Organizing

Topic Discovery Using Machine Learning

By guest contributor Ergest Xheblati Recently I was asked by Tiago to see if I could do something interesting with his Instapaper article collection stored on Evernote. I had recently completed a similar project at work where I looked at product descriptions and generated tags from them. I thought I could do something similar for…

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Second Brain Case Study: Using Digital Notes for Stand-Up Comedy

In this wide-ranging conversation, I spoke with Michael Skiba, who participated in the very first cohort of Building a Second Brain in January 2017. He talks about how he’s continued using and developing his Second Brain over that time. Our conversation includes: How he uses his digital notes to maintain a side gig as a…

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The 10 Principles of Building a Second Brain

Now available in Spanish. If I had to give everyone one piece of advice for improving their productivity and learning, it would be “principles over prescriptions.” Every tip and tactic has a shelf life, and will someday become outdated. Even the most cutting-edge new app will eventually lose relevance. The history of managing ideas reveals…

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How to Build a Second Brain in Notion, by Maria Aldrey

By Maria Aldrey of Groovywink, offering 1-on-1 productivity training for busy freelancers. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram. The day in 2015 I took Tiago Forte’s course on Getting Things Done a weight was lifted from my “brain’s shoulders.”  I recognized what I had been doing wrong; I was relying on my brain to store every…

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What Makes Building a Second Brain Different

Here are some of the main differences between my Building a Second Brain methodology and others. 1. This isn’t yet another method for how to be successful It is the method that prepares you to benefit from all those other methods – how to gather and organize the knowledge you need to make use of…

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The Story Behind Building a Second Brain

I first started taking notes on a computer at the age of 22, when I came down with a mysterious illness in college. The pain was inconsistent, varying a lot from day to day. At first I thought it was a temporary thing, that it would soon go away. But it grew steadily worse, over…

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Adapting to PARA using GitLab

This post was originally published on Julius Gamanyi’s blog It’s almost 2 months since I started walking through Tiago Forte‘s series on PARA Method (Projects. Areas. Resources. Archives) and implementing it. I’ve got Ben Mosior and Tasshin Fogleman to thank for the connection. I loved these series, especially the fifth one, the Project List Mindsweep, because it’s broad enough to cover both home…

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Introducing the Forte Labs OneNote Resource Guide

We’re very proud to introduce version 1.0 of the Forte Labs OneNote Resource Guide. It is a public, shared notebook containing videos, tutorials, add-ons, technical and reference information, and other resources. The notebook was created with Microsoft OneNote and is designed to allow anyone to quickly learn the ins and outs of the popular digital…

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Second Brain Case Study: UX Designer at Adobe

I recently received this testimonial from Parker, a student in my online course Building a Second Brain. It’s a great example of how someone can overcome longstanding challenges and truly succeed in their personal knowledge management. Tiago, I’ve been a virtual student of yours for well over a year now, closely following Praxis since the…

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Building a Second Brain: A 45-Minute Presentation

This is a 45-minute video recording of a talk I delivered at a conference recently. It is a condensed version of some of the material from my course Building a Second Brain, with how-to examples of each of the three main parts of the methodology: Remember, Connect, and Create.

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The 7 Benefits of Building a Second Brain

In my online course Building a Second Brain, I teach people how to create an external repository of their best ideas, knowledge, and experiences, called a “second brain.” But one of the most common questions I receive is, “Why should I?” In this article I’ll summarize the 7 main capabilities that a second brain gives…

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