In Part 9, I explained why it is so important to create placeholders for your work-in-process: to allow you to pursue multiple projects acro
Over the past year, I’ve seen P.A.R.A. implementations of all shapes and sizes. I’ve seen them from every corner of the globe, in languages
In Part 4, I introduced the idea of “intermediate packets.” Instead of delivering value in a big project that spans huge amounts of time, we
I previously described how the weekly review is an operating system, funneling each bit of information you captured during the week to its p
In Part 1, I argued that curating the content of others was an excellent way to start creating content of one’s own, whether your goal is ad
In The Weekly Review is an Operating System, I detailed the process I go through each week to capture any new open loops, clear my workspace
One of the most exciting trends in coming years will be the formation of cooperative working groups made up of independent contractors. Whe
Technology has transformed every aspect of business, from the tools we use to communicate and collaborate, to how products and services are
In Part 2, I described the sublime and powerful experience of flow, which could be considered the “holy grail” of productivity. I argued tha
In Part I, I explained Progressive Summarization, a method for easily creating highly discoverable notes. In Part II, I gave you many exampl
As part of my year-end review, I always review my favorite reading of the year. These usually tend to be “long-form” online essays diving de
In Part 3, I argued that having a personal knowledge base is the linchpin of success in a creative economy. A knowledge base allows you to r
In Part 10, I argued that digital knowledge work was fundamentally different than other kinds of work, because its structure, features, and
Last year I launched the Anti-Book Club, my own take on the tradition of book clubs. The idea is simple: instead of everyone in the group re
In Part 8, we looked at divergence and convergence as the two fundamental modes of all creative work. Now let’s see what this looks like in
I recently compiled all my notes, findings, and ideas about the “ideal customer” for Building a Second Brain, and put them into a single doc
In Part 1, I introduced Return-on-Attention (ROA) as a way to evaluate how we invest our most precious resource – our attention. But there i
In Part 14, we looked at the potential for massively increasing our bandwidth by creating “personal productivity networks.” These networks a
I first came across the idea that great strengths can emerge from great constraints in Ryan Holiday’s book The Obstacle is the Way. He takes
In Part 11, I introduced the concept of a “critical path” of tasks in a project, and the rationale for pushing tasks as late as possible on
In Part 19, I argued that continuously finding new sources of motivation was the most important challenge for knowledge workers, and that th
In Part 12, I described the shift from a just-in-case to a just-in-time philosophy of work, using late starts as an example of the benefits
15 Unexpected Uses for Digital Notes
In Part 13, we looked at the benefits of Component Thinking, which involves thinking of any product we are working on as made up of subcompo
