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Yesterday, I promised to share a bit more about myself and tell you the story that kicked off the whole Second Brain movement.

So, here’s my wonderful family: my wife Lauren, our son Caio and daughter Delia.

This photo was taken on a recent trip to Mexico.

Now I can hardly imagine anymore that there was a time in my life when having a family, a career, let alone a successful business, seemed utterly impossible.

It all started when I was 22 years old and in college at San Diego State University.

I worked at an Apple Store, selling Mac computers and teaching people how to use them. I was having the time of my life with so much hope for my future.

One day, completely out of the blue, I began to feel a strange tickle at the back of my throat. I ignored it at first, hoping it would go away on its own.

But it didn’t….The tickle became a scratch, and the scratch slowly turned into relentless pain and tension I felt every minute of the day.

I began to see doctor after doctor, looking for an explanation. I did every test, scan, and diagnostic you can imagine. None of them could give me even a clue as to what it was.

The worst part wasn’t the pain; it was the psychological effects. The overwhelming preoccupation with this feeling in my body made it impossible to be present and connect with others. I felt like I was cut off from everyone around me, even my most cherished loved ones, unable to explain or share even a hint of my experience.

It felt like my life was ending before it had fully begun. And in a way that made no sense, and had no reason or cause. As my symptoms worsened, I fell deeper and deeper into a black hole of despair. My hopes and dreams for my future dwindled to the point that I wasn’t sure it was a future worth having.

Eventually, a neurologist I was seeing gave me a last resort: a powerful anti-seizure medication called Carbamazepine. It’s normally used to treat schizophrenia and caused a numbing sensation throughout my entire body.

I took it without hesitation. That was the depth of my desperation. But every day I took the medication, I felt like I was drunk, and my days passed in a numb blur.

Later on, I discovered another, undocumented side effect: severe short-term memory loss. Entire books I read, conversations I had, and trips I took were wiped from my memory like they never happened.

Every day I was faced with an impossible choice: to be pain-free or to keep my memories.

There was a specific moment when something shifted in me. Sitting in yet another doctor’s office awaiting yet another appointment, I was struck by the realization that I was at a crossroads.

I could continue trusting the experts to figure this out for me. I could walk the conventional path and wait for the medical system to come up with an answer. Or I could take matters into my own hands. I could take ownership of my treatment and become the author of my own story.

I stood up abruptly, walked over to the receptionist, and asked for my complete patient record. By then, it was a thick stack of papers from years of appointments and lab tests. I took all of it home and began digitizing it using the scanner at my parents’ house.

Once all those documents were digital, I could begin to work with them. I could highlight the most important points, rearrange them, and add my own observations alongside advice from my doctors. I could turn all the information and guidance I was receiving from so many sources into practical experiments.

I became a scientist of my condition, testing new possibilities empirically to see what worked for me and my situation.

Eventually, I realized that I didn’t have an illness that could be cured with a pill. I learned that it was a functional condition – a breakdown in how a part of my body functioned. I began to use my notes to put in place a series of habits – how I slept, how I ate, how I exercised, and how I took care of my mental health – that together provided enough relief to live a normal life.

But let me tell you: By that point, I had no interest in living a normal life. My unwanted adversity had created an unforeseen superpower. I found that I had created something – a cognitive exoskeleton – that amplified and enhanced the capabilities of my mind.

I started to call it my “Second Brain,” and one after another, I began to use this system in every part of my life.

I used it in college, graduating with stellar grades and university honors for the first time in my academic career. I used it to successfully apply for the Peace Corps and plan my English lessons for hundreds of eager students in Ukraine. I used it to land my first professional job in San Francisco, which introduced me to the world of tech and startups. And finally, I used it to start a business to teach that system to others.

It took a long time for this to dawn on me, but what I had created was a system that could be used to solve almost any problem and accomplish any goal. I had found a way around the central bottleneck of my potential – my biological mind.

What I’ve found is that if you want to create unusual results, you need to take an unusual path.

The standard career advice – work hard, acquire credentials, don’t make mistakes, memorize stuff, use your head – is NOT designed to give you a life of freedom and abundance. You have to step outside the bounds that have been drawn for you by society, the media, and the education system.

You need what I call an unfair advantage – a capability that few others possess, which gives you options that few others have.

I don’t mean “unfair,” as in playing dirty or being unethical. Not at all. I mean “unfair” as in difficult to copy. I mean a source of leverage that allows you to do more than anyone could reasonably expect while putting in less effort than anyone could reasonably imagine.

It’s like a secret door when everyone else is waiting in line. A hidden trail when everyone is slogging through the mud. While everyone else is competing in a brutal contest of sheer will, you take the path of least resistance and draw on a source of leverage that is, literally, inhuman.

A Second Brain is your unfair advantage!

Here’s a talk I gave at Google about the power of Building a Second Brain. It’s a great introduction to the concept.

Check it out here on YouTube:

Tomorrow, I’ll introduce you to someone like you who is already harnessing the power of a Second Brain.

Talk soon,

Tiago

Tiago Forte

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How my Second Brain saved my life