Building a Second Brain gave me the tools to create a system that works for me. It has showed me the potential of using such a system with regards to creative output. It was a wonderful experience and I’ve not only made major changes to my life in terms of how and where I spend my time, but I’ve also been able to impact my clients in a greater way as well.
BASB has had a huge internal impact by changing my perspective. I know have a doable process for creative knowledge work that previously felt illusive or nearly impossible for me. I expect that it will be a gamechanger for outer expression work I'd like to take into the world. The possibilities seem endless!
As a long-term collector of information that often sat unread and unused, BASB has changed my approach to information and the possibilities are just beginning to unfold. This was life-changing.
I am finding this course extremely beneficial and have actively taken a step back from my current projects to re-evaluate how I pretty much do everything (in a good way!!!). If anything, the course might be moving a little too fast as I am still finding flaws in my own unique approach (based off the teachings) to PKM and trying to address them while we are moving to the next phases of this course. But, I love how all of the information and lectures have remained up so I can always go back if I need help or want to re-visit a certain topic.
Tiago has completely shifted the way I think about learning in a digital world. After taking the class, I have a reliable system to actually retain, organize, and use the best of what I read rather than just relying on memory alone. Former “needle in a haystack” tasks like topic research and tracking down citations now feel like child’s play. The community is well-curated with thoughtful discussions from a wide variety of professional experience — I learned almost as much from the other participants in the class. Have taken quite a few online courses and Building a Second Brain stands up to any that I’ve done in terms of value delivered per dollar and hour spent.
The Building a Second Brain program brought me into contact with the exact people I was hoping to meet. It has been a phenomenal experience. Diving deeper into BASB's CODE methodology helped me identify and troubleshoot bottlenecks in my workflow, and helped me complete multiple projects concurrently. I believe wholeheartedly in Building a Second Brain.
I'm more confident in synthesising my learning and sharing my ideas. I want to emerge as a thought leader in my field. Building a Second Brain has allowed me to distill and express my thoughts in order to achieve my goals, and my Second Brain ensures I always have the building blocks ready to explore any idea. I used to read a lot, but now I know how to use my learning better.
I started BASB with a generalized hopelessness and the distinct feeling that I've been getting stupider as time passes. I felt discouraged, overwhelmed, and fatigued under the continuous effort of inefficient work and used ineffective strategies, like trying to keep *everything*, which made things worse. This course changed my life the way that finally getting glasses at age 13 did; I have so much more focus, everything looks beautiful, and I'm astounded at how much I was missing. If you're even considering taking this course, chances are it's because you need to be here. Take the plunge you are certain to come away with all sorts of discrete & existential gains.
I had a lot of AHA moments during the BASB course. It has had a huge impact on how I work and manage my life. Finally, I have more structure in all areas of my life. Thanks Tiago & Team.
I found wonderful people with amazingly creative souls that inspire me to keep moving forward. Thank you!
I cannot overstate how much BASB has helped me. I am an administrator and faculty member in higher-education and am constantly trying to manage multiple streams of input, while managing many projects, staffing, budgets, my own research and ideas, and more. Until I took this course, I was often literally holding my breath, hoping to remember all the moving parts, hoping to not show up and be too unprepared, and dreaming of the day when I would have more time to work on my own projects. Now, within the span of 6 weeks, I feel completely different not just about my projects and creative output but about all of my work. There is a clear delineation for me before and after I started this course. It is just what I needed. And just in time. The class has not only been a lifeline for me, it has been spiritually and emotionally rewarding. I don’t feel defeated or like I’m always playing catch-up. I know what I need to do and I have the tools and ideas to accomplish it well.
My Second Brain has allowed me to free up my poor biological first brain! This has been profoundly calming while also supporting greater possibilities of expression to build over time.
The Building a Second Brain course was a game-changer. In the past, all I did was collect and lose information. Now I have a system! Data is not isolated anymore and everything connects. I can feel how my creativity flows freely and my delivery is not only faster, my content is more complex.
BASB taught me how to think more critically about my knowledge management approach and has given me the tools to overcome my biggest hurdles that were preventing me from getting more out of my previous PKM system.
‘Building a Second Brain’ was just the class I was looking for to help me take my work in education philanthropy to the next level. Not only did I learn how to build a system to organize my sources and notes, but I also learned a technique to process this information to keep it alive. Now I know how to add value by growing the resources I collect into actionable ideas to take back out into the field.
BASB has given me a roadmap of where I want my life to go. It's sparking some creativity in all my endeavors.
The BASB course has made me more confident in handling what life throws at me and being more effective in expressing myself. It will continue to be part of my overall productivity kaizen.
I'm receiving so much value already from the course. I had a hunch that I needed this skill but I never knew how badly I need this skill in my work and personal life. I have started building systems in my work but this is the conduit or connective tissue I need to propel those systems forward. Thank you for this gift of catalyzing my self-actualization pursuit in reaching my God-given potential to execute on my purpose in life. You all are the best.
BASB has greatly impacted my life and given me new found hope that I can take years of frustration around productivity and creativity and turn it into the joy of completion and expression. I am deeply grateful to Tiago, his team and the mentors for providing so much air that we can use to lift ourselves on our own.
BASB has improved my consumption system in a way that I've never imagined possible. I'm very grateful for this knowledge, Tiago and the team.
The BASB community and the Forte Labs team are amazing. They've inspired me to take on challenges I've never thought were possible. You've done it again Forte Labs team! This is the best cohort yet! Thank you for all your passion and hard work to make this a wonderful experience.
Tiago has been at the forefront of discovering, and sharing, better ways of interacting with work and life for awhile now. As a participant in his BASB course, I finally learned the practical steps needed to implement his discoveries into my own workflow. The results have been profound, and immediate.
BASB helped me at home and at work to organize my digital life and reframe how I think about "success" when it comes to projects.
Because of Building A Second Brain, my repetitive tasks are easier and I'm able to focus on cooler stuff at work. I'm able to make connections, collaborate with others, and more easily capture their insights. It's made me more geared towards action and expression.
I want to put in a huge thumbs up for Tiago Forte’s online course Building a Second Brain. On the surface it’s a course about the art of capturing, organizing, and retrieving digital notes — which is perfect for anyone (like myself) who makes their living researching and utilizing large amounts of information — but under the surface it’s a course that will change your life in many profound ways. Tiago’s class deeply changed my life in at least two ways: I now have a working system for keeping endless emails, overwhelming numbers of research notes, and confusing writing projects clearly organized and searchable; and for the first time in my life I have a clear understanding of what it means to be a “knowledge worker” and “content producer” in a rapidly changing world where those are powerful ways to make a living. Tiago is a formidable and highly respected thinker whose insights into productivity and creativity are having a huge impact. His class was generous, warm, and personal, and well worth every penny because he shares so much and is completely available for questions and insights that matter to you.
The Second Brain is a living database. It is a method for storing and organizing information for reference and re-use…Instead of spending hours researching the same topic months from now, with the Second Brain, all of the information is only seconds away.
I’ve got some big ambitious goals….I feel like I’ve got the tools to be able to take on longer-term projects and have them persist over a long period of time, and allow for that incubation period, and allow for serendipity, allow for ideas to marinate, allow different perspective… opening up that wheel and making progress every single day, has been very fulfilling and really just a life-changer as far as overall happiness goes.
BASB answers to our evolutionary need to rethink our way to exist online, how we consume and create with more intention and clarity. The course was thought-provoking, and I was impressed by the quality of the content (amazing production indeed!), the way it was structured, the solid teamwork, the curriculum- it really set a new standard in the online education space and as a course creator, inspired and humbled me. This is just the beginning but now I look at the future of digital era with more hope and trust, and from a place of empowerment. I know that I now have the tools and frameworks to turn the digital chaos into calm.
BASB has already impacted my life. I am not shy in front of others as I was before. I'm eternally grateful for the course, Tiago, support staff, and mentors for helping me find my direction, my port of call. BASB has been 100% worth the investment (money, time, and attention).
Having an established second brain system has allowed me to become more productive, creative, and valuable than I have ever been before. It has not only allowed me to optimally manage my workflow but has allowed me to become a resource to others. Now, when I’m in conversation with others, or when people have questions on a specific topic, I typically have a note or two in my second brain that I can use to add to the conversation or answer someone’s question.
High-value knowledge work requires high-quality knowledge resources: abundant working knowledge capital, a reliable knowledge infrastructure, knowledge liquidity, and a differentiating knowledge value proposition, all coherently leveraged to provide a competitive advantage. Building a Second Brain has transformed my relationship to, and understanding of, personal knowledge capture and retention. The value to my business is significant; the value to me personally — immeasurable.
BASB taught me that I don't need to have more information but rather be able to relate to this information in a healthier way.
Just like the invention of the telephone was a necessity for the development of the skyscraper, I can feel that BASB has changed something inside of me that continues to morph and evolve. Having gone through the course reminds me of the final scene(s) of the original Total Recall. The glass ceiling has been shattered and the proverbial Mars, that is my understanding of PKM, has been terraformed. The sky is quite literally the limit and I feel ready to soar!
BASB got me from 0 to a knowledge management system that makes me more effective by the day! As I learn new skills, write tutorials and blog posts, and record presentations, my second brain keeps that knowledge around long after my first brain forgets. This is almost an unfair advantage!
I rarely complete my personal projects and I really couldn't understand why until BASB. It clicked that as a recovering perfectionist, I had never risked failure. BASB has totally reframed "failing" for me and I'm now excited about it lol! The live sessions and Q&A were my favorite part. I loved when Tiago crowd-sourced answers from the chat. There was so many awesome suggestions!
Tiago’s course is helping me to recalibrate my personal and professional documentation and note-taking system to focus on the important parts of my digital files to obtain insights and rapid retrieval of existing knowledge. Unloading artifacts of knowledge into a uniform system throughout all my tools and documentation structure is helping me to focus on my most value-adding actions in life, and still be confident to obtain further insights.
Having a Second Brain has saved my behind. My parents passed away, and it has helped me immensely as the executor of their estates. I love this program and its amazing impact on my life.
I feel much less overwhelmed than when I started Building a Second Brain. I believe I will be much more productive with my scientific writing in particular this year as a result of taking it.
BASB has made me feel more confident with information and being in the environment. Now, I can take action to create tangible things to share.
I got much more than my money's worth before I even started the Building a Second Brain course. One of the biggest benefits I've received has been about connecting with so many amazing, super smart people from around the world including the mentors and peers. The Circle is easily one of the best resources for tapping into high-quality peer-created and curated content that I will continue to use for years to come.
BASB has opened up my mind to new possibilities. The pearls of wisdom that Tiago sprinkled throughout the course --not directly related to notes or productivity -- were golden.
BASB has gave me an organizational framework that is flexible enough to contain all areas of my life, through the different seasons of my life. It has helped relieve my anxiety to know I have a way to externalize all my knowledge, worries, and concerns. Knowing I have a way to edit and organize my thoughts digitally combats any disorganization and disorder I feel.
@fortelabs thank you tiago , now i have perfect second brain 🧠🥳🤩 You have changed the concept of how humanity deals and manages with knowledge, you are a great man What you're doing is revolutionary 🙏
The Building a Second Brain course helped me accomplish many things, including how to start new projects, organize information, and manage complex creative projects. Organizing is no longer overwhelming, I have more space in my calendar and brain, and the projects I'm excited about are now "both and" instead of "either or". I can now fully trust my personal knowledge management system.
After taking BASB, I feel 1000X more productive and have a system that gets a lot done for me. I think it is the foundation of a lot of growth for me and I'm excited about it.
Honestly, since I got a hang on it — I’ve had quite a few WTF?! cognition melting and folding moments — cognitive reboot…That clarity of delivery obscured the depth of possibilties, which became casual tools-to-play-with after I had crossed the chasm, but were confusion-inducing earlier. The remaining confusion is actually a more sensitive perception, a place of possibility and momentum.
This course offers a highly adaptable method for building your own digital brain. What? Yes. How? PARA + constraints. Why? Tiago offers a loose set of standards which you can start extracting long term, compounding interest on all of your work. I’ve never explicitly valued my attention, but I found myself regretting how much I’ve forgotten about the 100s of articles I read monthly — 100s of hours of attention, wasted! At work, I couldn’t easily find materials for my current projects — much less my previous projects. My attention was scattered. Tiago’s system strikes isn’t complicated or strict, which allows you to grow your very own personalized digital cortex. Now I can match my work to my mood and add value to my projects no matter what the week throws at me. In the two months since starting, I’ve produced three blogposts, planned three backpacking trips, decluttered my room, created an enterprise workshop, and got admitted into a developer conference. All using the *SAME* system! I’m living the PARA lifestyle now, and I’m never going back. This way lies not just productivity, but happiness and ease of mind. I started with no experience with GTD. I didn’t understand constraints. I never used a notetaking tool. I used my inbox as my todo list (starred messages). In other words, a total productivity degenerate. Take this course to start to feel agency in the world of infinite information and filter failure!
My Second Brain means I have less mental stress around finding important information, and ensures I have more creativity in the future.
BASB has made me feel much more confident in the projects and life goals I am pursuing. I used to feel overwhelmed by the amount of information on the internet but now feel like I have the tools to capture, organize, and distill that information.
Tiago is a downright master at breaking down the challenges of knowledge work. Ever since college, I fumbled with incorporating something like “Progressive Summarization” into my notes and reviews — I never felt like I could trust my digital systems. With each lesson, Tiago gave me context and terminology to actually understand my problems and design meaningful improvements to my approach. The only reason not to take the course is if you’re allergic to “Aha” moments. Seriously.
BASB opened up a whole new world of note-taking. I feel so much more productive and my brain physically feels better! It has changed my entire mindset around knowledge management.
The Building a Second Brain program unleashed inner strengths I had hidden, pushing me to both feel in charge of all the aspects of my life, but especially calling me into publicly sharing my knowledge, my experience and my life. I now have more hope and trust that I can be valuable for other people that are also sharing this life journey.
I feel like this is going to change everything. Moving forward, I can't wait to see where all this takes me!
The sensation of certainty – that I knew that whatever had peaked my interest, I could capture it so easily – and there was a well thought out framework where it ended up, just waiting to be used towards achieving my dreams – that sensation was a real feeling of having gotten smarter. This in turn gave a noticeable boost in self-confidence and energy towards working on my projects. It’s hard to understate the sense of growth of who I am – of what I’m capable of achieving. It has profoundly altered my outlook on life and what I dare to aspire to.
BASB has given me a more "action oriented" approach to my knowledge management. This will help me both produce and gather information more selectively. I also appreciated the scholarship that you made available as it meant I could afford the course as part of my professional development budget.
Tiago’s course provides profound insight into managing your thoughts using a system. Prior to this course, my system was undefined, but after taking the course I am confident I have the tools to enable me to think bigger, organize my thoughts, and achieve more.
Building a Second Brain taught me how to translate knowledge and insights into action. It showed me how to sift through a lot of stuff to get to the gold. And it showed me how to make starting points that can actually grow into a full project. It will save me hours of time spent on researching and reading that went nowhere.
Thanks to Building A Second Brain, I am now more confident to be able to handle big projects and remember and use everything that I have learned. I know where to store things. I have become curious about incoming information rather than dreading it.
After this BASB cohort, I picked up some new habits. I was able to launch a newsletter and a blog that I have been trying to get off the ground for over a year. I love BASB.
After BASB, my thoughts are clearer and my writing has improved. It's already allowed me to create things I never would have considered before this course.
I started this course to achieve 2 things. One, somehow collect all the stuff I consume daily to an easily accessible place. Two, use these to produce new content. I love how easily can I make new content using progressive summarization. Feel less overwhelmed and ready to be consistent with creating content.
@fortelabs That's why I loved taking both Building a Second Brain and Write of Passage. I now have 5,264 notes and 89 posts, and am organizing many of my best ideas into my first book! Took both classes in 2019! Thank you! I've met so many awesome people through my posts!
Building a second brain has given me new skills to gain deeper understanding and make sense of things, in a quicker and more organized way than before.
Tiago was great at reminding us that the way we approach BASB is how we approach many other things in our lives. If we want things to be perfect, and put things off generally, that is how we will approach BASB. It gave me the push I needed to get out of my comfort zone and just jump in. This will help not just with BASB but other aspects of my life.
Building a Second Brain has allowed me to have more clarity of thinking, more discernment about what I want to use my time for, and helped me acquire powerful tools to harness my productivity and creativity so that I can transcend them and simply live a joyful life.
After taking the BASB course, everything has changed for me. It really helped with note readability. I used to capture a lot and some of the notes weren't easy to understand. The concept of progressive summarization and intermediate packages has helped with this immensely. This system is GENIUS and I'm so excited to read the book!
Because of the Building A Second Brain Course, I’m less anxious and have tools to manage my relationship with information.
It’s easy to fall into the thinking that what Tiago teaches is merely knowledge and concepts. That will be a headfake. Through the knowledge and concepts he provides in both courses, Tiago is also indirectly showing you his philosophy of being an executive or an entrepreneur in this new millennia. It is this philosophy presented as note-taking productivity advice that is truly going to be pivotal for the average executives and entrepreneurs given the upcoming upheavals of massive information and automated workflows. The saying, “Ideas are cheap. execution is everything” by now is a cliche. While the bottleneck to creative output is no longer the supply of ideas, the bottleneck is not execution either. More precisely, it’s the clarity of thought that has become today’s executives and entrepreneurs bottleneck. Without clarity, you will get mired in bad execution. Tiago is training us to be warriors not of facts or activity, but warriors of clarity. Through clarity, comes productivity.
Before taking BASB, I never thought of myself as a writer. This course has really helped me find my voice and gave me confidence to share my knowledge with the world.
Building a Second Brain has given me the tools to have less stress and anxiety. Having a system of finding things means I don't have to switch context and I'm now a producer more than a collector. My tasks now take 1/3 or 1/4 of the time and I'm able to have weekends, Friday mornings, and evenings free for my relationship, family and friends. I'm even enjoying my hobbies like cooking more!
BASB has encouraged me to create material in areas that I would previously have approached passively as a consumer (e.g. writing a review about Hamlet instead of just reading the play). BASB was an enriching experience. It provides a framework in which 'write about what you read/watch/hear/see' becomes operational and integrated with life more widely.
After taking BASB, I'm less overwhelmed by information overload. I now know that nothing is too big to tackle.
BASB has made my mind feel lighter. Now, my email doesn't scare me. My thoughts and ideas aren't just nebulous things I want to put out into the world but never get around to doing it. Now, I'm actually doing the things I said I would. I loved BASB so much after just one week, I upgraded my membership to premium because I wanted even more. The mentors inspired me so much that I want to be one too.
Building a Second Brain is life-changing. I feel more organized. I know where everything goes. It's cleared up my information hoarding and replaced it with buckets for distilled work. One example of how it's helped me: I had a meeting with a team about an upcoming presentation. I discussed my thoughts, recorded them during the meeting, distilled the content, pushed it to my VA. She drafted a presentation that took 15 minutes to edit! BAM!
BASB has given me one of the best skills in my life and that is a living system that I can control. I am not overwhelmed anymore and I'm now more organised.
I’ve tried various knowledge management systems but the ones taught in Building a Second Brain are the only ones that I’ll definitely stick with. It’s simple yet it’s the most effective at helping me generate value from my knowledge repertoire.
BASB has had a huge impact on my life. It has been one of the best decisions I've made in the last few years. The support of the course and the community will allow me to continue on a great path.
BASB is the best online course I've taken so far. It's helping me sort through all my mental, emotional, spiritual blockages.
Building a Second Brain has given me the permission to dive deep into my own personal data. The things I know, the things I care about, the things I love. And that I can do it in a way that works for me and my life. There's permission to do it my way -- not the one way that works for everyone.
I loved the Building a Second Brain course. I wish I started 40 years ago. If I had, today, it would be one of my most valuable tools and possessions.
Imagine being able to recall all the really interesting things you’ve ever read, seen and done. How good would that be? Any problem, any piece of creative work boosted with a library of relevant material right there at your fingertips. That’s powerful. Well, this course helps you do just that. It’s fast-paced, expertly taught and full of examples, exercises and discussion that help you organise all the really interesting, useful stuff in your life into a system that allows easy access. I wish I had done it years ago.
My Second Brain has been very impactful in relieving "cognitive drag". I'm already doing things with the knowledge I've been collecting. Even something like cooking Thanksgiving dinner has been easier. I had three different menus to prepare while dealing with a lower back injury. Because of my Second Brain, I laid on my floor while my family helped. Because it was so well organized and planned in my Second Brain it came together easily and incredibly.
@gregoryjhickman @fortelabs All joking aside, if @fortelabs lets you give him money, you should do it. BASB totally changed how I store and access knowledge and I can’t even begin to calculate what that’s been worth to me.
The Building a Second Brain course was life changing! I've been more mindful to capture, organize, distill, and express information. It helped me get aligned with my goal to balance information consumption with production.
I feel like I finally have my arms around the massive amounts of information that comes my way each day. I didn't fully understand the goal toward "expressing," when I started the Building a Second Brain course. But I now have a completely new perspective on the purpose of my Second Brain. Yes, it is a repository of information, but it is also a tool for helping me develop my creative ideas and for preparing those ideas to be shared.
BASB has given me practical tools that I can use in my professional and personal lives. Now, I feel I can move forward. Prior to the course - I was stuck.
From my heart… now, with the BASB framework as a foundation, I approach my day with a playing mindset rather than my former dreading the coming slog mindset, I take joy in the constant rain of ideas. They sprout rather than wither because they have a place where they can wait and even grow until I need them. AND I can find them! Tiago has provided us a physical process that doesn’t suck the life out of our imaginative trips. Obvious as it may seem, for disorganized dreaming scheming ME, the ‘news’ of distinguishing WITH SPECIFICITY between a PROJECT and an IDEA was WORLD grounding, freeing, and FUN.
Building a Second Brain is helping me create mental clarity and focus in a cluttered digital environment. Practically speaking, it's helping me prepare to start a business and train for a new career.
Tiago’s class Building a Second Brain solved many problems that I had been encountering over and over again in my productivity workflow. And it also solved many problems I was not aware of. It has allowed me to create a system that will work easily so that I can spend time on what’s important: creation.