After teaching over 5,000 students how to build a Second Brain, I know that there’s no one right way and no one true app. I also noticed that my personal setup not always resonates with everyone. Most students find it helpful to see how other people have implemented the principles of the Building a Second…
Imagine you sit down to work at your computer determined to really get things done. You brew a strong cup of coffee, turn off your phone, put on your favorite playlist, and resolve to not get up before you’ve made real progress on your most important tasks. Even if you already know what your top…
From the Dawn of Email to the Rise of Personal Dashboards In the beginning… was email. The very first email was sent 50 years ago, in the spring of 1971. The incredible spread of email since then unleashed an unimaginable torrent of information into our everyday lives. And to this day, we still haven’t recovered….
We’re supposed to hate email and everything it represents. But I have a confession to make. I love email. (Scandalous, I know.) When it comes to email, I always think about the alternative: What would I do if there was no email at all? Write letters? Telegrams? Or most terrifying of all… get on the phone…
I recently hosted Dan Charnas, author of the book Work Clean: The Life-Changing Power of Mise-en-Place to Organize Your Life, Work, and Mind (affiliate link), for an in-depth conversation about the most interesting, impactful principles from his work. Dan takes us on a fascinating journey through his career in the music business, as one of the first…
In 1969, studio executives at Paramount Pictures were desperate to find a film director for a new movie they had purchased the rights to. It was to be a crime drama based on the New York Mafia. One after another, all the top directors of the era turned the project down. They all found it…
Knowledge work is unique among skilled professions in that we lack a culture of systematic improvement. Other skilled trades – from carpenters to welders to nurses to pilots – have been around long enough and are repeatable enough that the best practices are widely understood. How to frame a door, how to weld a seam,…
This guide is also available in Spanish. In 2016, I read 57 books. I read like I was running out of time. It felt like an achievement, yet by the end of the year, I could scarcely recall even one useful idea from each book. That moment was a turning point. I realized very little…
I rage quit my consulting job in June of 2013. I had had enough of the consulting world. Enough of the overwork and burnout, enough of the lack of guidance and support, and enough of working on other people’s goals instead of my own. A couple weeks later, on my first day newly unemployed, I…
There is a secret to radically improving your productivity – it’s called a Weekly Review. It’s not a very secret secret. It’s a secret hiding in plain sight. We’ve all heard countless times that we should take some time each week to review our schedule and priorities for the week. We’ve all heard it, but…
By Marie-Pier Corbeil, Vice President and Lead Designer at RVE (Recharge Véhicule Électrique), working on solutions for EV charger installation in multi-unit residential buildings To use progressive summarization with PDFs, here’s what I do: 1. I highlight and comment passages in PDF Expert (which is my layer 1): 2. I export my highlights…
By Dr. Roberto A. Leon Ferre, Oncologist, Mayo Clinic Here is a typical (hypothetical) clinical note for a breast cancer patient in a busy oncology clinic such as my own: A 35-year-old premenopausal female with recently diagnosed breast cancer presents today for recommendations regarding treatment. Her oncologic history is as follows: August 15, 2016: patient…