After a bout of fiction and epic historical narratives, I decided to spend some time with productivity hacks for the modern knowledge worker. So I dove into Tiago Forte's Building A Second Brain.
A strategy he describes, to tame the modern day onslaught of information, is to maintain a running list of questions in your head. Long term questions. These questions serve to triage what comes into the head. For anything resonant you consume, you can check it against each question in your list. Does this help answer my question? Does it help me see the question in a new light? Get closer to an answer?
But, this reader wondered, how do I generate these questions? What Big Questions should I be generally marinating on?
Well, Tiago posits, these types of questions tend to hold steady throughout your life. He, for example, loved playing with LEGOs blocks as a kid. But not like how most kids play. He spent all of his time organizing his vast collection of bricks. It seems his obsession with calming the chaos and with building organizational systems has been with him since childhood.
So, he advises, if you want a rich source of material for what Big Questions you should carry around with you, perhaps ask those who knew you well as a child. What were you interested in back then?
So, following his advice. I texted my mother:
- Question: What would you say I was "really into" as a little kid?
To which she responded:
- Goofing/clowning around.
- Also balls
And she sent this photo of me making fun of my grandpa who always wore his pants really high above his waist.
...
So... still trying to sort that one out...