It is June of 2016, and I’m sitting quietly at my computer in a trendy cafe in downtown Oakland, California. I’m gulping down a huge, over-sweetened chai latte and sweating profusely as I log in to my computer. I’m incredibly stressed out, and using the sugar as a coping mechanism. I’m sweating not because I’m working
In this new video series, I walk you through my own learning process as I get to know Roam Research, the “note-taking tool for networked thought.” From creating my Roam account and opening the program for the first time, I’ll ask the stupid questions so you don’t have to, experiment with every feature through trial and
In the summer of 2018 I sat down with a guy named Conor at the Interval, a trendy coffee shop and bar on the Embarcadero in San Francisco. We were there to attend a conference called iAnnotate, on a niche academic topic called “web annotation.” I’d had a couple conversations with Conor online, and knew
In order to get where you’re going, you need to know where you came from. When it comes to learning, you need a way to measure your progress toward your goal. How will you know whether you learned it? How will you compare your performance before and after? What concretely will you be able to
There is one guiding question for our team as we design the Building a Second Brain course: How can we make a course that is impossible to fail? So many courses make a big promise of everything you will do and achieve…as long as you perfectly complete every lesson and comply with every requirement. I remember taking these courses.
I recently rewatched Inception, the blockbuster film directed by Christopher Nolan. The film takes place in a world where “dream sharing” technology has been developed by the military for training purposes. By hooking a group of people up to a special device and putting them to sleep at the same time, a team of dream