We just reorganized our YouTube channel into new playlists, and there's a lot worth binge-watching.

A few to start with:

• ​AI + Second Brain — everything we've made on Claude Code, NotebookLM, and other AI tools
• ​Building a Second Brain: Start Here — the best place if you're new to the core ideas
• ​Quick Wins — our top Shorts, each just a few minutes long
• ​Productivity Deep Dives — longer videos where we get into the systems, techniques, and workflows

If you've been getting value from this newsletter, subscribing to the channel is the best way to support what we do.

Inside 3 Second Brainers' Distilled Notes (The CODE Challenge, Episode 4)

Distillation is the part of the CODE Method that demands judgment, not effort. You can't capture your way out of it. You can't organize your way out of it. Sooner or later, you have to look at a pile of material and decide what's worth keeping.

This week, watch three Second Brainers make that call.

One uses AI as a sparring partner to pressure-test her workshop ideas before going live. One trims a stack of consultant calls into a single page he can pitch from tomorrow. One finds himself stuck, using "one more pass through the notes" to put off the moment he has to write his own words.

The History Beneath My Feet: Two Years in Valle de Bravo

I've been living in a small Mexican mountain town for almost two years now, and it's been teaching me something I didn't expect to learn.

Most people choose where to live based on cost, commute, or career. But the more time I spend here, the more I think the right question is: which place is shaping you into who you want to become?

In this post, I trace 500 years of Valle de Bravo's history, from a Franciscan friar's unlikely founding mission to a Woodstock-scale rock festival, to what this town is showing me about convenience, community, and how we might choose to live as AI takes over more of our work.

Your Master Prompt Isn't Enough for Project Work

Your Master Prompt tells AI who you are. But when you open a new project, it still doesn't know what you're working on. Without that, it gives generic answers.

The fix is a simpole Project Context Doc: a short brief you create inside your project folder, then share it with a Claude Project, ChatGPT Project, or Gemini Gem. Build one for every project you want AI's help on. Cover what's relevant:

• Purpose: what this project is and why it matters
• Status: where you are and what's next
• Key people: anyone AI should know about
• Constraints: deadlines, scope, hard limits
• Decisions already made: things you don't want to revisit
• Open questions: where you still need help

It doesn't need to be long. A page is plenty. The point is that AI knows the work before you type your first prompt.

Action step: Pick one active project and write a context doc for it today. Then ask: "Given everything you know about me and this project, what might I be missing?"

Hit reply and tell me what came up.

Turn Your Expertise Into a Portfolio Business on Maven

You have expertise people will pay to learn. The hard part is figuring out what to launch, in what format, and at what price.

On Tuesday, June 2, at 12 pm ET, we're opening up a Second Brain Membership workshop to everyone. Maven — a platform for running live workshops and cohort-based courses — is hosting a free session to help you do exactly that.

What you'll learn:

• A live exercise to identify what students will pay to learn from you
• A decision framework for matching your content, style, and time to the right teaching format
• A pricing framework that connects your price to the value students walk away with
• Your next three concrete steps to getting a Maven product live