You may recognize Tiago’s name from his guest posts for the Evernote blog, in which he’s argued for a brain-based approach to creative workflows and changing the productivity curve of our work days. More recently, he’s launched “Building a Second Brain,” a productivity boot camp for personal knowledge management.

Highlights of our conversation are transcribed below. To hear the complete interview and subscribe to future episodes of “Taking Note,” head over to iTunes, SoundCloud, or Overcast.

Let’s talk about the modern workforce. We all live in this giant paradox. We’ve got access to endless information and we’ve got more flexible ways to work than every before, but at the same time, we’ve got so many inputs. Our days are fractured. We’re frustrated. We’re burning out. And to add a paradox on top of a paradox, we’ve got this seemingly endless series of solutions which are presented to us, prescriptions and methods for productivity. What’s your solution to this problem?

It’s just what you said. I mean, with great freedom comes great responsibility, right? It’s like we’re kids getting out of school, just throwing off our backpacks, “We’re free. We can work anytime, anywhere, on any device.” But then, summer vacation starts and we realize we’re kind of bored or frustrated or stressed because all the structure that is there in the workplace is gone.

And I kind of have a theory about this. I call it the rise of the freelance generalist. Freelancing has been around a long time, but almost by definition you had to be a specialist. You had to be a very niche, focused specialist because that was the only way that you had skills that could be monetized easily enough that you could do away with the organization. And that kind of provided its own structure. You’d wake up in the morning and know that you were doing copywriting, you were doing coding, you were doing design. It was pretty straightforward.

Now, I think technology is reaching an inflection point where it’s easy to use enough, cheap enough, seamless enough, frictionless enough, that you can be a generalist, which is what I consider myself to be, and make a living as a freelancer using these tools.

Are there solutions out there that you find are counterproductive?

Yes, there are. In particular, the trend with deep work. I’m opposed.

You know, I get it. People are feeling frazzled and just scatterbrained and all these things. But I really think this idea that you’re sort of this monastic knowledge worker, that you’re going to enter your chambers and just think deeply for hours and hours and hours on end, is a holdover from that freelance specialist mindset. And following up on that idea of a generalist as a freelancer, to do that effectively you need a portfolio. You can’t have just one narrow skill that you do.

YOU NEED A PORTFOLIO. YOU CAN’T HAVE JUST ONE NARROW SKILL THAT YOU DO.

And this is kind of how I think now. I have free products — like my blog I write for free for lead generation — but then I have other things that are not free, like online courses. Then I have consulting and corporate training for companies, but also one-on-one coaching for consumers. So it’s like I’m constantly managing this portfolio of products and services. Some are passive, some are active.

What that requires is not this kind of intense mono-focus. It requires being very skilled and fluid with switching between things. Multi-tasking is not going away. That’s not a disease or a plague. It’s just the way the world is going. We can either fight it and treat it like a threat, or we can get better at it.

You wrote a guest piece for the Evernote blog not too long ago where you got into some of these topics. You argued that since our days are filled with these interruptions constantly, and those interruptions do make it harder to deliver value from our work, maybe instead of trying to alter the shape of our days, we should try to alter the shape of our value curves and deliver more value in smaller pieces throughout the day.

That post came from a lot of research I’d been doing on the history of productivity, specifically manufacturing. And it’s kind of amazing being here in Silicon Valley that we have this breathless fascination with technology and the future, which is great, but a side effect of that is we ignore history.

If you look at the history of manufacturing, one of the great, great insights that took decades and decades to discover was small batches, right? That was one of the key breakthroughs to better quality, to speed, to more throughput, to more profitability in manufacturing. And then you go to knowledge work and you have the deep work thing, which is another way of saying big batch sizes. Deep work, spending hours and hours in deep flow, is a big batch size. So it’s like we’ve completely gone against decades of experience in manufacturing.

But, like with the example of Toyota developing this entire culture around it, using small batch sizes requires skill, and requires a different way of thinking and doing things.

So with the question of changing the value curve, I always kind of come back to this idea that there’s no inherent structure to work. Work has no inherent unit. We make units; we make tasks, and projects, and milestones, and goals. But nothing about those is inherent in the nature of work. So that’s a little scary because it’s all arbitrary, but it’s also an opportunity because it means we can use whatever units we want.

THERE’S NO INHERENT STRUCTURE TO WORK. WORK HAS NO INHERENT UNIT. WE MAKE UNITS. BUT NOTHING ABOUT THOSE IS INHERENT IN THE NATURE OF WORK.

Say, the word “project.” That word comes with baggage. All these ideas about how big should a project be, how long should it last, how much money should it make, how many people should be on a project? I almost like using different words. I have this one word “intermediate packet.” Instead of “deliverable,” I say an intermediate packet. Try to finish every working session, whether it’s 15 minutes or 8 hours, with an intermediate packet that you expose to the world; that you get some sort of feedback on.

I look at my to-do lists and I’m kind of overwhelmed by that. I don’t even necessarily get 25 minutes free because there are meetings and there are requests, and there are emails, and it’s all coming in constantly. Is there any way to get past that sense of overwhelm?

There is, and this is starting to get into the particular philosophy I have around using Evernote, actually. This is my main project these days, it’s an online course called “Building a Second Brain,” that’s actually a virtual boot camp because it’s not self-paced, take whenever you want, however you want. It’s five weeks, really intense, two meetings per week, and live video conferences. And essentially, it’s an end-to-end personal knowledge management system.

PKM, personal knowledge management, is related to PIM, personal information management. It’s basically making use of the knowledge that you gain on a personal level. Knowledge management, traditionally, has been organizations. When an employee walked out the door, all the knowledge that person had gained would go with them. So for years now, organizations have been trying to capture and catalog and use the knowledge of their employees.

Well, now if you look at the research, employee tenure is at, I think, 2.3 years. We spend a couple of years at a company. We do a few projects, a certain number of projects, and we’re gone. We need a better way to take knowledge with us. Not proprietary, confidential stuff, but actually just the insights and the breakthroughs and the learnings that we gained in the course of our work.

You mentioned that this plays into how you use Evernote. I know when you do the “Building a Second Brain” course and the other workshops you do, you try to structure them in a way so that they’re not tied to a particular platform or tool, but you are an Evernote user and Evernote is sort of the default example you give. So let’s talk about how you use Evernote. How is it set up? How is your personal Evernote set up?

I have this method I’ve developed called PARA, which stands for projects, areas, resources, and archives. And the inspiration from this — a little bit of historical background — is something called the OODA loop, which stands for observe, orient, decide, and act. It was developed by this guy named Colonel John Boyd starting the the ’40s or ’50s. He essentially used it to revolutionize aircraft fighter warfare. And it was basically a way of thinking about how to react dynamically to quickly changing conditions. You observe, you orient yourself, you decide on a course of action, and then you act.

It’s been an incredible inspiration for a lot of people in a lot of fields. It’s sort of underappreciated, the impact it’s had. But the thing that really sets is apart is it’s not a static way of thinking. It’s not like a flow chart — do A, do B, do C, do D. It’s loops, and then loops within loops, and then loops within those loops. Because you’re at all times intaking information, turning that into decisions, and then into actions.

And it’s the same with PARA. PARA is 4 categories, and that’s kind of the starting point. You divide your work into projects, which I’m using here the GTD definition, a series of tasks linked to an outcome.

Areas of responsibility: Some standard or area of your life that’s an ongoing concern; that you want to maintain on an ongoing basis.

Resources: Basically, interests or topics. Things like website design. For me, it’s not a particular project — not even really an area because that’s not my work — but it’s something I’m interested in that I’d like to keep track of.

And then Archives, which is anything from the previous three categories that’s no longer active, because you want to avoid clogging up your actionable categories. As soon as something is not top of mind, not front and center, you want to move it to the archives, but still keep it in case you want to go and find something there.

You have a whole workshop around applying design thinking to workflows, and to doing day-to-day work. What concepts do you draw from design thinking, and how do they apply?

Great question. Design thinking is an incredible way of thinking; an incredible movement, really, and taking place across many decades. The thing I take away the most from design thinking, especially when it comes to productivity and personal knowledge management, is just really the idea that you are a designer. Each one of us truly is a designer by nature, even if not by training. And that’s something that’s hard for people to get used to.

EACH ONE OF US TRULY IS A DESIGNER BY NATURE, EVEN IF NOT BY TRAINING. AND THAT’S SOMETHING THAT’S HARD FOR PEOPLE TO GET USED TO.

I actually had a previous course called “Design Your Habits.” It was on habit formation. And I had to be constantly explaining to people, because they would see “Design Your Habits” and they’d go “Oh, I’m not a designer. I didn’t go to design school.” And I’d have to be like, “No, you design habits. If you’re trying to lose weight and you want to change your diet, you design this whole routine that might be around exercise, or walking, or food. And you do that, in most cases, pretty instantaneously, intuitively, and just naturally on the course of your day.”

It’s a spontaneous process, but it does involve, I think, a lot of the same steps; sort of looking around and taking stock of sort of the elements in front of you, thinking of a workflow and a process, having some sort of a feedback loop.

Yes, design thinking, getting this process that has become a profession and bringing it back to its origins, which is just the way humans think. We are designers, we make, we create, we modify, we get new information and we change, we tweak. That’s completely natural to what it means to be human.

Written by Forrest Dylan Bryant on May 22, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

Podcast: Tiago Forte’s Approach to Productivity was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For many of us, inspiration begins with a simple sketch.

Leonardo da Vinci, the most inspirational of all Renaissance figures, imagined the possibility of everything from flight to robotics. It was drawing and sketching that represented the most pivotal tools he used to bring those imaginings to life.

Earlier in this series, we tackled some of his note-taking styles that are easily adaptable in today’s digital world. But, we reserved some of his most vital skills for a post all its own — drawing, sketching, and mind mapping.

Here are some ways you can draw inspiration from one of our greatest minds.

Draw Your Inspiration

As early as 1505, da Vinci drew inspiration — mainly from birds — and formulated ideas into a notebook devoted to the study of flight. His Codex on the Flight of Birds contained over 30,000 words and 500 sketches that traced fundamentals that would eventually apply to the world’s first flying machine.

That notebook remains one of the most ground-breaking and important documents ever written about flight. It’s a treatise that not only planted the seeds of how man would fly, but also outlined principles of propulsion that paved the way for space travel. The notebook also contained concepts for such ‘futuristic’ ideas as the parachute, helicopter, and glider.

Many of the lessons that da Vinci drew from his drawing can be incorporated into our life and help bolster our personal and professional pursuits.

Draw from real life. Da Vinci saw great potential in the nature around him. Birds helped him see the possibility of flight, but he also honed skills drawing moving objects like water and groups of people.

Key into the subtleties of motion. The chaos and disorder of moving things teach us how to work with both the hand and mind, and to make strategic choices about what to draw. Artwork, much like real life work, is all about selectivity.

Pay attention to detail. Da Vinci was one of the first to map the anatomy of the human body with complex and intricate drawings. In fact, some of these drawings are still used today in medical texts. His drawings on the human skull and the spinal column are still considered accurate and were hundreds of years ahead of their time.

Tap your intuition. Da Vinci had an innate understanding of form and function. A talented sculptor and draftsman, he had an ability to tap his intuitive understanding of the human form and connect his observations to anatomic mechanics.

Dabble in other areas. At the same moments he was tackling the codex on flight in 1505, da Vinci was also working on painting his iconic Mona Lisa.

Draw many times. Practice makes perfect, and in drawing, it takes many tries to get something right. Da Vinci studied other master artists, and created many iterations of his sketches until he was satisfied.

Mind Map Your World

In today’s world, we can take a cue from da Vinci’s incessant need to draw to understand his world.

Use mind maps to capture ideas, set personal or professional goals, set daily, weekly, or monthly plans, and other thought cataloging. Rather than writing them down point-by-point, try doodling or sketching them out. Like da Vinci, you may be surprised at what develops.

Mind maps may be the most creatively powerful note-taking format. Traditionally, they work well on paper, but with digital tools today like Evernote, it’s possible to adopt a flexible framework that embraces digital, paper-based systems (or, both together).

Mind maps favor the creative and visual right-brain thinkers, and that’s probably why da Vinci was so successful. His note-taking combined the worlds of art and science, logic and imagination and created a super connected way of whole-brain thinking. It enhanced his ability to learn, and it also has lessons to all of us about how we acquire and keep knowledge at the same time as honing in on our creative aspirations and ideas.

You don’t need to be a creative genius or an illustrious painter to carry on da Vinci’s note-taking legacy. You just have to do what he did every day — connect all your ideas, thoughts, observations, and sketches to your note-taking world. He did it using a unique ‘tree-branch’ structure (which evokes the traditional mind map), but he also referenced sketches with detailed notes to bring them all together. By looking at his notes, da Vinci was able to make instant connections visually.

Here are some tips for mind-mapping you can do on your own:

• So many possibilities. Start with a blank sheet of paper or a Moleskine notebook. Flip the page horizontally for premium workspace.
• Start with the main idea. At the center of the page, jot down the central theme of your work. A keyword or short sentence will do.
• Branches, twigs, and leaves bear fruit. Your main theme creates a hub from which branches flow, representing different concepts and ideas. You can illustrate the branches with annotations, images, keywords, or shorthand.
• It’s all about the lines. Use thicker lines to represent more important ideas and thinner lines that call out sub-points. Symbols like bullet points also help, as do colors or highlights.
• Be creative. Use your own personal flair and style to link your ideas to the main theme. If that is original sketches, diagrams, or smiley faces — then go for it.
• Structure is key. When you’re reviewing your mind map later, you want to identify the material in a cohesive way. Think of a structure that works for you that is clear, easy to understand, and shows information in a hierarchy, like most important to least important.

Written by Taylor Pipes on August 11, 2016. Originally published on the Evernote blog. This post is part of our ongoing Evernote Blog series, “Taking Note,” outlining the storied history and styles of note-taking. Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll explore how the practice of taking notes can improve your creativity and all the work you set out to accomplish.

Drawing Inspiration From da Vinci was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

William James wrote that “The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” If that’s true, Steve Jobs may have been one of the wisest men of the late 20th century. Jobs may not have been a “creator,” but his sense of design touches almost all of our daily lives — even if you’ve never used an Apple product in your life. It’s hard to think of a product released in the last few decades that hasn’t emulated Jobs’ and Apple’s aesthetic of simplicity.

In the mid-1970s, Jobs dropped out of college to travel through India. While recovering from dysentery, he read Paramahansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, which began a fascination with Eastern religion that would last the rest of his life. According to his friend Larry Brilliant, “Steve had been flirting with the idea of being sadhu,” meaning becoming an ascetic who has renounced worldly goods.

While this might seem an odd career path for someone who eventually headed one of the most pervasive technology companies in the world, those interests, and that mindset led to a lifelong quest to make things so simple and obvious in their design and function that they were almost intuitive to use at first glance.

1. Making things simple is more than just making things easy

That simplicity is the first lesson we can take from him. Simplicity is more than just making things easy. If that were the case, iPhones and Macs would have on/off switches. Simplicity means anticipating how a user will perceive a product and how the product will make sense to people. The process of taking a product or an idea to its most basic and necessary elements takes time, though. In 1988, Jobs told Business Week “That’s been one of my mantras — simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

People’s lives are complicated enough. We don’t want to read instruction manuals on how to use a product. We buy it, take it out of the box, and want to use it right away. So it behooves a designer or a writer to take the time to figure out the message a product or content is conveying and how customers receive it. An informative message will go unread if it’s too complicated or confusing. The most powerful phone or computer in the world will sit on a desk gathering dust if it takes an advanced degree to run it.

Along with that simplicity, though, must come innovation. Think of the first time you saw or used a smartphone. The attraction wasn’t just that it was easy to use (a rubber band is easy to use), it was that it was innovative. It was something people had never seen before, yet presented in a way that was both new and intuitive. “Well, of course! Why didn’t anyone ever think of that before?”

“YOU CAN’T ASK CUSTOMERS WHAT THEY WANT AND THEN GIVE IT TO THEM. BY THE TIME YOU GET IT BUILT, THEY’LL WANT SOMETHING NEW.” — STEVE JOBS

2. Enrich Your Life With New Experiences…and Ask Questions

It’s easy enough to say “be innovative” (or “Think Different,” as Apple’s famous tagline proclaimed), but how does a person do it? Unfortunately, while there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, having that very problem is actually a strength in Jobs’s view. In 1982, in accepting an award from the Academy of Achievement, he said, “If you’re gonna make connections which are innovative…you have to not have the same bag of experiences as everyone else does…or else you’re going to make the same connections (as everybody else), and then you won’t be innovative, and then nobody will give you an award.”

Jobs encouraged his audiences and employees to take advantage of their uniqueness and to do neither what was expected nor what the person next door was doing. In his speech to the Academy, he encouraged listeners to take the time to travel, to see and experience things, to read, and to try different things. He said, “I heard about some kid that’s 14 on his way to Stanford, and that’s great…but you might want to think about going to Paris and being a poet for a few years. Or you might want to go to a third-world country. It’s very much, so worth doing.”

The more we experience — and especially personally, not just vicariously — not only will our lives be richer, but we’ll also be better trained to notice new things. Experience allows us to see connections between things that others may not notice. But even as exposure to the new and unfamiliar will broaden and deepen a person, simplicity shouldn’t be forgotten.

The simplest question of all is “Why?” Children ask this all the time, not just because they don’t understand how things work, but also to make the unfamiliar familiar — to make connections between what they know and what they don’t. If we can think like children — not in a childish way, but to strip away our preconceptions and assumptions about what things are and how they work, we can make new connections and innovations. We shouldn’t take things for granted, but ask how they can be bettered.

Making something “simpler” or “better” doesn’t always mean less complicated, though. Sometimes an additional feature or step can make the difference between not quite right and just right. There’s a famous anecdote about Jobs and the first iPhone. It was virtually ready to be produced when:

“Jobs holds the device in his hand…He takes the headphone jack and inserts it into the iPod. The engineers await in tense silence. Something is wrong, and Jobs hasn’t even hit play yet.

He takes the jack out and inserts it again. Then he does it again. Dread descends on the group. The planned launch is only days away. Jobs frowns and finally pronounces, “Where’s the click?”

The exhausted engineers say, “Click? What are you talking about?”

“I mean that people need a click when they insert the jack,” says Jobs. “Without the click, they won’t know that it’s properly in there. They will keep working it and worrying with the headphones until they break. The solution is not elegant. This is not design thinking.”

When a person can notice those “clicks” (or lack thereof) in things, connections and innovations can be made — but only if one has the awareness and breadth of experience to notice them.

3. Creativity Is Just Connecting Things

In a previous entry about Mark Twain, we noted that Twain believed that there were no original ideas. He said, “The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. … It takes a thousand men to invent the telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or the telephone or any other important thing — and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. With this in mind, it almost behooves us to expose ourselves to as much knowledge and inspiration we can find from any source to synthesize it and, ironically, make it our own.”

Jobs was of much the same mind. In 1995, he told Wired Magazine: “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’d had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they’d had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.”

A lot of people who haven’t had very diverse experiences end up with linear solutions to problems because they don’t have a broad perspective. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better innovations we will have.

In the same interview, he said

“The Web reminds me of the early days of the PC industry. No one really knows anything. There are no experts. All the experts have been wrong. There’s a tremendous open possibility to the whole thing. And it hasn’t been confined, or defined, in too many ways. That’s wonderful. There’s a phrase in Buddhism, “Beginner’s mind.” It’s wonderful to have a beginner’s mind.”

Jobs was by no means perfect or a role model; famously, he could be downright awful to people. We shouldn’t emulate the thought processes that brought on his bad behavior. However, his commitment to being exposed to as many experiences as possible and looking at things in unprejudiced ways to make them simpler and/or better are things we can all do; it just takes patience, observation, practice, and the commitment to make the good better and the better as perfect as possible.

Written by Dave Sikula on May 8, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

Steve Jobs: Three Steps to Making Connections that Matter was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Anatomist, botanist, artist, engineer, geologist, inventor, musician, philosopher, polymath, sculptor, scientist, and writer. Without a doubt, Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was one of the most brilliant people to ever walk the planet. Mankind has never seen such prolific individual success across such a vast array of fields. Especially revered for his artistic works the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, he also imagined (through his expansive notebook collection) ideas for inventions that would become reality centuries after his death: The airplane, helicopter, calculator, machine gun, spring-powered car, and military tank.

Da Vinci’s diverse interests and knowledge crossed the worlds of art and science. With just the power of his imagination, he singlehandedly influenced the development of anatomy, geology, civil engineering, optics, and hydrodynamics.

One of the things that made da Vinci the ultimate Renaissance Man was his prescient observations and copious note-taking. Even today, we’re inspired by his unique approach to taking notes, an eclectic mixture of musings, sketches, hidden messages, and to-do lists that have shaped the way that we think about creativity, design, and observation.

Let’s dive into some of his notebooks and discover five ways we can be inspired by da Vinci’s accomplishments in our own work.

1. Invoke your own system

We know that da Vinci invoked unique systems of note-taking by writing backward. As a left-handed writer, he took notes from right to left in a technique known as “mirror writing,” which he may have done in an attempt to keep his notes illegible to anyone other than him.

In his book, Leonardo’s Brain: Understanding da Vinci’s Creative Genius, author Leonard Shlain notes that da Vinci’s style of writing is indicative that he accessed two different regions of his brain in his thinking: “Leonardo’s quirks of penmanship strongly suggest that….the traditional dominance pattern of one hemisphere lording it over the other does not seem to have been operational in Leonardo’s brain.” Most remarkably, da Vinci was able to accomplish so much with very little education or learning language from an early age. He didn’t learn Latin until his forties, and his long lists of vocabulary in his notebooks suggest that he taught himself.

Research suggests that da Vinci possessed incredibly rare cognitive attributes that allowed him to see, think, write, and visualize in ways that have never been seen before or since. Da Vinci constantly studied and observed, habits which were crucial to his note-taking technique. The things he saw helped strengthen his universal thinking — a blend of art and science — and he created a system to measure and track lifelong learning. His drawings helped establish a visual vocabulary that acted as cues to his writing. Together, they often lived in his journal side by side and were a rudimentary implementation of the Cornell Method, popular in academia today.

His system truly served his pursuit of knowledge and commitment to lifelong learning. Whether he was working hard to keep his ideas secret from interlopers (which has been debated), it’s clear that he was complacent about his work committed solely to paper. Despite the advances of movable type and the printing press, da Vinci was content not to turn his journals into published books.

How da Vinci can help you with today’s note-taking: Invent a system that works for you. Whether it’s borrowed from a legendary figure or cobbled together from books and professors, adopt a system and commit to it. For example, da Vinci’s system of observations and note-taking blended ideas, thoughts, and sketches (more than 13,000 filled his notebooks). He also was adept at blending learning from many different disciplines and used those skills interchangeably. A true generalist, he pioneered note-taking methods long before they became popular, including what would come to be known as the Cornell Method and mind mapping.

2. Always innovate

Long before they became common knowledge, da Vinci postulated ideas that were not only revolutionary but at the time, blasphemous:

• Earth is older than the Book of Genesis indicates.
• Humans share a common ancestor with monkeys.
• The Earth is part of an entire solar system.
• He predates Newton’s understanding of gravity and the fact that the planet was round.

Da Vinci’s ideas at the time were quite radical, but it’s even more of a feat when you realize that they predated the course of science and the existence of scientists altogether. In fact, da Vinci practically invented the modern course of science by applying his own research and insights and connecting them to his studies and observations — much of what was greatly articulated in his notebooks, known as codexes.

Follow da Vinci’s note-taking example: Adopt a note-taking style using either paper-based or digital means. Remember to stick to a regular schedule and review your notes often. Da Vinci’s notes were practical. It was not unusual to see reminders and memos alongside complex mathematical notes.

3. Take charge of your life through lists

From Edison to Michelangelo, checklists and to-dos are a common thread for how our most legendary note-takers tracked their work.

Lists are a great way to take stock of things we don’t want to forget and things we need to accomplish. For da Vinci, that meant tracking everything from vocabulary words to observations in anatomical research.

Da Vinci’s to-do list was nothing short of incredible. A team at NPR (National Public Radio) worked to decipher his impressive to-dos and a sampling reveals that da Vinci imagined tackling far more than a lifetime’s worth of work.

According to The Royal Collection Trust, where these manuscripts first publicly appeared, da Vinci employed some rather unusual items in his checklists:

“Leonardo lists spectacles, stockings, shoelaces, a pane of glass, a fine-tooth bone saw, forceps and a skull as just some of the items that he thought he might need for a journey,” Shlain writes. “He reminds himself to obtain a skull, to get his books on anatomy bound, to observe the holes in the substance of the brain, to describe the tongue of the woodpecker and the jaw of a crocodile, and to give the measurement of a dead man using his finger as a unit.”

Da Vinci was also a consummate cook. Many of his notebooks show cost, quality, and quantity of the food he encountered throughout his travels.He also used notes to plan and prepare feasts, shopping, and even used his notebook to plan kitchen remodels for the castle of Duke of Milan.

List it like Leonardo: Follow Da Vinci’s lead and take advantage of checklists and to-do lists. It’s tough to tackle everything on your list, but we can use exemplary models like da Vinci to help propel our work.

4. Cross-pollinate

Blending both the arts and sciences was extremely crucial to da Vinci’s work.

For him, everything was literally connected to something else. And contrary to popular belief, he was not a solitary figure, churning out ideas. He relied on the outside world and others to help empower and enrich his ideas.

In addition, his observations from other aspects of nature — animals and plants — helped shape his ability to study everything from fashion to psychology, and even fostered his understanding of mechanics.

Make connections the way Da Vinci did: Track your personal ideas and observations everywhere you go. It’s tough to steal away moments amidst today’s digital chaos, but when the moment strikes you, sketch out an idea on paper or a Moleskine when you’re out and about. It’s amazing how a few moments away can connect your ideas and thoughts to help solve your most frustrating challenges.

5. Promote Yourself

It’s hard to self-promote and market ourselves when we’re looking for a job, but da Vinci had it down — because he had kept such detailed notebooks of his work. When he was trying to land a job working for a leader in Milan as a military engineer, da Vinci spelled out his accomplishments with a list of ten ways he could help. He covered everything from advanced knowledge of military engineering to the ability to draft plans for indestructible bridges that could be moved easily in the heat of battle.

Take inspiration from Da Vinci when selling yourself: Just like the biggest companies in Silicon Valley, you can constantly innovate in your profession and your life to make and change for the better. All it takes is your imagination.

A page from da Vinci’s notebook

How do you think you can use da Vinci’s note-taking techniques? Share your story and tips in the comments.

Written by Taylor Pipes on July 27, 2016. Originally published on the Evernote blog. This post is part of our ongoing Evernote Blog series, “Taking Note,” outlining the storied history and styles of note-taking. Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll explore how the practice of taking notes can improve your creativity and all the work you set out to accomplish.

5 Ways We Can Learn About Note-Taking from da Vinci was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

THE IS ACTUALLY ONE OF THE LEAST WELL KNOWN OF ALL FAMOUS PEOPLE, AND MUCH OF WHAT EVERYBODY THINKS THEY KNOW ABOUT HIM IS NO MORE RELIABLE THAN A FAIRY TALE. — KEITH NIER, THOMAS EDISON HISTORIAN

People love building up stories about famous people to legendary status. That’s why we all think that the coldest winter Mark Twain spent was a summer in San Francisco. In reality, studies of his writing indicate that Twain never said it.

On a similar note, it’s difficult to question the epic work ethic of prodigious inventor Thomas Edison. His work has been responsible for thousands of patents and his inventions have had ramifications on how we live and work to this day.

Yet, there is this image of Edison that has long propagated to mythical status around his work. We imagine that he was struck with surges of inspiration and that swell of near-constant ideas was directly correlated to his success as an inventor.

And it turns out that isn’t quite true.

We know because he articulated and captured so many ideas and thoughts into over 3,500 notebooks. A team of researchers at Rutgers has scoured through his notes and discovered very little evidence that proves the electrical confluence of ideas fell from the sky like apples striking Newton’s head, alas, that’s another myth.

After all, Edison did (and, this is true) utter this most famous phrase:

“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration”

Last week, we chatted with Paul Israel about the work his team at Rutgers has accomplished studying thousands of notebooks Edison accumulated. Today, we dive into some of his notes to explore ways he stayed productive. The themes evident in his notes are relatable and transferable into much of the work we do today, including:

• Thinking about the future to imagine how problems can be solved.
• Observing the world around you.
• Embracing collaboration with fellow colleagues and researchers.
• Fostering and embracing creativity.
• Drawing inspiration from sketching.
• Managing the details of life through lists.

Always Discover

Edison’s penchant for peering into the future was nothing short of remarkable.

Decades before the Wright Brothers completed their first successful flight from Kitty Hawk, Edison was tapping his imagination to map and tinker with ideas about flight in his notepad:

a Paines engine can be so constructed of steel & with hollow magnets . . . and combined with suitable air propelling apparatus wings . . . as to produce a flying machine of extreme lightness and tremendous power.

While he definitely nailed some of his seemingly otherworldly predictions, like the future of flight, he missed a few others. Edison envisioned a world where our books would be plated and printed in copper, mostly because it was more economical.

Regardless, Edison championed thinking about the future and because he took mental risks, he has become a pivotal symbol to innovation — always thinking about how to improve processes or create things that made an impact.

Make Observations

Observation is essential to understanding and creativity. Leonardo da Vinci’s observation of birds in flight inspired drawings for futuristic flying machines. Albert Einstein tried to make sense of theories that were validated by science long after his death.

Edison’s free-flowing imagination was also helped by rigorous observation. He used observational insight to help influence his current projects while balancing other ideas that could potentially be something bigger. On one notebook page he was penciling out diagrams for magnets and printing telegraphy, and a few pages later he was jotting down prognostications on the future of flight.

While working on the phonograph, Edison was shown images from renowned photographer, Eadweard Muybridge. The photos illustrated animals in motion and instantly inspired Edison to think about how those images could be conveyed to people.

Suddenly, the work he was doing with the phonograph created a connection to another project, leading eventually to the kinetoscope and motion picture cameras. In drafts for patents he says, “I am experimenting upon an instrument which does for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear.”

Without Edison’s notebook discoveries by the team at Rutgers, we may never have realized that his observations from a photograph served as the impetus for his work with motion pictures. According to Rutgers professor Reese Jenkins, “If we hadn’t looked at his notebooks and draft caveats,” Jenkins points out, “we’d never know what the original impetus for the idea was.”

Constant Collaboration

If you imagine Edison to be the single most important individual behind his inventions, you’d be mistaken. He was never about individual efforts. Everything about his work was directly connected to other contributors. His success was dependent on their success in the lab.

Long before Steve Jobs had Jonathan Ive, Edison had the vision to pull in the people who could help take ideas to fruition.

He also was known for the ‘midnight lunch’ — an endearing term coined by colleagues who would work on projects late into the night. According to author Sarah Miller Caldicott, Edison would leave the lab around 5 p.m. to have dinner with his family, but would return later to check in on the progress his colleagues. It was then, surrounded by a close-knit group of trusted colleagues and the convivial atmosphere, that collaboration took its most pure and meaningful form in the Edison lab.

At about 9 p.m., Edison would order in food for everyone from a local tavern. For an hour or so, the assembled crew would relax, tell stories, sing songs, and even play music together, before heading back to work until the wee hours of the morning. They connected socially, and created a deeper understanding of each other as people and not just workers. This process of midnight lunch transformed employees into colleagues. It served as the foundation for collaboration in all of Edison’s labs. Through midnight lunch, we see the importance of activities that encourage employees to come together in ways that link work with their social lives. For Edison, midnight lunch was crucially important… creating an environment in which collaboration could thrive. It became a powerful link to Edison’s use of small teams as a driver of innovation success.

Today, the equivalent may be a team putting out an order for late-night pizza while they are working hard on pushing out a release update or finalizing a new product feature.

Edison was always keeping his eyes and ears open, watching what others were doing. When he learned that the competition — in one case, Alexander Graham Bell — was nearing completion of a phonograph, Edison called a confab and his closest colleagues and contributors came to a three-day session to help solve the challenge.

The lessons that Edison can teach us about collaboration are vital and very applicable in today’s work world. Many of the following points were integral to Edison keeping forward momentum on his projects:

• Tapping the knowledge of colleagues working in small teams.
• Expecting everyone to have equal weight in the lab and share in all active discussions.
• Emphasizing the process of discovery and learning over simply producing.
• Edison understood that collaboration influences knowledge, which in turn creates tangible assets that can be configured and reconfigured for future projects and inventions.

Ideas & Creativity

Embracing his team’s creativity was a huge asset for Edison. In fact, he encouraged them to contribute ideas, jot down ideas, and sketch out diagrams. The best ideas from his experimenters were identified and developed — keeping creation at a group level rather than favoring individuals.

According to historian Greg Fields, Edison’s keen insight into the creative process was what set his work apart from the rest.

“One of Edison’s greatest overlooked talents was his ability to assemble teams and set up an organizational structure that fostered many people’s creativity,” Fields says.

Draw Your Ideas

Many of Edison’s inventions involved a complex menagerie of parts, machinery, and electrical wizardry. Edison relied heavily on drawings and sketches to help map things out and manage complex concepts in his inventions. They also helped out when it came time to filing for patents.

As Edison pursued the advancement of electricity, his notes and drawings for work on the electric light grew so big they required their own notebook.

Today, there are many scientific links to the power of doodling out ideas by drawing, again showing how well Edison presaged modern productivity methods.

Manage the Things to be Done

And then, of course, there’s one of the world’s most famous to-do lists.

Edison isn’t quite considered the father of the to-do list. But, his lists — especially the four-page ‘things doing and to be done” he created in 1888, established an important system of managing and tracking all the projects he had going on during the opening of his West Orange laboratory and the projects he planned to start.

In the span of a few notebook pages Edison penciled in work he wanted to manage for the cotton picker, the electric piano, ink for the blind, the phonograph, and a chalk battery. While he certainly didn’t complete everything on this massive list, it represented the opportunity to get ideas at many different stages committed to paper.

“He did keep a very careful record of the experimental work. At West Orange, every project was assigned a number. At all of his laboratories, you can find account records and experimental records. He was managing costs, figuring out where things might start to get too expensive,” said Paul Israel.

As we go about our busy days, trying to manage a barrage of media inputs, organize our thoughts, and create our own legacies, the methods of Thomas Edison can serve as a template. They are also a powerful reminder of the power of systematic thinking, teamwork, and, above all, note-taking.

Are you using any of these in your note-taking? If so, Edison would surely be proud. Share your tips and advice for the Evernote community in the comments or on Twitter with #takenote.

Written by Taylor Pipes on March 18, 2016. Originally published on the Evernote blog. This post is part of our ongoing Evernote Blog series, “Taking Note,” outlining the storied history and styles of note-taking. Throughout the coming weeks, we’ll explore how the practice of taking notes can improve your creativity and all the work you set out to accomplish.

Lessons in Collaboration & Creativity from Thomas Edison was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the five-star general and the 34th President of the United States was heralded for his ability to lead and make decisions in times of conflict and duress. He prioritized people and resources above everything else. Even in the darkest hours and most pivotal moments of World War II, Eisenhower was intensely ambitious and steadfastly positive.

And like many of our noteworthy luminaries, there remains a certain, almost apocryphal mystique behind how the legendary leader earned his own power-packed productivity tool. According to legend, the matrix below was attributed to Eisenhower who said, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.” Despite its questionable veracity, there’s not much difficulty in debating Eisenhower’s effectiveness in time management. It’s why the Eisenhower Matrix system exists today. His ability to manage his time and tasks was essentially a decision matrix — a framework for deciding what was important and what wasn’t.

Most recently, the system has been popularized by Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Time management solutions are a helpful antidote to days filled with increasingly blurred deadlines, incessant noise, and excessive disruptions. Today, one of the biggest business challenges (and personal challenges, too), is how we can decide what is urgent and what’s not. Once we clear that hurdle, procrastination melts away, and things start getting done.

The Matrix

Think of a task you need to do today. How do you decide when you’ll get it done, given all the competition from other items on your to-do list? Use the Eisenhower Matrix to help you figure it out Where you decide your task falls within a specific quadrant dictates where, when, and how long you should take to do that task. Take a look:

Quadrant 1 — “Do it immediately”

Type: Urgent and important

These are the tasks and to-dos that need immediate attention. They are very important deadlines with the highest level of urgency.

Quadrant 2 — “Decide when you’ll do it”

Type: Important, but not urgent

This is considered a strategic section of the matrix, perfect for long-term development. Items that belong here are important, but they do not require your immediate attention.

Quadrant 3 — “Delegate to somebody else”

Type: Urgent, but not important

Phone calls, emails, and last-minute meeting requests belong in this quadrant. These types of tasks usually don’t warrant your attention because they don’t produce measurable output. The goal with these tasks is to make an attempt at eliminating and reducing the things that don’t help you do work.

For some, delegation can be an attractive option by offloading work to others so that the calls, emails, and requests can still be handled, freeing you to focus on things that matter in other quadrants.

Quadrant 4 — “Do it later”

Type: Not important, not urgent

Activities that belong in this quadrant are the time-sucking things that don’t contribute any value whatsoever. Simply put, this is the stuff of procrastination — the time-wasters that prevent us from accomplishing the more urgent and important tasks in the first two quadrants. It’s best for you to see them in this quadrant so you can work hard at completely eliminating them from your work day.

Choose your own color

To add a new dimension to your matrix, assign each of the sections in your system a color. The perfect color codes to implement can be modeled after those of firefighters. Assign each color priority level.

For example:

Red = urgent: Do this task immediately

Yellow = important, but it’s not super urgent: Decide when you need to do it.

Green = urgent, not important: Delegate this task!

Grey = not urgent, not important: Dump this task!

If you’re tackling the matrix for your professional goals, you may start to see that many of your to-dos are in quadrants one and three. The biggest payoff comes from actions in the second quadrant.These are the goal-setting and evaluation of business objectives that impact the long-term success of a business, yet, they are rarely classified as urgent.

Be a steward of your most precious resource: time.

1. Make a list of the things you need to do.
2. Label each of the things with a number, one through four (matching the matrix).

Now that you have written your list, you have an accurate representation of the things you need to work on, and what is most pressing.

Urgent vs. important?

It’s a huge challenge to understand the things that take you off your projected course compared to the things that will move the needle. But if we don’t get a handle on this fundamental time management issue, it could leave a lot of us wishing we could get things done instead of actually getting them done.

Instead of focusing on solely the ‘urgent and important’ quadrant of the Eisenhower Matrix, ask yourself these questions to help set the future for your long-term decision-making strategies.

• When will you deal with the tasks that are important, but not urgent?
• When will you take the time to deal with the important tasks before they suddenly become urgent?

If an emergency comes up, your priorities will change. For example, if you own a small business, and a customer calls and asks to speak to a manager about missed expectations, that suddenly takes precedence over other action items in your matrix.

Things to be done

President Eisenhower was able to delegate tasks to his staff. If you don’t have a staff, 25 percent of this matrix is useless. To solve the problem of being a staff of one, implement a to-do list. Assign a number on each task from the list to the quadrant to which it belongs in the matrix.

If you need another way to think about what needs to be done and when, look no further than multi-billionaire, Warren Buffett. He suggests making a list of all the things you have to get done each day. Start with the very top of your list and scratch it off when you have completed it.

To do more — design your time

Here are a few more tips on using the matrix to your advantage so you can accomplish more.

1. To-do lists help ease your mind. How you employ a list is up to you, but make sure you question (much like Mr. Buffett), what you need to accomplish first. Priority is key.
2. The point of each quadrant is to add many actions and tasks, but it will get over-complicated if you have more than seven or eight action items. The goal is accomplishment.
3. Try creating a separate list and matrix for your professional and personal life.
4. Only you get to define the priority level of the action items on your list. Hit the to-do list every morning, and you’ll start to experience how it feels to accomplish your tasks at the end of the day or week.

Use the Eisenhower Matrix in Evernote. Grab this template and save it to your Evernote account. Tip: If you’ll be using it frequently, make it a shortcut!

Written by Taylor Pipes on May 2, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

Work More Effectively and Productively with the Eisenhower Matrix was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re reading the Evernote Blog, chances are you’re someone who loves to get things done. To move the needle.

But have you ever had the suspicion that the way you’re approaching your to-do list and overall task planning is hindering your effectiveness? Perhaps your processes are increasing stress or anxiety (known disruptors to problem-solving) and clouding your creative thought.

The power of progress

It’s interesting to note that according to research, having a sense of making progress with work that matters to us is the most influential factor in maximizing long-term creative output, positive emotions, and motivation. The problem is, for some of us, focusing on what’s next (for example: our to-do lists) means we skate right past our wins, no matter how big or small they are. How do we train ourselves, over time, to notice progress? We already keep a to-do list. Why not add a done list?

A done list is a log of the tasks you’ve completed. Keeping a done list has the power to fortify your motivation, and heighten positive emotions like joy and pride. They can make creative productivity more sustainable by helping you experience a sense of progress for work that matters to you.

Success leaves clues

Renowned entrepreneur and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Netscape, cheekily calls it the “Anti To-Do List.” For years, Google had a process called “Snippets,” which caught fire at companies like FourSquare, Buzzfeed and Shopify. Snippets is the process companies use to gather what employees have accomplished and are working on, typically on a weekly basis. They them make that information internally public so any team member can see what’s happening in other departments. In the case of FourSquare, employees even provide feedback to CEO Dennis Crowley on his Snippets.

All of these systems refer to the process of reflecting and writing down what you’ve done. Creating a list of done items has the almost magical effect of amplifying motivation and productivity at tasks that matter. How amazing would it feel to end each day focusing on your accomplishments, rather than the never-ending mountain of tasks waiting for you come morning?

When we reflect on progress, we practically metabolize it. Jot down completed tasks, and view them as “wins,” or progress towards your final goal(s), and you can externalize and recognize them. ” Writing, like speaking, requires translating thoughts into words, which externalizes those thoughts and allows us to see them for what they are so we can move forward. Clarity affords possibility.

In the process of reviewing and writing down our work, we also often unearth learnings that went unnoticed in real time. Hindsight is 20/20. Looking in retrospect at a completed project allows us to see it within a larger context. We can quickly and more accurately analyze why particular aspects were challenging and the ways in which we succeeded, then apply that awareness to future tasks. For example, if you felt you had a stressful week, you might make this list and notice that your attention was split between too many projects. In the following weeks, you could use new-found knowledge that awareness to reverse-engineer your days to focus on one major project at a time.

Let momentum do part of the work

If you’re planning strategically, meaning you’ve laid out the items on your to-do list comprehensively to achieve particular ends, accomplishing a discrete task or set of related tasks is a “win.” Researchers have long noted the particular power of the small win, which organizational psychologist Karl Weick defines as “a concrete, complete, implemented outcome of moderate importance.”

Weick shows that small wins have power beyond themselves. “Once a small win has been accomplished, forces are set in motion that favor another small win,” Weick explained. “When a solution is put in place, the next solvable problem often becomes more visible.”

If reflecting on our wins makes them seem more “real,” and small wins help generate more and often larger wins, the least we can do is write down our accomplishments, right?

The link between wins, emotion, and motivation

Wins also heighten positive emotions and intrinsic motivation, which result in more creative productivity.

In The Progress Principle, psychologists Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer analyzed over 12,000 journal entries written by 238 company employees. They discovered that on days when employees experienced progress, they reported positive emotions like joy and pride. We’re more productive when we’re happy. In other words, positive emotion is a win for everyone.

In their research, Amabile and Kramer discovered something fascinating: contrary to the commonly held belief that negative pressure creates better performance, on “progress days,” people were more intrinsically motivated. In other words, on days when employees felt progress and the positive emotions that come with that, they were more inspired to work based on interest in the work itself rather than by extrinsic sources like praise and encouragement. On “setback days,” though, people were both less intrinsically and extrinsically motivated.

Given that we can’t always control external sources of motivation, like recognition from our boss, family and peers, drawing from our internal well of motivation by recognizing wins is a success strategy. The done list means that we can create motivation no matter where we find ourselves or what’s happening around us.

How to implement done list psychology

Keeping a done list in addition to your to-do list is a quick and simple way to increase success and well-being. How do you create these lists in a way that fits your needs?

Here are some approaches to try:

• Every Friday, set aside 10 minutes to jot down your wins for the week. If it’s helpful and relevant, after each task you complete, write any learnings or changes you’d like to implement in the future. Research suggests that handwriting activates different, critical areas of the brain than typing.
• Keep a done list for each project you work on. This can help you experience a sense of progress at a discrete goal, especially one that feels hairy or overwhelming.
• Encourage any teams you manage or work with to periodically discuss progress. This could mean starting meetings by having each team member share their recent wins — what they’ve done — or asking people to email their points of progress to their relevant managers.

How do you recognize your progress for maximum results? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Written by Valerie Bisharat on April 12, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

Do vs. Done Lists: Jot Down Your Small Wins to Amplify Success was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“Imagination does not become great until human beings, given the courage and the strength, use it to create.” — Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori’s legacy reshaped the field of education, introducing the philosophy that we learn and grow best by following an innate path of self-development. She knew what she was talking about — she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize an astounding six times, and her image was even on Italy’s 1,000 Lire banknote. She urged her students — both children and adults — to “trust that you know what you’re doing.” It worked in classrooms when we were children, and it works in the workplace today.

An educational rebel

In the late nineteenth century in Italy, when Maria Montessori was born, girls had only two career choices: to be either a teacher or a nun. But that didn’t stop Maria. She was an excellent student, passionate about her education, and ambitious. Her parents certainly didn’t hamper their daughter’s natural enthusiasm for learning. They were both avid readers and well-educated themselves. They also had the means to support their daughter in doing something that bordered on scandalous. Montessori entered an all-boys technical school at 13 to study engineering (where she was required to spend recess inside to avoid being tormented by her male peers). After graduating high school, she decided her next step was another male-dominated field — medicine. Hey, the girl liked a challenge.

Montessori applied to, and was rejected by, the University of Rome’s medical program, ostensibly due to her lack of knowledge of classical languages. Undaunted, she studied for two more years, then reapplied. The university finally had to admit her. Still, it was considered too risqué for her to work on cadavers in mixed company, so she did so in the evenings, alone. Boundaries be damned. Maria Montessori graduated in 1896, the first woman in Italy with a medical degree.

Forging her own path

Montessori’s early medical practice focused on psychiatry, which was still in its infancy (Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams, for example, was published in 1899, and took eight years to sell all 600 copies). She also attended courses on education, where she developed a deep interest in educational theory, especially in the ways children with intellectual and developmental disabilities were treated. In 1900, she launched a new training institute for special education teachers. This gave her a place to experiment with different teaching methods. In 1907, she opened the Casa dei Bambini, a childcare center for unsupervised poor children. There, she designed the classroom environment and the learning materials to foster what she believed was each child’s natural desire to learn.

International influence

Montessori’s approach to education was enthusiastically adopted internationally and in her native Italy. When Benito Mussolini seized power in 1922, Montessori, who had been traveling and lecturing aboard, returned to Italy to accept the position he offered her, that of “Chief Educator.” Blending politics and education didn’t work out so well for Montessori, however. She fled the country in 1934, after refusing Mussolini’s dictate that her schools pledge their allegiance to fascism. Mussolini retaliated by shutting more than 70 Italian Montessori schools. Meanwhile, Montessori headed to India, where she spent time with Gandhi, who was a huge proponent of the Montessori system; he taught the children in his ashrams using a similar technique. Her friendship with Gandhi and her continued focus on pacifism influenced Montessori’s books Education for Peaceand Education for a New World.

Learning in its natural state

Montessori founded her method on the observation that children who are placed in a rich, unstructured environment learned naturally. An educator could simply provide opportunities for the natural stages of learning to flourish. Her schoolrooms were equipped with child-sized furniture (radical for the time). She trained teachers to give children the freedom to play however they liked with “spontaneous discipline.” It was so successful that by 1910, the Montessori Method was known worldwide. Today, there are 22,000 Montessori schools in at least 110 countries.

Interact and learn: The Montessori Method

Another educational innovation Montessori introduced was based on the then-new concept that we learn by interacting directly with our environment. She also concluded that children learn things, then build upon what they learn, moving to the next step naturally, without the need for a forced, inflexible lesson plan.

All of Montessori’s theories can be great for grown-ups, too. How many of us get stuck in the way we’ve always done something, rather than reacting to what’s actually happening? Instead of imposing a one-size-fits-all solution or way of thinking, trust yourself to develop your own path.

Freedom and challenge: Not just for kids

If you’re hitting too much resistance, you may not be using the right tools, or maybe you’re working toward the wrong goal.

Even as adults, we “fall behind” when we try to force something too early. Meeting an arbitrary norm isn’t a good reason to set a goal. For example, there’s no rule that says you should have a good grasp of a foreign language after two years’ study, or that you should have mastered a software program after a month of using it. Someone just made that up, and it doesn’t take individual circumstances into consideration. The Montessori Method trusts that kids will guide themselves to an appropriate stage of learning. It works for adults, too.

Individual paths: forge ahead

For self-guided learning to work, the Montessori educational model relies on a methodical progression from one level to the next. Students tackle lessons in the way that works best for them. First, discover the best learning style for you. Once you get that, you can turn up the gas.

Montessori believed in “sensitive periods,” a developmental stage in which a student has the most to gain from a new experience. When in a sensitive period, a child shows an intense interest in a certain activity or type of play until a new skill has been mastered. Adults do it, too, becoming enamored of certain hobbies or interests. The key is trusting that your interests have value. Pay close attention to your enthusiasm — what is it guiding you toward? That’s where you’ll shine.

Montessori believed that all students to develop strong “self-regulation,” the ability to educate yourself, know what is being learned, and assess the learning experiences. Where is your work style weak? Where are you strong? Determining each aren’t value judgments, they’re information tools to help you get to where you want to go.

Goals and structure: We still need ‘em

Montessori insisted on uninterrupted blocks of work time. Without interruptions to disrupt that groove, you’ll have the mental space to make crucial connections and let those discoveries sink in. Block out uninterrupted work, play or creativity time just for you. It’s crucial for creative thinking and innovation.

Mentorship and Community: Connect

Montessori also relied on the community created by mixed age groups. Younger kids look up to older ones as supportive, helpful figures. Older kids enjoy playing the role of mentor. For adults, many of our best mentors may not be rock star success stories, but rather people who are just a few steps further along the same path. A mentor can either be someone who’s been where you are now, or who has already arrived where you want to be. Ask them for advice or just try some of their approaches.

Applying the Lessons: Get out there

Montessori recognized that for children, their play is their work, especially activities which appear creative, abstract, and fun. Take that concept and run with it: It’s all good. Embrace things that don’t have a clear path to profit or external growth. Time spent doing something creative and (un)constructive is still totally worthwhile.

“Respect your process,” “Find your groove,” and “Work hard, play hard.” These are not just tee-shirt mottos, they’re proven educational approaches. Take it from Dr. Montessori: You can get where you need to go by respecting your own way of doing things. Wander from someone else’s game plan. Grab some quiet time. Play to your strengths, and yes, play as hard as you work.

Written by Barbara Atkinson on March 14, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

How The Montessori Method Applies to Today’s Workplace was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

From the moment we wake in the morning, we’re tempted.

Reach for the phone. Check texts. Read email. Scroll through social feeds. Add a few clicks to news stories and before long, you’ve logged what will likely be the first of more than 76 daily interactions with your mobile device.

Even though mobile devices have increased our access to information and ability to communicate with others, they’ve also introduced barriers that could negatively impact our work.

By understanding how to distance ourselves from distractions and improve time management, we have a better chance to dive deeper into our thinking and reach new heights of productivity.

Battle for our attention

Today, we are engaged in a battle for attention — from a cascading waterfall of social streams, news articles, chatter, and digital noise. We unlock our iPhones an average of 80 times and rack up more than 4.7 hours actively engaged with our mobile device each day.

Thirty percent of our daily media consumption is spent surfing the internet. It’s not just social noise, either. The average American watches 35 hours of television a week, and our viewing habits have taken a dramatic tilt from televisions to devices.

In the ultimate sign that change is afoot in response to our shifting spans of focus, the National Basketball League (NBA), a stalwart of the American sports scene, is exploring ways to speed up the end of games to satisfy shrinking attention spans.

According to a recent survey commissioned by Microsoft, we lose our focus faster than a goldfish. The glaring takeaway was a quote in the report by Microsoft chief Satya Nadella, who signaled the trait most essential to modern employees seeking success: “The true scarce commodity of the future will be human attention.”

Deeper connection to our work

The idea of ‘deep work’ is nothing new. The term was recently coined by Cal Newport, a professor, scientist, and author of “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World.”

According to Newport, deep work is classified as ‘professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limits.’

It’s been practiced in some ways or another by everyone from Carl Jung to United States President Barack Obama.

• President Obama, a well-known ‘night guy,’ logged time deep into the evening from his office, reading, writing speeches, preparing memos, examining documents, and thinking. He’d be able to finish things during the late night hours that drew constant focus from the leader of the free world during the day. “Everybody carves out their time to get their thoughts together. There is no doubt that window is his window,” said Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s first chief of staff. “You can’t block out a half-hour and try to do it during the day. It’s too much incoming. That’s the place where it can all be put aside and you can focus.”
• Carl Jung was so passionate about decoupling from the trappings of the world, he built a stone complex in Switzerland he could retreat to when he needed to reflect, think, and write. In his memoir, Jung credited the escape as being important to helping him be satisfied, sufficient, and restful.

These two examples seem almost contradictory. In fact, they are classic illustrations of escaping to a place of comfort as a way to get stuff done. If deep work is a vehicle for concentration and thinking that produces work, it can happen in the Oval Office or in the mountains of Switzerland. It’s the ritual, scheduling, and location of the work that matter.

FOMO

Newport examined the cognitive impact that social media and office distractions have, and the importance of undivided attention in completing meaningful work. By removing distractions, he argues, we can move beyond “shallow work” to reach new levels of productivity and produce a substantial amount of work.

Of course, social media is not bad, and we’d be silly to suggest otherwise. Most of us have an irrational fear of missing out, (FOMO) — so we’ve become dependent on social media, groomed to always check in. But, if we understand that distraction can negatively impact our deep work, then we can start to take steps to help us focus on complicated cognitive functions. What do we get out of that? We’re rewarded with mastery of complicated tasks, better information processing, and producing more in less time.

“We have a growing amount of research which tells us that if you spend large portions of your day in a state of fragmented attention — where your regular workflow is constantly broken up by taking frequent breaks to just check in with social media — that this can permanently reduce your capacity for concentration,” said Newport.

Much of social media is specifically built to fragment your time. Not unlike a slot machine, it rewards you with “shiny things” — likes, hearts, retweets, comments, and other positivity in exchange for time. Before long, your day becomes disrupted as you push, pull, and swipe for updates and notifications.

Even a quick glance at Twitter or reviewing an email has a negative impact on your ability to focus on tasks. In fact, that one quick glance costs you about 15 to 20 minutes of attention loss. Our brains are simply not wired for that level of distraction. The barrage of the social media world is changing the landscape of our brain’s reward centers. In addition to impacting our cognitive ability to get work done, it also concerns medical professionals, who are seeing increased rates of anxiety other psychological issues among college students.

Distractions are a growing part of interruptions knowledge workers experience in the office on a daily basis. It’s not just self-imposed interruptions from social media. In the office, we’re bombarded with instant messages, chat and communications from colleagues using collaboration software, email notifications, co-worker “drive-bys,” last-minute meeting requests, and even distractions caused by open floorplans designed to bring us closer together.

The New Economy

A new competitive information economy is here. And Newport argues that it’s one that will reward workers who understand that the currency is work that produces ‘unambiguously rare and valuable output.

“Our work culture’s shift toward the shallow … is exposing a massive opportunity for the few who recognize the potential of resisting this trend and prioritizing depth…:” Newport writes in Deep Work.

The rarest commodity of all is the employee who’s able to devote significant time to deep work and its byproduct — high-quality material that is incredibly difficult to automate or to replicate by a machine, an algorithm, or globalization.

“Anything a six-year-old can do with a smartphone is not something the market will reward,” Newport says.

Deep work is a tool you need to build and produce things like a craftsman. Think of the time it takes a glassblower to perfect a beautifully-sculpted vase, or how a master woodworker uses both art and craft to create furniture worthy of display in a museum.

Computer programmers, visual designers, academics, and writers all have a huge competitive advantage because of this ability to concentrate and turn out that rare and valuable commodity — the craft that drives the information age.

“If you can write an elegant algorithm, write a legal brief, write a thousand words of prose, look at a sea of unambiguous data — If you can do these types of activities to produce outcomes that are rare and valuable, people will find you — regardless of how many Instagram followers you have.” — Cal Newport

How to create meaningful work

Deep work does not have to be tedious. In fact, it can be enjoyable, creative, meditative, and thought-provoking. Here are some tactics to integrate the principles of deep work into your schedule:

1. Work deeply. It takes great patience and practice to get to the point where you can integrate long stretches of deep work into your schedule. Newport created an equation to explain the intensity required of deep work and compared it to students who pulled all-nighters in college.

Work accomplished = (time spent) x (intensity)

Work at a high level with dynamic and intense intervals that increase over time to produce a desirable outcome. Get in the zone for at least 90 minutes and build up to periods that last anywhere from two to four hours, or more.

2. Protect your time. Maintain a set of rituals and routines to ease deep work into your day more easily. Try implementing scheduling tactics into your workflow like:

Tallies — Keep a tally of the hours you spend working, or when you reach important milestones like pages read or words written.

Deep scheduling — Try scheduling deep work hours well in advance on a calendar, like two or four weeks ahead of time.

Scheduling and tracking time has a huge benefit of giving time back. Many academics, authors, and scientists have been able to produce ample amount of work while working normal hours and having time for personal pursuits or family on evenings and weekends.

3. Train your brain to do nothing. Try for a moment, to sit still and do nothing. How long do you find it takes until the social stimuli and buzzing signals of your mobile device prove too much? If you can embrace sitting quietly meditating or thinking, or even staring into space, then you can train your brain to spend more time in deeper work.

4. Quit swimming upstream. Decide for yourself what restrictions you can place on email and social media by removing it from your work week altogether, or by logging out and staying off for an entire day. Evaluate your personal and professional life and experiment where social fits and where it doesn’t. Your result may be a month-long digital detox, or completely cutting the cord on social.

5. Cut the shallow work. Endless meeting requests and instant email responses are turning knowledge workers into ‘human routers’ that create the shallow work that defines many of workplaces. We’ve been groomed to reply and respond because it feels like we’re accomplishing something, when in reality, we’re not.

“Spend enough time in a state of frenetic shallowness,” Newport warns, “and you permanently reduce your capacity to perform deep work.”

How are you diving deeper into your work and avoiding distractions? Share your tips with the Evernote community below.

Written by Taylor Pipes on February 23, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

Why Deep Work Matters in a Distracted World was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“You need not expect to get your book right the first time. Go to work and revamp or rewrite it. God only exhibits his thunder and lightning at intervals, and so they always command attention. These are God’s adjectives.” — Mark Twain, in an 1878 letter.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was many things: a steamboat pilot, a prospector, a reporter, a world traveler, a lecturer, an investor (mostly a bad one), an inventor (with three patents; two successful, one not), a father, and, most importantly, the author known as Mark Twain.

What he was not was either particularly organized or industrious.

This is not to say he wasn’t prolific; he turned out novels, essays, plays, reviews, and letters by the score. He just wasn’t a slave to work.

Strike While the Iron Is Hot

Alex Applebaum, in a review of Bernard DeVoto’s 1942 Mark Twain at Work, noted of Twain’s working habits that

Twain worked “sporadically” depending on fits of “inspiration.” Instead of forcing himself to work for a certain amount of time, [he] relied heavily on “improvisation” and would sometimes work furiously for days; sometimes not write at all; sometimes start projects and leave them hanging for years; sometimes finish them quickly … He didn’t finish nearly as much as he started, but, nevertheless, he wrote prolifically. There are still thousands of unpublished pages and ideas he never carried through with.

What can we learn from this? To write and write and write some more — when inspiration strikes. Make note of everything. Don’t censor yourself. Even if an idea may seem useless now, it could well turn into something valuable later. Keep journals, diaries, notes, or even a blog. Even if an idea doesn’t lead anywhere on its own, it may provide the spark for something that does. The only mistake would be to not let your native creativity express itself when the time is right.

What Works Best Is What’s Right for You

While there are indeed times when we want to write or communicate your ideas with a specific goal or project in mind, don’t let not having a specific result hinder you. Twain’s approach in this regard was noted when the revised edition of his autobiography was published in 2010. Robert H. Hirst, the General Editor of the Mark Twain Project and the Curator of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkeley, told NPR’s David Bianculli that

Twain … “hit upon the right way to do an autobiography” … What he had discovered … was the art of dictation. Instead of writing down his autobiography, Twain wanted to tell stories to another human being. And instead of telling his life story in chronological order, Twain wanted to talk about what interested him at that moment — and to allow himself to change the subject as soon as his interest flagged.

Twain dictated most of that autobiography from his bed. In 1905, he told A.E. Thomas of The New York Times:

“Whenever I’ve got some work to do I go to bed. I got into that habit some time ago when I had an attack of bronchitis… I liked it so well that I kept it up after I got well. There are a lot of advantages about it. If you’re sitting at a desk, you get excited about what you are doing, and the first thing you know… somebody comes in to attend to the fire, he interrupts you and gets you off the trail of that idea you are pursuing.So I go to bed… Work in bed is a pretty good gospel — at least for a man who’s come, like me, to the time of life when his blood is easily frosted.”

While Twain’s “working” methods may seem both antithetical to productivity and unique to him (how many of us can perform our daily tasks from a comfortable feather bed or dictate our thoughts to a handy stenographer?), there are lessons to be drawn from them. There is much to be said for allowing one’s creativity to flow freely with no inhibitions; to get something down on a page or contributed to a project. You can always develop and edit ideas, but the initial spark of creativity should never be denied. Those ideas may sit fallow for months (or even years), but they exist and you can expand upon them later when you’re ready.

All Work and No Play …

Perhaps Twain’s disdain for traditional working methods had to do with the fact that he didn’t consider what he did to be “work.” In the same Times interview, he told Thomas that he had never done

“…a day’s work in all my life. What I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it.

Who was it who said, ‘Blessed is the man who has found his work?’ Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind…When we talk about the great workers of the world, we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great.”

He expounded on this point in his 1889 novel, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (that savagely ridiculed capitalism and the looming “Golden Age” of plutocrats) by having his surrogate protagonist say:

“Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation and its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him — why certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it’s a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair — but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash, also.”

Today, so many of us get caught up in our day jobs (that can, admittedly, be drudgery) that we don’t allow ourselves to take the time to think, reflect, and enjoy the freedom of expressing ourselves and preserving our own observations and ideas. The thought of actually sitting at a keyboard — or, worse, actually putting pen to paper! — can seem like schoolwork or a chore. But how often do we get the chance to be with ourselves and commit what we really think and feel in a permanent form? Sure, coming up with a pithy tweet or a vague Facebook status is nice, but how much better to give ourselves the freedom to really dig into and examine an idea or a concept to ourselves? It’s not like anyone else has to see it or read it; the mere chance to think and write about an idea develop creative muscles that can be useful when they’re really needed for something to be expressed publically.

There’s No Such Thing as an Original Idea

To duplicate and use Twain’s methods would honor the man who expressed the notion that there were no original ideas; just borrowings and expansions of the work and ideas of others. In 1892, author and humanitarian Helen Keller was accused (and acquitted) of plagiarism. After reading about the case in Keller’s own autobiography, Twain was moved to write her, saying:

“Oh, dear me, how unspeakably funny and owlishly idiotic and grotesque was that “plagiarism” farce! As if there was much of anything in any human utterance, oral or written, except plagiarism! The kernel, the soul — let us go further and say the substance, the bulk, the actual and valuable material of all human utterances — is plagiarism. … It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a telephone or any other important thing — and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. With this in mind, it almost behooves us to expose ourselves to as much knowledge and inspiration we can find from any source in order to synthesize it and, ironically, make it our own. Read anything you can. Write down notes and observations.”

(The edited versions of Twain’s own notebooks and journals of just his first 36 years as a writer run to more than 2,200 pages.)

Let inspiration take you to the familiar and imaginary. Travel. People-watch. Get out of your comfort zone and see things and meet people that are “strange” and unfamiliar in order to make them familiar and then share those unique insights with others. Make yourself the most interesting person in the room because you’ve been there and done that — and can express it in colorful and exciting terms. (Though two more precepts from Twain should be noted here: “As to the adjective: when in doubt, strike it out.” and “Use plain, simple language, short words, and brief sentences. That is the way to write English — it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in.” What good are even the best observations if they get lost in the underbrush?)

In his notebook for 1902–1903, Twain may have given his most trenchant tip: “The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time, you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say.” So, if you’ll excuse me, I think I need to now to start over again the beginning …

Written by Dave Sikula on February 17th, 2017. Originally published on the Evernote blog.

Thunder, Lightning, and Revisions — Mark Twain and Creativity was originally published in Taking Note on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.