Building a Second Brain (BASB/PARA)
Tiago Forte's personal knowledge management system. Instead of trying to remember everything, externalize your thinking into a...
4-6 hours initial setup, 15-30 minutes daily maintenance
Flow State Triggers (Transient Hypofrontality)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi identified flow as the state of optimal performance where you lose track of time and perform at your...
90-120 minute blocks for flow sessions
Inversion Thinking (Munger Method)
Charlie Munger's favorite mental model, borrowed from mathematician Carl Jacobi: 'Invert, always invert.' Instead of asking 'How...
15-30 minutes per decision or problem
Mind Mapping (Radiant Thinking)
Tony Buzan's visual thinking technique that mirrors the brain's natural associative structure. Start with a central idea and...
15-30 minutes per mind map
Morning Pages (Stream of Consciousness Journaling)
Julia Cameron's foundational creative recovery tool: write three pages of longhand stream-of-consciousness first thing every...
30-45 minutes every morning
Pre-Mortem Analysis
Gary Klein's prospective hindsight technique: before starting a project, imagine it has already failed spectacularly, then...
30-60 minutes per session
Spaced Repetition (Anki Method)
Exploit the spacing effect — the cognitive phenomenon where information is better retained when review sessions are spaced out...
15-30 minutes per day of reviews
The Feynman Technique
Named after Nobel physicist Richard Feynman, this learning method forces genuine understanding by making you explain concepts in...
20-30 minutes per concept
Weighted Decision Matrix
A structured method for making complex decisions with multiple criteria. Eliminates analysis paralysis by forcing you to define...
30-60 minutes per decision