In early 2023, after teaching 6,000 students over six years, I abruptly decided to stop teaching our Building a Second Brain cohorts. Even at that early stage, with the release of the first version of ChatGPT just a couple months earlier, it was clear to me the impact this new technology would have. Almost from…
It has now been 3 years and 3 months since my book Building a Second Brain came out in the U.S., and I’ve just received word that it has now earned out its advance! That probably doesn’t mean anything to readers, but to me as an author, it means a ton. It means that the…
On October 3-4, 2024, we hosted our very first in-person Second Brain Summit in Los Angeles, and honestly, it was a dream come true. This event felt like a “bucket list” moment in every way. I’d count it among my top five life milestones, right up there with getting married, witnessing my children’s births, and…
This is a proposal I wrote for a television show based on my bestselling book Building a Second Brain. If it resonates with you and you’re in a position to make a TV show happen, please let me know by emailing [email protected]. I’m open to a variety of formats, funding sources, routes to production, and…
I’ve long believed that our choices about which projects to take on are among the most important decisions we make, and now I have evidence to back it up. In an article on the TED blog and a paper called The Methodology of Personal Projects Analysis, research professor Brian R. Little examines how the pursuit…
It’s now been two years since the release of my book Building a Second Brain. It has already reached and surpassed every goal I had for it, with 250,000 worldwide sales and many new countries and languages still to come. On this occasion, however, I want to answer a longstanding question that is only just
Like so many others, I’ve spent the past year exploring and experimenting with emerging AI tools. Throughout that time, there has been one question I’ve been trying to answer: Will AI replace the need for Second Brains entirely? A lot of people seem to think so, and I admittedly have a self-interested motivation: to decide…
One of the aspects of writing a book I most looked forward to was releasing it in my family’s country of origin, Brazil. I’d spent years daydreaming about what that would feel like, returning to my homeland bearing the gift of hard-won knowledge to share with the people who had given me so much. Criando
I’m unbelievably proud to announce the inaugural Second Brain Summit, taking place October 3–4, 2024, in Los Angeles, California! We’re gathering the most dedicated experts and practitioners of personal knowledge management in the world’s creative capital with three goals in mind: To meet other like-minded people and see that we’re not alone To celebrate the…
When it comes to storing and organizing digital information, photos are in many ways the elephant in the room. They’re highly valued and meaningful, yet require a lot of storage space. For many people, photos are probably the earliest experience of having too much digital content to manage. I first felt this sensation of information…
An aspiring author asked me what I’d learned from writing and publishing my book over the last 5 years. I responded with a 17-minute video, recapping the timeline of the project, my biggest lessons, mistakes, and sales milestones. If you’ve ever considered publishing a book or are just curious about what went into the project,
About six months ago, I decided to evaluate a few of the newer generation of Second Brain apps. I’ve been using Evernote for 10 years and wanted to see if any of the up-and-comers could take over as my platform of choice. I tested three of the most promising ones – Obsidian, Tana, and Mem