Building a Second Brain 2022 Essential Edition by Tiago Forte

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Is all the interesting information you’re consuming leading to meaningful results in your life … or is it going to waste?
Discover how having a Second Brain is helping people around the world save their best ideas, organize their knowledge, and lead a more fulfilling life with more ease & less stress.

Cohort 15 in fall 2022.

Join the waitlist and get our free Second Brain Quickstart Guide!
Join The WAitlist
Here is the simple truth: you can’t afford to keep everything in your head.

You have way too much to remember, too much to think about, and too much to do.

Trying to keep all those balls in the air using a brain that never evolved for it makes life more stressful for you than it should be. ‍

And the problem is: The volume of information flooding your brain today is just a trickle compared to what’s coming.

If you’re wondering whether you’ll ever be able to accomplish your most important goals amidst all the competing obligations that life throws at you...

Then you’re not alone!

More and more people realize that...
Your ability to process and manage the information around you is the biggest bottleneck to whatever you want in life

The good news is: You don’t have to accept this state of constant Information Overload.

There are tools already at your fingertips to help you capitalize on the full potential of your knowledge and ideas.

This isn’t about finding the right productivity app to solve all your problems! (It doesn’t exist.)

It’s about developing a system of tools, habits, techniques, and mindsets to take care of the mundane day-to-day details, freeing up your attention for more creative, interesting endeavors.

This will allow you to consistently do your best work – the work that has a real impact on the people, the organizations, and the communities that matter to you...

And truly leave work behind each day, knowing you’ve gotten everything you can out of your time, so you can be present with your families, hobbies, and the rest of your life.

Let me tell you how...
Hi, I’m Tiago Forte

I’ve spent more than 10 years researching and personally experimenting with a new way of organizing our digital lives and improving our productivity as creative professionals.
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What started as a quest to deal with a chronic illness turned into a life-long mission to help you harness the full potential of your ideas and turn them into reality. I firmly believe this is a crucial part of creating a better future for all of us.
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The system I want to share with you is the result of thousands of hours spent teaching, speaking, coaching, and writing about Personal Knowledge Management.

My work has been featured in

Introducing
The C.O.D.E System

This is our 4-step process for consistently turning the information you consume into creative output and concrete results.

Whether that’s better decisions, better opportunities, or new products or services. And as a side effect, the constant worry that there’s some little detail falling through the cracks will fade away for good.
Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient and unchanging.

– Silvano Arieti

While technology is constantly changing, the heart of the creative process remains fundamentally the same:

    Capturing information from the outside world
    Organizing it in a way that lets you easily find and use it
    Distilling it down to the best ideas
    And then expressing your ideas in your unique voice through writing, speaking, designing, or teaching.

By leveraging the power of technology...
you can supercharge your creativity and capitalize on the full value of your ideas to transform your career, business, and life.

Living by the C.O.D.E. system allows you to surf the waves of information instead of drowning in them.

Cultivate a collection of valuable knowledge and insights for future use

Uncover unexpected patterns and connections to improve your thinking

Create structure around creative projects to reliably move them forward

Create a digital environment that promotes clarity and peace of mind

Reduce stress & anxiety knowing all your ideas and insights are preserved

Know exactly where to find all the files and notes you've saved in the past

Based on Tiago’s work with the following organizations and over 25,000 online learners

I’ve charged between $15,000 and $25,000 to teach this system to elite professionals at some of the world’s leading organizations.

But I want to make that same quality of education available to everyone, regardless of where they live or which resources they have access to.‍

In this course, you’ll gain the best insights and methods I offer my clients, while receiving direct support from me and my team, on your schedule, for a small fraction of the price.

“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.”

Jimmy Conway

Organizational Improvement Consultant

“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.”

Dawn Williams

Management Consultant
Get more done, faster, with less effort
Join Building a Second Brain & create your own personalized knowledge management system in 5 weeks

In our live online course, you’ll learn a systematic method to capture, organize, and express your ideas, leading to creative breakthroughs in your work and life.

Cohort 15 in fall 2022.
Essential Edition
Everything you need to build a Second Brain
5 Interactive Live Sessions

Join Tiago for step-by-step instructions to help you implement your Second Brain system. Live captions, transcripts, and recordings are available to make these sessions as accessible as possible for you
7 Short, Studio-Quality Video Lessons

Learn the fundamentals of the Second Brain Method on your own time. You’ll have lifetime access to any future updates, which come out before every new cohort.
Private Online Community

Connect with over 4,000 of the most dedicated Personal Knowledge Management practitioners in the world to get your questions answered and solve your challenges. You’ll have lifetime access to our ever-growing alumni community.
Live Alumni Mentor Workshops

Get personalized support implementing the Second Brain Method from our best alumni, using a wide variety of notetaking apps and other tools, including on-demand replays.
Second Brain Resource Vault

Dive into recorded demos of capture tools, real-world case studies, and step-by-step guides on how to put your notes into action, presented by Tiago and other experts.
Lifetime Access to Praxis

Get access to exclusive content and workshops exploring the frontier of productivity and knowledge management on Tiago’s blog, Praxis.
Premium Edition
The extended curriculum and advanced training
Lifetime Access to Future Cohorts

Join future live cohorts of Building a Second Brain (typically scheduled twice per year) to take your system to the next level.
5 Live Q&A Sessions with Tiago

Learn the fundamentals of the Second Brain Method on your own time. You’ll have lifetime access to any future updates, which come out before every new cohort.
Exclusive Expert Interviews

Get personalized support implementing the Second Brain Method from our best alumni, using a wide variety of notetaking apps and other tools, including on-demand replays.
Advanced Tutorials

Connect with over 4,000 of the most dedicated Personal Knowledge Management practitioners in the world to get your questions answered and solve your challenges. You’ll have lifetime access to our ever-growing alumni community.
Executive Edition
Personalized coaching from Tiago
(limited to 12 participants)
60-Minute 1:1 Coaching Session

Get Tiago’s undivided attention and direct suggestions to help you build your Second Brain around your top project or goal.
5 Small Group Coaching Sessions with Tiago

Exclusive coaching sessions, plus on-demand replays.
Priority Support

A personal concierge from the course staff to make sure you’re having the best experience.
Remember everything. Achieve anything!
Cohort 15 in fall 2022.

Join the waitlist and get our free Second Brain Quickstart Guide!
Join The WAitlist
Here’s how people from every profession and industry are benefiting from Building a Second Brain
Dr. Michele Gill

Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Central Florida
Steven Wilkinson

Founder and Managing Director of Good and Prosper Ltd., Wicklow, Ireland

“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 perspectives… 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.”

Justin Finkelstein

Internal Auditor

“BASB is the answer to information and project overwhelm. You aren’t here to ‘do tasks’ – you are here to create and accomplish. Most productivity systems are about better managing your to-do list which predictably lend themselves to expediting the easy over the important– i.e. send email over, write book. But at best, that only serves us to make us more and more efficient at lower value work, if we can even call it that. BASB is about making the information you consume your own so you can better do what only you can do: create. It’s something you might not even fully realize you want or should do until you see it. A true gamechanger. If I could put it more simply, BASB is NOT an ‘organization’ system, it’s a THINKING system.”

Noah Goldman

Consultant, Coach and Entrepreneur
What you’ll be learning and doing week by week
A comprehensive curriculum to harness the full power of your ideas.
Week 1: Capture your best ideas and the crucial information in your life

• Identify and overcome the most common limiting beliefs around productivity, thinking, and learning in the Information Age.

• Discover why you need to build a digital notetaking system even though you can “google” anything.
Escape the “reactivity loop” and learn how to manage Information Overload. This will have a direct positive impact on your physical and mental health.
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• Know and prioritize the digital tools available to you, so you aren’t distracted by the next “shiny object.
”Identify your personal priorities using the Feynman Method, a simple exercise created by a Nobel prize-winning scientist.

• Set up your digital capture system with clear criteria for what is worth capturing in your Second Brain and what isn’t.
Week 2: Organize your ideas for insight and easy access

• Find out how to “time travel” thanks to your digital notes.

• Turn your digital notes into "thinking tools" that allow you to access brainpower you didn't even know you had.
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• Implement a simple technique called PARA to bring order to your entire digital life in minutes.

• Set up your Second Brain as a dynamic system that evolves along with your needs and priorities.

• Discover the incredible power of an up-to-date Project List, with in-depth feedback and guidance on how to create one for yourself.
Week 3: Distill your notes to make them easily discoverable

• Find out what the real purpose of notetaking is (Hint: It’s not to remember things).

• Design your notes for “glanceability,” making them easily discoverable for your Future Self.
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• Master Progressive Summarization, a new take on highlighting specifically suited to digital content.

• Train your ability to decide what's important and what's not in the moment.

• Embrace strategic laziness over rigid rules – our notetaking strategies leverage human nature instead of fighting it.
Week 4: Express your ideas and turn them into concrete results

• Maximize your Return-on-Attention and get value out of every bit of attention you spende the most common limiting beliefs around productivity, thinking, and learning in the Information Age.

• Switch your default approach from “heavy lifts” to "slow burns" to escape the rat race of trying to work harder and longer than everyone else.
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• Transform raw material into knowledge assets – a valuable body of knowledge for a side project, career advancement, or new business.

• Use the concept of Intermediate Packets to completely transform your approach to productivity. Never start anything from scratch again.

• Become interruption-proof and get better and faster feedback than you ever thought possible.

• Escape any creative roadblock or dead-end with the principles of divergence and convergence.
Week 5: Your next steps

• Take advantage of the compounding knowledge in your Second Brain to tackle projects of any size with ease.

• Move consciously from scarcity to a place of abundance, from obligation to service, and from mindless consumption to self-expression.
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• Discover how Project Kickoff and Completion Checklists can help you reuse your best thinking and free up your mind for more interesting, fulfilling endeavors.

• Establish Weekly and Monthly Reviews as routine check-ins to keep your productivity, creativity, and peace of mind on track.

• Evaluate your progress and identify areas for improvement using our trademarked Second Brain Snapshot, which measures your Personal Knowledge Management skills along 12 dimensions and compares how they’ve changed over the 5 weeks of the course.
Your 30-Day Money-Back Guarantee
Your satisfaction is our #1 goal, and we want the decision to join Building a Second Brain to be 100% risk-free so you can focus on learning.

If you decide the course didn't deliver on its promise for any reason, just let us know within 30 days of purchase and we will refund your full payment, no questions asked
Get reimbursed by your employer
Most large organizations, and many smaller ones, will reimburse tuition for professional development.

Click here to download a proposal template.
Who this course is perfect for
Entrepreneurs and freelancers

who have trouble managing all the information they need to run their business
Content creators and writers

who lose track of their ideas or struggle to organize all the material they need for their creative projects
Productivity & self-improvement enthusiasts

who wonder how to save all the knowledge they’ve gained and find it when they need it
Shirley Rivera

Founder and Principal Consultant at Resource Catalysts in San Francisco, California
Bronson Chang

Co-Founder at Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha in Honolulu, Hawaii

“In the two months since starting, I've produced three blog posts, 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 note-taking tool...Take this course to start to feel agency in the world of infinite information and filter failure!”

Doug von Kohorn

Managing Partner, Fathom Ventures, New York, NY

“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.”

Filip Rankenberg

Body therapist and trainer, Entrepreneur
Remember everything. Achieve anything!
Cohort 15 in fall 2022.

Join the waitlist and get our free Second Brain Quickstart Guide!
Join The WAitlist
Your Frequently Asked Questions
What does the schedule look like?

The 5 live sessions typically take place on Tuesdays 11 am - 12:30 pm ET (view in your timezone).

Premium Edition students have the opportunity to attend 5 additional Q&A sessions with Tiago, typically held on Wednesdays 11 am - 12:30 pm ET (view in your timezone).

Executive Edition students have access to 5 Small Group Coaching Sessions with Tiago, typically held on Thursdays 11 am - 12:30 pm ET (view in your timezone).

Please note: The timings of the sessions for Cohort 15 might change.T

he Mentor Sessions are scheduled across different time zones and all 7 days of the week throughout the program.

‍All sessions are recorded and you have lifetime access to the replays. So, if you have to miss a session, you can always catch up.
How much time do I need to invest to benefit from the course?

Building a Second Brain is an intensive learning experience delivered live in real-time. Although we make replays of all sessions available and you can always rewatch them afterward, we strongly recommend that you attend all live sessions to fully benefit from the program.

Overall, you should plan on spending at least 5-10 hours per week for the 5 weeks of the program, including:

• The five 90-minute live sessions hosted by Tiago (1-3 per week depending on which Edition you choose)
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• 1-2 Alumni Mentor sessions of your choice per week.

• 1-2 hours per week watching the pre-recorded lessons and other tutorials.

• 1-2 hours per week completing the assignments and engaging with your peers on the discussion forum
What tools are used in the course?

Building a Second Brain is tool-agnostic, meaning our system will work in any software you prefer.
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In our cohorts, students use Evernote, Notion, OneNote, Roam Research, Bear, Google Keep, and many other notetaking tools.
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As the focus is on the Building a Second Brain System, we don’t teach you how to use a particular tool in-depth.
Are there any prerequisites for this course?

There are no official prerequisites to take Building a Second Brain. However, we do expect you to be reasonably comfortable with using a computer.

Didn’t see the answer to your question? Check our Help Center for more FAQs.
A final word from Tiago

Imagine what it would be like if you knew with total certainty that every great idea you encountered was reliably saved forever.
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You could move forward decisively on your goals without wondering whether you had all the right information. You could execute your projects and create new things without wondering whether this was really the best you could do.
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If you're paid to think for a living, you cannot afford not to invest in the most valuable asset you own – your ideas. You can’t afford to burden your biological brain with trivial details that don’t ultimately give you the life you want. It’s time to build a Second Brain and take hold of the potential you know you are capable of.
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Don't spend 10 years figuring out how to make your knowledge work for you, like I did. Don't resign yourself to watching your ideas pile up and never doing anything with them. Don't reach the end of your career wondering if you were actually capable of more.
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Join me on this incredible journey, and find out what it's really like to have the full power of a Second Brain at your fingertips.

See you inside!
Tiago
Alysson Costa

Senior Lecturer and Mathematician, Melbourne, Australia
Harirai Khalsa

Writer, Musician, and Entrepreneur, in Santa Fe, New Mexico

“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."

Christine Walther Tripp

Executive Director, The Walther Foundation, San Francisco, CA

“This course has honestly transformed my life! I’ve always struggled with being organized and keep track of my many obligations and interest, but after taking the course and applying the material learned, I now find myself exciting to wake up in the morning to enjoy this new life this course has helped me put together.”

Michael Rosidor

Personal Trainer, L.A. Fitness
Remember everything. Achieve anything!