Living Well With Lauren Valdez and Tiago Forte  🔗 **Source:** [Living Well With Lauren Valdez and Tiago Forte](https://share.snipd.com/episode/4563684a-493c-46ad-a479-2e29a3e809dd) ## Highlights - **Move To Rural Mexico Recentered Their Family Life** - Lauren describes moving to rural Mexico as deeply healing for family, business, and emotional health after a year and a half there. - She emphasizes reconnecting with her Latino roots, being accepted by community, kids learning Spanish, and the privilege of cross-border mobility. Transcript: Lauren Valdez I'll start because Tiago's looking at me. It's been a year and a half since we moved to Mexico and it's been incredible. Like probably one of the best decisions we've ever made that's impacted our family, our business, our mental, emotional health living here with little kids. It's an adventure, but it also is like deeply healing living here. It's just a different culture and environment. Like both of our families are Latino. And so where we get to experience more of like that Latino side of ourselves, where we are so grounded in community social support in comparison to how isolating America could feel. And in Western cultures generally, where it's very like individual driven, work really hard. Here, it is way more about living well. And we live here with like the most ultimate privilege as like being people who can move across borders freely in a time when that is not possible for many people. So we can maintain both our families across cultures, which is incredible, but we could also afford a really great life here. It's been really amazing. And, you know, it comes with a lot of privilege and we feel very honored to be accepted into the community here, to have our kids learning Spanish and to feel so supported here and also Being able to just go home whenever we want to, you know, maintain our community ties back in the U.S. As well. ([Time 0:01:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/214c2cac-24c2-4c9d-855d-1d44ec1dfeb1)) - **One Hour On One Hour Off Plane System** - Lauren and Tiago developed a plane strategy: one parent handles both kids for an hour, then they swap to rest. - She describes a packed to-go bag of foam puzzles and activities and the rhythm making flights manageable. Transcript: Lauren Valdez Yeah, we're like, I mean, anything with kids or anything you don't do often feels really hard, like a big challenge. And now it's like, we're just pros on airplanes. Like I like, I have my packing like down, like my kids aren't kids with iPads on airplanes. It's like I have a my to go bag that has like every color activity, foam, puzzles, whatever. And then Tiago and I have a good system now for planes where we used to split up having one kid next to us each. And now we realize the better option is one person with both kids for an hour. And then the other person gets to relax and be by themselves and then we trade every hour and we're like oh this is a great system like we're on for an hour off for an hour and then we trade Back and forth um so we've really like kind of figure that out you know there are days where it's it just doesn't work out things break down um especially if there's travel delays like If our flights delayed like hours that like breaks down like my system i'm like i don't have enough snacks for the amount of time we're delayed or whatever. But you know, some of the trips are difficult. But I mean, we've kind of just like figured out a system like anything in life, if you just figure out your system, and it becomes a routine, it's not challenging. Benjamin Borowski Has there been any changes for the kids in terms of the way that they're sort of ([Time 0:04:30](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ca316aed-2f0a-4ffa-9eb7-0231ed141df3)) - **Environment Shapes Entrepreneurial Rhythms** - Living in a town of remote entrepreneurs normalized flexible schedules, making weekday hangouts and creative classes possible. - Lauren highlights ceramics at 9:30am and parents brainstorming between paddle ball games as daily integration of work, family, and play. Transcript: Lauren Valdez To live here, you need to be someone who has control of your time. And so there's a lot of people and particularly it's the byproduct of the school we have chosen to send our kids to where most of the parents are entrepreneurs, are people who have full Like control of their time because a lot of the people at this school came during the pandemic from Mexico City. So they've been very successful in their careers and they can work here remotely and they may have to go back to Mexico City, but it's easy to do that from here. And so like we used to feel very not isolated, but where we were at in our community in Long Beach, like we didn't know a lot of people who had businesses like ours and had full control over Their time. And we're working in this online way, which is why we found you all and people in different cities who do this kind of work and connected online. And we'd come together once a year and bond over our kind of unique lifestyles and businesses and marriage partnerships, working together and all that stuff. We're here. That is like the default of our friend group. It's really incredible to live in person in a place where everyone gets it, like running your own business and side projects and like managing multiple things and also trying to raise A family and like live a good life. ([Time 0:10:27](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ce8b078f-36e3-4ca7-9544-b31a34ce471a)) - **Hire Help To Reclaim Time For Self Care** - Buy domestic help to reclaim time for self-care and family if affordable in your context. - Tiago notes hiring full-time help for a few hundred dollars weekly freed time for exercise, walks, and calm decision-making. Transcript: Tiago Forte For like a couple hundred bucks a week, we have full-time help who does all the cooking and all the cleaning. Like that alone. And then of course, what do you do with that time? We spend it mostly. I feel like the number one thing that gets added in is self-care. It's exercise, taking walks, hiking, playing with the kids, going to the pool. Benjamin Borowski And so that's a big part of it too. It's a big part of it too. Yeah, you've been doing a lot of personal training and getting into the fitness in the last year. How's that kind of changed your mindset around, you know, showing up for work and being energized? Oh my gosh, yeah. It has a tremendous impact on work. Tiago Forte I feel like I'm working less than ever than I ever have in my career. I rarely work past maybe 12 or 1, so like three to four hours a day. A lot of that is AI's help as well. But it's like each of those hours that I'm there are so intentional and I'm in such a calm, balanced state that I just make better decisions. ([Time 0:16:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4865ccfa-86a3-42cf-a315-fc71b8cc16a8)) - **Less Time With Better Decisions Multiplies Impact** - Working fewer focused hours can increase impact because calm decision-making prevents wasted execution time. - Tiago says he works three to four intentional hours daily, aided by AI, and avoids late-night work for clearer choices. Transcript: Tiago Forte I feel like I'm working less than ever than I ever have in my career. I rarely work past maybe 12 or 1, so like three to four hours a day. A lot of that is AI's help as well. But it's like each of those hours that I'm there are so intentional and I'm in such a calm, balanced state that I just make better decisions. And like decision making is where it's at. Like one good decision can save so many hours of, you know, poor execution. ([Time 0:16:48](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e173042c-8c2e-4ed1-a53b-e44bd5166bad)) - **Lean Into Complementary Roles In Partnered Work** - Play to complementary strengths in partnered businesses: assign strategic, counterbalancing roles rather than duplicating tasks. - Lauren explains she acts as Tiago's public counterbalance and focuses on kids and selective side projects. Transcript: Lauren Valdez But Tiago is still like the boss who sometimes they're afraid to challenge. And when I can challenge him publicly, then they're like, oh, wait, yeah, Lauren, we all think that too. We just weren't saying anything or whatever. It's like, it's like, kind of like the unique role I play now. And so I'm really not hands-on with much of the business at all. It's more like strategic advising, looking big picture at things. Every once in a while, I take on small projects like leading workshops or doing some YouTube videos or things like that. But I'd say mostly my role is counterbalancing Tiago's approach and way of thinking. Like we really see each other as like the yin and yang of each other. Like I'm just like a lot more embodied, intuitive and like spontaneous, chaotic, I guess. And Tiago's more the ordered, structured one and like the systems one. And like you definitely need both of those things. Since having kids, I've been extremely hands-off with the business and more focused on the kids. So the kids are my main priority and responsibility. ([Time 0:19:08](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e66e1165-81d7-47ab-8849-30c872ab5793)) - **Somatic Rituals Powered Her Book Writing** - Lauren found conventional writing advice burned her out and built a somatic ritual: tea, no coffee, two hours of embodied writing. - She describes needing morning intuition practices and artist dates to process emotions before productive writing sessions. Transcript: Lauren Valdez It's like, get up and do your this many minutes or this many words and blah, blah, blah, and everyday consistency and blah, blah, blah. None of that like worked for me at all. It burned me out very quickly. I had to spend like one to two hours on like getting in touch with my intuition every morning, like a tea ritual in the morning, no coffee. I like, I could even feel in my body what coffee did to my writing. And I was like, I don't like that. Like if I drank coffee, I would very quickly start to doubt myself and go to AI. And then I'd spend my whole writing time being like, okay, now everything I produced is crap. Instead, I'd have to spend the time like feeling into my body, my intuition and my sensations to then get me into flow. And so it required like so much self care and being embodied in a lot of exercise and regularly keeping up my artist dates and that sort of thing and processing my emotions and my fears And moving those physically to be able to just write for like two hours. That's like, that was my process. And I'm like, I must not, like I would have to get all my hands and knees and like, as if I was like grieving something that needed to come out of my body to be able to write something like on Sundays. And I was like, this is crazy. ([Time 0:26:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f51b56d4-c5df-4e5a-b6c0-9c645ee54f57)) - **Life Outside Screens Feels Like The 90s** - Stepping out of smartphone-driven urban life feels like living in the 90s with richer in-person connection and fewer mediated transactions. - Tiago compares rural Mexican social norms to pre-smartphone public life and notes both positives and timing frustrations. Transcript: Tiago Forte Tried so many different things. It's so ironic, but it's like a whole world. There's a whole discipline in non-screen activities. Like you could study it. You could really like, because it really is amazing how the screen has come to dominate so many aspects of our lives. Like I think Ben, I think you were the one that asked me this question in our mastermind that we both attended in 2023. It stuck with me for years, which is like, do you have any non-screen hobbies? And I was like, no. ([Time 0:31:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/371895b7-71d4-45d4-9f0c-2c028ca09865)) - **Decide Your AI Stance Before Adopting Tools** - Before adopting AI, clarify your stance and personal constraints: augmentation vs replacement and how much agency you trust. - Tiago urges deciding which AI narratives you accept and teaching responsibly given influence and long deliberation over three years. Transcript: Lauren Valdez About your question, Ben, that you posed earlier about like the morality of not knowing. This is something I think a lot about, too, in terms of second brains is like I read this article in The New Yorker. I can't remember what it was called now, but it was about a book about the value of forgetting that like your brain supposed to forget. It's meant to forget things and that's good for you. And thinking about like, when you're trying to remember and preserve everything, like that's actually damaging at some point. And so like you as the human are the one who decides what's worth remembering and forgetting. I'm so grateful that I forget things all the time. Like my task management system is as once I became a mom, I was like, if I forgot it, good, I wasn't supposed to do it. Like, I'm like, I'm glad I didn't write that down. If someone didn't follow up with me to get it done, it was not supposed to be done. That's actually like good for us. So I think about this with AI too, like, there's a lot of people who just waste time being like that never needed to be done in the first place. Like the example you just gave, like no one needed that. And I do this personally and I've noticed this through my journaling and my reflective work that I'll be like, wait a second, that was just a huge waste of time. Like, did I need to do and create that? Like I could make a lead magnet really fast using AI, but like, did I need to? Like when I didn't have time to make lead magnets, I use the same lead magnet on every single thing. And it was great. But now that I can make new lead magnets, I'm just gonna make a bunch of them. And then I was like, I never needed to do that. That has happened to me a lot with AI. And I think a lot of people don't realize like the toll that takes on you. And this is something I've been feeling with AI is just like feeling super fragmented very quickly because you can manage more projects, but that management takes its own mental load. And so I've been coming back away from that being like, no, this requires so much more intentionality to decide when is it right and appropriate to do something with AI versus not. ([Time 0:45:21](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d4ff7477-44b6-4572-8133-7a961732ba45)) - **AI Increases Output But Also Cognitive Fragmentation** - AI can enable more projects but increases fragmentation and mental load, so it demands intentional limits and bodily awareness. - Lauren warns rapid AI-enabled output led her to create unnecessary lead magnets and feel fragmented, urging pre-AI intentionality work. Transcript: Lauren Valdez This is something I think a lot about, too, in terms of second brains is like I read this article in The New Yorker. I can't remember what it was called now, but it was about a book about the value of forgetting that like your brain supposed to forget. It's meant to forget things and that's good for you. And thinking about like, when you're trying to remember and preserve everything, like that's actually damaging at some point. And so like you as the human are the one who decides what's worth remembering and forgetting. I'm so grateful that I forget things all the time. Like my task management system is as once I became a mom, I was like, if I forgot it, good, I wasn't supposed to do it. Like, I'm like, I'm glad I didn't write that down. If someone didn't follow up with me to get it done, it was not supposed to be done. That's actually like good for us. So I think about this with AI too, like, there's a lot of people who just waste time being like that never needed to be done in the first place. Like the example you just gave, like no one needed that. And I do this personally and I've noticed this through my journaling and my reflective work that I'll be like, wait a second, that was just a huge waste of time. Like, did I need to do and create that? Like I could make a lead magnet really fast using AI, but like, did I need to? Like when I didn't have time to make lead magnets, I use the same lead magnet on every single thing. And it was great. But now that I can make new lead magnets, I'm just gonna make a bunch of them. And then I was like, I never needed to do that. That has happened to me a lot with AI. And I think a lot of people don't realize like the toll that takes on you. And this is something I've been feeling with AI is just like feeling super fragmented very quickly because you can manage more projects, but that management takes its own mental load. And so I've been coming back away from that being like, no, this requires so much more intentionality to decide when is it right and appropriate to do something with AI versus not. And I think that all comes back to the body and like being able to sense and feel things, which I think most people are so disconnected from their body all the time. And so like, you don't even know what you don't know. You can't feel that it's bothering you until like you're in burnout or whatever. And so that's what I think a lot. ([Time 0:45:26](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d740f8ec-1293-4fb3-81d8-b819486e3e97)) - **Annual Review As A Slow Moving Technology** - Annual reviews function as a technology: a repeatable process that captures artifacts, reframes perspective, and guides future choices. - Tiago frames the ARC review as look back, look present, look forward, amplified by digital records like notes and viewing history. Transcript: Tiago Forte Is something I realized, I think I was telling, I was sharing this with my team just last week. We kind of have an MO in the work we do that I had never really realized, which is we present a thing, a system, we sell a system. But then when you get that, you know, an object, an artifact, this discrete entity, but then, and people, you know, take it, they accept it or they buy it but then when they open it up what's Inside is a process right like you want a second brain well really it's code it's this four-step creative process they want para oh an organizational hierarchy well really even para Is a process things start as projects they become areas etc and i think that's kind of I see technology now more broadly is systems or things disguised or processes disguised as artifacts. And that's what the annual review is. It's just a slower moving process than we're used to. It's kind of interesting, actually, like almost every year long process has been ripped out of society and eradicated. There's almost none left. And the ones that remain, like Christmas, have been so commercialized that they've lost their original meaning. And so it's this step-by process, just three parts, looking at the past, looking at the present, looking at the future, not that original, and repeating that every year. But to me is the essence of technology. And now it does also involve technology, like to look back at your notes helps to have those digitized in some way. To look back at your content consumption helps to have your YouTube viewing history. Like technology has a way of keeping records in such a way that you can look back at them and reflect on them. ([Time 0:51:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/ad78d0c0-2329-4e1e-a4f5-bc54e0e685f1)) - **Turn Reviews Into Rituals To Maintain Them** - Make reviews ritual and sensory to stick: weekly scrapbook, morning pages, moon rituals, and birthday check-ins. - Lauren spends two months on her annual review, compiles journaling and photos, and converts it into a video artifact. Transcript: Lauren Valdez Do so many reviews. I have my morning pages that I write most days. And then I have a weekly review scrapbook where it's like I print pictures and I journal about the week. And then I have a moon ritual review. So every new moon and every full moon, I have a check-in and that's kind of like my monthly review. And then I have my annual review, but I also do a review on my birthday or like if any big thing happens, like, um, and I do reviews with my kids. So like before on their birthdays, like generally like the night before they go to sleep on a birthday, we review the last year and I ask them questions and they answer like about the highs And lows. I love reviews. And I used to like in the GTD sense of reviews many years ago, I could never get my reviews a habit. Like my weekly review, my monthly review, like they just broke down super quickly. I never got the habit until I started doing it through like journaling and like by hand and it being like something that felt more spiritual and more of a ritual. And same thing with my annual review. I spend like two months on my annual review. I love it. Like, I like review. I like rereading my, all journal entries from like, the whole year to do my annual review. And then I put it into a video form as like my creative project artifact. ([Time 0:54:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/94324a6e-3d06-4a0e-a97f-2ff1e255eb29))