I spent 2 years serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Eastern Ukraine from 2009 to 2011. I lived in the town of Kupyansk, a couple hours outside Kharkiv, near the Russian border. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life, teaching me so much about myself and life and the people and…
17 years ago, at the age of 22, I uploaded my first YouTube video. My high school friend Derick and I had set up a digital camcorder, faced the camera with our backs to his bedroom wall, hit record, and just started talking about 3D printing, which was to be the first episode in a…
Mike St. Pierre invited me to speak at his 2022 Nonprofit Productivity Summit. In less than 25 minutes, we covered… Why I’m not a fan of digital minimalism The simple mindset shift to step out of the information overload crisis How taking notes can have a miraculous impact on you and your career The under-appreciated benefits…
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…
I joined best-selling author Daniel Pink on The Pinkcast to discuss how to take notes and capture like a pro. In 193 seconds, we also discussed: Why we should offload information? The 30-day experiment to make you a pro at notetaking How to retrieve your notes quickly and efficiently Watch our quick chat here:
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 Helen Raptis for my first TV morning news appearance on KATU TV Portland to discuss all things Second Brain. You know Second Brains are ready to go mainstream when they appear right after “local hummingbird lays eggs” and the latest Bachelor drama. We discussed: How to make sense of digital information What should…
We are officially launching cohort 13 of Building a Second Brain (BASB), our flagship online course on how to save your best ideas, organize your knowledge, and use it to lead a fulfilling life with more ease and less stress. We’ve spent the last 5 months making a new round of radical improvements to every…
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…
I recently hired designer and writer Michael Dean to summarize my Building a Second Brain course in visual form. Michael is the writing coach and lead facilitator for The Writer’s Studio, a new cohort-based writing workshop he recently launched in partnership with David Perell. I asked Michael to take the course as a participant, and to document the main lessons…
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…
I recently joined David Duncan to discuss his new book The Secret Lives of Customers which teaches the Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) framework using the intriguing format of a detective story. The basic premise is that consumers “hire” a product (or service) to perform a certain “job” for them. I’ve used JTBD in my own business to figure…