It's so sad that @ribbonfarm is retiring...

But the blog post announcing it does SUCH a good job of explaining why the blogging era has ended, what that means for how writing online is produced and consumed, and how that affects business models based on digital text

🧵👇 1. "The cultural reign of the blog, roughly 2000-20 or so, coincided with the second full chapter of the internet. Far more than aggregators, photo-sharing services, or social feeds, the blog was “Web 2.0.”"

Only now do we have the distance and sense of perspective to see blogging as just one era among many. I feel like I was practically raised on blogs, and it was difficult to imagine them ever going away

But it's now clear that blogs were native to a 20-year period that was early in the Internet's growth, when it was still somewhat difficult to get your writing live on a webpage. It was before distribution became all important, and having a reliable place people could go to was all you needed to stand out

It was also, as @vgr notes, a side effect of low interest rates, fueled by lots of underemployed pseudo-intellectuals.

I finally read the How To Succeed At Mr. Beast PDF...

And I think it's the most important piece for understanding YouTube, the Creator Economy, and what it means to do business on the Internet today

It's also been completely misunderstood by all the online commentators...🧵 1. "Youtube is the future and I believe with every fiber of my body it’s going to keep growing year over year and in 5 years Youtube will be bigger than anyone will have ever imagined..."

The first thing you have to understand is that YouTube has basically won the Internet. It's not just one among many other similar platforms – it's fought a two-front war, against social media on one side and traditional TV on the other, and dominated both.

Like the U.S. emerging victorious from World War II after winning on both the Atlantic and Pacific fronts, it's about to reshape the Internet the same way the U.S. reshaped the world.

YouTube has the most longevity of any platform, the best creator monetization program, the most sophisticated algorithm and analytics, and the most vibrant and healthy ecosystem generally. It now constitutes 10% of ALL watch time, not just streaming, outpacing Netflix.

All of this means that whatever is happening on YT is disproportionally influential and important for understanding how the web is changing and will change.

DON’T store this information in your notetaking app 👇 My notetaking app (I use Evernote) is the center of my Second Brain ecosystem and the default place for capturing information. However, it's not the best place to store all types of information…

People often ask me how values and goals play a role in building a Second Brain

How does everything fit together?

To me, it's a pyramid with several layers!

Let me explain... The lower you go on the pyramid, the more fundamental and deeply rooted inside of you are the forces

It's more about your nature, your temperament, and who you are as a person

These things are slower to change, if at all

How to remember what to store in your Second Brain using INPUT

🧵 Newsletter reader Roman shared with me a clever acronym he developed to remember the criteria for what to save in his Second Brain. It's called INPUT:

• Inspiring
• Needed
• Personal
• Unexpected
• Topics

None of the content you consume can go on your resume

But for most of us, content consumption far outweighs content creation

Let me show you how to kickstart your creative journey using the curation method 👇 Have you heard the 90-9-1 rule? On the internet people are:

• 90% Lurkers: Mostly consume content
• 9% Interactors: Engage by commenting or sharing
• 1% Creators: Actively create new content

Seeing the most popular highlights from my books is such a fascinating way to understand what resonates with different people

Here are the 10 most popular highlights from Building A Second Brain 📖 1/10 (Part 1)

We spend countless hours reading, listening to, and watching other people’s opinions about what we should do, how we should think, and how we should live, but make comparatively little effort applying that knowledge and making it our own.

The First-Time Notetaking App User’s Playbook

(Read this if you want to streamline your workflow, enhance your creativity, and build a reliable knowledge repository)

🧵 1/ Choosing a notetaking app isn't just about features—find the right fit for your personal notetaking style:

• Architects = structure + systems
• Gardeners = spontaneity + connections
• Librarians = categorization + retrieval
• Students = simplicity + flexibility

One of the biggest misconceptions I see when it comes to notetaking apps:

That you need to keep all your notes in one notetaking app only

But I'm here to tell you that you absolutely can use different notes apps for different purposes

(It's what I do): 1. My default notes app

I use Evernote and it works for the majority of use cases

Here’s an example of how I use Evernote to plan my weekly tasks: buff.ly/3UJbPgQ

One big lie you’ve been told about productivity...

That you have some kind of obligation to the tasks on your to-do list

Here’s why my approach might surprise you: It’s a common feeling:

“I feel like a failure if I don’t get to every to-do in my task manager”

But it's based on a misconception that every task has equal weight and urgency

🧵

The number of books you read doesn’t matter

What matters is what you’re taking away and implementing from those books

This is the single most powerful habit for applying what you read in books 👇 Distill book knowledge into actionable steps

One of the most life-changing ways I’ve ever applied this trusted method is for sleep-training our newborn son after my wife Lauren and I could no longer handle the sleepless nights

If you want to stop mindlessly over-consuming content, read this:

🧵 Add all your content to a read-later app (I'm using Reader) for focused, distraction-free reading, watching, and listening

Your brain loves to ambush you with the best ideas at the worst times…

In the shower, when rocking your toddler to sleep, or when you're driving

It's how great ideas get forgotten

So this is how I NEVER let game-changing ideas slip through my fingers 👇 I call it:

Building a “capture habit”

Instead of playing “catch and release” with your ideas, make it a habit to capture your ideas right then and there so they don't slip away and you can revisit them later

Here's how to do it...

3 ways I use AI to help me remember everything I read: 1/ I use ChatGPT to create book summaries

You can’t just ask ChatGPT to create book summaries for you (they will suck), but I’ve found the perfect middle ground that blends ChatGPT’s ability with my own interpretations and notes

Here’s how I do it: buff.ly/3x6wi5F

Give me 2 minutes and I'll show you how to organize your bookmarks with the PARA Method for lightning fast web browsing What’s PARA?

It’s my simple system for organizing virtually any information in your life

Projects: Short-term efforts in work/life with a deadline

Areas: Long-term responsibilities

Resources: Topics/interests

Archive: Inactive items

Key principle = organize by actionability

Our workdays are filled with inevitable gaps…

Between meetings, waiting to pick up the kids, computer doing a software update…

It’s so tempting to spend that time scrolling aimlessly

Here are 2 things I do instead to use those gaps more "productively" 👇 Because these gaps often aren't long enough to make meaningful progress on anything, it's so easy to grab your phone and watch TikTok videos to stay occupied

I don't know about you, but this doesn't leave me refreshed and motivated to tackle whatever is next

Instead try 👇

Building a Second Brain can be transformative

But a lot of it hinges on choosing the right notetaking app

There are 6 specific criteria that I believe will help you pick the perfect app 👇 1/6 Utter reliability, like a utility

Reliability comes down to factors like:

• Near 100% uptime
• Speed and responsiveness
• Minimal software bugs and crashes

I’ve been using Evernote as my Second Brain for 10 years

6 months ago, I decided to evaluate a newer generation of apps:

• Obsidian
• Tana
• Mem

Here’s my evaluation as to whether they could qualify as my Second Brain platform 👇 1/6 Obsidian

The app of choice for a lot of PKM enthusiasts and a clear leader when it comes to link-based apps

But not the best start for me:

Faced a major hurdle setting up sync between desktop and mobile, which hinted at the complexity ahead

My first keynote was at World Domination Summit, followed shortly by a Google Talk

I immediately loved public speaking, but I soon realised winging keynotes wasn't going to cut it for the long haul

So I hired a speaking coach

Here are 5 game-changing insights I discovered 👇 1/5 Mastering public speaking is not just about delivering polished keynotes

It's an art of spontaneous self-expression and connecting authentically with any audience, big or small

Every time I start a new project, I follow a very specific 5-step checklist

• It leverages the existing information in my Second Brain
• Takes me 20-30 minutes to complete
• Helps me to execute efficiently

Here’s why 👇 I've noticed that the way most people launch projects is very haphazard, leaving it up to chance whether they will complete or not

But projects are some of our biggest investments of attention

Isn't it worth adding a little bit of structure to how we start them?

Here’s how 👇

I bet you're guilty of productively procrastinating (we all are)

Where you organize everything to avoid the thing you should be doing

Turns out learning, researching, and organizing are the most tempting forms of procrastination You can tell yourself that you're "making progress" only to avoid the point where you need to make a decision on what to do next

Even having to get feedback on every action you take is ultimately a form of procrastination

So here’s my condensed guide to dealing with this 👇