This is our last newsletter of 2022 🎉

And it's a special one to celebrate the past 12 months.

Below, you'll find our most popular blog posts, YouTube videos, and tweets from this year.

Thank YOU for being part of this journey. Everything we do is ultimately to serve you.

I'm truly proud of what we've achieved this year at Forte Labs...

• Released the Building a Second Brain book after 2 years of extensive work, smashing expectations
• Grew our YouTube channel exponentially from 6k to over 125k subscribers
• Turned our twice-per-year cohorts into an always-open Membership so we can help people build a Second Brain all year round
• Launched our first self-paced version of Building a Second Brain, called Foundation​
• ​Expanded our team to 10 wonderful, highly-skilled individuals

I'll share my full annual review in the beginning of the new year, which will go into more detail.

Now, without further ado...

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Our 5 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2022

We've published 33 posts and received 1.17 million visits on our blog this year.

These 5 blog posts were read most often...

​1. How to Build Your Personal Productivity Stack​

Let me take you on a journey from the dawn of email to the rise of personal dashboards. I'll introduce you to the four functions of your “Productivity Stack” and show you how you can use each piece of it better.

​2. 12 Steps to Build a Second Brain​

How do you establish the habits of personal knowledge management in your life? I share 12 practical steps you can take right now to get your Second Brain started.

​3. The 4 Notetaking Styles: How to Choose a Digital Notes App as Your Second Brain​

How do you pick the right app? You don’t choose a notes app – a notes app chooses you. In this blog post, I’ll guide you through the process of choosing the perfect notes app for you, taking into account your personal notetaking style.

​4. What I Learned From the Bullet Journal Method​

I didn’t think I had much more to learn about notetaking. But as I turned the pages of Ryder Carroll’s book, he introduced me to ideas that profoundly changed how I think about notes, journaling, productivity, and even what it means to live a good life. Here are my 10 favorite quotes from The Bullet Journal Method, including how each one shaped my thinking.

​5. Project People Vs Area People: Are You Running a Marathon Or a Sprint​

Let me introduce you to the most effective way I’ve found to organize my work and life: by project and area of responsibility. This simple shift dramatically reshaped my relationship with my productivity, creativity, and commitments.
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Our 5 Most Popular YouTube Videos of 2022

Our channel received over 3M views this year and consumed 24.3 years of viewing time. Insane!

These 5 videos contributed the most to this growth...

​1. Pick a Notes App: Your Notetaking Style​

While a Second brain is not one app but your entire digital ecosystem, your notes app is at the very core of it. But I know that choosing your notes app can feel overwhelming. In this video, I share the 4 notetaking styles and the best app to accompany each style.

​2. Taking Book Notes (How to Start)​

What's the best way to turn any book into a Second Brain of insights that you can grab off the shelf at any time? Book-reading influencer Alex & Books walks us through his notetaking method for physical books that helped him build a following of over 700k book-reading fans.

​3. How We Organize Our Life in Notion​

In this video, I’m breaking down how my family, team, and I use Notion to manage the business, our household, and even my creativity. Once I stopped trying to remember what’s important and started writing things down, a huge burden was lifted, and my life got easier.

​4. Inside Ali Abdaal's FULL Second Brain System​

We chatted with productivity YouTuber Ali Abdaal about the "Idea Factory" he used to build a team of 20 and a YouTube channel with over 3M subscribers. This is a detailed walkthrough of the 4 steps of Ali's Second Brain process and the specific apps he uses every day.

​5. 75% of Notetakers Use These 4 Apps​

We surveyed 6,519 Building a Second Brain students over 2 years and found the most popular notes apps. In this video, we share the results, including the surprise notes apps that are growing the fastest behind the scenes.

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Our 5 Most Popular Tweets of 2022

I'm always fascinated by which type of content receives the most engagement on social media.

Not profound insights and wisdom...but mostly updates 😄

Tiago Forte @fortelabs We received an offer to translate my book into a language called Marathi I wasn’t sure it would be worth it for some obscure Indian dialect… Then I looked it up – 90 million native speakers, the 10th most of any language on Earth 🤯 India is unfathomably huge October 12th 2022 260 Retweets 1,903 Likes

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Tiago Forte @fortelabs It's finally here! pic.twitter.com/bO1eIDB4wE June 5th 2022 92 Retweets 1,776 Likes

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Tiago Forte @fortelabs My reaction seeing my book in a store for the first time pic.twitter.com/mGYlxemrtO June 17th 2022 59 Retweets 1,734 Likes

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Tiago Forte @fortelabs Organizing my business, personal life, and creative work in @NotionHQ is one of the most powerful things I've ever done. Here’s how I do it + get my free Notion template (thread) November 1st 2022 94 Retweets 1,288 Likes

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Tiago Forte @fortelabs The Evolution of Man(uscript) pic.twitter.com/abM7vozLnV June 21st 2022 48 Retweets 964 Likes

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PS: Now that 2022 is in the books, we're turning our attention to the new year.

And the first highlight of 2023 will be Cohort 16 of Building a Second Brain.

Every cohort, I pick an actual project, so you can see how I apply the Second Brain methodology in real life to my work.

For Cohort 16, the project will be the annual review.

If you want to set your goals for 2023 as part of a community of thousands of dedicated professionals and wonderful humans calling in from around the world...

While building your Second Brain so you can start the new year with a clean, organized digital workspace...

​Join us in the BASB Membership and participate in Cohort 16, which starts on January 10th and runs for 3 weeks.

I'd love to see you there.