Sheila Glesmann

Owner of Emission Strategies, Inc.

BASB has reduced my stress levels. I now feel less scattered and more directed.

Rob Joseph

Fractional CFO

I feel as though I have increased my IQ by 20 points. Of course this isn't true, but it feels this way because I am thinking so much more clearly and with so much more relaxation and concentration. I am no longer improvising my knowledge capture as much, making it all up as I go along. The consistent techniques make my PKM habits more effortless by getting them out of my way so I can focus and think about the actual information.

Luke Walquist

Head of Sales & Customer Experience

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.

Dennis Nehrenheim

Software Engineer & Blogger

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.

Wren Roberts

I feel like this is going to change everything. Moving forward, I can't wait to see where all this takes me!

Kumar Ramasamy

BASB mentor sessions had the biggest impact on me. They allowed me to see the diversity of perceptions from people with different life experiences.

Stevie Depew

Chief of Staff, Sandler Training

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.

Tim Beadle

Independent Web Technologist

BASB was a form of therapy for me. It's encouraged me to make more & better notes, and lean into the realisation that my future self will thank my current self for doing so.

Laurie Anderson

Alexander Art, CEO

BASB has given me a sense of peace and comfort to know it's easy to find things without remembering where I put them. I plan to attend future cohorts to keep learning and applying what I know.

Traci Reuter

CEO, Divine Social

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.

Mia Lang​

My second brain is one of the best resources I have because it gives me the freedom to easily consume information, organize it, and create a blog post…It taught me a fantastic way to simultaneously learn more, and archive information to be able to fully focus on one thing, all while keeping the information I have already collected readily available.

Adam Zielinski

Software Engineer

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!

David Lukas

Author and naturalist

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.

Dallas Fuentes

Gerontologist & Transformation Coach

Building a Second Brain is like a fuel injection. I'm ready to create, design, and get things done!

Patrick Strubbe

Founder and Owner of Preservation Specialists, LLC

I have much greater confidence in what I'm storing, how I'm storing it, and more importantly how to put it to use. The Building a Second Brain course has given me clarity on what a project is, and how to stay focused on it.

Eleasah Whittaker

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.

Michal Bartov

Lawyer, writer & productivity enthusiast

My Second Brain means I have less mental stress around finding important information, and ensures I have more creativity in the future.

Hunter Schwinn

Student

Being able to catch ideas as they come to you is one of the most important things you could perfect…I will be building my second brain every single day for the rest of my career. This is not a static database but is rather a living, breathing system of information and knowledge management.

Alexi Weeks

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!

Darren Scully

BASB has confirmed and consolidated my knowledge. It’s giving me a ‘honed’ approach. It’s made me more rigorous. It’s even given me a sense of intention and confidence. I think, above all, it’s going to make me more creative.

Ting Chang

Front-end Engineer

I came into the course thinking that BASB would be teaching a cookie cutter method, one size for all. But it was a pleasant surprise how it focuses on building a system that works for you. I love how Tiago would bring in the high-level concepts/principles, and show his way of going about it. The mentors would also show their perspective, this really was gold. I absolutely loved BASB. The biggest impact is how it triggered a reflection on my existing systems and patterns, not just to notetaking, but on a broader perspective. BASB has been so much more than another PKM course.

Diana Lyn Davidson

Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Artist, Writer & Photographer

BASB has given me a roadmap of where I want my life to go. It's sparking some creativity in all my endeavors.

Nat Eliason

Founder of Growth Machine, podcaster, blogger

This is the best investment I’ve made in improving my personal output, productivity, and knowledge management. All of the materials taken together are phenomenal, and I’m really happy with what I’ve learned from the course.

Cristina Varela

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.

Carlos Solis

Tech Evangelist & Author

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.

Somangshu Goswami

Engineering Leadership

BASB has made me feel more organised. I wish I was doing this all my life.

Michael Skiba

Writer & Project Manager

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.

Jose-Elias Alvarez

CEO at Inspirit

I have to say this has been an amazing immersion and experience. BASB is very dense but worth 10X the investment. Without a doubt. After so many years of GTD practice and intense productivity management, I thought I was a “productivity ninja.” Well, BASB has questioned and challenged all my stuff on productivity and it’s taking it to a next level. PARA is game changing and it’s adding massive clarity and order to my stuff across all the platforms I use. Key differentiators of this program versus others out there that I think provide a competitive advantage, include: the merging of deep philosophical concepts with the pragmatism of the program; incorporation of randomness and serendipity to the process — for example, via random notes; and the merging of divergence and convergence.

Lucian Condrea

Software Developer

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.

KimSia Sim

Business Development Director

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.

Eralp Sendan

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.

Jenn Reid

BASB has already impacted my life in more ways than I could have imagined. Now, I feel like an authority and I am not worried about expressing myself. My biggest win was participating as a moderator and getting to learn more about the leading practices at Forte Labs. It has allowed me to witness the hard work and attention to detail that goes into creating an exceptional experience.

Felipe Fraga

BASB transformed the way I organize my information and look at my workflows. It opened up my perspective to new ways of doing things. Especially regarding creating and expressing, and how it's important to have the outcome in mind while going through all subsequent steps.

Celz Alejandro

Creatives Manager at UP Advertising Core Antipolo, Philippines

It's been a few months since BASB has ended but I'm still reaping the benefits of having this system. Having a Second Brain is so, so, SO important. Just the other day, I misread a deadline for some case studies, and it was already 9:30am!!!! But since I had a Second Brain, I was able to whip one up because I already had my testimonials, social proof, and screen shots all in one place. Funny enough, I was commended because my case study submission was apparently super clean and well thought-out. So this is what you meant when you said people will think you're some sort of "genius", when really you just know how to manage the stuff in your head.

Kris Vockler

CEO ICD High Performance Coatings

BASB proved to be an amazing linkage between true brain dynamics and a system that increases the likelihood of connecting ideas and creative thinking. This new version of BASB builds on the already highly useful system. Connecting ideas in a framework external of the brain is difficult, but this system gets as close to how the brain functions as I’ve ever found. Learning how the brain connects ideas has been a lifelong quest of mine. I’ve wanted to create an opportunity to connect more ideas by how I organize physical data and ideas outside the brain. Using this system has greatly increased my ability to efficiently connect ideas and bring more creativity to my thinking. This new version is a positive iteration on an already awesome system.

Danielle Bellows

Assistant Professor & Board Certified Pediatric Clinical Specialist

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.

Doug von Kohorn

Startup co-founder

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!

Paula Cuello

Educator

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.

Savera Tasawar

Project Manager

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!

Stefan Hoffmann

Freelance Facilitator

PARA has both reduced the chaos in my mind and helped me with information overwhelm.

Alicia I.

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.

JC Cangilla

Director Business Development in Big Tech

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.

Meagan Beltekoglu

ClickUp Consultant, New Leaf Digital

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.

Sean Kearney

Founder, UpGaged LLC

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.

Wess Daniels

University lecturer, administrator, and author

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.

Rubén Garcia

Son-Husband-Father, Pediatrician & Ongoing learner

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.

Raphael Cox

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).

Maika Endo

Entrepreneur Coach

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.

Terry Toh

Program Manager @Google, Life Coach @TalkToTerry.co

Now, I can't live without my Second Brain.