Only one more week to go until the tickets for our inaugural Second Brain Summit go live on May 14th.

My team and I are working around the clock to create the best possible experience for you on October 3rd and 4th in LA.

I can't stress enough how big of a difference in-person events made in my career. People I met became pivotal collaborators or mentors. Ideas I heard in passing ended up being cornerstones of my work. Mindsets and perspectives I absorbed from thought leaders changed who I am at a deep level.

I want the Second Brain Summit to be a pivotal moment in your journey. A moment you look back on years down the line, knowing that it changed your trajectory.

I hope to see you there! Join the waitlist now to secure your spot.

Join the waitlist

"I Have Hundreds of Old Notes! What Should I Do?"

I've noticed again and again that a mountain of past notes and files keeps people stuck when they're trying to build a Second Brain.

You feel this sense of obligation to have to do something with them, to sort through them, to preserve them.

Here's my recommendation: Rip the bandaid off and wipe the slate clean.

That might mean moving to a new notetaking app (leaving all your old notes behind but still accessible) OR archiving everything in your current app and starting fresh.

I found that it’s never really worth going item by item for old notes and titling, labeling, tagging, and organizing them. You’ll likely never use them again (trust me on this).

You can start with a clean slate and still have access to your archived material, tugged away in a folder, just in case. Only move old notes out of your archive when you actually need them.

Will Artificial Intelligence Replace the Need for Second Brains Entirely?

A lot of people seem to think so. And I admittedly have a self-interested motivation to answer this question.

I need to decide whether I should continue advising people to build a Second Brain at all, or just tell them to rely on AI and save all that effort.

After many dozens of hours of experimentation, my conclusion is that AI is not going to replace the need for a Second Brain anytime soon.

Here’s why: no matter how powerful AI becomes, the data we put into it has to come from somewhere, and the AI’s outputs have to go somewhere.

A Second Brain (or whatever you want to call it) is still needed both as the repository of all those inputs and as a staging area for storing those outputs until they’re ready to be used.

Keep reading on the blog

Managing Ideas: A Framework for Unlocking Creativity

Michael Stelzner interviewed me on the Social Media Marketing Podcast about idea management.

We went deep into my CODE framework for reliably capturing, organizing, distilling, and expressing your ideas. And I shared concrete tips and strategies for each step.

Read the article

Watch the Video

Book Recommendation: Get Better at Anything by Scott Young

My friend, Scott Young, just published a new book – a master class really in accelerated, effective learning.

Learning that's grounded in seeing how others are succeeding; experimenting with and testing new ideas in the real world; and, most importantly, being open and receptive to the feedback that inevitably comes back.

Almost everything we do depends on learning new skills, attitudes, and behaviors.

This book is an indispensable guide to mastering that skill for a twenty-first century rocked by change and uncertainty.

Get your copy