Speak Easy

Speak Easy E2 Jonny Cosgrove
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Tyler Sellhorn: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. My name is Tyler Selhorn and welcome to another episode of Speak Easy, the podcast where we discuss communication, capturing our thoughts and how we share those thoughts with our future selves and others. Managing our brains is core to 21st century work and we're here to learn how to do it better than we did yesterday.

Thanks so much for listening. Speak Easy is brought to you by Cleft, the easiest way to collect your thoughts with Our cross platform applications. You can simply capture your ideas where you are and paste them where they belong later. Today, we are blessed to be learning out loud with Johnny Cosgrove.

Johnny is a repeat founder, a neurodiversity and data protection advocate, and a top global distributed work influencer. Johnny's. Previous entrepreneur pursuits include events, social media, and data protection. Most recently, Johnny Bootstrap Meeting Room in 2017 as co founder and CEO. An [00:01:00] XR virtual meeting room solution for distributed enterprise teams becoming a top category solution with Fortune 500 customers including Shell, Nike, Red Hat, and UBS while partnering with Meta and Enterprise Ireland.

Johnny is currently launching Cleft, an idea capture and sharing tool. Johnny, it's my pleasure to be recording. Speak easy with you. It's also my pleasure to be building Cleft with you. I'm curious what motivates you to build a tool like Cleft?

Jonny Cosgrove: Thanks so much for the amazing intro and welcome Tyler. I'm super excited.

I'm holding myself back. I mean,

Tyler Sellhorn: no, no, no, there's no holding back. We're going to go all in with the enthusiasm for this moment because, uh, we're launching Clef to the entire world. This is. The, the moment in time where we are timestamping it, placing our flag in the ground and saying, come join us on this effort to become better knowledge workers.

Jonny Cosgrove: Well, part of what I'm doing is answering your question, which is, I spent the majority of my life very much having [00:02:00] to mask and act in a very different way. From a communications point of view, I was having to hold back like I'm doing right now, even with my body language and in similar ways That led me, like, we all have our different reasons to why we go on different paths and journeys.

And the Cleft journey for me became a bit of a mission to unlock a bit of that, which was not the intention, but it's definitely now looking back saying, okay, it lets me unfilter. It lets me get my thoughts out and all that. And I'm not going to go into exactly how the tool works, but it's a case of what Cleft means to me is a better, a better way of getting what I'm trying to say out to other people.

It's about communication, which is what we're here to talk about today. And for me, a big driver. So before that was, look, there's a lot of people like myself and a lot of our team who are nerd aversion and myself and Justin, when we started talking about this kind of stuff, we said, look, let's start with the edge cases.

Let's start with the users who usually left, get left, sorry, usually get left behind. So that was our basis. We wanted to build a house that everyone could walk into, fly into our role into whatever. The case is, and that was, that led us to [00:03:00] something, which means for me personally, as a user and creator, which is super exciting, I get to build something that is able to keep up with my thought process.

It's not that every thought is amazing. It's that I get to capture them in a way that suits me and people like myself.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. So let's, let's dive in there where you, when you're thinking about capturing your own thoughts, tell me more about. Like that process, like where, where are you? What are you using?

What's what's in your hands. What's in front of your, your eyeballs. Like, like, how do you capture your thoughts? Like, you know, obviously this is the thing that we're building at cleft, but I'm curious, like just what's going on in your mind. How do you get yourself ready to, or how do you just start doing it?

Uh, on your own when you're, when you have a thought to share with yourself or with others.

Jonny Cosgrove: Okay, so let's step back a sec before I answer you directly.

Tyler Sellhorn: Yeah,

Jonny Cosgrove: let's think about me like a page like any of our Whatever your note taking app or note your whatever your central source of [00:04:00] truth is zooming out

Tyler Sellhorn: Yes knowledge management.

Let's talk about it

Jonny Cosgrove: the properties of my page. I'm johnny I'm not just Johnny, an entrepreneur, like we've had the lovely intro. And thank you very much for filling out that property. I'm Johnny who also likes to do a lot of yoga. Uh, not that I'm looking like your average yoga bear. I like to run. I like to do a lot of different things.

I like to get outside. I won't go on about that all day. I do photography. I do drone taking, and that's me when it comes to trying to look at all the different bits and pieces about who I am and then core to a lot of that and core to my cleft journey is I also found out along that journey that I'm also ADHD and ADHD and autistic.

So in terms of. The way I approach things is probably a little bit different than some of your users might go for. That's why we're

Tyler Sellhorn: talking to all these different people, right? Like, you're going to be different. So let's learn about you.

Jonny Cosgrove: So let's go into the basics. For me, I have to over engineer what some people find incredibly easy.

Routines and stuff. They're not in my brain. They're not normal. They're not natural, but I make them happen. And at times in my life, I was called over [00:05:00] organized. Um, interesting. So how, how I, how I come at it, let's go down to base, not the tool and the text, but more, where am I doing stuff? When I'm on the move right now, to be perfectly frank, my mobile, I've been doing my best to reduce the apps on my phone to what needs to be on my phone.

And then what really, where everything happens is at my workstation. My workstation is either at my desk or it's on my laptop. So it's either two screen. Or it's one screen and I do different types of work depending on what that might be. And for me, my multi, for anyone looking to understand the multiscreen, I've got one in front of me, which is my main.

And then I've got a total reference, which if I don't need it, it's off. It's not something that I don't need. And I don't want 16 different screens around me, no matter what a vision pro might do for me in the future. Um, it has to be simple. It has to be organized. It helps to, it helps with my flow of doing things.

Does that help set a base?

Tyler Sellhorn: Yeah. Yeah. I love that you. Zoomed out to like who you are and like like the things that you do Um as like like [00:06:00] centering like who you are before we talk about like things that you do right, um You're somebody that loves to get outside and, and is a drone photography nerd. And you know, someone who practices yoga and you also describe yourself as, um, and you know, someone who lives with ADHD and autism.

Right. And that like, that's even like one of the reasons why you built Cleft the way you built it with Johnny and Justin as the, the, you know, the, the OGs here. Right. Like thinking about note taking and idea capture from a neurodivergent kind of first sort of way. So when you say that, what do you mean when you say, Oh, well, we want to build it so that everybody can just kind of roll up or roll out or roll in or fly in or however it is they come.

What do you mean when you say those things? What does it mean to build a knowledge capture tool that is built for neurodivergence first?

Jonny Cosgrove: Yeah. So something that's biased and forest is something that. [00:07:00] It's not full of all the different things you can do. It's, you can capture your thoughts in a really simple way.

And that means for, for this, it's going to be fast. So for my brain, it moves really, really quickly. And it might be gone before I've picked up my sticky note or my marker here to actually write stuff down, which I still have. I still have all the normal stuff that people do. I still have a notebook where I use.

Notes and take notes when I'm in it, when I'm meeting someone in real life, go figure for, for what we were looking to do was a digital field book of sorts. I suppose that's my vernacular around this, which sorry, I won't be so loud. Johnny's

Tyler Sellhorn: Johnny's laughing because I, I'm, I'm showing him the field notes that I'm writing little bits and pieces as he's listening so that I can say things back to him later.

Uh, so sorry for the, uh, audio listeners. I've got, you know, your, your Chicago made field note, uh, uh, classic here in, in, in my hands.

Jonny Cosgrove: Yeah. So look, I'm, it's about doing one thing really well in the same way I'm going through my setups and that kind of thing. Most of the things I [00:08:00] do have one way of doing it.

It's like an atomic note. Like they're there for one thing. I treat scripts the same. I treat, um, whatever the case may be, you've got to just treat it as one thing. And if you have to update that, fine, that's it. That's it. So with, with bang back the cleft does one thing really well. Helps you capture and get it out to the place it needs to be.

That's what it is for me.

Tyler Sellhorn: Awesome. Awesome. Why I, I know as someone who is not identified as a neurodivergent person, I express gratitude for any software that is built with accessibility first, because. There are days when my brain doesn't work normally, right? Um, maybe I am neurodivergent, but I've never like explored that.

Like, but my brain works well when using Cleft. I capture my ideas. I get them out and share them where they belong in those ways. Um, okay. So. You mentioned that you over engineer your life. You have been described as over organized. What, [00:09:00] what's, what's coming up for you when you say those things? Like, you know, you, you mentioned routines.

You mentioned like, like maybe even some people like looking at the way you live as like wrong for some reason. It's like, um, Maybe, maybe let's skip the judgment and like, like lean into the curiosity of what you mean when you say over engineer and, and over organized.

Jonny Cosgrove: To call myself that I can also be the most under organized person in the world as well.

This is not a, yep, yep. So I, I, I, in my personal life. I'm a person who has calendar invites out for people for personal events. Why? Because that's to make sure it actually happens. If it ain't in my calendar, it's not in my purview. I have things like, uh, object permanence is definitely not the right technical term, but out of sight and out of mind can happen to people as well as different bits and pieces.

So I have to put in reminders and things for myself to go, Hey, make sure to remind someone that you're alive to a certain point. And that might sound really bleak, but it's like, no, that's just. I, I have the, I am very lucky that I can go five years, not seeing someone in [00:10:00] real life and pick up right where we left off.

But the learning for me in my later life with my different learnings was not everyone's built that way. So again, part of that, and part of the humbling experience of all these things is just. It's everyone has their own way of doing things. And for me, it was getting a guide later in life. Not that there is a guide, no one has that, but to make things a little easier.

So for me doing particular things, like I have a stream deck set up that has particular functions that I will say, right, do this, do that, like create a note or bring up my screens to a certain way, because that just means I can flip into that mode an awful lot faster and not dilly dally.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. So Johnny, you're not allowed to just skim across the surface of that here.

Okay. We are nerdy now. Together about like how we manage our brains right here on on speakeasy So you've got it. You've got to go deep you you mentioned something super cool called a stream deck Okay, wait a second. What is that? First of all and and second Like how, how have you engineered, uh, things for [00:11:00] you?

Like, like obviously stream deck is one thing, but like, how do you manage your brain to be able to do the things that you want to be able to do as a 21st century work?

Jonny Cosgrove: Starting with the basics of treating myself like a human as opposed to a worker, um, I suppose is a way I look at it. Uh, I like to live my life before 12 o'clock in the day Irish, which also suits well working my teammates on the other side of the, uh, of the ocean.

Um, so it means that I get to have a pretty full day before I even kick start. start into things that might be going out and doing whenever might be. I'm not going to go and run through my, my morning, my morning routine here right now, but the point is then treating my different workstations and planning that out and saying, right, am I hybrid?

Am I moving around? Am I somewhere else for that? Is it work that I like to do in different places because no one likes doing inboxes on their own. And it's nice to be out for a cup of coffee, doing different bits and pieces. So simple things like that, right down to zone in at that level here in my apartment, what I do is I have a sit stand desk, I've mapped out the different rooms so that it's very much, I remain together.

I can shut the door, even if something's in [00:12:00] the same room, so some of that might be sit, sit, stand desks and things like that, which I do have, but a lot of that comes down to, and flip this into my, my own particular quirks, I need to flip that up every few months I need to, even if it's just something small, I need to make sure that it's still fitting in the right way.

So, yeah, it just means that, honestly, it comes down to basics. Plan things out and make sure it fits to the routine that you planned out. And for me, I've mapped that out in writing. So it's a little easier to do. Maybe

Tyler Sellhorn: plan things out, write it down. Yeah. I mean, these, these are the, that doesn't sound like over engineering to me.

That doesn't sound like over organized. That just sounds like, sorry. I just, what I just did

Jonny Cosgrove: there is I also went off on a tangent at. Let's make it really specific. Back in a previous life, when I was a Nike promoter, one of my first businesses, which turned into social media, I had 30, 000 people in my phone book.

I had countless people reaching out to me. I had thousands of people going through my doors a week and I. I only learned about 10 years later that I actually have face blindness. [00:13:00] Um, so it's a lot more difficult for me to recognize someone and know who they are, and it's not being rude going, Hey, I've met you five times, but I don't have a connection points there for my brain.

Hasn't done that yet. So for me, I used to over engineer by if I had a guest list, I'd probably do what some people call it, what we call back then a Facebook that's, um, in the devil wears Prada, that book they do where they're showing who's who I used to do that for Everything in certain ways. It wouldn't always be that detailed and printed up, but I would have had to do that.

And I didn't realize why I was doing that until yeah, well after that life.

Tyler Sellhorn: Well, uh, shout out to you making it work and centering your humanness and how your brain works and just getting the job done. Right. Cause you needed to be able to know who those people were. And so you had to over engineer, you know, like how to recall those people's, those faces and those names and be able to work with them.

Okay. Um, let, let's you, you're, you were mentioning writing it down and having a diary, [00:14:00] having a place to put things. Okay. So we've, we've, we've captured our thought. Where, you know, give us the current version of like how you send things out to be able to be recalled by you later, like you're, you're doing this, you know, idea capture, tell us about the system that you're using to be able to, to recall those things.

Jonny Cosgrove: So I go right down to the basics. I've got a folder structure, which I follow, um, I've got an inbox, which I'm, that's the one part I'm still tweaking about how stuff goes in there. Um, but to be, to bring it to it step by step right now on my stream deck, I sorry, I applied two different methodologies GTD.

So getting things done, that's just how I managed it. So if I want to make sure operationally in my own life and work, I get stuff done. And then I have vaults or Zettelkessons little, just little nooks and crannies that I like to store things away. And I'm a big believer in not that I always keep this in my cleft, not in my cleft book, but what I will always do is I'll just delete things as I go.

[00:15:00] Um, so I have, I go through a very simple capture process, which for me right. Right now is a button on my stream deck, which I press, it sets up certain windows. It actually captures from clefts. Then I have an inbox where I bring things into my obsidian and then I bring it out to the right different places from where it needs to go.

It's really simple, totally manageable. I, I'm, I'm someone who uses after reminders for the things that I want to have as just those daily do this and do that. And I just try and keep it as simple as humanly possible.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. So you, you said two jargon words that I want to make sure that we blow out and, and express what that means to Johnny, because you know, I I'm confident that over the course of speakeasies conversation, GTD isn't going to be spoken of at least more than once.

So I want to, um, invite you, Johnny, to tell us what does GTD, what does getting things done mean to you? Um, David Allen, not yet a guest, uh, on the schedule. We, we would love to have you. Uh, come on down, you know, other GTD people like [00:16:00] we are definitely interested in talking to you. So if you're listening to this, uh, uh, Tyler at clefnotes.

com, uh, come on into my inbox. But what, what do you mean when you say GTD, Johnny?

Jonny Cosgrove: It's not the jargon. So apologies. That's not my meaning where I'm coming from. No, no, no, I'm not,

Tyler Sellhorn: I'm, I'm saying jargon. I just want to get your, your version, uh, out in, in, in the, into the, Oh, I mean, for everyone else,

Jonny Cosgrove: listen, I mean, for everyone else listening, who doesn't know me well enough to realize I don't really believe in jargon words, even if we have to use them.

Um, but for me, GTD is very much, look, I need to get things in. So I want everything in one inbox. Everyone has a downloads folder that they ignore. I have an inbox that collects. Everything that I have to process, organize, or delete along the way. Um, so I have an inbox, I have a way of processing things, and then I have a way of getting those to my different bits and pieces, whatever they might be.

It might be a task, it might be delete, it might be, Hey, turn that into an atomic note somewhere. Whatever. I'm not going to go through my list of things right now. Point is for me, it's just my way and my system, because that's what it all is all about. It's not about tools. [00:17:00] If that's the only thing people remembered listening today for me, some of these tools, I will update and change over time.

But for me, the system will say the same and even, Oh, that's awesome. I'm working on.

Tyler Sellhorn: Okay. Well, thank you for, for blowing that out there for us and making it clear what you mean by GTD. Okay. So now, now you were saying something about, about Zettelkasten. Okay. What's what's what's Zettelkasten.

Jonny Cosgrove: Okay. So really high level, and I'm going to get butchered by anyone who's really into it because I try and do the simple ways I always, everyone has their own way of doing things in the same way.

I treat anyone with a template. The recipe, everyone adds their own salt. In terms of for me, that means I'm trying to create some atomic notes, something that means something to me in whatever part of my life. And I'm, I'm all, my challenge is always, how do I vote that? Um, what boxes I go under, but really simple.

It goes from a fleeting thought into something that's permanent. There'll be some reference and literature working behind that. But the main thing for me is it's also in personal life, quite I find it very useful for building out my values. So understanding, right. You're going to [00:18:00] change over time. Your opinions are going to change over time.

So mapping out and tracking that over time, I just find super interesting because, you know, we all changed and if you haven't changed enough in a few years, we haven't really done enough work.

Tyler Sellhorn: I've got to lean in here. Right go for it i said i said tell me about zettelkasten right and then you mentioned atomic notes and then you talked about like your values as a person um help help us to connect those dots and maybe bring us along that journey together of like how how a note taking system becomes.

A way to express who you are.

Jonny Cosgrove: So yeah, first off, Zettelkasten, it's a system. It's a nice way of collecting things that are fleeting and turning them into permanent thoughts. When it comes to me and why I apply and even look at all these different systems and why I'm doing that, I'll tell you a wee quick story that I, I used to be the photo guy when I was back in high school, college, all that kind of thing.

And part of that was for me is actually, it's part of [00:19:00] how I collect memories. Um, for me, it's a much better way of going back and remember that. Cause I will literally forget something happened. Um, not out of badness, it's just the way my memory works. So in terms of notes, for me, it's a great way of mapping out who I am, who I would like to be, like we all do when we sit down and do our lovely cup of tea and sit down with a scented candle notes and journaling.

But for me, it's a great way of mapping out my connections and different things and just working on things. So, that's why I would even bother doing a notebook. Taking system, like you've got to ask, why are you doing this at the end of the day? And for me, it's just look part of it's mapping who I am. Part of it's mapping where I'd like to be really, really simple.

That can mean work. That can mean personal, but I don't like to delineate. There's only one Johnny.

Tyler Sellhorn: Well, I, I resonate with that idea of living, uh, life as an integrated person. Um, you know, living life as someone who is reflective. And who, uh, thinks about who they want to be, right? And expressing that. Um, yeah.

And, and I guess maybe [00:20:00] the thing that I'm, I'm picking up there when you say, um, you're building memories. Right. And, and like, that's even just how your brain works. Um, can you tell us more about what you mean when you're saying that you're building memory?

Jonny Cosgrove: Yes. I'm helping fill the gaps. My brain will still have a memory, but it needs certain triggers or joggers.

So it means even when, how I use cleft, I, I'm, there's lots of different kinds of users, but I like the voice. I really liked the voice. I'm not always going to listen to it, but I liked the opportunity to go back in time. And to feel that context, whether, you know, when I was taking that note, when I was coming out of a meeting or when I was coming out of meeting someone in real life saying, Oh, I really must catch up with that person.

For me, it, it physically helps me go back into that place. Um, and that's really just something for me as a, as a personal user, but the other, the other element of this was the creating memories part. Um, even I suppose how I got a bit deeper. I've always taken notes of journals since I was a kid, but when I got really into the systems, it was probably along the time where I learned more about the ADHD and do autism and things, not at the same [00:21:00] time, unfortunately.

And had I had this lovely lovely system years ago, I might've caught one of the first ones because I'm one of the unlucky few who got diagnosed with ADHD before it was actually officially in adults. And so it was one of those for, I suppose, from an integrated person point of view, being told a huge part about yourself and then saying, yeah, it's probably not real that, uh, whatever marks that might leave in time.

I suppose for me, it's just like many neurodivergent. You could. Get, you go through what a lot of people go through in their teens, which is you get to figure yourself out in a way that's you, as opposed to what you were supposed to, or what everyone else told you to do. Does that make sense?

Tyler Sellhorn: Yeah. Um, I guess maybe that's the thing that I want us to, to kind of, you know, like invite you to conclude here is.

When you think about, um, you know, giving some advice or some suggestions to others that are on this same journey as you of, of trying to figure out how to get things done or how to turn, uh, fleeting thoughts into memories, right. And, uh, you know, becoming a better human, right. What are the things that you [00:22:00] would suggest and like give ideas to, to people that are, that are thinking about this journey themselves of, of becoming a better person by.

Uh, you know, making use of the, the computer as, as a teammate or, or just writing things down on a piece of paper or a field note, right? Like what, what are the things that you might say to some folk as, as they're trying to figure this out for themselves?

Jonny Cosgrove: First off, I promise we'll do a screen share, screen share session in the future to show some of the stuff I've been talking about today, but I suppose in terms of actually what they can do, look, it's the same as we treat, as Justin's always getting us to do is ship it, like in the same way in life, just do it.

You know, Nike got it right back in the day. And there's a reason for that. Uh, it's, it's something that people will write about all day and actually The biggest thing for anyone who's talking about note taking and listening and all this kind of stuff, don't just live in a notebook. Like I'm talking about capturing memories because we created them, like go out and create them is basic.

And part of why we created clefts was for those AFK moments where you don't want to have to sit down and take a notebook to capture that in the same way. A photo is amazing, but sometimes that's just not [00:23:00] enough. So that's, that's what I say. Just go out and do it, capture it and make sure you actually cherish it.

That's what a lot of note taking might be to people. I know for me, it is. Um, other than that, I would definitely say download Cleft and give that a go because for me, as a, as a founder, I'm just excited to share this journey with other people. Like I'm, I'm, I'm the lucky one who's got to face, get face to face with hundreds of our users since day one.

April. Um, which is insane. Um, 'cause we're only in August right now. This shouldn't have happened for a few months in terms of numbers and the stories I'm hearing, I'm not gonna, we'll come back on and talk about it again another time or we'll make sure they come on and talk about it. Um, because it's just been amazing and it's been humbling.

And I would say please get on board with that. And for me as a personal user, honestly, I'm just so lucky that the other part of Johnny made this along with an amazing team to go, look, here's something that's made your life. Physically and all the different angles better and I did not expect that so I'm pleasantly surprised to Berkeley Frank So join me on that journey

Tyler Sellhorn: [00:24:00] I cannot think of a better invitation than to head on over to cleftnotes.

com And join us on this journey. We would love to help you become a better worker better person All of the ways that we want to live integrated lives that are serving ourselves and others better. Thanks for that reminder, Johnny

Jonny Cosgrove: Thank you. Thanks for having me Tyler. An amazing day.

Tyler Sellhorn: The Speak Easy Podcast is brought to you by Cleft, the easiest way to collect your thoughts. With our cross platform applications, you can simply capture your ideas wherever you are and paste them where they belong later. Check us out at cleftnotes. com. That's C L E F T N O T [00:25:00] E S. com. Thanks for listening.

As we think aloud together,