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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

My interview on the Mindhack Podcast: Finding the Achiever’s Mindset

I recently sat down with Cody McLain to talk about productivity, achievement, and personal growth. We went deep on the relationship between internal experiences like personal growth and self-awareness, and external measures of success that people usually associate with “achievement.” Click here to visit the Mindhack website for the audio recording and full transcript.

How Emotions Are Made: The Theory of Constructed Emotion

This post now available in German. The Theory of Constructed Emotion offers a radical new take on what emotions are, where they come from, and how they shape our lives. Presented by psychology professor and neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett in her best-selling book How Emotions Are Made (affiliate link), it also contradicts many of…