Education

Second Brain Case Study: Building a Second Brain in Higher Education

This is a presentation and conversation with Professor Wess Daniels and a group of professors, college staff, and undergraduate students from the 6 classes that have learned Progressive Summarization at Guilford College in North Carolina. It includes a slide presentation with key themes and learnings from their experience, a live demonstration of performing progressive summarization collaboratively…

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Announcing Write of Passage

I’m very proud to announce Write of Passage, a new online course on how to accelerate your career by writing online. It is my fifth course and the first one co-created with a partner, David Perell. In the spring of 2017 I appeared as a guest on David’s podcast, the North Star. We had a…

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Behind the Scenes of a Profitable Online Course

I advise everyone I know to create an online course. Everyone has something to say. Everyone has valuable knowledge that others could benefit from. I believe that in 10 years online courses will be like websites today – everyone who works online will have at least one. And without one, you will be all but…

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Second Brain Case Study: Citation Management in Academia

This is an interview and case study with Addison Shockley, a Phd in Communication Studies with an emphasis in Rhetoric. He has developed a customized workflow to use with his second brain that allows him to precisely track citations for writing academic articles, including multi-colored progressive summarization (red for arguments/debates, blue for external significance, black…

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A Vision for Escola Pura

At the end of every year I perform an “annual review.” It includes a series of exercises and questions designed to close out the previous year and help me plan for the new one. I decided to do it differently this year. Under the guidance of my friend Ting, I took on a process of…

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Second Brain Case Study: PARA and Habit Formation in Argentina

I recently interviewed Federico Gonzalez, an Argentinian educator in Buenos Aires, about his experience teaching some of the methods from my Building a Second Brain course to three groups he works with in Argentina. The first group is sixth-year students at Escuela Técnica del Gran Bs As in the La Matanza municipality of Buenos Aires. They…

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The Future of Ebooks

I’ve published a few ebooks over the past year, and have plans for a couple more before the end of the year. In contrast to fears about the “end of reading,” my self-publishing experiences have led me to believe that we’re in the midst of a transformational revolution in reading. But it remains to be…

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The Digital Productivity Pyramid

Imagine if we had a learning curriculum for modern knowledge work. This curriculum would reliably produce elite performers, training them in the fundamental skills required to thrive in the digital age. It would impart concrete skills that could be generalized to any kind of knowledge work, not just one discipline or career path. In our…

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Case Study: Creating an Online Course, with Lauren Valdez

Lauren Valdez joined me last week for an interview and case study, on how she developed her online course Win a Fulbright, which coaches people step by step through the process of successfully applying for the Fulbright fellowship, a prestigious government program that pays for a year of overseas research. Submit your email here if…

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Progressive Summarization V: The Faster You Forget, The Faster You Learn

In Part I, I introduced Progressive Summarization, a method for easily creating highly discoverable notes. In Part II, I gave you examples and metaphors of the method in action. Part III included my top recommendations for how to perform it effectively. Part IV showed how to apply the technique to non-text media.

In Part V, I’ll show you how Progressive Summarization directly contributes to the ultimate outcome we’re seeking with our information consumption: learning.

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