AI Second Brain Meetups are coming to 31 cities 🎉

A few weeks ago, we asked who wanted to host one. You raised your hands in 19 countries.

From Quito to Kigali, Bhopal to Berlin, Montréal to Melbourne, members are saving a café table, a library room, a rooftop for an afternoon of conversation.

Quito goes first on October 9. The rest run through the end of November.

These are small, informal gatherings. Bring a question you've been turning over, an AI experiment that surprised you, or just show up and talk to people on your wavelength.

The more thinking we hand to AI, the rarer a slow conversation over coffee becomes. Let's make in-person connection less rare.

The Productivity Guy With No Morning Routine

Habits haven’t worked for me. Neither have daily journaling or morning routines. As a productivity expert, I probably shouldn't admit that.

But after 17 years of annual life reviews, I've found something that fits the way I work. It gives me what habits promise, without the daily pressure or the guilt.

One dedicated weekend a year does more for me than 365 days of checking boxes.

The Christmas displays go up in October now. The year is closer to over than it feels, and soon it'll be time to look back at it properly.

So I'm starting a playlist around Life in Perspective, my book on the annual life review. This video is the first one in it, and I'm adding a new one every week, starting October.

Adult Friendships Take Real Work

Here’s another observation on our theme, “human connection in the AI era,” from our Second Brain Membership member Christopher.

He pointed out that friendship falls off a cliff after college. School hands you a structure you don't have to build yourself: the same people, in the same room, at the same time, week after week. Once that disappears, so often do the friendships it was quietly producing.

Most of us try to replace it by scheduling: dinner with an old friend, a call you keep meaning to make. That works once in a while. It rarely turns into a habit, because there's no structure holding it in place.

A standing appointment fixes this: a running group, a weekly call, a class on the same night every week. Structure does the work willpower can't.

Pick one recurring thing to join or start this month, something with a fixed day and time. Hit reply and tell me what you picked.

A Useful Gut Check for the Next Big Claim

My team shared Andrew Sharp's piece, "Some of All Fears," internally last week. There's something genuinely useful in it, and it goes well beyond AI.

Sharp traces how a small, tight-knit group of voices shaped years of AI doom headlines, circling back to two questions:

• Who benefits when a fear spreads?
• Has anyone checked it against reality?

You don't have to land where he lands to get value from this one. The real lesson is a habit. When a claim keeps showing up everywhere, trace it back. Find the source. Ask what they gain from you believing it. Then decide for yourself.

Worth twenty minutes if you've felt swept up in any recent headline, AI or otherwise.