Building a Second Brain and The Unfair Advantage

BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN by Tiago Forte offers the intriguing potential to apply “A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential.” Forte is a productivity expert who has worked with numerous corporate clients and he splits this new text into three sections: The Foundation, The Method, and The Shift. He writes in a very conversational tone that reassures while capturing the reader’s attention. Many points are supported with data (e.g., “according to The New York Times, the average person’s daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes.”) As I was reading, I thought BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN would make a useful “One School, One Book” choice and support much-needed work on helping students become more organized and tech-savvy. For example, Forte is a strong advocate for digital note taking and therefore advocates using apps like Evernote or OneNote which we have been talking about for years. He further suggests organizing saved notes by PARA (Project, Area, Resource, and Archive) and employing CODE (Capture, Organize, Distill, Express). As a list maker and librarian who both juggles numerous requests and curates resources, these habits of personal knowledge management all seem rather intuitive, but Forte does point out some broader aids like a monthly review template. Many of his ideas are explained visually in this 2019 video.

THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba describes those often-overlooked aspects which could give the reader a competitive edge, particularly in an entrepreneurial, start-up situations. Both Ali, who founded Uhubs, and Kubba, whose TedTalk is here, have significant experience in creating and advising start-ups. Their new text begins by acknowledging that life is unfair and that success is a product of hard work and luck. The next sections describes the MILES framework and encourages readers to perform an audit of certain attributes (Mindset, Money, Intelligence and Insight, Location and Luck, Education and Expertise, plus Status) in order to illustrate “How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed.” Finally, they include several chapters which make up a “The Startup Quick Start Guide.” THE UNFAIR ADVANTAGE feels like a text which should have an accompanying workbook. Of possible interest to those looking to start their own business, I also think that excerpts or summaries might intrigue some of our business students.

Curious? See also other recent titles of interest like Build by Tony Fadell, Atomic Habits by James Clear, or the slightly older Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. 

The Local by Joey Hartstone

THE LOCAL by Joey Hartstone is an impressive courtroom drama set in East Texas in a small town called Marshall. The narrator and main character of this debut murder mystery has the absolutely fabulous name of Jimmy Euchre. He’s a practicing patent attorney, the “local” in a federal district which according to The Dallas News was indeed the busiest in the country for patent law, although that may be changing. Euchre has been hired by the New York based firm of Gordon & Greene to work with Abe Rabinowitz and Layla Stills on an infringement case involving a high tech and transport company called Medallion, headed by Amir Zawar. The chapters introducing all of these characters were fun and quick moving, reminiscent of the Netflix series The Lincoln Lawyer. Shortly after their initial time in court a prominent local official is murdered and Euchre shifts to criminal law, acting as defense attorney. He and Layla are aided by a private investigator, Lisa ‘the Leg’ Morgan. The middle section drags a bit, but the ending offers a nice surprise and potential for future cases. Hartstone is an accomplished writer for film (two features directed by Rob Reiner) and television (The Good Fight; Your Honor) so Grisham and Turow readers will certainly enjoy this legal thriller. I also recommend THE LOCAL to fans of S.J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin and Bill Smith series; there’s plenty of feisty-ness on display.