For 10 years, I’ve been immersed in the world of online education. Courses, social media, blog posts, videos – these have been my daily tools of the trade in developing the Building a Second Brain (BASB) ecosystem. Yet I’ve recently been haunted by the feeling that we’re still barely scratching the surface – that after…
This is a compilation of all the personal annual reviews I’ve published, as well as other writing I’ve done about my long-term vision and goals. I’ve also included articles I’ve written about how to make such periodic reviews more effective, including annually, mid-year, monthly, and weekly.
In October 2023, I took part in my first Ayahuasca ceremony. I had heard about the substance and its effects for years when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, but I didn’t want to do it in some random apartment in Oakland. I wanted the “real” experience. I had always thought that meant…
This year feels like an especially major milestone, for a few reasons. First, because it officially marks 10 years that Forte Labs has been in business. In June 2013, I left my consulting job with plans to work on independent projects for a couple months before seeking my next one. Little did I know those…
About six months ago, I decided to evaluate a few of the newer generation of Second Brain apps. I’ve been using Evernote for 10 years and wanted to see if any of the up-and-comers could take over as my platform of choice. I tested three of the most promising ones – Obsidian, Tana, and Mem – as my daily driver for about two weeks each. Applying my criteria for any knowledge management app I adopt, here is my evaluation as to whether they could qualify as my Second Brain platform.
I couldn’t be more excited and proud to unveil my first new course in 7 years: Pillars of Productivity (which we call POP). I’ve spent the last 7 years dedicated to teaching people how to build their “Second Brain” – a long-term and personalized system for notetaking. With thousands of students taught, two bestselling books…
One of the most common sources of confusion I see in the world of productivity and self-improvement is a failure to distinguish between beginner-level advice and advanced-level advice. In any given pursuit – tennis, chess, jiu-jitsu, painting – there is a hierarchy of skills that you have to acquire one by one to progress. More…
The PARA Method is a simple, intuitive system for organizing all information in your life so you can find them when you need them. The first step to using PARA is to apply it to your notetaking app of choice. This is much easier when you see examples of how it’s done. So, we’ve curated useful YouTube…
If you’ve decided to follow my advice and create your very own personal system of knowledge management – which I call a “Second Brain” – then your first step is to decide which app to build it on. Your notetaking app is the core of your Second Brain, the central place where you store your most important information and use them to do your best work. Here are my personal criteria for choosing a notetaking app.
I’ve had some form of a Second Brain (a personal system of knowledge management) for a couple of decades now, and during that time it’s been hosted on four different platforms. Recently, I sat down to reflect on what made me switch from one platform to the next and why I haven’t moved yet to another app. So in this blog post, I cover what the best time is to switch your notetaking app, 3 situations in which people commonly switch apps that I think are ill-advised, and how new technologies mature and what that means for your choice of notetaking app.
Around the time my first book Building a Second Brain came out in June 2022, I started looking for a speaking coach. I had just delivered my first keynote to a large audience at World Domination Summit, followed soon thereafter by my Google Talk. These experiences had been not only fantastic promotional opportunities but fulfilling…
At the start of 2023, as I reviewed the end-of-year financial report sent over by our accountants, I had a stunning realization: our net income had dropped 87% in 2022 compared to the year before. From an incredible 64% profit margin in 2021 we ended 2022 with a razor-thin 6%. The picture got even worse…