Behind every great product is a greater story!
I read extensively and attend various webinars and courses regularly. And I make and collect copious amounts of knowledge via notes. My notes are mainly handwritten which makes ‘searching’ for a specific piece of knowledge quite hard. I have been meaning to transition to digital note-taking and feel the time is right for me to do so.
But digital needs structure too. Searching may be easier but it needs structure. I was recommended Tiago Forte’s book, Building a Second Brain, as a must-read before transitioning. I started reading it this morning and I introduce you to his CODE method in this article. I am a geek for good (new) tools and share ones that I think you may find useful.
But what caught my attention was his backstory.
There is one main commonality I have found in most (nearly all) creators of tools, techniques, or products. They had a burning desire to solve a problem. And almost always a personal problem. They searched and when they eventually found the answer, they shared it with the world.
CODE was born from Forte’s need to solve his personal health problem. It started with a small pain in the back of his throat during the early years of his college life. He put it down to the start of the flu, but his doctor couldn’t find anything wrong. He went to other specialists, and none found a problem. His pain got worse and there was no remedy. The pain was so severe that speaking, swallowing, or laughing was painful! Extensive scans and diagnostics showed nothing.
As months and years passed, Forte began to lose hope that he would find any relief. He was prescribed anti-seizure medication for his pain. That gave him bad side effects including numbing of the body and severe short-term memory loss. Books he read, trips he took, and precious experiences he had were wiped out from his memory as if they never happened. He was 24 years old with the mind of an eight-year-old. Life couldn’t get any worse.
Then one day, in the doctor’s waiting room he had an epiphany – to take responsibility for his health instead of shuttling between doctors looking for a solution. And that day started the journey to CODE. He started taking notes about what he was thinking and feeling. He wrote about the history of his condition in his own words for the first time. He also wrote about treatments that helped and those that didn’t. What he was willing to sacrifice (and not sacrifice) and what it would be like to be pain-free.
He then asked his doctor’s receptionist for all his records. By this time his patient records were hundreds of pages and Forte went through them making notes. He digitised the notes onto his computer and slowly found a pattern emerging.
What he eventually found was that the medication he was taking was masking his symptoms and not allowing him to get to the source of the problem. He discovered a class of afflictions called ‘functional voice disorders’ which is a problem with a set of muscles in the throat (about 50 of them) that need to work properly for swallowing to work.
Forte realised that what he had was not an illness or infection that could be eradicated with a pill but a functional condition that required him to change the way he took care of himself! He researched breathing, nutrition, vocal habits, and even how childhood experiences manifested in the nervous system. He began to understand the mind-body connection. He experimented on himself and kept notes.
He changed his diet, meditated regularly, and did voice exercises with a voice therapist. And to his shock and amazement, it worked almost immediately. His pain didn’t disappear, but it was more manageable. His medium for getting to a solution was the notes that he took throughout his journey. His notes became his guide to practical solutions!
This led to the creation of CODE. Because Forte realized the immense power of taking or having digital notes. Once in digital form, information could be molded shaped, and used for any purpose. This short YouTube video gives you a highlight of CODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmTTAv8GH7Q
An incredible journey and I like the philosophy behind CODE. It is quite intuitive and what most of us do by default. Forte gives it more clarity via his structure. But my attention is still with his backstory leaving me with questions and thoughts.
What personal problem(s) have you solved that needs to be shared with the world?
As always, you can reach me at yoga@yoganesadurai.com