welcome welcome to talks at Google I'm very excited to be hosting this event today I am AA and I am on the ads user experience team here at Google we have a very special guest with us today uh for this talk at Google event before we get into introducing Our Guest I just wanted to do a quick reminder that we have time at the end saved for questions so if you are in the room you're welcome to queue up next to the microphones also you can submit your questions through the Dory if you're not in the room and I'll make sure that we take questions through both these methods okay with that out of the way very excited to introduce Our Guest for today Thiago Forte Thiago is one of the world's foremost experts on productivity he has taught thousands of people around the world all these Timeless principles that have made them more productive unlocked their creativity and made them more effective he's the author of The much acclaimed bestseller building a second brain and more recently the par method simplify organize and master your digital life I can say I read the book in one setting cover to cover it was an extremely compelling read and I'm personally very very excited to learn more about this methodology from Thiago himself Thiago it is my pleasure to welcome you to talks at Google thank you testing testing great hi everyone thank you for being here in person and online in the 4th Century BC Aristotle heard of him claimed that all human knowledge all of it could be classified according to its substance quantity quality relation Place time position State action and passion reading about it you get the sense that it was like a weekend project for him we've all been there right we were he was like let me just take one weekend push everything aside and just get organized it'll be easy was not easy and little did Aristotle know he was kicking off a millennia long many centuries long quest to find a universal system for categorizing knowledge fast forward 2,000 years Francis Bacon the scientist and philosopher said let's try this again but it was too complicated that's too many categories it's really just three memory basically history the past reason philosophy and Imagination the Fine Arts okay few hundred years later the father of Indian Library science ranganathan said he actually introduced a more sophisticated system called faceted faceted classification that was going to be more capable of organizing our more plentiful modern knowledge and he said no the categories are personality matter energy space and time a very modern conception of knowledge but we never really accomplished this Quest it never really worked Century after Century philosophers scientists eventually Library scientists tried and tried again to find the one system to rule them all the one set of categories that could Encompass all human knowledge every time they tried they ran into the same problem which is any system that was truly Universal was so Broad and Abstract that it was not useful it was just sort of like interesting and any system that was specific enough to be useful was no longer Universal right in a way Google's since we're here Google's original Mission statement to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful in a sense was picking up the Baton on this age-old Quest and I would say they succeeded you succeeded but in a completely different way forget categorization definitely forget using human effort to individually classify each piece of information which wasn't even possible 2500 years ago much less today that we're producing exponentially more information okay so we did it in a way but I would argue that the dream of a universal system a universal sometimes called a taxonomy is still alive and well and still just as important as ever in a much smaller realm which is the world of the individual one person's in information okay and part of the reason for that is the technologies that Google used and other search engine creators used crawling and indexing and graph databases and all these different tools don't work for all information right they work for some of it a lot of it but there are entire categories of information that are totally not addressable with that Approach at first it might be hard when I when I say that people go is there really it's hard to think of examples and in fact the most common kind of objection to my entire work is that sounds like too much effort I'll just Google it right so that's a perfectly valid and fair objection but all it means what it means is we need to look at the dark Corners the secret secluded corners of the information universe what is not something that you can find using a search engine give you four examples information that is simply personal it just has to do with you right it's not worth indexing you don't particularly want to make it universally accessible right it might be very temporary it's only relevant today or this week your to-do list your calendar your agenda your personal contacts your notes right personal information think about memories what has happened to you in your past we have some platforms for photos right so we've made some progress there videos a little bit more difficult but if you think about the broader scope of our memories our past can you search your past can you tell me easily what are the top five highlights of your life what were the 10 most impactful lessons you learned messages stories experiences sensory experiences so much about our past is not something that is documented and definitely not easily searchable even more difficult your personal perspective right not the content you've consumed that could be saved but your interpretation of the content you've consumed your take on it your takeaways your opinions about things about ideas about developments in the world about the news about anything your theories and beliefs and hypotheses how do you think the world works or your industry how does that work or your organization or your team or your household whatever level you're thinking at what are your beliefs your hypotheses even if you especially if you can't prove them right we're talking about information about knowledge that is not verifiable documented authoritative might even be wrong might even be incorrect but it's still valuable to you and finally personal knowledge it's kind of the big one right in a knowledge driven economy knowledge very clearly is the number one the most valuable asset the biggest most important resource in my book I cite a study a very rigorous objective study uh done by economists that showed the value of looking at the scale of a country the value of of human capital in the United States is 10 times 10 times the value of all physical capital think about what that means for a sec get all the physical capital everything the buildings the freeways all the houses all the vehicles all the Machinery the factories everything that is physical capital and the knowledge that is in our head in our neurons is worth 10 times that imagine if that were true for you right scale it down if you knew for a fact that your knowledge Capital was worth 10 times your net worth of everything in your accounts your house your car would you do anything differently would you take steps to capitalize or to realize the value of all that knowledge your ideas your insights your expertise Lessons Learned through many times really difficult hard one Real World experience experience you know your failures your mistakes and your successes in other words your tacit knowledge things that you know and you know that you know you swear you have that expertise and that knowledge but you can't quite articulate all of it or even say what it is it's tacit it is embedded in your body mind life experience and your environment starting in the 1990s actually nearby at UCLA a new field a new discipline was coined called personal Knowledge Management PKM this is the sort of academic counterpart to what I do and is the source of many of the insights that I draw upon okay since the 1990s it's become a legitimate full-fledged field with conferences and journals and studies and different organizations dedicated to it PKM also has a historical counterpart a historical Legacy that is almost as old okay it's something called a commonplace book okay the word commonplace comes from the Greek it was a place a book or some sort of medium of writing in uh ancient Greek courts or assemblies or political meetings where they would keep the records it was the common place for all the decisions and ideas and actions that were taken okay and since then it's been a continuous thread thread throughout history especially in periods of intense change or uncertainty it's actually been reinvented again and again all over the world in Japan and China during periods of change and uncertainty in Poland and Eastern Europe during times where the boundaries of countries and Empires were being redrawn and most famously in Europe during these revolutions right the Renaissance the enlightenment the Industrial Revolution the Scientific Revolution all those revolutions were happening out in public out in the world transforming society and in order to cope with that in each of these periods people needed a private place to think basically okay they needed a commonplace book which was simply a book like the one you see here that was Private that was informal only for them for their eyes only where they would keep bits and pieces of what we would call content from many different sources to understand the world to uh record quotes or Bible verses or recipes or genealogical records they would keep uh excerpts from their reading bits of poems and in later years drawings and photographs as well it was a personal repository of information of knowledge that they used to to make sense of the world so in a sense the goal of PKM personal Knowledge Management the goal of commonplace books is in a way less ambitious it's easier right instead of the world's information all we're trying to do is organize one person's one individual's information and make it personally accessible and that's it right no need to make it universally accessible we're just trying to give one person access to what they themselves already know or information they already have access to but in another way it's way harder in another way it's way harder because it's not a technological problem right we have the technology we've had note taking and books and different recordkeeping devices for ever it's not a technological problem it is a human problem always much more challenging to make one person's own information personally accessible and useful you have to delve into that person's World which is really a world unto itself right into their psychology their preferences their thinking style and the way that their mind works their their life circumstances their goals their strengths and weaknesses their uh past their desired future in a in a weird way the internal world of one individual is in a way more complex and and unpredictable than the whole world itself plus the fact that you have to do it for yourself right there's no at least so far off-the-shelf solution trust me I teach a course about this and people use at least 30 or 40 different software programs to apply the lessons that I'm sharing with you now and each person is totally convinced that their software platform is the only one that works because that's the that's the one that works with their mind right last year uh I published a book my first book called building a second brain did a Google Talk which you can watch which was about how to do this how to create essentially a modern digital commonplace book my term for that is a second brain an extension of your first brain into a second brain this month actually just about two weeks ago uh I published a follow-up second book called the parame method that really zeros in on the core challenge the core challenge that people have with whether it's creating a second brain or just this whole realm of dealing with information which is how in the world to organize it how do I organize it that's the question the complaint the desire that I hear constantly every day it's not hard to acquire data these days you hit save capture share download and you have all the information you could ever want or need but then what to do with it my answer to that my solution that I came to after more than a decade of teaching coaching writing honestly just trying everything and anything to see what works and what works for the widest variety of people is called perah okay I'm going to introduce you to it briefly and then say a little bit about why it works and where it comes from and how you can use it as well perah is an acronym it's a four-part acronym each letter standing for one essential category of information okay the p is is for projects it's pretty much the conventional definition that you'd expect short-term efforts in your work or life that you're working on now so they're active right I'll emphasize shortterm because the defining feature of a project is it has an end date it's not forever it's not endless it's like a short-term Sprint you're starting something you're finishing it within a reasonable amount of time but not everything is a project right some things are more like long-term responsibilities areas of responsibility things like your health your finances your family your car your home your pets these hopefully don't have a day on the calendar that is the specific Endo they're sort of continuous they they go on for usually a long time or at least an indefinite amount of time then you have resources right which is basically everything else advice you hear content you consume highlight lights from books quotes from podcasts excerpts from articles you read lessons you from courses or conferences everything else the the whole universe of content consumption which is really topics or interests that may be useful in the future right that interest you that spark your curiosity that you're passionate about they're still important they're still worth keeping information about but definitely less important less of a priority than your projects in your areas and then finally there's Arch which is everything from the previous three categories that is either finished inactive or no longer useful think of it like think of it like the cold storage of your digital life right you finish a project don't throw away all the materials related to that project just archive it away you have an area of responsibility that you're no longer responsible for don't delete it cold storage same with resource you lose interest becomes less relevant we're at this point where you never need to delete anything ever again right you really the amount of storage we have access to locally on the cloud through subscription is ever increasing you never have to delete anything ever again which is both the biggest blessing and the biggest curse right because you really can keep it all but you can't keep it front and center in your attention all the time you need a place that is secure and safe but completely out of sight out of mind and that's the archive okay so let's get a little more practical what I recommend you do what I'm asking you to do is to create four folders okay it really is this simple create four folders called projects areas resources and archives on whatever platform in whatever place you keep information okay and that's a key point is this is a platform agnostic system probably its greatest strength okay so if you're wondering where are these folders which platform should I choose which is kind of a stressful decision right my answer is pretty much everywhere you can and should use perah to organize if you adopt this this solution to organize your cloud storage drives your local storage your documents folder your project management software your task manager your calendar your notetaking app did I miss any I've seen people organize even other things their finances their pantry and refrigerator their wardrobe you once you see it you're going to see it everywhere which is these four categories endlessly repeating themselves at different scales and in different ways okay so in whatever platform that you are keeping information on let's just say it's the documents folder on your computer underneath or within each of these top level folders I recommend you create one folder for each one of the specific specific projects such as completing a webpage design buying a new computer renovating a bathroom this is both work and life a specific folder for each of your active areas such as work-related ones like marketing human resources or personal ones like your health and these lists could very well continue these are just a few examples uh resources create a folder for graphic design graphic design assets graphic design templates create a resource fer for your personal productivity any tip or piece of advice or productivity app that you come across or even for something that's just a you know a side hobby organic gardening what you're learning about how to take care of plants and as you live your life do your job progress in your career those various things will finish or become in active and that's when you can move them to the archive which is really your your history it's the not just the it's the record but also all the supporting documentation for basically everything else everything you've ever done the projects you've taken on the areas you've been responsible for the resources you've collected I sometimes summarize perah that it's four folders and a question okay because this is all great to have somewhere to put things but how do you decide that's usually the next question how do you decide where something goes right sometimes is not very clear sometimes a piece of information can go more than one place or many places and what I found is when it comes to personal organizing like organizing on an individual level you only really have the time and energy for one question for one question right I'm guessing you don't have a ton of extra bandwidth to spare you don't have an overabundance of energy and you know cognitive open space when it comes to making decisions about where to put things we have barely enough enough time maybe for one question the best question I found the most effective is the following how and when will I use this next it's a little bit cheating because it's kind of two questions but the answer is really the same right the answer and you can ask this question of really anything any note any story you hear any example any piece of research image a slide a piece of audio a video um a design asset a contact really anything how and when will I use this next it's really asking you to look at information not through the lens of what it means that's our default and where we really get into all those Universal systems that get too complicated instead of what it means or what kind of information it is which is really endless looking at information through the lens of utility utility how can this be useful how can it actually change something how can it make a difference how can it improve something for someone for myself for my family my community my neighborhood my team my organization or the world okay it's a big mindset shift for a lot of us in comparison to school where everything was by academic subject but the answer to how and when is always one of these right right there's really it's a it's it's a multiple choice question with four answers and no none of them are wrong right you're going to use it in some project think about the word project in its in its broadest sense right almost anything that you're actually doing engaging in is a project could be the tiniest you know changing a light bulb sometimes I recently had to change a light bulb and it became a project because I had to research oh it's a special kind of bulb and then I had to go to the hardware store didn't have it then I had to go online it became this whole thing changing a light bulb can be a project all the way to you know the most massive construction uh of a building or something can also be a project if it's not part of a project it's part of an area right it's something that there's no you know goal or Milestone that you're driving towards but you are there's some responsibility there's something that you're overseeing or that you are sort of a part of or you're involved in or you're accountable to that means it's wor keeping that information if not it's a resource and if it doesn't go into one of those three then you don't have to keep it right what like what could possibly be the use case for a piece of information that doesn't fit into any of any of these when we're talking about an individual the amazing thing about these four simple categories is the diversity of people that it helps I'm still I still kind of can't believe it to this day that four folders in a question has gone so far has become a course and a book and now a Google Talk and there's people using it from third grade classrooms to organize their arts and crafts projects I know of one all the way to Fortune 500 companies to to NASA Engineers to people with hundreds of millions of dollar budgets and everything in between everyone in between some how this the and this is where we'll go next the Simplicity of it you can't over complicate four categories there's no way to use it as a form of procrastination organizing and organizing and organizing because you're avoiding actually just doing the work right it's always clear where something goes and if not you really just put it into one of four large categories and you're pretty likely to come across it again in the future or there's always search which is sort of the safety net to all of this right so there's three reasons that I think it works so well for such a wide variety of use cases uh the first is that it's that it's simple that it minimizes the cognitive load of people I think a lot of people a lot of the time are very close to being overwhelmed right they're at their limits the complexity of their work and their life and just managing a household just adulting just living a modern life pretty much maxes out the cognitive load that we can handle and so we need an organizing system that is not as complex as our life if you have an organizing system that is just as complex as your life then you'll spend all your time organizing stuff and not actually just living your life right so in a sense it has to be reductive it has to be too simple or simplifying in a sense so that it frees up more time and attention than it takes the second reason I think it works well is that it is actionable it's so tempting in the digital realm to accumulate for the sake of accumulating right digital hoarding it's become easier than ever just by moving your finger and clicking and tapping you can amass many lifetimes worth of data in no time at all and it's challenging because there's no constraints unlike say your house where you'll eventually you know run into the walls or a warehouse space there's some kind of physical limit in the digital realm there's essentially No Limit you can really do it forever so actionability what is useful what is active what is a milestone that you're working toward is a kind of is the organizing principle of Pera that I think is so powerful because it really focuses on your tangible projects and goals what are you actually trying to accomplish right now what are the goals that if you reach them would actually make a difference right make a difference to your career your health your customers the communities that you serve and third returning back to that age-old dream it is universal okay and when I say Universal it's not in the sense of all human knowledge you definitely don't want to try to save you know all human knowledge on your computer but what I've noticed time and again is that we are now a highly crossplatform species we can and we do all of us use dozens of different platforms to manage information all the ones I mentioned calendar agenda to-do list the project management app uh an app like notion for creating dashboards database apps uh various forms of cloud storage and local storage I don't think it's possible nor would we even want to have one app to rule the them all that would just be putting all our eggs in one basket we use many platforms and we use many different devices so instead of treating that fact as a as a rare exception oh you can't store everything in one app I prefer to assume it to just assume that any given modern person professional will use a whole variety of different apps and those actually will all be changing all the time right they're constantly turning over you're moving to new new places perah is crossplatform in the sense that you create the same four categories with the many of the same subcategories in each and every single place where you have your information okay and we don't even have time to get into this but that univer universality also applies across people how often do you have shared repositories shared drives shared projects and the four words of perah each of which is totally easy to understand and we're using pretty much the conventional definition often becomes a kind of shared language right imagine if within your team or your department or division or organization when someone said project that meant something very specific that you all understood and were on the same page about when you said area of responsibility that had a specific meaning and a specific place on any given information storage platform that everyone understood everyone knew how to put something there when they wanted to save it and just as important certainly how to find it when they needed it next I want to share a little bit about why why I'm so passionate about projects which is about the origin story of all this and I don't think I've ever talked about this publicly from about 2009 to 2011 I served in the US Peace Corp the Peace Corp for anyone who doesn't know is a a US governmental organization founded in the late 1960s and since then it has recruited and trained Americans of all ages to serve overseas in developing countries in various capacities working on some sort of democracy building or Economic Development or in my case language uh capacity I was stationed I was assigned to a small town in the far Northeast of Ukraine called kopans okay a small town of a few thousand people where I was to spend a little over two years teaching English to all ages so my day job every day I would wake up go to school and teach English classes just like any English teacher I had grades from third grade to 10th grade and a bunch of them in between that was sort of my day job but at night or on the weekends or during breaks or especially in the the summer my true passion was a program that I developed called PBC projects bring change you can probably tell where this is going what we would do is go to for example summer camps which are a big tradition in Ukraine during the summer everyone goes down to the Black Sea Coast and you have these different summer camps that happen or sometimes they happen on uh lakes or rivers or in the countryside and what I would do is uh recruit a small group of students that I thought were promising enthusiastic really eager and I would teach them what we would call some basic life skills or project management skills really simple stuff how to set a goal what even is a goal right things like how to make a budget how to make a plan with steps and substeps how to make a to-do list how to say what a project even is a project scope okay and then in just a few days during the course of the summer camp which was no more than maybe a week I would lead them in actually planning and executing a community service project okay so actually put it into action things like a trash cleanup or a fundraiser for a local library or painting a mural or um different things to enrich and contribute to their local community this isn't a sort of a long-standing part of Ukrainian culture in a lot of post-soviet countries it was always the state the state was responsible for all those things in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union it's become sort of it's had to become a much more Grassroots thing okay so we would do these projects and you know they weren't super impressive just a few days picking up trash painting raising raing some money but time and time again to my amazement I would see these small projects of just a few days completely transform these kids' lives completely change the trajectory of their lives in just a few days I would see them I would see them uh find within themselves and in new skills new knowledge they didn't even know they had they found a sense of self-confidence or agency being being awoken within themselves by just watching themselves seeing themselves reach out and actually solve a problem in some cases a long-standing problem in their communities I'll never forget doing a brainstorm on one of these very ancient chalkboards where we did a simple brainstorm all the different Community projects that we could do basically the needs in the community what are the needs in our community we just did a brainstorm with poits and then over here we did another brainstorm with resources what are all the different resources in the community the tools the physical materials the knowledge the relationships all that stuff and then we just did a matching exercise just matched the red poits and the green Post-its and it was an incredible experience to just watch in that moment each of those teenagers seeing that for almost every problem that they could think of in their Community there was some existing resources some existing piece of knowledge or some skill or some person that could address or at least make a difference in that problem I left the peace score after a couple years the program continued and actually uh went on for some years but I came back to the US moved to San Francisco started my kind of professional career and to my amazement I saw the exact same thing this exact same phenomenon in these in most cases Elite high powered professionals that I was surrounded with in Silicon Valley that a project a simple project whether it's at work or a side gig whether it's something that they were asked to do or something that they decided to do so often a discret tangible project where something happened something was different before than after something took place that wasn't going to happen anyway in so many cases was the difference between that person believing themselves and not believing that they were ready and believing they were not I don't know I have not yet encountered a mechanism that can change people's identities and make them believe in themselves and ultimately realize their potential then a Hands-On practical short-term project what I'm suggesting with perah is that fact is so important that you use it as the central organizing principle of your entire Digital Life that all the information the vast knowledge you have access to you just organize it and align it over the projects and the goals that you are trying to accomplish thank you that was that was awesome um we were talking about this earlier and you know I I mentioned how I am really excited about the system and want to implement it because I'm some someone who has failed at multiple attempts to actually organize my digital life or organize my life and what I really appreciate about the par method is just how simple and flexible it is and it seems like something that I can mold to really how I work versus trying to fit my life into how the system is supposed to work so just as the first question I would love to hear from you um what are the what are the different parts of the system that are a must do and the parts that are more flexible and can Flex based on different people's preferences and working Styles yes great question um I would say okay I'll get a little nerdier here than I would otherwise because I know it's Google it's engineering teams around here uh I think the core principle is an information hierarchy right one of the the deepest most uh kind of fundamental patterns that you see everywhere which I always think of as a pyramid right in any given situation there is some small percentage of the information that is more important right in any book you read There are some ideas that are more important in any class you take there are some takeaways that are more important and some that are less in in a conversation that you have there are few things that person said that are more important than less it's kind of a natural structure of all information so what perah does is just say and really I think any good organizational system is given that fact take that little bit of information that is relatively more important and put it to the top make it easier to find easier to access more visible easier to to pick up and work with uh and actually that's how we organize most things you know it's funny we we organize this is very funny but our our ref refigerator with perah and sometimes I'll ask my wife Lauren you know where's the some food where's the mayonnaise and she'll say it's in projects and I know that means the middle shelf which is the easiest to access that has the stuff that you're working with every day uh and so I would just say that that's the principle that needs to be present whether you use perah or something completely different is don't get the small percentage of most important information and hide it this is what people tend to do they hide it in some Sub Sub Sub subfolder in some Corner that's hard to find no get that most important information and put it at the top in a place that you're easily going to be able to see it and find it and work with it uh par is one way to do that but really that there's it's a principle you see across a lot of platforms I love that so much and I got to say uh something that I was really excited about is earlier I got permission from you I asked Thiago I said so you saying I can use the system on my Tik Tok Instagram YouTube folders and you said yes and that was very exciting yes I see hope at the end of the tunnel for me so thank you for that absolutely uh reminder to the room if you have questions you please feel free to queue up next to the mic we also have many questions on here could we please sort this by top I don't think that's happen right now as we wait for that I would love to ask you a question about something very profound in the book that hit me pretty pretty hard you talk about how this system really makes you come to terms with where your energy is going and it makes you be honest with yourself or it's so important to be honest with yourself cuz you see it right there could you elaborate on that a little bit please yes so on the surface parah is a way to organize your digital files but that is almost kind of a trojan horse because it really is more fundamentally uh two things it is a way to structure your life right even if you never say saved another file in your entire life you could still find Value in this because there's value in saying what are your currently active projects just making a list right some people don't even have a computer or electronic device they're on paper and I say great just make a list in your notebook of your currently active projects your currently your areas you're currently responsible for any resources that you have they'll do it on one page and just that exercise will give them tremendous Clarity so it's really a way of structuring or not struct it's not that you have to change your life it's a mental model for understanding the things that you're already doing in your life and then secondly and as a part of that it's a way to be honest with yourself often people create any kind of systems but especially organizational systems as a kind of aspirational idealized version of their life you know they'll put a category for surfing do you surf no for you know guilty guilty maybe with that specific example also it's it's aspirational all organizing in a sense is kind of aspirational right but so often I see these things people create you know beautiful dashboards and with the wonderful emojis and these beautiful elegant tables so thorough so comprehensive and then almost inevitably I talked to them a day later a week later a month later and that was essentially like a one-time art project that they just did one day and has no effect on their life that's why I really recommend people creating the categories of parir out or any system just based on what is real what is today right now actually happening and what information are you already accessing every day start there and then grow maybe in the future towards aspirations I love that so much the onetime art project definitely resonates that that has been my mistake in the past okay let's take our first question here from the audience so question from Daniel have any of the tools for Thought category of products added features that you think are useful or transformative in the last year or two so it's really interesting uh for anyone who doesn't know so tools for thought one of the problems of this discipline this field is we have not settled on a term so there's at least four or five different terms that are kind of all talking about the same thing the the person who asked this question refers to Tools For Thought which is one of the terms I call it second Brains it's also PKM it's also just digital notetaking all of those things are essentially the same thing um but what I notice with these this kind of type of software let's just talk about software is often for a new kind of feature a new kind of capability to really change how people work and live it has to be so simple it has to be so easy it has to be so easy that it's easier to do it to adopt a whole new Behavior which is usually quite challenging it has to be easier to do it than to not do it has to actually result in a net reduction of energy that is required right and that's a tall order I mean I see I review software I especially this category tools for thought there's probably a new software every month if not every week and a lot of very complex sophisticated powerful impressive features but it is rare in a year for me to see a new feature that that I see it and I'm like okay that has been simplified and distilled enough that it can it can just Ripple across the the software world the last one that I've seen was probably backlinks this started a few years ago with a a platform called Rome that has been adopted by notion and log seek and obsidian it's you can see that it's kind of spread and it's I mean the idea is ridiculously simple it's just the idea that if you link for example from one note to another um um that link should be bidirectional right instead of only linking from this place to that place this note to that note it should also link from that note to this note there like a two-way street so that that one little idea which has been around for a long time right that was part of wik and software 10 20 years ago that has just entered the consumer space still after three or four years it's not that common and was the last thing that I've seen that was like I said simple and easy enough that that it can really change how we do things so it's it's a very slow moving field it operates on the scale of decades not on the scale of years or months like a lot of other software um yeah yeah I think also something that resonates is how you talked about at the core yes technology and technological solutions help but at the core this is not a te technology problem it is more of a human problem which is what you talk about in the book um we have a question from our live audience could you state your name and the question please hey yeah my name is Joe I'm actually a return peace volunteer too so thank you for coming today uh my question is really two parts first part is um you mentioned that this is technology Gnostic but I think a lot of times without technology there's a lot of friction you know in terms of writing down a note or searching through your notes for example so what is your recommendation if say you currently don't have access to some of these common apps maybe because your company restricts access to them like what are your recommendations to to to just you know start something without these applications and the second part is you know without these applications there's a allot of friction and sometimes you kind of need motivation to put a lot of effort into organizing your notes because you know there are benefits later on but the upstart is kind of taking a lot of efforts how do you keep up with that motivation great questions okay so one at a time um especially in a workplace setting it is it is super important you know this is a pragmatic not a super idealistic philosophy so you should you definitely need to know and follow all the rules that your workplace puts on information where it can be where it can't be what format where it can be set where it can't be the funny thing is as I've worked with with professionals and companies on this that is much more common than not right it it is practically universally the case that there is either there's compliance issues there's privacy issues security issues sometimes you know we've worked with Healthcare organizations there's Hippa it is far more common that there is a whole Litany of different rules and regulations than not right um and so what I would say is almost always the solution is to just segment you start creating almost like Frontiers or borders so let's say personal information about your side projects and hobbies can go in a note taking app like Evernote because that's just your personal stuff anything related to a work project has to go into you know your internet or your Wiki or whatever app you use at your workplace but that's perfectly fine you can still use per across both in fact whatever number of segmentation you have some people like to segment work versus personal have those in completely different software programs some people like to have projects in one place and areas in a different place some people um have most information in one platform but then one very specific kind of information such as customer data has to go somewhere else the the the categories of PA cut across whatever segmentation you you have to use that's kind of the way it was designed and so I would just create whatever segmentation is needed to follow each and every one of those you know those rules and regulations um for the second one I mean that's this is the whole problem the motivation problem right that is almost the the question who cares how powerful a software program is or how eventually beneficial a productivity method is if you just don't care you just don't want to you don't feel like it right especially in this realm right when you go you know to work in the morning you have a lot of good reasons to to do your work you're being compensated Etc but no one cares if you organize your personal information no one will even notice your boss doesn't doesn't particularly care your spouse your friends you know it's sort of like a personal like nerdy Obsession that you have so you really have to connect with your personal motivation which in my experience is usually a project and often not a work project it's a project that you've chosen to take on you know that doesn't you may not be compensated for it may not even make money may not be something that is even very explicit and very uh visible you know it might be a skill you're learning a hobby that you're taking on a community service project something that is inherently meaningful that you do just because you want to do it that right there is the perfect training ground for this because you know adopting any new methodology such as perah there is a there is a learning period there's training wheels you kind of have to get used to thinking in a way that is a little bit more systematic than we're used to thinking about and if you're doing it in a project that you would do anyway that you're doing doing almost just for fun for personal interest for passion reasons that is a good way to get started once you learn it then I often see that people will start with one project and then it kind of spreads it kind of takes over all these other things um but I would start with just one one personal project that you're you're really passionate about thank you thank you for the question let's take one from our audience that's watching the live stream uh so question from damla welcome to Google how is parah different from building a second brain which dla loved is it building on it yes it's very closely related I would call it the it's kind of like an implementation guide you know okay you're sold on second brain concept sounds cool where do I start perah is how you start uh it it's also kind of like the summary if you'd like a shorter you know my second book is less than onethird the length and uses I'd say simpler language simpler Concepts there's less that you have to really take in and understand conceptually much less with the par method uh but they're really the same system in fact one of the chapters in my first book building a second brain is about perah all I did was get that one chapter which is people's favorite chapter the chapter that I have the most questions on that's why I did the second book I got that one chapter and expanded it into its whole own book um and the reason for that is before going off and creating all these new new complex systems just start with organizing the content you already have you already have content it's sitting in your email inbox in your web bookmarks in your notes app on your phone it's there start with organizing the stuff you've already saved that's what per is for if then you you want to sort of expand your horizons think about your creativity think about realizing your potential think about scaling up the system that's when building a second brain becomes more relevant thank you I do we have a question question from the live audience yeah hi my name is Ben and um one thing that I think is really appealing about this method is that it's sort of top down and there are these General categories that make really nice sense intuitively and I was wondering how you think about the other side of that equation what Atomic pieces of information are worth entering into a system like this yes we didn't even we didn't even really touch on this but what is the right content to save in the first place right that is addressed much more in my first book but it's funny I can so first my advice is to be very selective really picky you know most information out there you can find it again you can just Google it right most of it will be there and any piece of information you save uh you're going to have to from that point forward manage it store it revisit it there's like a I almost think of each piece of information you save as a debt yes it's an asset but it's also a debt because it creates this kind of obligation just by the fact of it existing that you then have to do something with it right so I find most people that are interested in this subject are over collecting over capturing they're trying to kind of boil the ocean and create almost their own personal internet you don't have to do that right I always think about 1% 1% of a book that you read 1% of a course that you take 1% of the content the information you consume in a given week which will still be voluminous right uh and so most people the skill they have to train is that discernment and kind of it's a kind of decisiveness right when you read a book let's say you're reading an ebook don't do the classic highlight full page turn highlight full page you know that is that is basically postponing the work of deciding what actually matters to your future self just take a second and ask if I could only keep one sentence from this paragraph or this page what would it be and you can find especially if you make that decision intuitively like what actually resonates with you what calls you what surprises you what makes you perk up and pay attention that is actually the best criteria because it's it's faster um you can almost always make that decision right in the moment save just the one sentence and I promise you every subsequent step will be far easier so I guess that's my short answer is what resonates with you what moves you I actually what I what I advise people to do is don't make the decision of what to capture logically right because if you have to boot up the abstract conceptual part of your brain so now you're burning calories right now it's the energy is really being consumed uh instead use your body right what makes the hair stand up on your arm what makes your heartbeat faster your pupils dilate uh what makes you lose your sense of time these sorts of bodily somatic things it's still your you you reacting to information but it's using that system one that that faster more intuitive system and in the long term honestly results it creates better results you'll actually find the stuff you save that resonated intuitively in some mysterious way ends up being genuinely most novel interesting and helpful in the future uh that would be my my advice thank you that's I love that thank you so much for that I know we're out of time but I'm going to squeeze in one more question from the live stream if you don't mind um so the question is from Boon I recall you being an Evernote user in the past were you digital first on this PKM journey I love paper and ink but they're tough to make accessible and useful without search wow there's a lot in this question yeah so um let me start with the actual question I was not digital first I have over the past gosh now more than maybe 15 years been on four different platforms uh the first of those platforms was paper right I mean that's what I learned in school that's how we all learned it was pre-digital or at least we weren't allowed to have technology in school so I had the notebooks and the big binders and everything and even uh when I so the the or origin story of my second brain was dealing with a kind of unexplained medical conditions about 15 years ago and I remember you know getting my patient record from each doctor that I had to see on paper highlighting on paper organizing in categories on paper and it was really when it became so voluminous you know my medical record started to get like that thick that out of pure necessity I didn't even want to um I had to move to digital because of search the ability to look for a keyword to create links to create annotations that themselves can be searched um I think paper is powerful we're not trying to disrupt paper paper has a place probably always will but it's really using the combination paper when it makes sense when it's more appropriate and then digital and sometimes you can save the paper in digital form using Technologies like OCR optical character recognition so you don't have to choose you know as a one-time decision I'm going to go paper or digital they are highly complimentary information can move back and forth you know between them as many times as you need the important part is what are you trying to accompl what is the end goal what is the use case the project the goal really every decision every kind of platform decision every implementation decision needs to be made not in a vacuum but in light of what you are trying to accomplish and it might change from Project to project there might be some that you use one platform and others you use a completely different platform some you use paper and you really need to to kind of keep your eye on the prize otherwise it's just so easy to get lost in this digital realm of you know this this person also kind of referenced you know switching apps people will make the decision oh let me switch apps to me that's like moving houses you don't make that decision lightly just on a whim you've just created an incredible amount of work for yourself maybe it's Justified maybe it's necessary but really think about that before you you know move from one app to another uh yeah those would be some some observations yeah you know the more we've talked about it I completely see what you mean about how power out the system is at horse but it really is so much more than that it's more about really how each one of us is looking at information processing information what we value and how we value information so just so many great insights Thiago this has been exceptional you are exceptional you help so many people on their Journeys um I'm so thankful to you for being here and thank you to folks uh our audience that's here watching and on the live stream thank you for your questions um and thanks for a great talks at Google event thank you so much Ela and the team it's been [Music] wonderful