How to Do an Annual Review That Genuinely Helps You | Tiago Forte

The year-end review most of us attempt starts with goals and ends in self-criticism. Tiago Forte has run one every year since 2008, and he has come to treat goal setting as the last step of the process, almost an afterthought.

Tiago is the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Building a Second Brain and The PARA Method, which have reached more than half a million readers in over twenty-five languages, and his new book is Life in Perspective: The Art and Power of the Annual Life Review. Through Forte Labs, he has taught this practice to more than ten thousand students in over seventy countries. He is also, by his own description, someone who resists self-reflection and does it anyway, which makes him unusually useful on the question of how to start.

The question Tiago offers the person whose year contained something they would rather not open, and the year his entire review became a single long walk Why nearly everyone reaches for their work life first, and where he finds the actual source of most people’s dissatisfaction A daily capture habit with a name, and his sharp reason your AI-generated notes are the wrong raw material for it Three signals he waits for in his own body before committing to anything big, and what he does when only two show up Four principles built to stop a life review from turning into the performance review you dread

If you have ever closed out a year feeling like it went by without you, this is a conversation about getting some of it back.

You can find Tiago at: Website | Tiago’s YouTube | Episode Transcript

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Episode Transcript:

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:00] So somewhere in November or December, a lot of us open up a blank page or maybe a blank document. We list all the goals we had for the year, along with all the things that we could have done better, and we call that an annual review and annual reviews. They’re great, but the way that most people do them is not. My guest today has run an annual review every year since 2008. The first one was actually inspired by a horrifying moment at gunpoint in a favela in Rio, when he was only 23 years old, and he’s developed a very different approach, one that’s not just interesting, but genuinely different and useful. Our guide is Wall Street Journal, bestselling author of Building a Second Brain and founder of Forté Labs, Tiago Forte, whose new book is Life in Perspective the Art and power of the Annual Life Review. In this conversation, you’ll discover why the way most of us were taught to evaluate a year, it often ends up poisoning the whole exercise and becoming kind of useless, maybe even destructive. We’ll talk about the three-part structure. Thiago uses to keep looking back and looking forward from bleeding into each other and getting less clear than more clear. We explore the physical test that he runs in his own body before he commits to anything big, and what he says to the person carrying something from this year that they would rather not open when reflecting. So excited to share this conversation with you. I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project, and we’ll jump right in after this short break.

Jonathan Fields: [00:01:33] The topic that we’re diving into today is something that’s been a deep fascination of mine curiosity. So I’ve loved learning your lens on this. Most people do some kind of annual review, whatever they might call it. And if they do it at all, they do it when they’re kind of kicking back at the end of the year, wondering where the days went, the months went. Maybe they blinked and they felt like the whole year went by, and they maybe want to take a little bit of stock and think about the year to come. Your annual review process was inspired literally not by that, but at gunpoint some 20 years ago. Take me there.

Tiago Forte: [00:02:11] Yes. Um, I was 23. Uh, so therefore, believing I was invincible. And along those lines, I, I went to study abroad in Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil for a semester. And I thought, I’m not going to live in the, you know, in the student housing or in the normal places. Let me go live in the favela, which is the Brazilian term for slum. Part of the reason was to save money. Part was to volunteer and teach English at a school there. And, uh, I was just I spent six months there, I did all that, studied, I volunteered, and then I think it was like the very last day that I was leaving the favela. I decided, let me just film, let me just film a little bit of my street, my house, my neighborhood. And that was where it all kind of started going wrong. Because I actually knew this. I knew that the. So the favelas in Rio, every favela is controlled by a different drug trafficking group. They’re kind of like gangs or cartels. And the headquarters, the home of the leader of the drug trafficking group in my favela lived on my street.

Tiago Forte: [00:03:22] And I was so just naive or innocent or just mindless, thoughtless that I. I’m filming the street where this guy lives and his guards who are, you know, holding these big, like, military machine guns, they just look at me and they just go, what are you. They just can’t believe it. They this one particular guy, his name is Chucky. He looks like he’s a commando. He’s like, all decked out and, you know, fatigues with his machine gun and his ammunition belt across his chest like something out of a movie. Uh, confronts me angrily and accuses me of being a police informant, an undercover journalist, all sorts of things. And he takes me. He takes me at gunpoint to the traffickers headquarters, where they question me. And after showing them the footage on my little camcorder, they released me. But I definitely had that moment that they talk about of your life flashing before your eyes. That’s not a metaphor, except with one key difference. It wasn’t my past life that was flashing before my eyes. It was my future life. All the things that I would never get to have and experience and be.

Jonathan Fields: [00:04:34] Mhm. Yeah. I mean, what a moment. Um, how does that then lead to you saying I need to, in some way, shape or form get more serious about understanding where I’ve been and also getting clear about where I want to go.

Tiago Forte: [00:04:52] It started small. It started small. You know, I, I am not a natural at self-reflection. It doesn’t come naturally to me. It’s not something I, I it’s kind of like exercise. I enjoy it once I’m doing it, but I don’t exactly look forward to it. I kind of resist it. I’m like, oh, do I have to? It’s like a, uh, um, and, uh, and that first year I just spent like 15 minutes or 30 minutes or something just writing down three goals on a, on a piece of paper. That was how it started. It was so brief, but then that produced results. I found, oh, this thing of writing down your goals that all the research says is effective. You know, it does work. And year after year I just started adding, just adding one more practice at a little meditation, add a little journaling, just always the best practices that you hear about, you know, they really do work and they especially work together, right? There’s no silver bullet. But if you bring together and assemble all these practices in a concentrated period, I mean, it is really transformative, is what I found.

Jonathan Fields: [00:06:02] Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting to hear you say that. And I love the idea that you had this one traumatic experience two decades ago that kind of makes you realize, um, in a blink of an eye, I could have not had the entire future of my life. And now when I step into the future, you realize that I actually do have it. Let me get more intentional. You’re 23 years old at that time, so I wouldn’t expect you to do a whole lot to spend like hours or days going deep into a process, but it sounds like that like a switch was flipped for you. Yeah. That said, I need to think a little bit more intentionally about this moving forward and then over the years, just added to and built and built and built until you have this process. I don’t think you know this. We’ve known each other for quite a while now, but this project, Good Life project, which has been around for 14 years right now. It actually would not exist. But for the fact that at the end of 2011, I actually did my own annual review and I was kind of making it up. I was, you know, like texting a close friend of mine who had done it and then shared it, you know, back in the blogging days when that was the thing to do. And he would share this giant post with thousands of words. And I was like, oh, that’s kind of cool.

Jonathan Fields: [00:07:16] And I did it originally because like, I bet this would make for good content to share for other people. I didn’t really intend it to affect me all that much. I just thought it would be really good. And I started doing it. And then I couldn’t stop because I just found it so powerful and so helpful to me and so revealing. And close to a month later, I end up with this 40 page designed annual report, um, that I reference for years later as sort of a compass for me, but at the very end of it, the last page I created just a graphic that said, like my Ten Commandments for epic business or something. Something silly like that posted them. That graphic kind of went viral all over the place, and at the end of it, I teased, I said, hey, next year I’m going to be launching this thing called Good Life Project., so keep your eyes peeled. I had no idea what this was or wasn’t going to be. I just loved the name. And that turned into this now project, which has changed my life and touched millions in various different ways, almost entirely started because, you know, some almost 15 years ago now, at the end of the year, I was like, let me just take a moment to take stock. It’s it’s remarkable what this can set in motion.

Tiago Forte: [00:08:34] I love that I had no idea, I had no idea. And this is so cool. This is so serendipitous because you are you’re a participant. You are you have experience with this thing that I’m talking about an annual review.

Jonathan Fields: [00:08:48] Yeah, it’s pretty wild. So somebody joining us and they kind of like, okay, so what are we actually talking about? Like, what is this thing called an annual review? And why? Why might I even think about doing this? What’s the value in it? So walk me through those two different things.

Tiago Forte: [00:09:04] Yes, yes. So first, what is it? It’s really a, an annual space, a space and a time. Those are the fundamental, the first ingredients that you set aside that you that you preserve, that you protect to look across the entire landscape of your life. Like really, when I say, look, I don’t mean just like, look, I mean, like, look.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:30] Peel the layers back.

Tiago Forte: [00:09:31] Yes. Look like, look at it, see it, dive into it, unpack it, deconstruct it. See in the deepest sense of the term, I’d say that’s the, that’s the basic definition. You don’t, you can take actions out of it. You can come up with goals or new projects. But I think it’s important that it begins with seeing, understanding, and feeling, not because the constant tendency of achiever types like us is to go straight to the finish line, straight into implementation.

Jonathan Fields: [00:09:59] Why do it then? You know, especially because somebody’s going to be like, okay, like it sounds, you know, it could be valuable. And but if you don’t, if you’re not doing it because you’re trying to, quote, set up something that’s coming next, what’s the value of it? Independent of that.

Tiago Forte: [00:10:19] It puts in place the foundation, the building blocks for. Yes, for that future that you’re, you’re trying to set up or you’re envisioning, but also so many other things in the future that you can’t even imagine. So what is that foundation? It’s gratitude. If you’re not grateful, if you don’t appreciate what’s happened in your past, you’re not going to be in the right mindset to to design that future. It’s awareness and self self-awareness. Self-understanding. Why do you do what you do? Why do you believe what you believe? What do you believe in the first place? Um, but also really appreciating and savoring the things that have already happened. That’s the basis of everything you’re seeking in the first place. What? What is every goal ultimately aiming towards fulfillment, satisfaction. Meaning, um, happiness. So what if, what if those things were not far off in the future at the end of this long, arduous journey? What if they were like, hiding in your past and your present and just waiting to be kind of unearthed and, and examined?

Jonathan Fields: [00:11:29] Yeah, I love the idea of it serving the role of appreciation or savoring. Um, and this is in fact, one of sort of like three Guideposts that you offer in thinking about how you might sort of like the macro structure of doing this. Um, especially because, you know, we’re so many of us have heard this phrase negativity bias. You know, we are so primed to look at everything that we didn’t do to look at everything that went wrong, to look at all the things that still aren’t accomplished. Like we just go there so easily. And we chastise ourselves about it. You know, like we’re just like, here, here’s the year of things that I told myself mattered and I did not do or accomplish or feel like we don’t have any trouble going there. We kind of go there with way too much ease because we’re wired that way. Right? And what you’re inviting us to do is say, like, even if this doesn’t lead to something grand and new, there’s value in the process of looking back and saying, but what went right? Mhm. You know, and I feel like that really does just change the way that we think about the time that we’ve spent. Does that land?

Tiago Forte: [00:12:32] Yeah. Sometimes the and I teach a course where I teach this and coach people. So I always have these, these, these anecdotes, these stories of, of people in mind. But sometimes what comes out of it is that you realize all your goals are wrong. That they’re they’re coming from a place of insufficiency or trying to prove that you’re good enough or to please your parents. So in that case, the best outcome is to get rid of those goals or to change your goals. Um, so you can’t exactly, this is something it’s a little hard to explain, but I, I can’t exactly promise what you’re going to get out of the annual review. Sometimes, often it’s the opposite of what you think you want. Or the opposite of what you think you need. Because there is an inner self there, whether you call it a soul or spirit or subconscious that has its own truth, that knows things that your prefrontal cortex may not know. So in a sense, you are handing over the reins just just for this one practice, not the whole rest of the year. You’re in charge. But for this one time you’re saying, let me let my life speak to me. Let that inner voice just run the show for for this time. And you’re often very surprised what you hear.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:48] It reminds me of something that, uh, a question, um, that I have returned to so many times in my life that was posed to me by a guy named Matthew Crossman who teaches a course at Yale called The Life Worth Living, which, which he says is the most frustrating course for any student because it’s all questions and no answers. But the question that he posed, which I think really lands with what you’re saying here, is he said, so many of us ask, what do we want? He said, but the question beneath the question is, what’s worth wanting?

Tiago Forte: [00:14:15] Mhm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:16] And I revisit that so often because so many times I get it wrong. And I think so many of us do. And then we get it and we’re like, but I don’t feel the way I thought it would make me feel because it wasn’t actually worth wanting or devoting energy to. And it feels like you’re talking about this process helps you tease that out. Yeah, it helps you process and understand when that happens and how to sort of like how to navigate things differently moving forward, maybe.

Tiago Forte: [00:14:40] And the answer changes also.

Jonathan Fields: [00:14:42] Yeah.

Tiago Forte: [00:14:42] Um, this is why the annual the annual part is so important. There’s no one time practice that you then solve the future. Uh, I’m amazed how every year, the thing that was meaningful and worth wanting last year is not this year. And next year it’s going to be altogether. Sometimes altogether different. Um, we go through seasons and sometimes a season is a year, six months, three months.

Jonathan Fields: [00:15:07] So agree with you. Before jumping on here, I actually found that annual report that I had written 15 years ago because I wanted to kind of see where was I at? And it’s almost like somebody else wrote it, you know, because it’s just things are so different. I want such a different things. And I see so much of what I put in there, even though I achieved a lot of it really wasn’t worth wanting. It didn’t give me what I, what I thought it would give me. So, so I agree with that. Take, um, you offer up kind of just a really interesting, simple meta frame for how to think about completing this. We’ve kind of already dropped into it because part one is appreciate the past. This is the appreciation. Look back. Walk me through the two other pieces of this.

Tiago Forte: [00:15:50] Yes. So the other two are reflect on the present. And the third one is create the future. And they’ll spell out R, a, r, c. And in a way. So those three correspond to the three dimensions of time, right. The past, present and future. But the reason I divide it that way I found is they’re almost require completely different mindsets. It’s good to segment them and even seek. I talk about this, seek different environments, use different tools, move your body in different ways. Um, you can almost think of them as for the past, it’s a gratitude practice for the present. It’s a presence practice because often thinking about the far past and far future can be a way to dissociate and avoid the present.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:39] And of course, I’ve never done that.

Tiago Forte: [00:16:41] No no no no.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:41] No.

Tiago Forte: [00:16:42] Never never. And then the future is a creativity. It’s primarily a creativity practice. And it’s the the union of those three, the way they inform each other and they complement each other, that creates something more than the sum of its parts.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:58] So let’s go a little bit deeper on these like so reflect on the present part of it. Right? Give me a little bit more guidance on what I might focus on, and maybe also what I might not focus on when I’m in this moment.

Tiago Forte: [00:17:10] So what not to focus on. Let’s start there. I find, you know, before I even decided to go ahead and write this book, I read all the existing books. There’s so many. You know, part of me was like, am I really going to do another, you know, design your life once a year book? Like, is that really my, my highest contribution? And what I noticed in almost all of them pretty much was there’s a central part of what they recommend, which is something along the lines of a gap analysis, right? Divide your life into these chunks. Analyze them always, pretty much always from a pretty intellectual kind of mental perspective. Rate them maybe on a scale of 1 to 10, you know, rank, rank them, go to the bottom. It’s all very, it’s like a business process, right? And I’ve done those and there can be value in that. But in my coaching of people and my teaching, I find that there’s a kind of information that only the present has. There’s certain kinds of information that only the past has, and only the future has in the present, it’s mostly emotions, it’s emotions, it’s sensations, it’s instinct, intuition. All these are are only exist in the present, really. And so that’s what I have people focus on. There’s two exercises. One is dissatisfaction journaling. So really get into the roots of your dissatisfaction. Complain, moan. Feel the. The the wrongness, the not enoughness of whatever part of your life comes to mind. And then the other one is an excitement map. So then go to the opposite end of the spectrum and try to tap into using kind of drawing and visual media. What is most alive for you? What is most alive in you right now?

Jonathan Fields: [00:19:00] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Yeah, I love the fact that, um, you offer tools because I think this is one of those things where so many of us are actually sort of so disconnected, so perpetually disconnected from the present moment, from our present experience. Like if you ask somebody, what are you feeling half the time, I think we say, I’m not entirely sure. Like, what are you thinking? Well, which of the 10,000 thoughts do you want right now? So to have just a simple processes and tools to actually say, let me pause, let me actually end this sort of like the dissatisfaction thing. Yeah, I think a lot of us can go there pretty quickly. Like, what am I, what don’t I like about my present? But again, giving the tools also to counter that and say like, what’s good and what’s right in the here and now, even as I sit here. Yeah. You know, give me an example. Like if you were literally sitting here right this second, give me sort of like a snapshot version of this.

Tiago Forte: [00:19:55] I have this sort of guideline, this, this technique, I guess, called the three signs of yes. And it’s really to look at the specific, like really specific, tangible physical sensations that arise in your body as you consider your various goals and projects and commitments. It’s a really interesting exercise. I mean, I can, I can do it right now. It takes some getting used to and some practice. But if I just think about something I’m considering doing, say, for next year, and I’m already starting to sort of think about my year end review in a few months. But one thing we’re doing is seeking to to publish a scientific paper on our work. It’s something that we’re, we’re preparing for. So when I think about that, I notice heat on my face. That could also be the, uh, the sun through the window. So I always like to look for three of them. It’s interesting too, that I. As the idea changes, I can I reconsider its form, its shape. Different sensations come up like the prospect of working with a real scientist, a real researcher, and imagining sitting down or getting on Zoom and talking to them gives me this like, rising feeling like in the middle of my back. And then third, let’s see if there’s a third. There’s not a third. So what I would take from that is the idea is still not quite there. It’s not quite there. We can look at its shape, how it’s going to play out, the form that it takes. But I think what I’ve taken from that practice is making it a filter for what I commit to. And over time, as as I only commit to things that provoke at least three physical sensations in my body. And sometimes those are fear. It’s not necessarily positive. Yeah. Like sometimes it can be a fear, like right at the bottom of my stomach. But that could also be a reason that that means it’s the at the edge of my comfort zone. That means that it involves growth. So that could also be a reason to take it on.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:04] Yeah. So the idea then is to sort of pick something. And if we’re in the present frame, right, like pick something that’s going on in your life now. Um, and rather than try and think your way, like, how do I feel about this? You’re dropping into your body more, you’re looking for sensations and letting the, your physiology give you information about how you really feel about this, this experience or this thing that’s in your life. Is that right?

Tiago Forte: [00:22:34] Yes. Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:22:37] Which is so hard for so many to do because we are again, we just want to jump up, you know, above the neck. Yeah. And be like, give me the rational process. Like give me the to do list. Whether like this thing that I’m doing. I’ve just committed to a project. I’m working on a book, I’m doing this thing like, let me, let me make the spreadsheet and figure out, you know, like, how do I feel about this? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? Does it go? Does it stay? I love the invitation to say, well, yes. And like, maybe there’s value in that.

Tiago Forte: [00:23:06] Yes.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:06] But there is so much data in your own physiology that we totally ignore.

Tiago Forte: [00:23:11] I think it’s the for this kind of person, the achiever, the intellectual, the hard worker, the person who identifies with their mind and their intellect, I, I feel this is the greatest untapped source of information is the information in the body.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:30] Yeah, I completely agree with you. So if we’re really thinking about the future and then we want to. I guess part of it, because you call this not an annual review, but an annual life review. And I wonder if also because you worked with so many people through this process now, I would imagine it’s thousands at this point, um, that we probably have a tendency to just immediately default to let me think about like, let me just do the work review. Like, let me just focus on my professional life and not worry about all the other stuff because that’s really what takes up most of my life and most of my days. Do you see that tendency in people?

Tiago Forte: [00:24:12] Absolutely, universally.

Jonathan Fields: [00:24:15] What’s behind that?

Tiago Forte: [00:24:18] Oh, man. Well, part of it is, I think the the legacy of what we usually call an annual review, uh, for most people, they just. When they think in their mind, what experience do I have with this concept? It is the performance review. That’s. That’s by far the strongest. Your work does play a big role, right? For for a lot of people, that is a central part of their identity. So I didn’t want to throw that away. But I find most people, the, the roots, the the source of their problems, their issues, their dissatisfaction, their pain is in their is in their broader life. It’s in their personal life. It’s not in their workplace.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:01] So if we zoom the lens out, then we say, okay, so work life is your work life is a part of this. What are the other buckets that we’re looking at here?

Tiago Forte: [00:25:09] So it’s funny, I, I, because of my, my, uh, my familiarity with that gap analysis, I don’t exactly name what are like the canonical, these are the ten categories or 12. But I find that there’s the usual suspects. The three big ones are health, finances and relationships. Almost 8,090% of people are going to, if asked to pick one area, are going to choose one of those three.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:34] Yeah. And, um, that resonates with me. That tends to be how I sort of like sort things as well in, in different language, but sort of like similar overarching picture. Um, so we start out with really reflecting or looking back. Step one, look back, appreciate the past focus on like both the things that went well and the things that could have gone differently. Mhm. Um, we move into that middle section reflecting on the present, bring the things that are currently a part of your life and really explore, um, and use not just an analytical approach, but also an embodied approach. Which brings us to the part that I would imagine most people just want to jump straight into first, like out of the gate, which is like creating the future. Mhm. And it would it be right to assume that a lot of folks just want to kind of blow off the first two and get to that last one.

Tiago Forte: [00:26:33] Me included, me included, every year I’m like, oh, I really got to do all these preliminary. I don’t want the preliminary steps. Let me just get to the. I find that part by far the most fun and the most enjoyable.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:44] I wonder if the intensity of the desire to skip straight to the future orientation is also in some way a signal of how you really feel about your present. Does that land at all?

Tiago Forte: [00:27:00] Absolutely. Yeah. It’s it’s two sides to the to the same coin. So this has been has been studied quite a bit. People tend to have a, a time orientation, their past oriented, their present oriented or their future oriented. And what’s interesting is a lot of the, the research kind of concludes that the almost like the best orientation is future. You know, it depends what you mean by best, but there are certainly advantages that that causes you to care about achievement and accomplishment. It causes you to make sacrifices in the present, delay gratification because your attention, your focus is on that future. It causes you to build, to create, to improve, to plan all these things. Um, so there are definitely some advantages. That’s why we keep doing it, right? But there are also some disadvantages. One of them is kind of what you’re, what you’re alluding to is, I mean, think about the typical New Year’s resolution, you know, which most people have not a great association with. It’s like, oh, I’m going to lose £20 this year. And then you can set a timer, like within hours, days, or maybe weeks. That’s over. That’s an example of jumping to future planning and future creation with no, no preparation, no raw materials. And so I really see the past and the present stages as you’re just like, in fact, I ask people to keep a resonance log where every time in the past and present stages, they come across something that just sparks an idea, an emotion, an insight. They write that down. Whatever it is, it can be a word, a phrase, a memory, a scene. And then so when they start the future, they open up this resonance log and it’s like a kid in a candy store. You have in one place every thought that has sparked something for you. And then those are your building blocks and you use those to construct that future.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:56] Mhm. Tell me a little bit more about the resonance log, because my understanding is this is something it’s not something that you start keeping at the moment that you sit down to do your annual life review. The invitation from you is this is a, this is a notebook, whatever it is that you want to use for it, where it’s a go to on a daily basis, maybe it’s, it’s a capture device for things that happen all day, every day throughout the year. Is that right?

Tiago Forte: [00:29:22] Yeah, it often turns into that. Um, I find that I have experience of this from my previous books, but if you tell people, you know, keep a notebook, even a digital app version and you’re like, okay, spend the next year capturing ideas. They’re just like.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:38] Nope.

Tiago Forte: [00:29:38] It’s too, too big of an arc.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:40] Too big. Yeah.

Tiago Forte: [00:29:41] And so it’s almost like the annual review, which I recommend people set aside around at least eight hours for is like a mini experiment. Just spent literally a day the equivalent of a day seeing if this works for you. And then if it does, just, there’s little friction to just continuing that afterwards.

Jonathan Fields: [00:29:58] So basically the invitation is just create a mechanism, a device, maybe it’s even your notes app, whatever it may be, right? And just know it’s kind of there, like I’m going to label it. This is my resonance log. Yes. And when you’re moving through your day, if you just happen to bump up against something that affects you in a particular way, and I’m guessing it’s positive and negative. Right? Note what the thing is and and then write it down. Or you’re really just focusing on the positive here.

Tiago Forte: [00:30:26] It can really be anything. Um but what I’ll say is I’ve often, much of my previous work is on note taking, and I find that people don’t know what to take notes of. They’re kind of, they kind of draw a blank. Journaling is more clear. You know, usually it’s like your diary, like, dear diary, we have, we have models for what that looks like. Or you have a prompt and you respond to a prompt. But with note taking, um, it’s, it’s harder to know. It’s a little more ad hoc, a little more open ended. And so I’m sort of trying to give people a, a concrete thing to take notes about, which is kind of preparing for your annual review. You know, if, if in the weeks or months or even the whole year leading up to your review, if you write down an idea, you have, oh, next year I could do X a change you want to make. I could change that about my health. You have a relationship you want to start or end. That’s an example where you might feel like it’s negative because it’s painful. But like I often find that these like relatively big life changes. We have to, they have to cook a little bit. You have to chew on them. You have to think and feel and consider from different angles. And the resonance log is just a dedicated place to do that.

Jonathan Fields: [00:31:41] So someplace to just keep returning to its seed planting. It’s sort of like so. So then part of the process here is when you finally do sit down to do that year end review, the annual life review, you have something where you can kind of flip back through. Yes. Because so like, we’re not going to remember all those moments when we try and sit down and say like, what’s happened over the last 12 months? So this is a device where you can literally look back and say, oh, right. Like that happened in February. It really mattered. It it lit something up. It triggered something in me. It was important. And had I not written it down, I would have no recollection of it whatsoever because life got busy and I just moved on. Is that the idea?

Tiago Forte: [00:32:23] Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I like that word resonance because especially these days, an increasingly large share of our notes are taken by AI. You know, and I want to make clear that’s not what I’m referring to. I’m not referring to all your Zoom meeting summaries, your distilled, you know, YouTube videos that AI has made for you. That resonance is a somatic and emotional experience. That’s the filter for what goes in your resonance log.

Jonathan Fields: [00:32:53] Yeah. I mean, that’s so important to write because so many of us do default to the note takers. And I think they have they play a role, you know, they help in the right way, in the right moment, in the right context. But in the in the context of your personal life. Right? I mean, this is our preference. It’s not what the AI deems, you know, in theory, based on analyzing everybody else, like should be resonant for you at this moment in your life. This is like what actually is resonant for us, and nobody but us can notice it and then capture it.

Tiago Forte: [00:33:24] Exactly.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:25] It’s also a tool for self-awareness, isn’t it? Just general self-awareness on a day to day basis?

Tiago Forte: [00:33:29] Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. It’s so related, but it’s sort of like an annual review is like batch processing that sort of concentrating it, but it’s very complementary to also have some sort of, you know, longer term slower a little bit at a, at a time practice.

Jonathan Fields: [00:33:49] And we’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors. If we’re thinking about this, you know, that that third phase of creating the review process create the future. Um, big picture. What are the general things that we want to be folding into this? And also, what do we not want to be focusing on here? And where do we potentially go off the rails.

Tiago Forte: [00:34:15] What people tend to overfocus on, and therefore I really de-emphasized was the means. The means to get somewhere. You know, they they think, they think, oh, get a promotion. They set a New Year’s resolution or set a goal to get a promotion. Well, what will that give you? That’ll give me, you know, more recognition, status and income. What will that get you? And you sort of like you walk down the. Well what then? And you end up, uh, at a destination that is often very worthy, very beautiful. You know, I’ll have more free time to spend with my family. I’ll have the time and space to focus on my health. I’ll have the. Often it’s time or space or freedom or autonomy or self-determination or something like that. So the destination is worthy. Very worthy. But people get too fixated on the means. They think, oh, this is the one path for me to get there. These are the exact steps and I. It has to unfold this way. That is such a recipe for disappointment.

Jonathan Fields: [00:35:20] So that’s maybe one thing to be wary of is putting too much emphasis on a very specific means. Like, I want to achieve this one very specific thing. It sounds like the invitation underneath that is to ask these multiple levels of like, why does that matter to you? Like, what are you really looking to feel by achieving this thing? Is that right?

Tiago Forte: [00:35:42] Yes, yes. And not just asking it, but the, the main kind of in many ways, the culmination of the annual review, as at least as I teach it, is this kind of, uh, visualization process of putting yourself in that future place, like closing your eyes, imagining the sensory details, where you’ll be, who’s around, what you’re doing, what’s the temperature, what’s the weather, what’s the colors, the smells to try to feel what that, you know, going down a few levels, try to feel that feeling you’re ultimately trying to get to. Now, instead of putting the feeling at the end of this long, like I said, the long, arduous journey, because that’s that first of all, it’s very inspiring and motivating to actually kind of get a taste of that thing you’re working toward. But I often find that also teaches people things. It teaches people about the nature of that desire that they have, which then causes them to change how they’re going to seek it or approach it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:36:45] It’s interesting. I have known you over the years to be fiercely analytical and process oriented. You keep dropping back into sensation and physiology as sort of like the ultimate guiding metrics in this. Is that a shift or is it an emergence?

Tiago Forte: [00:37:05] Oh, it’s a big shift. It’s a big shift that’s been unfolding for years. Part of it has been my wife. My wife is kind of the opposite of me. She’s the intuitive, embodied, spiritual, you know, who’s in my life. And so much of this has been just learning from her. Uh, I’ve just been repeatedly surprised and amazed how her practices, her rituals. I always come into them so skeptical. And it somehow in ways that I cannot explain. I’m, I’m not sure if there’s been any research on this, but these these rituals provide new perspectives. They help you tap into things. It’s really helped me realize that that there’s a mythopoetic part of me, there’s a hero’s journey. There’s a mystery in me that is an essential part of me, even as analytical as I am. And if I ignore that part, I am denying some important, important truths about my life.

Jonathan Fields: [00:38:09] Mhm. Yeah. That lands really powerfully. I feel like the older I get, the more I’m just open to the fact that certain things just are without needing to deconstruct why. Yeah. You know, it’s just. I’ve experienced them enough. There’s no rational explanation. I can’t, I can’t, you know, like in reverse figure out the process or the evidence, but I just accept it to be real. And often those are the things that end up mattering the most to me. Yeah. You’ve used the word goals a few times in our conversation when when we get to this, this stage where we’re in the create the future. What’s the role of goals here?

Tiago Forte: [00:38:50] You know, it’s funny, I, I considered even in my own review practice abandoning goals. Just thinking, oh, that’s outdated. Let me just get rid of these. But I found it didn’t it wasn’t, didn’t work. Uh, goals have some useful functions. But what I’ve sort of settled on is they’re kind of like almost the very last step. You know, once you appreciate the past and reflect on the present and create the future, you, you visualize what that future is going to be like. You put yourself there, you backcast, which is like you walk back to the present day, you write your annual letter, you do everything. Then goals are the final, almost just like functional next steps, right? They’re there. They’re not of central importance the way that they’ve become in modern, you know, productivity culture. They’re, they’re a mechanism. They’re a means they’re a vehicle, but you often have to change vehicles. You have to switch up the means. So I guess what I’m saying is just to hold them very loosely because they often change.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:53] Yeah, I love that. Um, I feel like we become so attached to goals and then and very rarely do we actually set goals that work with our lives. And then when we fall down in achieving them, it’s just judgment and shame and self-flagellation. And then we start telling ourselves we’re not the type of type of person who does X, Y, Z, or who’s worthy of um. And it becomes an identity level thing and it just shuts us down. I’m, I’m so mixed on goals. I think like at times they’re really effective and they can be incredibly helpful, held the right way. But it’s a delicate dance. Which kind of brings us to something else that you speak to, which is the mindset that you invite people to bring to this entire process, because this can, especially depending on the person and the history you bring to it, this can tip into a process of self-punishment way too easily. Talk to me a little bit about this.

Tiago Forte: [00:40:57] Yeah, I would say that’s the main pitfall. The main pitfall, um, it’s a legacy of what we’re used to with performance reviews, you know, critique, criticize. What’s the shortfall? Where are you not performing? Um, but I think it’s also it’s, it’s again, kind of native to the achiever mindsets. Most people’s achiever mindset, which is you sort of beat yourself into submission. You self criticize as the only way that you know how to improve. Um, and it just doesn’t work long term. It’s toxic. It’s like poison. It slowly fills your system. It slowly undermines the very things that you think you’re, you are seeking. And so I try to sort of have antidotes to that poison throughout the book. One of them is upfront, I think in chapter three, the pace principles like the four core principles, all of them, all four are meant to counteract that, that mindset to to emphasize pleasure. That’s the P appreciation is the a, the The concrete. Just things you can touch and see. And what’s the last one? Emotions.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:08] Right? Yeah. Which is a powerful invitation to keep defaulting to those things. You know, like pleasure over probably sacrifice, appreciation over criticism, concrete over abstract emotion over analysis, really easy to say, hold these as you’re doing this process. Probably a lot harder for a lot of folks to do.

Tiago Forte: [00:42:33] Yeah. Yeah, it’s a skill. It’s a skill and a muscle that you have to develop, that you can develop over time like anything else.

Jonathan Fields: [00:42:44] Somebody joining us, they’re kind of nodding along. They’ve been maybe playing at the fringes of doing something like this towards the end of every year. Maybe they’ve even done some version of it in the past, or maybe never tried before, but they kind of like, all right, I can see how this might be helpful to me. Um, but I have this one last piece of resistance, which is I know there are some big things that happened over this last year that are really bad that I don’t want to deal with maybe at my own hand, maybe through circumstance, maybe I had nothing to do with it. But they landed in my life and maybe the lives of those I love and hold dear in deep, dark ways. And if you’re saying, do this thing and don’t leave anything off to the side, that means I have to bring that in. What do you say to that person?

Tiago Forte: [00:43:42] I would say first. What would it look like to feel instead of fix? To feel. Just feel nothing else. The disappointment, the grief, the heartbreak, the helplessness, the frustration, the loss. I find that so much of our our goals and our productivity is trying to fix, trying to change or avoid or suppress that emotion. But this is something that I’ve, I’ve learned it’s taken me many years, but I have a mentor and a friend named Joe Hudson who has taught me this, that it’s just the feeling of it, just the being with it, loving it and allowing it to express itself. That is the answer. And the annual review can be a forum for that. There’s been years where I don’t get to any of the productive stuff. There’s no plans that are made. There’s no ambitions that are built. It’s just, you know, I lost my uncle and I somehow managed to go the whole year without feeling that grief. And that year I just spent the whole day hiking. I live on the side of a mountain. I just walked down my front door and I just hiked and felt that grief. I would say for the first time, like ten months later. And that was it. That was the review. What I would tell them to is if it or ask them if it didn’t have to look any particular way, what would it look like for you? Like if there were truly no requirements, no necessary structure, it was just a time and a space for you to look at your life, for you to feel what there is to feel. And that leads people to, you know, annual reviews that look nothing like annual reviews that are very, very diverse, but that fit what they’re going through.

Jonathan Fields: [00:45:45] Yeah. I mean, that really lends, I feel like the invitation you’re offering is really, to be honest with yourself while also being gentle with yourself. And also, you know, like you just shared like your annual review that one year. It’s like you brought this person who you lost to mind and went and spent a day in the mountains. Um, while you do offer a lot of process and a lot of advice and like ways to walk through it in a very linear way, part of your invitation also is like, look, these are tools. This is my process. It’s worked for me and a lot of other people, but this is more about the idea of it than you exactly replicating what I’ve done in the past. It’s an invitation to just create your own version of that. Is that right?

Tiago Forte: [00:46:30] Exactly. Yes, yes. And it’s such a balance because people want the the recommendations and the tips and the tools. And I really try to give them all the best of what I have to offer. But ultimately, the true sign of mastery and the true sign of ownership is when you you take what the teacher has to offer, the parts that you need, the parts that resonate and you design your own thing, you take it your own direction. Mm.

Jonathan Fields: [00:46:59] Love. It feels like a great place for us to come full circle as well. So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Tiago Forte: [00:47:08] What comes to mind is Socrates and his quote, his famous quote about the well-examined life, the Well-examined what I, what I understand in that is. You know, if you achieved great things and and did a lot of impressive things, that’s fine. But did you really did you really examine your life? Did you study it? Did you learn what it had to teach you? Did you savor it? Did you enjoy it? I think that’s a deeper question, and it’s at the heart of what a good life is for me.

Jonathan Fields: [00:47:41] Mhm. Thank you. So let’s talk about some of the big takeaways from this conversation. One thing I’m thinking about is how just casually Tiago kind of demoted the part that most of us think this is all about goals. He said. They come last in his process, not first functional steps once the looking is done. That’s a. Or see or appreciate the past. Reflect on the present. Create the future. I love the simplicity of this model. The first two are what give the third anything to work with. Then there’s the resonance log. Such a cool concept here. One place you return to all year to capture whatever landed on you and the resonance. It’s somatic. So you know your AI meeting summaries, they actually don’t count. It’s got to come from you. And then there’s the three signs of yes. Before he commits to something big, Diego checks his body for three distinct physical sensations. And when only two show up, the idea just isn’t ready. One small thing this week to take away. Also, maybe on the action level, open up your notes app tonight or wherever you want to take notes. Call a new note your resonance log and put a line in it from the past maybe seven days.

Jonathan Fields: [00:48:51] Something that landed really either good or hard or just whatever you noticed. Do that a few times before December and you’ll walk into your own review with something to work from. And hey, do me a quick favor. Share this conversation with just one person that you know, who’s maybe heading into the year feeling a little bit like it got away from them and they want next year to feel different. And while you’re at it, I so appreciate it. If you take just a few more seconds and leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It helps us get discovered and brings more people into the conversation. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By, Troy Young, and Alejandro Ramirez. Kris Carter crafted our theme music. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, go ahead and follow us wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss a conversation. Until next time. I’m Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.

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