Tiago Forte

• BookDiscusses$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Deep Work

  Calls himself a proponent of deep work and a reader of Newport's blog, then pushes back on the book in his review. Treating every network tool as pure distraction is too simple, he argues, because weak ties and online reach open doors the book does not account for.

  Source: fortelabs.com: A Review of Cal Newport's Deep Work
  View item: Deep Work6/54Backed by 6 of 54 stacks
• GearDoes it$$$Mid: Roughly $50 to $500, or up to $50/month.

  Kindle e-reader

  From every finished ebook he pulls the highlights and files them in his notes app, including books with no obvious use yet, on the reasoning that he can resurface them later and find a connection. Pulling them out is a step in his monthly review.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The Monthly Review is a Systems Check
  View item: Kindle e-reader4/54Backed by 4 of 54 stacks
• AppRecommends$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Readwise

  Points at it for anyone who wants Kindle highlights landing in their notes app on their own instead of exporting them by hand each time. He states plainly that he has no affiliation with the company beyond liking what it does.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The Complete Guide to Saving Your Kindle Highlights
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  Building a Second Brain

  The book he wrote about keeping one trusted place outside your head for the ideas and insights you collect, so you can put them to work rather than hunt for a note you were sure you saved. David Allen and Daniel Pink are among the people quoted on its page.

  Source: buildingasecondbrain.com: the book
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• AppDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Evernote

  Evernote is the notes app he says he uses and recommends, picked for simplicity and for the range of sources it will take. Everything he captures across a week, about 15 to 30 notes, gets filed into notebooks in one batch when he sits down for his weekly review.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The One-Touch Guide to Doing a Weekly Review
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  Fitbod

  Lets the app generate each day's session instead of programming his own training, and credits the variation it builds in for keeping him going. He says he loves it and recommends it, and used it to track a year of lifting.

  Source: fortelabs.com: My 2025 Annual Review
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  How to Take Smart Notes

  Of everything he has read on the subject he rates this the most useful, and says it broke his usual way of summarizing a book, because there was almost no filler to strip out. He was struck by how closely it matched what he had worked out on his own.

  Source: fortelabs.com: How To Take Smart Notes, 10 principles
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• AppDoes itFREE, no cost

  Instapaper

  Anything worth reading but not right now goes to Instapaper as he clears email, one of four places he sorts messages into during a weekly review.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The Weekly Review is an Operating System
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  The Bullet Journal Method

  Picked it up while writing his own book, expecting to learn nothing, and credits Ryder Carroll with changing how he thinks about notes, journaling, productivity and what a good life looks like. For him it is a method for clarifying what you value that happens to live in a paper notebook.

  Source: fortelabs.com: What I Learned From The Bullet Journal Method
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  The PARA Method

  Shorter follow-up, also his, covering the four folders and nothing more. Its page pitches getting the system up across computer files, cloud storage and a notes app in seconds, and makes a point of saying the setup does not have to be perfect to be worth having.

  Source: buildingasecondbrain.com: The PARA Method
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  Things

  Names Things as his task manager, singling out one feature: a keyboard shortcut that captures a task from anywhere and keeps a link back to the email it came from.

  Source: fortelabs.com: One-Touch to Inbox Zero
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Repeatable, mostly free routines with a defined trigger and dose.

• Resistance trainingDoes it$$$Cheap: Roughly under $50, or under $15/month.

  Lifting is the one habit he says he could never make stick, flagged as his weakest area in review after review. In 2025 he logged 52 sessions and more than 500,000 pounds moved, and he reports he can no longer reliably get into deep focus on a day he has not trained.

  Source: fortelabs.com: My 2025 Annual Review

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• Environment designDoes itFREE, no cost

  He got training to stick by taking the decisions out of it: a nanny hired for the afternoon school run, a second car so a session costs him neither work time nor family time, and a gym that is empty at the hour he prefers. He frames those as irreversible choices that spare his willpower.

  Source: fortelabs.com: My 2025 Annual Review

  7/54Backed by 7 of 54 stacks
• Yearly auditDoes itFREE, no cost

  At the close of each year he writes a gratitude list, works through a dozen questions about the twelve months just gone, then answers a second set about the year ahead. He calls the exercise a rearchitecture rather than planning, because what gets adjusted is the narrative he lives by.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The Annual Review is a Rearchitecture

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• PARA methodDoes itFREE, no cost

  Developed the four-folder system over more than a decade of his own experimentation, teaching thousands of students and coaching professionals, he says. Filing goes by what a piece of information is useful for right now, which project or area or resource, rather than by the subject it sits under.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The PARA Method

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• Progressive summarizationDoes itFREE, no cost

  Adds a bolding layer to a note only when he happens to be reviewing it for something else, so the summarizing uses attention he was already spending. He says he works to no explicit criteria, just whatever reads like the core of the idea.

  Source: fortelabs.com: Progressive Summarization

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• Silent meditation retreatDoes itFREE, no cost

  Sat a ten-day vipassana course in California with no talking, reading or writing, waking at 4am for the first of about eleven hours of meditation a day. He wrote it up afterwards as a lesson about attention rather than as a spiritual account.

  Source: fortelabs.com: 10 Days of Vipassana

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• CODE methodRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Capture, organize, distill, express. He teaches the four steps as the cycle a note system runs on, and argues most people already do a rough version without having named it.

  Source: fortelabs.com: Building a Second Brain, the definitive introductory guide

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• Intermediate packetsRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Coined the term for the small reusable chunks a project breaks into: notes from a team meeting, a list of research findings, a slide deck. Instead of trying to move a whole project at once, he advises ending each work session, whether it ran fifteen minutes or three hours, by finishing one packet and saving it for reuse.

  Source: fortelabs.com: Building a Second Brain, the definitive introductory guide

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• Twelve favorite problemsRecommendsFREE, no cost

  Keep about a dozen open questions live in your head and test everything new against them, he suggests, crediting an account of how Richard Feynman worked. It doubles as the filter for deciding what is worth saving in the first place.

  Source: fortelabs.com: 12 Favorite Problems

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Daily practices held long enough to become default behavior.

• Gratitude practiceDoes itFREE, no cost

  Once a year rather than daily. He lists everything from the past twelve months he is grateful for, usually 60 to 90 items, and calls it his longest standing yearly ritual, kept every year since 2008.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The Annual Review is a Rearchitecture

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• Weekly reviewDoes itFREE, no cost

  Five items on a digital sticky note in the corner of his screen: email, calendar, desktop and downloads, notes, tasks. Same steps in the same order whether he is coming off a quiet week or back from three weeks away, and he puts the whole thing at about 30 minutes.

  Source: fortelabs.com: The One-Touch Guide to Doing a Weekly Review

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• Written goal sheetDoes itFREE, no cost

  Twenty years of writing goals down with a target date attached, starting at 20 with one about a student government seat he was almost certain to win. Looking back, he says he cares less about which ones he hit than about who he became by aiming at them.

  Source: fortelabs.com: What I've Learned From 20 Years of Goal-Setting

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• Inbox zeroDoes itFREE, no cost

  Oldest email first, one decision each about where it goes, calendar or task manager or notes or read-later, then archive. By his own time tracking that came to 17 minutes a day, roughly 7 percent of his working hours over a year.

  Source: fortelabs.com: One-Touch to Inbox Zero

  1/54Backed by 1 of 54 stacks

• “Fundamentally, our brains are for having ideas, not storing them. Building a Second Brain is a methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we’ve gained through our experience.”

• “I spend 17 minutes per day on email, or 7.43% of my total work time over the past 12 months.”

  On Inbox zero

• “It doesn’t matter if I’m checking in after a couple calm days of work, or returning from 3 weeks of vacation. I follow the same steps in the same order.”

  On Weekly review

• “This is my longest standing yearly ritual, which I’ve done every year since 2008. It’s also the simplest: I sit down and I make a list of every single thing I’m grateful for from the past year”

  On Gratitude practice

• “According to my exercise tracking app, Fitbod (which I love and recommend), I lifted over 500,000 pounds this year, across 52 workouts, mostly in the latter two-thirds of the year. That is definitely the most consistently I’ve ever exercised, and I’m now in the best shape of my life by far.”

  On Resistance training