The Forte Labs Blog

Dedicated to Exploring the Frontier of Modern Productivity

What Makes Building a Second Brain Different

Here are some of the main differences between my Building a Second Brain methodology and others. 1. This isn’t yet another method for how to be successful It is the method that prepares you to benefit from all those other methods – how to gather and organize the knowledge you need to make use of…

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The Building a Second Brain Chain of Beliefs

I recently joined an online course “accelerator,” in which a course marketing expert coaches 5 course creators through 10 weeks of exercises and experiments to level up their marketing efforts. It’s been a fascinating journey already, and I’ll be sharing bits and pieces of what I discover here on the blog. One of the most…

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The Punk Strategy Guide to the Logical Thinking Process

In the 1980’s an Israeli physicist named Eliyahu Goldratt shifted his attention to business. The most well known result of his efforts and studies was the Theory of Constraints (TOC). TOC originated in manufacturing, where it consistently resulted in production and profits that were previously considered unimaginable, impossible. However, it quickly spread to other businesses….

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Announcing the 2019 Summer of Learning

I’m very proud to announce the 2019 Summer of Learning, an integrated curriculum of two courses focused on modern writing. For the first time ever, we’re combining back-to-back live cohorts of Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage into an immersive program co-taught by Tiago Forte and David Perell. In Building a Second Brain,…

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The Story Behind Building a Second Brain

I first started taking notes on a computer at the age of 22, when I came down with a mysterious illness in college. The pain was inconsistent, varying a lot from day to day. At first I thought it was a temporary thing, that it would soon go away. But it grew steadily worse, over…

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Adapting to PARA using GitLab

This post was originally published on Julius Gamanyi’s blog It’s almost 2 months since I started walking through Tiago Forte‘s series on PARA Method (Projects. Areas. Resources. Archives) and implementing it. I’ve got Ben Mosior and Tasshin Fogleman to thank for the connection. I loved these series, especially the fifth one, the Project List Mindsweep, because it’s broad enough to cover both home…

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Introducing the Forte Labs OneNote Resource Guide

We’re very proud to introduce version 1.0 of the Forte Labs OneNote Resource Guide. It is a public, shared notebook containing videos, tutorials, add-ons, technical and reference information, and other resources. The notebook was created with Microsoft OneNote and is designed to allow anyone to quickly learn the ins and outs of the popular digital…

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Top 10 Things I Learned from Chimp Essentials

I recently completed an online course called Chimp Essentials, by well-known writer and freelancer Paul Jarvis. The course teaches everything you need to know to be able to effectively use the email service provider Mailchimp for your online communication and marketing. I took Chimp Essentials to finally get serious about email marketing after years of…

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Real Magick Deconstructed (Interview with Chloe Good)

A few months ago I was wasting time on Twitter as usual, and came across a tweet by an online acquaintance referring to “magick.” I figured it was a typo, and messaged him to find out more. That was the beginning of my introduction to the mysterious, strange, paradoxical world of “real magick.” This isn’t…

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My Top 10 All-Time Most Popular Articles

These are my Top 10 all-time most popular articles based on number of unique visitors: 1. One-Touch to Inbox Zero A step-by-step guide to streamlining your email workflow, which will save you hours every week and consistently take you to “inbox zero.” 2. The Rise of the Full-Stack Freelancer My prediction for the future of jobs, including a “portfolio…

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The BASB Customer Persona

I recently compiled all my notes, findings, and ideas about the “ideal customer” for Building a Second Brain, and put them into a single document. I’m working with my editor to narrow down and refine this customer profile from here, so I can have a crystal clear person in mind as I write the sample…

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