The Making of a Fast Brain
A conversation with brand founder and Chief Creative Officer, Alanah Purtell, on designing for a brain that refuses to be predictable... And the risk of messing with something that hundreds of thousands of people said changed their lives.
Ch. 01
The brain it
was built for
Fast Brain started with a fairly simple frustration: I was tired of trying to force my brain to work the way traditional planning systems seemed to expect it to. The problem was, my brain has never been particularly interested in being that predictable.
I have one of those brains that can feel almost superhuman one day and completely incapable of functioning like a normal person the next. Some days everything connects easily; other days, deciding what to do first becomes the entire task. Add small children, a business to run, a life that rarely behaves itself, and enough espresso to keep the whole operation moving, and consistency starts to feel like a very optimistic concept.
And yet almost every planner I had used still seemed to be built around a very tidy idea of how people function: that we know what needs doing, can summon motivation when required, and move through our days with some reliable sense of order. That never felt realistic to me.
So instead of trying to build another planner that asked people to get better at planning, I wanted to understand whether the tool itself could get better at meeting the person using it.
Ch. 02
Not one brain,
thousands
My background was in functional design, so I started there. I looked at how we process information, how we build pathways, how attention shifts, what happens when everything feels equally important, and why some approaches make it easier to narrow your focus when your brain has decided that every thought deserves immediate attention.
I also quickly realised that my own brain could not be the only reference point.
Over the years, Fast Brain has been shaped by hundreds of hours of research, conversations with psychiatrists and occupational therapists, and the experiences of the neurospicy community actually using it in real life.
All of that eventually boiled down into a set of core principles we now call the Fast Brain Method.
Ch. 03
Inconveniently
individual
The method is not about squeezing more productivity out of yourself, and it is certainly not a promise that the right notebook will suddenly turn you into someone who wakes before sunrise, drinks something suspiciously green and moves through the day with flawless discipline.
It is about recognising that brains are inconveniently individual things.
Sometimes the most useful thing a planning system can do is help you work with the brain you have today, rather than making you feel as though you have failed because today does not look like yesterday.
That has always been the foundation of Fast Brain. It is also the reason we changed it.
Ch. 04
The risk
Admittedly, changing a notebook system that has sold more than 1.5 million units worldwide is slightly terrifying. The safest option would have been to leave it alone, especially when so many people already knew exactly where everything lived and had built their own rhythms around it.
But the Fast Brain was originally built around the way my own brain worked, and once thousands upon thousands of other brains started using it, we learned an enormous amount.
There is something slightly ridiculous about making a product people genuinely love, because eventually you have to decide whether loving it means preserving it exactly as it is.
We chose the second one.
There is always some risk in that. Some people may prefer the old version, some may need a minute to get used to the new one, and some will immediately understand why we moved things around. That is part of making something that is still alive.
Fast Brain was never meant to be a fixed answer to how a brain should work. It exists because there was never only one answer in the first place.
The notebook has changed because we have learned more about the brains it was made for. The reason it exists has stayed exactly where it has always been.
All New Edition · $24.95
01 EVERY NOTEBOOK HAS 33% MORE PAGES
Noticeably chunkier, but still snack-sized.
Page volume has increased to 64 pages in every notebook including the addition of a dot grid section at the back for bullet journalling, brain dumps, and bright ideas.
The notebooks are still slim, undated and thread sewn. They continue to slip perfectly inside all of your folios (just a touch more girth).
02 SHE'S NEVER FELT BETTER IN YOUR HANDS
The matte laminate is gone. We wanted to marry up our planner range with the same durable, tactile finish of our Hobby Note range, making sure your entire collection looks and feels like they belong together.
Fast Brain notebooks are now printed in a richer offset colour, both inside and out, all on uncoated 300gsm craft.
03 WE'VE MORE THAN DOUBLED THE DAILY LAYOUT OPTIONS AND SORTED THEM INTO MODES FOR YOU
The old edition shuffled the same 7 designs week after week. New Season Fast Brains have 16.
The new layouts can be categorised into Circular, Spine, Buckets or Timeblock - each built for a different kind of day and chosen based on what the behavioural science says actually works when the focus is hard to find.
The new layouts have been built off 5 more years of knowledge in the field of neurodiversity, and road testing from hundreds of thousands of users on how your brain truly interacts with the layouts.
They are incredibly special (and fun).
04 THE LAYOUTS HAVE BUILT IN PARALYSIS BREAKERS
Some of the most common feedback from new users was that feeling of paralysis when approaching different layouts for the first time.
So we built small, unobtrusive guidance into every layout to help you push past this moment.
These prompts give more insight into not just how a certain layout can be approached, but what is happening in your brain when you do it (pretty cool right).
Importantly - these sections remain nothing more than helpful ideas. You can still choose to use them in entirely different ways... we secretly love when you do.
05 BUILT AROUND YOUR DAYS, NOT YOUR CALENDAR
This might actually be the most important change. Fast Brain notebooks were originally built in a way that felt like they should only last a month at a time. But the reality is that not every day needs to be plotted out.
What we have found is that most people keep a Fast Brain on hand for fuzzy days, and then accompany that with one of our other notebooks for organising their actual calendar.
The increase in density of each notebook plus the shift in how layout modes work has been an ackowledgement of how people are really using the notebooks, and is why it's no longer tied to a month at all.
It's okay if one notebook lasts you months a time.
We also shifted the weekly preparation spreads to the back of the notebook. Daily focus layouts drive the goal of a Fast Brain, but weekly prep remains an option for when your executive functioning just ain't functioning.
SO WHAT ACTUALLY CHANGED?
THREE WAYS TO START FAST BRAIN
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