New In Conversation with Tiago Forte

[John Forrister]

Listen as David talks with Tiago Forte, whose company Forte Labs equips knowledge workers with productivity skills for the digital age. Tiago approaches productivity as a design challenge. He discusses what he's learned about measuring productivity--it's about much more than counting completed tasks. He may surprise you with his contrarian ideas on multitasking, meetings, and email.

Audio, 55 minutes.
https://gtdconnect.com/multimedia/audio.php?titleid=711&trackid=1336

Tiago's company site is Forte Labs. We recommend his wide-ranging blog, and he's on Twitter @ForteLabs.

In this interview you'll hear Tiago mention a couple of authors whose ideas you may want to check out. They are Josh Waitzkin, The Art of Learning, www.joshwaitzkin.com/, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of several books, www.fooledbyrandomness.com/.

You'll also be interested in his talk at Evernote, on Quantifying Productivity.

 

[John Forrister]

Listening back to this recording, one of the things that stood out for me is that people who are chronically late assume everything will go as planned. I bet you've heard a couple of great quotes that don't support that approach. Sometimes I find myself planning for the best instead of for contingencies. Once a few months ago I was five minutes late to a haircut, even though my barber is only 3/4-mile away. (Everything in our tiny town is within a mile or two.) Turns out the main road through town was blocked by some surprise, and the side road that is on my way to the barber was the designated detour. I was in a traffic jam that took about 8 minutes. Not a big deal, except I only allowed 3 minutes to get to the appointment. I assumed everything would go perfectly, and in this case, it didn't. Funny, because my barber has a great collection of magazines about classic cars and motorcycles that I enjoy, and the extra few minutes before my appointment would have been pleasant. I'll get another test in a couple of weeks. We'll see how I do . . .

 

[tforte202]

Good example John. I found the original article I was referring to: http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late/1097735/

Interestingly, the article says that consistently late people are actually more optimistic. They don't plan for contingencies because they assume everything will go right, which in some contexts is a hopeful and productive attitude. But in other contexts such optimism is unwarranted.

 

[John Forrister]

Good example John. I found the original article I was referring to: http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late/1097735/

Thanks for posting the link, Tiago. After years of training in GTD and agreement tracking, I'm not chronically late. But I do like to smell the roses, or follow a series of links from one page to another (~13 tempting ones in the body of that article), and time slips by. I'm supposed to pick Kelly up at the airport this afternoon. I'll stop clicking on links well before it's time to go.

 

[TesTeq]

Good example John. I found the original article I was referring to: http://elitedaily.com/life/culture/optimistic-people-have-one-thing-common-always-late/1097735/

Interestingly, the article says that consistently late people are actually more optimistic. They don't plan for contingencies because they assume everything will go right, which in some contexts is a hopeful and productive attitude. But in other contexts such optimism is unwarranted.

I'm shocked. Really. I've never thought about the lateness - optimism connection. And it immediately reminds me the very successful man (that I worked with) who was chronically late. On the other hand I feel very bad when I am not at least 5 minutes before any event. And certainly I am less optimistic than he. Much less...

 

[GTD-Sweden]

I'm shocked. Really. I've never thought about the lateness - optimism connection. And it immediately reminds me the very successful man (that I worked with) who was chronically late. On the other hand I feel very bad when I am not at least 5 minutes before any event. And certainly I am less optimistic than he. Much less...

WORDS THAT SHOULD EXIST IN ENGLISH
Tidsoptimist (Swedish) -- "time optimist", a person who's habitually late because they think they have more time than they do (https://www.quora.com/search?q=tidsoptimist).

In Sweden we obviously are not as shocked as TesTeq. I guess that the expression implies that you are an optimist in other areas as well - not just arriving on time? At least that was the case for me. Before GTD I was an optimist about time, resources and energy. The breakthrough was understanding the revolutionary implications of the Tree fold nature of work. Since having small kids at the moment (one at 1 year and the other at 2,5 months) it takes a lot of horsepowers arriving on time

 

[John Forrister]

On the other hand I feel very bad when I am not at least 5 minutes before any event.

I'm not sure he said it originally, but the first time I heard this was from David Allen: "If you're not early, you're late." Took me some pondering to realize that a meeting at 10:00AM has an infinitely small starting point, and to be on time I need to be there sometime in the spacious time before that infinitely small starting point.

 

[GTD-Sweden]

I need to be there sometime in the spacious time before that infinitely small starting point.

To put i another way - I think you have to think like Warren Buffet, just exchange investments for time - you have to build in a margin of safety when it come arriving on time. At least 15 minutes. Or as the saying goes - hope for the best prepare for the worst - that is traffic, slow start in the morning, and so on.