What is stopping you from doing your best thinking?
Are you consuming too much of other people's stuff, but don't know what to do about it?
Do you find it hard creating new ideas and find yourself getting stuck creatively?
Do you wish "technology" would actually help you think better, instead of always getting in your way?
The solution: Create a trusted space to support and power your thinking efforts.
Want to create one?
Read on.
Build a custom system to support your best thinking
The Linking Your Thinking Workshop is an online workshop that teaches, trains, and supports you to build a "Personal Knowledge Management" system you trust.
I had no room for my own thoughts!
I also used Evernote to build an international fitness boxing business and to produce two indie feature films. And personally, I used my digital notes to reflect, to write, and to think.
It worked, for a while. But secretly, a hidden cancer was growing in my notes. I still remember the pain of trying to put together a business proposal for opening a boxing gym in NYC—and slamming the keyboard because I was wasting so much time searching for lost notes.
I used to jump into my notes to get my thoughts in order, but after 5 years, opening Evernote was no longer fun. It was stressful. It caused my mind to feel scattered. Just the thought of opening my notes created surprising amounts of anxiety.
The problem was that my notes were becoming less of my notes. I was capturing so much NOISE that I was drowning out the SIGNAL. Since I was filling up my notes with other people's thoughts, I had no room for my own thoughts!
The happiness I used to feel using my digital notes was experiencing “death by a thousand cuts.” When I couldn't find my most valuable thoughts, I started to feel like I was losing a part of myself.
My joy evaporated.
I knew there had to be a better way...
Trusted by thinkers at the following institutions
There is a better way
But by the end of 2015, I finally had full ownership of my notes again. I made my notes plain text. Because of that move, I was using linked notes half a decade before they burst onto the scene. There were no systems to follow.
So I spent the next several years stress-testing and iterating on the universal frameworks hidden in linked notes. I used it in the real world for several extremely diverse efforts in my life (described more below).
My joy returned. And so did my successes. I discovered what made our knowledge fragile, what made it robust, and what made it come alive!
Being able to finally use technology to connect our ideas is a revolution. Now we can use external tools to support our thinking efforts in the same way our brain naturally works!
That's why I'm calling all writers, thinkers, life-long-learners, content creators, entrepreneurs and knowledge workers...
If you want to do your best thinking, more often, there is a better way.
It starts with this:
• Less collecting. More connecting.
• Less highlights. More insights.
Your best thinking is when you are fully engaged in the stuff in front of you, connecting it to other stuff—and finding your unique perspective amongst it all.
Want to get there reliably? Consistently?
The knowledge management principles we teach and train in the LYT Workshop will give you the insights, guidance, and support to unlock and empower your best thinking.
And, you will leave the workshop with your own, future-proof PKM system —a supercharged "ideaverse" to support and power all of your thinking efforts.
Meet the creator of Linking Your Thinking
I’ve spent the last 15 years using digital notes to create and grow a fitness boxing into an international company, produce two independent feature films, become a TV and film editor, and—perhaps most importantly—to calm my thoughts and make better sense of the world around me.
Hi, I'm Nick Milo.
I’ve spent the last 15 years using digital notes to create and grow a fitness boxing into an international company, produce two independent feature films, become a TV and film editor, and—perhaps most importantly—to calm my thoughts and make better sense of the world around me.
I’ve tested and stretched the limits of Personal Knowledge Management in the “real world”:
- from the fitness industry 🏃♂️ to the film industry 🎬
- from the football field 🏈 to civil engineering 🏗
- from strength training 🏋️♂️ to the boxing ring 🥊
- from public speaking 🎤 to content creation 🎨
What I’ve learned is this: being effective at managing knowledge is a superpower—and linking your thinking supercharges it.
The frameworks I teach unlock our ability to work with ideas in a way that is fast, flexible, and future-proof. I have taught the principles of linked notes to thousands of people with great results. These principles are flexible enough for you to shape them to your unique use cases and personal needs.
I’ve tested and stretched the limits of linked notes in the “real world”:
- from the fitness industry 🏃 to the film industry 🎬
- from the football field 🏈 to civil engineering 🏗
- from strength training 🏋️ to the boxing ring 🥊
- from public speaking 🎤 to content creation 🎨
Being effective at managing knowledge is a superpower—and linking your thinking supercharges it.
Do you want to...
that will support & power your thinking efforts for the rest of your life?
Do you want to work better in your research?
Do you want to make better sense of the world?
Do you want to create consistently?
Do you want to write big and often complex things?
Do you want to get your thoughts in order?
Do you want to be productive with your efforts?
from attending the LYT Workshop. It is the best way to reliably
build your custom, future-proof ideaverse that will
support & power your thinking efforts for the rest of your life.
Trusted by 1000+
note-makers
I didn't think it was possible to do that. It’s transformed my perception of what a system can be like and I am blown by the possibilities!
Sharalene Moonjely
Marleaux Flournoy
Cris S.
Narelle Rowe
It will change the way you think for the better.
Helen Zhu
Matthew Strother
Noah Matthews
What will you learn from the curriculum?
- Learn how links are allowing us to lose less and create more
- Learn how to make meaningful relationships between notes
- Identify when note-taking fails and when you need note-making
- Practice with each type of relationship between notes
- Use your PKM Planet results to gain clarity on your use-cases
- Learn how note-taking creates weak
thinking habits - Learn how note-making unlocks your
best thinking - Learn how to make notes grow in value
over time - Practice the 7 C’s of note-making
- Understand the fundamentals of
fluid thinking
- Recognize when “mental squeeze points” occur, and how to overcome them.
- Understand the fundamentals & power of Maps of Content (MOCs)
- Practice the 11 C's of map-making
- Explore the benefits of MOCs and other ways we can use them
- Complete your idea emergence network
- Build your library note
- Build your ultimate dashboard,
your home note - Refine your use of links, folders, tags,
and queries
- Improve how you separate the signal from
the noise - Practice the skill of transitioning from idea to note-making
- Create and develop your PKM workflows
- Explore advanced sensemaking tactics
- Review ways of sensemaking
- Cover tactics for sensemaking
- Explore common activities in our PKM system
- Define where, how, and why we share things with others
Get Started Today
What's included in the workshop?
We will guide you to build and improve your custom and future-proof PKM system.
6 live interactive lecture sessions with Nick Milo
These are 90-minute sessions where "You learn, we work, we talk" in a tightly curated working experience designed to leave you more empowered with PKM each time.For those that stick around, we go an extra 30 minutes to answer all of your questions. Ending at the two-hour mark, this is a true super session.
8 live guided note-making sessions
These are our signature "sensemaking sessions" that will make you "comfortably uncomfortable" as you learn the art and craft of note-making.Now offered live at two times on the day so people in the Asia-Pacific time zones can easily attend!
90 lessons with exercises
Expect to lean forward as you learn and personally apply each concept with focused exercises. (You don't just hit auto-play with these lessons!)6 units. 90 lessons. Targeted exercises. 60+ minutes of video weekly.Lifetime access to the lessons.
Live learning sessions with hand-selected experts
Receive targeted sessions from hand-selected subject-matter experts on how to apply the workshop's concepts in specific contexts and situations to further improve your system.
Feedback from workshop mentors
If you want to get better, you need fast feedback.
Our dedicated mentors are workshop alumni who are looking to help provide guidance and make sure you keep moving in the right direction.
Showcase Sessions
This one-of-a-kind experience happens during the final week of the workshop.You get to see over 40 examples of digital ideaverses from your fellow students.You will leave awed, excited, and further empowered.
Your support team
by the amount of support you have during the workshop.
Expert guided sessions
Expect at least two 60-minute sessions from each of them
Dr. Jeremy Nguyen
Karen Hume
Bianca Pereira
Your core team
Dan Lardi
Nick Milo
Keaton Sondreal
What makes LYT so different?
Is this you?
"I was able to organize information but it didn't help me with knowledge."
Is this you?
If you’re trying to do PKM but you feel stuck—or something feels “off”—it may be because your system is encouraging you to focus on the wrong things.
So what are the right things?
These six focal points in Linking Your Thinking are what will finally get you actually working with your Knowledge!
Collecting a new idea does not equal KNOWING a new idea, or being able to effectively work with it—or even explain it to others. If you take anything away from these words, remember this:
We don’t need more knowledge every second. Instead, we need to get better at developing the knowledge we already have.
Put down the highlighter and slowly step away! Once you do, something amazing happens. You open a space to think—to connect—and to generate your own insights.
Multi-step highlighting techniques encourage the habit of “collecting without processing”. In practice, this means you’ll save many articles, and process few. This creates a PKM system where 99% of the stuff in there are someone else’s thoughts, not yours.
It disconnects you from your own thinking and creates a sterile thinking environment devoid of joy.
This is the “Fall of the Note-Taker”: Too much note-taking kneecaps your best thinking and harms the long-term health of your PKM system.
The future will favor the Note-Maker. Note-making is where you are creating the most personal meaning and value.
You can’t get to yours, if you’re always just highlighting theirs! The trouble with chronic note-takers is that they never get the part where they’re doing their best thinking.
Where do you think your unique perspective comes out? From bolding and highlighting the words of other people, or from writing your own thoughts and making the insights yourself? We need you to be your best self.
We need you to share your unique perspective with the rest of us.
If you are merely clipping articles and filing resources, folders are fine. But in truth, that’s less “Knowledge” Management and more “Information Resource” Management.
And maybe that’s what you want.
But if you care about knowledge, ideas, and making leaps of insights; then you simply must learn how to link ideas in a powerful and future-proof way.
Once you start linking ideas together, you cross the threshold, and there’s no going back. Your neurons are firing like they should and you are spending more time doing your best thinking. It feels good, doesn’t it?
Looking back, you laugh at how silly it was to try to do PKM without linking. Oh, Life!
If you want to get things done, learn GTD. If you want to build a rich universe of ideas that you develop throughout your life, learn LYT.
If you want a course on project management, take one of the million courses on that. But if you want to improve how you actually work with ideas (not just sort them into folders), then learn LYT.
Hey, I get it. We have to get things done. But look around. You’ll find everyone kneeling at the alter of “tasks”, “projects”, “tracking”, and “getting things done”.
Somehow, we gave up the inherent joy of thinking, as its own reward. We stripped away the soul of inquiry and replaced it with soulless efficiency. Can you even remember a time when you felt calm and joy jumping into your notes? Because...
Ironically, it's when you stop exploiting and start exploring, that you generate some of your best ideas and insights!
You may not know this, but you have a choice. You don’t have to serve your task manager. Take the power back. Choose to be led by the carrot of curiosity over stick of a task list.
What will you leave the workshop saying?
Enroll in the LYT Workshop
Cohort 9
October 11 - November 11
You will leave this workshop with your custom future-proof ideaverse.
We have 2 different plans to help you achieve this.
1 Workshop
3 Workshops
Monthly Events & Continuous Learning
1 Workshop
3 Workshops
Everything you see on the left is yours. Every part of Workshop 12 is included in the Journey package. The difference is…you get to experience a full workshop TWO MORE TIMES!
We are starting 2024 out with a bang! Every LYT Workshop is similar but different. You can expect the same high value live sessions, but expect the list of experts to change. Learn from new students. And realize who you were for the previous workshop is not who you are for the next one. You’ve grown, changed, and evolved; so use each workshop to continue your journey.
For our mid-2024 workshop, you will be in the top 0.1% of PKM practitioners in the world. What efforts will you be focused on then? No matter what they are, use this workshop as an accelerator—a forcing function—to have the most joy and make the most progress possible.
Monthly Events & Continuous Learning
Workshop schedule
Frequently asked questions
If you need guidance, please feel free to email us at hello@linkingyourthinking.com.
You can also use this proposal template.
We had a few people use Roam in the previous workshop. They found the MOCs in particular to be very empowering.
You can start by learning from our two case studies here and also here. Check out some of our recent Alumni Insights here. This is also a handy public reference for you.
So that would be something like Obsidian or Roam or Remnote or Athens or anything that allows for link-based notes can work.
Now as far as the workshop, all the examples are shown in Obsidian, and the fancy advanced features are not needed. I'll talk about some cool hotkeys from time to time, but the focus is squarely on how we can work with link-based notes. These are timeless fundamentally no matter the software.
While this workshop isn't course on how to use a specific piece of software, you're surrounding yourself with people you can help, and surprisingly, like to help a lot!
The workshop is hands-on, focused-work, with people solving the same problems that you're trying to solve...that's how you accelerate your growth! Instead of walking down the wrong path for several years (like I did in Evernote by over-collecting), you can quickly revise and iterate your knowledge management system in "real-time" so you not only build a system that remains useable and scales with your ever-changing needs—but you also ensure that your digital notes remain a source of joy.
For the expected experience, try to budget around 6-8 hours per week—that includes the live sessions of course.
For the best experience, just attend the live sessions (or watch the recordings as soon as they are available), go through the lessons, make comments, read what others have shared, and be an active part of this amazing gathering of inspiring thinkers!
Still have questions?
Learning is better together
Active, not passive
Faster alone at first, further together forever
Comfortably uncomfortable
Why the workshop works
Linking Your Thinking created and follows the
six principles of Lean Forward Learning™
Online learning is different. It's the wild west out there.
My deep goal is to inspire other teachers in online education to incorporate the paradigm of Lean Forward Learning into their own educational products and services.
The Lean Forward paradigm is an extension of the "Learn by doing" theory of education set forth by John Dewey in the early 1900's. However, the Lean Forward paradigm is different because it outlines principles specifically for online education.
I believe online workshop designed like Linking Your Thinking are just the beginning of a deeper level of digital learning. Sitting back and passively watching instructional videos is easy, but the results are far less powerful. Instead, the LYT formula forces you to grab the controls and pilot the ship.
Designing the right educational experience with these principles in mind provides students with an effective and profound learning experience.
Here are the Six Principles of Lean Forward Learning™.
- Curated yet Non-linear: There is a sense of freedom, and yet, a sense of structure. As a student, you have some agency to “Choose Your Own Adventure”.
- Hands-on Repetitions: The very nature of the workshop builds in inescapable hands-on repetitions with the exact thing you are trying to learn. Just like a video game, if you don't take the controls and move forward, you don't make progress. In other words, it's designed to force "unavoidable engagement".
- Uncomfortable: The very nature of the workshop means that the adventurer will be uncomfortable, challenged, and sometimes even frustrated. Those are "deep reps". That’s when the deepest, stickiest learning happens! And it's the getting stuck that leads to sticky learning.
- Immersive: It feels like a special self-contained mini-world...a holistic learning system.
- Measurable: There are ways to measure a student's progress.
- Multiple Avenues of Engagement: Students don't just "read" and "watch". They DO. Plus they also do some combination of: commenting, interacting, and sharing. This ties back into getting reps: reading reps, watching reps, doing reps...reps commenting, interacting, and sharing.
The LYT Workshop did not design the six principles of Lean Forward Learning™ . No. The principles were born from the LYT Workshop!
The LYT Workshop is the model for an all-encompassing tsunami of a learning experience.