Building a Second Brain in Miro

I recently hired designer and writer Michael Dean to summarize my Building a Second Brain course in visual form. Michael is the writing coach and lead facilitator for The Writer’s Studio, a new cohort-based writing workshop he recently launched in partnership with David Perell.

I asked Michael to take the course as a participant, and to document the main lessons and takeaways in visual form. He decided to use Miro, an “online whiteboard for visual collaboration.” It’s basically an infinite horizontal and vertical canvas that you can draw on, type into, and embed images and videos on. 

The result is extremely compelling: a “visual map” of the course from a bird’s eye view, including both the pre-recorded videos and the live sessions delivered over Zoom. Michael included his own interpretation of the main principles and techniques I teach in the program, with an eye toward the most surprising or insightful ideas from his point of view.

I struggle to summarize this material because I’m so immersed in it all the time. This is one of the best high-level overviews I’ve seen. Watch the full 15-minute video below, and click the red button to access the Miro whiteboard directly, which allows you to pan around and zoom in and out to your heart’s content.