Two books I read recently helped me tremendously to understand what’s happening now with Artificial Intelligence: Prediction Machines and Power and Prediction (affiliate links) by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans, and Avi Goldfarb. The authors are economists and professors at the University of Toronto, one of the leading institutions studying the economic impacts of AI. Their…
Over the past few weeks, I did something I’ve never done before: I read through all my old journals going back 10 years. I’m not a hardcore journaler, as you can probably tell by the fact that only 7 notebooks cover a full decade of my life. Journaling is more of a crisis intervention tool…
Ryder Caroll, the creator of the Bullet Journal, invited me to discuss all things personal knowledge management (PKM) and Building a Second Brain. We covered: First vs Second Brain What a Second Brain looks like How to use a notebook as a Second Brain Goals vs Projects The Second Brain and reflection The future of…
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…
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.
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.
Information is the fundamental building block of everything we do. But we often find ourselves mentally juggling and straining to recall things. I’ve found that the most successful people are always sharpening their memory power — so that their ideas become more concrete and new connections are easily revealed. I call it the “CODE” method:…
When I started my career, all the work I was doing felt like a giant blob labeled “work.” The tasks I was responsible for stretched out before me toward an endless horizon. No matter how hard I worked or how many hours I logged, that horizon never seemed to get any closer. But eventually I…
I joined Bilal Zaidi on the Creator Lab podcast to talk about sustaining behavior change, adopting the mindset of a curator, and designing notes for your future self. We also covered: Why there is no right way to express your thoughts The power of cohort-based courses A comprehensive summary of the CODE method (Capture, Organize,…
Popular productivity YouTuber and Ali Abdaal summarized Building a Second Brain in this 15-minute video. This is an incredible distillation and expression of the book’s core principles. Ali discussed: What is a Second Brain and why should you have one The CODE method: my 4-step process for knowledge management and creative work How having a Second Brain…
I joined Scott Young, the author of Ultralearning, to discuss all things Second Brain. We covered: The power of habits How life can be a marathon or a sprint How notes are tools for thinking My personal tech stacks How notetaking can be a tool for personal development What we can learn from artists Watch…
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