Table of contents
The first steps
After thinking for weeks about whether I should book the course, I finally decided to attend Building A Second Brain by one of my mentors when it comes to Productivity: Tiago Forte. Because I have already gained great value from the free Content (Blogposts, Youtube Videos, Book - BASB) I have watched and read from him, I decided to book his course to get deeper insights into using and working with the Second Brain.
In this post, I will talk about the first step, what you have to do before the first live session with Tiago. There are a total of 4 live sessions over the course of the next 4 weeks. Also, every Thursday there is a virtual hangout for Second Brainers to connect with each other.
After I made the payment, I got access to the portal. Before the first live session, I had to go through six steps, as you see in the picture.
Setting ourselves up for Cohort 15 of Building a Second Brain
1. 📽 Welcome Video
Short Video introduction and warm welcome from Tiago.
2. 👋🏼 Introduction
As I already know from other online courses, you could introduce yourself in the section "Introduction" and get an impression of other participants.
3. 📆 Live Sessions
Then it got serious. I was allowed to add the dates for the four live sessions to my calendar. I've been using Google Calendar for years as my calendar app. I'm very happy with the simplicity, still having enough features. What does Tony Robbins say? “If you talk about it, it's a dream, if you envision it, it's possible, but if you schedule it, it's real.”
4. 📱 Note-taking App
Now I got to choose a note-taking app. Tiago Forte has created a 4-part-video-series on how you can find the note-taking app that suits you best. If you had asked me 2 months ago, I probably would have said Notion. However, since Notion on mobile takes ages to load (biiiig barrier 🚧) and I didn't know about the great features of Evernote at the time (finding handwritten notes on images being only one of them) - I switched to Evernote a month ago. I love it. 💚Take a look at my favourite apps.
Different note-taking apps people in the course use:
5. 📑 Survey
The current note-taking capabilities by assessing myself on 12 dimensions were measured. In 4 weeks I will be doing the survey again to (hopefully) see my progress. Take a look at my result:
6. 😲 How not to get overwhelmed (applies to all online courses)
Here are the key points which resonated with me the most, reading the paragraph about "not getting overwhelmed" in the forum.
- Only read the posts you are personally interested in. For example, you don't have to read a post about Evernote if you are using Notion as your second brain. If it still interests you, skim through.
- What I still remember from Thomas Franks book, 10 Steps to Earning Awesome Grades (While Studying Less) is to really engage with the community and content - this is how you will learn the most. He describes how he used to challenge himself in college, to ask one question every lecture.
🎯 What I want to focus on
My main goal is to use my notes effectively and not get overwhelmed with the huge amount of information I have in my second brain. To achieve this, I believe that I have to first organize the notes so I can find them when needed and then distill them regularly to their core essence.To sum up my main areas of focus are:
- Organize
- Distill
💪🏼 Strengths
Because for me, valuing my strengths is as important, if not more important than working on my weaknesses I believe that I already have a great capture system. Furthermore, even though I am only producing content and sharing it with you people, for less than 3 months, I believe to have a good system for expressing my ideas.
👨🏼🏫 From theory into practice
I decided to complete the setup of my website neurohackingly.com as my project for this Cohort. What else do I have to say? (Even with a swiss vague) the course is very expensive in my opinion, so I would only recommend booking if you are SURE you will give 100%. However, there is also a 30-day money-back guarantee, if you did not get any value from it.
The First Live session in BASB has already started this Tuesday. I will be sharing everything about it next week on Thursday. Don`t want to miss it? Be sure to subscribe to my Newsletter 💌 where I share updates on my journey.
Thanks for reading and see you around!
🎧 Want to learn more about the second brain? Listen to my podcast episodes on Spotify | Google Podcast | Apple Podcasts | RSS