SHOW TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is automatically generated by Descript.  Any errors or omissions are unintentional.

[00:00:00] Mike Schmitz: personal knowledge management is a fairly new, I would say, s- like, sub-niche of productivity. basically, you- you’ve got all these, these notes and ideas. How do they connect? And I think a lot of people get stuck in, like, that big graph view and looking at all the connections, you know, murder board style.

[00:00:15] Mike Schmitz: This is all- everything I’ve ever created and how it connects. That’s kinda pointless to me. the creativity flywheel framework that I alluded to earlier, the key piece of that is the, is the last piece. You create something from the component pieces. Hello, folks. Welcome to Creator News Live. I’m Jeff Sieh, and you’re not

[00:00:38] Paul Gowder: And I’m Paul Gowder, and this is the show that keeps you up to date on what’s happening in the world of the creator economy and so much more

[00:00:44] Jeff Sieh: You ever finished something with AI and quietly wondered if it was even yours anymore? Maybe you feel like you’re either supposed to be all in on these tools or a proud holdout with no room in between. And to be honest, do you have 100 notes and highlights saved [00:01:00] somewhere that you have never once gone back to and used?

[00:01:03] Jeff Sieh: If that sounds familiar, then this is the show for you

[00:01:06] Paul Gowder: Our guest today is Mike Schmidt, the founder of Practical PKM, co-host of the Focuses and Bookworm podcast, and the creator of Life HQ, a done-for-you Obsidian vault, which I really, really want to hear more about. Mike helps deep thinkers get more out of their notes and ideas, and today he’s sharing where AI actually belongs in your creative workflow, how to build a second brain that makes you sharper, and why your taste is the one thing that no machine can replace

[00:01:32] Jeff Sieh: So sit back, clear your schedule, clear your mind to get ready for this week’s episode of Creator News Live [00:02:00] That’s right, it’s Mike Schmitz on the show today. This is gonna be a fun one. Mike, I’m sorry, you, this is the first time you’ve experienced your own theme song like that, so, uh, apologies in advance. but what makes this show possible is our amazing friends over at Ecamm. They are the ones who sponsor the show.

[00:02:15] Jeff Sieh: You can find out more at ecamm.com/jeff. Save 15% by using code JEFF15 on your first purchase. They were the ones who sponsored camp. We’ve got another big one coming up at the end of September, in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so make sure you guys check that out at ecamm.com/camp, to find out all about that.

[00:02:34] Jeff Sieh: It’s gonna be amazing. I can’t wait. Paul’s gonna be there. I’m gonna be there. So many people are gonna be there, so make sure to check that out. All right, so I wanna ask the audience, be honest, where are you with your AI in your creative work right now?

[00:02:48] Jeff Sieh: Are you all in? Are you dabbling? Or is it a hard no? Like, “I don’t wanna hear about AI anymore ever again.” there’s those people out there. So I wanna know, all in, dabbling, or [00:03:00] hard no, I’m done with AI and everything. So let us know wherever you’re watching from. But Mike, you wrote that AI isn’t a switch, it’s a dial.

[00:03:07] Jeff Sieh: So unpack that for a creator who feels like the only options are all in or all out. It seems like there’s this just polarization that happens. So what does turning that dial actually look like day to day for you?

[00:03:20] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, that polarization, that’s a, a good way to, to describe it. Really, it, it was just me getting frustrated with, the two extremes that I, I see online and sort of a general uneasiness, like there’s gotta be some middle ground. and I, and I think you kinda described a little bit already the, the two ends of the, the spectrum.

[00:03:37] Mike Schmitz: There’s the, the people who are all in with AI. These are like the LinkedIn AI bros, like “Claude is making me $100,000 a year on its own. I don’t have to touch it.”

[00:03:48] Jeff Sieh: Right

[00:03:49] Mike Schmitz: And then there are the people who are the, the purists, and this is I think a lot of creators because we think that our ability to create is, We wanna believe it’s unique, [00:04:00] we wanna believe it’s special, and I believe that, that it is, but it’s also I think a bit of a formula. Uh,we can get into kinda like my whole history with this, but at one point I actually thought that I was not creative, that I just didn’t have that creative gene. So I had to kinda wrestle through that and realize that, oh, if I collect good dots, then my brain is kinda connecting that stuff and there’s, a good output that, that comes from that.

[00:04:24] Mike Schmitz: And so I think there’s a middle ground where we are using AI to do the things that don’t require us specifically in the creative process, but then also we’re protecting what actually we bring to the table, which is our, our taste and our, our voice. I think that’s probably a pretty good intro. Let me know where you wanna go from there ’cause there’s a million different directions.

[00:04:49] Jeff Sieh: I wanted to, I wanted to dive into that a little bit because you mentioned, and we talk about this a lot, and I even in my presentations, one of the, my big themes is you’re created by the Creator to be creative. I think everybody’s creative. [00:05:00] I, I love how you, kinda went into that. And I think it was, was it Steal Like an Artist?

[00:05:05] Jeff Sieh: What was the book that made you really think about that? Was that it? Because I bought it. I have to read it now, so that’s the thing.

[00:05:12] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, it was Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. and I guess just briefly to tell the story, I was in college and I was writing songs on my guitar, and then I would, like, go get a burrito with my friends and hear a song on the radio and, and realize that I had ripped off a chord progression or a melody line from some other song that I was already familiar with.

[00:05:31] Mike Schmitz: And I felt like I just don’t have what these other people have. They’re able to get lightning in a bottle and the, the idea just comes fully formed. Somehow they’re able to synthesize this and, like, they get this… They, they’re creating out of nothing. and I was like, “I just, I just can’t do that. All I can do is kind of remix things.”

[00:05:50] Mike Schmitz: And then I read Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, where he’s talking about your job as the artist, really is to connect preexisting dots in new and interesting ways. But when you create something new, you’re [00:06:00] connecting these dots, the dots themselves are not completely original. And that’s kind of what gave me permission to, to create because before that I was like, “Well, I can’t just make something out of nothing like everybody else can.

[00:06:11] Mike Schmitz: I guess I’m kind of, like, stealing stuff.” And then when he’s like, “Steal like an artist,” I’m like, “Oh, okay. So that is the process. Creativity is a formula.” and I kind of built a career out of that. I, uh, left the family business, was working with Asian Efficiency for a while, and at one point I was running the Productivity Show podcast, which published every week.

[00:06:29] Mike Schmitz: I was, in charge of the blog. We had a new article that went out every week, so I was writing half of those and managing, like guest articles the other half. I was creating a completely new productivity video course and publishing it in the community every single month, and I just did it, you know?

[00:06:43] Mike Schmitz: And then as I was thinking through, like, how am I able to do this? I’ve kind of run with this idea, steal like an artist, but there’s got to be a system below this. That’s where the, the creativity flywheel framework, came from

[00:06:54] Jeff Sieh: Very, very cool. And yeah, we’ll get into that in, in just a little bit. Yeah. Very, very cool

[00:06:58] Paul Gowder: I need to go read that book too, ’cause I, when I [00:07:00] first started photography, I struggled with that same thing, is like e- every photo I take is just a copy of somebody else’s. but so that’s a great idea. in the, Made with Love and AI, you argue that labor though was never the part that was ours, the typing, the drafting, and all the busywork.

[00:07:14] Paul Gowder: And that is freeing, but a little terrifying. So what is it that, in this whole product, what is ours, and how do we protect and make sure that we keep doing what is the thing that makes us us?

[00:07:26] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, so that’s, that’s kind of the thing. Steal Like an Artist, you know, creativity is a formula. So at, at that point, creativity really is like a, a system, okay? And if you’re… I, I’m a systems thinker. worked as an integrator at a digital marketing agency for a while. I, I, I think in systems. So when I, when when that light bulb went on, creativity is a system, I kinda, I realized that I don’t really have to do all of these pieces.

[00:07:48] Mike Schmitz: So when you’re talking about labor in the creative process, typically what you think of is, like, Steven Pressfield, The War of Art. It’s this big battle. I’m gonna go away to the cabin in the woods and write Walden, you [00:08:00] know. A- and that works for some people. I actually, uh, just read a book, How to Try Again by Steve Kam.

[00:08:06] Mike Schmitz: He’s talking about the different creative processes, and he talks about the guy who wrote the James Bond series. He goes to his private island and types every day at a certain time on his gold-plated typewriter. You know, if you’re able to do that, great, but if you’re a solopreneur trying to make a living, get some help.

[00:08:23] Jeff Sieh: Right, right

[00:08:24] Mike Schmitz: And so that’s where, I, I realized that, like, there are so many options for getting help now. One of the big unlocks for me, I mentioned this in the Macstock talk, was I look up to these creators like Ali Abdaal, a YouTuber I really admire, and he cranks out these killer YouTube videos, and it’s like, man, I just can’t, I can’t create like Ali can.

[00:08:44] Mike Schmitz: And then I realize that he’s got a scriptwriter, he’s got a thumbnail person, he’s got a team of editors. He’s got all these people that he is paying to fill these roles, and they’re doing things that are part of his creative system. And I was like, “Hmm, I wonder, is AI good enough [00:09:00] that I could hire it for some specific roles?”

[00:09:02] Mike Schmitz: And, no one, no one thinks that Ali isn’t, isn’t creative, or they’re not, you know, mad at him because he’s pumping out slop because he’s got a team that’s putting together the scripts for him and he’s showing up and reading them. So I, I think the, the real thing that people want is not, you know, is this AI or not, but really, like, is this good or not?

[00:09:22] Mike Schmitz: Is this something that is worth my time to consume this? And people don’t like to be tricked. They don’t, they, they don’t wanna feel like they’ve, they’ve been duped, you know? So I don’t… I think you gotta use it intentionally. You gotta be real about it. You know, I’ve, I’ve used AI in, in these specific ways.

[00:09:38] Mike Schmitz: but ultimately, if it makes the work better, I feel like there’s never been a better time to be a creator. There’s a lot of things that are possible now that weren’t, a couple years ago.

[00:09:50] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. In that same note, I want … This is a great segue. and I actually built it while we were at Mac Stock, so it was, was very, very cool, But AI for me is letting me do [00:10:00] stuff that I have never … That I’ve wanted to do, but I haven’t had time. Like for example, Amy Porterfield, for all of her podcasts and all her episodes, she has like a sheet or a quiz or something like that, that her team puts together for that.

[00:10:13] Jeff Sieh: Never been able to do that. I thought that was a great way. I thought it was a great lead magnet. But now with AI, I was able to do that. So if you guys want to go to jeffsieh.com/cheatsheet, I’ve got like the last five or so, episodes that I’ve done. It’s actually a system now that kicks off as soon as I am done with the show.

[00:10:31] Jeff Sieh: It takes the transcript and it, and it builds this. But it’s also a great little lead magnet now that I’m gonna have for each one of my shows. So jeffsieh.com/cheatsheet. Go kick the tires. Tell me what you think. I wanna know what you guys think about that, and let me know. But this is a perfect example for me of something I’ve always wanted to do, but never been able to.

[00:10:50] Jeff Sieh: On that same note, Mike, you know, the, the thing is, is you talk about in, you kinda keep coming back to this, that AI produces the median. Like it’s just, it’s [00:11:00] the average kinda stuff, because that’s what it’s doing. It’s going and pulling all this stuff, and it produces kind of the, the medium kinda stuff.

[00:11:07] Jeff Sieh: And, and you said the median by definition is average. So if everyone is holding these same tools that spits out competent, but that kind of average work, so how do we stay, unmistakable? And you kinda alluded it to that a little bit before, but how do we practically do that?

[00:11:25] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, you gotta steer it. You know, if you just, if you just let it go, it’s gonna produce the average. It’s gonna keep predicting the next thing in the chain until it just sounds like everything else that’s, that’s out there. But I think your cheat sheet is actually a, a pretty phenomenal example of being intentional about it because you’ve, you’ve got this vision, right, for what you want the, the thing to be, and now if you got some help, you can deliver value in some new and interesting ways.

[00:11:50] Mike Schmitz: AI’s not gonna get to that point where it’s, I think, originating that idea and building that thing for you. Maybe it will. I, I don’t know. A great book on, on AI that really [00:12:00] helped me how to think about it was Co-Intelligence by Ethan Mollick, where he lays out the, the, the options, and this was written a couple years ago.

[00:12:07] Mike Schmitz: He’s like, “This is… On the, on the one end, this is the best it ever gets, and it’s actually kinda useless. And then on the other end is it gains sentience and enslaves the human race.” Those are options, not likely either one of those. The truth is somewhere in the in the middle, so let’s figure it out.

[00:12:26] Mike Schmitz: You know, let, let’s figure out how we can use this intentionally and actually add value to the things that, that we do. and so that’s where, like, as a creative brainstorming partner, I actually think AI is incredible. I, I, I posted something about this on LinkedIn the other day. There was a, there was a specific point.

[00:12:42] Mike Schmitz: You know, I’m actually very introverted. I get exhausted when I’m around other people, but put me in a room where we’re brainstorming and, and I was the product guide agent efficiency. I remember we were down, uh, down in Austin, and we were talking about what are we gonna build this quarter. Like, that energizes me.

[00:12:59] Mike Schmitz: I could [00:13:00] talk about that all day. And so I’m, I’m down there, we’re talking about what we’re gonna do, we’re talking through dinner. I’m staying with a coworker at his apartment, and, at his apartment, he, all of a sudden, he’s very extroverted, turns to me, he’s like, “Mike, I just can’t, I can’t think about this anymore.

[00:13:13] Mike Schmitz: I, I gotta be done for the day.” And I was like, “What? You’re the, you’re the extrovert.” AI is like a creative collaborator that never is, never gonna tap out. It’s, it’s never gonna be, “I’m too tired to throw ideas at you.” And some of the ideas that it gives you are completely off the wall, right? Which is why you can’t just say, “Okay, yeah, run with that,” but, “Okay, uh, you’ve given me 20 different hook ideas, 20 different headline ideas.”

[00:13:36] Mike Schmitz: I’m working on a cohort, and I, like, go back and forth with that. Like, “What do you think about this?” the trick is figuring out, you know, This is good. This isn’t. You know, let’s, let’s drill down deeper in this. So you still gotta, still gotta guide it, but then it just, it continues to generate options.

[00:13:51] Mike Schmitz: And I feel like for a creator, like, that’s the hard part is, is coming up with the options. Give me something to respond to, and then I can make it awesome.[00:14:00]

[00:14:00] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, I think that’s totally true

[00:14:02] Paul Gowder: And you have a, a, a rule that you love, and I think this is so important for a lot of people because they, they get stuck on this part. But you say that, you know, point your AI at your own material for connection. It’s, not a, a blank page for generation. So yeah, explain that a little bit more and why that’s, you know, people get caught in that trap of just starting with a blank page instead of their own work

[00:14:22] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, well, the, the thing that makes AI work is context, right? The bigger the context window, the more valid the response is going to be, and I feel like if you can give it a bank of your own work, your own notes, your own ideas to work off of, of course it’s gonna give you better results when you, when, when it spits something back to you.

[00:14:44] Mike Schmitz: So there’s a bunch of different ways that, that you could take that. One is the, the PKM route, where you’re pointing it at your Obsidian vault. These are all notes and ideas that I’ve, I’ve captured, curated, collected, connected, you know, over the years. I wanna create something new out of [00:15:00] them, These are things that have resonated with me in the past. Side note, I guess, on that, you know, if you’re just piping in everything that you think might be important, I don’t think you’re gonna get the, the same sort of insight from your PKM. I, I use Obsidian, but you don’t have to use Obsidian specifically Bottom line, if you got that, that bank of notes and ideas and you’re just, like, capturing things that you really don’t have that resonance, you don’t have the, you know, the…

[00:15:25] Mike Schmitz: It’s resonating in your soul, like, that piques my curiosity, I’m interested in that thing. It’s just, well, I better hang onto this. I think if you collected a whole bunch of notes and ideas that are just like, “Well, this sounds important, I better hang onto this,” you’re not gonna get the, the creative output from it.

[00:15:40] Mike Schmitz: the other thing, like I’ve, I’ve actually built my own, online tool for this, I call it Creator Bot, and, and the thing that makes this work is it actually builds out a context for, like, your creator business. So I kinda built it because I had a creator business accelerator I was walking a beta group through, and they were having a little bit of trouble keeping up, and I was trying to figure out how [00:16:00] can I scale my, my coaching, basically?

[00:16:02] Mike Schmitz: How can I give people advice when they get stuck? So I built this tool, and it kind of builds out, you know, this is your ideal customer profile, this is your niche, this is my signature product, these are my content buckets, you know, this is my primary attention platform, all those types of things.

[00:16:17] Mike Schmitz: So then when you say, you know, “Give me feedback on my content,” it knows what you typically write about, it knows the angle that you’re taking, it knows the shape of the things that you’re trying to make. And so when it gives you a bunch of options, those are much more relevant options. but yeah, if you just wanna, like, get more out of your notes and ideas, I feel like there’s, there’s some specific pieces that you need there.

[00:16:34] Mike Schmitz: Whether you apply AI to them or not, you’ve gotta have good stuff to work with. I like to think of them as, like, mental Lego bricks. I’ve got five kids, and they– We… The best Christmas gift we ever gave them… I overheard a barista at a coffee shop one time saying they were trying to raise money for college, and they were selling 75 pounds of Legos. And I was like, “Dude, I’ll take them.” So we’ve got all these Legos at, home, [00:17:00] and I was the one who was always follow the instructions, build the castles. Like, I thought I, was good at Lego, and then my kids come, and they’re just, like, building all these insane creations out of absolutely nothing. That’s the me- that’s the creative process, and it’s a muscle, so the more you do it, the better you get at it.

[00:17:14] Mike Schmitz: And then AI, if you apply it intentionally, can, can help you do it faster, do it better

[00:17:18] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Th- LEGOs are great until you step on them in the middle of the night, and then

[00:17:22] Mike Schmitz: True.

[00:17:23] Jeff Sieh: and then they turn into Satan’s bricks of torment. And I, I’ve lost my religion many times, stepping on those when my kids were at home, in the middle of the night. That was not fun. I wanna bring up some comments here from our amazing chat room.

[00:17:35] Jeff Sieh: so many people saying they were all in on AI. I don’t think anybody said, they weren’t. but I wanted to… Paula Marie Davis says, “All in on AI when powered by human creativity.” She did a great talk, at MacStock, so thanks, Paula, for, for coming around today and chatting with us. But I think that, powered by human creativity, you know, one of the tests for good work is almost human. Like, did the, a person with taste stand behind this and decide what [00:18:00] was good? So how do you actually build that taste, and it, can it be taught, or do people just have it?

[00:18:07] Jeff Sieh: I think that’s a great question when we talk about curating stuff for our… And PKM stands for personal knowledge management, correct? I just wanna make sure for people who

[00:18:15] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, sorry. I should have defined

[00:18:17] Jeff Sieh: That’s good

[00:18:17] Mike Schmitz: and personal knowledge management is a fairly new, I would say, s- like, sub-niche of productivity. basically, you- you’ve got all these, these notes and ideas. How do they connect? And I think a lot of people get stuck in, like, that big graph view and looking at all the connections, you know, murder board style.

[00:18:33] Mike Schmitz: This is all- everything I’ve ever created and how it connects. That’s kinda pointless to me. the creativity flywheel framework that I alluded to earlier, the key piece of that is the, is the last piece. You create something from the component pieces. So you can capture all the right pieces, the things that resonate.

[00:18:52] Mike Schmitz: I think you gotta have something in between capture and, like, I’m actually working with this, so curate is the second phase, and that’s where you bring over the stuff that [00:19:00] really resonates. I capture stuff to a separate inbox. I don’t pipe it straight into, Obsidian because I find that if I come back and I revisit my ideas a week later, a lot of times I’m like, “Well, that was stupid.

[00:19:09] Mike Schmitz: I don’t know what I was thinking.” But sometimes it’s like, “Oh, actually, I’m more excited about that than I was before.” That’s my signal that there’s actually something there. Bring over the good pieces, right? So that’s curate, the second step, and then, um, connect them. So how does this connect to the other things that I’ve, I’ve collected?

[00:19:25] Mike Schmitz: the key inspiration for that, by the way, is How to Read a Book by Mortimer Adler, like, written in the 1960s, I

[00:19:33] Jeff Sieh: Wow. Yeah

[00:19:34] Mike Schmitz: and he talks about the four levels of reading. The top level is what he calls syntopical reading, and that’s where you’re reading a book, and you’re taking the ideas, and you’re lining them up with the other, uh, things from other books that you’ve read.

[00:19:47] Mike Schmitz: So for me, this happened when I read, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Charles Duhigg w- wrote the canonical book on habits, The Power of Habit. He’s got that cue routine reward cycle, right? Everybody’s running with that, “Oh, this [00:20:00] is amazing. This is how habits work” and I was like, “I don’t like that.” It- there’s something off about as soon as I see the cue, I’m a rat in a cage, and the- automatically triggers the routine.

[00:20:08] Mike Schmitz: So then when James Clear talks about there’s actually four steps to that, and like, oh, that makes more sense, but I’m still trying to figure out, like, what, what determines whether we follow through on the thing we wanna do, or we don’t. So then Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg, you know, that he has this, like, Fogg behavioral model, and if the prompt is strong enough, if your motivation’s high enough, it works.

[00:20:27] Mike Schmitz: If it doesn’t, if it’s not, it doesn’t. So all that stuff, like, comes together, and it forms my understanding of habits, right? That’s the four- the fourth level of, of reading and action, and so for me, that’s kinda what happens inside of my Obsidian vault now. But it also happens inside the gray matter between my ears.

[00:20:46] Mike Schmitz: Whether I move anything into Obsidian, whether I connect those notes at all, it’s already happening. So if you were gonna look through my Obsidian vault, you’d be like, “This is a complete mess. Tiago Forte would be [00:21:00] ashamed, like, there’s no para. There’s a whole bunch of orphan notes.” And I’m just kinda like, “I don’t really care.”

[00:21:05] Mike Schmitz: You look at the desks of the really creative people throughout history, they’re a complete mess. It’s not that- They were creative because of the mess, but they get so focused on the generation of something new from the component pieces that they don’t care about the mess. And I do think that eventually you gotta go back and you gotta clean up the mess ’cause it’s distracting.

[00:21:24] Mike Schmitz: But when you’re, when you’re in it, the most important thing is that there’s an output. Now, your original question was about developing the taste. I think if you’ve got that creative system and you are publishing consistently, the taste will come, but you will never get to it until you start publishing consistently.

[00:21:42] Mike Schmitz: You don’t know what you have to say or what you really think about things until there’s that creative output. There’s a famous saying, “Thoughts disentangle themselves through lips and pencil tips.” For me, it’s also clicky keyboards. You know, writing is the basis of everything that I do. All the podcasts, all the YouTube videos, the blog, the newsletter, all that kind of [00:22:00] stuff, it all comes back from that ability to write, which I developed simply by forcing myself to sit down and write.

[00:22:06] Mike Schmitz: I think I am living proof that if I can do it, anybody can do it

[00:22:10] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, so you know what helped me the most was that I n- and I, I’m not bragging, but I kinda am. I have, like, an unbroken for 2,369 days, I think now, of writing in my journal, right? So it could v- but sometimes it’s just a paragraph. Like, don’t think I’m, like, writing, like, the novel. Sometimes it’s just like, “I don’t wanna write.

[00:22:30] Jeff Sieh: This is what I have to do. It’s a pr- I gotta get this done,” kind of a thing. It’s fine, right? But I have that streak. But that writing in my journal gave me the confidence, like, oh, you know what? I can write an email once a week, right? Like, I can do this. Like, it may not be good, but I know that it’s not this big mental, “I’ve gotta write,” because I do it every day.

[00:22:50] Jeff Sieh: And so I think those little… What is it? I think Clear calls them, like, the, the habits that you stack. Like, I have mine, so I can’t unlock my office until I write in my journal, ’cause the button [00:23:00] right there to unlock my office is the, right by the journal button, that I use day one for my journaling. So anyway, so I, I think that’s a great way too if you’re struggling with a habit is find some little piece to do and do it consistently.

[00:23:12] Mike Schmitz: Can we unpack that a little bit? ‘Cause that’s a great example. Like, you writing in your journal, that is the, th- that is creating. That, that is the, the last step of the creativity flywheel. That’s the output that makes that, that work, and that creates the confidence that you can do that in, in other ways.

[00:23:28] Mike Schmitz: Now, if you had AI automatically generate that journal entry for you every day, you’re not gonna develop that skill. You’re not gonna develop that muscle, and you’re not gonna be able to, to write the, the email or whatever, whatever other flavor, uh, of, of writing it that needs to happen. But that doesn’t mean that AI, in my opinion, should not be used in the, the writing process.

[00:23:51] Mike Schmitz: You’ve developed the muscle, right? So now when you sit down to, let’s say you’re gonna write a blog post. I don’t know what I’m gonna write. The blank page stops so many people. [00:24:00] All right, well, give me a bunch of options. What , what are some ideas that I could write about, you know? And one of those is gonna land, and that’s what you, that’s what you write about.

[00:24:08] Mike Schmitz: So that’s an example, I think of, of where to use AI in this process

[00:24:12] Jeff Sieh: Yeah, that’s a great, that’s a great way to think about it. I just think the, it just helped me, and you can go back and trace it, when I started journaling, that’s when I started doing email, and that’s when my list started growing. That’s when I started… I mean, it just, you can trace it all back just to that little thing of doing something very deliberate every day.

[00:24:27] Jeff Sieh: I think that’s, it was a big unlock for me at least.

[00:24:30] Mike Schmitz: And that’s the, that’s the systems at work. You know, every system is really three things: an input, a process, and an output. So this is where I think if you can think in systems, you can look at, this is the input that I, I used, this is the process that it went through, this is the output that I got. You look at that output and you say, “Do I like this?

[00:24:48] Mike Schmitz: Do I not like this? Am I happy with the results that I got? If not, let’s go tweak one of the other things, the input or the process.” And if you just took that approach to using AI instead of just blindly accepting whatever [00:25:00] output it gives you, I feel, it gives you, I feel like you eventually you’re gonna land on an intentional way to use it

[00:25:04] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. Yeah. Great points

[00:25:06] Paul Gowder: All right, with all of that being said, I am curious about this. Is there a part of your process, your writing or whatever else, that you don’t let AI into?

[00:25:14] Mike Schmitz: I don’t know. I, I, I want to be curious. I want to experiment. so I’ll, I’ll share a recent workflow, which kind of forced me to push those, those boundaries a little bit. for a long time I would not let it write any words for me but I have always wanted to have these 15-minute book review videos, and I realized that I just didn’t have the time to make these.

[00:25:39] Mike Schmitz: I experimented with a couple of them on my main YouTube channel, and they just… It’s not the right thing. I, I’ve talked to, different people who are much better at YouTube than I am, and they basically said, “You should start a secondary channel for these. it’ll help the algorithm find the audience, and, and that’s the only way to get successful.”

[00:25:56] Mike Schmitz: Okay. Well, I guess I just don’t have time to do that then because, [00:26:00] writing these scripts, recording the videos, even if I have an editor who helps me chop ’em up, takes me, like, eight to 10 hours, to do that because I script all of my videos word for word. I do not do outlines. I, I can sit down and have a conversation like this, but if we were re- re- if I turn on record on my camera and I just try to, to chat, it’s gonna be a complete mess.

[00:26:21] Mike Schmitz: It actually saves me time to script all those videos. Okay. So I wanna record these videos on these book reviews. I’ve read the books. I have a really crazy way of taking notes on my books, by the way. I think I’ve got a video where I walk through that, but essentially, I re- always read physical books. I always take notes on my iPhone in MindNode.

[00:26:40] Mike Schmitz: So I take mind map book notes. I have my own emoji coding system where I implement kind of a digital version of Mortimer Adler’s How to Read a Book philosophy. So, like, this is something that sparked an idea. This is a key idea from, or a key argument the author made. this is, you know, an action item.

[00:26:58] Mike Schmitz: This, this blew my mind, all that kind [00:27:00] of stuff. That’s all, like, emoji inside my, my mind map. I bring those into Obsidian, and I have also the markdown version of, of all of those. So I have this big bank of these book notes, and then I also have a podcast where I talk about these books for 90 minutes with a cohost.

[00:27:17] Mike Schmitz: So I have put a whole bunch of work into not just reading the book, but figuring out exactly what I think from that book, talking through everything that I got out of that book on a podcast. And so, what I did is I created a Claude skill, which pulls in my notes from my Obsidian vault. So it’s got my rating.

[00:27:37] Mike Schmitz: It’s got all of my notes. It knows how to interpret my crazy emoji coding system, so it knows from those notes what stood out to me. I also bring in the transcript from the podcast that I recorded, and it looks at only my side of the conversation, but then it writes the script for me. And the first time I did that, I was like, “I can’t read this.

[00:27:57] Mike Schmitz: I didn’t write this.” And then I went [00:28:00] through, and I started editing it, and I realized that actually a lot of this stuff I had said before. These were my original thoughts, even if I didn’t write them in the script. and I went through and I edited the whole thing word for word, and it took me about 45 minutes.

[00:28:16] Mike Schmitz: And I was like, “Oh, okay. Now maybe I can do this consistently. Now maybe I can make the thing I always wanted to make- But I didn’t have time to do it. and so I, I do that, and I’ll, I… The real trick for me with that is I wanna go through and I wanna edit the whole script because I want every word that I deliver to the camera.

[00:28:34] Mike Schmitz: I am not using AI for the video part. I am not using ElevenLabs to generate my voice. It’s me speaking to the person on the other end. I take that responsibility seriously, and I want every word that I say to be authentic. I actually got a chance, this is a little bit of a sidebar, sorry, but I, I got a chance to talk to, James Clear.

[00:28:53] Mike Schmitz: at Craft and Commerce, they have, like, a s- invite-only mastermind the day before. My creator friends have always, [00:29:00] like, been going to that, and I was a little bit jealous. I got invited this year. I was like, “Yes, this is so cool.” And then, we had… There’s a Q&A with James Clear, and I had the opportunity to ask him how he thinks about using AI in the creative process, and I really liked his response.

[00:29:13] Mike Schmitz: Basically, he said it doesn’t make the writing, doesn’t make it faster, but it makes it better. And he talked about how if he could, you know, just use it to, to write a bestselling book, he would, but it doesn’t give him… It doesn’t meet his, his quality bar. He uses it in all sorts of interesting ways, though.

[00:29:28] Mike Schmitz: He’ll generate a paragraph in the style of Ernest Hemingway. He’ll generate a paragraph in some other style, and then he’ll take a sentence from this and a sentence from that, and he’ll pull it all together, and that’s what he publishes, right? That’s, the, the James Clear voice.

[00:29:39] Mike Schmitz: It’s the, it’s in the, the editing, of that. But the, the workflow that I just described, you know, like I said, I really struggled with that because AI is writing these words. How can I possibly show up and say the words that AI is putting in my mouth? but then after I started using it, and again, with the, the example of Ali Abdaal and how he’s got people on his team who are, are working for him and [00:30:00] doing different things, I was like, “I just hired Claude as a scriptwriter, and actually did a pretty great job as a scriptwriter.

[00:30:05] Mike Schmitz: You know, I should give Claude a raise.” I’m not gonna do that, but

[00:30:07] Jeff Sieh: right.

[00:30:08] Mike Schmitz: you know, that was a big unlock for me

[00:30:10] Jeff Sieh: Yeah. It’s funny ’cause, you know, I think about like, y- you know, Fallon and all those guys. They have writer rooms. They have huge writer rooms that they pay, and I’m like, ” Now I have my own.” Like, you mentioned having your, your scripting. What I was able to do for Mac Stock is on the train, I actually…

[00:30:24] Jeff Sieh: I had my script all ready for my, my talk, but I said, “hey, I want you to go get me a version where you’re a late night, host, like, and have a writer room. What’s that like? I wanna have a stand-up comedian you take the same script and write it in that way. Write it as a TED Talk, and then write it as a bunch of…

[00:30:38] Jeff Sieh: that I’ll be speaking in front of a bunch of Mac nerds. What should I do?” And it gave me four versions of my talk, but then I was able to pick and choose, like, some jokes from here and stuff from there. Kinda like what you were talking about, like, James Clear does. And the other, real quick, I wanted to give some people, a, maybe a tool that they can use.

[00:30:53] Jeff Sieh: I am not allowed to buy any more physical books. We have too many, and we would not have anywhere to sleep if I [00:31:00] continued on that path. So I have to buy Kindle books, and what I love about it is there’s a tool called Readwise. So anything I highlight actually goes, and it actually surfaces up again as emails, but it also takes it and put it, puts it to my Notion database.

[00:31:13] Jeff Sieh: So I can go into the book and just pull it in. I can have AI look at all the notes, in that way, and, I think it’s a really great tool. So that’s called Readwise, so make sure you check it out. So, once again, we have amazing comments from our amazing, chat room.

[00:31:28] Jeff Sieh: Paula says, “Huge takeaway for me. I use AI to make it better, not to make it faster.” Great. Great point. I think that’s really good. But I wanna know, ’cause we’re gonna talk about kind of Obsidian building a second brain in this next section.

[00:31:40] Jeff Sieh: Do you guys have a note system or a second brain that you use, or is it a mess? Like type, “Yes, I use it” or “Still a mess” in the comments wherever you’re watching. So, “Yes, I use, uh, it” or “Still a mess,” ’cause we’re gonna be talking about the second brain. but first we have a great question from the, the Disney hotel lady.

[00:31:59] Jeff Sieh: Great question. [00:32:00] What is Obsidian? We’ve talked about this vault thing and Obsidian vaults, and what is it? So first of all, just tell us what it is and, why you are in love with it so much

[00:32:09] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, so Obsidian is essentially a markdown writing app is how I would, describe it. it’s a, it’s a markdown editor. So when you create an Obsidian vault, it’s basically just a folder full of plain text files on your computer, and, uh, those plain text files, if you use, some of the Obsidian plugins, you can do some pretty interesting things with that plain text.

[00:32:32] Mike Schmitz: I would say the signature feature of Obsidian is that in those plain text files, you can put double square brackets around any piece of text, and then that will create a link to that text as the name of a note inside of your Obsidian vault. And that allows you to build these connections. They’re not just one-way connections like wiki links.

[00:32:56] Mike Schmitz: You know, if you’re gonna look at Wikipedia and there’s a link to another page, you [00:33:00] can click on that link, go to that other page, but you can’t n- there isn’t necessarily a way back to that previous note unless there’s another link on that other page. So all the links in Obsidian, they’re called bidirectional links, which means you can navigate to them from either direction.

[00:33:14] Mike Schmitz: So the way that I started using Obsidian actually was I wanted a way to create my own cross-reference library of all the sermon notes that I took. I’d take, sketch notes using GoodNotes on my iPad, and I always, like, have the, the verses that are mentioned, and I have a square box around them. So I was thinking, you know, if I could take this sketch note, create a note for that, you know, this is the day of the s- the note that I took, and then from there create links to these individual verses, I could click on the note for those individual verses, and I could see all of the other notes that I’ve taken that have linked to that and that’s, that’s basically the value of this.

[00:33:53] Mike Schmitz: You know, I can say this was the verse that was mentioned this Sunday, so I click on that, I see that verse, I see all the other [00:34:00] notes that are connected to that, not just sermon notes anymore, I’ve developed my own, like, topical Bibles, that sort of thing. But all of the other places inside my Obsidian vault that, that link to that, that particular verse.

[00:34:10] Mike Schmitz: And the, the key idea from this, if you don’t want the scriptural example, is that those individual notes, those are called atomic notes, right? So that you can connect to literally anything else, and that’s where the real, real power comes from, is when you break down things into the smallest component pieces.

[00:34:29] Mike Schmitz: I stole that atomic idea actually from James Clear when he talks, he defines it inside of Atomic Habits, is these things of immense power in the smallest component piece. I was like, “Okay, so if I take these notes and I break it down, I take the Bible text and I break it down to the smallest component piece, what is that?”

[00:34:44] Mike Schmitz: That’s an individual verse. So I have 30,000 individual verse notes inside my vault so that I can connect them like that and create those, those connections. But at, the key is I’m not looking at the big graph view that shows all the connections of everything in my vault. I’m never doing [00:35:00] that. There’s, what’s called a local graph.

[00:35:02] Mike Schmitz: You can put it, you can pin it inside of your, your interface. So when I open up a note, it puts that note in the middle on the local graph, and it shows all of the notes that either link to or are linked from that note as connections on that graph, and you can click on that graph and you kind of navigate your notes that way.

[00:35:18] Mike Schmitz: If you do that a little bit, you can end up in some really interesting places, and then as you’re doing that, your brain’s like, “Oh, that’s connected to that. I didn’t even realize that before

[00:35:26] Jeff Sieh: And that’s where creativity is, It’s connecting things together that you haven’t, or you haven’t shared, or it’s not in your voice. That is fascinating. I used to use a tool called Roam Research, which had the kinda same thing, then I kinda moved to Notion. But now I’m really diving into Obsidian, mainly because of the AI and the markdown stuff, and all that stuff that ties into it.

[00:35:44] Jeff Sieh: So that, Disney hotel lady is what Obsidian is. So if your brain’s exploding right now, don’t freak out, because Mike has an amazing YouTube channel where he kinda goes through a lot of these individual pieces in setting up Obsidian. it’s a big channel. It’s really cool, so [00:36:00] make sure you guys check it out.

[00:36:00] Jeff Sieh: Uh, what is the YouTube name again, Mike? I’m sorry, I can’t remember off the top of my head.

[00:36:04] Mike Schmitz: The URL is youtube.com/mikeschmitz, but if you search for Mike Schmitz, you will find my YouTube nemesis, Father Mike Schmitz. That is not

[00:36:12] Jeff Sieh: That is right. I found him. Yeah, I found him. So I did Mike Schmitz practical PKM, and that’s what, it sur- it surfaced. So you can do it that way as well

[00:36:21] Mike Schmitz: Yeah

[00:36:22] Paul Gowder: So for somebody like me, I’ve heard of Second Brain, and Jeff talks about it all the time, and I want to get started. So, like, how do we actually do that? And then how do we go about, like, how does it change how we’re thinking and, and how do we use it on a daily basis?

[00:36:36] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, that is the million-dollar question, and I think the… Let’s start with, like, how to get started with it. do not just import everything from whatever failed system you tried before that made you frustrated. That’s the question I get most often is, “How do I import stuff into Obsidian?” Obsidian has an official importer, but my que- my answer is always, “You don’t.

[00:36:58] Mike Schmitz: Start fresh,” [00:37:00] and Put things in there that you’re working on, things that are interesting to you, and then start to work with your notes by creating those, those links. and this is where, you know, talking about AI in the creative process, I’m absolutely not gonna let AI mess with my notes and ideas in Obsidian and make those connections for me, because each one of those connections has to be some- has to be a connection that I’ve made.

[00:37:24] Mike Schmitz: It has to be a connection that I’ve realized. Having a bunch of connected notes where I didn’t forge those connections myself, I think is pretty much useless. I want each one of those connections to mean something significant to me. So there’s a bunch of different ways that you could do it, but if you, I think, uh, in terms of a, a creator, for example, I would just put in some… S- Start capturing some, some, ideas, some things that are, are piquing your, your curiosity, things that are interesting to you. Eventually get those into Obsidian. Ask yourself how these connect. And then what I love about Obsidian is that it’s the best markdown editor I’ve [00:38:00] ever used.

[00:38:00] Mike Schmitz: With all the plugins, you can configure it exactly the way you want. You can basically build your own, productivity, creativity system. With Claude, you can make your own plugins if they don’t exist now. you can really craft whatever writing environment you, you want to, to have and then force yourself to write about things.

[00:38:18] Mike Schmitz: Doesn’t matter if it’s public, you know, like Jeff was talking about with Day One and those, those journal entries. That is the create phase of the creativity flywheel. That is the, the output. Even if nobody else ever sees it, just get in the habit of consistently making things inside of Obsidian, and then because it’s markdown, if you do wanna put it anywhere else, it’s real easy to copy and paste it, put it in a newsletter, put it in a blog post, whatever.

[00:38:40] Mike Schmitz: but yeah, just start capturing things, start connecting things, and then start creating things.

[00:38:45] Jeff Sieh: So why I started doing the second brain thing and why, and I’ve, I’ve kind of, I’ve done Notion, which is kind of my workflow stuff now, so I want to have a new capture second brain thing. ’cause I did, Thomas Frank’s, he had a great, like, kind of Notion database that I used. but [00:39:00] for me, the whole idea of a second brain is because my creativity ebbs and flows.

[00:39:04] Jeff Sieh: I think I’m like a lot of people. Sometimes it’s really like, “Oh my gosh, I c- I c- I got so many ideas, I don’t know what to do with them.” That’s when, uh, the second brain comes in, and because it’s what I call, like, a, it’s rainy day insurance, right? Like, some days you know you’ve got to write an email, and you’re like, “I got nothing.”

[00:39:18] Jeff Sieh: Like, “I don’t wanna get up out of bed today. Paul said something to me that just hacked me off. I just don’t wanna be around.” And so, like, what… And so I can go to my vault, I can look at it, and I’m like, “Okay, I already started this. I’m gonna finish it, and then I have a piece of content.” So it’s kind of like rainy day insurance for me.

[00:39:34] Jeff Sieh: but you mentioned before your creativity flywheel, but I wanted to make sure we all, we talked about it and, and m- everybody’s clear on it. So it’s capture, curate, connect, cultivate, and then create. So where in that process does, like, the real magic happen? Like, and where do most people stall out?

[00:39:50] Jeff Sieh: Like, where do people, like, go, “Too hard, I’m done. I’m tapping out”? Like, where is that in the sequence that you’ve seen?

[00:39:56] Mike Schmitz: Yeah. well, it, it, it could b- actually happen [00:40:00] at any point in the flywheel. I used AI actually to create a creativity flywheel diagnostic that helps people identify the bottleneck. I think it’s flywheel.practicalpkm.com if people wanna, wanna try it out. and then there’s like, uh, some videos that will help, help you figure out where, where to get things, unstuck.

[00:40:18] Mike Schmitz: But the key for me, and the reason that it’s a flywheel, is that, I think creativity is a lot like, and PKM in general, is like a water wheel. There’s gotta be an inflow, there’s gotta be an outflow. So if the wheel stops, then the creativity stops. this, what you were describing, Jeff, about the, the insurance, the stuff that you can fall back on, the only reason that you have that stuff that you can fall back on is because you have a system for capturing things, and they are in that idea bank when you need something to write about, you know that I’ve pre-vetted these things and so there’s some good stuff, to work off of.

[00:40:53] Mike Schmitz: I think one of the most dangerous things is when you don’t have a system for your [00:41:00] ideas. You’ve got an idea that you’re excited about, but it’s the only one that you’ve got, and you’re putting all your stock into, “I have to make something out of this.” I feel like when it comes to creativity, you have to be willing to hold these things lightly, and you have to be willing to walk away from it if you realize, actually, this isn’t the thing.

[00:41:18] Mike Schmitz: That’s really hard and really scary when you don’t have something else to fall back on, which is why I describe my, uh, Obsidian vault as like a greenhouse for my ideas, and that’s where the different elements of the creativity flywheel happen. The only thing that doesn’t happen in Obsidian really is that capture phase.

[00:41:36] Mike Schmitz: I capture things into drafts, and the main reason is that drafts is everywhere for me. I’ve got it on my Apple Watch, so I can even dictate something if I’m out for a run. Obsidian’s quick capture is not really quick. it takes a while for the vault to open. By that time, you know, I, I may not j- I may not jot anything down.

[00:41:52] Mike Schmitz: So I want zero friction when I am capturing things. If I think something is at all a remote possibility, there’s something [00:42:00] here, I’m gonna capture it. But then I’m gonna go through and I’m gonna curate that, and that’s why that inbox has to be separate from where the rest of the stuff happens. I go through that drafts inbox about once a week and I look for the things that are still resonating, and I bring them over.

[00:42:13] Mike Schmitz: I estimate that about 90% of the stuff that I capture, after I get some distance from it, I’m like, “Ah, there really isn’t anything there,” and I just delete it. I’m not worried about, maybe there, maybe it was something valuable. I believe that if I’m constantly chasing my curiosity, that if something is really valuable, it’s gonna come back to me.

[00:42:31] Mike Schmitz: I’ll stumble upon that idea, uh, again, because I’ve always got that, that open loop. that’s, by the way, when you talk about the creativity flywheel, if you have that constant output, what it does is it primes the pump for recognizing what’s actually valuable. And so it’s actually makes it a lot easier to capture things.

[00:42:47] Mike Schmitz: once you get some momentum, then it, it, it continues to, it continues to build on itself. Uh, at Craft and Commerce a couple years ago Nathan Barry, the, the CEO of Kit, talked about the laws of flywheels, and that really resonated with me. He talked about [00:43:00] how when you, turn a flywheel, it takes a lot of effort at the beginning, but then each turn actually becomes easier as you build momentum, and it also produces more.

[00:43:09] Mike Schmitz: And so I think that absolutely applies to the creative process. Now, w- how that stuff happens inside of Obsidian, I, I kinda don’t put any sort of, pressure or, or timeline on that. I’m curating the things that, that come in there. I’m periodically making connections, but I’m making those connections not on a schedule, not, you know, three hours a week I’m in there making my notes.

[00:43:30] Mike Schmitz: but when it… when I notice that there’s a connection, and this is my big beef with some of those pre-made systems, is I feel like if you take somebody else’s system, and I have a pre-built vault, but there’s an important distinction here, I wanna make. it- it’s a starting point. It’s not the blueprint.

[00:43:46] Mike Schmitz: So if you’re gonna, you know, have a set folder structure, that’s, that’s great if it clicks for you, but 99% of people, that’s probably not the folder structure you should use. PARA is great if you are all in with PARA, if that’s the way that your brain [00:44:00] works. But I think a lot of times we force our brain down these paths when we, we should be s- like, giving it some, some fresh stuff to work with.

[00:44:07] Mike Schmitz: Like Paul, you were talking about just starting off. I wouldn’t say create these folders first. I would say start playing with your notes and sort of like the desire paths on college campuses, see where your brain naturally wants to go, and then add some structure around that, whether it’s folders, whether it’s tags.

[00:44:22] Mike Schmitz: Don’t try to, like, apply all that stuff at the beginning, and then, “I don’t understand any of this,” you know, and then then you write it off, and you go try the, try the next system. so you let that stuff develop. Let the connections happen, you know, kinda organically, and then the cultivate phase is the real important one.

[00:44:41] Mike Schmitz: That’s why, like, I, I do write a newsletter every week. I do create on a schedule, but that’s only because I’ve got a quantity of, ideas to work with there. I’m not forcing anything. That cultivate phase is kinda like time in the oven. Don’t take the cake out before it’s finished. And as long as you’ve got the [00:45:00] system that’s feeding all the other stuff, you know, you’ve always got some other pieces to, to work with

[00:45:05] Jeff Sieh: Very, very cool

[00:45:06] Paul Gowder: All right, so let me see if I can put this in photography terms. in like, in the dark room. So the negative is your notes. Your personality, your taste is how we develop that negative, and then AI is the part that can make it, you know, enlarge it and do other things with it. Is, is that f- for me, the photographer, is that fair?

[00:45:26] Paul Gowder: And then can you break that down a little bit more for us?

[00:45:28] Mike Schmitz: I think so, though I’m not a photographer, so I, I do think that that is probably a pretty good analogy though. so you- maybe you can help me understand this a little bit better, but my understanding of, like, old school photography is that when you are in the, the dark room, there are a lot of things that, that you can do that are going to change the composition of that, that image, right?

[00:45:52] Mike Schmitz: You have control over what that actually looks like at the end. and, and I f- I feel like, yeah, [00:46:00] you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta control that, that dial. You can’t just take your hands off the, the steering wheel at, at that point. But AI, I think, is, is great at, at amplifying your human voice and taste if you, if you use it intentionally.

[00:46:14] Mike Schmitz: so if- I generally have an idea of what I wanna say, and, just as an example, maybe you’re, you have a… You know what you wanna say, your fingers move faster than your brain, and so you make a whole bunch of typos when you send a newsletter. You’re gonna run it through Grammarly or something.

[00:46:27] Mike Schmitz: That’s AI in the process. for me with YouTube, I know how to make a… Like, I know how to… I know what I wanna talk about, and I know that I can create a pretty killer screencast video, whatever. I’m terrible at writing hooks. and so that’s where I’ll use AI to, through vidIQ, help me, nail down the, the hook for this, this video, things like that.

[00:46:45] Mike Schmitz: I’m not just, like, putting it on autopilot. and it is definitely impacting the, the final product. But yeah, you gotta kinda have an idea, or some sort of vision in your, your, your head of what I want the, the final output to, [00:47:00] to look like. A general idea of that, that vision, and then, then AI can, can help you bring it to life

[00:47:05] Jeff Sieh: I think those are great, that’s a great example. Yeah. I wanna ask one question before we move on to the next section. Man, we’re running out of time. I love h- having Mike on here ’cause this is stuff I nerd out about and I could talk with him forever about it. But Paula has a great question, and I thought of the same thing when you kinda, because this is, I think, a, a big friction point for a lot of people.

[00:47:23] Jeff Sieh: She goes, “Mike, could you repeat your process for capturing ideas on the fly?”

[00:47:27] Mike Schmitz: Sure. So I use Drafts, I think it’s draftsapp.com or maybe getdrafts.com. I don’t remember. It’s a indie app from a single guy, and it’s basically a plain text, capture tool. It supports markdown too, so if I wanted to capture in markdown, whatever I captured there is actually gonna be rendered when I bring it over to Obsidian.

[00:47:47] Mike Schmitz: But a lot of times I will just, if it’s an idea, I usually put idea colon, and then whatever the idea is. if it’s a podcast episode, it’ll be like idea colon, you know, topic for Focused or [00:48:00] something. those sit in my Drafts inbox, which I can access on my iPhone, I can access on my Mac. when I’m out for a run, which is typically where I get a lot of ideas, it’s a complication on my watch, and so idea colon whatever, it’ll sync back immediately ’cause it’s all just plain text.

[00:48:16] Mike Schmitz: And then about once a week I’ll bring that stuff over into Obsidian. I don’t pipe it in automatically. there are, like, export actions in Drafts, but I think this is one place, that curate phase, if we, if we wanna eliminate the friction during the capture phase, curate is where we wanna add it back. it’s really intentional friction where things really have to resonate in order to bust through that, that barrier.

[00:48:38] Mike Schmitz: But yeah, that’s basically it. It’s not, it’s not too complicated, it’s just if something, you know, resonates, I, I drop a marker, and then later I come back to it and if it’s something that I’m still excited about, I’ll, I’ll bring it over into Obsidian and see where it goes.

[00:48:53] Paul Gowder: I, I, I’d love to draft… I, I think it was CEX where somebody showed me drafts. I have it as my action button on my iPhone, [00:49:00] so at any point I can just… I, I have a complication too, but I use that action button more often than not, and yeah, it just quickly captures, get it out of my head.

[00:49:08] Jeff Sieh: I, it’s, it’s all about friction. And you know what I’ve been using, and I’ve been doing it for probably about five months now, is I use the Reminders app, and I have an, a, a tab just called Ideas. And I do what you do, Mike. I’ll say, like, email, da da da da da da. Or, you know, product idea, da da da da da da.

[00:49:25] Jeff Sieh: You know? I’ll, I’ll capture it that way because it lives, like you said, everywhere. Drafts for me is a little hard to get opened and stuff, and so I like, I really like just Reminders, ’cause it just is so easy and it’s … You know, I can s- I can just talk and say, “Hey, set a reminder in my ideas to da da da da da,” and it will capture it and put it out there.

[00:49:40] Jeff Sieh: So the capture, as long as you do it, but then you go back and curate it and do something with it. Just don’t … A lot of people just capture ideas, and then they, they don’t ever do anything with it. So having that time where you go back and sit down and make those connections and say, “Okay. Oh, I, I actually have three.

[00:49:56] Jeff Sieh: I have an email series here,” or, “I have a new sequence,” or whatever you can [00:50:00] have, when you go back and do that. So really quick before we wrap up, I want you to talk about your, your Life HQ, because I was so impressed with it I actually bought it. He tried to give it to me, but I’m like, “No, you don’t.

[00:50:10] Jeff Sieh: Quit doing that. You gotta, you gotta sell your stuff.” so I bought it. I’ve been very impressed with it, one, because he gives you one that he’s kinda pre-populated, but he also has one like he was talking about that’s totally blank for you to do with whatever with, with. And I’m just, I’ve just dipped my toe into the Obsidian thing, and I’m pretty impressed with it.

[00:50:28] Jeff Sieh: but let’s, let’s talk about it. Obsidian’s biggest problem might be that empty vault. But you open it and you have no idea where to start. So what does Life HQ, you know, how does it scratch that itch? And so what is Life HQ in practical terms?

[00:50:43] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, so Life HQ started as a collection of my workflows. I do a, a practical PKM cohort where I talk through, a model or framework I call the PKM stack, which really just kind of visualizes how information flows into and out of your, [00:51:00] your PKM system. And I would argue, by the way, whether people have never heard of Obsidian, have no interest in Notion, like you have a PKM stack that you are currently using for managing the information, the ideas, the actions, your identity, reflection.

[00:51:15] Mike Schmitz: Those are all like component pieces to, uh, doing more of, of what matters, right? So, Life HQ really is all of the workflows that I built, and I started off, I just put all the, the s- the settings and the plug-ins and things in there, gave it to people and they’re like, “Here you go.” And nobody used it, and I don’t blame them.

[00:51:33] Mike Schmitz: So then it was like, we really need some, some explanation of how this stuff is put together. that led me down a rabbit hole, which turned into Life HQ. There are- there is over 60,000 words of handwritten documentation for all of the workflows that I have used, ’cause I’ve been all in with Obsidian for over five years now.

[00:51:50] Mike Schmitz: it’s all broken down into categories. So there’s journaling, there’s task management, there’s, I call it the life theme, you know, my, my vision and values [00:52:00] piece, personal retreats All that kind of stuff kind of falls into these different buckets, and there’s, like, hub notes on, like, this is everything you need to know about journaling, and all of the, the notes that connect to that.

[00:52:10] Mike Schmitz: And then there are specific how-tos for each and every workflow. There’s a summary at the top. and I, I built it in a way that the, the Life HQ reference vault, I call it, that’s the, the big one with, with all the stuff in there. There’s a whole bunch of example data so you can see how things work.

[00:52:25] Mike Schmitz: There’s screenshots, there’s videos. It, it documents everything. there’s also an onboarding that, like, walks you through if you’re brand new. The very first thing you see is start here. That note opens by default. You click to that, go to the next one. It introduces you to some of the, the core frameworks.

[00:52:39] Mike Schmitz: But then it’s sort of choose your own adventure. everything is linked, so you can jump between different things, and there’s a status property for each and every note that at the beginning is unread. There’s a button that I built on each note. So as you, like, okay, I got that one, you click the button, it marks it to red, and the highlight behind the note changes from a blue magnifying glass to a green check mark.

[00:52:58] Mike Schmitz: So you can kind of visually keep [00:53:00] track as you work your way through this. And really, the idea is I want documentation for my own workflows, explanation of how they work, so that you don’t just use what I built. The blank version basically is that. If you didn’t do anything else to it, you could just start putting in your own stuff and using it that way.

[00:53:18] Mike Schmitz: But I want people to understand it so that they can tweak it and make it their own. I really take a values-based a- approach to productivity and, like, what are we, what are we doing? Why are we doing it? You know, I want it to be in alignment with my vision and my values. I call it a life theme. You know, everything I do has to be connected to that life theme, otherwise it’s an automatic no for me.

[00:53:38] Mike Schmitz: So my life theme is I help people multiply their time and talent, leave a bigger dent in the universe. So if I… I, I’ll experiment with stuff, like, when I talk about PKM, it’s very much in, in service of that. I wanna help people me- get, get clarity on what really matters, and then create these productivity and creativity systems so that they, make more, of what they were designed to make and do more of what, what really [00:54:00] matters, to them.

[00:54:00] Mike Schmitz: But I don’t want it to be just, like, a, a done for you, okay, here, now you’ve got the system, now just start using it. I wanna give people the, the power to tweak it and make it their own. that’s the, the vision behind it. it’s kinda hard to do that. I think you really do have to sink your teeth into it which is why I tried to make it as easy as I could with all that documentation, to help people rip out, you know, specific pieces of it as they layer stuff into their, their own Obsidian vaults.

[00:54:24] Jeff Sieh: And you also have, like, a free version that I saw too. it gives you, like, some tutorials and some walkthroughs.

[00:54:29] Mike Schmitz: Yeah, I’ve got a, I’ve got a free starter vault. It’s not actually like LifeHQ Lite, it’s really just a bunch of, tips and, and resources for Obsidian. So if you’re like brand new to Obsidian, it’s forcing you to write in Markdown, I have no idea what Markdown is, the starter vault has like a Markdown cheat sheet, stuff like that

[00:54:44] Jeff Sieh: Very, very cool

[00:54:45] Paul Gowder: Now, you’ve mentioned that in, in some of this, some of these workflows you have are battle-tested. These are things that you’ve tested over the years. Can you tell us, as we are getting… Some of us are just getting started, what’s some things that went wrong for you, and what are- that’s baked into this app that we won’t make those same [00:55:00] mistakes?

[00:55:01] Mike Schmitz: Oh, man. well, I’ll talk about journaling ’cause that’s probably the, the most pointed example. I have an o- on-again, off-again relationship with journaling. I’ve used, I used Day One for, for many years, tried all the different apps, and it just never really stuck. I would stick with it for a little bit, but very jealous of Jeff’s 2,000-day day streak.

[00:55:19] Mike Schmitz: Like, that never worked for me. So I read, Triggers by Marshall Goldsmith for the Bookworm Podcast, and he talks about this different way of doing journaling that he calls daily questions. And the, the thing there is instead of having the prompt like, “What did you accomplish today?” where it’s focused on the outcome, his was framed, “Did I do my best to…”

[00:55:39] Mike Schmitz: and then he’s got, like, core areas he’s checking in on, and he gives himself a rating from one to 10. So you’re eliminating the outcome from the, from the process because I, I would go to journal and be like, “What did I accomplish today? Well, pretty much nothing. Okay, I don’t wanna say that, so, I’m just not gonna journal today.”

[00:55:55] Mike Schmitz: And then I miss a day, I miss a couple of days, and all of a sudden, you know, the momentum’s [00:56:00] gone. So with daily questions, you’re really just focusing on the effort, not the outcome. And so, like, I have on there, did I do my best to be spiritual, love my wife, love my kids, create something, learn something, and exercise example, if I am getting over a cold, and I force myself to just go for a, a short, slow run, and I run a mile and a half, you know, I may give myself a nine for did I do my best to exercise?

[00:56:25] Mike Schmitz: If I’m training for a half-marathon and I cut my long run short and I do seven miles instead of 10, you know, I might give that a six. so it’s all based off of, off of the effort because I believe if you consistently put in the effort, then the score will, will take care of itself. That daily questions format has really stuck with me, and I actually…

[00:56:44] Mike Schmitz: I came from Roam Research too, Jeff, so I was starting to do that in Roam Research using the daily notes. I built that into Obsidian now, using the metadata properties at the top, and I was able to create some fancy graph views so I can, I can chart my, my scores and my [00:57:00] averages over time, bring that into my personal retreats.

[00:57:02] Mike Schmitz: and I’ve been doing that consistently now for, I think five years. That was one of the first, workflows that I built in Obsidian, and that really was the thing that caused journaling to click for me. And then this kind of gets at another point, to what you were asking about, Paul. Getting started with Obsidian, don’t try to do a whole bunch of stuff.

[00:57:19] Mike Schmitz: Get one workflow that’s gonna solve a specific need for the way that you work because with Obsidian, if you have an idea for a specific workflow that’s not working in another app, whether it’s task management or, or anything, you can probably build it. So build that one thing that’s really gonna add value, and then you can layer things on top of that.

[00:57:37] Mike Schmitz: That’s exactly what I did with the daily questions. Once I got consistent with the daily questions, now I’ve got sections in that daily note where I can capture a journal entry. I can capture a gratitude entry. I can capture any wins that I have. You know, and I can build all these systems in so, like, it all gets pulled together using these queries, so it’s easy to review when I do my, my personal retreats.

[00:57:56] Mike Schmitz: but I have failed lots of times with journaling. I’ve failed lots of times with [00:58:00] task and project management. and, and my task and project management one, that’s in LifeHQ. I’ve got a video on this. definitely take a look at that video because this is not for the, the faint of heart.

[00:58:09] Mike Schmitz: This is the evolution of me failing over and over and over again before I found a system that actually worked for me. But, yeah, so that’s what I mean by, by battle-tested is, like, it took me a long time and a lot of trial and error, but I landed on some things that actually worked. Because I’m a systems thinker and I wanna get to the why, I unpack why I think it worked, and then, you know, this is what I built.

[00:58:30] Mike Schmitz: Feel free to tweak it and make it your own

[00:58:32] Jeff Sieh: Or you could do something where you can’t get in your office unless you write in your journal, which is what I’ve done. So

[00:58:37] Mike Schmitz: Forcing functions. I love it.

[00:58:38] Jeff Sieh: that’s what I did. So this has been amazing. make sure you guys go follow, Mike everywhere. You can find him at Mike Schmitz at practicalPKM.com.

[00:58:49] Jeff Sieh: So that’s practicalPKM.com if you guys are listening on the podcast. Amazing stuff. I have been more and more impressed every time I hear him speak or sit down and talk to him. We didn’t even get to the AI thing he built, there when I was watching [00:59:00] him at, at Mac Stock, but it was great. So we’ll ha- we’ll have you back on.

[00:59:03] Jeff Sieh: We’ll talk about that, sometime as well. But thank you guys so much. Paul Gowder, what’s going on with you? Where can people find out more about the amazing Paul Gowder?

[00:59:10] Paul Gowder: I got a Facebook challenge going on if you’re looking to really grow your Facebook and do more there. So come over, check me out, paulgowder.com/facebookchallenge

[00:59:18] Jeff Sieh: And Mike, is there anything else you wanna talk to us about before we wrap things up? Anything you wanna send people to other than practicalbkm.com?

[00:59:25] Mike Schmitz: Nah, practicalpm.com is the, the place where I’ve got links to everything else that I do, including a whole bunch of free tools. If you’re getting started with Obsidian, I got a whole section up at the, the top there free tools that I’ve vibe coded. Claude’s been, uh, very helpful in creating a whole bunch of quizzes, diagnostic tools, all sorts of things, if you need help with Obsidian

[00:59:44] Jeff Sieh: Very, very cool. And don’t forget, if you guys want to get the notes of all the things we’re talking about today, in a couple hours this will be rolling out on jeffsieh.com/cheatsheet, where you can find the notes of this show that are, and next steps, all sorts of cool things. Go and kick [01:00:00] the tires for me.

[01:00:00] Jeff Sieh: Tell me what you think about this new feature, jeffsieh.com/cheatsheet. We had some great comments today. Paula says, “I really like adding the resonance component. If my idea continues to resonate over time, it’s more likely to be meaningful to those interacting with my content.” Rich is saying, “Ugh, I feel you with journaling.

[01:00:15] Jeff Sieh: So hard to stick with it.” Thank you, guys. We have Thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you, Mike, for being here. We will see you next time. Have a great weekend, everybody. Bye now