Tiago Forte's Blog, page 3

Reflections on Our First In-Person Second Brain Summit

On October 3-4, 2024, we hosted our very first in-person Second Brain Summit in Los Angeles, and honestly, it was a dream come true. 

This event felt like a “bucket list” moment in every way. I’d count it among my top five life milestones, right up there with getting married, witnessing my children’s births, and signing my first book deal.

Looking back, I’m still in awe of the warmth, love, and generosity everyone displayed—from attendees to volunteers to our lineup of speakers.

Our MC Jo Franco hyping everyone up for the group photo

One of my biggest takeaways from the Summit was personal: I learned the incredible growth that comes from letting go. 

For much of this project, I had to place my trust in others to handle details big and small. For someone who’s used to doing everything himself (or at least attempting to), this was transformative. For the first time, I felt fully carried by a team of talented individuals working right alongside me, taking collective ownership of a vision we all believed in.

A special shoutout goes to Simply Storied, our event organizer. They made it all possible, guiding us through each stage with finesse and care. And of course, none of this would have happened without the energy and dedication of our team and volunteers.

The Simply Storied team and our fantastic volunteers

Now that I’ve had a month to process everything that happened, I’m ready to share my reflections with you, including some painful realizations and lessons learned.

Who joined the Second Brain Summit 

We welcomed 212 total attendees from 16 countries! Only 57% came from the U.S., with some traveling from faraway places such as Bali, Taiwan, and Australia to join us. 

59% were male and 41% female. A third of attendees identified as business owners and entrepreneurs, followed by employees and freelancers. 

I loved to see such a wide distribution of different ages at the Summit, as I think it’s super important for different generations to learn from each other:

Only 44% of attendees had ever purchased one of our courses or cohorts. So for many, it was the first time joining one of our experiences. 

I can confidently say that everyone who attended was a 10/10 in interest and passion. Each person followed such a unique and personal path to get there that we can’t identify a “typical” attendee profile. 

The highlights: What attendees loved the most  

Our highlights video will express this better than words ever could:

I was honestly taken aback by the positive things people said about the experience, starting about two hours in. They spoke about it being “life-changing” and “healing”; as the best conference they’d ever been to. 

My favorite quotes I overheard:

“You created the world you wanted to live in.” (from my dad)“This is a conference for high-functioning autistic people.” (this one made me laugh)“I finally found my people.” “This was a spiritual experience.” (from a speaker)

Here are the things attendees said they loved most: 

The incredible lineup of 39 speakers, their diversity along multiple dimensions, and how most stuck around and participated for the full two days of the conference. High-quality, warm and friendly, and interesting fellow attendees, whom many people noted were unlike any group they’d encountered elsewhere.The positive energy of the event, noting that people were genuinely excited to be there. The opportunity to meet people in real life whom they had known online for a while and to have informal yet deep conversations in person.  The size of the event (~200 people) was ideal for connecting with others and getting to know them beyond superficial “networking.”The seamless, frictionless, classy event design and management (kudos to Simply Storied team)The sponsors added a lot of value by offering relevant products and education about how to use them. The “Digital Swag Bag” full of courses, memberships, and tools, allowing attendees to go deeper into what they learned. 

Here’s how attendees reported feeling at the end of the summit (“inspiring connection” jumps out as perhaps the overarching theme of the entire summit):

By the end of the event, 98% of attendees said the Summit met or exceeded their expectations. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) hit 80, a rare and impressive outcome that shows how likely they are to recommend it to others.

This shows how hungry people are for such communal experiences in our digital-centric world and that there’s huge potential in this area.

Our attendees and speakers mingling at happy hour. The financial snapshot

In the interest of transparency, I’d like to share what it took financially to bring this event to life.

Ticket sales brought in $120,604, and sponsorships contributed an additional $60,000, for a total of $180,604 in revenue. However, our total expenses came to $349,771, resulting in a net loss of $169,166. This essentially meant we subsidized each attendee by about $798 on top of the ticket price, which ranged from $999 (early-bird) to $1,200.

The primary challenge? We only sold about half as many tickets as I had originally envisioned, leaving us with the cost profile of a much larger event than we actually hosted. Although we made adjustments along the way, I was so committed to delivering a high-quality experience that I chose to eat the additional cost rather than cut essential aspects of the event.

Moving forward, it’s clear we’ll need a more sustainable financial model to make future Summits viable.

Standing ovation after my closing words What we’d do differently next time

After reviewing the attendee feedback and our own reflections as a team, here are the things we’d change if we were to host the Second Brain Summit again:

Increase the focus on the B2B and professional aspects of our niche, making it easier for people and their employers to justify the cost and time to attend.Prioritize interactive workshops and hands-on practical sessions, which can only be delivered live and in person. Cut non-essentials such as games, a reserved hotel block, and catered food. A smaller venue would also reduce costs for AV, rented furniture, on-site event staff, security, signage, etc.Pick a location different from downtown LA, as the surrounding neighborhood was pretty sketchy. Cap the attendance at an even lower number, so we are guaranteed to sell out and can spend more time on the event design rather than marketing/sales. Schedule fewer sessions concurrently. We had as many as 6 sessions happening at the same time, which was too many for people to choose from and created FOMO. Start conversations with sponsors earlier (9-12 months before the event, when budgets are being committed), seeking deeper, more strategic partnerships that would allow for higher sponsor revenue. Offer a recorded or live-streamed version of the Summit sessions, as so much value was on offer it would have been nice to capture it.Add a third day with an unstructured agenda, allowing for informal meals, walking around town, and follow-up meetups to process all the new information and deepen new relationships. Sell a “high-ticket program” on the backend of the summit, such as a group coaching program or mastermind, to support the financial side. 

With these changes, I believe we could make future Summits a financially viable and deeply impactful addition to the Second Brain community. I know of no better way to build true community and connection in our increasingly fragmented, distracted, isolated modern world.

I’m deeply grateful to everyone who joined, participated, and made this Summit possible. It’s an experience I’ll never forget, and I owe a huge “thank you” to every single one of you who helped make it real.

My wife Lauren and I A personal note

There was something about this summit that moved me at a very deep level. I felt myself changing, transforming into someone new. 

Diving into the emotions and insights afterward with my coach, I realized that gathering together all these wonderful people in a warm, welcoming environment had touched a nerve inside me: a longstanding feeling I’ve had that I didn’t belong anywhere.

I traced that feeling back to my school years when I attended 5 different schools in 5 years from 5th grade to 9th grade, which made me highly resilient and adaptable but also made me feel isolated and alone like I didn’t have real friends. I traced it further back, to being the child of immigrant parents from two separate countries, a true third culture kid.

That narrative – that I didn’t belong in any group and no one could understand me – simply couldn’t withstand the outpouring of acceptance and love of 200 people, all united together in one common purpose. It was just so obvious that everyone there had felt alone or misunderstood, but that we could, in the words of my father, “Create the world we wanted to live in” anyway.

Many people have asked me whether we plan on hosting another summit in the future. I honestly can’t say, but what I do know is that in the coming years community is going to be one of the last and most meaningful differentiators in a world transformed by AI. It’s one of the only things that can’t be generated algorithmically, no matter what “social” media tells you.

I honestly don’t know how the financial side makes sense, but I do know two things: that every time I’ve doubled down on community it’s always worked out; and that every time I’ve doubled down on what has aliveness and energy it’s worked out, even if I couldn’t envision how in the beginning.

So in one way or another, I’m going to keep seeking ways to build true, meaningful community, to bring people together whether virtually or in person, and to help forge relationships that transcend any particular app, trend, or niche, so that everyone in my community has the chance to feel that sense of shared purpose and belonging that has been so transformative for me.

The best snapshots from the Second Brain Summit

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Reflections on Our First In-Person Second Brain Summit appeared first on Forte Labs.

A Quest for Self-Knowledge: From Self-Help to Somatic Healing (Part I – Opening My Mind)

When I left the religious faith of my youth in my early 20s, everything collapsed – my faith, my certainty, and the sources of meaning I had clung to since childhood. 

I grew up with a clear sense of purpose: fight the good fight, spread the gospel, and fulfill God’s divine plan for my life. Then, one day, I woke up and realized I didn’t believe any of it.

What do you do when the foundations of your life crumble, and the reality you once believed in dissolves away and slips through your fingers?

I didn’t have the answer at first, but over the next two decades, I began an unexpected journey—one that transformed not just what I believed, but who I was. Far from being the end of my spiritual path, leaving my religion was actually the beginning of it.

This blog series tells the story of how I pursued that path over the last 20 years. In the early days, I thought it was an external search, for someone or something outside of me. I eventually realized it is in fact an inner quest for self-knowledge about who I truly am.

With the benefit of hindsight, I can see that this quest has unfolded in three distinct stages. 

The first chapter was all about my mind and intellect, as I spent my 20s questioning the narratives that I’d constructed to explain my past. My logical brain, the prefrontal cortex, stood like a sentinel at the gates of my mind, and I needed to befriend him and assuage his fears before he’d allow me to go any further.

The second leg of my journey was centered on my heart and emotions, as I learned how to let down my walls and connect with other people vulnerably. It was about deprogramming my default attitude toward emotions – repression and avoidance – and finding new ways to let my emotions flow through me.

And today, at the precipice of my 40s, I’m at the start of a third chapter: reawakening and getting in touch with my body and my gut. It seems to be about changing how my nervous system works and responds to fear, intuition, and desire at the most fundamental level of my bodily sensations.

Let me tell you the story of this first chapter, beginning with my mind – the world of ideas, facts, and logic.

Reading to understand myself and the world

I had always been a dedicated reader, but my consumption of books took on a desperate, existential drive when I abandoned my religious beliefs. I felt like a child being born again, ironically, forced to make sense of the most fundamental building blocks of my reality anew.

I relearned the origins of the Middle East and early church history from scholarly sources instead of theological ones through books like Church History in Plain Language and The Gnostic Gospels. I read about Eastern religions, finding many principles and points of view that resonated with me in Buddhism and Hinduism. I devoured the books of James Michener, diving deep into places like Poland, Spain, South Africa, Alaska, Afghanistan, Mexico, and Palestine through the medium of historical fiction.

As I dove deeper and deeper into the past, I realized I also wanted to understand the future, and picked up my first science-fiction books. My preference was for “hard” sci-fi, which stuck to known or plausible scientific principles as much as possible. I eventually read over 100 sci-fi novels that inflamed my imagination with the potent possibilities of the unknown future.

I dabbled in literary fiction, thrillers, fantasy, mystery, and magical realism. I devoured biographies, travelogues, popular science, and speculative fiction. I had a habit of camping out at bookstores for many hours at a time, churning through a giant pile of books without purchasing any.

And then one day I discovered the category of self-help. 

It was 2005, and I was perusing the aisles at my local Borders bookstore in Mission Viejo, near where I grew up in South Orange County. That first book was called The Paradox of Choice, and it delivered a simple yet shocking message: having more options not only doesn’t lead to better choices in many cases; it leads to worse choices that we tend to be less satisfied with.

I was astounded by this insight. I just couldn’t believe such a practical, compelling idea was available for anyone to learn and apply to their own lives.

With the naivete only a wide-eyed 20-something is capable of, I thought it had radical implications for much of modern life, in which we are inundated with a constantly proliferating number of options for practically everything, and yet find ourselves with a pervasive sense of dissatisfaction and FOMO as a result. 

After that, I began to voraciously read every book on personal development I could get my hands on. Napoleon Hill taught me how to think and grow rich. Daniel Goleman introduced me to the importance of Emotional Intelligence. Tony Robbins introduced me to the tenets of positive psychology. Daniel Pink revealed the secrets to having an unstoppable drive. Malcolm Gladwell blew my mind with his analysis of tipping points. 

I was hooked.

I found it remarkable, and still do, that you can buy a book for $10 or $15 dollars (or read it for free at the local library, bookstore, or online via resources like the Gutenberg Project) and get instant access to a lifetime’s worth of knowledge from the world’s top experts on virtually any subject imaginable.

This realization changed everything for me. 

It taught me that everything in life is a “skill issue” – a known problem that someone has had before, has probably already figured out, and more than likely, is willing to help me with. I realized that I could choose any aspect of my life and reliably improve it through education and experimentation.

Looking back, these were the first stirrings of a newfound agency I felt in my life. 

With each new tool or insight I gained, the hold that my upbringing, my parents’ worldview, societal expectations, and default life scripts had over me was weakened. I began to see that I could decide who I wanted to be and how I wanted to feel. I wasn’t stuck with the natural temperament, skills, personality, or talents I was born with. My destiny was mine to author.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had already embarked on a journey. It was a journey into outer space, to make sense of how the world worked and what my place in it might be. It was also a journey into inner space, to discover who I really was at my core.

The first cracks in an opening mind

My love of reading followed me through college, a few years living and studying abroad, two years of service in the Peace Corps, and my first couple of years working in San Francisco. My beaten and battered Kindle was always by my side, every digital highlight synced to the cloud for safekeeping.

But in 2013 things started to change. I decided to leave my consulting job and strike out on my own as a freelancer, plunging headfirst into a way of life with far more uncertainty and unpredictability than I had ever experienced. 

I can still recall waking up on that first Monday morning and realizing I had nowhere to go, nowhere to be, and no one expecting me. I had the sudden thought that if I suddenly dropped dead, it would take days for anyone to find my corpse. I finally had the complete freedom I’d dreamt of for years, but instead of feeling liberated, I felt terrified. It was like waking up adrift on the open ocean, with no solid ground anywhere in sight.

As I cast about over the subsequent months trying every way I could think of to make money, I was faced repeatedly and harshly with the reality that I lacked most of the qualities I needed. I didn’t have the commitment and consistency I needed to accomplish my goals. I had no idea what valuable skills and knowledge I had to offer potential clients, much less how to effectively articulate them and close the sale. I didn’t have the social skills needed to find collaborators and make new friends without the shared context of a workplace.

Yet the absence of these external, professional skills paled in comparison with the inner qualities I was missing. I had the habits and self-care routines of a typical 28-year-old male; that is, I lacked them completely. I had little understanding of my own psychology – the ruminating and worrying and recurring anxieties racing through my mind. I avoided most of my problems, ignoring warning signs in my mental and physical health until they became unbearable. I didn’t have a way of getting to the root of my blindspots and baggage and thus recreated them time and again.

This was all the more frustrating because I had read all the self-help books. I knew all the terminology, could cite all the studies, and was following the “right” advice. In theory, all this knowledge should have prepared me for the challenges I was facing. In reality, it was all conceptual or theoretical knowledge, very little of it rooted in my personal experience.

The stark contrast between the sophisticated theories in my head and the poor results and struggles I was experiencing in my life eventually reached a breaking point. I decided that I needed something different, something deeper that would change who I was, not just what I knew. In my desperation, I decided it was time to go beyond reading books and find the environments, teachers, and training that would give me visceral, first-hand experiences of what it meant to change who I was at the deepest level.

Mastering my attention through Vipassana meditation

I decided to seek out what I now call “transformational programs” – structured, immersive, embodied experiences facilitated by skilled teachers who know how to facilitate lasting change.

I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time, the global mecca for self-development and self-exploration of all kinds, and couldn’t help but notice how many such programs existed and the benefits they seemed to produce for others.

I had picked up an introductory book on meditation and mindfulness which I’d discovered on an obscure online forum late one night. Over the course of a few weeks, I was introduced to the first elementary practices for calming my mind and observing my thoughts. 

The book introduced me to the classic “raisin exercise,” in which I closely examined a single raisin with all my powers of observation and all my senses, which showed me in sensual terms how much detail and complexity was hiding within my everyday perception. I wanted to go deeper but had little money as I struggled to make ends meet.

Soon afterward, I heard about a free 10-day meditation retreat known as Vipassana, which was hosted at retreat centers around the world. Free sounded like the right price to me, and I signed up, not knowing that it would be the portal to a new world and a new path that I am still following to this day.

I returned from that retreat and wrote my first blog post, 10 Days of Vipassana, recounting what I had learned:

Attention is a skill. Unless I intentionally cultivated it, the modern world’s constant barrage of distractions would inexorably undermine my ability to focus or even think clearly.Every distraction takes a toll. Distractions are not just momentary interruptions that leave no lasting trace. Each one I allow to yank my attention away conditions me with the subconscious habit of valuing the new at the expense of the important.How I pay attention is more important than what I pay attention to. Which means that I don’t have to perfectly control my environment or my inputs in order to feel the way I want to feel.Paying attention to something takes away its power. So much of my life was dominated by fear of pain of some kind. But pain is as insubstantial and impermanent as any other sensation, and by giving my full attention to any anger, doubt, shame, or envy I was feeling I could loosen its hold on me.

Most meaningfully of all, I discovered through prolonged meditation that happiness is my default state, like the bottom of the well of my mind. It wasn’t something I had to go out and find like a rare prize. It was always there waiting for me, which meant all I had to do was remove the things that were in the way and return to myself in order to find it again.

That first Vipassana retreat and the daily meditation habit I adopted afterward equipped me with the basic tools of introspection. It introduced me to the simple yet profound idea that there is a vast inner world inside of me and that I could explore that world freely using meditation, without permission from anyone.

Crucially, this experience also led me to begin writing in public. It was the first time that I felt I had experienced something unusual and interesting enough to be worth sharing. Writing itself would also become an essential practice, allowing me to structure, process, and integrate lessons for myself, with the added bonus of helping others and eventually, building a following.

Encountering psychological truths at the Landmark Forum

A couple of years later, my freelancing work had become more stable and for the first time, I had a little disposable income to spare. In the space of a few months, three separate friends told me about their experience at a weekend seminar called The Landmark Forum. I felt I was ready to begin investing money in my personal development, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I can still remember what an enormous commitment it seemed like at the time – spending 3 full days and about $750 on myself felt like an outrageous indulgence. It was also a completely life-changing experience, which I wrote about in A Skeptic Goes to the Landmark Forum.

I went on to take the rest of the Landmark curriculum over the next two years, including about a half dozen courses on integrity, communication, and self-authorship. I eventually completed their intensive 5-month leadership program, known as the Introduction Leaders Program (ILP). 

Here are the main lessons I took away from that experience, which was a holistic education in many aspects of leadership:

Everything I think or believe is just a “story,” a narrative I’ve created to interpret and understand what’s happened, which means I can choose to disbelieve or edit or reframe any event from my past.Any time I’m blaming others, it’s usually to avoid taking responsibility for something myself, while also receiving hidden payoffs (such as self-righteousness or dominating others) that keep that blame locked in place.Witnessing the power of honest conversations in Landmark’s programs, I adopted vulnerability, collaboration, and openness to feedback as central values in my life, a sharp departure from my typical self-reliance and perfectionism (which led directly to the live cohort-based courses that would completely transform my career).I realized that trying to be “right,” which had driven me for much of my life, is ultimately futile when it comes to living an authentic life of intimacy with others.

Most meaningfully, I used these insights to take responsibility for my relationship with my father. I had had a long-running story that I was irreparably damaged because of how he raised me. I’d told myself that I couldn’t have the life I wanted because he had been too harsh, too critical, and had failed to listen to and support me in the way I needed him to. Those attitudes were, of course, a set of stories that kept me a victim toward any source of power or authority that reminded me of him.

Letting go of my resentment toward my father, while forgiving his imperfections and accepting that he was always just trying his best, unlocked a floodgate of gratitude not only toward him but for the life he had given me.

The power of transformational programs

Landmark and Vipassana served as my introduction to the category of “transformational programs.” 

They showed me that personal growth could be efficient. There were direct paths to concrete outcomes that irrefutably improved my life within a reasonable amount of time. These paths weren’t exactly predictable, but they also weren’t completely mysterious. Personal growth was something I could invest time, money, and attention in and reliably see tangible change in my life as a result.

I realized I didn’t have to wait until the end of my life to learn what life had to teach me – I could accelerate that process and yield the benefits while I was still young enough to enjoy them.

I began to develop a set of criteria for the kinds of programs I would seek out in the years to come:

A time limit – a clear beginning and end to the experience, allowing me to calibrate my commitment and see results without getting in over my head.A structure – whether that is a series of meditation prompts and guidelines over a certain number of days, or a formal curriculum with learning objectives, I sought a structure I could use to track my progress.Teachers and guides – whether a skilled facilitator imparting their tacit wisdom, a seminar leader following a workbook, or a volunteer silently serving food in the kitchen, I wanted guides on my journey who had already been where I wanted to go, and who could therefore help me see through my assumptions and blindspots more quickly.Social interaction – though there are periods when solo work is needed, the vulnerable sharing and vicarious learning that can only happen in groups makes social experiences far more enjoyable, and thus more sustainable and effective.Accessibility – I want experiences that others can learn about and sign up for themselves, allowing them to follow in my footsteps if they so choose so that my family and my community can grow alongside me.

Following these guidelines, each new book, teacher, program, and practice I’ve encountered has uncovered new layers of who I am, like a perfect diamond encrusted with dirt and mud slowly emerging as those layers are washed away.

At the same time, the world of the mind and the intellect was just the first leg of my journey, akin to stocking the ship and navigating the calm waters close to shore. In the next chapter, I learned that true transformation isn’t primarily about acquiring information, and doesn’t occur only on an intellectual level.

The deepest change happens on multiple levels, at multiple timescales, and changes every part of us, especially the parts we feel most ashamed and fearful of. For me, that meant my emotions, and thus it was my heart that I explored next.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on X, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post A Quest for Self-Knowledge: From Self-Help to Somatic Healing (Part I – Opening My Mind) appeared first on Forte Labs.

Building a Second Brain – The TV Show

This is a proposal I wrote for a television show based on my bestselling book Building a Second Brain.

If it resonates with you and you’re in a position to make a TV show happen, please let me know by emailing hello@fortelabs.com. I’m open to a variety of formats, funding sources, routes to production, and distribution platforms for this project.

Introduction

Have you ever felt drowned in a sea of ideas, struggling to recall that one crucial piece of information when you most needed it? Have you ever spent hours scrolling social media, or consuming content online, only to find yourself unable to remember even one useful takeaway?

Imagine a world where your mind is freed from everything you’re trying to remember and keep track of, while every important detail and inspired thought remains safely tucked away and easily accessible within seconds. Welcome to the possibility of building a Second Brain – a digital extension of your mind that remembers everything, so you can accomplish anything. 

This isn’t just about storing information; it’s about reshaping the way you approach life. You are offloading your thoughts to technology so you can think more clearly and calmly. By organizing the digital realm where you likely spend hours every day you enhance your focus instead of splintering your attention. Aligning your online habits with your values and goals transforms the time you spend consuming content – from merely passing the time to compounding your learning and growth over time.

By creating a Second Brain, you’ll have a dedicated, digital space you can step into anytime you want to focus your energy on what truly matters to you. Rather than relying on your scarce self-discipline or willpower, you’ll have a cognitive exoskeleton designed to propel you forward into taking action on the goals and projects that could transform your life.

Inspired by the revolutionary concepts from my books Building a Second Brain and The PARA Method, which have sold over 300,000 copies worldwide, and the transformative experiences of thousands of my students, readers, and followers, I’m excited to bring the power of the Second Brain to television. Let’s dive deep into the world of digital organization, redefining the way we engage with information and using it to unlock the best version of ourselves.

The Show

I propose an intervention/makeover/personal transformation style unscripted show revolving around people’s digital organizational habits and creative projects. 

This genre typically shows an expert or “guru” who comes into a person’s environment, and shines a light on an aspect of their lives that they are ashamed about, in pain from, or that is holding them back in some way. 

For example:

Marie Kondo and people’s closetsRamit Sethi and people’s bank accountsQueer Eye and people’s wardrobesThe Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning and people’s possessionsThe Biggest Loser and people’s waistlinesDream Home Makeover and people’s homes

These are all domains that are crucial to our well-being and thriving, but that many of us feel disempowered or embarrassed by. 

There have been many such shows, but I’ve never seen one that deals with people’s digital life – their notes and documents, emails and text messages, web favorites and bookmarks, photos and videos, books and reading, YouTube videos and social media posts, etc. In my experience, most people would rather open up their homes or their bank accounts than show you what’s on their smartphones or computers, and that’s why we will find so many touching, hilarious, and ultimately meaningful stories there.

Why now?

Over the past decade we’ve become a digital-centric culture. 10 years ago, as of 2013, Americans spent more time on digital devices than watching TV. We consume digital media over 7 hours per day, with 44% of 18- to 49-year-olds saying that they go online “almost constantly.” Millennials (currently aged 24-41) are now the dominant economic, political, and cultural force in our society, and their experience of life is fundamentally shaped by the digital world. 

The Internet isn’t a thing anymore, it’s a place – the primary place we go to for education, entertainment, community, connection, and so many other needs and wants. Our digital lives are rich, fruitful landscapes where our hopes, dreams, and creative visions can come to life before our very eyes, as long as we have the will (and the tech-savvy skills) to see them through. 

Yet where is the authentic portrayal of that digital realm that has become such an important part of our experiences? At most, we’ll see a character in a TV show briefly sending a text message on a 5-year-old phone. Where is the self-discovery, the stories, the drama, and the life-changing inspiration that we find online every day?

The Stories

A starting point could be my story of struggling with a debilitating neurological condition that plunged me into a world of pain and shut down my ability to speak, ultimately leading to the realization of how crucial self-expression is to life (and inspiring my writing and teaching on this subject). 

Here are some of the other (real) stories we’ve heard from the graduates of our course, viewers of our YouTube videos, and readers of my books:

The Colorado pastor who interviews the families of the recently deceased in order to write their eulogies found himself overwhelmed by the quantity of information he was collecting and taking weeks to distill it. He began using a voice transcription app to record the interviews and summarize the key points in minutes, freeing up his time to spend with the bereaved. The UK single mom trying to juggle homeschooling and work, whose depression had advanced to the point that showering and brushing her teeth was a struggle. She adopted digital habits that led to her learning to manage her life and even enjoy reading again.The Florida education professor who felt frazzled managing her job while taking care of the kids, before she started using digital notes apps to capture ideas and insights on the fly, which made prepping for speeches something she can do in little batches during the small windows of her busy day.A college student who realized he was addicted to video games and watching his life pass him by. Upon discovering the power of a Second Brain, he began using it as a way to learn and grow while activating the same parts of his brain that video games once did.The Managing Director for an automaker in Mexico, who after treating her depression with medication, found that she also needed to change her routines around managing emails, her schedule, and her to-do list to put her life and career back on track. Now she’s teaching her team the same techniques and seeing it lift the performance of the whole department.The oncologist at a world-renowned cancer clinic who uses my techniques to condense his reading about new clinical trials and patient notes so he can quickly reference the information he needs while spending more time listening to and being present with his patients.The manager, whose company was being acquired and position made redundant, decided to utilize digital platforms to document and systematize his company’s knowledge. This led to him being named the General Manager of the new combined business, a position with far more responsibility and compensation.

And these are some of the topics and issues we can touch on:

The tension between personal productivity for succeeding in your career, and creativity as a means to personal fulfillmentThe epidemic of Information Overload and the crushing stress of all the information we consume and have to pay attention to every daySocial media’s impact on our attention span, mental health, and ability to focusThe explosion in freelancing, the creator economy, and remote work as powerful possibilities that require fluency in using digital tools to manage our work and lives to take advantage ofADHD and other neurodivergent conditions’ effect on how we think, and how to use technology to consume and interact with information in more effective waysContent consumption on online platforms as a major influencer of our thinking, while requiring more intentional habits to glean the most helpful ideas and insights from the noiseOur digital habits and the platforms on which they take place as important avenues for self-expression, self-determination, and creative agencyPotential challenges

Here are some of the main challenges we’d face in creating such a show, which also represent opportunities if we succeed:

How to represent digital spaces and virtual interactions in a visual, engaging, relatable wayWhat to call this subject (common terms include second brains, digital organization/hygiene/fluency, personal knowledge management, tools for thought, and others)How to frame the “promise” of watching the show (commiserate with others struggling with information overwhelm, gain inspiration from others overcoming relatable challenges, get new ideas for how to approach the digital world, be moved by the stories of courage and vulnerability as people confront their fears, etc.)How to make the stories relatable, grounded, and easy to understand, since this topic can easily become convoluted and abstractIdeas for portraying Second Brains on TV

Here are my initial ideas and notes on how we could portray digital environments and habits on the small screen:

Feature digital notes that are more visual rather than purely textual, including graphics, photos, drawings, diagrams, screenshots, etc.Project computer environments onto walls or 3D spaces that we can point to, talk about, and walk around in (like Hans Rosling did on the BBC)In Ramit Sethi’s show How to Get Rich there are some good examples of using a combination of zooming in, on-screen animations, and over-the-shoulder shots to make the screen feel less two-dimensionalGo out into the field and interview real people (architects, sex workers, casino owners, professional athletes, musicians, etc.) on how they use digital notes/second brains “in the wild” as part of their professions (a good example of this is the 1997 documentary Fast, Cheap and Out of Control, which profiled an animal trainer, topiary gardener, robot scientist, and biologist studying mole rats)Borrow ideas from Sherlock on how to film thoughts and subjective experiencesUse virtual or augmented reality environments to make the digital realm more tangible; for example, using the Apple Vision Pro to provide a new interface for interacting with digital content on our devicesCreate in-scene animated objects that I can interact with and move around (such as Bradley Cooper’s character in Limitless ), or immersive, full-screen animations that illustrate concepts and ideas, such as Steven Johnson does in How We Got to Now on PBSCreate a “studio” or “lab” with tangible materials and tools that are used to “think outside the brain,” like Stanford does in their design schoolHere’s a short video highlighting some interesting recent experiments in depicting digital/online behavior on screen

If this resonates with you and you’re in a position to make a TV show happen, please let me know by emailing hello@fortelabs.com. I’m open to a variety of formats and distribution platforms for this project.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Building a Second Brain – The TV Show appeared first on Forte Labs.

Unspeakable Pain: A Personal Journey Through Psychosomatic Illness

At the age of 22, one fine spring day at the Apple Store I worked at in college in San Diego, I began to feel a small scratch at the back of my throat. 

I tried for a few months to ignore it, but as it gradually grew worse – eventually turning into a searing pain throughout my neck and an inability to control my voice – I started seeing a series of doctors and specialists to identify the cause.

I tried anti-reflux medication, changing my diet, quitting coffee, anti-allergy pills, massage, voice therapy, and eventually, a powerful anti-seizure medication that gave me temporary relief but at the cost of whole body numbing and crippling memory loss. 

Why am I sharing this story with you?

Because this unexpected condition forced me onto a new path, and that path taught me incredibly valuable lessons – about psychosomatic pain and its sources, about the relationship between body and mind and how it can go wrong, and ultimately, about how to heal from the disconnection from myself that lay at the heart of it all.

In this essay, I’ll share with you what I’ve discovered in the hope it might help you too.

A descent into despair

At no point in my medical odyssey did I receive so much as a diagnosis – no MRI scan or neurological test or laboratory diagnostic could detect even the slightest thing wrong with me. 

I found that I was always treated as a collection of symptoms, and when a specialist couldn’t find the source of my problem in their assigned body part, they quickly passed me off to someone else.

After 7 years of this fruitless search, during which I saw more than a dozen doctors in four countries, I had made no progress, and the pain and tension I felt was worse than ever. It felt as if an area the size of a ping-pong ball at the back-right of my throat had lost all sensation, like when the dentist injects novocaine into your gums. This numbness inflamed all the surrounding areas as they struggled to compensate for the loss of function. This irritated other, even more distant muscles and ligaments in turn, like a slowly spreading wildfire of burning tension. 

Yet the physical pain was actually the least of my worries. It was really the social and psychological effects that sent me spiraling into despair.

When I opened my mouth to speak, I didn’t know what would come out. I might feel deep conviction in a business meeting, but my dysfunctional speech would come out weak and halting. I’d want to convey warmth and support to a friend, only to hear my words sounding monotone and strained. My words often had the opposite effect I intended, as if a demon had possessed me and was clutching me by the throat, distorting and undermining every word I spoke.

I can distinctly remember being at a house party in Oakland in 2014, and wanting to make a good impression. It was hosted by my then-girlfriend Lauren’s friends, and I wanted to fit in and be liked. I met someone who had also served in the Peace Corps, and was elated at the chance to connect in an environment full of strangers. But as I opened my mouth to speak, my voice was so tight and strained I couldn’t make myself heard at all, despite the relatively quiet surroundings. I might as well have been mute.

I left the party early, and as I walked home through the dark streets of downtown Oakland, a terrifying thought arose in my mind: “Life is not worth living if I have to live it this way.” I’m an inveterate optimist, and had never felt this depth of hopelessness. It felt like the end of the road, the lowest of lows. And I knew in that moment I needed to try something new.

Discovering relief by looking inside

Shortly thereafter, I attended my first Vipassana meditation retreat, mostly in the hope of learning to accept and make peace with my condition. 

Instead, on the final day of the retreat, something remarkable happened: My attention had sharpened to a fine point after days of silent meditation, and I moved that mental scalpel to the place in my throat that had caused me so much suffering. To my amazement, it came alive! 

Like the circuit breaker in a house being flipped to full power, the entire area around the back of my throat instantly lit up with full sensation. For the first time I could remember, I swallowed normally, feeling the sublime joy of all the muscles in my throat and neck working in beautiful synchrony. 

Sitting quietly in a room and looking inside of myself had accomplished what tens of thousands of dollars and years of medical appointments couldn’t touch: total, instantaneous relief. That was the moment I knew I’d found a new way, a new path, and a new world. I found such relief a second time when I tried LSD at Burning Man. And a third time, when I did anger work at a week-long course called Groundbreakers. I was hooked.

What all these experiences had in common was that they were pattern interrupters. They temporarily shifted how my body and nervous system were operating, and by doing so, reestablished an internal connection that I had disconnected as a child to survive painful experiences.

An exploration of psychosomatic illness

These brief flirtations with relief set me on a new course – to research and study the underlying mechanisms of what was happening to me in these situations, with the goal of replicating them permanently.

The most compelling explanation I found was in the book The Divided Mind, by Dr. John Sarno. 

In his book, Sarno describes his years of experience treating psychosomatic disorders, most of all, debilitating back pain. I had long resisted the idea that my condition was psychosomatic. It was so visceral that I couldn’t accept that it was “only in my mind.” But Dr. Sarno’s work makes a crucial distinction: while the source of the pain may be in a person’s mind, that doesn’t mean the pain isn’t completely real.

I was struck by how closely his description of the illnesses he treats matched my own (in bold): “The patient may experience a wide variety of highly debilitating maladies, including muscle weakness or paralysis, feelings of numbness or tingling, total absence of sensation, blindness, inability to use their vocal cords, and many others, all without any physical abnormalities in the body to account for such symptoms.” This seemed to describe my situation exactly.

As I kept reading, I was further startled to see his explanation of the cause: “…the cause is to be found in the unconscious regions of the mind…its purpose is to deliberately distract the conscious mind.” I couldn’t believe what I was reading. He seemed to be suggesting that the body creates physical symptoms as a protective measure, to distract or shield the conscious mind from thoughts and feelings that are too threatening or painful to bear.

I kept reading, and in his extensive descriptions of his typical patient profile, I saw myself clearly reflected:

Sarno notes that “…rage in the unconscious mind is central to understanding virtually all psychosomatic reactions.” I knew that repressed anger was one of my most deeply ingrained emotional patterns.He says that anxiety, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often coincide with the apparent physical symptoms, which I’d also experienced.Perfectionism and other “repressive” behaviors are ubiquitous among psychosomatic pain sufferers, with patients often describing themselves as “hardworking, conscientious, responsible, driven, success-oriented, perpetual seekers of new challenges, sensitive to criticism, and their own severest critics,” which the subconscious mind interprets as a form of control or pressure and is thus enraged by.Many patients are the caretaker type and are always worrying about their family, friends, and relatives; at the same time, they’ve often experienced emotional abuse, including harsh or excessive discipline, absence or unavailability, temper, or unreasonable expectations from those same family members, creating another source of internal tension.A majority have come from families with hardworking, loving parents who conveyed overly high expectations and hopes for their children, families not characterized by any particularly unusual dynamics that would stand out in today’s society.

Ultimately, Dr. Sarno recommends the following treatment for his patients: that they directly face and bring to their conscious awareness the anger, emotional pain, and sadness brewing in their subconscious mind. He recommends a detailed step-by-step plan for how to do so, including reading his book and related materials, journaling and reflective writing exercises exploring possible sources of emotional pain, and cataloging situations that create suppressed rage. 

The emphasis throughout this process is on allowing the inner child to express their rage at all the responsibilities, pressures, disappointments, problems, and unfair expectations they’ve faced, and most of all, their self-imposed demands to achieve, take care of others, or be good. It’s about freeing yourself from needing other people’s recognition, and learning to care for yourself in a kinder, gentler, more forgiving way than perhaps you were raised. In other words, you are learning to be more compassionate with yourself.

In effect, the purpose of Dr. Sarno’s treatment is to “blow the cover” on the covert operation your body is running to keep you from thinking about the reservoir of rage within you. Once the big secret is out, there’s no sense in continuing the pain, and thus it ceases.

 

Healing through learning

Sarno finds the unavoidable conclusion of his work almost too good to be true: not only can physical pain be psychosomatic, but you can stop it by learning about it! 

And that is exactly what I found: the more I read and learned about Sarno’s work, the more the pain and tension in my throat dissipated, often in real time as the words entered my brain and my awareness of what was happening inside of me grew.

Another casual observation in Sarno’s book astounded me, and explained so much of my journey: “We know from experience that the theoretical wall, the barrier separating the conscious from the unconscious mind, cannot be breached from below—that is, the rage will not break through into consciousness—but there is nothing to stop us from intellectually breaching the barrier from above.” 

This explained why my personal journey had started with the mind and the intellect, as I read books and took courses on various aspects of personal development. I used my mind to create the “breach” that allowed my awareness to begin looking inside instead of outside for answers. Only then was I able to begin exploring the world of the heart and the emotions.

While intellectual understanding and self-study are crucial, Sarno also points out that it isn’t necessary to fully “figure out” or change repressed emotions. It is only necessary to acknowledge that they exist, and that they’re a normal part of life. He has found that truly accepting our genuine self, who feels many things, including feelings that might be unpleasant or painful, is what leads to relief.

The cause of psychogenic voice disorders

I discovered a 2008 paper called The role of psychogenic and psychosocial factors in the development of functional voice disorders. It examined a range of prior studies and concluded that psychogenic voice disorders “may develop in response to negative emotions following stressful life events,” and especially “situations where there was a strong challenge to speak out and yet a marked constraint against doing so.”

One thing I had never understood is why I would have the apparent symptoms of trauma when my childhood seemed relatively idyllic. This paper suggested an answer, indicating that “traumatic incidents and serious situations involving death, loss, separation and threat to personal or family security were reported infrequently” in patients with psychogenic voice disorders. 

Instead, the researchers found such disorders occurred more frequently in people who had “interpersonal problems with close partners or family members.” This included “difficulties with the expression of negative emotions related to repressed hostility, discomfort over sexual feelings and rebellion towards authority figures (Barton, 1960).” 

This seemed to fit my situation much more closely than the “acute” trauma caused by sexual assault, natural disasters, or extreme abuse. In my case, subtle, internalized forms of emotional repression led to subtle, internal symptoms of trauma. The suppression of anger in my family – the sweeping under the rug of any brewing conflict – might seem like it would have led to a peaceful household. In reality, it only turned the chaos inward where it was unleashed to do a different kind of damage.

Other common factors in the development of psychogenic voice disorders seemed to fit my situation closely as well. The patient data showed “a trend towards education and helping professions, and recent prevalence studies indicate teachers are more at risk for functional voice disorders than any other occupational group.” I had been a natural teacher almost my entire life.

The same paper proposed a possible explanation for the specific symptoms I’d faced: when emotions (such as anger, in my case) cannot be expressed, they are “reverted” to physiological symptoms associated with fight-or-flight. This reaction “is thought to prepare the organism for increased physical work, by fixing the upper extremities to the thoracic cage for combat, requiring firm adduction of the vocal folds and wide abduction to facilitate an increased volume and flow of oxygen in order to meet the body’s increased metabolic demands.”

In other words, when we repress emotions and don’t allow them to be expressed, the body reacts to this with a fight-or-flight response. In order to prepare for the increased physical exertion of fighting or fleeing, the body stabilizes the upper parts of the body (like the arms and shoulders) against the ribcage to create a solid foundation for movement. As part of that preparation, the vocal folds (or vocal cords) are brought together tightly to control the breath and then are spread apart to increase oxygen intake. 

This was the most precise description of what I experienced in my vocal cords I had yet encountered: a combination of too much tightness and tension, and somehow at the same time, too much looseness and lack of control. It was like reading the user’s manual for my body, specifically the troubleshooting section, where my seemingly unexplainable problem was described in precise detail.

Studying the vagus nerve

All my research was pointing to the vagus nerve, which I came to understand was the central actor in my story.

The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body, running from the diaphragm all the way up the torso, through the neck to the brain. It is like the “main information highway” of the body, connecting together and coordinating the parasympathetic nervous system in the heart, lungs, and digestive tract, and governing such functions as sucking, swallowing, facial expression, and the sounds produced by the larynx.

I began to study the vagus nerve intensely, filling my notes with anatomical diagrams and cross-sections of the throat from every direction. I found that right at the point it passes up through the right side of the neck, there is a “choke point.” If the nerve senses too much pain coming up through the nerves from the body, this is the last place it can shut itself off and thus prevent those signals from reaching the brain. Like a circuit breaker flipping off when it detects a dangerous surge of energy, the vagus nerve does the same for the body.

It was another book, The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk, that helped me understand why the vagus nerve seemed so central to my symptoms.

He calls this complex of nerves our “social-engagement system.” When it’s functioning properly, “…we smile when others smile at us, we nod our heads when we agree, and we frown when friends tell us of their misfortunes.” It also sends signals down to our heart and lungs, slowing down our heart rate and increasing the depth of our breathing, making us feel calm and relaxed, centered, or pleasurably aroused. 

Dr. Van Der Kolk explains that any threat to our safety or social connections triggers changes in the vagus nerve. When something distressing happens, we automatically signal our upset in our facial expressions and tone of voice, which are meant to beckon others to come to our assistance. Our throat gets dry, our voice tense, our heart beats faster, and our respiration becomes more rapid and shallow. In other words, our bodies purposefully signal to others when we are distressed, effectively reaching out to the people who care about us for help.

And here I was desperately trying to hide my symptoms, doing everything I could think of to prevent anyone, even my closest family and friends, from realizing anything was amiss. As I saw what was happening, and clearly saw the war raging within myself that I was by definition always losing, I felt the edifice of my total self-reliance begin to collapse. I couldn’t do it all myself. I couldn’t carry it all myself. Not when I was a child, innocently looking for a way to express my rage. And not even as an adult, trying to achieve and succeed and improve all on my own. 

It was slowly becoming clear that anything that stimulated or awakened my vagus nerve immediately improved my throat symptoms. Both major emotional releases and psychedelic experiences, but also simpler things like breath holding, cool wind in my face, and playing with animals or children. I could often feel in real time my throat muscles tensing or releasing based on what I was doing moment to moment.

With time, I’ve come to see my vagus nerve’s sensitivity and tendency to shut down as a wonderful gift. I’ve realized it is akin to having a real-time barometer of how connected I am to my body and my heart at any given moment. It represents my inner child, prone to hide or run away at the first sign of something scary, but also the source of my deepest innocence and joy. 

When I abandon and dissociate from myself – by overworking, drinking too much coffee, distracting myself with social media, or not saying what I’m feeling – I can feel my throat closing down soon after. It is as if my vagus nerve switches off, protecting me from the pain emanating from my body but also throwing off my intuition, my self-awareness, and most concretely, my ability to speak, swallow, sing, or laugh. 

As soon as I find the courage to reconnect with my body, to bring my feelings back online, it always turns on again, and I have my voice back. It is the greatest blessing to receive such clear and unmistakable communication from my body – I would rather be stopped in my tracks as soon as I fall out of alignment with my authentic self, than spend years in disconnection and look back on my life with regret.

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The 10 Most Transformative Books on Personal Development I’ve Read

I’ve read hundreds of books on productivity and self-improvement over the years.

Many of them are filled with vague prescriptions or clichéd advice, but a small number were truly transformative for me. They served as intellectual lighthouses on my journey, helping me understand what was happening to me as I explored my past, my psyche, and my pain.

Here are the 10 personal development books that have been most inspiring and impactful for me, in the order in which I encountered them (all the following links are affiliate links, for which I earn a small commission at no cost to you):

Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World, by Mark Williams and Dr. Danny Penman

I found this book on an obscure online forum late one night soon after arriving in San Francisco to begin my first professional job. 

I had read a lot of philosophical or mystical accounts of meditation and mindfulness, but this book was different. It describes a series of empirical, first-hand experiments I could run to reach my own conclusions, free of unprovable metaphysical claims.

I still remember the classic “raisin experiment” – a series of prompts in which you examine a single raisin in extreme detail using one of the senses at a time – which opened up a doorway into the infinite intricacy and subtlety of my everyday perception. Since then I’ve always returned to the idea that running experiments to uncover my own truths is far more powerful than just accepting someone else’s philosophy.

The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment, by Michael Singer

Michael Singer’s first book, which I wrote about in The Untethered Soul: The Roadmap of My Personal Growth, has been like a user’s manual for my mind over the last decade. I’ve reread the book multiple times, and each time I’m astounded at how Singer is able to describe almost exactly what I’m experiencing inside the confines of my mind in such vivid detail.

It has served as a roadmap in my journey, reassuring me that each dissolution of a part of my identity is a good thing even when it feels disconcerting. 

His second book, The Surrender Experiment, is an autobiography of his spiritual journey, including his incredible achievements in business. It gave me hope that success in business is not incompatible with the spiritual life and that the former could even be a gateway to the latter. 

Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism, by adrienne maree brown

Adrienne maree brown’s book Emergent Strategy is a mainstay in political activist circles. I picked it up at my then-girlfriend Lauren’s suggestion and was skeptical at first, expecting a lot of sociopolitical theory and shrill finger-wagging.

Instead, I was shocked to discover a powerful framework based on nature metaphors for understanding and shaping change, systems, interdependence, and power, which I summarized in Emergent Strategy: Organizing for Social Justice.

Her followup book, Pleasure Activism, is an even more radical exploration of the “politics of pleasure,” and has influenced my thinking for years as I learned to tap into pleasure as a source of motivation in my work. I wrote about my takeaways in Pleasure as an Organizing Principle.

Man Enough: Fathers, Sons and the Search for Masculinity, by Frank Pittman

This was another book I read at Lauren’s recommendation. It is an exploration of what is known today as “toxic masculinity,” including all the ways our upbringing and societal expectations shape our understanding of what it means to be a man and a father.

Pittman was a psychiatrist, and thus his writing isn’t about abstract theories or political diatribes. It’s rooted in the real conversations and experiences of his patients, which gives his ideas a vulnerable, personal grounding.

His book helped me see and understand how masculinity had been communicated across generations in my family, how that legacy had affected me, and which parts I wanted to embrace or reject in my own life and parenting.

It Didn’t Start With You, by Mark Wolynn

Mark Wolynn’s book, which I wrote about in It Didn’t Start With You: How to Understand and Heal from Intergenerational Trauma, opened my eyes to the tremendous importance of family history in unraveling one’s own individual trauma. 

You would think that discovering how unresolved trauma is passed down through generations would feel like a great burden, adding to the already formidable burden imposed by a single life’s experiences. Instead, I experienced this revelation as a tremendous relief. Finally I had the context to understand why so much of my pain seemed to come from before I was even born.

Up until that point, I had never realized what a weighty responsibility it had been to feel that all my problems and shortcomings were mine and mine alone. To hold myself responsible for my own pain and its healing. This book helped me see my own healing efforts as a service to past generations of my ancestors, giving them so much more meaning and significance.

The Yoga of Eating, by Charles Eisenstein

Charles Eisenstein’s book, which I wrote about in The Yoga of Eating: Food as a Source of Information, gave me a whole new perspective on eating and food and its importance in cultivating my intuition and self-awareness.

I had never thought much about food, considering it a mere source of fuel for my brain. But as I got older, what I ate started to have a bigger impact on how I felt and performed. So I knew it was time to revisit that relationship.

Eisenstein’s book is such an unorthodox approach to this topic. It’s not based on science, nor does it recommend any particular diet. It’s about reframing how you understand the very nature of food – not just as macronutrients but as a potent source of information flowing from the external world into your cells.

The Body Keeps the Score, by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk’s book is an encyclopedic tour de force of many aspects of trauma and its treatment, which I summarized in The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Treatment of Trauma.

This book rose to international mega-bestseller status, despite its semi-technical and often winding prose. I think that’s because it has become the banner for a broad increase in awareness of trauma, a complex and nuanced subject that can take many forms and has many potential causes and forms of treatment.

Our society is becoming “trauma-informed,” and this book is the best deep dive into what that often charged and misunderstood word really means in the context of our lives.

How Emotions Are Made, by Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett

Dr. Lisa Feldman Barret’s book gave me a completely new way of understanding emotions and how they work, which I recounted in How Emotions Are Made: The Theory of Constructed Emotion.

This book is mostly about the science of emotions, which is helpful for avoiding many of the unfounded assumptions and ancient cultural baggage around the topic. Dr. Barrett’s work creates a bridge between the heart and the mind, giving us a way to think and reason about our emotions, but also a way to feel into our thoughts.

I believe that emotions are the most important frontier of personal development in society today, and understanding what they are at the most fundamental level is crucial for exploring that frontier.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

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VidCon 2024: 8 Takeaways on How YouTube and the Creator Economy Are Changing

In June 2024, I attended VidCon, the preeminent global conference on YouTube and all things Creator Economy.

It was the first large-scale event of its kind I’ve ever been a part of, and it introduced me to many fascinating and surprising trends emerging on the Internet.

Here are my top takeaways from the conference that are going to inform my work on our YouTube channel:

#1 – YouTube is becoming increasingly influential and dominant

YouTube continues to encroach on and replace traditional media consumption channels like cable television. In fact, the fastest growing device for YouTube viewing is connected TVs, and 10% of total TV-watching time in the U.S. is now spent on YouTube alone, outpacing all other digital platforms including Netflix. 

During a panel on TV viewing habits, it was fascinating to watch a veteran Disney VP repeatedly defer to Mr. Beast’s content strategist when it came to questions of how best to reach online audiences.

In the last five years, media spending on digital platforms (which includes all advertising spent by companies) has grown from $1 billion to $7 billion USD, an astonishing rise that shows no signs of slowing down.

Yet that’s still only 1.9% of the $360 billion in media spending per year in the U.S., meaning there’s still enormous room for growth. 

#2 – Creators are starting to figure out how to “exit”

In the past, most YouTubers were “accidental” – they stumbled onto the platform to pursue a geeky side interest or just for fun, and then unexpectedly found traction. These days, in contrast, creating content online has become a full-fledged career being pursued by millions.

I attended a session with the founders of The Game Theorists channel, MatPat and Steph, who create videos analyzing and explaining video games. After 13 years building multiple channels and acquiring tens of millions of subscribers, they were acquired by Lunar X in 2022. As part of the several years’ long transition, MatPat will be replaced with 4 other “hosts” who have been working with the company for as long as 10 years.

This points to one reason why “Goodbye YouTube” videos have become such a trend. The first generation of professional YouTubers is approaching their 40s, and many of them are truly leaving the platform. As they plan their exits, they’re experimenting with a range of options, from simply disappearing and riding off into the sunset, to bringing on other talent to their channels, to selling their IP to larger media companies.

Interestingly, one panelist noted that it’s worth building a YouTube channel with such an exit in mind, even if you never plan on leaving, because it will lead to a more sustainable, less risky, and more profitable backend business.

#3 – The difficulty of staying on top

Related to the above, one theme that I kept noticing throughout the event was just how difficult it is to stay on top. In various sessions, I heard from people who’d been at the top (whether measured by subscriber counts, views, or clout) only to lose their spot in the limelight as trends shifted and younger, harder-working YouTubers took their place.

The amount of work it takes to stay relevant on the platform seems staggering, with 70 or 80-hour workweeks seemingly common. This reinforced for me how challenging it is to create a sustainable business in an inherently unpredictable, quickly changing, trend-driven creative industry like the Creator Economy. And it made me all the more determined to find less fickle, longer-term income sources (such as books) that don’t depend on the whim of an algorithm.

#4 – Are you the Network, the Show, or the Talent?

We’re definitely seeing an expansion in the power and influence of major creators in mainstream culture.

One session explored how creators were once viewed primarily as “talent,” essentially using YouTube to kickstart their acting or hosting career in Hollywood. YouTubers like Lilly Singh were lauded for leveraging their online viewership to make the jump to “legitimate” TV shows and movies. 

But power, money, and influence are increasingly flowing to online creators, who command the vast audiences that major media companies are desperately trying to reach. This has led some creators to begin identifying primarily with a “show” – a repeatable format that often gets released as a series of similar videos over time. This gives the creator more options and more negotiating leverage, since a show can be taken over by another host, or sold to a different network, without losing its original appeal.

We’re now entering a third era, in which creators are accruing so much power and money that they are starting to see themselves as something even bigger – as a network unto themselves. For example, the aforementioned creators of The Game Theorist channel have expanded over time to include The Film Theorists, The Food Theorists, and The Style Theorists, each one applying the same format of in-depth nerdy analysis to a new category.

Lunar X didn’t merely acquire talent, or even a successful show; they acquired a thriving network of channels, which together provide far more financial and cultural weight with much less risk of any single one failing.

#5 – Generative AI is here to stay

Gen AI was a recurring theme of the conference. Seemingly everyone is experimenting with and exploring it. In the sessions I attended, I found a much more nuanced and complex view of its potential than what I typically see on social media.

A survey of online consumers presented at one session showed that 60% of them actually prefer GenAI content to human-created content. I think these are early signs that for certain people and certain topics, the sheer prolific variety that AI is capable of will make it superior.

81% of creators reported better engagement with their AI-generated content, again showing that the ability to rapidly and easily create hyper-customized content is going to appeal to certain niches and allow certain kinds of content to be created that wouldn’t be otherwise.

#6 – The incredible rise of fan culture

A keynote presentation by a YouTube executive analyzing major trends on the platform zeroed in on the rapid rise of “fan” culture over the last few years.

In their research, they found that 85% of people online aged 14-44 say they’re a fan of someone or something. 80% of those people say they use YouTube at least weekly to consume content about what they’re a fan of. 47% of Gen Z viewers say they’re part of a fandom that no one they know personally is a part of.

66% said that they watch more content unpacking or discussing the subject of their fandom, than the original content itself. This could take the form of fancams, explainers, reaction videos, fan art, or hour-long video essays analyzing every minute aspect of a new video by a prominent personality.

For example, when Rockstar Games released the trailer to its long-awaited sequel, Grand Theft Auto VI, it was viewed 93 million times in the first 24 hours, setting a new record. But fans of the franchise also immediately started creating reaction videos, breakdowns of the trailer, and detailed deep-dives, which themselves accumulated another 192 million views in the same 24-hour period.

In other words, even the most successful, viral videos are now only a stone dropped in a pond. Their true impact is amplified by the legions of fan-created ripples that grow and spread far beyond what the original video could do on its own.

Fans are morphing from passive viewers to active co-creators, with 65% of Gen Z survey respondents saying they consider themselves to be “creators”. In effect, they are partnering with the celebrities they adore and extending their reach and relevance to new levels. In YouTube’s words, “fan culture has become the central driver of emerging popular culture.”

#7 – YouTube is an economy unto itself

It’s tempting to list YouTube alongside the other major social media platforms, but my impression from VidCon is that’s not accurate. YouTube is the juggernaut of the Internet, an ever-growing black hole of attention consuming ever more of the wider economy.

I’ve always thought of YouTube as a way to attract attention and find followers, only to send them to my email newsletter for a longer-term relationship. But I was shocked to learn that there are actually 10 different ways to monetize on YouTube:

Advertising revenue (through the YouTube Partner Program)Channel memberships, where viewers pay a monthly fee for exclusive perksSuper Chat and Super Stickers, allowing viewers to pay to have their messages highlighted in live chatSuper Thanks, letting viewers purchase one-time animations to show appreciationMerchandise shelf, selling branded products directly on your channelYouTube Premium revenue, earning money when Premium members watch your contentSponsored content and brand deals, partnering with companies to promote products in your videosAffiliate marketing, earning commissions by promoting products with special linksCrowdfunding/fan funding through platforms like PatreonSelling your own products or services, using your channel to market digital or physical goods

YouTube is at its most powerful not as a lead acquisition source for other platforms, but as a self-contained, integrated economy in its own right. You can achieve all the critical components of a business – from acquiring customers to monetizing them to communicating and supporting them to developing new products and services – without leaving the platform. And as the viewership grows, that’s where the incentives will lie.

#8 – The acquisition of attention is core to every business

This is the insight that trumps all the others, because it explains both YouTube’s rapid rise, and the broader proliferation of all parts of the Creator Economy.

Every business, not just media or entertainment businesses, has to acquire attention to sell its products or services. The only thing that varies is how different businesses or industries go about that.

There have always been a variety of competing options, but as YouTube continues to grow and dominate more and more of the world’s attention, it is finding its way into every industry imaginable, whether for lead generation, community engagement, R&D, recruiting, advertising, brand awareness, customer education, or something else.

If TV was the dominant communications medium of the 20th century, and all roads led to it one way or the other, it seems like YouTube is well on its way to dominating the 21st century.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

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How Your Projects Shape Who You Are

I’ve long believed that our choices about which projects to take on are among the most important decisions we make, and now I have evidence to back it up.

In an article on the TED blog and a paper called The Methodology of Personal Projects Analysis, research professor Brian R. Little examines how the pursuit of “personal projects” powerfully affects the trajectory of our lives. 

Little pioneered the development of a field called Personal Projects Analysis, or PPA, to study how the pursuit of such projects is a fundamental component of human well-being.

“Personal projects” by his definition include not just formal ones you might focus on at work, but informal ones as well. Toddlers are pursuing a project as they learn to walk. Lovers are pursuing a project as they fall in love. All the way to the highest reaches of human achievement, like landing on the moon.

The key factors in making them “personal” are that they are personally meaningful and that they are freely chosen, not imposed from the outside. Little’s research has shown that such “intrinsically regulated” projects tend to be more successful and lead to greater well-being than “externally regulated” projects.

Little and his colleagues have studied the projects of thousands of people, and found that they tend to have 15 active projects on average at any given time, falling into 6 major categories:

Occupational/Work: “Make sure the department budget is done.”Interpersonal: “Have dinner with the woman in the floppy hat.”Maintenance: “Get more ink cartridges.”Recreational: “Take a cruise holiday.”Health/Body: “Lose fifteen pounds.’Intrapersonal: “Try to deal with my sadness.”

They have found that a person’s collection of personal projects not only shapes their life but even who they are at their core.

This is a fundamentally different view of “personality”: We are not limited to a collection of traits fixed at birth, or shaped in childhood. We evolve over time through personally meaningful pursuits we decide to take on. This opens up the possibility that we can purposefully choose the ways we want to change, by choosing projects that give us new skills, perspectives, and ways of thinking.

In other words, by changing what you do, you can change who you are. Your actions speak louder than words, including the words others have applied to you in the form of labels like “introverted” or “extroverted,” “ambitious” or “lazy,” “focused” or “distractable.”

Little’s research found that we can even take on new traits to more effectively pursue our personal projects. We commit to delivering a talk, and as a result, start to take on the traits of a public speaker. We say yes to a new relationship, and begin to change into someone more vulnerable. He dubs these “free traits,” like free-floating personalities, we can grab ahold of and put on like a new outfit.

It turns out that there is more than “nature vs. nurture.” There is more to us than the genes we were born with, and the events that unfolded shortly after our birth. There is a third component – projects – and those projects are actively shaping who we are now and for many years into the future. 

Which is another way of saying, a single creative project can change the trajectory of your life. 

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

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Did My Bestselling Book Turn Out to Be a Financial Failure?

It’s now been two years since the release of my book Building a Second Brain. It has already reached and surpassed every goal I had for it, with 250,000 worldwide sales and many new countries and languages still to come.

On this occasion, however, I want to answer a longstanding question that is only just starting to come into focus: Has the success of this book grown the underlying business?

This was one of the most important rationales I had for writing a mainstream, traditionally published book in the first place (which I first formulated in March 2019) – to create a “loss leader” and promotional vehicle for the other products our company sells, such as courses.

With two years of hindsight and data, we can start to arrive at some answers. Let’s approach it through a series of questions.

Did the book grow our audience?

My first hypothesis was that the success of my book would significantly grow our audience. Looking at the growth trajectory of our email list over the past five years allows us to compare the period before the book and after it (the vertical line is the book’s publication date):

The graph above shows a clear inflection point right around the time my book was released, strongly suggesting it made a big impact. 

In the two years preceding the book’s release, our email list grew by 42 new subscribers per day on average (from 16,000 to 46,000 subscribers). In the two years since the book’s release, it’s grown by 108 new subscribers per day on average (from 46,000 to 125,000).

That represents a 2.6x acceleration in new subscribers per day on average. In a timeline where the book never existed and the previous growth rate remained constant, we would have ended up with 77,000 subscribers today, instead of 125,000, which means there are 48,000 people on our email list that likely wouldn’t be there if it wasn’t for the book.

Looking at social media, I compared our following on each platform where we have a presence between March 2020 (when I signed the publishing contract for Building a Second Brain) to March 2024 (when I signed for my next book).

We’ve seen tremendous growth across every platform, including 180x on LinkedIn, 147x on YouTube, 24x on Facebook, 16x on Instagram, and 13x on Twitter/X. Overall, the Forte Labs audience grew 28x over these four years, an incredible result.

In this chart showing the trajectories of each platform over the last two years, you can clearly see that they fall into three distinct groups: the low-effort platforms where we only repurpose content from elsewhere (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn), the high-effort platforms we focus on (Twitter/X and the newsletter), and then YouTube, which stands on its own due to the power of the algorithm in continuously finding new audiences for our videos.

I can definitively say that my book succeeded in massively growing our audience. There were several additional factors, such as the major investments we made into YouTube over the same time period, and pandemic-fueled growth, but I still conclude that most of this wouldn’t have happened in the absence of my book.

Next, I’ll turn my attention to whether all those new followers and subscribers actually led to growth in the underlying business.

What is our audience worth?

Although there are a lot of intangible or difficult-to-measure benefits of writing a bestselling book, the one I’m interested in most is the financial return-on-investment. If the numbers don’t make sense, then everything else is a wash.

If there are 48,000 subscribers on our email list who wouldn’t be there otherwise, I wanted to calculate how much revenue they would theoretically add to the business. I know our Lifetime Customer Value is $720, so assuming we can convert 10% of those subscribers to customers, that suggests $3.4 million dollars in potential revenue.

Now, realizing that potential revenue is an entirely different question. In late 2023, we stopped offering live cohorts, which were our primary revenue source up until then. This made it significantly harder to monetize all those new followers, forcing us to depend on lower-priced products such as self-paced courses.

Looking at the onboarding survey for those courses, the main ways people found out about us are YouTube (this includes other people’s channels as well as our own), and in second place, my books.

Cross-referencing these referral numbers with our course sales over the past couple years indicates that about $486,000 of our revenue came by way of books, which suggests that we’ve only successfully realized 14% of the potential revenue of this new, larger audience.

Did my bestselling book turn out to be a financial failure?

My strategy with the BASB book was to treat it as a “loss leader” in favor of monetizing via courses, and now I have the chance to determine whether that’s panned out.

Looking only at the book itself, we’ve spent $1.13 million dollars ($570,000 on staff costs plus $560,000 on everything else) on its creation and promotion so far. On the revenue side, book advances have added up to $498,000, and if we add another $486,000 in course referrals, that adds up to $984,000 in total book-related revenue. Which means five years after the start of the project and two years since publication, we’ve yet to break even and are still about $146,000 in the red.

Adding YouTube to the picture, we’ve made $840,000 (via Google AdSense, sponsored videos, and course referrals) and spent $576,000, for a profit of $264,000. Our YouTube videos have been both funded by book revenue and inspired by the content of the book, so I doubt this performance would have been possible without the book. Considering the book and YouTube channel together, they’ve made $1.8M and cost $1.7M, slightly more than breaking even.

The great confounding factor in this entire analysis is that we are in the midst of an “online course winter,” as the immense surge of enthusiasm for everything digital that the pandemic unleashed is now giving way to an exodus, as people want to spend their time and money elsewhere. Nearly all course creators I know are struggling, and in a couple of years, we may see all these numbers turn around.

But if I’m being brutally honest with myself, the financial picture of my book has thus far been pretty mediocre. 

Despite its runaway success in terms of copies sold, I made three major mistakes that are making it difficult for us to capitalize on that success:

I spent too much money in the leadup and initial launch of the book, putting us deep into a financial hole that is now taking a long time to climb out of (I probably should have been more conservative with my spending and investments from the beginning).We killed our flagship program and main source of revenue just as our following was exploding (it probably would have been better to change and adapt the live cohort-based course to the needs of readers, rather than killing it completely).We didn’t create a clear pathway from reading the book to taking a course that picked up where it left off (our self-paced Foundation course is largely an alternative to the book in video form).

Essentially, I assumed and hoped that the “rising tide” of the book would “lift all boats” in the business, but without a clear pathway to a profitable course, and no funds held in reserve that would have helped us to build that pathway, we’ve been unable to translate much of the flood of interest we’ve received into profitability.

The big open question for the future is whether subsequent books will change this equation. I’ve already noticed that the short follow-up companion The PARA Method, which I released just a year after Building a Second Brain, has been almost pure profit, since it takes advantage of all the infrastructure and the following created by the first book and thus required very little new spending. 

My next book, on the practice of annual life reviews, will come out in the fall of 2026 and represent my first major title since BASB, and thus the first true test of whether my book writing efforts can be profitable long term.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

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Rewriting My Financial Story: How I Healed My Relationship with Money

I recently attended a 3-day intensive program designed to shift people’s attitudes toward money, hosted by executive coach and teacher Joe Hudson and his team.

I didn’t really know what I was in for. I went mostly to accompany my wife Lauren, who said she needed a new perspective on money and thought I might get something out of it too.

What I got was so much more profound and multi-faceted than I ever could have imagined: a deep understanding of where my mindset toward money came from, how it has shaped my life and my decisions, and how to change it to serve me better.

The origins of my story about money

Like everything in life, my stories about money began when I was a child. As the program unfolded and we spent hours examining our most deep-seated memories and beliefs toward the subject, I slowly began to uncover three core pillars of my financial mindset.

Core pillar #1: We have enough money, but I don’t deserve it

In my earliest years, I received two conflicting messages about money: the first, that we had enough of it and therefore didn’t need to worry about it.

I knew my grandfather had been a successful entrepreneur and left us with a comfortable inheritance. In my family, we always talked openly about his legacy, how much he left to us, and how we planned to manage and invest it.

The second story was that we needed to be frugal. My father was a professional artist, supporting a family of four kids in Orange County (he always reminded us), and his spending decisions reflected his constant concern for keeping us financially stable.

I reconciled these two seemingly incompatible messages by believing, “We have plenty of money, but I don’t deserve it.” In other words, I made it about me and my worth. Money became synonymous with a feeling of deservedness, approval, and love, which means I interpreted my father’s tight fist as him withholding his love from me.

As I grew up into adulthood, this subconscious story manifested itself in profligate, even wasteful, spending. I found that I could spend money on myself and instantly receive that feeling of deservedness and recognition I craved. And I didn’t have to worry about the long-term consequences, because I knew someday that sizable inheritance from my family would arrive to rescue me.

This attitude followed me throughout my 20s, and I was always on the edge of financial solvency as a result. My spending criterion was simple: if I had the money, I spent it. It almost didn’t matter what it got spent on – I wasn’t into luxury or status goods thankfully, but for travel, tech, eating out, and books and courses, I spared no expense.

But something changed in 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic: I began making a lot of money for the first time in my life. The worldwide lockdowns created immense demand for the kind of course I’d been teaching for several years at that point, and I was perfectly positioned to reap ten-fold growth in the business.

This may seem like a fairytale ending, the perfect resolution for my chronic overspending. In reality, it exaggerated my existing habits and made my finances even worse. 

The rapidly growing balance of my bank account only meant I had even more to spend, and spend I did, on everything from hiring employees and contractors to expensive video production gear to buying cryptocurrency. It was all so easy to justify in the name of “investing in future growth” and preparing for a glorious future in which our revenue would continue to grow at the same rate for years to come.

Well, it didn’t. And starting in mid-2022 our sales began a free fall. The online course market was rapidly evolving as many other live, cohort-based courses flooded the market. The end of the pandemic meant people wanted to socialize and get out of the house, not sit at their computers on Zoom. We cannibalized our own sales by publishing our previously exclusive content in multiple forms for cheap or free. I had over-hired and over-invested, and suddenly there was no underlying business to justify it all.

Looking back with a couple of years of hindsight, there was a specific moment when my stance toward money caught up to me. It was the moment I had to lay off half the team at short notice. People I cared about suddenly lost jobs they loved, lost their health insurance, and had to scramble to support their families. This was the moment that I realized my attitude toward money wasn’t just affecting me; it was hurting many others.

The cycle of shame was complete: in trying to spend money to feel worthy and deserving, I’d wasted it, leading to a self-fulfilling future in which I felt like a failure who was even less worthy or deserving.

Core pillar #2: It’s shameful to care too much about money

There was another memory that vividly came to mind as we began the weekend: I was about 10 years old, standing by our backdoor in my parent’s house, next to my father, and I told him offhand that I didn’t want to worry about money – I just wanted to earn “enough to pay the bills” and spend my time doing work I cared about.

I know this was a core memory because I can remember feeling shocked by the strength of my father’s response: he replied sharply that it was irresponsible and dangerous to not care about money. In that moment, I realized that I had believed up until that point that my father didn’t care about money, and that was why he conserved it so much. I had expected a nod of approval when I said I also didn’t care about it. His sharp response made me see that it was in fact the opposite: he cared about it quite a bit because its presence or absence determined whether he was allowed to pursue his art full time, or would be forced to make money in other ways.

In retrospect, my takeaway from that conversation was that my father cared too much about money, and therefore I wasn’t going to care about it at all. The belief I internalized was: “It’s shameful to think about, worry about, or grub after money.” 

Frugality took on a negative connotation in my mind, associated with such words as “small-minded,” “fearful,” and “selfish.” It felt to me like retreating from life, like missing out on life’s pleasures. As a result I developed a judgment toward anyone who was too frugal: careful investors who analyzed every investment option, budgeters who meticulously tracked their expenses, and penny-pinchers who spent time clipping coupons or going to garage sales.

Looking back, I can see that overspending was my subconscious way of trying to escape the scarcity and fear I so strongly associated with saving money. The entire world of finances felt constrictive and limiting to me, and therefore I did everything in my power to avoid it. That included refusing to make or follow a budget, save or invest for the future, or create a financial plan.

In other words, I formed a domination relationship with money: either I dominate it or it dominates me. The main way I tried to dominate it was by refusing to give it attention, or time, and starving it of oxygen. Once in a while, when it ran out and became an emergency, I was forced to give it my attention, but only begrudgingly.

Core pillar #3: Money is easy to make

The previous two beliefs – that spending money was a way to feel loved and that it was wrong to conserve it or give it too much attention – might have led me to financial ruin, except for the third pillar of my relationship with money: that it was easy to make.

I found early on that I had a gift for entrepreneurship, probably inherited from my grandfather and great-great grandfather.

In a weird way, this third pillar both justified and amplified the previous two. I could afford to keep spending like crazy because I knew there was always more where that came from. And I could afford not to manage and cultivate my money too carefully because again, I had a way to replenish my reserves despite all the gaping leaks.

However, as long as I kept spending my money as fast as I made it, I was stuck in place. I couldn’t grow my business significantly, or outsource or delegate key functions, or invest in automation or scale. At various points in my entrepreneurial journey, I’ve had to face the fact that I am a highly-paid employee of my own company, not the owner of a true business that I can step away from.

The bottleneck on my entrepreneurial growth has never been my ability to generate revenue – it has always been my ability to generate a profit, and a crucial component of that is ensuring our expenses remain in check.

Owning my projections onto money

One of the main frameworks we used during the weekend was to treat money as if we had a real relationship with it, almost like a person. That included all the aspects of any complex, long-term relationship: past hurts and resentments, pent up rage or disappointment, recurring unhealthy patterns, as well as unexpressed love and gratitude.

This also meant that we had projections toward money, and the single most powerful exercise for me involved owning those projections. 

A projection can be understood as a defense mechanism in which someone unconsciously attributes their own unacceptable thoughts, feelings, or traits to another person. It’s a ubiquitous feature of human psychology, a tool we use to avoid acknowledging undesirable aspects of ourselves (and thus avoid feeling the associated emotions) by perceiving them in others instead. It’s like judging a painting for its flaws without realizing it is in fact a mirror.

We went around the circle apologizing to money for the qualities we had projected onto it, and embracing those same qualities in ourselves instead. After a few fairly tame ones, and as my next turn approached, I began to feel an intense wrenching feeling in my gut. Tears began to pour freely from my eyes before it was even clear what I was going to say. As my turn began, I found myself saying to the others around the circle, as if with a voice that wasn’t mine, “This is the hard one guys. I’m going to need your help…”

What followed was one of the most intense and unexpected physical reactions I’ve ever had in such a setting. My whole body began shuddering, my feet stomping on the floor as I hopped up and down in my chair. Suddenly I began breathing rapidly, with sharp in and out breaths like I was running up a hill. I felt unable to speak at first, and instead made a series of animal-like growling, whimpering, and shouting noises. At one point I burst into hysterical high-pitched crying that lasted only a few seconds before abruptly stopping. I kept trying to meet the eyes of the others around the circle, but each time I encountered their gaze, my body would react again.

I remember watching all of this unfold like a spectator, my internal witness in awe of my body’s capacity to integrate a new perspective at the somatic level. I believe that’s what was happening: my body was wrestling and writhing with an idea the way a boa constrictor might wrestle with prey, or the way a woman might give birth. I knew that my ability to allow all this to happen, to let my body do what it needed to do without (too much) fear or self-judgment, was the culmination of years of work on my part. What I mostly felt was pride.

Eventually, once my body had completed its process, I was able to complete the sentence: that I had projected onto money that only it had the capacity to make change in the world, when in fact, that was just a way of avoiding facing the reality that it was me who had that capacity.

I couldn’t quite believe that this was the sentence that most triggered and confronted me. It felt almost cliche, like a motivational slogan. But in saying it again and again, each time a little more integrated and heartfelt, it dawned on me that I had never fully accepted this possibility. 

I’d spent much of the last decade trying as hard as I could to make a positive impact, from teaching English in South America to working in microfinance in Colombia to volunteering in the Peace Corps in Ukraine to starting an education business on the Internet. This endless striving came from an insatiable need to make a difference, to feel like my life mattered. 

I’d spent years proclaiming from the rooftops, via various globe-spanning online platforms, that I was making a difference. I’d documented and displayed the evidence proving to everyone I was making a difference, had harangued my team that we needed to make more of a difference, and plotted ever more grandiose plans to make an even bigger difference in the future. 

And yet, as I was smashing down the gas pedal on “making a difference,” I was simultaneously smashing the brake with the other foot, refusing to truly let in the evidence and the feeling that I was already doing so. The feeling that my mere existence, my life, made a difference, and that I didn’t need to justify it to anyone.

This was the feeling that I had to use every bodily movement to let in: that the central driving purpose of my life had been fulfilled, and in fact was always already fulfilled. I had created the story that “I wasn’t worthy” in order to make sense of the world as a child, but since that gaping hole inside of me was created by me, it was only me who could fill it, not any external form of achievement or recognition.

Inheriting my family’s attitude toward money

Another major theme for me during the program was coming to terms with the ways my family’s attitude toward money over the generations had been passed down to me.

First, and most immediately apparent, was a deep feeling that I didn’t deserve to be the recipient of all the sacrifices they’d made. Perhaps this was the true source of my sense of undeservedness, which I had interpreted as coming from my father. 

I know a lot about all four strands of our family line because my mom is an avid genealogical researcher. 

We know about the 17th-century religious wars our ancestors got caught up in as French Protestants, the persecution and discrimination they fled by escaping to the Netherlands and then the UK, the difficulty of traveling across the Atlantic to Canada only to face more discrimination, the harsh years they survived as immigrants in upstate New York, and the many tragedies and hardships they endured from car accidents to fatal illnesses to broken marriages.

I know all the vivid details of how they struggled to make ends meet, and what they had to give up to provide for their families. All that information has often felt like a gigantic burden on my shoulders: Who am I to be the beneficiary of so much pain and sacrifice? 

Paradoxically, having “enough” money has sometimes felt like it creates a sense of intense urgency, because I have no excuse to not realize my dreams and goals.

I realized I’d adopted a strange mindset as a result: that if I worked hard my entire life, maybe, just maybe at the end of it, I would deserve the money I’d received at the beginning. It was as if I placed the feeling of deservedness and worthiness at the end of a long road, and told myself I had no choice but to walk it. In other words, I would have to work just as hard to “deserve” the wealth I already had as if I never had it in the first place! This is what’s known as a “double bind” – a pair of contradictory beliefs held in place to ensure you can never win.

My family’s financial prosperity has made my pursuit of meaning feel harder. It has never felt like enough for me to survive, or merely prosper. The privilege of starting life’s race at the halfway mark has led me to feel like I can’t ever complain, can’t have problems, can’t relax. I’m afraid that my efforts and sacrifices won’t mean anything. I’m afraid the (even more) money we’ll leave to our kids will make their lives feel meaningless.

Considering all this in the weeks following the program, I realized that my family never left behind the scarcity mindset toward money they had adopted through the ordeals of immigration, the Great Depression, and the World Wars. My grandfather had grown up with a conservative, working-class mindset toward money, and never truly gave it up or learned to enjoy it even as he grew a successful business. He passed his money on to my father, who also refused to spend it, and is now passing it on to me with the same mindset intact.

I don’t know what exactly will change for me as a result of this weekend program, but I do already see my place in this legacy very differently: not to continue amassing wealth with no end in sight, nor to spend it thoughtlessly like it doesn’t matter. I’m starting to perceive a middle path between those two extremes: I can use the financial capacity that’s been passed down to me to heal the pain that gave rise to it in the first place. The privilege I embrace is the privilege of healing my family’s relationship to money, and moving us out of the realm of scarcity and fear for generations to come.

I can summarize my family’s attitude toward money as “Money is fine as long as we have enough of it.” I can see and appreciate how important that simple heuristic has been to help us survive through the centuries and across continents. I can also see that at some point, that becomes a limiting belief, because there is more to money than merely having enough. There are deeper and more subtle questions that I now have the freedom to explore, such as how I can invest that money and honor my ancestors’ sacrifice while still honoring my own life.

If you’d like to explore this kind of personal development work for yourself, check out the various courses and workshops offered by Joe Hudson’s company The Art of Accomplishment. You can also join their newsletter to hear about the programs they offer year-round, including one-time retreats like the one I attended, which are only open to course graduates. 

To give you a taste of what it’s like to work with Joe, he has shared excerpts from his coaching sessions related to money, including how to make money doing what you love and how to feel financially safe. I can also recommend the following episodes of the Art of Accomplishment podcast:

Money Can’t Save YouMoney Can’t Oppress YouMuch Ado About Money

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Rewriting My Financial Story: How I Healed My Relationship with Money appeared first on Forte Labs.

Digital Attention Spans: AI as a Source of Infinite Patience

I recently came across a Substack post by Venkatesh Rao called Oozy Intelligence in Slow Time that was one of the most insightful I’ve ever read for understanding the nature of Artificial Intelligence.

We tend to think of Artificial Intelligence as being in an arms race with Human Intelligence. Which one is smarter? When will AI surpass us?

But there is a hidden assumption buried in that comparison: that intelligence is best measured by its peak moments – the flash of brilliance, the sudden epiphany, the intellectual breakthrough.

Rao suggests that we look instead at a completely different aspect of intelligence: how much it costs.

Human intelligence is tremendously costly. Most of our time is spent simply maintaining this high-performance machine we call our body. Eating, drinking, sleeping, grooming, socializing, resting, etc. can all be seen as “overhead costs” needed to merely keep us alive.

Because it costs so much just to function each day, every minute of focused attention we spend requires a certain return-on-investment to be justified. We are constantly making choices to maximize that “return” on our attention: Do I spend the next 30 minutes working out, or cleaning the kitchen? Do I spend today working on this project, or that project?

Activities that don’t meet our threshold for “required return” don’t get our attention, plain and simple. This can be understood as a kind of “minimum wage” that our brain must earn, otherwise it refuses to work. 

We make this calculation fairly seamlessly any time we consider engaging in an activity:

We might be willing to spend 10 minutes reading an interesting article, but not if it takes 30 minutes (“too long, didn’t read”).We might be willing to drive 20 minutes to eat at an exciting new restaurant, but not if it takes an hour.If you buy an appliance for your home that costs $20, but you spent 2 hours reading reviews and evaluating the options, the return on that purchase is lower than if you had instead received and acted on a trusted recommendation from a friend

This is part of what makes learning anything new so challenging: you have to spend lots and lots of time, with little return on that investment, in order to gain some future reward that isn’t even guaranteed. It’s akin to investing a lot of money into something without knowing if it will ever pay you back.

Another way of defining the “minimum wage threshold” for our brains is patience.

Rao asks: “How often are you in the mood to do boring, tedious, bureaucratic tasks (such as filling out forms, doing your taxes, or opening postal mail)?”

His answer, and mine, is: not often. It’s not that I don’t have the time for such tasks. It’s not that I’m not smart enough or don’t know how to complete them. The problem is that they require too much patience (i.e. they fail to meet my brain’s minimum wage threshold). I thus “can’t afford” to spend my attention on them, and instead tend to put them off for as long as humanly possible, usually until some catastrophic consequence becomes threatening enough that I have no choice.

If you think about it, there are many such tasks that would produce immense benefits for us, if we just had the patience to do them:

Spending hundreds of hours learning a new language or how to codeReviewing every note you’ve taken over the last few years for buried ideas or insightsOrganizing all your personal contacts in a searchable Notion database

These kinds of tasks involving collecting, organizing, summarizing, formatting, and reviewing information would be tremendously valuable if we did them, but often fall into the “requires too much patience” category for most people.

This is where AI becomes so powerful. AI effectively lowers the patience threshold to almost nothing. There is no task that is too boring, too mundane, too repetitive, or “beneath its dignity.” Unlike us, grinding away on such tasks doesn’t annoy it, ruin its motivation, give it a bad attitude, or make it angry at us. It is a dutiful employee requiring a minimum wage of virtually zero.

This is a very different way of understanding AI’s value. It’s not AI’s superintelligence or blazing speed that make it valuable to us: it’s AI’s patience in completing an endless series of tedious tasks that are too far below our patience threshold for us to justify doing at all.

Our attention is expensive, and thus can only be spent on activities with a clear outcome that can be achieved in a predictable amount of time. Whereas AI has an almost infinite amount of attention that is so cheap it can be spent lavishly, even wastefully, on activities that would never be worth our time. We can afford to spend this newly abundant form of intelligence on tasks that are below the minimum wage our brains are willing to work for.

The two components of patience

If we stopped here, this would mean that the main use for AI is completing our boring to-do lists for us. But there’s a level deeper to consider, because patience has two components that can be separated: time and detail.

As you toil away filing your taxes, for example, there are two factors that determine how much patience it takes: the level of detail that you’re required to process and the time it takes to do so. It is the combination of many complex details you have to process over a long span of time that makes taxes so excruciating.

The crucial thing to understand is that we have a minimum AND maximum threshold for BOTH the time we’re willing to spend and the number of details we’re willing to process:

If it takes too much time, we get impatient and opt out (think of a movie where not enough is happening to hold your attention)If it doesn’t take enough time, we get overwhelmed and opt out (think of a short-form video that is so fast it’s aggravating to watch)If it presents too much detail, we get frustrated and opt out (think of a book going way too deep into a technical topic you don’t understand)If it presents not enough detail, we get bored and opt out (think of a children’s book with not enough complexity to be interesting to us)

In other words, as humans, we have a clearly defined “window of attention” that limits what we’re able to pay attention to for long periods. Our attention span is an actual span with clear limits. Anything outside of that – that either moves too slowly or too quickly, that demands too much of our brains or too little – is tremendously expensive for us to attend to.

When you say “I don’t have patience for that,” you’re not saying you don’t have enough time. You’re really saying “That is below the level of detail I can sustainably process at the required rate.”

Thomas Carlyle once said, “Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains.” The word “pain” is informative in this sense – it is actually painful for us to stay outside our window of attention for long. The brain has a “focal length” it is comfortable with, like our eyes, and that attention span evolved for chasing and hunting down an animal about our own size, or picking fruit from trees; anything outside of that feels unnatural and painful for us.

This might seem like a discouraging and even fatalistic view of human potential: there are just some things we can pay attention to, and some we can’t.

But there’s another detail that Rao highlights here: that time and detail interact and influence each other. They are not independent variables: changing one actually changes the other.

Consider that looking at a raindrop with your naked eye might be boring, but if you zoom in with a microscope, you’ll see millions of microorganisms blooming and buzzing in stunning diversity. The classic example of “watching paint dry” would be terribly exciting if you could zoom in to the molecular level and watch the symphony of chemical reactions playing out.

In other words, the more you zoom in, the faster things are happening. The rate at which time passes for you depends partially on how much information you can take in. It’s not that time is actually speeding up or slowing down – your perception of time is speeding up or slowing down, and that perception is strongly influenced by how much detail and complexity you can take in and process.

Considering this idea, perhaps it is not people’s intelligence that limits what they can pay attention to and learn: it is their patience. And what limits their patience is not some stoic quality of their character, but their ability to zoom in and take in enough detail that reality feels interesting.

This also changes our view of what exceptionally patient people are doing. It’s not that they have some inner reserve of steely endurance – it’s that they’re better at operating at a level of detail where things happen faster.

The gardener absorbed in the intricacies of trimming a bonsai tree, or the basketball player shooting hundreds of free throws in one practice session, or the chess grandmaster playing through dozens of alternatives of a match – maybe these people aren’t abnormally patient; they’re just better at zooming in to a level of detail in their craft that the full bandwidth of their attention can be occupied.

We tend to think of patience as primarily a moral virtue, alongside work ethic, honesty, integrity, and empathy. What if instead we removed the moral framing, and thought of it instead as a side effect of the way we consume information?

AI could be used to tweak and tune information with the goal of fitting it into our preferred window of attention. Instead of treating the content we consume as one-size-fits-all, we could use AI to modify that content so that it’s at the right speed and the right level of detail such that it feels captivating and enlivening for us to pay attention to.

If a piece of content is too detailed, we can ask AI to summarize and distill it for us in ways that a novice can understand. If a piece of content is not detailed enough, we can ask AI to elaborate and add more sources and examples.

If a piece of content is coming at you too fast, you can ask AI to slow it down, break it into chunks, and give it to you one piece at a time. If it’s coming too slowly, you can ask it to move faster and progress to more advanced topics sooner.

I can foresee a future in which we rarely consume a given piece of content without changing it to suit our preferred window of attention. A future in which we run all our content through an AI curator who refines and modifies it to fit how our brains work. Not doing so will feel like buying a pair of shoes without trying them on for size.

In that future, patience won’t be considered a moral virtue – it will be considered a failure to properly utilize the tools at our disposal to customize our experience according to our needs.

If you’d like to read the Substack post by Venkatesh Rao called Oozy Intelligence in Slow Time yourself, click here.

Follow us for the latest updates and insights around productivity and Building a Second Brain on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and YouTube. And if you’re ready to start building your Second Brain, get the book and learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

The post Digital Attention Spans: AI as a Source of Infinite Patience appeared first on Forte Labs.