This video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XlAqrS-fSAI
Extracted the auto-generated transcript like this:
yt-dlp --all-subs --skip-download \
--sub-format ttml/vtt/best \
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XlAqrS-fSAI
I used the GPT-3 playground to summarize it.
Annoyingly the length limit there is 4000 tokens, including the space needed for the output - so I had to split it roughly in half and run two completions:
I didn't record exactly how I split it, but I followed each half with this prompt:
Summarize the above in bullet points.
For the first half I got:
- Eight years ago, the speaker read a book called The 100 Startup and began to explore entrepreneurship.
- In 2007, the speaker began to experience a strange sensation in their throat which developed into tension and pain.
- After consulting with many specialists and taking powerful anti-seizure medication, the speaker experienced severe short-term memory loss.
- The speaker realized that memory is essential to who you are and that our biological bodies can't deliver the ambitions we have.
- The speaker studied monkeys and discovered that their brains remapped themselves to include tools as part of their body.
- The speaker also studied prosthetic devices, which are technology designed to assist the differently abled, and found that many of the most important innovations in consumer technology started as assistive devices.
- The speaker realized that humans have the potential to extend, augment, and enhance their natural capabilities.
- We are using the same brains and nervous systems that we had two hundred thousand years ago, but modern life has become much more complex.
- The speaker proposed a prosthetic device for the mind, which they called a second brain, that would allow people to be unconstrained by their biology, natural memory, and natural talents.
Second half:
- Taking notes is a timeless and ancient technology
- Notes help to shift our focus from novel and public information to timeless and private information
- Everyone should have a digital notes app installed on their smartphone
- Taking notes should be based on resonance and surprise
- Organize notes according to projects and goals
- Benefits of taking notes include increased focus, reduced stress, and better self-understanding
- Herbert Simon said a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention
- Joining the second brain movement can help us move beyond the desert of attention to the mountains of abundance.
Here are the full extracted captions:
hi everyone
[Applause]
wow
eight years ago
i picked up a book called the 100
startup
this isn't part of my talk i'm just
adding it
and i read through it and i thought
maybe i should try this entrepreneurship
thing
i couldn't afford to come here or to any
other event or conference or summit
and eight years later here i am
[Applause]
my story begins a bit earlier
in 2007.
i was living in san diego attending san
diego state there we are
love that city
i was studying business
at san diego state university number one
party school in the nation
very proud
and i was having as you can see the time
of my life
the time of my life
life was simple life was good
i had nothing
but hope and optimism for my future
i also had my dream job
i worked at the apple store
the apple store fashion valley one of
the at the time busiest apple stores in
the entire world
and i loved it it was my first
experience teaching people how to use
computers seeing their eyes light up as
they discovered the power of a
user-friendly computer and what it could
do for their productivity and their
creativity
does anyone remember what happened
around june of 2007
what happened
the iphone
the iphone came out do you remember
how it changed everything
continues to change everything
this is a photo of me working at the
apple store on the release day
that's me in the bottom right corner
you can see the excitement the
enthusiasm this photo actually appeared
on the apple.com homepage a few days
later this is my claim to fame
now around that same time the reason i
mentioned this period the summer of 2007
is something happened to me
in that period that would just
completely change the course of my
entire life
one summer day out of the blue
for no apparent reason
i started feeling like a little tickle
in the back of my throat in my neck
like any twenty something i thought
it'll go away on its own don't worry
about it
and it didn't go away
in fact it got worse
that little tickle became an itch
the itch became a scratch
the scratch over months and then
eventually years
evolved into
tension and pain
all in my neck
it got to the point a few years later
that i would wake up each morning
feeling like there was a vice
clutching me by the throat
like i could barely
barely talk on some days had difficulty
laughing
singing was almost impossible hanging
out in groups of people was almost not
an option because i couldn't project my
voice because of this pain intention
eventually i started going to doctors
after doctors
after doctors specialists after
specialists
at one point eventually i probably saw a
dozen specialists in three countries
not one of them could give me even a
clue
even a hint of what was happening to me
much less give me any solution
no answers no hope
finally
i talked to a neurologist
who gave me a final last resort
one final option
take this pill
it's a medication called carbamazepine
which is an anti-seizure a powerful
anti-seizure medication that is usually
used to treat schizophrenia
it's like the nuclear option when it
comes to neurological disorders when
nothing else works
and i took it
i took it happily
i was willing to do anything
the main side effect the main impact was
it essentially numbed sensation
throughout my entire body head to toe
i walked through my days
feeling
drunk
feeling numb literally physically numb
to what was going going on and happening
around me
but there was an even worse side effect
that i would discover later that was not
on the bottle
which was severe
short-term memory loss
entire
experiences that i had books i read
classes i took relationships were wiped
from my memory
like they had never happened like a
formatted hard drive
i remember one day
i was living in ukraine at the time
turning to my friend allison who lived
in a nearby town
and saying you know it would be really
cool if we if we traveled to russia to
moscow at the time there were very
peaceful relations
and she turned to me with a look of
shock on her face and she said thiago we
just went to moscow a few months ago
don't you remember
looking through these photos this is one
felt vaguely familiar
but it was like looking at someone
else's memories someone else's life
eventually i was faced essentially with
a choice
two paths diverging
what would you choose
if you had to make a choice each day
whether to take that pill
whether to have
whether to be pain free
or have access to your memories
what would you choose
i learned
through that experience
that memory is everything
memory is all you have that's who you
are
it's the sum total of your life
experience without your memories you are
actually a different person
there's something else that i learned as
i went through this experience
that now today i'm so grateful
i'm deeply grateful that i had the
chance to learn so young
so early
and that's the lesson i want to share
with you today
and that lesson was i cannot rely
on my biological brain and my biological
body to give me the life i want
i'll say that again this body
as much as i love it as capable as it is
is not going to deliver
the life the ambitions the goals the
impact the friendships that i want it
can all be taken in one instant
for no reason
now i want you to think about that for
yourself
okay you're all incredibly smart
creative accomplished driven people the
cream of the crop
of the knowledge work creative
industries
and i want you to consider for a second
how much you demand of your brain
think about it think of the burden that
you place on it
you demand that it remember everything
you've ever learned and read and thought
about you demand perfect focus you
demand the longest attention span you
demand that it supply you with a
never-ending stream of great ideas
is that fair
is that reasonable
is it sustainable
i've reached the point that i think
the comp
modern life has become so complex that
the complexity of managing a modern life
has exceeded the capacity of the human
brain
think about what that means
never mind a business and a career and a
community and products and services
and yet
and yet
there's things that you want to do in
this world
right
there's things you want to build
and accomplish and create and achieve
and change
so what do we do
how do we square
this paradox
that we are these fragile flesh bags
trying to live a transcendent
unconventional life in a world full of
chaos and uncertainty
how do we do it
the answer lies with the monkeys
the
monkeys i began to research this
because of my condition and i discovered
there's a whole scientific field
dedicated to this it's called extended
cognition
the study of how humans and other
animals
go beyond the limits of their biology go
beyond the limits of their skull
one study which i cite in my book
was on monkeys and scientists scanned
these monkeys brains
as they were using a tool in this case a
rake like a little like a little rake to
reach an object and pull it towards them
that they couldn't reach otherwise
pretty simple task
but what they found was that something
remarkable was happening inside that
monkey's brain
something really extraordinary which was
that the part of the monkey's brain
that is responsible for mapping the
boundaries of the body
changed
it re-mapped itself to include the tool
which means from the perspective of the
brain the minute that monkey held that
rake the rake was just as much a part of
its body as its arm
or its leg or any other part
do you understand the implications of
this
have you ever i know you have
experienced this
have you ever lost your smartphone
and felt like you just lost the limb
you did from the perspective of your
brain
okay think about the implications that
our technology is not just tools they
are
almost literal extensions of ourselves
our cognition our creativity our
intellect our social intelligence
i kept going deeper
and i studied
somehow i got into
the history of what are called assistive
devices also known as prosthetic devices
i did a project for the city of san
francisco where we mapped all the
all the wheelchair accessible routes
throughout the entire city and as part
of that consulting project i studied
the history assistive devices prosthetic
devices are technology designed to
assist the differently abled mobility
devices seeing devices hearing devices
and i found something really
surprising which is that many of the
most important innovations in technology
consumer technology started as as
assisted devices and prosthetic devices
think about on your phone you know the
settings where you can change the
contrast or increase or decrease the
font size or the brightness of the
screen or all the little interactions
that make using your phone more
intuitive and more accessible
many of them started as assistive
devices
what's more
i realized through simple observation
that prosthetic devices are universal
you're wearing many of them right now
did you know
anyone wearing
glasses or contact lenses
okay prosthetic devices to enhance your
site
right
anyone wearing a watch
a prosthetic device to enhance your
perception of time
anyone wearing shoes hopefully everyone
okay
although this is wds so maybe not
[Laughter]
a prosthetic device to support and
enhance your feet
to sum all this up
not only can
humans
extend augment
enhance our natural capabilities there's
nothing more natural
what it means to be human is to think
with and through our tools and our
environment and our relationships this
idea that it's all on my brain i have to
do it by myself the lone ranger the
self-made man or woman
is just not rooted in biology
that's not how it works
let's turn back
to creative work and knowledge work
there's something when i was thinking
about this that i found kind of puzzling
which is we know we're living through
this historic
transformational moment right
the information scarcity that dominated
our entire history
our entire history in the blink of an
eye
transformed to information abundance
in a in the blink of an eye
it all changed
by one measure we consume if you can
wrap your head around this
five times
the volume of information
today as we did in 1986.
that comes out to the equivalent each
and every day of
174 full newspapers
that you consume worth of information
and the reason i found this puzzling is
there is one part of the body that
hasn't received an upgrade
one part of the body i think the most
important part that doesn't have any
assistive or prosthetic device the brain
we are using essentially the same brain
and nervous system
that we had two hundred thousand years
ago on the plains of east africa
you are trying to run a complex modern
life on paleolithic hardware
you know how you get mad when your phone
is like a year too old
there you go
i think we're reaching this moment i
believe it's time that we have a
prosthetic device for the mind
a prosthetic device for our brain
think about what would be possible
if you were not constrained by your
biology
you were not constrained by your natural
memory
you were not limited to your natural
talents that you were born with you were
not limited to
the experiences and the knowledge that
you've gained
i call this prosthetic device a second
brain
instead of trying to make this brain
better which is kind of hard
let's just create a second brain
now when i say second brain
people often come to mind these sort of
futuristic sci-fi
artificial intelligence network nodes
kind of visualizations
right and there's definitely people
working on this right this will happen
eventually but this is not what i mean
this is not what i mean i don't know
about you but this
has nothing to do with my day-to-day
problems and day-to-day reality
and i don't really want to sit back and
wait around for some tech company who
doesn't have my interests in mind to
deliver this solution for me
i'm talking about something much more
basic
much more common something you already
know already use
i'm talking about
notes
notes
everyone's like and
[Laughter]
notes are a timeless timeless and
ancient technology did you know the word
note
is among the two percent oldest words in
the english language
and it's found across cultures across
languages
there's nothing that's been around
longer if you go back to the earliest
examples of writing in sumeria there
were notes about how many bushels of
wheat or whatever were in the storehouse
casual quick informal
to get something done
there's a couple things that notes do
when they interact with our psychology
so
in our short history with digital
technology 30 40 50 years our
relationship to information so far has
been obsessed
totally dominated
by information that is novel
and public
have you noticed
everything let's do novel first
everything is new on the internet new
new new new
i call this neomania the obsession with
things that are new just because they're
new
you're reading one thing that's new and
then you get interrupted from reading
that to switch to another thing that is
even more new
it's an obsession
and public information to make matters
worse all the information or most of it
a lot of it is public by default
everyone is online screaming into the
wind at full volume every random passing
thought that they had
okay
notes inherently do something when we
use them they shift our attention
they shift our
focus
instead towards what is timeless and
what is private
instead of novel and public
timeless and private
what happened to timeless ideas
ideas that take time more than the five
seconds
of a tick-tock video
to sink in to be absorbed take work take
effort but once you put in that effort
they become part of who you are the
fabric of your being
and how about privacy remember that
what if the power of technology the same
technology that we have was used
to develop and refine
and distill our thinking to make it the
best it can be
before we take it into the public arena
this is what notes are for
to ask this as a question what would it
look like to reinvent
the ancient
timeless practice of note-taking for our
modern connected age
this is the question that i've dedicated
my career to solving
and i want to share with you three
answers
three answers that are so
hard won from a decade and a half
of my personal experience from teaching
at this point over 5 000 students from
over 100 countries
and now most recently writing a book
these are the three lessons i would have
wanted that 22 year old self to know
first take your notes everywhere
ideas don't arrive on schedule
have you noticed they don't arrive on
command in fact the best way to have no
ideas is to tell yourself okay come up
with a good idea
right zip nothing but then in the shower
later driving on the bus
having a conversation with a friend
watching tv then the mind is like oh
yeah here you go lots of ideas
okay
notes have to be ubiquitous
in the past this meant having some kind
of journal
paper
carrying it around with you everywhere
somehow remembering to have a pen or
pencil
right and even if you somehow manage to
write that thing down it's fragile
it's not searchable it can't really be
reorganized
it's easy to lose
okay
the ex the rise of smartphones has been
a quantum leap in this realm we now have
a device a super computer with us almost
at all times
and the smartphone sitting in your
pocket or your bag or your purse right
now
almost certainly already has a notes app
installed
you don't even have to download anything
okay go and find it apple notes
android phones have their own version
that is what i'm talking about
my bias is becoming clear i know
[Applause]
take your notes everywhere
now this sometimes leads people to think
oh i need one app to rule them all
don't do it
don't fall into that trap
this is not lord of the rings there is
not one ring
there's as many rings as you want
you will always use probably many dozens
of different pieces of software and
consume information and content from
many sources just to name a few of the
most common books
both ebooks and paper books and
audiobooks
articles
from websites from news sites from blogs
notes you already have
notes on classes you took books you've
read quotes from conferences and summits
you've been to
social media
the things you've favorited the things
you've bookmarked the things you've said
okay that actually is important for me
to to keep to remember
podcasts and just web pages in general
right
go to all those places they all have
their uses but take this crucial step
route
centralize all of it back to one single
central place which is your digital
notes app
the one place that is backed up to the
cloud that is synced across all your
devices and that allows you to take just
quick informal notes
without many strict rules
if you're wondering which app should i
choose which is the most common question
go to my youtube channel i have a
four-part in-depth step-by-step guide
where i will help you find the exact
perfect note-taking app for you out of
over 60
second brain apps that now are on the
market
second what should you write down
you may be wondering
right what do i write most of us have
memories of school where the teacher
said
write this down and we'll be on the test
right the implication of that statement
is the only reason to note anything down
is for one short-term outcome
pass a test or a quiz get a good grade
write the essay i'm talking about
something very different i'm talking
about a lifelong
collection of your most important
knowledge and expertise to serve a
lifetime of projects and goals and
endeavors that you cannot even imagine
so you need a different approach
i really
implore you to not make this step of
deciding what to write down an
intellectual one
this is one of the biggest pitfalls
to make it a checklist highly rational
logical step by step that will not work
okay for a lot of reasons that i won't
get into
what you want to do
is to capture what resonates
resonates
resonance it's like an echo in your soul
and the actual best way to determine if
something resonates
is to pay attention to signs and signals
in the body
look for
goosebumps
standing up on your arm the hair
standing up on the back of your neck a
tingling sensation on your face
sometimes
this the sensation of time passing will
kind of slow down the your environment
will kind of fade away your your pupils
may dilate there's all these little
signs they'll be different for you
but that is a sign
from your body using emotions and
intuition which don't consume a lot of
energy
that what you are encountering is
something surprising
surprise
that is your filter
which is kind of obvious isn't it if you
read something and it doesn't surprise
you you already knew it
so why write it down
don't take notes on all the things you
already think and already believe and
already know which is actually what
people tend to do
okay the point is to change your mind
take notes on things that are surprising
that you disagree with
that provoke you
that confuse you
that move you
that inspire you
you can google answers to a question but
you can't google a feeling
[Laughter]
[Applause]
and third
this might be the most life-changing
this might be the single kind of most
popular highlight
which is don't organize all the stuff
you're collecting it's digital notes but
it's also your emails your files it's
documents pdfs word documents
spreadsheets all the digital stuff that
we collect
most people
try to organize it by these really broad
categories
don't do that
okay don't organize like you are a
librarian i love libraries but you are
not a librarian okay you're not creating
an encyclopedia don't have these
categories like psychology
right or like economics
business
quotes
ideas that's my favorite
ideas it's like
okay
you are one person
this is just an in
your one individual the best way to
organize is according to your projects
and your goals
go in there create a folder or a
notebook or a tag or whatever system it
uses
for each one of the currently active
projects that you're working on and the
goals that you're working toward
when it comes to individuals the reason
all this is worth it
really is to advance your projects and
your goals
organize to support the life that you're
trying to create
to put this another
way instead of organizing organizing
ideas by where they come from
organize them by where they're going
organize them by where you are going or
where you want to go
you might be wondering and a lot of
people do as they get into this world
there's a lot of terminology systems
processes apps different workflows why
do all this and there's a lot of
benefits
you'll be more focused because you can
offload what you're working on to your
second brain
you will be less stressed from being
able to kind of offload your thoughts
and anxieties and worries and just
examine them objectively you'll save
time
by being able to revisit past thinking
and past thoughts all sorts of things
but there's really something deeper here
which is the reason this is all worth
doing
is self-understanding
it's understanding
you
your memories
your nature your personality
the just unique way your mind works
i really think of building a second
brain or you can just say taking notes
in an intentional way
as a radical act of self-worth
it's a radical act of self-worth to say
my memories are worth keeping
to say my ideas matter enough to be
written down
and not just written down but organized
and revisited over time
it's a radical act of self-worth for
those of us
that want to understand ourselves but
also want to build and achieve and
create things in the world you get the
best of both worlds
it's a exercise and self-understanding
and also helps you create some amazing
stuff
you might be wondering what happened
with my medical condition
after years and years of shuttling back
and forth
from one doctor to the next
i was sitting in a doctor's office one
day
and i just had this flash of insight and
realized i have to take control of this
situation
no one is going to save me
no one is going to just give me a pill
or a surgery or a treatment that will
just make this disappear so i can go
back to living that life that i was
supposed to live
at that moment i stood up i marched over
to the receptionist
and you could tell by the look on her
face no one ever does this
because i said can i have my patient
record
and she was like what do you mean i was
like all of it
i want all of the records
and at that point it was like this size
it was stacks and stacks
i took it home i digitized it
back then it was scanning like one at a
time into a computer organized it
distilled it started to annotate and
analyze and really study
what all this information was telling me
and what i discovered was that i didn't
have an illness or an infection
what i had which was clear once all the
dots were connected was a functional
condition
a functional condition
is when something in your body
needs to change
the way that your body works the
function has to change it's not a virus
or bacteria or anything
based on that insight
i started putting in place a simple but
important set of habits
self-care habits
taking care of my nutrition my eating my
sleep exercise actually thinking about
for the first time my mental and
emotional health
that is how i found a solution that is
how i became pain-free
i think a lot of life is this way
a lot of areas and the problems that we
face in our lives the solutions are out
there
the answers already exist
i mean isn't that kind of obvious
someone has faced this before any
challenge or roadblock that you're
facing
the problem is there's too much of it
what is missing is someone
that could be you
with the will
and the intention
and the desire and the willingness
to take it in
do something with it organize it distill
it make sense of it and shape it to
create the outcomes the results that you
want in your life for your business or
your career
that's what digital notetaking a second
brain is for
there was an economist herbert simon who
said a wealth of information creates a
poverty of attention
he was writing back i think in the 40s
little did he know
in the 40s he was saying it's
unsustainable
and i think that's what we're living in
with all of our resources and all of our
wealth we are impoverished when it comes
to attention
there's just none left have you noticed
if you have 30 seconds free waiting for
the subway to arrive you are being
productive or consuming content on your
phone there's not even 30 seconds of
unoccupied attention in your day
but i think that's largely because we
are in this early adolescent stage of
technology
it just happened
technology like just appeared on a
historic time scale like last minute
if we can get through this adolescence
together
if we can find a way to bring intention
and strategy and our own goals and
projects and desires to it we will be
the first generation to go beyond the
desert
the desert of attention beyond to the
mountains of abundance abundance of
knowledge abundance of information
abundance of wisdom
that i know is waiting for us
i invite you to join the second brain
movement it's way bigger than any
methodology or book or book or course
it's an entire movement
dozens hundreds of different pieces of
software many methodologies many
approaches
we're having a fun time and we're
changing the world
thank you
I just tried ChatGPT for part of this too. I said:
Got back: