Building a Second Brain
Tiago Forte's productivity brand and book teaching people to capture, organize and distill personal notes.
Where Building a Second Brain comes up1 episode or test
Tiago Forte built his book by testing ideas publicly on his blog, Twitter and live teaching, then editing in single-filter passes to strip jargon for a mass market. His Evernote held 7,365 hand-curated notes. The cheaper PARA book, out about 14 months later, cut course sales 80 to 90 percent. Lesson: public testing sharpens a product, but a simpler cheap offer can cannibalize your premium one.
- 1Try idea publiclyBlog, Twitter or live teaching
- 2Watch responsesComments, or a flicker on faces
- 3Distill a shorter versionPublic responses shape the rewrite
- 4Print it in the bookOnly after hundreds confirmed it
From Tiago Forte on writing Building a Second Brain
What was said about Building a Second Brain
1Testing every idea in public before it went into the book
Forte printed nothing in the book that the public hadn't tested first. Every idea in Building a Second Brain had to be tried on the blog, on Twitter or in live teaching first. A book is printed many times and translated widely, so he wanted hundreds, if not thousands, of people to have confirmed an idea before committing it.
He compares it to a startup validating a product before spending millions. His Godfather research went onto his site as a few thousand words, and public responses shaped a second, shorter distillation for the book. Blog comments work but are slow. Live teaching is fastest because you see 'a flicker' cross faces when an idea lands or fails.
When the book stalled, he tweeted the stuck idea from many angles. His heaviest tweeting came exactly when the manuscript was blocked. He attacked the block analytically, intuitively and emotionally until one version worked, then pasted it into the book.
He treats quality and quantity as two tracks to switch between, like his painter father drawing a hundred pineapples before making the perfect one. A slowing of breakthroughs is the early sign to switch to quantity before hitting the block.
Team debriefs after each cohort session turned feedback into lessons. After every live session the team reviewed what worked and what didn't, giving brutal feedback even on Forte's favorite stories. Teammates cross-checked Zoom thumbnails against the chat, which he can't watch while teaching.
Slack, the course forum and support tickets fed the same distillation.
2Editing Building a Second Brain for a mass market
Edit in many narrow passes, each checking for only one thing. Forte read all of part one, four chapters and about 20,000 words, through a single filter, such as whether it sounded too geeky or technical.
"It's just many passes, each pass, usually looking for just one thing." Reviewers give disproportionate feedback to a book's beginning, since asking for 40 hours of reading is hard.
He cut Silicon Valley jargon to reach readers beyond tech nerds. Early Second Brain served technical PKM enthusiasts. To go mainstream he checked every sentence for phrases like 'order of magnitude', 'Overton window' and 'leverage', asking whether it pulls readers deeper or makes them bolt.
One bad, unclear or bombastic page is often what makes a reader abandon a book. "Normal people don't talk like that, and because they're not familiar with those words, it turns them off."
The book's stories were gathered by many people and distilled by one. About 12 sections began as texts or conversations with David Perell, and stories like Taylor Swift writing a Blank Space line were chosen for mass appeal over niche references.
Forte calls the book the accumulation and then distillation of dozens of people's thinking.
3The PARA Method book and the course it cannibalized
A simpler spin-off book drew readers but cut course sales 80 to 90 percent. Seeing many readers still found Building a Second Brain too complicated, Forte pulled out one technique and wrote a short book on it, The PARA Method, about 14 months later. He says it cannibalized his course, with sales down 80 to 90 percent.
He sees PARA as a stepping stone and thinks it could be distilled further, even for fifth graders. Every distillation gains accessibility and costs depth.
4Expensive multi-day writing retreats
Book-length work needs protected days, and paying more raised his accountability. Writing one sentence meant loading the book's whole structure, editor comments and his own realizations, which took an hour or two, so even a 30 to 45 minute call wasted the day. He took three to five day retreats in Temecula, a Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey and a Malibu condo.
On one he wrote seven or eight hours straight without eating or going to the bathroom. "It's better if it's expensive... because then I'm accountable."
5Moving from capturing notes to repackaging them
After years of capture, Forte switched to reusing the notes he already had. With 7,365 hand-curated notes in Evernote, one more note made little difference, so he now focuses on explaining ideas better, new formats and translating them for more people.
Five essays that took about 50 hours each have fed eight years of simplified work since. "I need to just capitalize on the information and knowledge I already have."
Write More Productively (How to Start) | Tiago Forte | How I Write Podcast
The book was built from ideas tested on the blog, Twitter and live teaching, and was edited in narrow passes to cut Silicon Valley jargon for a mass market. Its course sales fell 80 to 90 percent after the cheaper PARA book appeared.
Forte printed nothing in the book that the public hadn't tested first. Every idea in Building a Second Brain had to be tried on the blog, on Twitter or in live teaching first. A book is printed many times and translated widely, so he wanted hundreds, if not thousands, of people to have confirmed an idea before committing it.
He compares it to a startup validating a product before spending millions. His Godfather research went onto his site as a few thousand words, and public responses shaped a second, shorter distillation for the book. Blog comments work but are slow. Live teaching is fastest because you see 'a flicker' cross faces when an idea lands or fails.
When the book stalled, he tweeted the stuck idea from many angles. His heaviest tweeting came exactly when the manuscript was blocked. He attacked the block analytically, intuitively and emotionally until one version worked, then pasted it into the book.
He treats quality and quantity as two tracks to switch between, like his painter father drawing a hundred pineapples before making the perfect one. A slowing of breakthroughs is the early sign to switch to quantity before hitting the block.
Team debriefs after each cohort session turned feedback into lessons. After every live session the team reviewed what worked and what didn't, giving brutal feedback even on Forte's favorite stories. Teammates cross-checked Zoom thumbnails against the chat, which he can't watch while teaching.
Slack, the course forum and support tickets fed the same distillation.
Edit in many narrow passes, each checking for only one thing. Forte read all of part one, four chapters and about 20,000 words, through a single filter, such as whether it sounded too geeky or technical.
"It's just many passes, each pass, usually looking for just one thing." Reviewers give disproportionate feedback to a book's beginning, since asking for 40 hours of reading is hard.
He cut Silicon Valley jargon to reach readers beyond tech nerds. Early Second Brain served technical PKM enthusiasts. To go mainstream he checked every sentence for phrases like 'order of magnitude', 'Overton window' and 'leverage', asking whether it pulls readers deeper or makes them bolt.
One bad, unclear or bombastic page is often what makes a reader abandon a book. "Normal people don't talk like that, and because they're not familiar with those words, it turns them off."
The book's stories were gathered by many people and distilled by one. About 12 sections began as texts or conversations with David Perell, and stories like Taylor Swift writing a Blank Space line were chosen for mass appeal over niche references.
Forte calls the book the accumulation and then distillation of dozens of people's thinking.
A simpler spin-off book drew readers but cut course sales 80 to 90 percent. Seeing many readers still found Building a Second Brain too complicated, Forte pulled out one technique and wrote a short book on it, The PARA Method, about 14 months later. He says it cannibalized his course, with sales down 80 to 90 percent.
He sees PARA as a stepping stone and thinks it could be distilled further, even for fifth graders. Every distillation gains accessibility and costs depth.
Book-length work needs protected days, and paying more raised his accountability. Writing one sentence meant loading the book's whole structure, editor comments and his own realizations, which took an hour or two, so even a 30 to 45 minute call wasted the day. He took three to five day retreats in Temecula, a Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey and a Malibu condo.
On one he wrote seven or eight hours straight without eating or going to the bathroom. "It's better if it's expensive... because then I'm accountable."
After years of capture, Forte switched to reusing the notes he already had. With 7,365 hand-curated notes in Evernote, one more note made little difference, so he now focuses on explaining ideas better, new formats and translating them for more people.
Five essays that took about 50 hours each have fed eight years of simplified work since. "I need to just capitalize on the information and knowledge I already have."
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