How-To Guides

4 step guide

How to Generate Your Own Favorite Problems: A 4-Step Guide

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.

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Cream colored backround with navy and green writing

12 Steps to Build a Second Brain

How do you establish the habits of personal knowledge management in your life? Here are twelve practical steps you can take right now to get your Second Brain started: 1. Decide what you want to capture Think about your Second Brain as an intimate commonplace book or journal. What do you most want to capture,…

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Example of a personal dashboard

How to Build Your Personal Productivity Stack

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….

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Teachable Workshop: How to Take Digital Notes with Tiago Forte

I recently taught this workshop on How to Take Digital Notes, hosted by Teachable, the online learning platform I use for my courses. This is an introductory workshop for people just getting into this crazy world of Second Brains, personal knowledge management, and digital notetaking. I presented some of the core concepts you’ll need to know…

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Inner Limits: Why You’re Not Getting More Out of Journaling

By Praxis Fellow FRANK ANAYA Every day you journal, you’re bringing fresh soil into your idea garden. But if you never look back at what you wrote, you’re losing the opportunity to till that soil, to work it and see what grows. Experts like Tim Ferriss and Julia Cameron say that the process of journaling is…

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How I Made a Documentary Film with Digital Notes

Over the last year I filmed a short documentary on the life and artistic career of my father Wayne Forte. He has been one of the strongest influences on me, not only as a father, but as a prolific lifelong artist. I wanted a way to share his remarkable story with a wider public, to…

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My Complete Gear Kit for Filming a Personal Documentary

This guide details the exact gear I used to make my personal documentary film Wayne Lacson Forte: On My Way To Me. For the full story behind the film, read here. My priorities were: The most minimal and affordable gear possible, since this was an experiment Products that were highly adaptable and could be repurposed for other…

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Launching Your Book

Everything you’ve done up to this point has been preparation for this singular moment: the launch of your book.

An incredible amount of time, energy, money, and attention has been invested by many different people. The foundation has been laid for sales of your book to reach thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, or maybe even millions of copies.

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Writing the Book

After all this work and finally signing a deal…it’s time to do the thing you’ve been asking for, and write the book.

Leave plenty of time to do this — more than you think you need. And then, add additional time for unexpected rewrites, reviewer feedback, finding photos and illustrations, securing permissions, doing followup research, and interviewing people.

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Negotiating Your Contract

Once you’ve accepted an offer for the publishing rights to your book, it’s time to draw up and sign a binding contract.

Many of these contract details have standard provisions, but you can always ask about and negotiate for them. The more you understand about the implications and subtleties of these clauses, the more empowered you’ll be in your negotiations.

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The Ins and Outs of Offers

After you’ve written your proposal and sent it to publishers, the future of your book is in their hands.

If you’ve done your job effectively, you will receive an offer (or hopefully, offers) to purchase the rights to your book.

Almost all offers come in one of three ways:

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Finding an Agent and Publisher

You should think of the people you’re working with at each stage of the publishing process as your publishing team.

Each one contributes something different and has different interests, but what you all have in common is the desire to see your book through to publication and on to the greatest possible success.

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