How I Write a Book: The 7-Stage R&D Process Behind Life in Perspective
The seven stages of research and development behind Life in Perspective, from 17 years of my own annual life reviews to 500 beta readers, 4,500 years of year-end rituals, and AI.
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What 18 Years of Annual Reviews Taught Me: A Live Q&A
I went live to answer your questions about my new book, Life in Perspective. Here are my best answers in writing, plus the full replay.
What I’ve Learned From Selling 500,000 Books
I recently reached an incredible milestone – 500,000 books sold across 8 titles. That includes 5 self-published Kindle ebooks, 1 co-authored book, and 2 traditionally published books, all released from 2017 to 2023. Here’s the breakdown of how those sales were distributed: Almost every single thing I believed about bookwriting when I started turned out…
5 Questions to Help You Navigate Uncertainty
In the early 2010s, the gaming startup Tiny Speck was a darling of the tech industry. The company had raised $17 million. The launch of its first game, Glitch, was covered by international media, including The Guardian and The New York Times. Within months of launching, it had tens of thousands of active players. But…
The Book I’ve Been Waiting to Write for 15 Years
I’m incredibly proud to share news that’s been two years in the making: my next book is coming on November 3, 2026! It’s called Life in Perspective, and it represents the culmination of a reflective practice I’ve been refining since 2008: the annual review. If you’ve read Building a Second Brain or The PARA Method,…
Beyond Acceptance: The Transformational Journey of Applying to Grad School (or Anything Else)
My wife Lauren and I met at a co-working space in San Francisco in our mid-twenties. I was working an entry-level position at a creative consulting agency, at the bottom of the pyramid. Lauren was making $15/hour at an arts nonprofit, living rent-free with her aunt. We both saw no pathway to climb in our…
3-Year Update: A Financial Analysis of My Book’s Unit Economics
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…
The 10 Most Transformative Books on Personal Development I’ve Read
I’ve read hundreds of books on productivity and self-improvement over the years. Many of them are filled with vague prescriptions or clichéd advice, but a small number were truly transformative for me. They served as intellectual lighthouses on my journey, helping me understand what was happening to me as I explored my past, my psyche,…
Did My Bestselling Book Turn Out to Be a Financial Failure?
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
New Book, New Strategy: The 7 Main Things I’m Doing Differently for the Annual Review Book
I recently announced my next major book project: a book on how to complete a year-end life review as a ritual for self-reflection and growth. I’ve had an annual review practice in some form since 2008, and I can’t think of anything else that has more dramatically impacted my life in that time. I can’t…
Launching Building a Second Brain in Brazil and Mexico
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
The 5-Year Journey of Publishing Building a Second Brain
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,