Tiago Forte
I joined best-selling author Daniel Pink on The Pinkcast to discuss how to take notes and capture like a pro. In 193 seconds, we also discussed: Why we should offload information? The 30-day experiment to make you a pro at notetaking How to retrieve your notes quickly and efficiently Watch our quick chat here:
I joined fellow productivity nerd Mike Vardy on the Productivityist podcast to discuss the depths of PKM and what it really means to Build a Second Brain. We dived into: Why notetaking needs to be a little chaotic, messy, and informal Why most life management systems fail The difference between productivity and personal knowledge management When I…
I sat down with Sachit Gupta on the Conscious Creators Show to discuss the business of Building a Second Brain. We covered… Why I thought of shutting down my company How I went from solopreneur to a team of 10 The biggest mistakes creators make The lessons I learned from my artist dad The importance…
I joined Chris Hutchins on the All the Hacks Podcast to discuss all things Second Brain. We dived into: How you can remember and use the things you learn Why you should only save the quote and not the whole book Why there is no one app to rule them all Why you need to…
One of my favorite things about open questions is that they can be freely borrowed anywhere you encounter them. In my course Building a Second Brain, I lead students through an exercise to identify their own favorite problems. They can then serve as a filter for what to capture in their notes, a guide for…
The future has become so uncertain that goals are now obsolete. The stable, predictable world we grew up in is gone. The idea that you can make a “5-year plan” and execute it one step at a time is laughable. No one knows what’s going to happen in the next 5 years or even the next 5 weeks. Goal-setting was once central to our conception of what it means to navigate the future successfully. But goals can no longer serve as guides to an unfolding future that we have so little control over.
It was a pleasure to sit down with Pomp to chat about all things Second Brain. We dove deep into a host of topics, including: Are we consuming too much? How many hours do I read a day? How to create projects from your notes Why removing risk from your life is wrong Do our…
Your favorite problems will likely stay consistent over many years, but that doesn’t mean they can’t evolve. I’ve found that in most cases I never actually arrive at a final, definitive answer to a question. Instead, the question changes as I learn more. Let me illustrate this with a case study. I’ll show you how one of my favorite problems – teaching – changed over time as my life went through different stages.
Writing down your open questions is an act of “externalization” – you are taking passing curiosities and interests from your mind and externalizing them into the outside world. That is a first step to making those questions active generators of possibility in your life, but certainly not the last. Once they exist in written form, such as in your notes, you now have a place to begin collecting potential answers to those questions without having to memorize them.
In this step-by-step guide, I’ll share the exact process I use for myself and my students to formulate the most powerful open-ended questions possible. In Part 1, I introduced “favorite problems” as a lens through which to filter the immense amount of information we are exposed to every day. A favorite problem is an open-ended question you use to prime your subconscious to notice potential answers in the information you’re consuming.
Richard Phillips Feynman was one of the most important scientists of the 20th century. Born on the outskirts of New York City in 1918, his work in theoretical physics radically reshaped our understanding of the universe we live in at the most fundamental subatomic levels. When it was all said and done, his biography would simply and fittingly be titled Genius.
I talked to Robert Breedlove on the What is Money Show about Building a Second Brain, email, PARA, and more. We covered… What is “Inbox Zero” and is it something you want to aspire to How to organize your email with the “executive approach” How I manage my daily calendar and what tool I use…