Zack Arnold

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Information Is Worthless…Until You Know How to Connect It (With or Without AI) | with Nick Milo

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About Episode

When information is everywhere and costs nothing, what actually makes any of it worth having?

Nick Milo is the founder of the wildly popular program and YouTube channel Linking Your Thinking and a former student of mine who is now a leading voice in the world of personal knowledge management. In this conversation, Nick and I talk about why information on its own has never been less valuable, and why the real value comes from your ability to connect ideas and take action on them. We discuss where AI can reduce the bad friction in our lives, but also where handing over your thinking to the robots can lead to what Nick calls “cognitive surrender.” You’ll also get a first look (or listen) at the mind-bending Obsidian knowledge vault we built for The Connection Conference, so you can see what linked ideas actually look like in practice. And we may even talk you out of letting the robots clean your closet.

If you’re buried in podcasts, articles, and AI summaries you never do anything with, or if you’ve started letting the chatbots do your thinking because it’s just easier, this conversation will show you that the value of ideas is in the struggle to turn them into action.

Key Takeaways

Use linked notes to move from organization into ideation. Connecting ideas gives you a trail you can return to, helping you recall, re-internalize, and build on what matters.
Protect your cognition when using AI. AI can save time, but turning to it whenever you are tired can become “cognitive surrender” and sacrifice the ability to cultivate wisdom.
Make AI bring ideas to you, then engage with them in your own words. The goal is not to have AI create your thinking, but to use it as scaffolding that helps you interact with and internalize what matters.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: Nick, I don’t know if you know this, but you belong to a very small subset of human beings, which is you are a three-time guest of my podcast. Your third time, I don’t know if you’re keeping track, but I am, and I’m very, very excited that you and I are here back chatting for the third time, so… Very much appreciate you being here, and I am stoked to crawl into your brain to really understand how we can make the most of all of the amazing knowledge that’s available to us.

Nick Milo: I’m so happy to be here, Zack, and in my brain, it can be a scary place, so I hope that we’re all buckled up, and let’s have a fun ride.

Zack Arnold: No kidding. Yeah, disclaimer for both of us. You’re crawling into both of our brains. It could definitely be a little scary, a little overwhelming. Can’t speak for you, but for myself, a big central topic of this entire conference is neurodivergence. And it gets a little scary in the ADHD brain. So, you know, disclaimer for all of you that this could get a little wild. Let’s go. Yes, sir. So the idea here today is… Eventually, we’re going to dive right into this brand new knowledge base that we’re building for this conference that we’re building in Obsidian, both made for humans, but also made for the robots. And we are largely building this entire knowledge base vault based on the inspiration and training that you have provided for for the world over because you’ve literally become the Obsidian guy. And I am one of your devout followers, watched many of your YouTube videos, played around with all the different things that Obsidian does. And I went from, yeah, I don’t know if this Obsidian thing is for me to I live inside this program all day, every day. It’s probably very messy and very disorganized compared to the way that you might approach it, and I don’t… I don’t have the confidence to actually show people what my vault looks like, but we’re going to be talking about what the knowledge base vault for this conference looks like. I’m going to be showing a very early beta version of it. This is, just for full transparency for anybody watching, this is recorded weeks before the conference. So everything you’re seeing today is going to be much, much further along. But I’m a big believer in doing this thing, kind of stealing an idea from the author Austin Kleon. I don’t know if you’re familiar with him, but I love Austin. And he talks about the idea of showing your work. And as a recovering perfectionist, I’m doing much better to be okay with showing things that are half thought, half completed, and bringing people into the process, rather than it’s got to be perfect before people see it. So this is all of mine and my team’s dirty laundry today, the early beta version of this Obsidian knowledge base vault that we’re building for this conference. But before we dive right into it, I want to give people just a little bit of context. And that is the context about why it is that you are here. And what’s very unique about you being here is that in a former life, many, many, many years ago, you were a student of mine. So, you and I recorded an in-depth podcast talking all about your career pivot and transition out of entertainment into the world of personal knowledge management. So, for anybody that wants, you know, like, the full menu, we’ll link to that. But give us the back-of-the-napkin version of kind of this transition from old life to new life, and how you became Mr. Obsidian.

Nick Milo: Sure, I’m just going to do high-level stuff. I graduated with a civil engineer degree. Until that wasn’t fun anymore, and then a former college football teammate of my… of mine, we co-founded a business called Pink Gloves Boxing. And it was a fitness boxing business, a fitness program, but it was more about empowerment and leadership. And that was sort of our Trojan horse. I’ll get you a good workout, but also you’ll… learn more about yourself and be able to lead others. You’ll be able to box, you’ll also be able to hold, and be like, 1, 1, 2, and give instructions. And we did that for Montana, where I grew up. Took that everywhere, it became international, 60 different locations, big in colleges, universities, and also in Scandinavia. We also had a few locations in Saudi Arabia, which felt sort of subversive, because it’s a lot about empowerment. Also, during that time, I, went to New York, And… started working at HBO. In the fitness department. Then that transitioned to a move over to Los Angeles. And I started working at a few different, on a few different shows, TV shows. Including at HBO. Where I was now no longer working in the fitness department, but parlayed some of those relationships to working in their programming department as an assistant to one of the main executives, and that was quite an experience. Through all that process, I found that I wanted to become an editor. That’s when we crossed paths. I saw what you were doing, and I was like, I need to figure out how to… how to get into assistant editing, and then really from assistant editing into editing, into that part of the chair. Picture editing. And, through working with you, long story short, about a year later, I had my first ever credit. But it was also, as the pandemic was rolling around. And my nerdy interests came to the forefront. Which was always about, like, thinking, journaling, taking notes, and now, suddenly, as the pandemic was happening, a new 75-year-long dream was finally at our fingertips. I’m not sure if you know, like, the history of all this, but it was the ability to finally link our thoughts to other thoughts, digitally. And this was a dream that started in 1945 by Vannevar Bush with something called the Memex. And essentially, he was saying. He has this essay, it’s a famous essay called, As We May Think, and in it, he basically says, if all the scientists who are spending all the time in World War II Devote their energy away from war. and to the advancement of knowledge, imagine what we could do. And there, he proposes, like, what if we had this thing where we could link our ideas together, our personal knowledge together, in such a way that allows us to cultivate it? And that was the white whale for the next 75 years, until 2020. Yes, if you, like, you were really technical, you could find out ways to do it, but not like today. Not like for the past 6 years. Now, we truly can. We can think digitally almost as fast as our brains naturally do. And we have a trail that we can come back to and continue to cultivate these ideas. So, since 2020, that’s where I’ve created Linking Your Thinking, my business, and I help people figure out, how do we actually accomplish this? How do we conquer information overwhelm? And more importantly, after that. With all that space that opens up. what can we do now? Like, what do you actually want to do with all of those information, all those bits of information, and bits of ideas that mean something to you? Now you don’t no longer have to remember it, now they’re connected in really informative ways, and we can finally go from Worrying about organization. to worrying and spending time in ideation, and that’s the big twist. That’s why I’m really excited about linked notes and everything that we can do.

Zack Arnold: There are so many things that I want to dive into, and I think it’s to me it’s so funny that you started in the world of fitness and then transitioned into Hollywood post-production, which is like the anti-fitness industry, which is as you know, that’s kind of where I started, and that my very first foray out of the out of bay into building a business and building a community was this community called Fitness in Post, which was the combination of people working in Hollywood post-production. and interested in fitness, and I just assumed everybody wanted to get more fit and be healthy and be better people and focus on personal development, and didn’t take me long to realize that Fitness Impost was an oxymoron. But to me, it was kind of the seed that was planted of, oh. There is a, there is a world of people that are interested in bettering themselves and learning more and connecting knowledge. And even though that was my, you know, first failed brand, I feel like that was the platform that led to what I’m doing now. But the… one of the challenges that I ran into that I think so many people are running into, even to today, with the exception of those that have already found you. Is that there is so much information. Like the world is information overload everywhere. We’re never going to listen to all the podcasts. We’re never going to watch all the things in the Netflix queue. I made a joke years ago, and you could, at the very beginning of Netflix, where you could create, you know, like, here’s my watch list. I said, there’s going to be a psychological condition that’s called Netflix Q anxiety. And I don’t know if it’s you know in the in the DSM, but people are like, oh my god, I have all this stuff to watch, I’m never gonna get through it. Now there’s 17 streaming platforms, there’s an endless stream of content on social. But there’s so much information, and information no longer has any value whatsoever. Now with the chatbots, we have access to everything. And my theory is, and I would assume that you’re very much in the same category, it’s about knowing how to find the right information, but then knowing how to be able to link the ideas together so you can execute on it, because I don’t believe ideas have value. I believe executed ideas have the value, and that’s where I think the work you’re doing is such a game changer for anybody that actually wants to implement things that they’re learning.

Nick Milo: Yeah, I would agree with that. The information, you know, information scarcity, before the last, you know, before our lifetimes, essentially, information was scarce, and it was valuable. Now it’s abundant, and therefore, each piece of it is less valuable. So therefore, what makes the value? And the value is what we make of it. By cultivating those, pieces of information that spark with us, those ideas that mean something for us, and putting them together in such a manner that value is then created. That’s gonna be different whether you’re someone who reports at work and, you know, have to write a white paper, versus someone who has… is just talking online, versus someone who’s retired and just wants to cultivate meaningful experiences and make sense of what they’ve done in life and what’s next for them. So it’s about what we make of it, though. It’s no longer just being finding it. It’s how do we interact with it? How do we engage with this information that’s all around us?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and this is something that I talked about with Ethan Mollick as well, but the way that he kind of frames it is that one of the things that AI does, specifically these LLMs and this version of AI that we’re all talking about in this moment, is that it’s a leveler. Which means that at whatever level you were at anything pre-AI, everybody significantly levels up. And I think one of the mistakes that people make, and you can tell me if you see this in your communities as well, is that they’re comparing what they could do before to what they could do now. Not what I can do now compared to what everybody else can do now with the same tools. It’s like. Oh my god, I have access to all this information, I can write much better emails, I can write much better this or that. And it’s like, so can everybody else. You have the same tools as everybody. So it becomes even more important to have taste, to have judgment, and an ability to know the good information from the bad information and connect all of it together.

Nick Milo: I, yeah, I agree with the, what you said at the very end, and not anything before that. I actually disagree with most of that. Oh, please!

Zack Arnold: Please tell me why.

Nick Milo: Worse emails are being written. Oh, yes.

Zack Arnold: That I agree with.

Nick Milo: And the bar is not… I guess… I guess the way that that came across, and I… I know you don’t mean it, but I have to push back for, actually, my community, and kind of how I feel, too, is that we don’t have to work harder, we don’t… the bar’s not raised for everybody, the bar’s actually been lowered. There’s slop everywhere, and people that I once admired are now putting out slop. So they’ve actually… become worse, and they’ve now no longer… they haven’t reached the bar that I’m actually going to pay attention to them. I’m actively ignoring them. And just shake my head, I’m like, you used to be someone I respected. Like, what happened? So, now more than ever. to what you said at the end, it’s about taste. How do we cultivate that taste? And it’s bringing… it’s bringing discernment, it’s bringing opinions. It’s like… being viscerally engaged with the material, right or wrong, you know, whatever, you know, change your mind, sure. Like, have… what’s it called? Strong opinion strong opinions weakly held. But if you have that strong opinion and you go out there and someone someone pushes back or sometimes AI pushes back, sure. Then it’s like, okay, I I can think about that and then adjust. But Yeah, so, I don’t know… yeah, I don’t know exactly… I don’t want to be too adversarial, but I do think that there’s… A lot of what’s happening with AI is not being helpful for the sense maker in us. It’s actually getting in the way of that. And a lot of the gains that are being made in the short term are at the sacrifice of the ability. For, for wisdom to be cultivated.

Zack Arnold: So here’s the funny thing. You’re actually not being adversarial at all. You and I agree on every single point, I just think we’re coming at it through slightly different lenses. So let me come back to that argument again and clarify for you. AI is a leveler in that it makes everybody’s emails quote unquote better. It makes everybody’s reports quote unquote better. So we think, oh, the quality of this is so much better than what I was personally capable of. But the problem is that everybody has the same tool, so everybody sounds the same and everybody’s equally mediocre. And now the value is in the effort. So I wasn’t saying that objectively, the emails are getting better, the reports are getting better, the Slack messages are getting better, the social pulse are getting better. It’s the person’s perception that it’s getting better. It’s like, I could never write an email this good. This is great. No, it isn’t. It’s garbage, and it’s the same garbage that everybody else is writing. So I actually think you and I agree.

Nick Milo: Yeah, that’s true. And that’s, I guess I would. the term that I bucket that under is, like, cognitive surrender. We’re tired, and so we turn to this tool, and it does something for us. I’m like, that’s good. But we’re actually surrendering, our cognition. And if we were to look at it with fresh eyes, and not just worry about deadlines or getting something out, we’d be like, oh, wait a second, that’s actually not good at all. And that’s… yeah, I think that’s kind of what we’re… we’re abdicating, oftentimes. But yeah, it’s… it’s… It is what it is. Let’s… let’s go where we need to next.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and I think that, again, even though we might be looking at it from slightly different lenses, I think we’re saying the exact same thing and arguing the same point, that what really matters is the effort. What really matters is the human touch. But where I also differentiate, and this is something that I talked about with Ethan, I talked about it with a lot of people at this conference. I’ve had many, many conversations. I need a version of Obsidian that’s literally in my brain, because there’s… So many ideas to connect, which is going to lead us to the knowledge base in a little bit. But effort, to me, is the real value of all this, even in the imperfections. I think the best way to encapsulate it was one of my friends who’s also going to be doing the Q&A, Steve Kamb, writer of How to Try Again. Oh, yeah. He said, if you’re not going to take five minutes to write it, don’t expect me to take five minutes to read it. It’s all about the effort. We’re looking for those imperfections. But where I separate this is the good friction from the bad friction. The good friction is, it’s hard to write an email to somebody, it’s hard to do the research and read some of their book, or watch a few episodes of their TV show, or watch their podcast, whatever it is, like. The robots can do all that for you. Summarize, look in the transcripts. But that’s the effort you should be making that shows I see you. Like your work is being seen, your message is being heard. That requires the effort. But then there’s the bad friction. which is all of the busy work, sifting through all the information, and that’s where I do believe either the robots or even the human version of something like linking your thinking in Obsidian They reduce or all but eliminate so much of the bad friction that just creates anxiety and just takes time. So for me, an example of bad friction is I’ve recorded 15 one-hour podcast conversations. All of them are on one topic. There are a bunch of themes and sub-themes, and they all connect. But in doing an event similar to this on a smaller scale, but you were also a speaker at the summit that I did about a year and a half ago. The number one piece of feedback I got over and over was, these are great conversations, but there’s so many of them. I’m so overwhelmed, I don’t know what to do with this. I’m like, huh. That’s interesting, I can see that, I can understand that feedback, and I think it’s valid. Is there a solution to it? To me, that’s bad friction. Should we just have the robot summarize all 15 of the conversations and say, here are the 5 key bullet points? No. I think the effort is still required, but I think there is bad friction that the robots or these knowledge-based systems can help, so people can find what they need faster. But then also connect their own ideas with the other ideas. So that’s kind of the reason that I wanted to bring you back.

Nick Milo: Absolutely. And to that, I agree. I think you’re sifting through so much information, you know, being able to have AI, do some sort of pass as a research assistant, consolidate. bring up concepts, like, can a concept be made into a note that then can be a bit of a cognitive scaffolding, that then we can, like, okay, I don’t have to remember that thing, and now different conversations are linking to the same idea that comes up. And that allows us to put some context around it, just by looking at and seeing these connections. Then, yeah, I think it’s providing the scaffolding upon which we can take the ideas further that we’d like to.

Zack Arnold: So we’re gonna do a visual demonstration in a few minutes, just so people actually get a sense of what in the world are we talking about. But before I hit the screen share button and we go into this early beta version of the knowledge base, that will be far further down the line for anybody if they’re seeing this, when the conference launches. But let’s take a step backwards. What is Obsidian? Like, what are we even going to be playing with? Because to most people, I’m finding they’ve never heard of this. They’re familiar with Apple Notes, maybe Evernote, but Obsidian’s still kind of a new player in this world.

Nick Milo: Sure. But it’s like that. I mean, it’s like Apple Notes. Apple Notes, you can link a note to another note. Doesn’t work so well, but it works. So Obsidian is just another note application out there. Now, a lot of people like it. Why do they like it? Well. you’re not trapped into another piece of software that, you don’t own. So, just… Obsidian just allows you to look at files on your computer. on your computer. So, Evernote doesn’t do that. Evernote has a proprietary format, and you’re looking at notes on their cloud server. You don’t have a copy of that. You can export, it’s in their proprietary format. You don’t really own your data, and that is, that’s fine, until it’s not. Until you’re like, well, I don’t want to… why is Evernote? Oh, they were acquired, and now they’re raising their prices? I don’t… do I really want to pay that high amount every single month? And then you start to feel like, wow, I don’t have any digital sovereignty. Huh, what a concept! Digital sovereignty, like, owning… what is sovereignty? It’s like, you’re, like, owning yourself, or, you know, what about, like, in medieval times? Did you have land? Or were you a peasant? So, if you had land, you were, like, a lord or a duke or something. If you didn’t, you were a peasant. And you weren’t sovereign. You didn’t have… you were just at the whims of the royalty above you. And so, Evernote is acting from that place, and apps like that, because they want you to stay on their system. In their application, and they want you to pay them. Obsidian doesn’t work that way. You have notes on your computer, if you choose to go this way, and then Obsidian is one of Hundreds of different applications that allow you to view these notes. And they allow you to view them in so many powerful ways, and make connections, and edit them, and do all these things. But at the end of the day, it’s just a note application. It’s really neat, though, when you’re typing, and you’re like, okay, and it reminds you, oh, that reminds me of this other note. And so then you just type the little link command. Dot dot, and then, like, you get this autocomplete window. Of all other notes. And so I’m like, oh, that reminds me of cognitive inferno, a term in the book I’m writing. Well, I type COG, like the start of cognitive, and I get cognitive inferno, next to cognitive overload, next to cognitive affordances. These are notes that I’ve made that mean something to me, and I’m like, oh yeah, affordances! Like, that’s… that’s a cool concept. I’m serendipitously reminded of this thing. While I’m searching for something else. So, how do we remember? How do we recall? How do we improve our memory in that? Well. Research from this is from the 1885 Ebbinghaus, but it’s been replicated multiple times. It’s about the forgetting curve. Like it, if we rapidly forget everything 24 hours after we’ve touched it. If we recall it the next day. that improves what we’ll be able to remember. If we recall it the next week, that improves. Well, in our… in our Ideaverse, that’s what I call it, but in our linked note system. When we have these serendipitous encounters with a note like cognitive affordance. I’m now remembering this, I’m recalling it, I’m reinforcing My memory. Re-internalizing these things. So it’s joyful, I can kind of wander, I can re-experience that, but then I’m bringing that to every other encounter I have, every other experience, every other situation. That’s at the forefront of my mind, allowing me to be equipped with all this, and that allows me to operate at a different level, much more, I would say, informed and confident in the actions that I take. So, what is Obsidian? It’s just a node application. Where you own the notes, because they’re on your computer, and it allows you to take advantage of the wonderful world of linked notes.

Zack Arnold: It’s a wonderful way to encapsulate it. It sounds like you do this for a living, and you actually, I don’t know, teach this program and help people build their knowledge management systems.

Nick Milo: But it’s always different, it’s always different. People, you know, it’s like, I never know where someone’s coming from. Like, you know, you said, Zack, that some people here, they’ll know, others won’t. So, it’s like, am I, am I, you know, is this a good way to reach them? I, I don’t know, but I hope it, I hope it’s helpful.

Zack Arnold: Well, from my perspective as somebody that doesn’t nearly have the level of depth that you do both with just technology in general and linking all these notes and working in an advanced level and understanding AI, when it comes to the world of film and television editing, I was pretty good at what I did. Outside of that, when it comes to technology, I’m on a combination of Wreck-It Ralph and Mr. Magoo. Just ask my team. They’re like, oh God, he broke something else. Here’s Zack, here’s how the thing works. So I’m not one to go super deep and advanced into programs. And what I loved about Obsidian is that number one, like you said, it’s an independent ecosystem because I got trapped in Evernote. I was using Evernote for years, then they were acquired by somebody, I don’t remember who it was, then their pricing structure changed, then it was four pop-up windows, get that. any of your notes. I’m like, I’m out. And obsidian is just. Here. Simple, right? Point me to a folder, there’s the folder of all these text files, great. So to me, number one, it’s so super simple, but with the simplicity comes an infinite amount of complexity, because it’s not, well, here’s how Notion organizes these, and it’s gotta be linked this way, or Evernote uses this format. Basically, if you can think it with Obsidian, you can do it. It’s one of the reasons that I love it, but I think the more important reason that I love it is the serendipity that you just mentioned. For years and years as a podcast host, I was doing everything with Google Docs, which is here’s a Google document. This has the bio of my guest and let me take some notes from their books and maybe watch a podcast or two and take some notes. And that was it. It just lived as a document, right? But I didn’t start using Obsidian for my podcast interviews until after I started working with you when I was doing the summit a year and a half ago. Now the entire ecosystem is in here and I’m constantly linking between, here’s a note that I have for this book for this guest, but I have it this tagged as mentorship and I could talk about mentorship with Angela Duckworth. Wait, Angela Duckworth, she has a, an article in the New York Times. Wait a second. Dana Suskind had an article. It’s just. It’s this endless like, wait, I could talk about this, I could talk about that. And I’m having much, much richer conversations with people because of the notes that are in front of me that are linked together.

Nick Milo: Absolutely. That is some of the beauty of linked notes, and it’s kind of hard, because Those of us who have experienced it will wax poetically about it for a long time, and, you know, those that haven’t are like. What… I just… what… aren’t they just notes? And I was like, but there’s so much more, or they can be. And it’s just a new thinking environment, is really how I see it, and we haven’t had this before. Now we have a new thinking environment. What would that… what could that do for an individual who who has a lot of ideas and deals with a lot of information. What if you had a new thinking environment, radically new, where it’s not just based on folders, but it’s based on links as well? Like, what could that do for how you think?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and to me, it kind of feels like a cheat code, where once you really start to link all these pieces together, and like I said, I’m not brave enough to show my actual Obsidian vault, especially, like, showing it to the master, you’d be like, Oh, dear Lord. No, no, no, no. And I wouldn’t want the audience to see it anyways. But it kind of feels like a cheat code because it makes you feel so much smarter because it’s so much easier to access relevant information, not just here’s everything on the Internet. Here’s the 80 page report that the chat bot spit out. It’s here’s what I deem relevant and I can link it based on my own tags, my own ideas, my own folders. So it’s to me, it’s so much more powerful than just like a Gmail. general second brain. I know that you built a strong relationship with Tiago Forte, and I know that he’s really embraced this world of Obsidian. You’ve even converted him. But to me, this is such a… Deeper, more effective version of a second brain than what we used to consider a second brain years ago.

Nick Milo: You know, it just depends what people will use the second brain term with. It just gets kind of commandeered for different purposes, but it was kind of a project management, information management workflow that was before the time of Lynx. Then when AI came around, people have been using it as a repository for all this information. But I think… and those use cases are fine. I think… There’s also this use case that I’m more focused on, and that’s the personal, development of Knowledge and understanding, and it’s not all project-based. Or if it is, it’s in, there are projects of unclear scope and scale. Where you change one thing here. And it changes a multitude of things there. You can’t plan for that, you can’t make a task list for all this stuff, they’re immediately out of date. So, anyways, this is a way to really think in powerful ways. So, that’s why I prefer a different framing for it and call it an idea-verse, where ideas come first. I’ve never said that before, that phrase just there. Oh, that’s interesting, but anyway…

Zack Arnold: Lincoln new thought thoughts on the fly.

Nick Milo: But, oh, the last thing I want to say, and then I do… I want us to, you know, hit your points, but No, I mean, embrace… embrace the mess, though. Like, there… The masters of knowledge management are not architectural masters. If there is such a thing as knowledge management masters, even that is debatable. But, like, my place is plenty messy, my idea verse… it’s… so there’s the architect in us, and then there’s the gardener in us, and they’re just in this yin and yang, constant balance, hopefully. Because if we over-architect, that’s when we’re like, oh, I’ll design everything from scratch, I’m gonna spend 2 days on just folder structure. It’s like, no, you can’t do that. Like, you have to… these things… are earned through your use, and there’s no shortcut to that. You can try a few structures, but I don’t know about you, Zack, but I’ve multiple times spent entire days thinking about my folders and just… It’s like, oh, didn’t you have these other things you wanted to do? And that’s fine if, like, if it’s worth it, but at the end of the day, any work is just… Doesn’t, doesn’t last, it’s building a sandcastle on the beach, because.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. Yeah, if we had the time, I would just conduct a meeting of Overthinkers Anonymous, and you and I could work through all of our challenges of spending hours and hours overthinking things. But what I want to do now is I want to actually start getting into the weeds. So, I’m just gonna go ahead on the fly, and I’m going to share… The… I think this is beta version 0.6, according to my team. Just gonna start right off the bat. There’s a lot of gaps, a lot of placeholders, a lot of things that need to be written, but I’m starting with, this is… if you’ve just opened up Obsidian and you have no personalizations, no themes, no colors, like, here’s the base level if you’ve never opened it. And the idea here is that it’s first made for humans, because there are a lot of people that I think this is useful for that don’t want things that are for the robots, but we’re making it for both. So the idea is that it just starts as the directory of all of the knowledge at this conference, right? So it literally starts with a simple note, here’s how Obsidian works, here’s how it gets… how to get started. By the time somebody actually sees this, if they’re thinking of the upgrading to the knowledge pass, trust me, this will be filled out, and it won’t say tutorial to come. But essentially, you just started a very simple handwritten note, handwritten by a human. Here’s what this is, and here’s how it works. So I’m just going to kind of walk through what would be in the written version. Which is first, there’s going to be a few basic tutorials, written tutorials, the basics of using Obsidian, how the vault is organized. If you only want to use this yourself as a human, here’s how you get the most out of the vault. If you want to use the robots, here’s how the robots can use it. And then here’s some basic FAQs, right? But to me, where I think so much of the value is, and you can correct me if I’m wrong. But to me, the value starts with all of the conversations. So anybody that’s going along with the conference, they can go in and say, all right, day one, here’s all the information about all the speakers. So if we just start with our headline conversation, Adam Grant, and again, all of this is going to be reworked. This is all very, very basic, and we’re going to rebuild the entire structure. But essentially you start with here’s a really important quote that kind of encapsulates our conversation. Here’s some basics about the speaker, right? It kind of reads like, you know, to start with, kind of like podcast show notes. Not… something that people are familiar with. Here’s the basic show notes, here’s some of the highlights, you can link to them, you can find them in the videos. But to me, where this starts to get really interesting, and again, we’re gonna be going much deeper into linking all of these ideas to start with. But what are the key themes that not only Adam and I talked about, but that relate to what other people talked about, and what are some of the relevant FAQs that people might have from this specific conversation? And then if you go into… once you get done looking at the note for the person. Then you go into the key topics and ideas. Now it’s not even about the person anymore, it’s about the ideas. And again, all this is very basic, we’re gonna flesh out these themes so they’re much clearer. This is kind of the robots doing their first dirty pass, and we’re gonna give this a human pass to make it more dialed in. But a very common theme that’s come up over and over and over is we as creatives, as artists and entrepreneurs, we want to be seen. We want our work to be seen, right? So that’s a core concept. So one of them would be introversion. Talk a lot about introversion. So you can go into a note about introversion, you get quotes with links from the different people, whether it’s Susan Cain, whether it’s Priya Parker, talking about these topics, and then going a little bit deeper into teaching about these topics. And then if you want to go right to the note of somebody talking about this, boom, now you’re into this other speaker’s note. Right? Again, here’s the information about the author, here’s a quote from that conversation, here are the conversation highlights. So it becomes this huge ecosystem that’s basically a hyperlink rabbit hole like Wikipedia, but that’s leading you based on not just, here’s the transcript, here are the bullet point AI summaries, but you’re kind of, like, going through, as you would say, this entire idea-verse, like. I didn’t even know they talked about this thing. I wouldn’t have listened to this conversation with Erica Erica Dhawan if I hadn’t seen this one note or this one link. So to me, it creates a much more enriching experience. So it doesn’t feel like, oh, I got to sit through 15 hours of podcasts. It’s here’s what I came to learn. This is where I can learn it. But then through serendipity, oh, I want to learn about this too. And I want to learn about that. So that’s the basic idea here, where we have all these key topics and ideas, which again are going to look completely different and more fleshed out once this is ready. But then in addition, if you just want to dig in and you have very specific FAQs, for example, you know, I want to start a gathering. So it would be how do I get a keep a relationship going after the first conversation? It’ll be some basic ideas and then it links to our people in their words saying. saying, here’s how I would answer this question based on the conversation that I had with them. So it goes a whole lot deeper. And all of this, by the way, this is just for the humans. All you have to do is go through here like you have your own private version of Wikipedia for this entire event, for these 15 hours of conversations. It doesn’t even get into what you can actually do with the robots. So what we’re also building is we’re going to have additional resources that have both the links to all of the books of our authors, but other reading, listening, viewing podcasts. If you’re like, oh, I love the idea of human connection and specifically how it overlaps with ADHD, boom, go to the I Have ADHD podcast. So, it’s, again, it’s kind of… it’s helping you find the relevant information based on your goals, based on your challenges. All right, so that’s the basic starting point, is we’re essentially creating Wikipedia for this event, and this is just the human version. So before we talk about where I believe the robots can belong, and by the way, they don’t have to, because I know people will be robot-averse. But if we just talk about the human version of this, you, you know, just full transparency, you had not seen this before I screen shared. I wanted you to come in here totally blank. First reactions is literally the guy that inspired all this.

Nick Milo: I’m pretty impressed. Oh, what I like is the start here page. I I know it’ll be fleshed out. That and that that’s the last thing that’s that’s done and from my end.

Zack Arnold: That’s why it’s here, because that’s the very last thing to do. Once you know where everything is, then you explain it in simple terms. So this is literally last on my to-do list the day before we launch the conference.

Nick Milo: Yeah. And it’s… and yet, it’s so important, because it’s like this little, hi, hello, and then it’s like some, you know, you get comfortable, and it’s like, if you’d like to do this, click here, and then, you know, having a few nice links, which is a lot… it’s a wonderful feeling when that start here page comes together. So the fact that you’re starting with it, that when someone opens their Obsidian vault, that that’s the very first note that pops up. Great! Then, you’re… I agree with you. Oh, okay, you got how to use this fault, that’s important. I agree with you that…

Zack Arnold: Zoom in for you.

Nick Milo: The, the conversations… Section is the most most important, I guess. Is it most important? It’s where the raw resources are. It’s like where the raw of everything.

Zack Arnold: This is the raw data that everything is built around. It would be… I mean, this entire vault is built upon the transcripts of the conversations. This would be like the raw data, but us packaging the raw data in a way that’s digestible.

Nick Milo: Yeah. So that’s absolutely valuable. I like how it’s broken up by day. So we’re learning. I was like, how how can you break this up? You didn’t have to do that. You could have, I mean, these are like little things that I’m thinking about. But you could have just kept them without any subfolders, and then they’re going to be organized, alphabetically. But how were they experienced? They were experienced chronologically, day by day. That’s how I’d want to remember it, and that’s what you have here. So I’m like, great, you know, which day was it? And they’re not too many, so even if you can’t remember, you pop down a few, and then. You see it in context with the other conversations of that day. which then, like whatever is going to help establish rapid context, re-establish, I should say, is really important. So I like how that’s put together. I don’t… I don’t have any… any notes on that part. Key key topics. Okay, well, hey, can you click on like and you had Adam Grant, like I think that conversation that was open. Yeah, and so if you just kind of slowly scroll through, okay, we have that. Keep going, please.

Zack Arnold: Keep in mind, all of these are still very much a work in progress.

Nick Milo: Sure, sure, about this speaker, great, great, about this conversation, and now we have highlight… okay, keep going, because there was a section… yeah, key topics and takeaways. Alright, so, one thing that I would be wondering, and… and… is… I would want to know if any of these linked notes were a quote that he may have actually said. I can tell that some likely aren’t, they kind of have an AI feeling to them, like the effort was the message. There’s just something AI about that.

Zack Arnold: All this is AI right now. We’re going to give this the human touch. This is just kind of the AI.

Nick Milo: That’s fine.

Zack Arnold: Help us build the structure.

Nick Milo: That’s fine. And when it is given the human touch or even if AI is going through it, if one of those linked notes happen to be something that Adam actually said or if if AI is optimized to create notes that are actually quotes from the author, I like that even more. So, it’s not their interpretation, but it’s like a direct quote from Adam and I’m like, I see the little quotes there, you know? I’m like, ” that’s That makes me actually. like that more, because it’s… because it’s not the AI interpretation, but I’m like, that’s Adam Grant material. And that to me, I’m like, okay, I can, I want to learn that more. Because that’s straight from the source. Still, though, like, I know it’s a work in progress, I’m not saying it’s bad or anything, I’m just saying, like, that’s something that I would like more, because… Yeah, it’s just gonna help me understand and learn more deeply. Gives me more context, and I think it’s what I’d want to optimize for. I love that there are the key topics and takeaways. That’s what it’s all about here. It’s like, okay, let’s extract something that was said, like, this is the joy of, you know, our linked notes, and let’s… we can actually make notes like this. That’s one important thing. Look how long you are probably wrong about how much people want to help you. That can be a note title!

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and it is. So if I click on this, it will take you into a note with several people that are talking about this topic. This is one of the core things is we think when we ask somebody, we’re going to bother them, but people are more than twice as likely to want to help us than we think they are. And I talk about this with like four or five different people. So if you’re like, oh, this is interesting. Oh, Vanessa talks about it. Adam talks about it, right? Angela Duckworth talks about it. Right. So it’s actually bringing you into these worlds where you might think, yeah. I don’t know if I need to listen to Angela Duckworth. P.S. everybody needs to listen to Angela Duckworth. But in this scenario, if you’re like, I don’t really know who Angela is, this isn’t interesting, but if your problem is, I feel like nobody wants to help me and I don’t want to bother them, well, here’s the section where you do need to listen to Angela Duckworth. That’s the idea, is bringing up all these topics and ideas you’d never find otherwise.

Nick Milo: And, and this is, this note is where it all comes alive, because we’re seeing Adam next to Angela, right here, on screen. And, and so, yeah, I love this aspect, and we see their exact quotes, so important. I don’t want, you know, I’m like, AI, if you paraphrase again. I’m gonna, like, come to where, you know, wherever your servers are, and…

Zack Arnold: I’m just joking.

Nick Milo: But it’s just like this is what’s helpful. So we can get the poor version of AI giving it context, but then we can see the exact quote. And that’s… That’s really what I’m after. And then, so then we have these key topics and where, where. I’d love this, so I think if I were, as I was getting familiar with this. After I got familiar with, you know, start here, how to use this vault, number one, number two, the conversations, I would then spend the majority of my time in key topics and ideas.

Zack Arnold: Yeah.

Nick Milo: And just like, okay, where can this take me? Because that’s where all the intersections are happening, and how, you know, like, how… I just love that idea, when… A few years back, I was researching just nonfiction books in general, as I was starting to write my own, and there are two people, two famous people in history, that I was just looking through every book to see if they were mentioned in the index. These two people were Charles Darwin and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, known for the concept of flow. So I go through all these books like Range by David Epstein and I’d just be like, “Hey, how’s he mentioning? Mihai’s work, and then… and then compare it to how somebody else is mentioning his work. And then through all that, I can triangulate, and then, because I’m so familiar with those two individuals myself. their work, I can understand the author so much better. So those are my points of understanding the author’s perspective. Like, what do you have to say about Mihaly? And that’s gonna tell me so much about you. I know it’s not gonna be, like, perfect, but just in whatever context your book is mentioning him, I wanna know. Because that’s where I can really, you know, grok what you’re saying. So, alright, well, I mean, so that’s number 3. I have, like, an idea that I’m sure you’ve probably thought about. I’ll hold that. We’re gonna pin it over here, because I just want to… Connection FAQs, that’s another one that’s similar to number three with key topics and ideas.

Zack Arnold: And the idea is that eventually the key topics and ideas would probably mirror what’s here. This would be more, you know, theoretical, deeper ideas. This would literally be framed in the form of, if this were an FAQ base, what is the exact question that you would be asking? How do I provide value in an outreach email? How do I ask somebody something without bothering them? Whereas these similar key topics and ideas here, they go. deeper into the theory, they link to the… so it’s… I’m trying to differentiate where this is… the FAQs are partly for the humans, but as I’m sure you know, they’re also partly for the robots.

Nick Milo: Yes, absolutely. All right. So I mean you’ve really knocked it out of the park. There isn’t anything where I’m like, oh, he’s missing that or this. the… what I would be curious about myself, as I use this in… when it’s fully unleashed and unveiled, is I would look at number 6 there, my notes, and I’d be wanting to prompt… I’d be looking for prompts from you, I’d be thinking about prompts myself, about, like, how can I convert this information into my own words? Not to improve it, but to internalize it. Yeah. And… so what would I do? I would look at… With the agents, what I would try to… okay, if there was a prompt that said, you know, like. what… what are you trying to learn? What are you trying to accomplish? These are the bad versions, but eventually get to something where I’m like, I’m looking for X, Y, and Z, and then that becomes a new key topic or idea, and then I say, hey, AI. Can you, through all those conversations, create a note on my behalf? That is looking at this key topic, or idea, for me. Also, please leave a section at the top For prompts for me to fill out, like answers to the questions, maybe how I feel about something, what resonates, what doesn’t, how I might be able to apply this to projects and efforts in my own life. I think that is where I would… having downloaded and looked at this, and listened to some of the live conversations, and I couldn’t make some of them, but I have everything here, then that’s what I’d want to do, and I think that’d be really fun. One, it’s like, it’s kind of cool when someone’s in the kitchen and they bring out a dish for you, and in this case, AI is bringing out this note. Now, that’s cool. But then, the novelty will wear off, because those aren’t your words. Those are… so, like, how do I make them… how do I internalize them? And so I’m, like, thinking about how can I… one, I want the topic to be super interesting and specific to me, that’s why I’m asking the question of, like, okay, what would it be? Now I get the dish back, but then it’s like, okay, two, now how can I engage with that? And start, like, typing myself, and hopefully, that would lead to me creating my own, strongly titled note. So, just like we saw in the key topics and ideas, with those really, sometimes long notes. And hey, we have permission, we can make a note quite long before the file system says it can’t go any longer. And I would just say, like, okay, how can I make this. Some phrased word that I will remember because it’s so sticky, it’s so striking that the ancients in Greece and Rome would applaud because they’d be like, that will stick in your memory palace. That’s what I’d be aiming for.

Zack Arnold: I love that. And that’s definitely, it’s something that we haven’t implemented yet. But there’s two things that I wanna point to, neither of which I can literally point to. One of which is that we’re gonna have static study guides. So for each conversation, if you’re like, all right, so I’m gonna hit the play button, open this note, it’s got a few prompts like, you know, what, what are your thoughts on this thing or whatever it might be. Clearly, I’m so good at writing prompts. They’ll be better than that, everybody, I promise. But essentially, there’s going to be a study guide that is static that goes along with the interviews, but then we’re going to build a Socratic tutor so that if you point AI to this, it will ask you a series of questions. It’ll say, you know, why… and again, this is off the top of my head, because my team and I are still developing it, but the simplest version, kind of the bad version is. Tell us more about why you wanted to participate in this conference, right? What do you want to learn about human connection? What specifically are your career goals? Where might you be struggling with human connection. And as somebody that’s been through my program, you know all about my go far framework. Right? First, we start by identifying goals. Before we start talking about to-do lists and focusing our attention, we have to identify the obstacles. So if you said, you know, I really need a mentor. I want to transition to, you know, a new career path. I really need a mentor. But my challenge is that I don’t know where to find mentors. I also have no idea. Well, how do I ask somebody for something? How do I not bother them in an outreach email? It would say, well, based on this career path and based on where you’re stuck. Why don’t you start with this interview? And in fact, here you go. Here are a few question prompts for you to think about while you’re watching the interview. So you can create your own customized experience for this entire conference with basically an AI concierge by your side the whole time.

Nick Milo: So I love that. Yeah, it, yeah, and that seems… it’s really neat. I think that’ll be great, and I… I get excited about that, because I can see it’ll… it’s the… it’ll transcend this particular conference, and we can take best practices to say what made that Socratic tutor come alive, and it’s probably some sort of, you know, skill, or set of skills that then can transfer to different I don’t know what we call these, like, knowledge base, basically a specific knowledge base, and it’s just like, okay, let’s… let’s, you know, add the concierge skill or agent, and then suddenly, it’s like, wow, like, this is, this is pretty great. And. By answering those questions, we are starting to engage with that material, so it’s not just a one-way conversation with information coming this way, but the faster that we can start interacting with it, the better that we’re going to internalize and make sense of the parts of it that matter.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, exactly. So if you’ll bear with me, I’m going to swap my screen sharing here. So now what we’re gonna look at is… the shitty version of how you can interact between the robots and this knowledge base. This was without us installing skills. This is me literally saying. ChatGPT work, here’s the folder directory. So I’ve just created a project, we’re in work, there are no skills, it’s not saying, you know, understand this entire vault, creating the me file, like… We’ve learned and stolen a lot from your ideas. So, and I obviously I say that in the best way possible.

Nick Milo: Yeah.

Zack Arnold: But most of, most of the third layer, you, I, I don’t wanna explain it ’cause I’m gonna explain it incorrectly. No, that’s fine. Yeah. What’s the, the briefest, simplest version of like the three layers, the three concentric circles? What’s that in a few?

Nick Milo: The middle circle are your notes, your knowledge. The outer circle are any of the AI tools out there. They’re a dime a dozen. The middle layer is the translation layer. How do you tell that AI tool? To work with your inner layer, where the notes are.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so what I’m gonna do here, I’m just, confirming… everybody’s gonna see I can’t type. You can read this, vault… directory. This is gonna be way better. I know you’ve got a whole bunch of tools here. I just… this is literally the… I have no idea what I’m doing, the skills aren’t in, how am I supposed to use this vault? I want people to see how easy this is. All I did was I clicked on the button that says, show me the folder. That’s it. Alright, so that’s how easy it was, and this is a folder directory that literally lives on my Finder. It’s just folders and text files. For anybody that doesn’t know, it could not be any simpler, alright?

Nick Milo: So what what I like about this is that you’re using Gpt work. I could use Claude Cowork, and we could add that this is the power. When you use a program like obsidian that can read the files on your computer. Guess what else can read the files on your computer? These AI applications. On your terms, you can say only this subfolder, or, you know, whatever a person feels comfortable with, but… or why not point it at these random conversations that are not personal data to you? Like, why not? This is great, you know, like, I love what you’re providing. Zack, this is, like, a great testing ground for everyone, playing a sandbox, essentially. And so, yeah, like you said, it’s that easy, I could use a different AI tool, I can look at the same set of notes, I can ask similar questions, I’ll get similar responses. It’s pretty cool.

Zack Arnold: So this is going to be the worst it’s ever going to be, but I want to give it one test. I haven’t tested this, everybody’s watching this on the fly, it could be massive, could be a massive failure. But I want to say I only have 3 hours to watch 3 interviews at this conference. I really struggle with outreach and asking people for things. I feel like a bother. Which three interviews should I watch? In what order, and why? I have no idea what this is going to say. But I just… I want people to understand how powerful this can be for somebody that really wants to build their own experience, assuming this doesn’t come out as complete crap. But like I said, we’re gonna show our work on the fly, and we’re gonna see what it says.

Nick Milo: Mmhm.

Zack Arnold: I know the playlist that I would put together.

Nick Milo: And what I like about this too, is that it’s, it’s specific knowledge. So it’s not the internet. It’s not just this vast.

Zack Arnold: It’s a closed LLM.

Nick Milo: Yeah, and that’s how, you know. It’s not random data, it’s specific data. And that can get us specific answers.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, and for anybody that’s nerding out, yes, this is the paid version, or right now, at least as of this recording, I’m using the best version, which is GPT-6 Astra Ultra. Yeah, so this is literally, this is exactly what I would have picked out. I would have said the most important one is Vanessa Bonds. The second would be Adam. The third would be Angela. And what I love about this, and this is something that I’ve experimented with at building a, an agent specifically to help people with research for their outreach, where it says, here’s the amount of time that I have to research this person. What should I be doing if this is the amount of time that I have? And it’ll say, if you’ve only got 3 hours, I would listen to this podcast, I would watch this, because that’ll give you a reason to reach out based on why you’re connected to them. That’s not a part of this package, but I’m developing it for my students. But essentially, what it’s done with the worst version of this it’s ever going to be is it said, here’s the order. First Vanessa, then Adam, then Angela. This is how long it’s going to take you, and here’s why. And this is the worst it’s gonna be. This is exactly what I wanted.

Nick Milo: Well, that’s fantastic. And then it has a little paragraph under each one, and why it’s suggesting it. And there’s a disagreement, so my eyes always go to that. I’m like, that’s juicy, that’s drama, and that’s where I’m going to initially be able to plant context around. Okay, what is this disagreement? And then I’ll go back up and read the descriptions.

Zack Arnold: So yeah, so that’s, that’s, like I said, this is the bad beta version, recorded weeks in advance of the conference, so anybody that is watching this, it’s only going to be significantly better than what you saw. But to me, it was really important that people understand what this is, because this concept is completely brand new. The… anytime that I’ve mentioned to them we’re building this for the conference, they’re like, I don’t get it. What is it? And even when I describe it, like, I still don’t get it. And then I screen share, and after, like, 2 minutes, they’re like, oh my god. Like, I need this. So I wanted people to visually understand how to approach this. And I realize that we’re, we’re up against time, so I don’t want to take too much more of your time, but I think the… for me, the one most important question that both I and my team had. was… and you’ve talked about this before in… I think you’d said it in a conversation with Tiago, and you’ve said it elsewhere, which is that if you were to… let’s say you just have a whole bunch of crap on your desktop. you’ve got folders, and you’ve got files, and it’s a big mess of stuff, and you say, robots, clean this up. It would be like, if you had a really messy house, or really messy closets, and you said, robots, clean this up, you’d be like. Where’s my stuff? I can’t find my stuff. So, to me, it’s really important that we find the sweet spot between we’ve created a great ecosystem versus you gotta put in the work to get the most out of this. So, what is the sweet spot for us to build something that makes this easier, but that also makes it harder, such that it’s the effort that leads to the learning and the connecting of the ideas? I feel like that’s the one piece that I want to make sure we get right, so we’re not doing all the work, we’re eliminating the bad friction, but we’re creating the good friction, so learning and implementation happen.

Nick Milo: Yeah. I think I think you’re finding that you’re striking that balance. And and the reason is because where you’re where this this whole thing is starting from. In both situations, Without… An idea verse, a set knowledge base of notes, and with one. Anyone who comes to it is starting from the same place. They have not touched this information. So, it is already… they’re not connected to any of it in any… in any way. So. This is a way to kind of like a multi-sensory experience, a choose your own adventure for how you can experience this. So I think as far as making the on-ramp work. Stoking curiosity. In the Start Here page, Where it’s like, okay, you can go through the GOFAR framework, Concierge? Click here, and then, you know, it’s gonna start a process, or tell you what to do. Great like, that’s maybe the preferred method. There will be people who don’t want to do that. And there’s okay, fine. Go explore as you will. You might want to wander over to some of the key topics that already do some compiling for you. So they’re sort of like… I won’t call that go-far approach. the architect approach, it isn’t. It’s kind of like this middle ground, it’s perfect. But the other approach is more Gardner, for sure, which is just, like, wander around, and see where it takes you, and then after you’ve built up some… Random context, then come back here, now go into the Gophar, because that curiosity will likely have fueled some more enthusiasm for the material. So, But I think that’s… I think there’s a bit of curiosity, there’s a bit of stoking that, so that it can fuel further enthusiasm. The enthusiasm’s going to come from A person finding some sort of alignment with… from that content with whatever they’re doing in their life. And… yeah, no, I love the balance. I’m excited to go through it. And it doesn’t feel overly complex. It works, whether or not you want to incorporate AI. I like that too. So yeah, I any question. I mean, like, how does that sound to you, Zack?

Zack Arnold: Well, first of all, that sounds amazing, because one of the things we didn’t really get to is kind of this 180-degree shift of where the mentor became the mentee, and that at one point I was your mentor, and now it’s completely shifted. You’re my mentor, and I’ve spent so much time consuming all of your content. So for somebody that I really appreciate and admire, that I think has just created this entire world from nothing. to, you know, get your gold star seal of approval, like, yay! Like, that’s the simplest version. It’s like, cool, alright! Because I also know you’d be honest and be like, yeah, I don’t know, this doesn’t make sense, I’d fix this. So I feel very good that I’m on the right track. For sure. But the… I think that the… this is essentially going to tease where we’re going next, both for myself and for anybody else that says, but wait, now I have so many questions. Good, because this is my shameless self-promotion portion of the program, where I say, Nick will be here for a live Q&A For the conference, for anybody that has either the Community Pass or the Knowledge Pass, they can come do a 90-minute Q&A. It’s going to be you and Alex Wykowski together, where we’re going to take these two overlapping Venn diagrams of the analog world and the digital world. And I loved my conversation with Alex, and I cannot wait to see the serendipity that happens when I put the two of you in the same space, especially knowing that you guys know each other. So I think it’s going to be really cool to bring you guys together, but for anybody that’s thinking, I have so many questions, how can I implement this, how can I customize it? This is your opportunity to say, yes, I want to join with the Community Pass or the Knowledge Pass, so you can ask Nick yourself, because I still have so many questions. The other thing that I think we might touch upon briefly is, because this entire event is all about connections and building community. Questions that specifically content creators or entrepreneurs might have about how the hell did you build. the universe that you did with all of the subscribers and all the followers. Like, you’ve built an entire industry around yourself, so for anybody that’s curious how you did that and how you built a community and connected with people, we might get into that as well. Don’t have the time to do any of that today, because I want to be respectful of your time, knowing that you are DEEP Deep in the throes of delivering a manuscript and that you hear it all, means a lot to me, so. Having said that, is there anything else that you want to add knowing there’s going to be a part 2 very soon?

Nick Milo: No, I think that covers it. I am so happy with what… I mean, I’m excited about what you showed. I’m excited… I think it’s at the right level. It’s not too advanced, and it’s a great on-ramp, even if someone’s a beginner. And, so, yeah, I’m excited to be a part of that. Have that future conversation, too, with Alex and you and just see where it all goes.

Zack Arnold: Awesome. Well, I’m gonna make sure that everybody can find you, your website, your YouTube, all of your resources, your linking your thinking, linking your AI. There’s so many amazing things that you’ve brought out into the world. But what I ask every single one of my guests at the end is how can people connect with you?

Nick Milo: Okay, with me. I would say… join my newsletter. I mean, linkingyourthinking.com, you can find it on YouTube, that’s where you’ll see me a lot, and then I’ll always have something where I’m like, hey, to learn more, you know, do this thing. Get on my newsletter. I send it out. I’ve sent it out every week except this past one due to the big book that I’m writing for Simon Schuster. I finally missed a week. It happened.

Zack Arnold: Wow, that’s amazing that you did every week, I have not been able to.

Nick Milo: I mean, just this year, just this year, I’ve missed so much.

Zack Arnold: That’s impressive, though.

Nick Milo: But yeah, and that’s where I try to get it as personal as possible, as opinionated as possible, and fully written by humans, and that’s the best way.

Zack Arnold: Nice. Well, I’m very excited to bring everybody into our live Q&A conversation. For anybody that’s listening in time, it is going to be, I believe, Tuesday the 20th. Tuesday, October 20th at 12.30pm Pacific Time. All the information, go to theconnectionconference.com. So, Nick, cannot wait for the next conversation, but this was awesome. Thank you so much for being here today.

Nick Milo: Oh, love being here, Zack. Great talking with you.

Information Is Worthless…Until You Know How to Connect It (With or Without AI) | with Nick Milo

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