Best of 2024


This is our final newsletter of 2024 🎉 a special edition to celebrate the past 12 months.

Here are some of the milestones we achieved this year at Forte Labs...

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

Here’s to closing 2024 with gratitude and stepping into 2025 with renewed energy, purpose, and endless possibilities—happy New Year!

Our team has curated the most popular YouTube videos, articles, and posts for you. Enjoy!


Our 5 Most Popular YouTube Videos of 2024

Our channel received over 4.2 million views this year and consumed 32 years of viewing time. Insane! These 5 videos that we published this year were the most popular...

​How to Use NotebookLM (Google's New AI Tool)​

Google’s NotebookLM is way more than a notetaking, writing, or organizational tool. It’s an AI collaborator, grounded on your data with your unique view of the world.

In this tutorial, I’ll give you a tour of the main functionalities, demonstrate concrete use cases such as making sense of meeting notes or writing an article, and cover the current limitations.

​OneNote as a Second Brain (What You're Missing)​

I invited Microsoft MVP Mathew Gilbertson for a deep dive into OneNote and was blown away by its capabilities.

We looked into OneNote’s almost unlimited capture methods and how it supports the free-form, informal notetaking that helps us think better.

If you’re using the Microsoft ecosystem at work and want to improve collaboration and the exchange of ideas, I highly recommend you watch this video.

​ChatGPT Vision: The Best Way to Transform Your Paper Notes Into Digital Text​

If you’ve ever found yourself torn between the tactile feel of paper and the convenience of digital notes, there’s now a solution for you.

ChatGPT’s new feature called Vision allows it to “see” your handwritten paper notes and digitize them with near-perfect accuracy.

In this step-by-step guide, I’ll show you how to turn your handwritten notes into digital text so you can edit, search, and preserve them forever.

​Is Obsidian the True Second Brain? ft. Nick Milo​

Obsidian expert Nick Milo joined me for a dive deep into the art of using notes to transform ideas into tangible creative projects.

Does Obsidian beat Evernote? Watch us put the app to the test, tackling a real-life project: producing a Building a Second Brain TV show.

This video is perfect for those at the frontier of novelty - be it starting a new job, learning a new skill, or exploring new places.

​How to Create More & Consume Less​

The act of “creating” is essential for everyone, not just YouTubers, bloggers, and influencers.

Think about it…none of the content you consume (social media posts, books, videos, games) can go on your resume. Only the things you create and accomplish can.

In this video, I’ll show you how to kickstart your creative journey using the Curation Method and give you my best strategies for overcoming any initial hurdles.


Our 5 Most Popular Blog Posts of 2024

We published 27 articles and received 1.3 million visits on our blog this year. These 5 blog posts published this year were read most often...

​The 10 Most Transformative Books on Personal Development I’ve Read​

I’ve read hundreds of books on productivity and self-improvement over the years.

Many of them are filled with vague prescriptions or clichéd advice, but a small number were truly transformative for me.

They served as intellectual lighthouses on my journey, helping me understand what was happening to me as I explored my past, my psyche, and my pain.

​The Ultimate Guide to Storing, Managing, and Enjoying Your Photos​

When it comes to storing and organizing digital information, photos are in many ways the elephant in the room.

They’re highly valued and meaningful, yet require a lot of storage space. After trying pretty much everything, I’ve found one solution I’m confident in.

In this blog post, I’ll cover where you should store photos in your Second Brain, how you can organize them, and what to do with your photos so they don’t just collect digital dust, but play a valuable part in your life.

​A Journey Between Worlds: The Story of My Ayahuasca Experience​

In October 2023, I took part in my first Ayahuasca ceremony.

Throughout the 3-day experience, I confronted personal traumas, met an ancestral warrior from my past, and got profound insights into my family history and my role as a father.

Coming back from it felt like rejoining society after months away. I felt calmer, more centered, more joyful, and clearer than I ever remember feeling.

This blog post is an extensive recap of the experience, as well as the aftermath and general reflections on plant medicine.

​Why We’re Moving to Valle de Bravo, Mexico​

At 14, my parents made a bold decision that reshaped my life: they moved our family from a comfortable Californian suburb to a working-class town in the mountains of Brazil.

Reflecting on that pivotal year decades later, I realize how deeply it influenced my adaptability and connection to culture.

Now, as I have kids of my own, I’ve been thinking about the kind of childhood I want to give them. Inspired by my upbringing, my wife and I decided to recreate that transformative experience.

We’ve moved to Valle de Bravo, a picturesque mountain town near Mexico City, so they can embrace a new language, heritage, and the invaluable lesson that they can thrive in any setting.

​Rewriting My Financial Story: How I Healed My Relationship with Money​

We all have a relationship with money, whether we acknowledge it or not. For many of us, that relationship is fraught with tension, shame, and unexamined beliefs passed down through generations.

What if, instead of avoiding or resenting money, we could heal our relationship with it?

In this blog post, I share how a weekend intensive gave me a deep understanding of where my mindset toward money came from and how it has shaped my life and my decisions. It also unearthed how I can change it to serve me better.


Our 5 Most Popular Posts of 2024

I'm always fascinated by which type of content receives the most engagement on social media. These 5 posts were the most popular...

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Tiago Forte
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@fortelabs
7:49 PM • Sep 25, 2024
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