The Four Pathways of Modern Book Publishing

I’ve spent the past couple months immersed in the world of nonfiction book publishing, trying to deeply understand the state of the industry. I’ve read dozens of articles and books, spoken to experienced agents and editors, and authors ranging from New York Times bestsellers to self-published writers. I’ve found that the choice between “traditional publishing”…

The Future of RandomNote (Seeking Developers!)

“I must admit that after many years of work in this area, the efficacy of randomness for so many algorithmic problems is absolutely mysterious to me. It is efficient, it works; but why and how is absolutely mysterious.” – Michael Rabin, from Algorithms to Live By We recently launched version 3.0 of RandomNote, our free…

Behind the Scenes of a Profitable Online Course

I advise everyone I know to create an online course. Everyone has something to say. Everyone has valuable knowledge that others could benefit from. I believe that in 10 years online courses will be like websites today – everyone who works online will have at least one. And without one, you will be all but…

Interview with Toby Sola, Co-Founder of Brightmind

This is a conversation and interview with Toby Sola, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Brightmind, a meditation app that expands the boundaries of human potential through tailored meditation instruction. We discuss topics such as: The intersection and fusion of monastic and entrepreneurial cultures How Toby stays focused and motivated building a technology product designed…

The Free Agent Ecosystem

One of the most exciting trends in coming years will be the formation of cooperative working groups made up of independent contractors. Whether they are called networks, guilds, cooperatives, collectives, flocks, or something else, these groups will bring back many of the benefits of working collaboratively with others, without the bureaucracy and overhead of traditional…

Second Brain Case Study: Citation Management in Academia

This is an interview and case study with Addison Shockley, a Phd in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Rhetoric. He has developed a customized workflow to use with his second brain that allows him to precisely track citations for writing academic articles, including multi-colored progressive summarization (red for arguments/debates, blue for external significance, black…

Commonplace Books: Creative Note-Taking Through History

One of the clearest predecessors to the modern practice of Personal Knowledge Management are “commonplace books” – centralized, personally curated, and continuously maintained collections of information from various sources that rose to popularity during the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution in Europe. These books helped educated people cope with the “information explosion” unleashed by the printing…