I recently came across an interesting guide on how to train ChatGPT to write in your own voice and style. It is part of the Substack publication Write With AI, by Nicolas Cole and Dickie Bush. I decided to give it a try because if I succeeded, this would solve one of the biggest problems…
In the second part of this blog series, I shared how I treated my book as a series of small projects culminating in a final product. The same was true for each of the 10 chapters it contained: each one was its own project, with a deadline and a goal for what that chapter was trying to achieve. Each chapter had its own project folder (according to my PARA Method), where I collected everything I would draw on – notes, sources, supporting materials, stories, action steps, and key details.
As I was researching and writing my book Building a Second Brain, I picked up another book to read on the side: The Bullet Journal Method (affiliate link) by Ryder Carroll. There aren’t many books on effective notetaking for the modern world, especially ones that have been as successful as BuJo (as it’s affectionately called)….
Publishing my book has been the experience of a lifetime. I’ve learned so much about myself, discovered new horizons of creativity, met so many fascinating people, and heard stories from all over the world about how my message has made a difference for others. Writing a book gave me the opportunity to dig deep into…
(While Having Our First Child During a Global Pandemic) Writing and publishing my book Building a Second Brain was by far the longest and hardest project I’ve ever completed. From the first call with the agent (who would eventually represent me) in January 2019 until June 2022 when the book was released to the world,…
I joined Anne-Laure Le Cunff founder of Ness Labs, a mindful productivity school for knowledge workers, to talk about all things productivity and notetaking. We covered: The evolution of my Second Brain The difference between note-taking vs note-making The need for mindful productivity My book writing system Are there 3 or 4 notetaking archetypes? It was…
One of the most important milestones for a born-again Christian is to tell your “testimony.” A testimony is your personal story of how you came to the faith. It often includes the problems or challenges you were facing in your life at the time, how lost or confused you felt, the person or experience that…
“Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work.” —Gustav Flaubert “We carry within us the wonders we seek without us.” —Sir Thomas Browne “The ability to ‘fantasize’ is the ability to survive. It’s wonderful to speak about this subject because there have been so many…
We’ve just signed our first international book deal to publish Building a Second Brain….in the United Kingdom!
The initial wave of pre-orders in the United States has turned publishing heads around the world, and my literary agency has reported a surge in interest and enthusiasm for BASB in multiple countries.
Last week I asked you to be among the very first people to pre-order my new book Building a Second Brain….and boy did you deliver!
The book quickly climbed the bestseller charts in the early morning hours last Tuesday, hitting the #1 spot in all 3 of its categories on Amazon.
It’s not every day that 4 years of nonstop work hinges on one moment.
But today’s one of those days!
I’ve dreamed of writing this email for many years, and I can officially say it:
You can now pre-order Building a Second Brain.
It was the fall of 2005. I was a 20 year-old student at Saddleback Community College near my hometown in Orange County, California.
Over the previous year, I had exhausted nearly all of my college savings by attending one of the most expensive universities in the country, in faraway Washington D.C.
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