Thread by @mikawl_lim

1/ If you don't go buy @fortelabs new book "Building a Second Brain" RIGHT NOW... you don't have a working first brain. 🧠

Joke aside - here's why you need to get a copy today and why Tiago's work (NOT HYPERBOLE) changed my life

🧵
#basb

2/ Ever seen these floating around twitter?

"Curate don't create"

"Writing is how you improve your clarity of thought"

"I'm proud to announce I'm teaching a cohort based course on X"

Tiago is to thank for the proliferation of much of this.

3/ I first took Building a Second Brain as a high school math teacher in the Teach For America Corps.

Can you imagine having to create curriculum compelling enough to wrangle loud, distracted, horny teenagers into DOING MATH?

Quadratics, regressions.. "lord end me now" I said.

4/ But with Tiago's guidance, I slowly started collecting and remixing math visuals and frameworks from corners of the internet.

The result?

My students had a transformative learning experience. Students who didn't think they were "math people" completely changed their tune.

5/ Tiago helped me see creativity as a two stage process

1) DIVERGENT thinking, where you gather and expand directions of thought

2) CONVERGENT thinking, where you stitch threads together and output compressed creative packets.

I had never reconciled this paradox before

6/ After TFA, I worked at Bain, a fancy management consulting firm.

I had to learn an unethical amount of excel shortcuts, Fortune 500 executive politics, and the nomenclature of billion dollar semiconductor supply chains.

Guess where they went?

Into my second brain.

7/ My next gig was leading a channel for the biggest YouTuber in the world.

You bet I was storing best practices on thumbnails, editing structure, and a million other YouTube optimizations into Notion blocks using PARA.

8/ Tiago's course taught me the value of architecting an external mind within which nuggets of wisdom would go, waiting for the right time to become useful.

Cuz we never know WHEN creative muse will strike us... but we can damn sure be prepared for when it happens.

9/ Tiago isn't a guru who spouts empty words that don't resemble his lived experience.

He walks the Second Brain walk

He's used notetaking to systematically improve and iterate one of the most profitable Cohort Based Courses in history.

For over a dozen cohorts.

10/ He has a formidable work ethic but doesn't even have to wield it all the time.

Why?

Because Tiago's notes do the work for him. They arguments and connections to simmer in his subconscious as a "slow burn" until it's time to create.

11/ The man literally recorded an entire podcast season with @david_perell in like one weekend -- all thanks to his notes.

Now him and @MarcKoenig_ are growing impressively fast on YouTube (probably with the help of Second Brains)

It's "Think Smarter, not Harder"

12/ Tiago has also been an incredible mentor to me on the INNER PROCESS of creation.

He's taught me that it's important to work through unprocessed emotion (especially anger)

The man beats futons with tennis rackets while screaming.

And he's a dad.

It's incredible.

13/ "We're past the Information age. We're in the Perspective age"

Tiago says this to mean that because information has become too abundant, perspectives are more valuable than ever.

14/ Crafting persuasive arguments - with the help of well documented, atomic notes -- will help you stand out in ANY career - whether engineer, or salesperson, or Onlyfans

No matter who you are, Tiago's book will make you more effective, more wealthy, and probably happier too.

15/ Happy to call @fortelabs a mentor, a friend, and now, one of my favorite published authors :)

Go get Building A Second Brain Today! (I think it's even 46% off on kindle rn or something outrageous)