How Tiago Forte Stays Sane

Useful advice from an AI pioneer

Tiago on Zoom yesterday from his home in Mexico

To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:

How to make 10-percent better decisions

Three years ago today I read a Medium post by Mark Ellis that introduced me to Tiago Forte, a man I’ve been learning from and inspired by ever since.

The post was titled “How One Book Transformed My Relationship with Apple Notes.” I immediately bought Tiago’s book, Building a Second Brain, which had been published two weeks before.

That was 156 days before ChatGPT burst on the scene.

Fast forward to now, when AI is everywhere—a tsunami of change arriving faster than any of us can grok—and Tiago has become my most trusted and helpful guide to ChatGPT and its kin.

Yesterday at a Q&A Zoom session with Tiago, I admitted that I feel overwhelmed with the constantly changing AI landscape. I asked how he stays sane following it.

You can hear this excerpt from his answer on today’s Morning Journal:

I’ll just say my answer is, I think, oddly, to work less and to spend more time learning and exploring, right? Which doesn’t have an immediate ROI. But it’s like, in a time of exponential change and ever-expanding leverage, you have to spend, I think, proportionally more of your time learning, growing, exploring, questioning your assumptions, seeing things through different perspectives, talking to people, doing experiments, changing your behavior, changing your usual approach.

Which is kind of odd, because you might think, “We all know how these AI superpowers or other superpowers—it’s time to exploit, it’s time to build, it’s time to, like, whatever. But oddly, I think: no. I think you have to step back and really kind of take it all in.

And then the other thing—maybe this is just my stage of life—but I’m finding I really need to exercise a lot. I need to meditate. I need to have a good sleep, eat well. Self-care is more important.

Because it’s another paradox. I’m now making so many decisions. AI takes care of a lot of the grunt work, and so you’re left almost in an executive role of just making decisions that someone else or something else executes.

And what I notice with decisions is the quality of a decision—if I can just make a 10-percent better decision—that might have incredibly huge downstream effects that involve all sorts of other people.

And the only way that I—there’s lots of ways to make better decisions—but being more connected to yourself, more grounded, more centered, more aware of your values, more connected to your family and friends, are ways of making better decisions.

I really like the idea of this being a time to make 10-percent better decisions. And I was glad he mentioned meditation.

After Tiago’s Q&A, I attended another Zoom meeting yesterday hosted by a friend of mine on the topic of Buddhism and the 12 Steps. Those meetings are based on a book titled Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness: Walking the Buddha’s Path by Henepola Gunaratana. Highly recommended.

I feel fortunate for these two guides, one for the ancient wisdom of Buddhism and the other for the wild west of AI.

Tiago has a business, a young family, and insatiable curiosity.

His YouTube videos are models of clarity, high production values, and humility. He has immersed himself in AI and is helping people like me learn how to enhance life with it.

AI looks good on him and gives me hope for the future.