Building a Second Brain

A proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential.

For the bonus chapter on tagging, visit buildingasecondbrain.com/bonuschapter.

For the notes app recommendation, visit buildingasecondbrain.com/resources.

Total time spent: 14 hours and 38 minutes.

Verdict

Personal Knowledge Management system goes by a lot of different names nowadays, one of which is the Second Brain coined by Tiago Forte in Building a Second Brain. From this book the CODE workflow for approaching PKM and ==PARA system for organizing notes and documents== are now perversive among the productivity and helped me kick start my own system.

The main ideas inside Building a Second Brain can be understood within 5 minutes, but the book is still WORTH reading thoroughly, as it provides other juicy insights and examples, especially if you’re a fan of productivity. Adopting these methodologies and philosophies literally SHIFTED my attitude toward Internet, information, note staking, and even my daily life as whole.

The YouTube channel of Tiago Forte is also a wonderful resource to go to for information on PKM.

Why we need a Second Brain?

Send information to our future self

To be able to make use of information we value, we need a way to package it up and send it through time to our future self.

Artists and intellectuals from ancient time use their Commonplace Books to record information, so that reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. (The Case of Books by Robert Darnton) Second Brain is a digital version of commonplace book.

Human brains are unreliable

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. — David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

Those who continue to rely on their fragile biological brains will become ever more overwhelmed by the explosive growth in the complexity of our lives.

• The power of a Second Brain:
  • Making out ideas concrete.
  • revealing new associations between ideas.
  • Incubating our ideas over time.
  • Sharpening out unique perspectives.

Main ideas

CODE Method

• Capture — keep what resonates
• Organize — Save for actionability
• Distill — Find the essence
• Express — Show your work

Give your future self a note

Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes — you are giving your future self the gift of knowledge that is easy to find and understand.

Capture

Have 12 favorite problems to start with! They should be open-ended questions, and may change over time. These serve as triggers for your capturing process.

Your favorite problems

You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!” — Richard Feynman

Avoid capturing to much

… Take on a Curator’s Perspective — that we are the judges, editors, and interpreters of the information we choose to let into our lives.

Ultimately, capture what resonates.

Capture Criteria

• Does it inspire me?
• Is it useful?
• Is it personal?
• Is it surprising

Organize

PARA system for organizing

• Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now.
• Areas: Longer-term responsibilities you want to manage over time.
• Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future.
• Archives: Inactive items from the other three categories

// TO PLACE A NOTE
In which project will this be most useful?
If none:
    In which area will this be most useful?
    If none:
        Which resource does this belong to?
        If none:
            Place in archives.

Always place a note or file not only where it will be useful, but where it will be useful the soonest.

Instead of organizing ideas according to where they come from, organize them according to where they are going — specifically, the outcomes that they can help you realize.

Distill

为道日损

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. — Lao Thu, ancient Chinese philosopher

Note taking is like time travel — you are sending packets of knowledge through time to your future self.

The most important factor in whether your notes can survive that journey into the future is their discoverability — how easy it is to discover what they contain and access the specific points that are most immediately useful.

The Progressive Summarization Technique: you highlight the main points of a note, and them highlight the main points of those highlights, and so on, distilling the essence of a note in several “layers.” Each of these layers uses a different kind of formatting so you can easily tell the apart.

Three Common Mistakes of Novice Notetakers

• Over-Highlighting
• Highlighting Without a Purpose in Mind
• Making Highlighting Difficult

Express

The purpose of knowledge is to be shared

An idea wants to be shared. And, in the sharing, it becomes more complex, more interesting, and more likely to work for more people. — Adrienne Maree Brown, writer and activist

Your singular perspective may patch some small hole in the vast tattered fabric of humanity. — The Bullet Journal Method, Ryder Carroll

Three stages of Personal Knowledge Management

• Remembering
• Connecting
• Creating

• Intermediate Packets: Each small note is a building block of new projects; a big project can be divided into multiple small Intermediate Packets.

• Divergence and Convergence stages of creativity.

• Archipelago of Ideas: divergently gather a group of ideas, then switch into convergence mode and link them together.

• Hemingway Bridge: don’t finish today’s work all at once, reserve momentum for next session. — ==End with beginning in mind.==

  • Write down ideas for next steps.
  • Write down the current status.
  • Write down any details you have in mind that are likely to be forgotten once you step away.
  • Write out your intention for the next work session.

• Dial Down the Scope: drop or reduce or postpone the lease important parts.

Ship small and concrete works

Whatever you are building, there is a smaller, simpler version of it that would deliver much of the value in a fraction of the time.

Quotes

Everything is note

If a piece of content has been interpreted through your lens, curated according to your taste, translated into your own words, or drawn from your life experience, and stored in a secure place, then it qualifies as a note.

For modern, professional note taking, a note is a “knowledge building block” — a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head.

It is about optimizing a system outside yourself, a system not subject to your limitations and constraints, leaving you happily in optimized and free to roam, to wonder, to wander toward whatever you feel alive here and now in each moment.

Every change in how we use technology also requires a change in how we think.

Your Second Brain becomes like a mirror, teaching you about yourself and reflecting back to you the ideas worth keeping and acting on.

In reality, you are just planting seeds of inspiration and harvesting them as they flower.

It's about info!

Our attitude toward information profoundly shapes how we see and understand the world and our place in it. Our success in the workforce depends on our ability to make use of information more effectively and to think better, smarter, faster.

No need of FOMO

All we need is a few seeds of wisdom, and the seeds we most need tend to continually find us again and again. You don’t need to go out and hunt down insights. All you have to do is listen to what life is repeatedly trying to tell you.

Chase what excites you

If I could leave you with one last bit of advice, it is to chase what excites you. When you are captivated and obsessed by a story, an idea, or a new possibility, don’t just let that moment pass as if it doesn’t matter. Those are the moments that are truly precious, and that no technology can produce for you. Run after your obsessions with everything you have.

Tagging

Tagging should facilitate effective action, not just abstract thought.

— Tiago Forte Tags were used to help retrieve info when computers were not powerful enough. Nowadays, each single word can be indexed, thus tags should be used for things that can't be directly searched.

• Create tags based on action instead of classification.
  1. Tags for use cases.
     • How will the notes be used?
     • Kind of information, e.g., #source, #evidence, #slides, #theories, #frameworks, #claim, #counterpoint, #question.
     • Final product, e.g., #presentation, #essay, #report, #website, #project-plan, #meeting-agenda, #budget.
     • e.g., #c for characters in story, #l for locations, #o for object, #s for situation, #a for act, #t for theme.
  2. Tags for tracking the progress.
     • How are the notes currently being used?
     • Role in a project, e.g., #meeting-notes, #timeline, #budget, #decision, #action, #idea, or #objective.
     • Current stage, e.g., #planned, #in-process, #waiting-for-approval, #reviewed, #approved, #on-hold, or #finished
  3. Tag notes retroactively and only as needed. (How have the notes been used?)