This was a somewhat frustrating, but ultimately disappointing read. Brace yourself, because I will not waste too much effort in friendliness and just cut to the point.
We have an author here that apparently is obsessed with personal knowledge management (PKM). And yet, I'm surprised he seems to not be familiar with one of the most important recent books in the field, Sönke Ahrens' How to Take Smart Notes. As a result of that miss, Forte continues to treat intellectual work in the same way as the GTD methodology would treat any kind of task. (Ahrens' book is precisely about how GTD is not sufficient a methodology for that, but that it can be expanded upon).
EDIT: I found a footnote in the book mentioning Ahrens' book. Someone sent me a review Forte made of the book two years prior to publishing this book. There he calls it "by far the most impactful and profound book I’ve ever read on the subject [of note-taking]". So much more surprising that it doesn't seem to have left any visible signs on his own book, save a small footnote.
Another thing that bothers me with this book is the typical examples Forte comes up with to illustrate his points. They're almost all of them focused on the self. The sphere of interest is me, me, me. Look, I set aside time for self-reflection. I think about the trajectory I am on. I meditate on my relationships and I write notes about significant events and problems that come up in my life. But at some point, you start widening your sphere of interest to other people (regardless of their relationship to your self), other places in the world, other forms of life. Perhaps you get a calling. You're done endlessly filling up the void in your with "new interests". And weirdly, because of that closing in on something that is really significant, your world expands. Because it is not just about you all the time.
I don't know who Forte had in mind, when he wrote this book. But I get the impression that his readers are all assumed to be searching for their passions or even a bit at loss with their life.
There's a weird self-promoting tone in the book. I suspect the author has practiced his writing skills in his newsletters, prompts for youtube-videos etc. All products where the primary literary genre is self-promotion. For example, for that new book he just wrote. It's fine. But please, don't continue in the book. There's a way he begins several sentences throughout the book: "What I call ..." You know, when an author wants to emphasize that he coined that word. It's fine if the word is genuinely carrying new meaning and not just a variation on concepts that already exists (new wine in old bottles, as it were). I must say, I don't find that the concept coined by Forte merits such frequent use of the phrase "What I call ..."
So when I read him ostensibly coining words, I don't read so much the sense of inventing a vocabulary that is useful and cuts to the core of things, but more in the literal sense, making coins of words. It's a branding strategy. But it seems needy for recognition. The unintended effect is it makes me think he doesn't have that much to say. Because he repeatedly reminds that reader that he is so deserving of recognition. It doesn't help that the book leads by calling him "One of the worlds foremost experts on productivity". (Easy now ...)
Then there's the overall marketing aesthetic, with the common seductive literary tropes, like "full potential" and all that. The aesthetic is superficial for something potentially deep, to-the-soul-cutting (after all, it's about everything important you have on your mind, right?). Frequent use of metaphor, but often falls flat. An aesthetic sensitivity or depth that is present in both Allen and Ahrens, obviously is lacking here.
I'm going hard on this book, not because it is the first badly written book out there (hey, every author should write at least a couple of those!), but because it too self-congratulatory and promises way more than it delivers on. I want to take it down to Earth. My very unsympathetic and perhaps slightly sand-paper-like judgment on this book: It's cliché-ladden, it reads like a collection of blog posts. It's too talkative and superficial. Reads like there was no editor. Badly written.
