. Since COVID, these sticky note-based whiteboard tools, they were around before that, but they took off overnight because suddenly teams could not get access to their traditional whiteboards anymore, and this was a valuable substitute.
As you know note-taking has taken off quite a bit and there’s a whole new sub-genre of that, that are visual note-taking tools where you basically have combined the card base note with an infinite canvas. Now once again, you have the ability to connect the dots and see things in relationship to each other that weren’t possible before.
Ross: Let’s start with mind mapping. As you say what you cover is far broader than that. What are some of the tips or the ways in which somebody who is already minding mapping could enhance their practices? What are some of the ways to make mind mapping as useful and valuable as possible?
Chuck: I actually have a four-step framework that I’ve promoted, and I have a course that I call “The Fast Framework”. You basically need to start out with the right foundation, actually having a goal for what you want that map to be.
One of the challenges comes in that not everybody knows or understands mind maps. As you create a map with all these branches, you understand the context and the thinking behind it but if somebody else is viewing it, if you’ve shared it with them, they don’t have that. You really have to think through it very carefully, what’s the objective of it? What are you sharing? How are you going to make it clear to others? Fortunately, as a thinking tool, it works the way your brain does by association so you can very quickly build out branches and cover a lot of areas.
But again, you have to have a goal. Are you planning a project? Are you trying to make a decision? Are you simply brainstorming and then trying to evaluate all the ideas you’ve come up with? And then from there, step back almost like a painter would from the canvas and look at a high level of what you’ve created, figure out what’s missing, what needs to be added to or clarified. Then there are some things that you can do to enhance the map that a lot of people don’t even bother with; things like icons or symbols, task information, tagging, and things that enable you to visually classify your information.
Then as you’re putting this together, the first arrangement of your topics shouldn’t be the end result, you can move things around, it gives you a great deal of freedom to rearrange your map, and to play what-if with the topics. The interesting thing is, when you move a topic to a new location on the map, it is suddenly surrounded by a constellation of other topics, and you’re able to look at it in a different context, and often that spurs additional ideas. Those are just some of the things you can do to improve a map.
Ross: Fantastic. It points to three major visual diagramming tools, mind mapping, concept mapping, and systems diagrams, each with a different frame for how those connections are made on the page. Other than mind maps, what else would you point to are useful visual tools?
Chuck: Concept mapping, you mentioned. A mind map is very hierarchical. It’s got a central topic, and then branches that come out from it. It’s almost like a visual outline like you did in school. But not all information is aligned with that model. A concept map enables you to show more complex relationships where some topic might have multiple parents or multiple children. You can add notes onto those connector lines, which creates some contexts.
I mentioned earlier, the sticky note-based whiteboard tools that have become so popular, like Miro and Mural, that really enable teams either in real-time or asynchronously to brainstorm, to start working through a thinking process, to do the planning. Again, it’s a very flexible canvas, you can do a lot of things with it.
There are some very popular note-taking tools that have grown to millions and millions of users and billions in valuations, things like Evernote and Notion. But now there’s a whole sub-genre of tools that’s come into play, just in the last year or two, that I call visual note-taking tools where you take the card base note, and now you place it within an infinite canvas once again so you can start moving things around and seeing your ideas in relationship with each other and connect them either implicitly with lines or with tags.
I get really excited about that because it helps you to think better, to think more creatively, and to take advantage of serendipity. One of the things that I’m particularly excited about recently, and I wrote about on my blog is the canvas that has been added to Obsidian. Even before that, the Graph view enables you to see notes that are somehow related, but you may not have connected them yet with backlinks. But you can filter that view to a very high degree and again, see connections between these SparkNotes, these germs of ideas that you can join together and create new things out of.
Ross: You mentioned Obsidian, which is one of the current generations of thinking tools. You said around 20 years ago, you were interested in thinking tools and you just did a post on your newsletter recently saying that the time of the thinking tools has come, which I very much agree with, where suddenly there’s this whole lot of energy and recognition that it’s something we need to do, and a whole bunch of tools are emerging.
What do you see of most interest in the thinking tools landscape at the moment? What’s emerging? What are people taking notice of?
Chuck: In the last year one thing in particular that I’ve seen that really caught my attention was the introduction of AI to these tools.
In the visual note-taking space, there’s one called Napkin, in that as you’re working on one note, it is displaying related notes in the periphery of this canvas. They could be notes that you have explicitly linked to that note, but not necessarily. The AI is doing some semantic analysis and displaying things to you that it thinks may be related that you might want to see. From what I understand when you get up above say 150 or 200 notes, the magic starts to happen, and you start to see things that you go wow, I put that in here a year ago, and I completely forgot it was there but it’s really useful to me now.
In the concept mapping realm, there’s a tool called ContextMinds that has added AI to it. What it does is as you add topics to this map, there’s a panel on the bottom of the screen where it displays related words and concepts. You can drag and drop those into your map. It doesn’t force you to take these things on, and it doesn’t draw the map for you but it gives you the choice to decide what’s related, and what else should be added.
Then in the mind mapping realm, there’s a tool called AYOA, it used to be called iMindMap, it’s been around for a long time, but it transitioned to being a web-based tool and the developers have taken it in some new directions, and they have added AI as well. In this case, if you’ve got a topic in your map, you can tell the AI tool to add five topics, and it’ll create new sub-branches with suggested words on it, again, based on semantic analysis.
Ross: One question is we’ve got all these wonderful arrays of tools available, these are just a handful, the ones you’ve mentioned.
How does somebody choose what set of tools they use? What’s the process of being able to say, I’ll this tool, or I’ll use these in combination? Would somebody use one of the ones you’ve mentioned plus an Obsidian, Roam, Evernote, or Notion? How do you build up a set of tools to use which works for you?
Chuck: Two starting points. Number one, what is it you need to get done? Are you writing? Are you planning? Are you trying to brainstorm things? Are you trying to make decisions? Secondly, what’s your work style? Does it tend to be more visual or more text-based?
In the mind mapping space there has been a great divide for as long as I can remember of people who think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, and then a whole other group of people who think it’s frivolous and their documents and spreadsheets and PowerPoint decks work just fine, thank you very much. But at some point, people realize if I want to make a bigger impact, I need to think in some different ways than I’m used to doing because I’m wearing these invisible blinders on my thinking and if I want to reach that next level, I really need to step up my game.
I would start out with something simple. In the mind mapping space, I always recommend one of the web-based tools like MindMeister, where for a very low monthly cost, you can experiment. You can’t really know before you go into it if it’s the right tool, you have to try it, and see if it fits in with your workflow and the way you like to think. There’s a little bit of trial and error, to be honest, but that’s the way to find out what’s going to work best for you.
Ross: Fantastic. A couple of things I want to dig back into. One is this idea of the notes. You mentioned 150 notes, whatever.
What’s the nature of those notes? Would that be a sentence? Would that be a link? Would that be a phrase or an idea? Of course, it could be any or all of those. But what are your suggestions as to the nature of one of these atomic units that are connected in these platforms?
Chuck: I think it’s a very individual thing. Again, serendipity is important. I’m the poster child for this. I’ve been using Evernote for over 10 years. I probably have 6000 plus notes in it. But it ends up being I call it a sarcophagus: ideas go there to die. I’m working full-time. I’m trying to do these things on the side, I don’t have a lot of spare time to write and do these other projects. I haven’t done as much linking and searching back into my archives and finding these nuggets of gold as I should. I’ve been using it right along as a writing platform, I found it really useful in the sense that I have an iPhone, and I use Siri to dictate ideas, I find those can hit me anytime.
I learned a long time ago that it’s wise to capture those immediately, even if it’s just a germ of an idea. Then I can iteratively go back into Evernote and build those up. I’ve been toying around with the idea of moving to Obsidian but I didn’t understand how it would benefit me, particularly as a content creator.
I came across a course recently by a guy named Matt Giaro, called Second Brain for Content Creators, that really opened my eyes to what was possible, particularly with Graph view. The whole idea of working in atomic notes, just taking things down to this basic level so that you’ve got building blocks literally like digital Lego blocks that you can combine in different ways to build up content more quickly than sitting down with a blank note and trying to come up with something and then doing a Google search to try and find more bits and pieces to join with it.
If you’re doing this right, if you’re really passionate about an area and you’ve been doing this collection or curation, and It’s a lightweight system, it doesn’t require a lot of rigor. But again, if you’ve been building up this repository of ideas, you can then dip into them and accelerate your writing process by quite a bit and improve it, coming up with ideas that aren’t just a regurgitation of what everybody else is writing about, but with your own unique perspective.
Ross: Absolutely. You mentioned the word serendipity a couple of times, which is also one of my favorite ideas and concepts. For example, the AI tools you mentioned, facilitate some serendipity, they make connections you might not see.
But more generally, just thinking back as a thinking tool or a thinking process, what are ways that we can enhance the serendipity of our thinking of the ideas that we find? How do we connect them? What are some of the things that we can do?
Chuck: In my opinion, it’s very much a mindset thing. I try and cultivate what I call an inside-out look. As I consume things, I hear things, I listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos, or read a newsletter, I’m always asking myself, what does this mean? How can I use it? How does it fit in with the rest of what I understand about this topic? Does it challenge it? Is this something I should save?
Just having your radar up looking for things, you’d be surprised at how much you come in contact daily with the things that might be somehow tangentially related to something you’re trying to get done or takes your thinking in a new direction, or helps you come up with a new angle on something you’re trying to write about.
Ross: One of the things I like to do is find different seeds: starting somewhere you would normally start and often a different direction. It’s like: can you find a person or a topic or an idea or a source which is outside, what you normally wouldn’t find? Then use that as a starting point to see where you stumble across that can be relevant to you.
Chuck: One of the things that I’ve been pretty rigorous about over the years is collecting creative thinking techniques. There’s one book I recommend to your audience in particular called Thinkertoys by Michael Michalco. It’s a fun book. It’s not a dry academic read, it’s delightful. It catalogs all these thinking methods that he has come across, and that he has used in his consulting.
I’ll just share with you one very briefly. You talked about a different starting point, one of them is called Board of Directors: Imagine that you’re standing in front of a group of the smartest people living or dead, famous or not, that somehow influence your thinking, say, you’ve got Steve Jobs, Albert Einstein, and a former college professor sitting in front of you, and you briefly explain what your challenges are. Then you wait for their advice. Based on their background, and the way they think, and a lot of this is very public if they’re famous people, there have been books written, and you imagine what advice they would give you and how to solve that problem.
It’s kind of a “sleight-of-head” exercise if you will. Because again, we tend to get very narrowly focused in our way of thinking. I’m sure you’ve heard of confirmation bias and availability bias. We tend to think in very narrow paths, and you need to be able to literally kickstart your head in different directions and this is one creative way to do that.
Ross: I love that phrase “sleight-of-head.” I absolutely agree. Since I was a child, I felt that most people are living their lives with blinkers on. It’s natural, we’ve got things to get on with. We implicitly put our blinkers on and don’t look around. Part of the challenge is to make sure that we take the blinkers off from time to time and look from side to side or outside what’s just right in front of us.
Chuck: It’s ironic, Ross. You write about dealing with overload, we have had to create these blinders just to be able to survive, we have to filter out what’s coming at us by necessity.
Ross: Just coming back to content creation. Your profession is creating compelling content. You mentioned this before, I’d like to hear about how to use all of these wonderful tools or approaches or frameworks to write better. What does that flow look like for you in terms of being able to write some compelling content, perhaps particularly on something which is outside your area of expertise?
Chuck: I have to put my professional hat on here because in the world of content marketing and content strategy as a starting point, we’re all so inundated with information. Step number one is to deeply understand your audience. What are they struggling with? What are their pain points? What keeps them up at night? What are some of their aspirational goals? You can build personas around that, just do a Google search on audience personas and you’ll find a wealth of information out there on how to do this, it’s not hard.
But you’re really trying to get into their head so that you can start writing things that help them solve problems, help them get things done, help them remove blocks from their life, or whatever they’re trying to do. You really need to focus on that first.
Then the real practical things like figuring out where they’re gathered? Where are they talking? Are they in communities? Do some listening to what they’re talking about, and then start to focus content development around those issues. Maybe you survey them, there are all sorts of ways to get that input like one-on-one discussions with people.
I’ve always believed that people like you who are podcasting, you’re talking to so many brilliant people, and getting so many perspectives that you get this incredible generalist view of the world that is so multifaceted just by having come in contact and deep conversations with these folks.
Ross: Once you’ve got that framing as who you’re trying to serve and how you’re trying to serve them, as you’re doing your research, let’s say, it’s a new area, as you’re doing research, how do you piece together all of those things that you discover? And how do those fit together to be able to draw a narrative?
One of the interesting things is that writing is linear. It starts and it continues and keeps on till it ends, presuming people read it that way whereas ideas and the landscapes we’re talking about, there are connections all over the place. How do you take that whole rich lattice of connections of ideas as you pull them together and all of the connections and frames to create a linear piece of writing?
Chuck: Usually, creating the personas and understanding what their journey is as they try and get things done naturally suggests topics to write about. I’m a big believer in either mind mapping if it’s a bigger project, or just doing a traditional outline of what I want to write just to create some constraints on it. Because otherwise, as you said, you could go in a million different directions. You don’t want to overwrite, you want to be fairly concise, because people don’t have much time to read, and frankly if you don’t hook them and keep their attention, you’re going to lose them pretty quickly. Again, it’s part of this filtering mechanism. I don’t want to invest a lot of time in this if I don’t see a payoff.
That’s a good way to keep the writing focused. Within that, you can be fairly creative. It also helps to constrain the research because you can really go down a rabbit hole as you know, doing Google searches and things like that. But it helps you to make some decisions about what’s relevant to the story you’re trying to tell, what’s not, what’s within scope, and what’s outside of scope. Maybe in the process, you find a few new ideas that you just jot some notes on and put them away in your system for future exploration, but it helps to keep the writing focused.
We live in a day and age that if you’re a content creator, the tools that you’re using to publish also provide a whole toolset of engagement. You really need to take the time to look at what people are connecting with, what are they sharing, what are they liking, what are they reacting to, commenting on, and that can give you a sense of if you’re actually meeting those needs, and maybe where you need to go deeper and spend some more time focusing on with your content.
Ross: Are there ways in which you practice focused deep work or focused attention or awareness? Do you meditate? Are there other ways in which you try to keep focused attention for periods?
Chuck: It comes naturally to me because I’ve been writing daily for decades professionally and for my own projects. In terms of my diet of information, newsletters play a big part, I know you’ve talked to other guests about source selection, and for me too, that plays a big role. There are certain things I’m looking for around creativity, change, technology, visual thinking, and note-taking. I subscribe to many newsletters, but then a fairly quickly cull them down. I’m looking for value, and I’m looking for insights that I can share or build upon. If I’m not seeing that, I unsubscribe.
As I said, I’m always in the habit of capturing ideas as they come to me. I just came across something this week that blew my mind. I’m focused a lot on content creation but I was always wondering if a course like the one I talked about earlier could have use for professional content creators, and content marketers working in corporations. Right now, the course that I referred to earlier is mainly focused on individual creators who are trying to write on Medium, Substack, or wherever.
I came across a subject, I’m trying to think of what it was called. The whole idea is that task-based work isn’t the only way to organize anymore, that there’s actually a content-based approach to gathering information and getting work projects done, which I found really fascinating because I never really thought about connecting the two. Apparently, task-based work has reached a point where there are some limitations to it, and the whole concept of teams, permanent teams working together for long periods of time, isn’t as flexible as it needs to be anymore. It’s opening up a whole new rabbit hole for me to go down to understand what people are7 saying about this and how can I connect it to what I’m trying to do.
Ross: Pulling back to this idea of Thriving on Overload, you have a wealth of insight and advice, but just want to distill, what are some of the things that you do, that you think that others might benefit from in bringing into their daily practices?
Chuck: I’m always looking for a better way, I guess that’s the first thing that comes to mind. As I said, I realized I had some limitations in my Evernote approach. It was serving me adequately. But again, I have limited time to work on things, and I need to figure out how to create better ideas.
Mind mapping has been around for over 20 years. I hate to say it, but I wouldn’t say it’s dying but its popularity as a business tool is starting to wane a bit. I’m at a point where I’ve reached a certain plateau with my audience in terms of views and newsletter subscribers, and I’m trying to figure out how to build it up to the next level with better ideas.
I’m trying to improve my information gathering, my writing, curation, all these things, to try and bring more value to my readers and hopefully, to a bigger audience of people.
Ross: I think that the most critical thing of all is that whatever you do, you can improve. I’ve spoken to a lot of people about what they do and some of them are amazing, including you, but I think that everyone can improve, I can improve, that’s the critical thing, is that whatever you’re doing, you need to be able to think about and try things to work out what it is you can do better.
Chuck: Again, we’re real habitual. There usually is some trigger event that convinces people to need to do something differently. Maybe they missed out on a promotion, or they got laid off from a job, or something just didn’t work out right for them, or something they tried failed, and it’s like, well, maybe I need to take a look at this from some different perspectives and different ways of doing things and maybe some different tools to help me do things more efficiently in a more focused way.
Ross: You have a wealth of resources that you share with the world. That will all be in the show notes. But where are the best places for people to find you and your work?
Chuck: Mind Mapping Software Blog is one. It’s mindmappingsoftwareblog.com. I also write on Medium. You can just look me up by name and find my writings there.
About a year ago, I started up a newsletter called CATALYST. Again, every other week, one idea, not fairly concise maybe about six or eight paragraphs, an idea to help creators and entrepreneurs think better, think more creatively and consider new perspectives.
In some cases, I’m just sharing my own observations. In a lot of cases, I come across ideas that just blow me away. Somebody’s got a new metaphor for looking at the world, and I share that in my own interpretation to that. You can find that on my LinkedIn. I also publish it to Medium. Those are the main places right now where you can find me.
Ross: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, Chuck. It’s been a great pleasure.
Chuck: Likewise, thanks for inviting me.
“You need to recognize that technology is not going to solve that feeling of overwhelm that I think is honestly intrinsic to being a human being in an era where the world comes at us faster than we are wired for. If you try to solve it all with meditation, you are going to miss your spreadsheet. If you try to solve it all with spreadsheets, you’re probably not going to heal your existential angst.”– Alexandra Samuel
About Alexandra SamuelAlexandra is an authority on remote work and the digital workplace, a speaker and a data journalist. She is the co-author of Remote, Inc: How To Thrive at Work….Wherever You Are and the author of the Work Smarter series of books published by HBR Press.
Website: Alexandra Samuel
Medium: Alexandra Samuel
LinkedIn: Alexandra Samuel
Facebook: Alexandra Samuel
Twitter: Alexandra Samuel
Books:
Remote, Inc.: How To Thrive At Work…Wherever You Are
Work Smarter, Rule Your Email
Work Smarter With Social Media
Work Smarter With Evernote
Work Smarter With LinkedIn
Work Smarter With Twitter and Hootsuite
What you will learn How organisations can set structures for their people to thrive on overload (02:11) * How to block time for private focus or sharing information with others for synthesis? (06:55) * How to make an overwhelming amount of information effective in any role (10:03) * Should organising information be taught as a foundational skill? (13:17) * How to use tools to develop your knowledge with new ideas, information, and concepts (18:27) * What are habits or practices for getting information that enhances your work? (24:28) * How do we shift our responses to the feeling that we are not keeping up or FOMO? (29:16) * Why building a toolkit to seize opportunities is crucial to thriving on overload (33:23) Resources Zoom * Slack * Microsoft Teams * Matt Mullenweg * Automattic * Sprinklr * Evernote * Coda * Zotero * EndNote * Scrivener * Zotfile * Duo-Tang * Feedly * Google News Search * Superhuman TranscriptRoss Dawson: Alexandra, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.Alexandra Samuel: Thank you so much for inviting me.
Ross: Overload today is a pretty omnipresent issue and the shift to hybrid has played an important role in that. I’d love to get your insights in an organisational context, people working all over the place, how organisations set up the structures or processes, or whatever it is that gives people the space where they can thrive or at least do well in this world of overload.
Alexandra: I hear from so many people who have really struggled with overload since that overnight shift to remote work at the beginning of the pandemic.
It’s been a real flashback for me because I started working remotely before it was even really a known thing. In mid-1998, I moved to Vancouver, and I started working for a company in Toronto, and it was a super weird thing to do. I didn’t go completely crazy but I did drive myself into a pretty intense depression because I was so isolated and I was working all the time to try and notionally keep up with these folks in Toronto who, of course, were waking up three hours earlier than me.
I think some version of that has really been what a lot of people have gone through over the pandemic, the sense that you’re supposed to be at your desk by 9 am but if you don’t get to your desk until 9 am, you’re never going to have a chance to answer your emails, because you’re going to be on calls all day from nine until five, and often booked into multiple calls in the same window. Then people are Slacking you at the same time, and you’re getting emails at the same time, and you’re supposed to do these deliverables for your clients. Then five o’clock comes around, and if you’re lucky, your meetings end at five, and then your workday begins and it sucks, it’s totally exhausting.
Not to mention the fact that it’s incredibly depressing and isolating because if you are living that pace at home, you’re not seeing other humans, and for good or bad, we are wired to be around other human beings and most of us pretty get cranky when we don’t see them.
It really is up to organisations to reset expectations and norms and to, first and foremost, reduce the volume of meetings and the normalisation of nine-to-five video calls, which has had the effect of pushing so much of our work into after-hours.
That comes down to making a mental shift we should have made at the beginning of the pandemic, or arguably 20 years before the pandemic when we discovered the miracle of email, the miracle of texting, and document collaboration, all of these tools have made meanings far less necessary because we do have other ways of working together. But we are so used to working like it’s 1964, the only way to get things done is by putting people in a room together that we never really stopped to look and ask “Does this conversation need to be a meeting or can I just send you a Google Doc and get your comments?”
The pandemic should have been the moment to reflect on that but when everything else turned upside down, keeping our cadence of meetings was one way to preserve normalcy. Then, of course, there were even more meetings, because the stuff that used to get dealt with serendipitously in the hallway, suddenly had to be a zoom call as well.
The bottom line is if people are in meetings more than four hours a day, and I’m pulling that a little randomly, but think about it, if you’re on Zoom calls more than four or five hours a day, there really is no time to get other work done. It’s exhausting. There’s no time for email. You’re probably not making the best use of those four or five hours of Zoom calls either frankly, that’s just a lot more focused, exhausting interaction than most people are capable of in the context of the video.
The one question that needs to be normalised in every organisation is, does this need to be a meeting? And even in a way before that, it’s just get away from the idea that a meeting is a default, and start with the assumption that everything is going to be handled asynchronously. Our normal way of working is to exchange documents, exchange Slack messages, exchange Teams messages, exchange emails, and if we need a meeting, it’s for a very specific reason, and we have a list of reasons in our heads and even better yet in some kind of shared documentation of what actually warrants a meeting.
Ross: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic, of course, has famously talked about the shift to asynchronous. That is the nirvana organisation. But beyond that, I think that’s almost the first step is to say, alright, let’s not just do back-to-back meetings, that’s probably a good start, and give people some space in between the meetings, but what are any specific ways you can give blocks of time for focus or to share information load by allocating that amongst different team members, what are any more specific things beyond asynchronous we can do to make this work for individuals?
Alexandra: The knowledge sharing you allude to is definitely table stakes. If I describe a need for an internal wiki, I guess I’m dating myself, it’s not what we call these things anymore.
Every organisation that has a significant volume of remote employees or where a large number of employees spend a lot of their time communicating online, which is, at this point, most organisations that are in the service, and even a lot of product businesses, any organisation like that needs to start with a question of how do we create information flows that are indexable and searchable?
It shouldn’t have to be that everything you know goes into a wiki and you have to figure out where it belongs and you have to make sure your document is in the right part of the shared drive, all of that is great but most people aren’t librarians and there can be sincere disagreements even between good librarians, so a system of knowledge sharing that depends on everybody putting their stuff in the right place with the right keywords and then also depends on people going and looking for the right stuff with the right keywords is pretty fragile.
It’s a lot more realistic to think about tools like group messaging, like Teams and Slack where just by adding a hashtag or even just by exchanging your message on a public channel as opposed to a direct message, you create indexable information that becomes available to the rest of the team in perpetuity.
I will say one of the things that have been transformational in my own productivity in the past few years, I’ve been very fortunate to have a long-running working relationship with a company called Sprinkler, and to be part of their internal Slack channels. At a certain point, I was several years into my working relationship when somebody on the team I was working with pointed out that the question I just asked her she didn’t know the answer to but I could probably find an answer to in a particular channel that I was then added to. That has become my go-to source for all kinds of questions that come up in the course of my work with them.
I think that’s a pretty typical and realistic scenario for how people can find information. If other people have asked the question in the past, you shouldn’t need to ask it, you should be able to go and find where it’s already been asked. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to ask a question that other people haven’t asked if you’re working in a large organisation.
Ross: I’d like to switch gears a bit, perhaps we can still incorporate the organisational themes, to your practices. Amongst other things, you’re an expert, researcher, and author. You have a lot of information, you’re working with your clients, which gives you even more information. I’d like to get a sense, perhaps dig in saying how do you take that overwhelming amount of information to be able to be effective in your role? What’s the starting point for you?
Alexandra: There are a couple of things. First of all, when I was 11, my mother literally bribed me to take typing in an adult secretarial school. I sat and cried every single day as I sat at my typewriter, but she was right, by the age of 12, I was a fluent typist. I’ve been typing for almost 40 years now. It sounds like a trivial thing but I’m amazed when I am a faster typist than almost anybody I know, and it is actually a transformational practice because if you type as quickly as you think, and to be honest, I think pretty quickly as well, then it becomes possible to capture everything.
The other part of that is I’m like an incorrigible voice reminder dictator, everybody I know makes fun of me because I’ll be walking down the street, and I’ll be like, Oh, remind me to order gum today at 7 pm, or somebody will say something, I’ll say, Oh, just a second, remind me to talk to Ross about why information overload is a problem for so many people.
I run my whole life actually off of reminders now. What’s really effective about that is it feeds thoughts and information back to me at a moment when it’s actionable and if it isn’t, as it turns out, actionable, if, at seven o’clock, I’m actually in the middle of eating dinner, I have the whole cascade of snoozing features and places to send things so that might bounce back to me for a couple of goes before I can put it somewhere to find it again. But eventually, that idea goes into my list of ideas to think about turning into stories or that idea goes into the structured documents/spreadsheet where I keep information related to data journalism.
I have several repositories that I have maintained in different forms for several years. I’ve been an Evernote user for 15 years now I realise and almost all my random stuff goes in Evernote. I’ve been a religious user of a platform called Coda for about three years, I like to describe it as Google docs on steroids, it lets you combine spreadsheet functionality and document functionality, and to essentially build your own apps.
I have built coded documents around every single major aspect of my life, some of them in incredible depth. That means that even though I am in 18 different directions and working in many different organisations and contexts, there is a home base for each aspect of my life.
Ross: I’d like to dig in a moment as to how you use Evernote in particular. But are these skills we should be teaching individuals? Should we be teaching people how to use Coda or giving them some templates or saying, choose Evernote or whatever note-taking systems, and here are some ways to tag or structure that? Are these some foundational skills that people haven’t been taught?
Alexandra: Yes, 100%.
It’s embarrassing what happens in my household, my 19-year-old has not only taken to using Coda but has become a Coda evangelist, and knows that the surest way to curry favour with Mom is to come home from their day at art school and explain how they’ve gotten a whole bunch of art students to start using Coda today to plan their projects.
And my 16-year-old, bless his heart, last year got really tired of the repetitiveness of his math assignments and just built a series of calculators in Coda to do his math homework for him. Every time I see them do something like this, I think like, who the heck knows? Is he ever going to use grade-10 math in real life? Maybe, maybe not. Is he going to use the ability to build his own little DIY work tools in an online platform? Absolutely.
There are a lot of aspects of my parenting I would not necessarily recommend to the general public but my kids are amazingly adept at using these different tools. It’s because they’ve grown up in a household where that’s just how we do. We have 14 different platforms we routinely use as a family. You do not want mom to catch you using a table when you should be using a spreadsheet, that is like bad news. I wish schools spent more time on this.
It’s one of the things that made me super upset about the whole transition in Google Suite is I have a huge problem with the corporatization of education. It is disturbing to see schools relying on a commercial platform, but also, if kids use Google in their school, and they’re using Google Sheets, or using Google Docs, they’re getting used to the platform they’re going to use as adults in the working world. I think that having kids learn how to use digital tools in these playgrounds that are designed for K–12 environments and then have to go and learn a totally unrelated toolset doesn’t make any sense. Let’s get schools and kids running on the kinds of tools that adults use or should use.
Ross: I suppose there aren’t that many adults that are familiar with Coda.
Alexandra: I’m working on it.
Ross: There are a lot of people struggling with saying they’ve got paper, or they’ve got Google Docs, or they’ve got all sorts of things, and no one has ever given them any guidance or said this is how you can organise or structure your life beyond whatever we throw at you.
Alexandra: That’s absolutely true.
Some of that can be addressed by organisations being explicit about tool choice, providing examples, providing resources, providing training, supporting people with templates, and getting started guides, and all of that. All of that would help.
But I also have to remind myself that not everybody’s idea of a fun Friday night is “Let’s try seven different task management apps and make notes on which ones have which feature.” That is my idea of a rip-roaring good time but most people do not enjoy messing around with software as much as I do.
The world is full of people who don’t like spreadsheets, also, I’ve learned that. I can’t even begin to describe how much I love it. I feel my brain is a spreadsheet.
One of the things that have been interesting to me, my younger kid is autistic so I periodically connect with other moms of autistic kids. You would not believe how many moms I’ve met in the autistic community are also big Excel nerds. There is possibly a genetic component here.
I’m not saying everybody needs to fall in love with spreadsheets but I think that if people can find tools that are genuinely a joy for them to use, you don’t have to use 482 different things the way somebody like me does, but if you think about how much time you spend holding your phone or at your computer, if you’re not working in an environment that gives you joy, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be a slog, so you want to encourage people to take ownership of their tools as part of taking ownership of their work.
Ross: This goes to knowledge frameworks. I describe them as concept frameworks or sometimes visualisations. It sounds like you’re using Evernote and Coda for that. From this frame of developing knowledge, as in finding things and building the connections between those, is that something you do? Or if so, how do you use your tools? Or even just your cognition as ways to develop your knowledge as you encounter new ideas, information, and concepts?
Alexandra: It’s interesting. I don’t think about either Evernote and Coda as knowledge as much as ideas. I keep a lot of web clippings in Evernote. I do often find things in Evernote that I saved seven years ago or whatever that are still useful.
From a knowledge and ideas point of view, what’s probably more relevant, I’m a Zotero user, I used to be EndNote user a hundred thousand years ago, I’m a huge fan of people choosing.
But if you do knowledge work, if you do reading of any sort using a bibliographic software program, Zotero is probably the one to beat now because it’s open source and has a really big user base, it’s pretty powerful. You take all your notes on your reading, you save your reading sources in one place, that’s where you highlight articles as you read them, you can extract those highlights and export them to other programs.
One of the most popular pieces I’ve ever written, at least in terms of the passion of the people who find it and write to me about it, I wrote this piece for JSTOR Daily a few years ago about how I use Zotero and Scrivener together. Scrivener is a writing program for long-form writing. I even use it to write my newsletters and my articles now because it’s just so much easier in a lot of ways than using a word processor. Not easier to learn but more powerful and faster once you learn it. I use them together.
I’ll save an article to Zotero, annotate the PDF in Zotero, use a tool called zotfile which is an add-on to Zotero to extract all the annotations and turn it into ultimately a Word document. Then I import the Word document into Scrivener so that each annotated section appears in Scrivener as a little mini document within Scrivener, and then I just rearrange all those quotes until I figure out the pieces I want to use in my article, and bam, I’m almost done with the first draft, it’s a little more fidgety than that but that’s been really significant for me. I think the knowledge management piece is very therapeutic.
I always feel embarrassed that I’m such a pack rat. I’m a pack rat from a long line of pack rats. When my grandmother died, we had her great grandfather’s clippings books still around. One of the lessons I learned from that is, if you keep it for your lifetime, you’re a pack rat. If the next two generations keep it, then it’s like an heirloom. You just have to keep it long enough. I have every essay I wrote in college in a cupboard upstairs printed out on dot matrix printer paper, in little Duo-Tangs and I still refer to them sometimes.
I can open any file I created within the last 20 years, maybe a little longer, and not just open it, I can find it. I have a heck of a huge, 32-terabyte file server in the house, which is big enough to actually have room left over. Of course, I have most of my stuff stored in the cloud. I’m constantly opening documents from 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and 14 years ago, repurposing a little bit of this or that. Just that ability to not replicate things I’ve already done is so powerful.
Ross: Do you use any tagging system or any structure to Evernotes like an overarching taxonomy or anything?
Alexandra: I have notebooks within Evernote. When I was first an Evernote user, I was extremely religious about tagging and notebooks. It’s been years since I even really bothered to use notebooks, it’s all just a big pile because search is so effective in Evernote, maybe it’s not perfect, and it can be a little messy.
The only thing I do that is really religious is years ago, my husband, this is one of these practices that no longer fully makes sense because computers have evolved but back in the day when things didn’t necessarily have reliable date stamps, he got me into the habit of starting every file with the date in the format, year, month, day, so today would be 2022-12-6.
I actually have a keyboard shortcut in my computer and on my phone that I can quickly add at the beginning of any file, and it’s now automatic that every time I start opening a file or start an Evernote note, I hit that keystroke combo and it starts with the date.
Yes, in theory, the date created, date last modified, whatever, should always be visible within a file but I’m telling you, man, every time I move computers, all the date stamps get screwed up, so that ability, and when you have it in that format, year, month, day, it means you can always sort by file name, and then it ends up in date order. File order is date order. That has saved my bacon many many a time.
Ross: Awesome. Let’s go into inputs. You get lots of new information to come into your consciousness every day. I’d love to just hear about are there any specific regular sources you use. Do you have any feeds? How do you look out and discover the edges of the world? What are your habits or routines or practices in terms of getting the information that feeds your ability to do what you do?
Alexandra: It’s funny, I often joke that my husband is the input device and I’m the output device. We have worked very closely together at various points in our careers. We ran a business together.
I have also had periods of my life where I did have a very structured daily news scan, I had an RSS aggregator, I’ve gone through various things over the years, Feedly, and so on to use RSS aggregation to bring keyword searches to me. I do have a standing Google News search for stuff related to remote work. I use an email program called Superhuman. Within it, I’ve set up a category for regular news and a category for remote news so my newsletters go into the regular news folder, and my Google News search, and a handful of newsletters I subscribe to on remote work, go into the remote news folder, but I really don’t look at either of them very consistently.
I’m trying to deal with this, I would say for me, the biggest problem with information overload is less cognitive and more emotional and psychological. For me, part of that has to do with transitioning the field that I work in. I’ve had a really weird career in a lot of ways. I’ve always been interested in stuff too soon. I was in the Political Science Ph.D. program in the mid-90s, and I decided in 1996 that I wanted to do a dissertation on the political impact of the internet and my department thought I was like bananas. I ended up taking a few years off coming back and doing a dissertation on hacktivism in 2001 and finished in 2004. It was before Anonymous. It was crazy early.
Then I got interested in what we now call social media before it was called social media. My husband and I literally started the first social media agency in the world, because we hung out our shingle in 2005, and said, we’re only going to do Web 2.0 projects.
I’ve had this career where I’ve been unprofitably ahead of the curve, and where usually what I’m working on and writing about, other people are working on or writing about. When I started writing about the personal psychological impact of using the internet, the only other people who were even talking about this at all were in the evangelical community, and I followed a handful of people who were trying to think about how do you speak tweet in the spirit of Jesus, that kind of stuff, long before all the Buddhists, the mindful tech started happening.
Working as I have in the past two or three years, taking my long experience of remote work, my long experience of helping organisations figure out how to build community online, taking my experience of helping people with information overload, with productivity, and turning that into a book about remote work and a pretty active career writing and speaking on remote work has been really disconcerting for me because I’m suddenly in a conversation that hundreds and thousands of people are talking about.
When I was writing about hacktivism, there was no Google News search yet. But when I was writing about social media and digital overload initially, I had searches set up on digital fasts and overload, some of these keywords, there was some stuff, but it wasn’t like a colossal waterfall of other people writing about the same topics.
Now, if I look at my Google News search for stuff on remote work in hybrid, I’m like, way too neurotic. It’s like, oh my God, these are like 45 great articles and I didn’t write any of them and like, I suck, they’re great, I need to go crawl into a hole and die.
Maybe everybody, maybe a lot of people are like that, maybe that’s part of what makes information overload so difficult. I just think as humans, we are the first generation to be continually immersed in what everybody else is doing that we’re not. It’s pretty tough to live in the constant stew of your own opportunity costs.
Ross: Yes, you’re absolutely right. Human cognition is not really geared for this particular environment. But a big part of that is emotional in the sense that we feel that we’re missing out, we want to try to keep up, but it’s impossible to keep up, and this leads to not good emotions.
How do we shift our responses? Some of those are processes or structures and one of those is really adjusting our attitudes. I talked about this idea of we have to be able to let go, and that’s not an easy thing for us to do.
Alexandra: No. My thinking and understanding of these challenges has been so profoundly influenced by my journey with my kid who was diagnosed with autism pretty late.
We spent a lot of time reading a lot of stuff about ADHD and other kinds of sensory disorders, as they’re sometimes called. I’ve read a lot about autism and spend a lot of time paying attention to people in the neurodiversity community who often make very effective case for all the talents and gifts that can come from having a different way of approaching the world. It’s made me very aware of how we fall into a lot of errors of assumption around what we’re supposed to be able to handle cognitively, at a sensory level, and emotional level. Again, the mismatch between what comes at us and what we’re wired to handle.
A lot of the tools that have helped me learn to deal with that in my professional life have really come from my personal life. To just give an example, we went through a very, very difficult time, in the middle of COVID, there was a survey here in British Columbia where I live, of families with autistic kids and literally, every single family in the province that was surveyed said, we are in crisis because of COVID, because there was such a loss of community support and scheduled routine and a lot of things people rely on. That was certainly the case in our household. We went through a really difficult time, and I had a pretty established repertoire of resources to work with, and I needed more.
I started working with a therapist who specialises in hypnosis, and then later with another somatic therapist to develop essentially some very physiological practices for self-regulation, just starting to notice what happens in the body. Because what had happened to me was we had such a series of crises that I was kind of in permanent fight or flight mode. I had to learn how to turn that down.
Having tuned into that at a physiological level and learn to notice like, oh, I’m feeling tightness in my chest, I feel my forehead is tight, I can feel what’s happening in my eyelids as I’m having that response, and then learning very simple techniques like, I’m going to pick an object in the room, and I’m going to really focus on it, and I’m going to look at the color, the texture, I’m really going to turn on my sensory experience to pull my brain out of that panic mode.
That feeling I have when I open my inbox, that same routine now comes into play. It’s not necessarily conscious, I don’t think, oh, no, I’m panicking over my inbox but it’s now become second nature to notice the physiological response so that instead of identifying with panic, I can observe it a little bit and not let it drive me.
Ross: That sounds like a fantastic tool. Our ability to control our attention is fundamental and I think those specific techniques are really powerful. To round out, what are any recommendations you would give from your deep insight and expertise as to how listeners can thrive on overload to function well in this world, which is very overwhelming, to be frank?
Alexandra: It’s funny. I’m just reflecting, is the solution a spreadsheet or a Buddhist retreat? I can’t decide.
I honestly do think that you need to look at both sides of the coin. There’s a lot of advice out there about decide what you want, be really clear on your intentions, you’ll manifest, blah, blah, blah, I actually have moved away and come to find it’s much easier to learn to float on the river and accept that the complexity and pace of our world is almost too much to be able to set really firm intentions.
Instead of thinking this is the thing I’m going to go for and I’m going to have this super linear way of going about it, if instead, you think about building a toolkit that allows you to float on the river and seize the opportunities that come your way, then you realise what you need is really, as I say, both sides of the coin, you need to build the technical tools that let you filter, triage what comes in, rediscover the resources you need to reuse, organise your writing and your work effectively, and you need to recognize that technology is not going to solve that feeling of overwhelm that I think is honestly intrinsic to being a human being in an era where the world comes at us faster than we are wired for. If you try to solve it all with meditation, you are going to miss your spreadsheet. If you try to solve it all with spreadsheets, you’re probably not going to heal your existential angst.
Ross: So a combination of technology and mindfulness?
Alexandra: Something like that.
Ross: That’s a fantastic way to round out. It’s a true and hopefully pragmatic advice there. Thank you so much for your time, Alexandra. That’s been a wonderful, really insightful conversation.
Alexandra: It’s fun talking with you.
“Because there’s so much information to pass and so many transactions that we need to transact every day, having that moment to properly think and work through a big idea is challenging. I find that especially difficult in my work today as a venture capitalist where synthesis is the core skill. It’s important that we find the time to think and the tools to help us think.”– Phil Morle
About Phil MorlePhil is partner at major deep tech venture capital firm Main Sequence Ventures, where he focuses on health, food, environmental companies, and leads the Feed 10 Billion People challenge. Prior to Main Sequence, Phil co-founded the first tech incubator in Asia Pacific, Pollenizer, and was the CTO of file-sharing company Kazaa.
Website: Main Sequence
Blog: Phil Morle
LinkedIn: Phil Morle
Twitter: Phil Morle
What you will learn How to enable synthesis whether alone or with others (03:10) * What are some good information sources, and routines? (06:32) * How to gather an information “mise en place” (09:50) * What is the Roam app? (13:20) * What is the fundamental difference between Outlook and Gmail? (14:56) * What is the difference between Roam and Obisidian? (17:28) * How do venture capitalists manage their information overload? (20:46) * Why clarity of purpose is crucial to thriving on overload (27:54) Resources Obsidian * Roam Research * Tana * Readwise * John Borthwick * Tools for THINKing * Rob Cross * Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse * Oblique Strategies Cards by Brian Eno * Oblique Strategies for iPhone * Oblique Strategies for Android TranscriptRoss Dawson: Phil, wonderful to have you on the show.Phil Morle: Glad to be here, Ross.
Ross: This is a topic you’ve been thinking about for a long time. I just dug up something which you wrote in 2007, saying we are becoming good filters but poor philosophers. We are good at information retrieval and storage, but not so good at the long thought. We need time to think. Do you still agree with what you said 15 years ago?
Phil: I do, and if anything, it gets harder, doesn’t it? Because there’s so much information to pass and so many transactions that we need to transact every day, having that moment to properly think and work through a big idea is challenging. I find that especially difficult in my work today as a venture capitalist where synthesis is the core skill. It’s important that we find the time to think and the tools to help us think.
Ross: You just mentioned synthesis. Let’s get to that, there are a lot of elements that precede the act of synthesis. How do you enable that? Is this a state of mind? Is this giving yourself the space to think as we mentioned? What is it that enables you to synthesize all of the signals that you get?
Phil: I’m a real thought hacker, and I’m just trying everything, every notebook, every tool, every meeting format. I do have a system that I like and it’s ever-evolving. I must say that coming out of COVID, one of the things I like the most is getting back in front of a whiteboard with a bunch of people because synthesis really happens wonderfully with a team. For example, I just spent some time with the team working on the pitch deck and just workshopping that with them. Because we were in a conversation, all this stuff was coming out of their mouth which was super rich and super interesting and was much more valuable than the very dry stuff that was in the pitch deck which is the kind of stuff you do natively and powerfully when you’re sitting on your own in a room with a screen in front of you.Of all the tools that I have, sometimes the best tool is a whiteboard, a marker pen, a couple of people, and ideas. It forces yourself into other spaces. When we go into digital spaces, that’s where I need that equivalent of other people, like, what are the prompts? What are the processes on rails that pull you through, that forces me to do that rather than just to get my emails done and just transact, transact, transact all day? How do I force myself into that position of thinking like I’m with some people on the whiteboard?
Ross: I’d like to come back to the process but first of all the whiteboard. If you’re on the whiteboard and you’re having a wonderful conversation, what does it look like afterward? Do you have any patterns for the sorts things you put on a whiteboard?
Phil: I’m a very visual person. I like connected tissue, so I suppose mind maps would be the most likely outcome for me. I’d say my whiteboards are either a mind map spider or a grid with a timeline with different dimensions to the timeline. From a venture perspective, so much of what we do is about what might be the story that plays out over time and what are all the different layers to that story. That’s what might get us to the grid, but the synthesis really comes from the mind map. That’s where you get all these strange connections in a graph that you might not have thought to do had you not co-located those two bubbles next to each other.
Ross: You have mentioned more recently as well as earlier in all of the wonderful stuff that you share online that you do have some processes and workflows. The one we started at the beginning as in input, what information sources do you find? Are there particular times of the day or any particular approach that you take to getting the crude, raw inputs that go into your thinking?
Phil: This is really important for me because come eight o’clock in the morning, I start getting smashed from every digital channel, my phone rings, the emails come in, about 10 different portfolio companies and their Slack channels light up, one company might have a big win, and another might be having a disastrous situation, and the day just goes right out of control and it’s all inbound information. The first thing that I do in my life, which I found really helpful, and I enjoy enormously now is I start my day really early. I start my day at four or five o’clock in the morning. It’s me-time, it’s synthesis time, it’s reading time, it’s putting together the plan for the day, it’s making sure I’ve collected everything from yesterday that I haven’t got to yet. The collecting of information and things to do and insights is something that just has to be incredibly quick, and frictionless because that’s how I don’t get stressed about it, I know I’ve captured it, and I know that my process will have a loop at some point where I come to it, I might pick it up, and I put it somewhere, and I do something with it.I’m one of those people who doesn’t like an open loop and doesn’t like feeling like I’m in somebody else’s open loop, so I don’t like to do that to other people. I have a whole series of tools that I use for doing this. The biggest change for me over the last year is to become a disciple of tools for thought as they’re becoming known. This is tools like Obsidian, Roam, and now a tool called Tana, which has become the epicenter of my work. You can think of it as an outliner, in its simplest form, but every bullet in the outline is a node in the graph, and all the graphs link together. If I say, I’m having a meeting with Ross Dawson, then the word Ross Dawson leads me to the entire history of everything we’ve done together. In that same thing, we’ll be making notes about all kinds of things and they all start linking together. It’s not a structured database, it’s a graph. This really helps me to think, and throughout that, there are prompts.I think of it as having a habit like a chef comes into the kitchen, and you prepare your tools for the day, chop your carrots, prepare your herbs, have everything lined up, partially cook some things, so you’re ready. Then people start coming into a restaurant and the world goes mental but you just grab the knife because it’s in the right place, you grab the carrots that you’ve already chopped too, you’re ready, and you’re not panicking trying to find the basic things.Every day when I open up my Tana, I have a prompt that asks me if I’m playing the infinite game, this is my reminder each day to behave a certain way. I then have a startup routine that I have to do. For example, there’s a series of checkboxes. The first one is start music. The reason I have that is that I have to focus, and I struggle with that sometimes, I can have just a noise of tasks in my mind and priorities, all competing, or I just might be brain-dead, still half asleep. I know that if I put my headphones on and I press play with the right playlist, it’s like an ADHD tablet. I’m just voof, I’m zoned in. It’s amazing how without the prompt, I’ll think, today, I’ll just sit here quietly and listen to the birds outside. That’s what I’d like to do. Every time I do that, I have a really ineffective hour. Some people would say, maybe you should do that, Phil, allow yourself to have an ineffective hour. I know if I put the headphones on, I’m in the zone.
Ross: What’s the right playlist for you?
Phil: Just a number of electronica, some experimental soundtracks, the theme is no lyrics. I almost don’t have any famous artists, I just go into this voyage of discovery into all the worlds of Spotify, but, just having something with a little bit of a pulse to it, just gets me into the zone, and then I can start getting things done. Then I just literally have checkboxes for just basically where all my inboxes are. I have some inboxes in Notion where team things come in, I have inboxes in my email, I have things to read in Readwise reader, so I collect those. Then, if I can get it all done in the morning, I’ll literally process those things, I’ll go through it, I’ll reply.One of the most important ones is just “review yesterday.” In Tana, I can just click a link, yesterday comes up, I can see everything I did, and I can do a search of all the tasks that came up yesterday. I have this little list that I call the snowball, which is just all this stuff that’s not been done in the last three days that’s accumulated. It’s my whack-a-mole, just to get those things done. That whole process just keeps me on rails, I know where everything is, I’m collecting everything as I go, so when I do have a moment to synthesize and think and process, I know I’ve got everything now and I haven’t missed something.
Ross: You’ve written as far as I could find six posts about using Roam as a VC. Roam is something that could be described in many ways. I’d like to hear you describe what Roam is. Most of the listeners will probably not be using Roam but tell us a little bit about how you use it.
Phil: Roam is a brand new paradigm that’s really difficult to describe, you know why it’s valuable when you start to use it. I think most people are familiar with hypertext and the way the web works, you can make a link that shows up in blue text or whatever on a website, and if you click on that link, it’ll take you to a page that you’ve made at another URL behind the link. But you have to manually go and make that page. What happens in Roam is this idea of these two-way links. In Roam, it’s two square brackets. If you go at meeting with [Ross Dawson], it’s immediately made a node in the graph for Ross Dawson. Then at any time, I can click on Ross Dawson and see the entire ledger of activity that Ross Dawson and I have been going through over time, and it’s by date and any other tagging and everything that I want to do. What that means is, you’re never trying to decide where to put something. It’s like the difference between Gmail and Outlook. Are you an Outlook user or a Gmail user?
Ross: Gmail for some time now.
Phil: Outlook users are frenetically trying to manage this folder system, where it has got these folders down the left-hand side, you’re going, where does this email go? And then Gmail said forget about that, let’s just make the search really good. This is the same. You just tag things as you go. and everything just shows up at the right place. Next time I go meeting with Ross Dawson, I’ve got my entire record of all the other meetings we’ve had instantly there, doing no work for it. You can also do things like time travel. You can say, meeting with Ross Dawson in two days, and then write some notes underneath. What happens then is in two days, those notes show up, right when you’ve got that meeting. It’s just fantastically powerful.The reason you understand it later is you just start using it. In the beginning, you feel really uncomfortable because it feels like, I’m not filing anything, I’m just making notes, I’m putting them down everywhere, and then three or four days later, you meet the same person the second time, or you go back to an essay you were writing, or some research that you’re doing, and all the information there is just automatically clustered. It’s incredibly valuable. I converted a lot of people that work into it, and my son is a devotee as well. It’s very good software.
Ross: You also mentioned Obsidian a little while ago. Obsidian is usually considered an alternative to Roam. Are you using both?
Phil: I did try Obsidian. Obsidian is beautiful software. From my perspective, the difference between Obsidian and Roam is Obsidian is not a graph-based database, it’s a much, much better version of Evernote, to put it very, very simply. Still, you’ve got a series of markdown file notes that you’re collecting, and you’re having to think about where things go, but it’s very, very powerful. Many people use Obsidian when they’re writers, for example, and it’s got a very nice interface for writing longer-form documents and things like that, and still having some element of a beautiful, easy-to-use note-taking system. But Roam, I tried to leave Roam because it’s ugly and hacky, and Obsidian is beautiful but it didn’t work like my mind, these things come down to that in the end, you have to map to what’s going on in your own brain, so I went back to Roam.That’s why I’ve now moved to Tana, you can tell an early adopter, crazy person here, but Tana is basically building upon the Roam paradigm. At the heart of Tana is this idea of a super tag. For example, here, what I’ve done is for this session, I’ve got a meeting with Ross on productivity, and I tag it as a meeting, which is just one that I’ve made, and then because of that, it has automatically dumped in all the metadata underneath for all the things I want to get out of this meeting. It’s the life on rails again.
Ross: Are you using Roam concurrently with Tana or have you shifted completely to Tana?
Phil: No, moved all over. You can import Roam. My Roam graph is in Tana now.
Ross: I use Obsidian, so still need to play around with other alternatives. But now a profusion of tools is coming out so if you’re trying to keep across what there is, there is this wonderful thing. Interestingly, John Borthwick of Betaworks, his latest camp has been “THINKing” tools. That’s his latest investment theme. As he does it, there’s still an enormous opportunity in the space. It’s still very fragmented. All of these mentioned tools, Roam, Obsidian, and Tana are still basically for geeks.
Phil: Yes, they are. You’re right. It’s a paradigm that maybe goes back to how we began this conversation that it gets harder and harder to synthesize in a heavily transactional world, and what are the tools that are going to help us to do a better job of that and this whole tools for thought category has emerged.
Ross: I think that venture capitalist, VC, is like the epitome of information overload because you not only need to keep in touch with your own industry but also your portfolio companies, and be able to keep across new companies coming up but also the underlying technologies that are driving all of those domains, and particularly with you working in deep tech, everything is new whichever way you’re looking. You do refer in some of your posts particularly how is this relevant to VCs, and I’d like to just unpack that a little bit. What are the things which are specific, or informed by, or where the VC world can teach us about useful processes or workflows?
Phil: I describe it as being like a fire hose of information. From the first encounter with a human in the morning to the last encounter at the end of the day, it’s just this information coming in. My calendar app has this feature called rewind, which I looked at last week, and it told me that I met 1788 people this year. Then for each of those people, they were talking about really complicated things like making proteins or enzymes that recycle plastic in different ways and things like that, so collecting the information that comes out and synthesizing it. With some of the people, there’ll be very quick meetings, there’ll be like a 30-minute quick meeting to try and find a fit, understand where someone’s coming from. I have a principle where I want everybody to get some value out of every meeting. I try and think about how to do that, which means I can’t use the whole 30 minutes, just small talking. It’s just a massive amount of information. Again, that’s why this need for inputs is really important. How can you effortlessly capture something and drop it into the system to do something with it later, and collect a record of everything, that’s why these tools for thought are just beautiful for venture capital. A lot of venture capitalists use them.
Ross: Do you build any meta frameworks as in thinking about a particular domain, and try to build a lattice of knowledge around that particular area?
Phil: At the simplest level, what I like to try and do when I live my life on rails is even when you’re having a bad day, how do you perform at your best? Even if I’m tired and fed up or stressed about something but I have to meet a founder who’s working hard on their business and it’s really important to them that it comes across well and they want to get some value out of the meeting, I make sure I’ve got a good framework that asks me questions and also helps me ask them questions. Then I collect it all in a similar format, and it’s just a scaffold, it doesn’t have to play that way but it means I can if that’s what I want to do. Then that also means that as we go through, I can start looking at things on aggregate, which takes us back to the synthesis, I can start querying things based on the similar answer to the same question that multiple people create, which is quite interesting.The other thing that I try and do throughout is I have a journaling and insights framework, which again, I can just collect it very quickly into these systems. Then at the right time, when I’m doing my weekly planning and things, it all comes up to the surface again, so then I can see something that was just quickly collected whilst I was walking down the street, or in between meetings, or in the middle of a pitch session or whatever, I can just collect it, move on, and then I can think more about that insight at some other one of my five o’clock in the morning sessions.
Ross: Are there any particular elements that scaffold that you described? Is it a series of questions or particular facets of what it is you’re trying to uncover?
Phil: Yes. For example, a new thing I’m doing at the moment is, because so much of my work is in a meeting with somebody, I’m trying to figure out which ones fuel me, and which ones drain me, of course, you still have to do some of the ones that drain you whether you like it or not, that’s life, we’ve got to do a mix, but what I’ve started doing in my scaffolding is every meeting I have, I have to give it a score, like, whether it drained me or fueled me. Then what I can do is when I’m doing a bit of a review, I can just look at my week and go, okay, look at this pattern here, this meeting just keeps coming up and it’s draining me, so what do I do? Maybe I don’t need to be in the meeting? Or maybe I can redesign how the meeting actually happens so that it’s more impactful and more fun and things like that. Again, if you just collect it in the scaffold, it’s just a very simple thing, it doesn’t add much, there’s zero workload, basically, it just takes half a second. But then the insight that gives at the end of the week is terrific.
Ross: That could be valuable to other people, I did some work with Rob Cross, he was at the University of Virginia at the time, around energy and networks, where essentially, you can map organizations by whether people are perceived as energy givers or takers, that actually provided some pretty strong insights into organizations, but also context. Because again, it’s not just the individual, it’s also the context, somebody who may be energizing in one context but not in a particular type of meeting, for example. There’s a lovely lattice of information that you can get if other people follow that as well.
Phil: It’s good just to be mindful of it and understand what’s going on. I’ve been having this conversation recently, for example, here we are, it’s the first year on the other side of COVID, we’ve all rushed out gobbling up the world again, nearly everyone I know has been phenomenally busy this year and is exhausted, and to your point about the meetings and energy givers and takers, each face you’re seeing around the room or on the Zoom screen or whatever is loaded with stuff on there at that moment that you don’t generally acknowledge in a meeting, but it’s in the room.
Ross: In a minute, I want to get a summary from you, and also anything which we haven’t covered. But to your point about making sure that you get as much value as I have from this conversation, hopefully, part of it has been able to share, be aware of what you’re doing but are there any questions you have for me or anything, which would help you make this a useful conversation?
Phil: You’re the expert. I’ve told you some of the things that I’m doing. How do I level up what I’m doing to get better at this fire hose?
Ross: The big thing for me is always that you have some clarity. This is what I describe as a personal information plan. This maps out for me saying okay, defining your purpose, and whatever ways. There are a couple of layers to that, from The Infinite Game through to what is the impact you want to achieve, framing different aspects of your life, thinking about your relationship to the areas of expertise you want to develop, what those are, your ventures, your well being, your family, what in the news more broadly is relevant to you or not. From that, the time boxing for where it is you’re focused, in terms of information activities, where it is you are making time for regenerating.It’s an interesting thing. I did refer to the improvisational theatre in Thriving on Overload, the book, as just one tool for how it is we get to a state of mind of synthesis. You have a background in theatre. That’s something where it’s not just that activity, but there are also other spaces that we can put ourselves in. Synthesis is, yes, partly being able to have all of the pieces of information connected but part of that is also how do we find for ourselves what are the spaces or the states of mind in which those can things, and what are the right times of day to be able to do that? How do we get to those places? This is the conscious-unconscious nexus, and how we pull that together? You’re probably better than most having lived in arts and technology and business and pulling that together.I think part of it is making the whole as much as possible. Again, in Thriving on Overload, the book, there are many tactics or more broadly, this framework of starting from purpose and flowing through all of the elements of the information inputs in the frameworks you build, and enhancing your ability for attention and ending up at that synthesis, which in a way goes beyond the conscious mind or anything that the technology can support.
Phil: One of my favorite hacks it’s called the Oblique Strategy Cards that Brian Eno wrote.
Ross: I haven’t seen those.
Phil: They’re designed for if you get stuck, if you get writer’s block or artist’s block and you’re procrastinating, and the idea is you just pick a card, and then you do what it says on the card. This one says courage, this one says accept advice, this one says voice nagging suspicions, use an unacceptable color, and it’s great. When you get a bit stuck or a little bit bored, you might be writing a dull report for somebody, you can pick a card up and make it a bit more fun, so that’s quite a good thing to do. What about “The Infinite Game”? That’s a new thing for me. I’m very interested in it. Have you seen this in play in the world in any interesting places?
Ross: I read James Carse’s original book, Finite and Infinite Games, a very long time ago. It’s been implicit. The quote which I have used in more keynotes than any other is finite players play within boundaries, infinite players play with boundaries. I’m always attuned to that. Just an example of that is my first book, I’ve gone into the field of knowledge management, and the first thing that hit me is this is all about internal, how about outside, knowledge outside and across organizations and relationships? I wrote a book about that. I guess all of my framing has always been going beyond the boundaries or playing with the boundaries. What is delightful today is how organizations and value creation and ecosystems and everything is going beyond boundaries. In a way that finite and infinite game almost best expresses the ecosystem because it has to be, in fact, you are participating, you’re not separate from everything else.
Phil: That’s right. You’re at the service of something bigger and it is unacceptable to get to the end because if you’ve got to the end, you’ve made it too small.
Ross: Yes.
Phil: I love it. It’s a good reminder. Whenever I feel too competitive or feel envious of somebody or something like that, the reminder that I just need to play the infinite game helps me get through.
Ross: Any closing comments or recommendations or things we haven’t covered that could be useful to our listeners?
Phil: I’m a bit of a nutcase when it comes to these systems. I’m sure listeners can tell, I’m an early adopter, and I’m an early adopter because I’m constantly looking for what’s going to give me that extra edge, that extra 10 minutes, that extra bit of ease, that extra ability to capture things and not worry about them. There’s something a little bit obsessive about it, and I find the balance that I have to have is how to then let go of it. What I do is I find myself going into a phase where I lock in a new habit, and the new habit gives me a new capability of some kind, it either works or it doesn’t work, but then I have to consciously step outside of it for a while and let it just relax a little while. Life is on rails, it’s helping me because it’s on rails, but it doesn’t have to be on rails, I can step off the train if I want to do that, and I think that’s important as well. Otherwise, I’d just be a bit of a robot. There are some amazing tools out there to help us today.
Ross: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, Phil. I really appreciate it.
Phil: Thank you, Ross. Great chat.
“If people valued that their lens and the strength of their lens is their competitive advantage, they would probably take better care of themselves. The mindset that I want to invite through this conversation is that if we only treated ourselves as well as we treat our gadgets, we probably would have a better time thriving on overload.”– Jennifer Sertl
About Jennifer SertlJennifer Sertl is president and founder of the leadership development company Agility3R, director of marketing at Circle Optics, and adjunct professor of Innovation at Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the co-author of the book Strategy, Leadership and the Soul.
Website: Agility3R
Podcast: Think. Build. Launch
LinkedIn: Jennifer Sertl
Twitter: Jennifer Sertl
Book: Strategy, Leadership, and the Soul
What you will learn Why is your personal processing and filtering also your competitive advantage? (03:10) * Why thriving on overload is ultimately trusting yourself (04:32) * How filtering using the 18 points is an excellent starting point (06:42) * How your identity affects the way you filter information (09:15) * How to tag people you trust to reference and find interesting information (12:58) * How to take reciprocity to a higher level (17:46) * How to connect the dots to build a constellation of interesting ideas (20:50) * What actually is reflection and why is it so important? (23:58) * Why you and your ideas are inherently interesting (26:48) Resources The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman TranscriptRoss Dawson: Jennifer, it’s wonderful to have you on the show.Jennifer Sertl: Thank you so much Ross for having me. I always think of the Knights of the Roundtable. When I think of the lineage of scenario planning where you and I learned someone that was part of the team that actually coined the phrase “scenario planning”, I feel like you’re a brother in that domain.
Ross: Yes, scenarios are one of the most powerful ways to make sense of the world. The classic idea is once you’ve established a set of scenarios, that provides a filter for perceiving what fits with the scenarios, what is more likely to lead to one of the scenarios unfolding, making sense of the world. I certainly feel that scenario planning is one of the most valuable tools to filter and make sense of a world of information.
Jennifer: Absolutely.
Ross: Jennifer, I’ve known you for a long time. I always think of you as one of the most visible and obvious contributors to the global brain in terms of being able to filter and make sense of the world and share what it is that you find, which people will find useful to contribute to their mental models and thinking. Where does that start for you? What’s that process? Perhaps starting from the attitude behind your seeking and finding and sharing.
Jennifer: Absolutely. One of the things that I feel especially in the world of gadgets is that people almost feel that they have nothing to contribute but their ability to interpret. What I really want to invite people to do is to realize that your competitive advantage is the accuracy in which you scan your environment, the way that you process what you scan, and make decisions. Ultimately, if people valued that their lens and the strength of their lens is their competitive advantage, they would probably take better care of themselves. The mindset that I want to invite through this conversation is that if we only treated ourselves as well as we treat our gadgets, we probably would have a better time thriving on overload.
Ross: How we can treat ourselves well in a world of overload?
Jennifer: I was lucky enough to be given a reviewer’s copy of Thriving on Overload. What was so great is that so many of the attributes that you talked about are things that are part of the practice. One is inviting everyone here to define their own sense of how to participate in the world. I was lucky enough. I know we had this conversation earlier that I was lucky enough to have a conversation with Thomas Friedman, who wrote The World is Flat, and this was back in 2005. One of the profound things about having that conversation with him is that he introduced me to John Hagel and the idea of the Power of Pull but I also realized that I was helping companies compete and that what I really should have been doing is helping companies condition, and that there’s a difference between preparing people to win or saying can you be in great condition.
I went through a pretty significant change in my consulting practice as well as in myself. I named three words. The three words were resilience, responsiveness, and reflection. My ability to make sense of the world is how well I can be resilient, be responsive, and be reflective. You had mentioned the word filter before when we talked about scenario planning, and what naming and claiming kind of my lens of the world is, is that it allowed me to sharpen what it is that I need to practice, and what fits and what doesn’t fit. I don’t try and come into an organization or come into people and say that you should use my three words, resilience, responsiveness, and reflection, I actually ask what is your filter, and if they don’t have their filter, then there are some neat exercises I can do to help them create that filter. With it, it creates an internal True North, and once you have an internal True North, you trust yourself. One of the things about thriving on overload is the ability to have a sense of trusting yourself.
Ross: Can you give me an example of that process in a nutshell of how you might take a leadership team through finding those filters? That way of viewing the world?
Jennifer: Yes, I can give you the exercise that I use, but it comes with a caveat that it is very dangerous to do in teams. Because unfortunately, we are hardwired to be loved and lovable. That ends up doing in a power struggle, and I have never been in an environment, including my family, that is not some sort of power struggle. The exercise that I use is I love the number 18, you’ve probably heard this before, it’s that every 18 months, there’s a lunar eclipse somewhere; whoever decided that a golf course should have 18 holes; then if you actually get into a situation like COVID, where you’re drinking a lot of whiskeys, you realize that there are 18 shots in a whiskey bottle. The number 18 means a great deal to me. What I talk to people about is the idea of the Elite 18. Again, the caveat is this is a very private exercise, you can set it up in teams, but no one should actually disclose what they come up with is their Elite 18 of people that they admire or hope they can meet in their lifetime.
Essentially, we are born for mirroring. That’s one of the reasons why, not to bring religion into it, but one of the reasons why the Madonna, a figure is so important is that there’s the idea of someone looking into a child, and a child really doesn’t know a child exists until it has the gaze. Behaviorally, we are hardwired for modeling. When you take the time to think of who are the models that you admire, this is where it gets tricky in teams, people want to know who’s on your list or who’s not on your list. I say that it’s very tricky business to be thinking about who would be on your Elite 18 lists.
But once I’ve seen people’s perceived Elite 18 list, meaning that I probably never get the truth of who they really want on their list, I can usually help people determine what are the most significant three words because each person represents a latitude and a longitude, and it makes it accessible to be able to get at what is their core identity, and then how can they cultivate, protect, and strengthen that particular identity?
Ross: Bringing this to the information or the overload, I use the word purpose as the first frame and what it sounds like you’re talking about is identity, is that what are you identifying and understanding so that you can filter the world?
Jennifer: Yes, if your competitive advantage is your ability to have a sense of accuracy relative to X, it’s really important that you name what X is. Even as far as technology goes, at the end of the day, it’s all about a sense of belonging and identity. It’s so hard for me to separate a filter from a sense of belonging and being. Although these terms are intellectual, they’re very private to how a person believes that they can create value, and the whole creation of value is being lovable at a core human level.
Ross: This outcome of the words that define yourself, how is this applied? Yes, of course, it’s applied throughout everything you do in the sense of being able to determine what is relevant to you. Does this then become something that you refer to or just implicit in terms of understanding what’s relevant to you?
Jennifer: You had mentioned at the beginning, I have a very global brand. I built it simply by being true to resilience, responsiveness, and reflection. When I began to put things through the portal that was either my LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever it is I do, I put it through that filter. What it creates is like a lighthouse, there’s a sense of affinity, and people have an affinity toward my lens. I know that no matter who’s listening if they took the time to codify their lens and they used it as a filter by which how they participate externally in the world, it would help them create more of a pull strategy.
Internally, I know when I do my own journal practice, that we do have to create a time in which we reflect on how we perceive that we’re being. When I used that same tool? Where was I resilient? Where was I responsive? How can I be more reflective? When I ask those questions, there is never a time when I haven’t had something to say, both plus and delta: Plus being something affirmative in which I noticed that I did it well, and the Delta being the triangle for change is that I still have work to do. My lens does not have an inner critic because I know if I’m afraid of judgment, I won’t be as accurate as a read in the macro environment, so my job is accuracy and truth. Truth can be critical, truth has to be accurate.
Ross: I struggled a bit when I was writing chapter one of Thriving on Overload on purpose, and part of it says the purpose is not what the book is about. It’s about information, like purpose is relative to information but began with that idea of identity, this idea of you need to know who you are, and the information is filtered by the perception of your identity but also shapes your identity. As you see new things, you could learn more about who you are. That journey of identity is one that you can look at from many frames. But in just simply that information frame, it’s fundamental in terms of saying you need to know who you are, to know what’s relevant to you, and as you discover that information, that helps shape your identity. We’d like to move on to you as a curator, it’s one word, there’s more to it than that. But you uncover wonderful things to be able to share on your channel. What’s that? Let’s get quite tactical here. What do you look at? How do you find these interesting things? How do you determine what’s relevant to your community? How do you share that? What are your daily practices to do that?
Jennifer: Thank you so much for asking. I know sometimes talking about Twitter now is somewhat volatile but I was an early adopter. In 2009, what I began to do is I tried, believe it or not, very hard not to be a woman and try not to be an American in that when I participated, I participated at the idea level. As I began to be a beacon, I noticed people started following me back. What I ended up doing is I started collecting people that I found interesting and then putting them into categories, both from where they were, from what country as well as what their thought model was. I have a group of system thinkers, I have a group of people that are design thinkers, and I have a group on sustainability. Now I’m in the world of 360 imaging, I now capture thought leaders that are talking about that photography. This is my secret sauce. I just got really good at being able to see the identity of the person I was following, and then put them into categories that were important to me.
It became easy to then collect what are these people that I find interesting thinking about daily. What also is a word that is underutilized now is reciprocity. It isn’t I’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine, and that is very transactional. We were using the word Metasphere before it got a little bit contaminated. But in the new sphere, in the collective intelligence of the groups that we participate in, if we found things that were interesting to them, if you can identify a person’s core theme and core purpose, if you found interesting things, you could tag them, and through, believe it or not, well over 15 years of tagging and collecting and nurturing people and ideas, it ends up being this incredible feedback loop where, I hate to say it, but I wake up and I have the most important information literally at my fingertips because I’ve created those filters and people tag me as well.
I’m so lucky that I’m involved and people know that they’ll be attributed so it isn’t about hoarding information, it’s really about being someone that, say, people trust Jennifer’s Sertl with information because it goes further with her, she becomes an important agent of that information. When that happens, you don’t have to look, you have to look at who you trust. That’s why the next layer is that I can’t possibly process all the information but I know who I trust. One of the reasons we’re talking is that early on, Ross, you were someone I trusted, it was accidental that we learned that we had some people in common. It was your commitment to visualize information, and it was beautiful. You made it shareable. You made it easy to extend your brand and make sure that you were being attributed because it was all so frictionless to make sure like sometimes the sharing is frictionless, but the attribution piece is missing. For people that really care about attribution, it’s hard, because then you have to make sure that you attribute and do all that. What you did so wonderfully and continue to do so wonderfully well even in Thriving on Overload is the images that you create are so prescient, they’re just condensed information, beautiful to share, easy to share.
Ross: I mentioned in the book the idea of diffused reciprocity, but yours is more specific. The essence of what you’re describing is when you see something which is interesting, you know who it is interesting to, because as you say, these are not just identities that share information, they’re not just tweet streams, they are people. Because you understand what these people are interested in, when you see things, you share with those people, Oh, I think someone would be interested in that, so and so. You are actively giving, this is precisely contributing to the global brain in the sense of saying, it’s not just here’s something I’ll throw out there but I’ll throw it in this direction, this direction, and this direction because I know it’s there. That reciprocity comes when people say, Oh, I know that Jennifer would be interested in that. She shared with me, I will share with her. You become then in that center of that sharing, and particularly knowing who is going to be interested in something described in the book.
Fred Wilson, venture capitalist says the most important information I get is from people, and it’s just people who know what I’m interested in, they send me what I need to know and everything I need to know people send to me because they know what’s interesting to me, and these are the most interesting people out there. It is an interesting intersection which you’re describing here of the Thriving on Overload, how it is that we thrive in a world of information and the living networks, where it is those who are contributing not just by filtering for themselves but by filtering for the community, filtering for those people they know, by knowing their identities, by knowing what it is they’re interested in.
Jennifer: It’s so amazing talking to you, Ross, because as I look at the background, you have a wonderful galaxy behind you. The decade for me, 2009 to 2019, was really about connecting those dots, participating, and creating clusters. This is a brand new idea, for everyone listening, this is a statement I’ve never said before, in this context with Ross right now, I think that the decade that we’re in now, 2022 through 2032, will be the constellation, making constellations, beyond curating, I think it’s making sense of things, sense-making, and beyond connecting those dots is actually creating iconic ways that people can actually both see the shape of the thing as well as make sense of it. It’s about making sense right now.
Ross: Yes. The idea of the synthesis, of connecting the dots, then the constellations is how these dots are connected, oh, in this particular pattern, it’s a lovely description of that. For you, what’s that process going to look like? Obviously, what you’ve been doing for a long time anyway is being able to pull together those dots and making sense of them but just to speculate on this is a time of the constellations, of connecting the dots, what is it that we are doing, can do, and will do to be able to build these constellations? What do you think?
Jennifer: I know that there was a time where there was this pressure to publish or perish, and you had to keep creating content and all, and I was someone that, you know I wrote a book in 2010, Strategy, Leadership and the Soul. I felt like I don’t like to write unless I feel compelled. As you’re asking this question, I’m thinking, I look forward to knowing what my role is with the constellations because the only thing I can feel right now is that I want to invite people to have more courage. For me, the answer to your question is to create time and space for processing and to not force anything but be open to it. Then what I need to have the patience for that next thing to emerge is the word courage. We’re in a place where we might feel frenetic to have an activity or feel that we’ll be left behind if we don’t do a certain thing, and I feel in the sense-making, the truth of it all is that what we need is quiet, and what we need is trust. I believe that the collective unconscious is speaking through us, the next layer wants to be known and it probably has a new language. I’ve never been disappointed by allowing quiet to inform the next iteration of whatever it is that I’m doing personally, or whatever it is that needs to be said.
Ross: This comes back to what you said, the third R is reflection. Several things we’ve already talked about, including what you’ve just been saying is about reflection. I’d like to dig into that word, reflection. What does that mean to you? What does that mean when you’re explaining that to somebody? What is that practice? What are the inputs to reflection? What are the outputs to reflection?
Jennifer: What’s so important is that we’re learning more and more. In the United States, even doctors are now prescribing the idea of going out to nature. When you’re working, and hopefully many people are working in hybrid spaces, it’s really important that you have downtime, and that you actually design downtime. If people work full time, I remember them really liking having to drive to work from having a meeting with me and having that time between driving to go, and now people are doing Zoom meetings, they may be less likely to create space between things. The first is to always make sure that there’s space in between things.
The other is to make sure that you’re in an environment where you can be in nature, even if you’re in an urban environment where you can’t go in nature, that you create a way to listen to water rustling. There are wonderful noisemakers that have all kinds of natural sounds, and I would invite you to take sound baths. If you don’t have access to nature, take an environment and force function it. It literally feels like a forced function. It’s counterintuitive. Be sure that you’re reading poetry in addition to fiction, in addition to whatever you need for your technical trades. I believe that poetry forces the pauses in between and that just being exposed to that type of nonlinear architecture does something to the brain. All the rules that you have in your book around managing technology, you have to actually say to yourself, I’m valuable, and my senses are valuable, and I will take care of myself the same way.
The most literal example is that I used to work with a manufacturing company that had a glass-cutting machine called a CNC machine. They knew when it had to be unplugged, and when it needed to be cooled down. You have to be unplugged, you have to cool down. The practices for me are journaling, writing, and always making sure that I create space. I too am someone that does have a lot of alone time. Everyone probably experienced me as an extrovert with a capital E but the truth is, I have an enormous amount of alone time. It’s because I value processing. I’m not doing anything at that time except just knowing something’s happening. It’s almost Eastern religion, or is it there’s never nothing going on? I just trust that so much.
Ross: It’s, in essence, giving yourself the space, particularly for that reflection, for what comes up, for processing. Is that right?
Jennifer: Yes, totally. Solid, liquid, gas. The solid is in physical spaces making sure that you’re actually creating space between. The liquid might be like the journaling, where you’re actually creating a space on a page, that you’re like, Okay, I don’t know what’s going to happen, maybe nothing’s happening, this is boring, I want to go, but there’s space on a page. Then the gas is really just being in silence, silence would be the gas. If we wanted to make it a physical component, that would be the three ways in which I’d say we need that.
Ross: Fantastic. I want to round out by, you sharing what you believe other people could find useful from what you do. You have a very distinct, unique frame, perspective, and practices that are yours. What of what you do do you think others might find useful in their practices in daily life and the world of emotional information?
Jennifer: I love that. There are so many ways to answer it. If I don’t feel like something, if I’m not a contagion, and you don’t feel like I want to find out more about her, my hope is that even on this call, I’ve given a couple of suggestions that people should take advantage of. Honestly, the truth is to be interesting, don’t underestimate the way that you carve out your reality, somebody wants to learn from that. I feel like I’m not answering the questions, particularly. What I care about right now is data ethics. The themes that I’m paying deeper attention to really have to do with data ethics and just learning more and more about our biases, and how important it is to know about biases because biases are being baked in. I was always lucky as a coach to have a great coaching practice, but I’ve been able to translate that into being able to be a Director of Marketing for a couple of startups, and really creating coherence inside of a company as well.
I invite people to find me, and they will see pretty clearly who I’m representing, and hopefully, they find it interesting. I know that you’re creating a new practice group with your Thrive On Overload. I would love an opportunity to help in any way I can with that practice. Because I do think the thing about you and I is that we’ve been to the future and are coming back, we have a lot of strength in how we lead this, and I do think people need strong models to help support them in creating new practices that are quite frankly, counterintuitive, and certainly counter-cultural. I invite anyway I can further the conversation around Thriving on Overload. I feel very lucky to be talking to you about this, and it’s within our best interest to care that deeply about Thriving on Overload. I think you’ve created a beautiful roadmap for people.
Ross: Where can people find you, Jennifer?
Jennifer: Yes. the neatest thing is just in my name Jennifer Sertl, and I can be found on LinkedIn as well as on Twitter. I’ve started to do more in women’s equity, and trying to get some funding for female founders. I have a podcast, think, build, launch to help support that practice. I love our communities and curating together so I’m sure it will lead to even better things.
Ross: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your insight, Jennifer.
Jennifer: So great to see you.
“I like to say stories is data with soul. Particularly when it comes to understanding potentially where your organization could be in the future that’s emerging, how do we help human beings, which are essentially storytelling animals, make sense of all that information? Stories are a really good way to do that. “– Ari Popper
About Ari PopperAri is the Founder and CEO of SciFutures, a foresight and innovation firm that works with leading organizations such as Visa, Ford, and NATO to create inspiring and insightful visions of the future to drive innovation and positive change. He is a frequent keynote speaker and his work has been featured in publications such as Fast Company, Wired, and BBC.
Website:
SciFutures
LinkedIn: Ari Popper
Twitter: Ari Popper
What you will learn How does data storytelling create meaning (02:12) * How tools prevent us from shutting down under overload (04:23) * How do you identify important trends from today’s massive amount of noise? (07:11) * What is the value of finding trends early enough to get first mover advantage (13:20) * What are structural frameworks and buckets? (16:13) * How to turn synthesis into beautiful stories (19:45) * How to write a brief for prospective or existing clients (22:49) * What are some available resources discussing the future of technology? (25:24) * What are some recommendations to thrive on overload (27:07) Episode resources AI 2042 by Kai-Fu Lee * Twelve Tomorrows Series * XPRIZE * HAL 9000 – 2001: Space Odyssey * The Terminator TranscriptRoss Dawson: Ari, awesome to have you on the show.Ari Popper: Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.
Ross: You run a very interesting organization called SciFutures. Tell us about that. What does it do?
Ari: Firstly, I want to say it’s great to be here. I’ve been looking forward to chatting with you. Thanks for having me. SCIFutures is a foresight and innovation agency. We’re 10 years old. I founded the company on the belief, intuition, and gut feeling that science fiction could be a really powerful tool for organizational transformation. My background was in management, consulting, and consumer insights, market research so I knew the power of stories, in terms of making data come to life. I thought if it applies to market research, we can apply it to the world of foresight and futures. I was also a big science fiction fan. I understood how sci-fi can capture the imagination and bought you into these future worlds in a visceral way. What I tried to do is bottle that and sell it. That’s basically what SciFutures does at a very high level.
Ross: So it’s getting you and your teams to write or convey stories about the future which are relevant to organizations so that they can be a little better informed or get a bit more perspective on the decisions today?
Ari: Exactly. Definitely, better informed because as you put out in your book Thriving on Overload, when you have so much information, how do you make sense of it? One of the great things that storytelling can do is it can help us create meaning and data. I like to say stories is data with soul. Particularly when it comes to understanding potentially where your organization could be in the future that’s emerging, how do we help human beings, which are essentially storytelling animals, make sense of all that information? And stories are a really good way to do that. Sci-fi, in particular, has done really well as a genre, as an entertainment genre. Our company, what we did is we took it and created it as a business tool. At a very high level, that’s what we do.
Ross: Pulling back to the present. Organizations and individuals are overloaded with information. One of the things you’re doing is using tools to be able to make sense of that. What are your reflections on this sense of overload that we experience as individuals? Even organizations, by extension, are also overloaded.
Ari: When you’re overloaded, as we all know, at least certainly for me, we shut down. We can’t function. That’s because there’s too many stimuli to take in so we start to shut out stimuli, or the stimuli that we have, we just cannot process it fast enough or in time. Actually, not only do you become in a neutral state, you become completely ineffective. At least as an individual when I’m overloaded, I just got to literally put myself in a room, close the door, put on my music, and regenerate that way. Part of that is the way that we as human beings process information.
Few of us are good at processing information in an intellectual cognitive way. That’s the tool of business, isn’t it? It’s slides and slides of data, and its management consultants talking to you and its engineers telling you about feeds and speeds, but it’s just too much. But what we are really good at is processing information in narrative, in stories. Stories help us make sense of the world. It’s a very successful medium. It’s one of the oldest technologies we have, the storytelling. Whatever most of us do and we’ve had a hard day at work, we come home and we put on the TV so we can watch stories. They are just the ways for us to process. Our approach to bring the future to life is to take the signals, trends, and information, create a structural framework for that, and then create stories to bring it to life so that you really enhance the key information that might have been lost.
There are lots of different ways to tell stories and create a connection with information and content. But the basic premise of it is if you follow the system one, system two processing, system two is the cognitive, analytical side, and system one is just got an intuition, and more emotional, visceral; what we’re trying to do is take all that cognitive information and then create a system two way of putting it. Another analogy I like to use is the iron fist and the velvet glove. The iron fist is basically that great research that you’ve done in the trends and all that information you’ve hoovered up and organized, and then that other club, the way it’s delivered, is through the stories or storytelling.
Ross: You’ve talked about the trends, then a structural framework, and then the story. Let’s unpack that, and coming from the trends, the information, the present, what do you do in terms of being able to identify what are the signals and all of the massive amount of noise that we have today?
Ari: Yes, it’s a really good question. The strong philosophy and this is a bit controversial I know in the foresight space, but I’m of the strong belief that the best way to predict the future is to build it yourself. I know that there are other foresight practitioners who like to try and plan as best as they can and create scenarios, they can do mental gymnastics to create the right what-if scenarios and levers but I think, in reality, that can just be a system overload too. What we want to do is to create well-informed stories about potential futures that excite and inspire the organization.
What’s the future we want to build? Let’s create visions, narratives, well-informed, we’re not making this up, and we’re not creating entertainment, but let’s create visions of the future that are inspiring and exciting. I wouldn’t say utopian, because we have a lot of challenges so we also need to be realistic in terms of what can be achieved and what can’t be. But let’s create what I call North Stars, well-informed North Stars. Those then become catalysts for the organization to galvanize and get behind. Now, whether those futures come to life exactly how they are imagined or not is almost immaterial. What’s more important is the fact that the organization is changing the way of doing things today.
You asked today what our work is about. It’s about accelerating change today, towards more, I would say, disruptive, although that word has become a bit of a naughty word these days, but more transformational futures for the organization. That’s really where we specialize, it’s building those well-informed visions. Now, what are the building blocks of those visions? That’s the question you asked me. It can be trends, it can be the big macro forces of change. Every organization has a different language around emerging technologies, weak signals, and strong signals. We often interview experts, subject matter experts, we interview experts within the company, and all of that is the raw data that we then use to inform the vision.
Another analogy I like to use is it’s like an artist’s palette of all the different paints and colors that you have and then those are all the signals and all that raw data, and then you can paint the picture using that as your toolbox. Even the process of doing that is incredibly valuable itself because what it forces the organization to do is to prioritize what’s in and what’s out. Oftentimes, they don’t know, but they happen to have those strategic conversations.
Ross: In Thriving on Overload frame, your purpose is the frame, which makes you understand what information is relevant and which is exactly in an organizational context. Either you have a vision or you need one.
Ari: Yes, or do you all agree that that’s the vision
Ross: That is part of the process. That starts to then filter what information is relevant and what isn’t. But there’s still this question of this process. As you say you’ve got strong signals and weak signals, but before you discern whether it’s weak or strong, you still got to see that there is a signal. Is there any practice? How do you individually look for information? Do you scan particular sources? Do you have feeds? How do you see what might be input into this?
Ari: We subscribe to companies that specialize in scanning, scouting, and signal identification. We also do our own, because oftentimes, there are common databases that companies have access to, but oftentimes, it’s unique people that you meet through your network. Our expertise is in identifying experts working on really interesting areas and bringing them in. It’s a combination of both. But we do a lot of our scanning, we create databases of companies around particular areas, we’ll use our client’s information too, but we typically buy into outside companies that do that all day, every day, and they’re good at it.
That’s part of it. Certainly, you want to make sure that you have the right foundational content. Maybe you want to prioritize what you think is more important than other pieces of content but it’s quicksand, you can get completely buried and swallowed up in that work. Ultimately, just be reasonable about what the signals are and what our foundational material is. But then let’s say, Okay, if this is the case, now, what potential futures could we create? What do we want to be when we grow up? What will motivate us? What will make us money? What will inspire our company or inspire our customers and stakeholders? Now let’s create narratives of that future. Now you’ve got something tangible, a strawman or some North Star that you could then work towards.
What’s unique about SciFutures is we do that, but we also help our clients prototype and build towards that future as well. Over the last 10 years, we know that the act of prototyping and starting to invent solutions around your North Star, that’s a creative act in itself, and the more you learn, the more you earn what you can and can’t do. Yes, ultimately, you might have had that as a North Star vision but now that you’re doing that hard work, you’re realizing that it’s probably going to look more like this. Then within the same time, the world is changing as well. The context is changing around you as you’re doing that.
Ross: Part of the point is that when you’re looking at these visions or possibilities for the future, you’re hopefully writing a trend, or understanding where are the directions, what it is that you can ride, or harness, or unleash, or work with because that’s part of the signal. It’s not the present state but where things are heading and that’s where you can’t necessarily completely turn the course of history but you can maybe tweak it, or write that in various ways, but you still need those inputs as to where we are heading.
Ari: And you need to be ready, ready to pivot, or ready to be able to jump on it. You don’t want to learn about something that’s transformational happening too late, because then it’s too late. If you can get in early enough and you have the language around it, organizationally, you have the competencies around it, then you’ll be able to jump on it may be quicker than your competitors and have a solution. It’s also developing competencies internally to be able to handle sometimes ambiguous, emerging, amorphous, but potentially very transformational ideas. Obviously, cryptocurrency is a great example of that, but there are lots of them.
Of course, the danger with that is the hype cycle, you get a little too excited or exuberant, it’s too early and it doesn’t eventuate how you are, it’s kind of a balancing act. But what I’m most interested in and what our clients struggle with the most, and these are Fortune 500s, is like, we just keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to have the same outcome or we did very well making money and became successful doing it this way, we really need to be open otherwise we can see the writing on the wall. What this work really does is it helps them rehearse the future and helps them practice, develop language, understand it, and experiment so that they can be a little bit more malleable and flexible. It’s easier said than done, of course, but that’s really what I’m excited about, is changing and getting out of that fixed way of operating into a more flexible, open way of doing things.
Ross: I’m from scenario planning. Rehearsing the future was one of the phrases I learned very early in my training, that’s a wonderful crystallization of what it’s about.
Ari: Yes. Exactly.
Ross: You mentioned earlier the structural frameworks. This is making very much the framework for which I put together for Thriving on Overload, so frameworks, yes, love it. What are those structural frameworks? How do you put them together? What is the process? What do those look like?
Ari: We don’t have a great process for it but we do have very smart strategists that we work with, that are very good at distilling. Their dream job is to take all that information, figure out the themes, figure out the commonalities, and then create meaningful buckets that the client can digest. For each client, those frameworks are different. It also depends on the brief of what we’re trying to achieve. I apologize, this is probably a terrible oversimplification of it but essentially what it is is it’s a way to tame complexity in a way.
Those frameworks are where taming complexity in a way that you can double-click on different areas, you can still get the complexity underneath it but it’s to meaningfully organize a lot of information, that’s what frameworks are, and there’s a real art to it doing it well, isn’t there? There can be genius creativity in creating these beautiful, elegant frameworks. You know it when it’s done. It’s like, Ah, it’s perfect. But oftentimes, it takes a lot of time to get that right framing. We tend to let that happen organically. It’s almost like we’ll know when we see it, but it also depends on the client, what language they are comfortable with, what they use.
Ross: You mentioned buckets?
Ari: Yes.
Ross: What’s a bucket? And what’s in a bucket? And how are buckets connected together?
Ari: Yes, it could be big bets, it could be opportunity areas, it could be the macro forces. It’s the one we’re just working on, why is it slipped my mind? Maybe I’m not allowed to say that’s probably why it’s my unconscious telling me not to, not to talk about it.
Essentially, there are big grouping areas that are contextual, may be mutually exclusive from the others, although it’s harder and harder to…because everything is intertwined but essentially, there are key ideas that can sit fairly independently on their own. That’s a good explanation of a particular area as distinct from other areas. We’ve seen them all, we’ve seen houses, Venn diagrams, pillars, there are just lots of different frameworks.
Ross: I have to ask are any of these public? I’m sure they’re all for corporate server-internal use, but nothing there which…?
Ari: Unfortunately not because it’s strategic to the client. It’s really where they’re going to focus their transformation efforts so it’s very difficult for a client to agree to share any of that work. It’s even more sensitive than sometimes they’re like, downstream work, like the stories and narratives.
Ross: You want me to try to get a pro bono client or so we can share something? Because that’s a part of the crystallization. The crystallization, of course, is in the stories, these applications, this is the future world and all, I can see, yes, this is possible, this is what we’re going to do to be successful in that world. But the frameworks are part of what a lot of companies don’t necessarily recognize as a critical step between the vast amount of information and making sense in a way that’s useful to them.
Ari: I totally agree, it’s that iron fist, because otherwise, you’re just sort of of finger in the air.
Ross: What you are doing, of course, is synthesizing. You are pulling together unlimited information and synthesizing that into something coherent, ultimately a story. You already shared some aspects, is there anything else you can say about yourself individually, the people in your team, the process, or how it is that you are enacting that beautiful act of synthesis?
Ari: It is a beautiful act, and it is a creative act. What I’ve learned through my career, and particularly my 10 years at SciFutures is that people have different skills and different passions. What I found is, for some people, their dream job is to literally spend all day doing research and looking for signals, and for other people, that’s a complete nightmare. For some people, I suspect it’s you, Ross, it’s to synthesize information and create structures and knitting beautiful, elegant frameworks. They love doing that. So, for me, what I found is finding the right people to do the right jobs. Then everyone’s happy, they’re in their flow, passionate about doing their research, they’re in their flow, passionate about creating the structures and the frameworks and the foundations.
Then the storytellers, the creatives, they can take that, and this is your brief, the structures and frameworks is what you need to use as your source material for your imagination. What I found works best is finding the right people to do the right jobs and then you’ll get really good work. Where it becomes difficult is when somebody who hates research has to do the research, or somebody is not a structural thinker, they’re just completely wild creators, it’s just a nightmare. Over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to identify good people. Occasionally, you get people who are very good and are passionate about one, two, or three. They are almost unicorns in the world of our world. I actually think it’s a bit like a personality type that it’s rare for people that have multiple, it can happen, but it’s rare.
Ross: Neal Stephenson or William Gibson?
Ari: Exactly.
Ross: Nice examples if you could put them all together.
Ari: Exactly. They’re unique. I’ve seen a couple of them in my career, and then they just go off and have these amazing jobs, because they’re super rare, and people hire them and they have these fantastic careers. Our business model is we have a very small team but we have a lovely network. I like to say it’s like my jewel box of precious jewels, and it’s like, we’ve got the client, and it’s like, okay, sounds like we need this person, that person, and then we assemble the team, and then we do really good work. Yes, it’s fun.
Ross: You’ve already described a little bit, but just to flesh out a little bit, that idea of a brief to the writer. You’ve got a sci-fi writer. As you say, if you just let them loose, they might go a bit wild. What is the nature of the brief that you give them? What do you give them so that they can write a story that’s relevant to the client?
Ari: This is another thing we’ve learned over the last 10 years is that you can’t expect extremely creative science fiction writers to write what I would call, a strategic narrative as science fiction, they just don’t know how to do it, because they don’t know the language of corporations, they don’t know the language of consumers, marketing, innovation, foresight, so you need to find the right type of creative that understands the world of business and commerce because those are most of our clients, not all of them, most of them, and also very creative, and those people are fantastic.
The brief will typically include these people who love information. We’ve created a nice brief, there’s usually a deck that supports it, and that’s the structure, the frameworks that we’ve developed. We share the frameworks. This is the opportunity area, this is the framework, these are the areas that clients are interested in, then they’ll use that, and then we’ll say, okay. Usually, we start with seed ideas, so rather than go out and create big works of art. To be clear, our stories aren’t always although sometimes they are just like short stories, they can be podcasts, magazines, articles, videos, or short videos, there are so many different ways to tell stories.
We like solicit seed ideas. This is the foundational material, this is what the client is trying to achieve, and that’s really what the brief is, let’s hear some of your seed ideas. Now, with creatives, as you’d probably know, some are more introverted and want to do that on their own so they’ll go away, and they’ll do it on and then come back, and then some like to brainstorm and dance with each other, so we have a combination of both of that. Then ultimately, we’ll take those seed ideas, present them to the client, and go, look, these are all the different ways we can tell your stories, these are the different types of stories we can tell within the lens of the strategic work that we’ve done. Then basically, we pick the ones they’re most excited with. It’s a collaborative process because the client has politics to deal with their own internals…
Ross: This is so inappropriate!
Ari: Yes, exactly. But ultimately, you’ll get to this happy, middle ground where it’s well-informed, it’s creative, but it’s also going to fit the culture of the client.
Ross: One book, it’s very generic, it’s not company specific, but is really nice is AI 2042 by Kai-Fu Lee, some beautiful, well-structured, pertinent scenarios for future AI. I’m just wondering if there are any other public reference points or other writers or things where you found that there are pragmatic, tangible applications of the future.
Ari: A publication I really liked was Twelve Tomorrows which MIT used to put out, I don’t think they do that anymore, unfortunately, though, they were fantastic. But I quite like the short story anthology format myself. Because in a short story, there’s enough space to really tell a good story, but also flesh out ideas. I’m a huge fan of that. Some anthologies are quite good, some aren’t that good. The XPRIZE did some interesting work for a client, if you’ve seen those, I think it was for All Nippon Airways (ANA), they created a fictional website, where each seat on the airplane was a different story. That was cool. There are some interesting ones, but they’re rare, I haven’t seen that many of them.
Every now and then Microsoft will do an anthology, which can be quite good. We’ve done a couple of public ones. We did one for NATO on the future of warfare, which we’re repeating right now, we’re doing it again, which is cool. It’s interesting to see how much has changed from when we did the first set of stories to where we are today and to reread those stories is fascinating. But yes, there aren’t that many, unfortunately.
Ross: To round out, from your role and what you do, what are any wisdom, insights, or recommendations you would share with our audience on how it is they can thrive and prosper in a world of lots and lots of information?
Ari: For me, it’s like, remember that humans are storytelling creatures. Don’t expect them to be able to process huge amounts of information. Although certain people can and they’re amazing and they typically are engineers but most people have short attention spans and the way to help them process information is through a story, well-informed, well-written stories, and when you say story, create a character that someone can relate to, give them a challenge, see them overcome their challenge or not, build a world that you can empathize with, and then implicit within that, there’s all the content or the messaging, I would strongly suggest that, that’s a very effective way to communicate in times of information overload.
You’d be surprised how powerful it can be when you get it right. It just can become part of the public imagination and science fiction has done that, you’ve got the HAL, you’ve got the Terminators, they’ve totally created a vision and almost a belief that this is what technology can do when it goes wrong or eventually will do. No one agreed that, the person who was creating those stories didn’t intend to do that but somehow, someway, collectively, we’ve realized that that’s our future. They’re powerful both in the good sense and in the negative sense.
Ross: Fantastic. Thank you so much for your time and your insights. That’s been a fascinating conversation.
Ari: Pleasure. Thanks for having me.
“I think this is a really valuable conversation for this moment where we’re talking about Web3 and the blockchain and all of this because there’s a fascination about using the metaverse to sell more things and to fashion more things. But what we need is a metaverse and a Web3 and a blockchain that allows us to collaborate to solve the world’s problems in ways that we haven’t before. We’re at a real tipping point, I think, for the net right now. “– Frank Spencer
About Frank SpencerFrank is the founder and Creative Director of Kedge, a global foresight, innovation, and strategic design firm, and co-founder and Lead Instructor of The Futures School, He has worked on strategic foresight projects for companies such as Kraft, Mars, Marriott, and The Walt Disney Company and has spoken about foresight around the globe for the last 20 years.
Websites:
Kedge
The Futures School
LinkedIn: Frank W. Spencer IV
Twitter: Frank Spencer
What you will learn Why we are futures thinking from the perspective of what we do on a daily basis (03:14) * What is the difference between complexity and complication? (04:48) * What is a swarm and holoptic foresight? (07:00) * What is a digital angel? (12:36) * What are some best practices for filtering and scanning information? (15:54) * What are sense making techniques for interesting information? (19:07) * How to balance our sensitivity to information with sense making (21:53) * Why we should look for where information collides with each other (26:46) Episode resources TikTok * Digital Angels – talk by Alex Lamb * How the Internet Will Save the World – talk by David Eagleman * General Mills * Walt Disney Company * Zan Chandler * Mural TranscriptRoss Dawson: Frank, it’s awesome to have you on the show.Frank Spencer: Ross, it’s a pleasure to be here. It’s an honor and I’m looking forward to our conversation together.
Ross: You have thought a lot about information overload. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Frank: Yes, I love the focus of the podcast. This is a big topic for people. We’re living in a world that’s more complicated than ever before. I’m sure that some of your guests have probably talked about the difference between complexity and complication today, but I think when we think about information overload, we think about things being so complex. For me, it’s really interesting, because I saw a great TikTok by you yesterday, I’m just scrolling through, and of course, we’re friends on TikTok, and I love that you’re using that medium as well. You were talking about how to manage your day, and just make sure you don’t go over ten two minutes in the morning. I loved that. That was great. I think people are desperately seeking those kinds of ways to manage their time and the information that comes in, and the overload.
Futures thinking is interesting. I know that you know this, but maybe there’s some of your audience that isn’t aware that when we think about the future we think about it from the perspective of what we do on a daily basis. We can think almost like three concentric circles. The inner circle is what I do, and what I’m really concerned about, my job, and the things that I have to do every day, it’s sort of that microenvironment. Then you’ve got this middle bubble, that’s like, this is my environment, this is the industry I work in, this is the people I talk to, and this is where the information is bombarding me. But then how we live in this digital environment as well with this outer circle that’s all of the stuff that seems unrelated to us but it’s just information that’s bombarding us all the time, the disruption, and things that people are worried about that weren’t necessarily things that 20 years ago, they wouldn’t have been caring about at all, but it’s a much more connected or interconnected world today. There are things that we often don’t think relate to us now, people realize they do.
But as you know, Ross, good futures thinking and foresight really work from the outside in and not the inside out, because it helps us to redefine how we’re thinking about our environment. I think that’s why for me, really focusing on sense-making is a critical element of that information overload. What I love to say about that, and if we get a chance to go into it on the podcast a little bit is this idea that we formed 12 or 13 years ago, natural foresight, and a conference we just had on transformation is really helping people to embrace the complexity. I know that you know this, but for the audience, there’s a big difference really between complexity and complication. Complexity is the natural order of the universe. I was just showing quotes at the anticipation conference last week of all these social scientists and biologists, and they all were saying something very similar that greater complexity gives us greater ability to find unknowns, to do things, to tap into unseen possibilities and answers and solutions. We definitely don’t want to weed out all of that noise because if we did, we would miss all of this great stuff that could happen, this very transdisciplinary approach.
I think oftentimes what we think is complex. It’s really complicated. That’s us trying to overmanage the situation. We put another button in and we fax another sheet and we put another lever in to try to control it, it gets complicated, it’s very complicated, and that’s what gives us the overload, I think more so than the complexity does. What I would suggest for managing that overload is to think about the environment differently. When we develop this sense-making for complexity, and we embrace it as a friend, not as an enemy, we tend to look at things very differently.
Now, I do think there are some very practical things that we can do to make the rubber hit the road here. Those deal with broadening our network, having a greater swarm around this, so that we’re able to tap into this information that’s needed, but we don’t have to house it all by ourselves all at one time, have multiple ways of seeing the world, multiple voices in our network. That’s a very different way than the good information or the good advice of managing your time, and I think those are all legit, of course, but also this idea of seeing complexity in a very different way and instead of shutting it, developing our sense-making ability to say, how’s this complexity broadening the way I see things so that I don’t feel overwhelmed by that information, and internalizing that information with networks and connections and swarms that are allowing me to think in a way that I’ve never thought before. It actually enlivens and empowers us rather than overwhelms us.
Ross: Let’s dig into that. One of those themes is around the swarms. Let’s dig into what’s it like to have that swarm of other people or ideas. How does that work? How somebody can put that in place in their life and work?
Frank: That’s a great question. It’s so important. We hear about holism being more important in organizations today and the multiple ways or models that we might get that in place. For over the past decade, we’ve been talking about something that we call holoptic foresight, and it’s a really fancy term. But to break it down, what it refers to is the eye that sits on the head of a dragonfly or a damselfly, those insects are unique, some other insects have this kind of holoptic eyes, but a holoptic eye is an eye that is 360 degrees at all times.
Dragonfly has an eye that covers the entire head, he can see forward and backward, up and down, right and left. But the really interesting thing is not that we can’t look behind us, we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads as a dragonfly does, but the dragonfly doesn’t look at those parts separately, they rather look at it as a whole. Could you imagine if we had that? It would probably drive us crazy, but maybe not because we would’ve been designed for that. To have an eye that has 360-degree vision allows them to see the environment very differently than we see with our eyes.
Even though our physical eyes aren’t probably ever going to evolve to that state, and we weren’t made for that, is there a way that we can model that holoptic eye of the dragonfly? When you zoom in on the eye, it’s really interesting because you see all of these little clusters and cells, and they are the individual parts of the eye that make up a whole. Likewise, is there a way for us to develop swarmed or holoptic networks that allow us to say, look, your diversity, my diversity, her diversity, his diversity is very important to coming together and bringing a common whole or cooperation?
Ross: What does that look like for an individual? Let’s say an individual says, this sounds great, I want to be able to get this many facets to see the world through, what do they do? How do they put that in place?
Frank: In organizations, we’ve got to think much more about hybrid value chains. There are many ways that we can think about this. But now we see these “Four P” models that are taking place of public, private, partnerships, and I forget what the fourth P stands for, but you see these “Four P” models all the time. It’s really beyond just public-private partnerships to saying, how can we get out of these siloed molds because our educational organizations are siloed, our organizations are siloed, and we, for so long, have leaned on and honored and esteemed the siloing because it allows us to think just about my one area, and I can really dig down deep. That’s valuable but research has even shown that the more we silo, the more we exacerbate our problems. Because we’re missing all of this information that could connect in between, that creates new solutions we’ve never thought of before, instead of trying to solve our problems from within the context of the problem.
Our organizations have to be more fluid, they need to be more open. We need to create organizational models that allow us to connect outside of what that organization traditionally thinks is its DNA, or what they’re doing. That means new work models too, that means new talent acquisition models, that might not be, you work for this company, but I work for seven different companies, and not just so the individual can have the freedom to work for seven companies, but the companies benefit for you working in them. I know there’s IP protection and all of this, I get that we get in those things but we have to start thinking about how we unsilo these things.
In terms of governments, very similar, but from me as an individual, we’ve got this great thing called the internet, maybe you don’t think it’s so great because it’s done a lot of damage, we see what’s going on with Twitter right now, we’ve seen how it’s directed behind the scenes, even elections and governments and wars and those kinds of things but the original idea, and I think David Eagleman had a great talk in 2011 at The Long Now Foundation, you can find that talk online, probably on Youtube, he talked back in 2011 about a civilization that has never had a tool like this before, that allows us to swarm in ways that elevate civilization to a new place. Back in 2011, he wasn’t thinking about what might happen with Elon Musk and Twitter in 2022, what might have happened with the elections in Australia or the United States and other places in 2018 and 2020 but certainly, he was saying, we have these tools, we have digital tools, we have organizational tools, but we really need to shift the way we think about siloing to connecting more.
We could go off on a whole tangent about how we need to build what I might refer to as digital angels instead of digital devils or digital demons and how that kind of model of the internet could connect us in ways to swarm so that I don’t have to have all of it in my head, I can rely on the swarm to build that holoptic eye for me. That’s a way of managing information. That’s not just about siloing that information, but rather, letting the information breathe among a diverse cohort of people that will open up new areas for jobs, talent, new ideas, new products, and new innovations.
Ross: What is a Digital Angel?
Frank: You watch the media, and they’ll tell you all the bad news so you got that out of the way. The good news is behind the scenes, there are tons of people working on tons of great things around the world, and we just don’t hear about that very often. This idea of a digital angel actually came from a sci-fi author friend of mine, and I think he was writing a book on at the time, I don’t know if he ever finished it. But I was speaking at a conference in New York a couple of years ago and he said we know what a digital devil is, and we see them all the time, and bots online, and misinformation but what we need to do is develop these nodes, individual nodes, and also regional collective nodes, swarms that are watching out for ethics on the net. That doesn’t mean necessarily censoring, but finding how we can get information to the forefront is true, and protecting this environment so that it can be helpful for people to collaborate in, to build in, to model in.
Ross: That’s a great idea. Who is the author of that?
Frank: It’s going to come to me in just a minute. If not, I’ll let you know after the show is over. I’ll look it up and you can put it in the notes or something.
Ross: That’ll be great. Are you aware of any actual examples of this in practice?
Frank: It’s interesting, we wrote a scenario for a company a couple of years ago, a large international food company. One of the scenarios that we wrote, of course, you know in scenario writing, a lot of research goes behind it, it’s much like science fiction authors do, they’re not just making wild stories, they do a lot of research about technologies and where things are going, and in this particular one, we looked up several different examples of people that were actually building ethics on the internet. I can’t remember the particular names right now. But that’s another thing that I could send to you after the show’s over, maybe we could reference some of those. But there are great examples of people that are working on, again, what we might refer to as these digital angel organizations to really flip the net.
I think this is a really valuable conversation for this moment where we’re talking about Web3 and the blockchain and all of this because there’s a fascination about using the metaverse to sell more things and to fashion more things. But what we need is a metaverse and a Web3 and a blockchain that allows us to collaborate to solve the world’s problems in ways that we haven’t before. We’re at a real tipping point, I think, for the net right now. Hopefully, we’ll see more and more people get involved in Web3 development that are really truly saying, when I say decentralized, in that I mean so that we can work together in this sort of holoptic or swarming way to bring our diversity together to create a new whole that we’ve never seen before.
Ross: Fantastic. I want to dig into your practices. You help many organizations think about the future which involves being aware of what’s happening in the present. I’d love to hear you, potentially you and your colleagues together, what is your practice? You’re immersed in overload more than almost anyone, and the fact that you have to be across everything, and you clearly thrive on that, so what’s your practice? Even take me through the day, or what are the things that you do to be able to achieve that?
Frank: That’s exactly right. I’m glad you asked that question. Of course, the organization that we formed probably about 12 years ago, Kedge is our mothership. That’s the main company. We are a foresight and innovation strategic design firm. We’ve worked with companies like General Mills, and the Walt Disney Company, and intelligence agencies, I was going to say which one, but oftentimes, I’ve said it to them, and they’re like, you have to say, intelligence agency, don’t tell us what agency it was, or we have to come after you, and organizations like that, that you’ve worked for as well. Fortune 500, 100, SMEs and governments, and all kinds of people. That does mean that daily, we’re looking across a swathe of different kinds of information and then connecting it. Because a lot of regular daily scanning that we might do, which happens off and on. I don’t normally because it’s my job, set a time aside during the day when I scan, that’s just me, I’m more of a type B person, I guess, everybody else in the organization is very type A, and they always are like, oh, here comes Frank, he is going to disrupt the whole thing.
I’m more of the kind of person that just as I’m going along and doing my daily routine, the scanning comes that way. Of course, if we’re working with a client, we’re going to not say that to them, we’re going to say, hey, look, here’s how you set aside a time during the day where you can scan around information, here’s the kind of information that you want to scan. But scanning is an important part of our day.
Ross: One of the really important points I make in the book Thriving on Overload is don’t just look at printed information or information on screens, get up and look around and get out there, that’s one of the best possible ways to get a sense of what’s going on in the world.
Frank: So true, it’s my favorite way. We’ve actually even dug into that so deeply that we’ve had multiple clients that we take out on field trips, in California, here in Florida where we reside, and across the world, we’ve taken them to certain places, in downtown areas, festivals, and teach them really how to look for what are people wearing? What are they doing? What are they consuming? What kinds of businesses are attracted here? What does that mean when you think about new patents and ideas and innovations and products? It’s really great to be able to walk down a city block and to be able to see how it’s impacting them, what’s on the fringe, what’s arising.
Ross: When you’re seeing or are you scanning? When you see something interesting, what do you do with it?
Frank: Yes, if we see something interesting, we do several things with it. For one thing, we put it in our scanning repository, and there are lots of ways that you could capture it. Scanning information, we make sure we tag it, which means that if we’re working with a particular client, we might put tags on it for us to go back to and say this was about the future of shampoo, or this is about the future of dog food or this might be about the future of rhinos because we worked a couple of years ago with the top 40 rhino experts in the world, they’re using foresight to think about rhino conservation. We might tag it with those kinds of things or whatever the focal issue is about or generally, if we’re just scanning and it’s not for a client, I see interesting pieces of information that I know are going to come back up again, and it’s just important for no matter what client we get, then we might tag or put those in the repository with ideas around whatever they are that they’re speaking to us. Because I will say that one of the most important parts for me, scanning is not what the thing I see or the thing I read says on the surface, is what’s in between.
As a matter of fact, when we teach scanning we teach people to really scan three different ways. We talk about scanning around what’s on the surface, the trends and those things, and, of course, if you’re in competitive intelligence or consumer insights, you’re like, I already do that, but do you scan around the values as well? That’s the next layer down because we know that value creation comes out of trends and values create or emerge or bubble up to new trends, so what are those values? Oftentimes, when we’re reading or looking, we’re really looking for these things that are in between, what values are emerging, and what does it mean? And then we’re also looking at the impacts on humanity. It’s really three different ways of scanning. Then we collect those, we put them in repositories, that go into pattern building, which means multiple values, trends, and impacts that create emerging landscapes of change. These things are interrelated in some way. That really takes us back again to that sense-making piece.
We’re not just collecting trends and saying, here are the top 10 trends because that’s not enough, that’s just scratching the surface. We need to understand how these trends are interacting because, in the real world, none of this information that is bombarding us are in pieces. They’re all colliding, converging, and intersecting. Because of that, it’s more important to see how they’re patterning than how they are impacting alone. 3D printing and the metaverse, yes, those are individual things, but how are they colliding with one another? And what does that really mean for healthcare and construction and government, etc.?
Ross: I want to come back to the sense-making in a moment, but first, I suppose you’re pointing to these ways in which we are sensitizing ourselves; rather than just looking around, we’re looking around and we’re looking for values, we’re looking around and we’re looking for trends, we are becoming more sensitive to the world. I think that’s a fundamental part, of course, just to be able to understand what’s going on, to be able to see it in a frame that helps us to make sense, but that starts to mean that there’s not just overload but there’s just more and more. As we sensitize ourselves even more, there is more and more to see, there’s more and more to notice. How do we deal with that? There are plenty of people that go through the world with tunnel vision and that makes it a bit easier for then in some ways but once we sensitize ourselves, we’re seeing so much. How is it that we balance that?
Frank: One of the things I was suggesting, I know people often hate this phrase, but they can’t swallow the ocean, I think that’s the phrase. We can’t do that. That’s why I think it’s important to understand the information we’re seeing in the context that we’re in. Now, of course, as you just suggested, it can change our context somewhat. I love this phrase that I heard a long time ago: we must hold tightly to our vision but be ready to let go of strategy at a moment’s notice. Applying that to this situation, I think it really means that the information we’re taking in doesn’t change the context or doesn’t change the vision necessarily but it does change our strategy around it, which could very well broaden the vision and alter the vision and help us to see the vision in a way we weren’t thinking of before but it’s still that vision. It doesn’t mean that the information when we take it in that way is going to overwhelm what it is that we’re trying to accomplish. It means that we’re making sense of it in our context. We’re not just making sense of the world, oh, I understand my identity in this context, I was really struggling with this for a moment but now I can understand how this makes sense for the world, but we have to center this thing around what it is that we’re doing and we’re trying to accomplish our vision.
Ross: The vision then is the vision of your objectives, objectives of the organization, so you say that you have clarity on that, that then starts to make that. One of the points I’m making forever on overload is that it’s a shift from overwhelm to abundance, in the sense of you’ve got overwhelmed because you got too much but if you have a sense of purpose, then everything, basically you’ve got as much information as you possibly want. Now that clarity around that vision or purpose or direction, whatever it is, then starts to essentially mean that everything is a resource and everything shapes something in the middle rather than just not having any you know or It’ll all just be in a mishmash.
Frank: Yes, that’s beautifully put. We just had a retreat, our first in-person get-together since COVID took place. The reason we were super comfortable with it is that we all went to a retreat center in Northern California, above San Francisco, and it was the rolling hills and it was beautiful. We had all kinds of people come there and met with Zan Chandler, who is a professor at OCAD, one of the association’s professional features board members was there with us, and we had just a great cross-section of different people there. One of the world’s most awarded and renowned slam poets was there with us. It was really a cool collection of people. They all brought a very diverse way of seeing things. Of course, every one of them came with their passion or purpose as you put it there, their passion, I love that. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
During that time we were there, we talked about the fact that we are nature, and to not silo, and we’re nature, we’re anticipatory, and if that’s the case, we can co-create together, we can collaborate, and we can cooperate without losing our diversity. It was amazing to see people leave the retreat and say, I feel more passionate now about the thing that I was passionate about when I came in than I did before I got here because now I realized that all of your passions can help me understand my passion better, and connecting with the cosmos in a greater way, and understanding that I’m not disconnected. Humans are a part of nature and nature as anticipatory has helped me to think about this in ways I never thought about it before. I love how you just put that. It’s not about just hearing the information and being overwhelmed, but it’s about receiving it and understanding the context of what makes us passionate and gives abundance to our passion. I love that you use the word abundance there, it just enlarges or empowers the scope of that passion.
Ross: That’s fantastic. I really resonate with that. Often I have those interactions where I think, well, you’ve made me even more excited about what I was excited about before because of the complementarity. Coming back to sensemaking, that’s a phrase we understand but it’s very conceptual in a way. I’d like you to try to make it as grounded as possible, what advice can you give to people that are saying, I’ve got lots of information, I’ve got lots of bits and pieces of things, I’m trying to do this, what can I do to be able to make sense of that?
Frank: One of the things that happens even in our practice because we have to make the rubber meet the road too, and of course, our clients are like, that’s great, Frank, sensemaking, can you make this very practical, as Ross just said? One of the things that we like to do is we like to keep a running mind map going. We actually have whiteboards all over the office. Right now you’re seeing me in the studio because over the last three years we built…I can look at 10 different cameras here, and actually Ross is over there so I’m just looking at the camera, but I see his face to the side because there are all kinds of screens. This is actually real behind me. That’s not a fake background, but it’s fake in the manner that there’s like a whole other studio behind it and such.
I say that to say that I’m in here, out there down the hall and then the offices, just whiteboards like crazy. However, you do it, there needs to be a way for us to be able to take this information that we see. If we’re working on new models, or new organizational resources or operations, or we’re working on an entrepreneurial idea or innovations, how can we actually map these ideas and make sense of them? One way we do that is, we first talk about the collision of ideas or information that we’re getting. That’s what really makes what we might call pattern recognition. I want you to keep a whiteboard, or on a piece of paper somewhere, somewhere that colleagues can see this. Maybe you’re an individual in your house, or you meet on Zoom with people, or you have a group, a mentoring group, or maybe you’re in an organization, so now you’ve got a room where you can put this up, I want you to actually do that, and make sense of the collision of these pieces of information.
Obviously, you’re thinking about it around what I might call a focal issue, but I love Ross’s use of the word passion here, so your passion issue, what is it you’re trying to accomplish? What are you passionate about? What are we doing here? First of all, look at the collision of these things, A, B, C, and D, they really speak to this pattern arising, this is the thing that’s happening that could really impact what we’re doing, so we’re mind mapping through that entire process. Every time that we go another layer down with that mind mapping, we’re really drawing out the sense-making, but we’re never losing sight that it has to relate back to our passion again.
You could put this in circles or squares or however it best suits you but to find some way to actually mind map this information so that you can stand back and see what it’s speaking to, what is shifting, and what is changing speaks to the issue that you’re trying to relate it to, and what that might mean in terms of change, or adaptation, or resilience or transformation, I like to often say even a higher order purpose is like, this is what we’re trying to accomplish but gosh, now that I know this information, this can add to what we’re doing in ways that we never thought of before. But you’re not going to be able to do that if it’s just floating around your head, you’re going to need to be able to do this collectively with others, to put it down on paper, to mind map this thing on a whiteboard, to get it out somewhere where you can really see it.
If I could take you on a journey out into the office out there, you would see all of these mind maps that wouldn’t make a lot of sense unless you were working with the clients. They look convoluted but to us, they’re beautiful paintings of how this connects to the issue and how we can actually make sense of this.
Ross: I think that’s around the relationship between the ideas. You’ve got all these ideas, these insights, this data, whatever it may be, but it’s the relationships between them out of which sense happens. I use paper and digital tools, but I think there’s real power to putting it on as big as possible canvas to draw that out.
Frank: I do too. I’m still a tactile person like that. I’m a child of the 70s and a teen in the 80s. Of course, I use digital tools now. We’ve had a long-standing decade-long relationship with Mural. We’re grandfathered in back when one of their first clients was the Walt Disney Company where we built a foresight team that spans 45 countries. They’ve been using Mural ever since. I love to use those tools, Miro, whatever it is that you use are all great. But there’s just something about being able to have that board in front of you, and you’re conversing, and you’re working together, you’re collaborating and cooperating.
There’s something that’s not just the information that goes on the board but sort of the mirror that happens back between the board and the group, or you yourself, where it’s changing that environment, I love that you just use the word relationship, it’s so powerful, and being able to see those circles and those connections on the board that says, this is what this would mean for us, and this is how we make sense of this environment, and this is how we’ll need to adapt or be resilient, or transform, to take our opportunity to transform because all living things transform, and that goes for people and organizations and governments, etc., if they’re alive, if they’re living, they eventually have to transform, so that tactile element is so important for me.
Ross: Yes, that’s fantastic. It’s been incredible just touching the surface of your practices, but I’d love to provide people a touch point to find out more about your work or even examples of that. Where can people go?
Frank: The place you want to go nowadays online is thefuturesschool.com. Going into next year, I’ll give a little tease or hint that we’re not completely rebranding, but we’re going to pull a BCG, PWC, EY stunt here, because people have known us as TFS for the longest time, and actually, even though the mothership is Kedge, everybody knows it says The Future School now, so we’re rebranding completely towards that. The Future School is a great resource. This has been what we call the Year of Free for us. We just tabulated yesterday, since we’re getting to the end of the year. This year, people around the world have been nominating other people to go to one of our programs, our three-day training program that was born out of our work with large corporations, Fortune 100s, from years ago, we used to do this three-day program to kick things off for them. Then it went public about eight years ago, and it just went gangbusters.
We’ve done it all around the world. Now we do it online. It’s our Foundations program. We also have a six-month activations program. Next year, we’ll have a lot more programs, because The Future School is a learning ecosystem. During this year, free people have nominated people to go to that. We’ve given away $200,000 in seats this year and had I think 95 people around the world get nominated this year. It was really cool. That’s a place where you can get free resources, go to the resource center, we gave away all our resources this year, and you can still get free resources until December 31. Just go to the checkout, and everything says $0. You can check out and get all kinds of templates and tools and great stuff, so thefutureschool.com, that’s where you want to go.
Ross: That’s fantastic. I think that generosity of sharing is really important because these are such important capabilities. Thank you so much for your time and your insights, Frank. It’s been a real pleasure.
Frank: What an honor to speak to you today, Ross. We here, The Future School, my business partner who used to be the Head of Futures at the Walt Disney Company, we respect you greatly from afar, and it’s a great honor to be on your podcast.
Eileen Clegg has been a long-time pioneer in visual journalism. She is the founder of Visual Insight, and is now also the CEO of vTapestry, which automates the creation of visual summaries of online meetings. She is the author of seven books including Claiming Your Creative Self and Creating a Learning Culture.
Greg Satell is a transformation and change expert, international keynote speaker, and bestselling author, most recently of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change. He is also a lecturer at The Wharton School; his work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Barron’s, Forbes, Inc., Fast Company.
Jim Marous is the publisher of the Digital Banking Report, co-publisher of The Financial Brand and host of the Banking Transformed Podcast. He has been named as one of the most influential people in banking, a sought-after keynote speaker, and is regularly featured in leading media such as CNBC, CNN, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Financial Times, and The Economist.
Stowe Boyd has been studying work and the tools we use to adapt to the future for the past three decades. Stowe coined the terms ‘hashtag’, ‘work management’, ‘social tools’, and ‘spreadbase’.
Michel Bauwens is the founder of the P2P Foundation working in collaboration with global researchers in exploring the potential of peer production. Michel travels extensively giving workshops, and lectures on P2P, commons, and the opportunities of a post-capitalist world.
Kristy is a digital wellbeing and productivity researcher, speaker, author, and consultant, helping corporations promote employee digital wellbeing and performance in the workplaces.
Robin Good is a writer, speaker, and change agent focused on content curation, learning, and collaboration. By emphasizing quality, credibility, and shared values, Robin has been helping entrepreneurs and small businesses share their content to develop long-lasting relationships and become reference points in their online market niches.
Cindy Otis is an author, disinformation expert, and former CIA officer. She is the author of books including True or False: A CIA Analyst’s Guide to Spotting Fake News. Cindy is a frequent media commentator on the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, NPR, and CNN.
Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized business strategist, enterprise architect, transformation consultant, futurist, analyst and in-demand keynote speaker. He is currently VP and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research where he heads up research and global client advisory into CIO issues, the future of work, and emerging technology in the enterprise.
Pia Lauritzen is the co-founder and chief scientific officer at Qvest, a technology company that unleashes the power of questions in companies and communities. She is the author of the book Questions and a regular contributor to strategy+business magazine.
Remi is Associate Professor of Learning Design and Technology at the University of Colorado Denver, and a leading scholar of annotation. He is co-author of the book Annotation, published by MIT Press, and many journal articles on the subject. Remi is also Scholar in Residence at Hypothesis and the co-founder of Marginal Syllabus.
Rohit is Investment Director at leading global venture capital firm Unbound, focusing on software and fintech. He was previously VP at Eight Roads Ventures and was leader of McKinsey’s growth tech practice. He is author of the Strange Loop Canon on Substack.
Sam is the CEO of global SEO agency VUDU Marketing, and the bestselling author of Screw the Zoo. He is the co-host of The Entrepreneur Cast podcast and frequently appears in media such as Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider and many others.
Derek Laney is Technology Evangelist for the Future of Work at collaboration platform Slack, having previously held a range of senior roles at Slack’s parent company Salesforce.
Berit is COO of Strategic News Service and director of programs for the Future in Review conferences. She co-founded and was CEO of Scout.ai, a media company exploring the future of technology. Her work on information warfare has been widely featured in major media such as New Yorker and TechCrunch and she is a frequent international keynote speaker.
Brenda is a Futurist, Author, Keynote Speaker, and Award-Winning Risk and Governance professional. She is the CEO of the Transdisciplinary Agora for Future Discussion and Managing Director at D@leo Consulting Services in Johannesburg.
Julie is a highly experienced corporate executive and entrepreneur, taking senior leadership and board roles in a range of industries and several countries for major organizations including Mary Kay, CVSL and EnXray. She is now the founder and CEO of She Banks, a fintech startup whose mission is to increase financial security for women.
Paul is CEO of data science and research startup League of Scholars, which works with a wide range of organizations including Nature and News Corporation, and the cofounder of a number of other ventures, He is an Adjunct Professor at U of NSW and Honorary Research Fellow at Western Sydney University, and the author of Online Gravity, a successful book on how technology is rebooting economics.
Nick Abrahams is a leading lawyer, futurist, and keynote speaker. He is the Global Co-leader of the Digital Transformation Practice at Norton Rose Fulbright advising major organisations on technology M&A, blockchain and cryptocurrency, and digital transformation.
Joyce is a strategic business futurist and President of The Herman Group appears regularly in the media, including in Entrepreneur Magazine, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR.
Stephen Poor is Chair Emeritus of leading employment law firm Seyfarth & Shaw, which has 900 lawyers across 17 offices and multiple continents. He led the firm as Chairman for 15 years, introducing a range of industry-leading innovations, and he now focuses on the firm’s client-facing technology strategy which includes robotics, AI, and cognitive computing.
The post Abhijit Bhaduri on divergence and convergence, the power of sketchnotes, multidisciplinary sensemaking, and skill portfolios (Ep20) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Gerd Leonhard on understanding between the lines, his favorite apps and tools, sharing bookmarks and tags, keynote storylines, and using visual catalogs (Ep19) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Madeline Ashby on watching the fringes, finding common threads, sensing and sensemaking, and using murder walls (Ep18) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Christopher Mims on seeing what’s next, filtering tools, valuable conversations, and tapping expertise (Ep17) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Michell Zappa on how technology evolves, scouting what’s emerging, assessing technologies, and designing useful future infographics (Ep16) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
I think an important thing is to do the job before you get the job. What I prefer to do is figure out how can I add value to that group.
The post Gary Swart on achieving balance, prioritization factors, filtering by relationships, and using frameworks (Ep15) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Marshall Kirkpatrick on source selection, connecting ideas, diverse thinking, and enabling serendipity (Ep14) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Annalie Killian on serendipitous learning, the network as filter, finding voices at the edge, and value from deep connections (Ep13) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Robin Athey on intellectual cocaine, the journey to purpose, slow leadership, and finding your North Star (Ep12) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post R “Ray” Wang on constant curation, learning from private networks, finding temporal patterns, and seeing the impact of trends (Ep11) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Dan Gillmor on going from macro to micro, useful aggregators, and the best tactics and tools (Ep10) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Harold Jarche on personal knowledge mastery, the Seek, Sense, and Share framework; networked learning, and finding different perspectives (Ep9) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Brett King on understanding fintech, writing for sense-making, thought leadership streams of consciousness, and changing how people think (Ep8) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Leslie Shannon on finding nuggets, storytelling for synthesis, the five Fs of sensemaking, and visual filing (Ep7) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Robert Scoble on how to find the latest news, how to use Twitter for insight, finding the 20 people you need to follow, and the value of conversations (Ep6) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Jerry Michalski on collecting, connecting, and curating two decades worth of information (Ep5) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Tom Stewart on the excitement of ideas, building overarching theories, abductive reasoning, applying Marie Kondo to information, and getting off the hamster wheel (Ep4) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Nir Eyal on using your values to filter, when to consume information, the best apps for content, and using audio for reading (Ep3) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Cathy Hackl on finding the key players to listen to, building mental maps, how to see connections, and becoming a voice in your industry (Ep2) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.
The post Tim O’Reilly on noticing things other people don’t notice, the value of soft focus, framing open source and Web 2.0, and patience in building narratives (Ep1) appeared first on Thriving on Overload.