Last week, I officially announced our inaugural Second Brain Summit, taking place October 3–4, 2024, in Los Angeles, California.

Today, I want to introduce you to our first lineup of speakers (more to come soon).

You'll get the chance to learn from your favorite teachers and creators in real life. They will become your personal mentors for two days, helping you solve your biggest challenges in hands-on workshops and interactive Q&As.

Join the waitlist to be the first to hear when tickets go live on May 14th.

Join the Waitlist

How to Manage Instant Messages (Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Google Chat)

This is one of the emerging frontiers of productivity that's a problem for many of us. Messaging apps initially felt like a godsend (remember when everyone was obsessed with Slack?) mostly because they allowed us to circumvent email.

But we never truly addressed the real problem of too much communication coming too fast, so now we're back in the same boat of message overwhelm, except in a place that is even more panic-inducing and difficult to manage.

My advice is much the same as for email:

Decide when you are going to check messaging apps. This probably needs to be done more often than email (For me, it's 2-3 times per day.)
When you do get to it, be purposeful and intentional: Give people thoughtful responses so they give you some grace for taking a bit to get back to them.
Clearly communicate your expected response times: Give yourself extra slack time. I told my team to only DM me something if it couldn't wait 24 hours.
Leave a message on "unread" until you've acted on it: That way you can easily filter what needs to be addressed.

Do you have any tips and workflows for dealing with instant messages? Hit reply and share them, please.

How I Created a Children’s Book With ChatGPT

My wife Lauren used ChatGPT to write and illustrate a rhyming children’s book about our family in under 15 hours from brainstorming to printing – amidst the whirlwind of parenting two kids!

In this video, she'll walk you through each step of the process, following my CODE Method:

We'll cover capturing those initial sparks of inspiration, organizing ideas, distilling them into a compelling story, and finally, expressing them in a tangible, visually stunning book.

Watch on YouTube

We Can Organize Our Digital Lives Into 4 Simple Categories

Big Think published an excerpt from my book The PARA Method. It's an intro to my simple, actionable system for organizing all the information in your life.

Share this with someone who's new to the PARA Method and help them get a grip on their digital stuff.

Read it here

How to Organize Your Inbox (and Never Waste Time on Email Again)

When it comes to email, I have some strong opinions...

Email is someone else's to-do list
The only function of email is to collect new information
You should spend as little time as possible in your email inbox (because it's NOT where you do your best work)

Over the years, I've developed a rigorous system to achieving Inbox Zero consistently in mere minutes per day. This required discipline and often workarounds to make up for missing functionality in email clients.

But finally, we have tools that simplify taming your inbox: I want to introduce you to SaneBox, an all-in-one solution to email overload, saving users 3-4 hours every week.

Their trainable AI assistant identifies important emails and automatically organizes the rest to help you stay focused. You can also...