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Building a Second Brain Membership

The Fastest Path to Build & Benefit From a Second Brain in Your Life

Leverage the momentum of live cohorts plus a powerful community to keep you accountable and continuously support you on your journey to creating the life you want.

Is all the interesting information you’re consuming leading to meaningful results in your life … or is it going to waste? 
‍

A Second Brain is already helping thousands of people around the world save their best ideas, organize their knowledge, and lead a more fulfilling life with more ease & less stress.

Join them now!

The Building a Second Brain Promise

When you join Building a Second Brain, we promise that you’ll…

Beat information overload

You’ll reduce stress and anxiety by knowing what to keep and what to ignore. Your best ideas will be preserved forever in a way you can easily find them again.

Organize your digital life

You’ll create a digital environment that promotes flow, clarity, and peace of mind so you can do your best work at any time.

Make consistent progress on your most important projects

You’ll be able to focus your time and energy on the things most meaningful to you, whether that’s your family, a new creative challenge, or your career or business growth.

Here’s how people from every profession and industry are benefiting from Building a Second Brain

Dr. Michele Gill

Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Central Florida

Steven Wilkinson

Founder and Managing Director of Good and Prosper Ltd., Wicklow, Ireland

Building a Second Brain is life-changing. I feel more organized. I know where everything goes. It's cleared up my information hoarding and replaced it with buckets for distilled work.

Barjes R. Angulo

Financial Planner

After taking the BASB course, everything has changed for me. This system is GENIUS and I'm so excited to read the book!

Savera Tasawar

Project Manager

BASB has given me a roadmap of where I want my life to go. It's sparking some creativity in all my endeavors.

Diana Lyn Davidson

Pediatric Critical Care Medicine, Artist, Writer & Photographer

BASB got me from 0 to a knowledge management system that makes me more effective by the day. This is almost an unfair advantage!

Adam Zielinski

Software Engineer

Visit our Wall of Love for more in-depth reviews of Building a Second Brain.

The Membership is your all-access pass to build, sustain, and leverage your Second Brain

Here’s what’s included with your Membership:

BASB Foundation course

Learn the fundamentals of the BASB methodology through 7 modules of succinct, polished instructional videos. Includes guided implementation steps and support to choose and set up your notetaking tool.

4 live cohorts per year

Work alongside Tiago on a personal or work project, taking it through the CODE system from start to finish. By the end of the 3-week cohort, you’ll have a deliverable you are proud of. Going through the full process together will allow you to apply it to any other project again and again.

4 interactive live sessions per cohort (with options for all time zones)

Join Tiago for step-by-step walkthroughs, live exercises, and in-depth Q&As to help you build and implement your Second Brain system. Live captions, transcripts, and recordings are available to make these sessions as accessible as possible for you.

Private learning community

Connect with the most dedicated Personal Knowledge Management practitioners in the world on our community platform Circle. Our alumni include leaders, experts, and creative professionals from some of the world’s leading organizations.

Personalized support from our Alumni Moderators

Our most experienced Second Brainers will help you implement your Second Brain using a wide variety of notetaking apps and tools. They’re all successful graduates who have tested their Second Brains in the real world and are returning to help our new members succeed.

Weekly live events & monthly Q&As with Tiago

Of course, we’ll support you on your Second Brain journey in between cohorts as well. Hop on a monthly live call with Tiago to discover real-life examples of how others are using their Second Brain and hear about the most exciting developments in the PKM ecosystem.

Our members come from the world’s leading organizations

Join the Membership on your terms

Quarterly Membership

$749 per quarter

.

Join Quarterly

Annual Membership

$1,999 per year

(save $997)

Join Annually

Meet Your Instructor

Hi, I’m Tiago Forte

AUTHOR & CREATOR OF BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN

I’ve spent more than 10 years researching and personally experimenting with a new way of organizing our digital lives and improving our productivity.

What started as a quest to deal with a chronic illness turned into a life-long mission to help you harness the full potential of your ideas and turn them into reality. 

My work has been featured in

What you’ll be learning and doing in Building a Second Brain

Start your journey with BASB Foundation

Every module contains short, to-the-point videos, concrete action steps, and reflection exercises so you can put what you learn into practice immediately. 

Module 1: Explore your perspective and why it matters

• Identify and overcome the most common limiting beliefs around productivity, thinking, and learning in the Information Age.

• Understand why your perspective is your most valuable resource nowadays and how you can actively develop it.

• Discover why you need to build a digital notetaking system even though you can “google” anything.

Module 2: Choose and set up your notetaking app

• Pick a notetaking app, the heart of your Second Brain, based on your unique notetaking style and preferences.

• Get started using your notetaking app right away with our guidance and without having to “master” every single feature.
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• Feel confident in your decision about which tools to use so you can stop jumping from one “shiny object” to the next.

Module 3: Capture your best ideas and the crucial information in your life

• Find out why digital notetaking is nothing like what you did in high school and how it can explode your productivity.

• Set up your digital capture system with clear criteria for what is worth saving in your Second Brain and what isn’t.

• Escape the “reactivity loop” and learn how to manage information overload – this will have a direct positive impact on your physical and mental health.

• Identify your personal priorities using the “12 Favorite Problems,” a simple exercise inspired by Nobel prize-winning scientist Richard Feynman.

• Switch your default approach from “heavy lifts” to "slow burns" to escape the rat race of trying to work harder and longer than everyone else. 

Module 4: Organize your notes for actionability and easy access

• Organize your digital life in minutes with our PARA method – a favorite among Second Brainers.

• Set up your Second Brain as a dynamic system that evolves along with your needs and priorities.

• Discover the incredible power of an up-to-date Project List with guidance on how to create one for yourself.

• Create a digital working environment that enhances your creativity and helps you get into flow states faster. 

Module 5: Distill your notes to make them easily discoverable

• Design your notes in a way that makes them easily discoverable for your future self, saving you tons of time.

• Learn a technique called Progressive Summarization to make sure your biggest insights are always front and center.

‍• Train your intuition to decide what's important and what's not in the moment based on “resonance.”

• Turn your notes into "thinking tools" that allow you to access brain power you didn't even know you had. 

Module 6: Express your ideas and turn them into concrete results

• Turn raw material into knowledge assets – a valuable treasury of knowledge for a side project, career advancement, or new business.

• Use the concept of Intermediate Packets to completely transform your approach to productivity. Never start anything from scratch again.

• Become interruption-proof and get better and faster feedback than you ever thought possible. 

Module 7: Establish the habits to continuously benefit from your Second Brain

• Take advantage of the compounding knowledge in your Second Brain to tackle projects of any size with ease.

• Move consciously from scarcity to a place of abundance, from obligation to service, and from mindless consumption to self-expression.

• Discover how Project Kickoff and Completion Checklists can help you reuse your best thinking and free up your mind for more interesting, fulfilling endeavors.

• Establish Weekly and Monthly Reviews as routine check-ins to keep your productivity, creativity, and peace of mind on track.

Accelerate your progress in our live cohorts

Four times a year, join us for 3-week live cohorts taught personally by Tiago. You’ll work alongside him on a personal or work project of your choosing.

We’ll take it together through the CODE system (our 4-step process for using a Second Brain to produce creative works) from start to finish, so by the end of the cohort, you’ll have a deliverable you are proud of.

‍Think of this as a “project accelerator” you can bring your most important goals and priorities to when you want to skyrocket them to completion.

Deepen your practice in our community with exclusive events

In the Membership, we’ll support you on your Second Brain journey in between cohorts as well.

If you ever get stuck, you can turn to our community of experienced Second Brainers and our official Moderators on Circle for personalized feedback and advice.

Hop on a monthly live Q&A call with Tiago, join specialized workshops and virtual meetups to connect with other Second Brainers, and discover real-life examples of how others are using their Second Brain.

Here’s how people from every profession and industry are benefiting from Building a Second Brain

Shirley Rivera

Founder and Principal Consultant at Resource Catalysts in San Francisco, California

Bronson Chang

Co-Founder at Uncle Clay's House of Pure Aloha in Honolulu, Hawaii

Take this course to start to feel agency in the world of infinite information and filter failure!

Doug von Kohorn

Managing Partner, Fathom Ventures, New York, NY

BASB is the best online course I've taken so far. It's helping me sort through all my mental, emotional, spiritual blockages.

Danbee Kim

Creative Director, OORI Studio

BASB gave me a noticeable boost in self-confidence and energy towards working on my projects. It’s hard to understate the sense of growth of who I am – of what I’m capable of achieving. It has profoundly altered my outlook on life and what I dare to aspire to.

Filip Rankenberg

Body therapist and trainer, Entrepreneur

BASB has given me a sense of peace and comfort to know it's easy to find things without remembering where I put them.

Laurie Anderson

Alexander Art, CEO

Visit our Wall of Love for more in-depth reviews of Building a Second Brain.

Feel confident in your decision

Talk to us

We want you to feel fully confident in your decision to join Building a Second Brain so you can focus on learning and taking action.

If you have any question whatsoever, email support@fortelabs.com for a private chat with our team.

Money-Back Guarantee

If you’ve joined the Membership and completed the implementation steps, but decide within 10 days of purchase that it’s not for you, we’ll give you a full refund. All you have to do is show us that you’ve done the work.

Please note that there are no refunds for the BASB Foundation course or the quarterly Membership.

Get reimbursed by your employer

Most large organizations, and many smaller ones, will reimburse tuition for professional development.

Click here to download a proposal template.

Join the BASB Membership

Your all-access pass to build, sustain, and leverage your Second Brain.

  • BASB Foundation, teaching the fundamentals of the BASB methodology, incl. guided implementation steps and support to choose and set up your notetaking tool
  • 4 live cohorts per year to accelerate your progress in 3-week sprints
  • 4 interactive live sessions per cohort with options for all time zones
  • Private members-only learning community on Circle with some of the most dedicated Personal Knowledge Management practitioners in the world 
  • Personalized support from our Alumni Moderators to help you implement your Second Brain in your notetaking app of choice
  • Weekly live events and monthly Q&As with Tiago to continuously support you on your journey and keep you updated on PKM developments

$1,999 per year (save $997)

or $749 per quarter

Get Instant Access

Is Building a Second Brain right for you?

Building a Second Brain is for ambitious learners, creators, and thinkers who want to create more meaningful work in the digital age.

Knowledge Workers

Anyone who needs to consume a lot of information, understand it, and use it to produce a result in their jobs. Whether you’re in Tech, Finance, or Management— if your greatest asset is your knowledge, Building a Second Brain is for you.

Creators

As a YouTuber, blogger, podcaster, or someone who needs to give killer presentations at work, a Second Brain will help you capture and organize your ideas, so you always have rich material to pull from.

Students

If you’re working on a thesis or want to make sure every ounce of your learning is captured and secure forever, Building a Second Brain will help you get the most out of your studies and stand out among your peers.

Freelancers & Entrepreneurs

Having trouble managing all the information you need to run your business? Building a Second Brain will help you work on your business and in your business without dropping any balls.

Families

Managing a household can be chaotic and draining. But when you leverage technology the right way and build a Second Brain to offload some of the burden, you can thrive, not just survive, at home.

Life-Long Learners, Productivity & Self-Improvement Enthusiasts

You’re consuming a ton of useful information but struggle to put it into practice. Now you can save all the knowledge you’ve gained, find it when you need it, and take the necessary steps to improve your life.

Most importantly, Building a Second Brain is for…

Anyone who wants to succeed in the digital economy

Our digital lives are expanding exponentially. Your profession and pursuits require you to consume and understand more information than ever, and it’s only going to get more demanding. Building a Second Brain is the answer to information overload and overwhelm. You’ll clear the mental clutter so you can start doing your best work with more clarity, purpose, and ease.

Answers to your Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different from the book?

The book contains the full Building a Second Brain material. But think about how often you’ve read a book, were inspired by the possibilities it outlined, yet didn’t take action to put your learnings into practice.
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That’s what the Cohort is for!

In the cohort, you’ll build your fully functional Second Brain with the momentum, accountability, and support of our team and like-minded Second Brainers. You could spend years tinkering with your system, probably making every mistake possible. Or use our proven blueprint and create a system for personal knowledge management you can trust and rely on in just 28 days.

What’s the difference between BASB Foundation and the BASB Cohort? 

BASB Foundation is our self-guided option for those seeking an introduction to building their Second Brain. Here’s what’s included:

• 7 modules with succinct instructional videos so you can absorb the fundamentals of the BASB methodology in the most distilled, easy-to-understand way
• Pick-your-notes-app quiz & checklist to help you choose & properly set up the right notetaking app for your needs
• Guided implementation steps so you can put what you learn into practice immediately
‍• A resource library of our best, most impactful content to dive deeper into digital notetaking and personal knowledge management
• Lifetime access to this version of the course

‍The BASB Cohort is our 4-week sprint to build your Second Brain with the momentum, accountability, and support of our team and like-minded Second Brainers. Here’s what’s included:
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• 4-week live cohort running from April 3 - 30
• 8 expert facilitators from diverse backgrounds who have tested their Second Brains in the real world
• 4x interactive live sessions with options for all time zones
• 4x office hours with direct coaching from our teaching staff to work through any roadblocks
• Step-by-step instructions so you can use your Second Brain faster to reach your goals
• Personalized support on Circle to get instant feedback and answers to your questions
• BASB Foundation self-paced course if you want to dive into the fundamentals of the BASB methodology right away

How long will I have access to the material?

You’ll have access to BASB Foundation for as long as we’re offering this course. You’ll have lifetime access to the replays of your BASB Cohort. 

What does the schedule for the upcoming cohort look like? 

The upcoming Cohort 18 will run from July 3rd to 30th, 2023.
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‍Here are the key dates*:
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• Wed., July 5th at 10 am ET: Live Session 1 (Americas/Europe)
• Thu., July 6th at 4 pm ET: Live Session 1 (Americas/Asia/Pacific)
• Fri., July 7th at 1 pm ET: Office Hours
• Wed., July 12th at 10 am ET: Live Session 2 (Americas/Europe)
• Thu., July 13th at 4 pm ET: Live Session 2 (Americas/Asia/Pacific)
• Fri., July 14th at 1 pm ET: Office Hours
• Wed., July 19th at 10 am ET: Live Session 3 (Americas/Europe)
• Thu., July 20th at 4 pm ET: Live Session 3 (Americas/Asia/Pacific)
• Fri., July 21st at 1 pm ET: Office Hours
• Wed., July 26th at 10 am ET: Live Session 4 (Americas/Europe)
• Thu., July 27th at 4 pm ET: Live Session 4 (Americas/Asia/Pacific)
• Fri., July 28th at 1 pm ET: Office Hours

The live sessions run for 90 minutes and are led by our facilitators. The office hours run for 60 minutes and are led by our course team.

‍We'll publish the recording of one live session per week including captions  so if you have to miss a session, you can always watch it later.

You’ll have lifetime access to the replays of your cohort live sessions.

*Please note that these dates and timings are tentative at the moment and might change.

What’s the cohort schedule for 2023? 

We’re running one more cohort of Building a Second Brain in 2023. Here are the dates:

Cohort 19: October 2 - 29, 2023

We'll publish the cohort dates for 2024 around June.

How much time do I need to invest to benefit from Building a Second Brain? 

We’ve designed BASB Foundation and the BASB Cohort to fit your schedule and pace.

BASB Foundation
While you can watch the Foundation videos in just a few hours, we highly recommend that you follow the implementation steps to put the BASB system into practice.

It will take some time and effort to implement, but ultimately, building and leveraging your Second Brain will save you countless hours.

BASB Cohort
When you’re joining the BASB Cohort, you’ll be part of a more intensive learning experiences delivered live in real time.

Although we make replays of all sessions available, and you can always rewatch them afterward, we strongly recommend that you attend the live sessions to fully benefit from the live learning experience.

Overall, you should plan on spending around 2.5 hours per week for the 4 weeks of the live cohort, including:
• 1.5 hours per week attending the live session (or watching the replay)
• 1-2 hours per week implementing what you learn
• (optional) engage with your peers on Circle, our community platform

What tools are used in Building a Second Brain?

Building a Second Brain is tool-agnostic, meaning our methodology will work in any software you prefer.

Students use Evernote, Notion, Apple Notes, OneNote, Craft, Roam Research, Obsidian, Bear, and Google Keep, among many other notetaking tools.

Are there any prerequisites for this course?

There are no official prerequisites to take Building a Second Brain. However, we do expect you to be reasonably comfortable with using a computer or smartphone.

What’s your refund policy?

Your satisfaction is our #1 goal, and we want the decision to join Building a Second Brain to be 100% risk-free so you can focus on learning.

BASB Foundation
If you decide the Foundation course didn’t deliver on its promise for any reason, email support@fortelabs.com and submit your refund request within 30 days of your purchase to get a refund. All we'll ask is that you show us that you completed Modules 0-3 of the course.

BASB Cohort
Join the first week of the Cohort and if you decide it didn't deliver on its promise for any reason, email support@fortelabs.com before the second live session (July 12th) to get a refund.

With that being said, we want you to feel fully confident in your decision to join Building a Second Brain. If you have any question whatsoever, email support@fortelabs.com for a private chat with our team.

Do you offer discounts or scholarships?

We don’t offer discounts or scholarship. Instead, we support Purchasing Power Parity Pricing. Based on your location, you might qualify for a reduced price for BASB Foundation and the BASB Cohort. If you do, you’ll automatically see a banner with a discount code on this page.  

Didn’t see the answer to your question? Check our Help Center for more FAQs. 

A final word from Tiago

Imagine what it would be like if you knew with total certainty that every great idea you encountered was reliably saved forever.

That you could wave goodbye to information overload because you have a way to filter out the junk while saving only the best stuff.

You could move forward decisively on your goals without wondering whether you had all the right information. You could execute your projects and create new things without wondering whether this was really the best you could do.

If you're paid to think for a living, you cannot afford not to invest in the most valuable asset you own – your ideas.

You can’t afford to burden your biological brain with trivial details that only gunk up your wheels as you go about your workday and go after your goals.

It’s time to build a Second Brain and fully unlock the potential you know you are capable of.

Don't spend 10 years figuring out how to make your knowledge work for you like I did. Don't resign yourself to watching your ideas pile up and never doing anything with them. Don't reach the end of your career wondering if you were actually capable of more.

Join me on this incredible journey, and find out what it's really like to have the full power of a Second Brain at your fingertips.

See you inside!

Tiago

Alysson Costa

Senior Lecturer and Mathematician, Melbourne, Australia

Harirai Khalsa

Writer, Musician, and Entrepreneur, in Santa Fe, New Mexico

BASB has already impacted my life in more ways than I could have imagined. Now, I feel like an authority and I am not worried about expressing myself. 

Jenn Reid

Imagine being able to recall all the really interesting things you’ve ever read, seen and done. How good would that be? I wish I had done it years ago.

Jimmy Conway

Organizational Improvement Consultant

This course completely re-organized the way I consume content. It changed what I pay attention to and why.

Yuri Burchenya

Co-founder at GetFoundXL

As a long-term collector of information that often sat unread and unused, BASB has changed my approach to information and the possibilities are just beginning to unfold. This was life-changing.

Kiva Slade

Analytics and Operations Consultant

The world is waiting for you to make the difference that only you can make.

Join the BASB Membership

Your all-access pass to build, sustain, and leverage your Second Brain.

  • BASB Foundation, teaching the fundamentals of the BASB methodology, incl. guided implementation steps and support to choose and set up your notetaking tool
  • 4 live cohorts per year to accelerate your progress in 3-week sprints
  • 4 interactive live sessions per cohort with options for all time zones
  • Private members-only learning community on Circle with some of the most dedicated Personal Knowledge Management practitioners in the world 
  • Personalized support from our Alumni Moderators to help you implement your Second Brain in your notetaking app of choice
  • Weekly live events and monthly Q&As with Tiago to continuously support you on your journey and keep you updated on PKM developments

$1,999 per year (save $997)

or $749 per quarter

Get Instant Access

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