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Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Nonfiction (2022)“One of my favorite books of the year. It completely reshaped how I think about information and how and why I take notes.” —Daniel Pink, bestselling author of Drive
A revolutionary approach to enhancing productivity, creating flow, and vastly increasing your ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us.
For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to contribute, and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than feeling empowered, we are often left feeling overwhelmed by this constant influx of information. The very knowledge that was supposed to set us free has instead led to the paralyzing stress of believing we’ll never know or remember enough.
Now, this eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. As a trusted and organized digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes, and creative work synced across all your devices and platforms, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals.
Discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.
A revolutionary approach to enhancing productivity, creating flow, and vastly increasing your ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us.
For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to contribute, and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than feeling empowered, we are often left feeling overwhelmed by this constant influx of information. The very knowledge that was supposed to set us free has instead led to the paralyzing stress of believing we’ll never know or remember enough.
Now, this eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. As a trusted and organized digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes, and creative work synced across all your devices and platforms, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals.
Discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.
Audiobook
First published June 14, 2022
About the author
Tiago Forte
10 books1,360 followersTiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness.
He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review. Find out more at Fortelabs.com.
He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review. Find out more at Fortelabs.com.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,572 reviews
March 4, 2024
Who else can relate to this?
I have 200-300 tabs open on my computer because I found a great website that I know I will need someday in the future. Every time my computer restarts I pray to the computer gods that my tabs will restore upon restarting. My best friend is CTRL + SHIFT + T to restore my accidently closed out tab.
Is there a better way? Can the information that I learned be stored in a more efficient manner?
According to Building a Second Brain, you can!
Did you know that out of a five-day workweek a worker spends one whole day searching for information? So how can we increase productivity? By making the information easier to find. Tiago Forte, the author, suggests a file system: Short-Term Activities, Long-Term Activities, Information, and Backup.
Of course, he uses other terms so you will have to buy the book for the more sophisticated terminology.
So what did I think of this book?
Building a Second Brain was overly verbose, wordy, with a lot of repetition. Personally, all that I needed to know is that people spend an incredible amount of time searching for information and a better way to store it. However, the factoid that I provided earlier (about the average worker) is just one sentence in an entire chapter. The file organization chapter is the only other chapter that I found helpful.
But did this one chapter change my life?
Yes. On the open tabs that I have on my computer, I started to save them to PDF along with a Word document with the web address. Then, I saved those files to the filing system that the author suggested. I was able to finally close out of my 200-300 tabs! Also, now the information isn’t buried. You know when you finally need one of those tabs and now you have to sort through them all? I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders when I finally closed out of my tabs.
However……
I am not sure that the average worker is the most beneficial person to read this. I propose that people with direct reports are the ideal target audience for this book. Why? Let’s take a look.
1. Back in the day, I worked in public accounting. At every office for every client, we were supposed to use a standardized filing system. For example, every client would have a Tax Returns, Provisions, and PBC (Provided by Client) folder. However, people rarely complied with this filing system. Why? Was everyone out to “get” the company? No. People were overworked, and they couldn’t care less about the filing system. Also, sometimes the Shared Drive was extremely slow or inaccessible, and it was much easier and faster to work from their desktop.
2. There was one gentleman that I worked for that was constantly (and unfairly) passed over for a promotion. He worked nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and he had vast in-depth knowledge of the company. Guess where he stored all of his files? On his desktop. This was intentional.
So why do I think corporations might be the best target audience? To ensure compliance with the filing system, they need to make compliance part of their employees’ performance metrics. Otherwise, people will let it slide.
Also, corporations need to rethink how and why they promote individuals. If someone is hording information and stating, “Promote me. I know what the others in the team don’t know.”, that person should not be promoted. Information hording should not be celebrated. The corporate response should be, “Why doesn’t the rest of your team know what you know? What steps have you taken to improve the team?” Information hording is not a leadership trait; it is actually quite the opposite.
Finally, I wanted to touch on something that the author missed (in my opinion). He referred to how you know so many things and you want to remember them all. However, Lisa Genova, a neuroscientist and author of Remember, gave a great example of clarifying what you really know in the first place. Imagine that you are running late for a very important meeting. You pull your car into the first available slot and run into the building. When you come out of the meeting, you can’t remember where you parked. However, you never took the time to look up and see the sign that says that you are parked in Level 3. You can’t remember something that you didn’t know in the first place!
This is a good reminder that sometimes we need to slow down. If you speed read something at 6X speed, how much of that book are you really going to remember? If you quickly skim an article online for 30 seconds, are you going to have any truly valuable takeaways?
Overall, Building a Second Brain has life-altering advice; however, it is difficult to wade through all of the other non-useful information to get to the useful stuff.
*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.
2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities
Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta
I have 200-300 tabs open on my computer because I found a great website that I know I will need someday in the future. Every time my computer restarts I pray to the computer gods that my tabs will restore upon restarting. My best friend is CTRL + SHIFT + T to restore my accidently closed out tab.
Is there a better way? Can the information that I learned be stored in a more efficient manner?
According to Building a Second Brain, you can!
Did you know that out of a five-day workweek a worker spends one whole day searching for information? So how can we increase productivity? By making the information easier to find. Tiago Forte, the author, suggests a file system: Short-Term Activities, Long-Term Activities, Information, and Backup.
Of course, he uses other terms so you will have to buy the book for the more sophisticated terminology.
So what did I think of this book?
Building a Second Brain was overly verbose, wordy, with a lot of repetition. Personally, all that I needed to know is that people spend an incredible amount of time searching for information and a better way to store it. However, the factoid that I provided earlier (about the average worker) is just one sentence in an entire chapter. The file organization chapter is the only other chapter that I found helpful.
But did this one chapter change my life?
Yes. On the open tabs that I have on my computer, I started to save them to PDF along with a Word document with the web address. Then, I saved those files to the filing system that the author suggested. I was able to finally close out of my 200-300 tabs! Also, now the information isn’t buried. You know when you finally need one of those tabs and now you have to sort through them all? I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders when I finally closed out of my tabs.
However……
I am not sure that the average worker is the most beneficial person to read this. I propose that people with direct reports are the ideal target audience for this book. Why? Let’s take a look.
1. Back in the day, I worked in public accounting. At every office for every client, we were supposed to use a standardized filing system. For example, every client would have a Tax Returns, Provisions, and PBC (Provided by Client) folder. However, people rarely complied with this filing system. Why? Was everyone out to “get” the company? No. People were overworked, and they couldn’t care less about the filing system. Also, sometimes the Shared Drive was extremely slow or inaccessible, and it was much easier and faster to work from their desktop.
2. There was one gentleman that I worked for that was constantly (and unfairly) passed over for a promotion. He worked nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and he had vast in-depth knowledge of the company. Guess where he stored all of his files? On his desktop. This was intentional.
So why do I think corporations might be the best target audience? To ensure compliance with the filing system, they need to make compliance part of their employees’ performance metrics. Otherwise, people will let it slide.
Also, corporations need to rethink how and why they promote individuals. If someone is hording information and stating, “Promote me. I know what the others in the team don’t know.”, that person should not be promoted. Information hording should not be celebrated. The corporate response should be, “Why doesn’t the rest of your team know what you know? What steps have you taken to improve the team?” Information hording is not a leadership trait; it is actually quite the opposite.
Finally, I wanted to touch on something that the author missed (in my opinion). He referred to how you know so many things and you want to remember them all. However, Lisa Genova, a neuroscientist and author of Remember, gave a great example of clarifying what you really know in the first place. Imagine that you are running late for a very important meeting. You pull your car into the first available slot and run into the building. When you come out of the meeting, you can’t remember where you parked. However, you never took the time to look up and see the sign that says that you are parked in Level 3. You can’t remember something that you didn’t know in the first place!
This is a good reminder that sometimes we need to slow down. If you speed read something at 6X speed, how much of that book are you really going to remember? If you quickly skim an article online for 30 seconds, are you going to have any truly valuable takeaways?
Overall, Building a Second Brain has life-altering advice; however, it is difficult to wade through all of the other non-useful information to get to the useful stuff.
*Thanks, NetGalley, for a free copy of this book in exchange for my fair and honest opinion.
2024 Reading Schedule
Jan Middlemarch
Feb The Grapes of Wrath
Mar Oliver Twist
Apr Madame Bovary
May A Clockwork Orange
Jun Possession
Jul The Folk of the Faraway Tree Collection
Aug Crime and Punishment
Sep Heart of Darkness
Oct Moby-Dick
Nov Far From the Madding Crowd
Dec A Tale of Two Cities
Connect With Me!
Blog Twitter BookTube Facebook Insta
July 5, 2022
In the 15 century, the Dutch scholar Erasmus of Rotterdam described how one should keep 'a common place book'.
He said that you should divide your notebook into sections. Each section should be dedicated to a topic that you want to investigate.
If you're interested, let's say, in the subject of the 'divine will' ( a subject that could have been of interest of Erasmus) then you should add all the relevant quotes or passages you encounter about this topic into your common place notebook. In the future, when you will sit down to write a book, you will have an enormous amount of references to use in your work.
The same strategy was used also by the English poet John Donne, who followed Erasmus' advice and kept a notebook like that.
Moreover, you could buy "ready-made" common place books in England and the Netherlands in the 15 - 16th centuries. They contained quotes, facts, passages on all sorts of topics collected for you.
All of this is not mentioned in Tiago Forte's book. Forte talks about Taylor Swift, and how she uses note-taking to write her songs. I will leave this to your own judgement. In fact the only serious thinker that Forte mentions in his book is the physicist Richard Feynman.
Everything that is written in this book covers the basic common sense that you already have. For example, Forte tells you that you should use CODE method to capture your notes. CODE stands for Capture, Organise, Distill, Express.
In the 'Capture' section, he advises you to take notes that resonate with you. If you've been capturing notes so far which do not resonate with you, then this is a great advice.
Forte uses another abbreviation to hide the shallowness of his book. He calls it PARA.
PARA is the best system (according to him) how you can organise your notes. PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives.
The notes on projects you work on should go to the 'project' folder. Notes that you no longer need must go into 'Archives' folder. Once again, this is a basic common sense.
Essentially if you've gotten so far into this review you've already read around 90 percent of this book.
This book is 300 pages long. It could have easily been squeezed into 5. I am not joking.
I've bought this book because it was recommended by Ali Abdaal - a doctor/ Youtuber who graduated from the Cambridge University. Unfortunately I was disappointed by this rec.
(P.S. If you're just about to graduate from school, this book might be useful to you. However, I've strong doubts even about that.)
He said that you should divide your notebook into sections. Each section should be dedicated to a topic that you want to investigate.
If you're interested, let's say, in the subject of the 'divine will' ( a subject that could have been of interest of Erasmus) then you should add all the relevant quotes or passages you encounter about this topic into your common place notebook. In the future, when you will sit down to write a book, you will have an enormous amount of references to use in your work.
The same strategy was used also by the English poet John Donne, who followed Erasmus' advice and kept a notebook like that.
Moreover, you could buy "ready-made" common place books in England and the Netherlands in the 15 - 16th centuries. They contained quotes, facts, passages on all sorts of topics collected for you.
All of this is not mentioned in Tiago Forte's book. Forte talks about Taylor Swift, and how she uses note-taking to write her songs. I will leave this to your own judgement. In fact the only serious thinker that Forte mentions in his book is the physicist Richard Feynman.
Everything that is written in this book covers the basic common sense that you already have. For example, Forte tells you that you should use CODE method to capture your notes. CODE stands for Capture, Organise, Distill, Express.
In the 'Capture' section, he advises you to take notes that resonate with you. If you've been capturing notes so far which do not resonate with you, then this is a great advice.
Forte uses another abbreviation to hide the shallowness of his book. He calls it PARA.
PARA is the best system (according to him) how you can organise your notes. PARA stands for Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives.
The notes on projects you work on should go to the 'project' folder. Notes that you no longer need must go into 'Archives' folder. Once again, this is a basic common sense.
Essentially if you've gotten so far into this review you've already read around 90 percent of this book.
This book is 300 pages long. It could have easily been squeezed into 5. I am not joking.
I've bought this book because it was recommended by Ali Abdaal - a doctor/ Youtuber who graduated from the Cambridge University. Unfortunately I was disappointed by this rec.
(P.S. If you're just about to graduate from school, this book might be useful to you. However, I've strong doubts even about that.)
June 20, 2022
What a waste of time that was. A few good nuggets in there but this whole thing should’ve been a blog post. Endless filler, entire chapters that contribute nothing, banal examples, even felt condescending at times. The essential point? Take more notes. Huzzah.
January 30, 2023
I noticed this book at Goodreads Choice Award.
I like his book title "Building a Second Brain. "
Of course, I want a second brain to assist me to manage my important things.
Imagine that you can add another hard disk and upgrade your memory RAM in your computer to run better and more complicated software.
I like the book "Digital Minimalism" and now I read a book that digitalizes my life. A bit confused now.
By the way, this book advises us to utilize the computer brain to keep and process data so that we can free our brain to think.
A few ideas and methods are recommended to keep our information such as CODE, PARA, etc.
I hope I can have the third and more brains to read more in the future. :)
I like his book title "Building a Second Brain. "
Of course, I want a second brain to assist me to manage my important things.
Imagine that you can add another hard disk and upgrade your memory RAM in your computer to run better and more complicated software.
I like the book "Digital Minimalism" and now I read a book that digitalizes my life. A bit confused now.
By the way, this book advises us to utilize the computer brain to keep and process data so that we can free our brain to think.
A few ideas and methods are recommended to keep our information such as CODE, PARA, etc.
I hope I can have the third and more brains to read more in the future. :)
July 21, 2022
This book really could have been one medium sized blog post. The premise is that you should use a digital note taking app to organize all of your thoughts, articles you want to read, projects, etc. He doesn't really recommend one app over another, though he mentions a handful. Then you have folders to organize all that stuff. Take notes whenever you have a thought, and once a week organize them. There are various anagrams he uses and he talks a lot, but that's about it.
I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.
I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.
October 4, 2022
This book delivered much more than I expected.
If like me, you take a gazillion of notes and never return them, this book will teach you a better way of taking notes.
It teaches you a system that will serve your present future self.
If like me, you take a gazillion of notes and never return them, this book will teach you a better way of taking notes.
It teaches you a system that will serve your present future self.
June 18, 2022
Personal knowledge management in this age of technological overwhelm is so important that anyone writing in this area deserves a read. And that is perhaps especially true of Tiago Forte, a well-known guy in the area of digital productivity.
Unfortunately, Tiago’s book did not work for me. His system is premised on a life driven by projects, which doesn’t apply to me, and his methodology focuses much more on collecting and distilling information than on really working with that information to make connections and generate new ideas.
Unfortunately, Tiago’s book did not work for me. His system is premised on a life driven by projects, which doesn’t apply to me, and his methodology focuses much more on collecting and distilling information than on really working with that information to make connections and generate new ideas.
August 13, 2022
It was on my "pile of shame" for ages, and I've finally decided to do something with that :)
First of all, I wish someone would have given me this book (or rather - such a book) when I was starting my professional career. Or even starting studies at the university. Why so? It's pretty much a primer book on making effective notes - in such a way that your personal knowledge base becomes pretty much an extension of your brain.
How does BaSB help you with that?
1. by bringing in a practical method ("framework") - CODE (Capture, Organize, Distill, Express)
2. by sharing good practices of digitizing organized information (& why they work)
To be absolutely frank, I haven't found anything new for myself. But that's understandable - I've been familiar with Forte's ideas for a long time already (thanks to e.g. his YT activity), I'm personally interested in PKM (it's sort of a hobby of main, as an aspect of optimizing personal productivity), and I've tried several methods (e.g. Zettelkasten) myself - I've ended up shaping my own "framework".
I can easily recommend BaSB to everyone who STARTS her/his adventure with PKM (Personal Knowledge Management). If you're advanced and you're looking for more sophisticated system (e.g. where hierarchical organization by project plus tagging is NOT enough), this book won't help you.
Why only 4 stars? I think the book provides a very gentle start, but even in such a short form it was possible to add some more content (ideas, ways of organizing, concepts - e.g. network graphs, bi-directional linking, etc.).
First of all, I wish someone would have given me this book (or rather - such a book) when I was starting my professional career. Or even starting studies at the university. Why so? It's pretty much a primer book on making effective notes - in such a way that your personal knowledge base becomes pretty much an extension of your brain.
How does BaSB help you with that?
1. by bringing in a practical method ("framework") - CODE (Capture, Organize, Distill, Express)
2. by sharing good practices of digitizing organized information (& why they work)
To be absolutely frank, I haven't found anything new for myself. But that's understandable - I've been familiar with Forte's ideas for a long time already (thanks to e.g. his YT activity), I'm personally interested in PKM (it's sort of a hobby of main, as an aspect of optimizing personal productivity), and I've tried several methods (e.g. Zettelkasten) myself - I've ended up shaping my own "framework".
I can easily recommend BaSB to everyone who STARTS her/his adventure with PKM (Personal Knowledge Management). If you're advanced and you're looking for more sophisticated system (e.g. where hierarchical organization by project plus tagging is NOT enough), this book won't help you.
Why only 4 stars? I think the book provides a very gentle start, but even in such a short form it was possible to add some more content (ideas, ways of organizing, concepts - e.g. network graphs, bi-directional linking, etc.).
July 14, 2022
Kalau kamu udah rajin nyatet sejak jaman kuliah, buku ini bakalan ngebantu banget!
Ketika ada istilah "second brain", yg ada di kepalaku adl cangkok otak 😂 Ternyata setelah baca yg bener "second brain" nggak melibatkan operasi medis.
Adalah Tiago Forte, seorang pebisnis + YouTuber, dengan konsep "second brain". Forte membahas pentingnya pengelolaan catatan alias Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).
Mungkin kita sering mencatat inspirasi, ide, kata-kata yg bisa jadi prompt tapi nggak terkelola dg baik. Sampai akhirnya "search & retrival"-nya butuh waktu lama. Atau bahkan nggak bisa ditemukan sama sekali. Forte menawarkan sistem CODE yg dijelaskan sepanjang buku BASB ini.
Forte menekankan, ini bukan perkara peralatan yg canggih atau apps yg paling komplit. Yang penting, "tools" itu bisa membantu proses Capture untuk beragam format informasi (tulis, lisan, audio, audio visual).
Sejak awal buku, Forte sudah bilang kalau "second brain" bisa digunakan untuk siapapun. Nggak selalu buat mereka yg kerjanya sbg Project Manager. Bahkan buat keperluan individu pun tetap bisa dimanfaatkan. Menurut Forte, setiap manusia punya kapasitas "knowledge" yg bisa dikembangkan selama mereka hidup.
Aku langsung "klik" ketika baca buku ini. Perkara PKM memang belum pernah kupelajari, tapi beberapa konsepnya masih familiar & beririsan dg dasar ilmu perpustakaan. Tinggal disesuaikan dg kebutuhan & nggak kudu saklek seperti aturan tertentu. Makanya aku langsung semangat & mau coba pelan-pelan taktik yg diajarin Forte. Semoga aku bisa konsisten 😂
Buku ini bak edisi panjang dari Show Your Work-nya Austin Kleon. Dua orang ini punya paham serupa kalau karya brilian nggak asal nongol. Karya itu datang krn kita aktif memprodukisnya secara perlahan. Dan itu bisa dimulai dari "building a second brain."
Ketika ada istilah "second brain", yg ada di kepalaku adl cangkok otak 😂 Ternyata setelah baca yg bener "second brain" nggak melibatkan operasi medis.
Adalah Tiago Forte, seorang pebisnis + YouTuber, dengan konsep "second brain". Forte membahas pentingnya pengelolaan catatan alias Personal Knowledge Management (PKM).
Mungkin kita sering mencatat inspirasi, ide, kata-kata yg bisa jadi prompt tapi nggak terkelola dg baik. Sampai akhirnya "search & retrival"-nya butuh waktu lama. Atau bahkan nggak bisa ditemukan sama sekali. Forte menawarkan sistem CODE yg dijelaskan sepanjang buku BASB ini.
Forte menekankan, ini bukan perkara peralatan yg canggih atau apps yg paling komplit. Yang penting, "tools" itu bisa membantu proses Capture untuk beragam format informasi (tulis, lisan, audio, audio visual).
Sejak awal buku, Forte sudah bilang kalau "second brain" bisa digunakan untuk siapapun. Nggak selalu buat mereka yg kerjanya sbg Project Manager. Bahkan buat keperluan individu pun tetap bisa dimanfaatkan. Menurut Forte, setiap manusia punya kapasitas "knowledge" yg bisa dikembangkan selama mereka hidup.
Aku langsung "klik" ketika baca buku ini. Perkara PKM memang belum pernah kupelajari, tapi beberapa konsepnya masih familiar & beririsan dg dasar ilmu perpustakaan. Tinggal disesuaikan dg kebutuhan & nggak kudu saklek seperti aturan tertentu. Makanya aku langsung semangat & mau coba pelan-pelan taktik yg diajarin Forte. Semoga aku bisa konsisten 😂
Buku ini bak edisi panjang dari Show Your Work-nya Austin Kleon. Dua orang ini punya paham serupa kalau karya brilian nggak asal nongol. Karya itu datang krn kita aktif memprodukisnya secara perlahan. Dan itu bisa dimulai dari "building a second brain."
September 29, 2022
The concept is very practical, great tips for organizing your digital life. The book contains a lot of fluff and every detail is over-clarified. Too many examples, too few actionable tips.
April 9, 2022
In the last few decades, computers and the Internet have provided humans with new access to untold masses of information. Humans are just now catching up on how to use this information for our own good. The technology needs to make our lives easier and more productive, not less so. Fortunately, first-time author Tiago Forte points the way to use these tools to aid creativity. In book form, he teaches a method that he’s shared in seminars around the world to manage “personal knowledge” better.
Habits of memorization and recitation are becoming things of the past. With a few new skills, we can use ever-present devices and computers to do these tasks for us. However, we have to learn to use them wisely. They must organize our lives more, not less, or we will become slaves to them. This field, called Personal Knowledge Management, aims to make computational resources our “Second Brain.”
Forte introduces readers how to use note-capturing software to organize one’s entire life – work and personal. He provides some basic, high-level organizational concepts that can get us started on using these. Two potential audiences are especially served: First, newbies to personal organization but old-hats to technology can learn how to organize life effectively; second, newbies to technology but old-hats to personal organization can learn basic skills to make their lives more efficient. These aids can manage both personal/private and business affairs.
Forte admits that in the long run, pragmatism wins out. Humans need to have a working system to organize the many things life throws at us. Those with superior systems – that is, systems that promote creativity and human flourishing – will capture the spoils. Many of us lack access to first-hand mentoring and education to teach us such a system. While Forte provides just a start in this quick read, it can move us in the right direction to changing our minds, hearts, and lives so that we can excel in the coming years.
Habits of memorization and recitation are becoming things of the past. With a few new skills, we can use ever-present devices and computers to do these tasks for us. However, we have to learn to use them wisely. They must organize our lives more, not less, or we will become slaves to them. This field, called Personal Knowledge Management, aims to make computational resources our “Second Brain.”
Forte introduces readers how to use note-capturing software to organize one’s entire life – work and personal. He provides some basic, high-level organizational concepts that can get us started on using these. Two potential audiences are especially served: First, newbies to personal organization but old-hats to technology can learn how to organize life effectively; second, newbies to technology but old-hats to personal organization can learn basic skills to make their lives more efficient. These aids can manage both personal/private and business affairs.
Forte admits that in the long run, pragmatism wins out. Humans need to have a working system to organize the many things life throws at us. Those with superior systems – that is, systems that promote creativity and human flourishing – will capture the spoils. Many of us lack access to first-hand mentoring and education to teach us such a system. While Forte provides just a start in this quick read, it can move us in the right direction to changing our minds, hearts, and lives so that we can excel in the coming years.
December 15, 2023
A classic example of someone discovering something that's common sense to the rest of the world, thinking that they're the first person in history to discover it, and deciding to write a book about it and sell it to people.
“If you want to remember something, write it down”, “Use note-taking apps”, “Organise your notes in folders”, “Take notes of what inspires you and resonates with you”. There. That is the summary of the book. So so profound, right? None of us knew all this!
So the title? Building a second brain? The book has absolutely nothing about that and the title is absolutely unrelated to the content. A title like “Note-taking for Dummies” or “Write It Down: How to Download a Note-taking App” would have been more accurate.
Who is this book for? Someone who has never ever taken notes, someone who knows nothing about folder organisation, someone who doesn’t know we can use apps for our notes, and someone who has no common sense.
June 23, 2022
Too much philosophy and not enough practical examples. And, I am a fan of the author's. I have a paid membership to the website. I watch every YouTube. I read all his blog posts.
I was looking forward to this book because I wanted some real "nitty gritty" about building my Second Brain. I wanted something beyond what I read on his social media.
But I found there was just too much talking about how important a Second Brain is and how we can change our lives by building one. That should have been Chapter 1--and the rest of the book examples or discussions of how to put the recommendations to work.
Unfortunately, the author spent page after page on too much explanation about how our brains work, etc. Don't get me wrong. Some of that was interesting. But it is not why I bought the book. The book's title is why I bought the book--I wanted to build a Second Brain.
I would definitely not recommend this book to anyone who does not have experience with building a Second Brain. On the other hand, if you do have experience and are already familiar with the author's work, you will probably enjoy the "non-practical" parts of the book.
I was looking forward to this book because I wanted some real "nitty gritty" about building my Second Brain. I wanted something beyond what I read on his social media.
But I found there was just too much talking about how important a Second Brain is and how we can change our lives by building one. That should have been Chapter 1--and the rest of the book examples or discussions of how to put the recommendations to work.
Unfortunately, the author spent page after page on too much explanation about how our brains work, etc. Don't get me wrong. Some of that was interesting. But it is not why I bought the book. The book's title is why I bought the book--I wanted to build a Second Brain.
I would definitely not recommend this book to anyone who does not have experience with building a Second Brain. On the other hand, if you do have experience and are already familiar with the author's work, you will probably enjoy the "non-practical" parts of the book.
October 6, 2022
It doesn't matter how good of a note taker or reader you are, if you cannot easily access your notes for future use, elaboration, or reference, then your note taking needs improvement. Your note taking needs a system that is easily accessible and organized in a way that you are able to reference, elaborate, and add to at any time anywhere. You need a Second Brain.
I started taking notes when I started reading books on a regular basis in 2015. I didn't start taking digital notes until 2019 because I realized that it was so much easier to keep track of. Then I realized that the notes that I was taking on the application that I use, RemNote, don't just have to be about the books that I read but also about the thoughts and the experiences and the projects that I am working on.
Going into Tiago Forte's book, Building a Second Brain, for me was not something new. The whole purpose for me reading this book was to discover his Personal Knowledge Management System, how he organizes his second brain and what sort of strategies I can use to adapt my own second brain. Some of the strategies that I took from this book were about how to organize knowledge or projects that I am not currently working on but may be relevant still in the future. Tiago suggests making an archive folder and this is exactly what I did after reading this book. Also, the notes that I've been taking more recently have been less about what I am interested in and more about the projects that I'm working on.
One of the biggest keys to note-taking is relevance. The strategies in this book will help you to take more relevant notes that way you can sort through the fluff and get to the core of the knowledge that will be most useful to you now and in the future.
I started taking notes when I started reading books on a regular basis in 2015. I didn't start taking digital notes until 2019 because I realized that it was so much easier to keep track of. Then I realized that the notes that I was taking on the application that I use, RemNote, don't just have to be about the books that I read but also about the thoughts and the experiences and the projects that I am working on.
Going into Tiago Forte's book, Building a Second Brain, for me was not something new. The whole purpose for me reading this book was to discover his Personal Knowledge Management System, how he organizes his second brain and what sort of strategies I can use to adapt my own second brain. Some of the strategies that I took from this book were about how to organize knowledge or projects that I am not currently working on but may be relevant still in the future. Tiago suggests making an archive folder and this is exactly what I did after reading this book. Also, the notes that I've been taking more recently have been less about what I am interested in and more about the projects that I'm working on.
One of the biggest keys to note-taking is relevance. The strategies in this book will help you to take more relevant notes that way you can sort through the fluff and get to the core of the knowledge that will be most useful to you now and in the future.
June 17, 2022
This has inspired me to be more of a curator not a hoarder
I have about 40 000 notes in Evernote. This has inspired me to curate it and ditch the junk. It has also shown me how I can use these notes to create things. Thanks for writing this Mr Forte.
I have about 40 000 notes in Evernote. This has inspired me to curate it and ditch the junk. It has also shown me how I can use these notes to create things. Thanks for writing this Mr Forte.
October 26, 2022
like all most books that are written to try and sell you something — in this case, the course that the author runs — it is less than 50 pages of content spread over almost 300 pages.
what does this book actually teach you? that writing things down so you remember them and look them up later is a good thing. but you can’t sell that! you need to come up with acronyms to make it sound very clever! and then also write a chapter per letter of the acronym! each beginning with a 20 page anecdote!
near the start of the chapter covering the second letter of the clever acronym the author introduced a second acronym! it’s acronyms all the way down! when covering the second acronym, the author tells us that work related to projects should go in a folder called “projects”. genius!
i skipped the rest of part two, only to find part three opened with another long winded anecdote, this time about the authors parents.
this book also makes me angry because all it does is strengthen the existence of these people that write about note taking and productivity. i want to know what tools and processes technical people use (the book mentions some famous people use a “commonplace book” to write down all their ideas, but i am not convinced any of them were using a hierarchy of acronyms to keep their work organised). i don’t want to know what tools and processes are used by someone who writes about tools and processes, because they need to keep switching things up unnecessarily to keep creating new content. the reality is that most people doing actual work are probably using something very simple, e.g. https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_te..., but unfortunately that’s not very interesting and doesn’t make anyone money so nobody wants to hear about it.
what does this book actually teach you? that writing things down so you remember them and look them up later is a good thing. but you can’t sell that! you need to come up with acronyms to make it sound very clever! and then also write a chapter per letter of the acronym! each beginning with a 20 page anecdote!
near the start of the chapter covering the second letter of the clever acronym the author introduced a second acronym! it’s acronyms all the way down! when covering the second acronym, the author tells us that work related to projects should go in a folder called “projects”. genius!
i skipped the rest of part two, only to find part three opened with another long winded anecdote, this time about the authors parents.
this book also makes me angry because all it does is strengthen the existence of these people that write about note taking and productivity. i want to know what tools and processes technical people use (the book mentions some famous people use a “commonplace book” to write down all their ideas, but i am not convinced any of them were using a hierarchy of acronyms to keep their work organised). i don’t want to know what tools and processes are used by someone who writes about tools and processes, because they need to keep switching things up unnecessarily to keep creating new content. the reality is that most people doing actual work are probably using something very simple, e.g. https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_te..., but unfortunately that’s not very interesting and doesn’t make anyone money so nobody wants to hear about it.
February 1, 2023
Will never cease to amaze me how many books are published that could have, and in fact were blog posts. The idea is solid, there is just a ton of filler.
July 16, 2022
I found Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte quite useful. There are a lot of helpful tips which can be used by people depending upon their work, the amount of reading they do, how much data they save and amount of time they have to implement the ideas given in the book.
The idea of the ‘second brain’ is to have enough space in our minds for more creative and fulfilling endeavors. We don't need to remember everything. What we find useful can be saved in our digital notes. We can use different criteria to store these notes according to their usefulness. While taking notes we should be brief and try to synthesize our notes from other categories for deeper insights. I have been taking notes digitally and physically for some time now and I think this would be a useful read for people who are struggling with digital clutter, or who are trying to be more productive or creative.
The idea of the ‘second brain’ is to have enough space in our minds for more creative and fulfilling endeavors. We don't need to remember everything. What we find useful can be saved in our digital notes. We can use different criteria to store these notes according to their usefulness. While taking notes we should be brief and try to synthesize our notes from other categories for deeper insights. I have been taking notes digitally and physically for some time now and I think this would be a useful read for people who are struggling with digital clutter, or who are trying to be more productive or creative.
May 16, 2022
I first heard of Forte when Ali Abdaal discussed having gone through Forte's course, which costs four figures at the lowest level. It was obviously valuable enough for Ali to recommend it to his YouTube audience.I was eager to get my hands on Forte's book. I had accessed a webinar from Forte, and I signed up for a free conference that he did as a sales funnel leading into a cohort of his class. It was accessible enough for me to pay for, but I was unsure if the value would pay off. I have a friend who did enter it.Forte is an expert on personal knowledge management (PKM). I was dazzled when I looked at the system that Forte described using now. I can't imagine setting up that many integrations. I was on a live presentation on how to set up the most basic version, and he really seemed to batch his active efforts to make the system reasonable. There are tons of integrations that he has set up, and it works for him. I'm a Millennial, and a fair number of us consider ourselves content creators. I read a relatively huge number of books per year. It's hard to retain all of the information or to take action on what I learn. Forte pushes you to remember the things that matter and take action.I've shared his free information with my friends. They've found it really useful. So I opened up the book with a lot of hope. My hopes were dashed. He is writing for an audience that does not include me. The way that he described everyone being barraged by information they can't possibly hold on to is not the way that my information intake works. However, I already had Notion because of Ali Abdaal's heavy use of it. More than a decade before I ever got Forte's book, I wrote blog posts about books I enjoyed or classes that were interesting to me. I'm much better at holding onto information than he seems to think the average reader's base state is, and it was jarring enough for me to close the book.He has a lot of good things to say. He has developed his system after handling thousands of students who are well-heeled enough to pay four figures for his classes. He has given talks and workshops to high-flying executives for years. He has valuable knowledge, but while I was reading his book, I wondered if it was valuable knowledge for me. I received a review copy from NetGalley and have left my opinion.
July 30, 2022
This book definitely could have been an email or a blog article, it basicaly explains in way too much detail how to store information that you MIGHT use sometime in your life as our memory and attention have limited capacities.
To be honest the very complicated methods of storing information have given me even more information oveload anxiety as it would take me ages to apply some his advice so I would say just use your common sense, try to implement some minimalism in your daily life, including exposure to information, clean your Inbox and save relevant details in separate folders.
Anyway, there is some food for thought I guess, after finishing this book, which I can summarize in a few questions:
1. This book is designed more or less mainly for content creators and we are daily spammed through social media with the idea we should all become creators of content and not just consumers. This is a huge pressure on many people and that is why we end up consuming a lot of junk information in the end as you cannot create quality content non stop. This is why so many books are written just to over complicate common sense topics.
My question would be: is this pressure of all of us becoming content creators just a superficial trend coming from influencers trying to sell you their courses and an attractive lifestyle, where you just write/shoot videos all day and not work at a regular job etc. Or is content creation the next big skill we should all develop (writing, video, product etc) to survive in the future job market which seems to belong to freelancers and remote workers?
2. Excessive documentation and reading becomes very unhelpful from a certain point and leads to anxiety, procrastination and impostor syndrome. We need instead to read less and act more and be more disciplined about it but how? These skills are developed by doing, not by reading. What do you do with all this information if you don't implement most of it? On the other hand is reading just for pleasure obsolete? Do we really need to be productive all the time?
Obviously I have some answers at the moment but just thought to leave these questions here to see if that answer will change in time.
To be honest the very complicated methods of storing information have given me even more information oveload anxiety as it would take me ages to apply some his advice so I would say just use your common sense, try to implement some minimalism in your daily life, including exposure to information, clean your Inbox and save relevant details in separate folders.
Anyway, there is some food for thought I guess, after finishing this book, which I can summarize in a few questions:
1. This book is designed more or less mainly for content creators and we are daily spammed through social media with the idea we should all become creators of content and not just consumers. This is a huge pressure on many people and that is why we end up consuming a lot of junk information in the end as you cannot create quality content non stop. This is why so many books are written just to over complicate common sense topics.
My question would be: is this pressure of all of us becoming content creators just a superficial trend coming from influencers trying to sell you their courses and an attractive lifestyle, where you just write/shoot videos all day and not work at a regular job etc. Or is content creation the next big skill we should all develop (writing, video, product etc) to survive in the future job market which seems to belong to freelancers and remote workers?
2. Excessive documentation and reading becomes very unhelpful from a certain point and leads to anxiety, procrastination and impostor syndrome. We need instead to read less and act more and be more disciplined about it but how? These skills are developed by doing, not by reading. What do you do with all this information if you don't implement most of it? On the other hand is reading just for pleasure obsolete? Do we really need to be productive all the time?
Obviously I have some answers at the moment but just thought to leave these questions here to see if that answer will change in time.
September 21, 2022
In the age of information economics, learning knowledge management is crucial. Future of job will be centered on organizing, processing and finally storytelling in attractive way. In this age, one is continuously bombarded with salvos of information. One will win the race, only by knowing how to use information.
Though personal knowledge managmement was originated from common place book system or zettelkasten method. The book 'building a second brain' (BASB) has been arrived at the right moment. Author Tiago Forte writes that book from his own experience, hence every line of the book is highly pragmatic.
There are mainly three important process of effective knowledge management.
1. PARA
2. CODE
3. Feynman's technique of 12 soldiers
Through process, areas, resources and archive (PARA) one can classify own's incoming information.
Through capture, organizing, distill and express (CODE) one can assimilate information.
Feynman's 12 soldier's technique is keeping 12 problems of your life in front of you. These will be your process area and captured-information will address those problems.
However, ultimate purpose of entire process is creation, not hoarding information. One's information is only useful, when it will be shared with other. The book is on the way to create revolution in field of knowledge economy.
Though personal knowledge managmement was originated from common place book system or zettelkasten method. The book 'building a second brain' (BASB) has been arrived at the right moment. Author Tiago Forte writes that book from his own experience, hence every line of the book is highly pragmatic.
There are mainly three important process of effective knowledge management.
1. PARA
2. CODE
3. Feynman's technique of 12 soldiers
Through process, areas, resources and archive (PARA) one can classify own's incoming information.
Through capture, organizing, distill and express (CODE) one can assimilate information.
Feynman's 12 soldier's technique is keeping 12 problems of your life in front of you. These will be your process area and captured-information will address those problems.
However, ultimate purpose of entire process is creation, not hoarding information. One's information is only useful, when it will be shared with other. The book is on the way to create revolution in field of knowledge economy.
January 29, 2023
Very disappointing. I learned almost nothing. 240 pages telling you to a) use a note taking app and b) er, that's it.
I have no idea why it is so popular. If anything he is doing a blatant ripoff of David Allen's Getting Things Done which is a far superior book.
I have no idea why it is so popular. If anything he is doing a blatant ripoff of David Allen's Getting Things Done which is a far superior book.
January 26, 2024
I used to think I was a good taker of notes and pretty great at capturing my thoughts in notecards, which I diligently organize in a specialized notecard filing cabinet thing that my wife won't stop making fun of me for.
Then I met these nerds that are into this thing called "PKM" or "Personal Knowledge Management", and apparently, they are great at telling me how wrong my system was, and that I'm a noob for not using Notion, or Evernote, or whatever. Pro tip: if you want to watch them go off the rails and pace around like a stuck roomba, tell them you take notes in powerpoint...
Forte's main line is that we often consume information at the wrong time, and that the chances of finding what we are currently reading/watching useful at the present moment, are very slim. Instead, he wants you to think not like a "note taker", but a "note giver", that is think of the notes as information you are sending to yourself in the future, where it will presumably be of greater use to you.
To do this, he uses the CODE framework: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. According to him, this method of using notes as your "Second Brain", frees up your first brain to do what it was intended to do: think, have ideas, be creative.
By far the best thing about taking notes like this, is the ability to share this notes with others to facilitate brainstorming and research on specific topics. In particular, I like using Notion for this and have set up template that are now used by my team to capture and distill information.
Recommended to any and all "information" workers, or anyone that needs to become better at navigating an information dense world.
Then I met these nerds that are into this thing called "PKM" or "Personal Knowledge Management", and apparently, they are great at telling me how wrong my system was, and that I'm a noob for not using Notion, or Evernote, or whatever. Pro tip: if you want to watch them go off the rails and pace around like a stuck roomba, tell them you take notes in powerpoint...
Forte's main line is that we often consume information at the wrong time, and that the chances of finding what we are currently reading/watching useful at the present moment, are very slim. Instead, he wants you to think not like a "note taker", but a "note giver", that is think of the notes as information you are sending to yourself in the future, where it will presumably be of greater use to you.
To do this, he uses the CODE framework: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. According to him, this method of using notes as your "Second Brain", frees up your first brain to do what it was intended to do: think, have ideas, be creative.
By far the best thing about taking notes like this, is the ability to share this notes with others to facilitate brainstorming and research on specific topics. In particular, I like using Notion for this and have set up template that are now used by my team to capture and distill information.
Recommended to any and all "information" workers, or anyone that needs to become better at navigating an information dense world.
March 30, 2023
Honestly it’s overrated. The book explains a new way of managing information called “CODE” and wait, this does not need a 200+ page book!
Anyway, I spent time reading through the book and found that I am already using an ok way of information management and what the author did is making it sound fancy.
Oops… giving it a three because it’s still an effective way if you do it right… but we don’t need a whole book for this.
Anyway, I spent time reading through the book and found that I am already using an ok way of information management and what the author did is making it sound fancy.
Oops… giving it a three because it’s still an effective way if you do it right… but we don’t need a whole book for this.
September 21, 2022
Finally a Productivity Godsend for All Knowledge Workers
Key Takeaways for Me
✿ To build a second brain is to recognise the limitations of the human brain and fashion an external system that runs in tandem with it. A second brain should facilitate coordination, clarity and speed of our knowledge gain.
✿ The CODE framework (Capture-Organise-Distil-Express) underpins the build.
✿ The PARA(Projects/Areas/Resources/Archived) filing structure simplifies and accelerates personal knowledge management, for it is a project-centric way of thinking and working. PARA enforces actions. Actions bring us closer to meeting our goals.
✿ Instead of working through large time blocks for any given project, it is always easier to work with tidbits of knowledge. The second brain is all about digesting small chunks of information, one at a time, and regularly.
✿ With a second brain maintained as a repository of small knowledge pieces written in our own words, add structure and intentionality to any combination of the pieces, and we will likely have already done the bulk of the work for any future project we take on.
A Real Test
Let me firstly point out that this book review took me 18 minutes only to complete. My second brain emerged halfway through the read. Procrastination and attention deficiency did not exist in my universe leading up to and during the review. I have well and truly just experienced unprecedented speed and concreteness in my entire history of dealing with knowledge! So I daresay I am proof that what Forte teaches in this book works.
My Summarising Thoughts
Fighting a Modern Plague
We all swim 24/7 in the ceaseless chaos created by modern tech advances. Our relationship with the explosive dispersion of information sees us surrounded by the riches of knowledge, yet starved for wisdom. Though I have lost count of the books published on what brain damages the internet continues to do us, their messages are in sync - We want to better consume information but don't quite know how to put together a diet that's tailored to our personal tastes, objectives and constraints. And thus we suffer from a modern plague that is yet to be controlled.
Brainstorm, now known as a classic and arguably effective method for making break-throughs amidst noises and mental blocks, is regarded by many as a way of unifying the otherwise latent and uncoordinated knowledge pieces in us. But in brainstorming, we make the mistake of leaving important aspects of our projects to chance. We block out hours every now and then, telling ourselves to brainstorm, to collaborate, to think and to investigate deeply. On our own or with others, “Oh! Brainstorm!” we chirp. It is music to management's ear, dogmatised and perpetuated by our corporate culture. BUT what are the chances our brains just so happen to recall the ingredients most fitting to the pot of dish we are cooking up right here and now? What are the chances we fall prey to availability bias? Fat, fat, fat chances I'm afraid. Also, when we depend on a biological brain for recall, we are prone to memory errors. In Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behaviour authored by Leonard Mlodinow, there are unnerving findings that reveal many ways our memory can lead us astray. For example, 'memory addition' (where we add new yet false information, filling the gaps in our memory to make sense of an old story retold) is evidently part of human nature, and we all might have done it without being conscious of our errors.
Without the right system to manage fleeting moments of creativity and inspiration that can potentially foster concrete development in areas of life we are or will be working on, even the smartest of us is at best a walking billboard that shouts a plethora of brilliant ideas at random times. Ideas lay scattered, unorganised, and even contradictory. Bookmarks, memo apps and browser extensions are great, but we need a centralised system that, in a timely and progressive manner, aggregates, synthesises and consolidates the useful knowledge pieces we accumulate as we navigate the wild waters of information. Such that retrieval of key takeaways formed in the past can be done within seconds, independent of our biological brain capacity (which, admittedly, pales miserably in comparison to machines). Personal knowledge management and retrieval via the second brain promotes fluidity and actionability of thoughts. Speed is everything when we are pressured for time and resources, which is almost always.
Meet CODE! Building a second brain entails an overarching CODE framework (Capture-Organise-Distill-Express):
[C]apture is to use Actionability (or Utility for that matter) as an information filter, shrinking down the magnitude and complexity of our learning curve at any given moment. The key points gleaned through this filter thus keeps us in line with the driving forces that actually move the needle, since every piece of information filtered through to us is actionable and can launch us into action rapidly. However, filters get us only so far. Capture should also be a discreet art, and guided by our attitude toward the vast amount of information out there. Our relationship with information shifts radically and positively when we no longer think like a consumer. Instead of hoarding information driven by the consumer mentality, "Gosh! We just don't have enough answers to our questions", we can let our specific questions guide us as we explore the world of information, and take the time to recognise, vet and test the best answers, reconciling ourselves with our ultimate goals.
[O]rganising within our second brain entails an inevitable challenge. There will come the itch to perfect the system itself. We may spend more time moving folders around in the system than actually deploying the second brain to serve a real purpose. Organising in accordance with PARA (Projects/Areas/Resources/Archived) is simple and enforces actions. A human brain is able to oversee only so many projects concurrently. Each bit of new information we capture would relate to one of the four camps (PARA), and thus should be organised accordingly. Easy!
[D]istillation recognises that, as always, behind every big complex wall of text, sits the essence of an idea that binds the text together. I suggest we loosely borrow the 80/20 rule to prompt distillation. We can pinpoint the 20% (or perhaps less) of a book's content that truly carries its essences, highlight, then highlight the highlighted to sharpen the visual discoverability of the essential knowledge we find. With knowledge distilled down to highly discoverable ‘dots’ of essences, connecting them is easy, particularly because our minds are genetically predisposed for finding patterns of information. Prior hard work will pay off. Fashioning our next magnum opus by connecting dots may be a mere walk in the park, as opposed to starting from scratch.
[E]xpression is about orchestrating the right IPs (“Intermediate Packets” in Forte’s semantics). IPs to projects are as ingredients to meals. In a second brain we build, we can always reorganise and repurpose the IPs according to how accessible they need to be for us to work through a new agenda. Much like how we move things around in the kitchen, making the right ingredients and tools most accessible for us to cook a meal different than the last.
Let’s Talk Advantages
I think of the CODE framework as a bite-sized, slow yet progressive route packed with advantages for any knowledge worker:
o Productivity | We all want to end each day with the maximum output possible. Working with tidbits of knowledge i.e. highlighting, making personal notes, distilling, summarising in our own words is the act of creating outputs in a ‘flow’ state of mind. Small information digests in small time windows continuously also means that we get to move forward unbridled by distractions. Or, in Forte's words, "you’ll become interruption-proof because you are focusing only on one small packet at a time, instead of trying to load up the entire project into your mind at once." These outputs automatically become inputs every time we enter a new project. And since no knowledge piece would have made its way into our second brain unless it was relevant to at least one camp of 'PARA', every output is an immediately employable input in future application.
o Stress Management | A common paradox I have observed is that many of us easily open up small chats where we proudly present many valid and cogent arguments in support of our own beliefs. Many of us literally end each week with thousands of words that reflect our creativity if we put together all the scripts of our chat history via text and call. Ironically though, the very thought of producing a 2,000 word report stresses us out, leading us to procrastinate, stall or abandon it altogether. Our perspective of the creative process needs an update. Small chat windows present us with no time pressure, no word limit requirement and no assessment criteria, hence we are free to explore, research and output the best words to prop our strongest conviction. And we get to do it in a sporadic manner even if our message may be unread by the other person for half a day. On the contrary, the mission of fleshing out a full research report does not tolerate such free-styling. It is a long drawn-out series of deliberate steps that require sustained focus and large uninterrupted time blocks (read as: Come on! Let's be realistic. Who in today’s world can really afford such luxury?). We may hand in our finished product by the deadline, having survived yet another burnout and social costs, but what are the odds the submitted work was fashioned using the best materials and NOT those we came up with under time, memory and resource constraints? Using the CODE framework however, we will have already completed the heavy lifting when we pick up a new assignment, as above-mentioned. What then is there to stress about?
o Keeping It Light Always | We all enjoy the allure of free will, because often it is only through free will we find abundant headspace at our disposal. For instance, we often feel more in touch with our creativity and some of our dormant thoughts while we wander about all day in the nature with nothing but free will. Unfortunately, free will runs increasingly scarce in this day and age. Burdened by incessant obligations and clutters, our emotion runs high, attention runs low. We hardly get to travel light in our headspace. Archiving our thoughts via a second brain, we are in no way undermining the importance nor the accessibility of any matter. It is simply a rearrangement such that certain pieces are stored away, out of sight, out of mind, freeing up the headspace needed for now. Returning to what's been put on the back burner is just as neat and easy had we built discoverability in those information pieces in the first place. Retrieval is simply a matter of quick searches by browse/keywords/tags. As we would have progressively summarised our knowledge pieces in our own semantics, retrieval gets easy through familiarity, even if they have been stored away in the second brain for months or years.
o FOMO No More | The very reason we operate with clouds of FOMO hanging over our heads is that we leave sparks of creativity uncaptured, unexamined for usefulness, or at best captured haphazardly via a channel that leads to no real outcome. In the shower, on the toilet, during a flight, on a cruise, throughout a cab ride, at a party, halfway up a mountain with no signal... the best ideas usually don't surface at our command. We may continue to schedule ourselves in for a brainstorm session or two, to stretch and taunt our rather fickle biological brain, but in reality, the best ideas waltz in and waltz right out of our heads unpredictably. What does the average Joe do with these fleeting moments? Most likely nothing. He may convince himself that his memory will have these pieces fall into place later, or that there will be brainstorm sessions to capture them all. After all, that's what brainstorm sessions are for, right? But then on and on, we continue operating under doubts and concerns that we missed that great idea which emerged serendipitously a while back. With a second brain, such FOMO is no longer. We would have lived most of our waking hours slowly and progressively working with small knowledge pieces, building up the volume of IPs ready for future use. So when we start a new project or enhance an existing one, the bulk of the hard work will have already been done, merely pending a creative and fun assembly. This is elite-level productivity!
o Objectivity | In Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, Handley stresses the importance of putting some space between her freshly penned articles and herself. This is an idea that speaks culturally to most knowledge workers today. Every newfound perspective shifts in shape and nature over time as our mindset evolves. “On second thought… “, we say, and the rest of that sentence is usually a 180 of our first thought. By the same token, capturing notes in a second brain enables us to do just that - we get to capture and store away notes anytime, yet have no need to hurriedly superimpose directionality. We have the confidence to revisit again and again, distilling what we know. As such, we are far more likely to remain objective in our thinking.
o Economies of Scale | We develop building blocks (or IPs) in our second brain so they can be reshuffled in searches, reorganised by project, repurposed by goals and so forth. Such versatility of IPs is warranted because we would have used essences of knowledge as a basis for developing the IPs, knowing full well every IP is a malleable input to serve various future projects. Completed projects can also breed new IPs, which join the existing repository of IPs, and circulate in our second brain as its blood flow. Any moment we tap into any combination of the IPs can be a moment primed for action. Notice also that, as Forte outlines, "much of our work gets repeated over time with slight variations. If you can start your thinking where you left off last time, you’ll be far ahead compared to starting from zero every time. " That, is precisely economies of scale in working with knowledge.
o MVP | As I came across Forte's mention of 'dailing down the scope' of a product in the face of looming competition, and of using the second brain as a vehicle for sharing, I was reminded of MVPs (Minimum Viable Products), which Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses proposes that startup entrepreneurs should all joyously release serially for any product that is yet to make it to launch party. Users of our MVPs feed us timely data that illuminates right away what isn't working and how we can modify product functionalities to better meet end-user needs. This mitigates the risk of launching a final yet ill-received product. Data unearthed in our MVP user feedback, as maintained by Ries, is especially critical in creating an unprecedented breed, since no proxy data is readily available to guide our development. I see MVP as a comparable framework for developing IPs in a second brain, in that we shouldn't stop at fine-tuning our IPs just because we think they are well made. Only good comes of floating our dearest ideas out into the real world. Fresh eyes get to explore them and let us know in real time how we are tracking. It is a process that can be as collaborative as we want it to be. Sharing our ideas with others, in itself, opens up ways to gauge the true value and impact of our expertise. After all, we sharpen all the IPs in our second brain not to keep them stocked, but to release them eventually into the real world in one form or another, delivering an impactful solution.
Quotes from This Book I Will Likely Recall on My Deathbed
Key Takeaways for Me
✿ To build a second brain is to recognise the limitations of the human brain and fashion an external system that runs in tandem with it. A second brain should facilitate coordination, clarity and speed of our knowledge gain.
✿ The CODE framework (Capture-Organise-Distil-Express) underpins the build.
✿ The PARA(Projects/Areas/Resources/Archived) filing structure simplifies and accelerates personal knowledge management, for it is a project-centric way of thinking and working. PARA enforces actions. Actions bring us closer to meeting our goals.
✿ Instead of working through large time blocks for any given project, it is always easier to work with tidbits of knowledge. The second brain is all about digesting small chunks of information, one at a time, and regularly.
✿ With a second brain maintained as a repository of small knowledge pieces written in our own words, add structure and intentionality to any combination of the pieces, and we will likely have already done the bulk of the work for any future project we take on.
A Real Test
Let me firstly point out that this book review took me 18 minutes only to complete. My second brain emerged halfway through the read. Procrastination and attention deficiency did not exist in my universe leading up to and during the review. I have well and truly just experienced unprecedented speed and concreteness in my entire history of dealing with knowledge! So I daresay I am proof that what Forte teaches in this book works.
My Summarising Thoughts
Fighting a Modern Plague
We all swim 24/7 in the ceaseless chaos created by modern tech advances. Our relationship with the explosive dispersion of information sees us surrounded by the riches of knowledge, yet starved for wisdom. Though I have lost count of the books published on what brain damages the internet continues to do us, their messages are in sync - We want to better consume information but don't quite know how to put together a diet that's tailored to our personal tastes, objectives and constraints. And thus we suffer from a modern plague that is yet to be controlled.
Brainstorm, now known as a classic and arguably effective method for making break-throughs amidst noises and mental blocks, is regarded by many as a way of unifying the otherwise latent and uncoordinated knowledge pieces in us. But in brainstorming, we make the mistake of leaving important aspects of our projects to chance. We block out hours every now and then, telling ourselves to brainstorm, to collaborate, to think and to investigate deeply. On our own or with others, “Oh! Brainstorm!” we chirp. It is music to management's ear, dogmatised and perpetuated by our corporate culture. BUT what are the chances our brains just so happen to recall the ingredients most fitting to the pot of dish we are cooking up right here and now? What are the chances we fall prey to availability bias? Fat, fat, fat chances I'm afraid. Also, when we depend on a biological brain for recall, we are prone to memory errors. In Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behaviour authored by Leonard Mlodinow, there are unnerving findings that reveal many ways our memory can lead us astray. For example, 'memory addition' (where we add new yet false information, filling the gaps in our memory to make sense of an old story retold) is evidently part of human nature, and we all might have done it without being conscious of our errors.
Without the right system to manage fleeting moments of creativity and inspiration that can potentially foster concrete development in areas of life we are or will be working on, even the smartest of us is at best a walking billboard that shouts a plethora of brilliant ideas at random times. Ideas lay scattered, unorganised, and even contradictory. Bookmarks, memo apps and browser extensions are great, but we need a centralised system that, in a timely and progressive manner, aggregates, synthesises and consolidates the useful knowledge pieces we accumulate as we navigate the wild waters of information. Such that retrieval of key takeaways formed in the past can be done within seconds, independent of our biological brain capacity (which, admittedly, pales miserably in comparison to machines). Personal knowledge management and retrieval via the second brain promotes fluidity and actionability of thoughts. Speed is everything when we are pressured for time and resources, which is almost always.
Meet CODE! Building a second brain entails an overarching CODE framework (Capture-Organise-Distill-Express):
[C]apture is to use Actionability (or Utility for that matter) as an information filter, shrinking down the magnitude and complexity of our learning curve at any given moment. The key points gleaned through this filter thus keeps us in line with the driving forces that actually move the needle, since every piece of information filtered through to us is actionable and can launch us into action rapidly. However, filters get us only so far. Capture should also be a discreet art, and guided by our attitude toward the vast amount of information out there. Our relationship with information shifts radically and positively when we no longer think like a consumer. Instead of hoarding information driven by the consumer mentality, "Gosh! We just don't have enough answers to our questions", we can let our specific questions guide us as we explore the world of information, and take the time to recognise, vet and test the best answers, reconciling ourselves with our ultimate goals.
[O]rganising within our second brain entails an inevitable challenge. There will come the itch to perfect the system itself. We may spend more time moving folders around in the system than actually deploying the second brain to serve a real purpose. Organising in accordance with PARA (Projects/Areas/Resources/Archived) is simple and enforces actions. A human brain is able to oversee only so many projects concurrently. Each bit of new information we capture would relate to one of the four camps (PARA), and thus should be organised accordingly. Easy!
[D]istillation recognises that, as always, behind every big complex wall of text, sits the essence of an idea that binds the text together. I suggest we loosely borrow the 80/20 rule to prompt distillation. We can pinpoint the 20% (or perhaps less) of a book's content that truly carries its essences, highlight, then highlight the highlighted to sharpen the visual discoverability of the essential knowledge we find. With knowledge distilled down to highly discoverable ‘dots’ of essences, connecting them is easy, particularly because our minds are genetically predisposed for finding patterns of information. Prior hard work will pay off. Fashioning our next magnum opus by connecting dots may be a mere walk in the park, as opposed to starting from scratch.
[E]xpression is about orchestrating the right IPs (“Intermediate Packets” in Forte’s semantics). IPs to projects are as ingredients to meals. In a second brain we build, we can always reorganise and repurpose the IPs according to how accessible they need to be for us to work through a new agenda. Much like how we move things around in the kitchen, making the right ingredients and tools most accessible for us to cook a meal different than the last.
Let’s Talk Advantages
I think of the CODE framework as a bite-sized, slow yet progressive route packed with advantages for any knowledge worker:
o Productivity | We all want to end each day with the maximum output possible. Working with tidbits of knowledge i.e. highlighting, making personal notes, distilling, summarising in our own words is the act of creating outputs in a ‘flow’ state of mind. Small information digests in small time windows continuously also means that we get to move forward unbridled by distractions. Or, in Forte's words, "you’ll become interruption-proof because you are focusing only on one small packet at a time, instead of trying to load up the entire project into your mind at once." These outputs automatically become inputs every time we enter a new project. And since no knowledge piece would have made its way into our second brain unless it was relevant to at least one camp of 'PARA', every output is an immediately employable input in future application.
o Stress Management | A common paradox I have observed is that many of us easily open up small chats where we proudly present many valid and cogent arguments in support of our own beliefs. Many of us literally end each week with thousands of words that reflect our creativity if we put together all the scripts of our chat history via text and call. Ironically though, the very thought of producing a 2,000 word report stresses us out, leading us to procrastinate, stall or abandon it altogether. Our perspective of the creative process needs an update. Small chat windows present us with no time pressure, no word limit requirement and no assessment criteria, hence we are free to explore, research and output the best words to prop our strongest conviction. And we get to do it in a sporadic manner even if our message may be unread by the other person for half a day. On the contrary, the mission of fleshing out a full research report does not tolerate such free-styling. It is a long drawn-out series of deliberate steps that require sustained focus and large uninterrupted time blocks (read as: Come on! Let's be realistic. Who in today’s world can really afford such luxury?). We may hand in our finished product by the deadline, having survived yet another burnout and social costs, but what are the odds the submitted work was fashioned using the best materials and NOT those we came up with under time, memory and resource constraints? Using the CODE framework however, we will have already completed the heavy lifting when we pick up a new assignment, as above-mentioned. What then is there to stress about?
o Keeping It Light Always | We all enjoy the allure of free will, because often it is only through free will we find abundant headspace at our disposal. For instance, we often feel more in touch with our creativity and some of our dormant thoughts while we wander about all day in the nature with nothing but free will. Unfortunately, free will runs increasingly scarce in this day and age. Burdened by incessant obligations and clutters, our emotion runs high, attention runs low. We hardly get to travel light in our headspace. Archiving our thoughts via a second brain, we are in no way undermining the importance nor the accessibility of any matter. It is simply a rearrangement such that certain pieces are stored away, out of sight, out of mind, freeing up the headspace needed for now. Returning to what's been put on the back burner is just as neat and easy had we built discoverability in those information pieces in the first place. Retrieval is simply a matter of quick searches by browse/keywords/tags. As we would have progressively summarised our knowledge pieces in our own semantics, retrieval gets easy through familiarity, even if they have been stored away in the second brain for months or years.
o FOMO No More | The very reason we operate with clouds of FOMO hanging over our heads is that we leave sparks of creativity uncaptured, unexamined for usefulness, or at best captured haphazardly via a channel that leads to no real outcome. In the shower, on the toilet, during a flight, on a cruise, throughout a cab ride, at a party, halfway up a mountain with no signal... the best ideas usually don't surface at our command. We may continue to schedule ourselves in for a brainstorm session or two, to stretch and taunt our rather fickle biological brain, but in reality, the best ideas waltz in and waltz right out of our heads unpredictably. What does the average Joe do with these fleeting moments? Most likely nothing. He may convince himself that his memory will have these pieces fall into place later, or that there will be brainstorm sessions to capture them all. After all, that's what brainstorm sessions are for, right? But then on and on, we continue operating under doubts and concerns that we missed that great idea which emerged serendipitously a while back. With a second brain, such FOMO is no longer. We would have lived most of our waking hours slowly and progressively working with small knowledge pieces, building up the volume of IPs ready for future use. So when we start a new project or enhance an existing one, the bulk of the hard work will have already been done, merely pending a creative and fun assembly. This is elite-level productivity!
o Objectivity | In Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content, Handley stresses the importance of putting some space between her freshly penned articles and herself. This is an idea that speaks culturally to most knowledge workers today. Every newfound perspective shifts in shape and nature over time as our mindset evolves. “On second thought… “, we say, and the rest of that sentence is usually a 180 of our first thought. By the same token, capturing notes in a second brain enables us to do just that - we get to capture and store away notes anytime, yet have no need to hurriedly superimpose directionality. We have the confidence to revisit again and again, distilling what we know. As such, we are far more likely to remain objective in our thinking.
o Economies of Scale | We develop building blocks (or IPs) in our second brain so they can be reshuffled in searches, reorganised by project, repurposed by goals and so forth. Such versatility of IPs is warranted because we would have used essences of knowledge as a basis for developing the IPs, knowing full well every IP is a malleable input to serve various future projects. Completed projects can also breed new IPs, which join the existing repository of IPs, and circulate in our second brain as its blood flow. Any moment we tap into any combination of the IPs can be a moment primed for action. Notice also that, as Forte outlines, "much of our work gets repeated over time with slight variations. If you can start your thinking where you left off last time, you’ll be far ahead compared to starting from zero every time. " That, is precisely economies of scale in working with knowledge.
o MVP | As I came across Forte's mention of 'dailing down the scope' of a product in the face of looming competition, and of using the second brain as a vehicle for sharing, I was reminded of MVPs (Minimum Viable Products), which Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses proposes that startup entrepreneurs should all joyously release serially for any product that is yet to make it to launch party. Users of our MVPs feed us timely data that illuminates right away what isn't working and how we can modify product functionalities to better meet end-user needs. This mitigates the risk of launching a final yet ill-received product. Data unearthed in our MVP user feedback, as maintained by Ries, is especially critical in creating an unprecedented breed, since no proxy data is readily available to guide our development. I see MVP as a comparable framework for developing IPs in a second brain, in that we shouldn't stop at fine-tuning our IPs just because we think they are well made. Only good comes of floating our dearest ideas out into the real world. Fresh eyes get to explore them and let us know in real time how we are tracking. It is a process that can be as collaborative as we want it to be. Sharing our ideas with others, in itself, opens up ways to gauge the true value and impact of our expertise. After all, we sharpen all the IPs in our second brain not to keep them stocked, but to release them eventually into the real world in one form or another, delivering an impactful solution.
Quotes from This Book I Will Likely Recall on My Deathbed
“Just as with the food we put into our bodies, it is our responsibility and right to choose our information diet. ”
- - -
“Talent needs to be channelled and developed in order to become something more than a momentary spark. ”
- - -
“The goal isn’t to definitively answer the question once and for all, but to use the question as a North Star for my learning. ”
- - -
“The ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. We have to jealously guard it like a valuable treasure. ”
- - -
“It is never a person’s toolset that constrains their potential, it’s their mindset. ”
- - -
“You search outside yourself to search within yourself, knowing that everything you find has always been a part of you. ”
March 15, 2023
This is about fine-tuning your second brain which guarantees you a principal advantage in life.
“The ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. We have to jealously guard it like a valuable treasure. ”
High performance and and personal productivity is not a "natural state", it's like the skills of learning or problem solving that are taken granted by "normal" people (mainstream expectation is to believe that people are born with those skills and they can just get by with gaining knowledge and doing things). Thus majority of people don't really bother systematically to develop those skills as they feel "productive enough" and the real performance potential remains an unknown unknown to them. One needs a strong drive and reason to take up this journey. GTD and others will always remain classics (before the "digital" era personanal efficiency provided a clear competitive advantage) but recently the most influential books in this domain have been written by people who have developed their methods to cope with or compensate for shortcomings in their cognitive function/efficiency compared to "normal" people (i.e. ADHD, coping with chronic pain) or whose aim is to help people with such conditions to function more efficiently. This brings us to books like "The Bullet Journal Method", "Stolen Focus", "Mindsight" and the one here. I have a deep respect towards such individuals who despite their own mind's limits achieve world class performance and then dedicate themselves in empowering others with their findings and also significantly improving the performance of "the normal people" who value it. I should have read this book a few months earlier as the last systematic effort to "organize my digital life" took place in December last year when I based my research mainly on different blog articles and Youtube videos on the subject: eventually I came away with selecting Evernote as my digital information management platform and Todoist as task management tool (still need to work on integrating them more seamlessly into my everyday life). I have to say that there is definitely a lot of GTD and importance of habits (i.e. Atomic Habits) in this book (in some cases it's stated directly, in some cases not so much). There wasn't that much completely new information in this book, but it was definitely presented from a novel angle. The topic is definitely relevant just after reading a book about Superintelligence and AI.
I found the PARA method intesting as I have been struggling to find the top level categories for organizing information. PARA is based on a simple observation: that there are only four categories that encompass all the information in your life.
* Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now. Projects have a couple of features that make them an ideal way to organize modern work. First, they have a beginning and an end; they take place during a specific period of time and then they finish. Second, they have a specific, clear outcome that needs to happen in order for them to be checked off as complete, such as “finalize,” “green-light,” “launch,” or “publish.”
* Areas: What I’m Committed to Over Time As important as projects are, not everything is a project. For example, the area of our lives called “Finances” doesn’t have a definite end date.”
* Resources: Things I Want to Reference in the Future The third category of information that we want to keep is resources. This is basically a catchall for anything that doesn’t belong to a project or an area and could include any topic you’re interested in gathering information about
* Archives: Things I’ve Completed or Put on Hold Finally, we have our archives. This includes any item from the previous three categories that is no longer active. (out of sight, out of mind, but still searchable...).
Assimilating information through CODE (capture, organize, distill and express).
*Capture - to use actionably (or utility) as an information filter, shrinking down the magnitude and complexity of our learning curve. It forces to reflect what is important to make the notes more valuable later on, you become better at it the more you practice it.
*Organising according to PARA.
*Distillation recognises that behind every complex wall of text sits the essence of an idea that binds the text together (80/20 rule).
*Expression is about orchestrating the right "intermediate packets". In the second brain we rebuild and we can always reorganise and repurpose the packets according to how accessible they need to be for us to work through a new agenda (i.e. creating a view through existing content with tags... reminder here to check author's separate writings on using tags).
"Keep what resonates (Capture) Save for actionability (Organize) Find the essence (Distill) Show your work (Express)"
PROGRESSIVE SUMMARIZATION
A helpful rule of thumb is that each layer of highlighting should include no more than 10–20 percent of the previous layer. every time you “touch” a note, you should make it a little more discoverable for your future self.
“Anything you might want to accomplish—executing a project at work, getting a new job, learning a new skill, starting a business—requires finding and putting to use the right information. Your professional success and quality of life depend directly on your ability to manage information effectively. According to the New York Times, the average person’s daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes.1 A separate study cited by the Times estimates that we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day, five times higher than in 1986.2 Instead of empowering us, this deluge of information often overwhelms us. Information Overload has become Information Exhaustion, taxing our mental resources and leaving us constantly anxious that we’re forgetting something.”
“The three habits most important to your Second Brain include: Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work. Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything. Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.”
"There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us: Making our ideas concrete. Revealing new associations between ideas. Incubating our ideas over time. Sharpening our unique perspectives."
"Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks."
"For modern, professional notetaking, a note is a “knowledge building block”—a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head."
"it wasn’t jobs that required advanced skills or years of training that were predicted to fare best. It was jobs that required the ability to convey “not just information but a particular interpretation of information.”
"Every time you take a note, ask yourself, “How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self? Your notes will be useless if you can’t decipher them in the future, or if they’re so long that you don’t even try. Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes”
"Feynman’s approach was to maintain a list of a dozen open questions." (and whenever new general knowledge arose then test all those 12 questions against it).
"If you try to save every piece of material you come across, you run the risk of inundating your future self with tons of irrelevant information. At that point, your Second Brain will be no better than scrolling through social media." When you use up too much energy taking notes, you have little left over for the subsequent steps that add far more value: making connections, imagining possibilities, formulating theories, and creating new ideas of your own.
"The archives are like the freezer—items are in cold storage until they are needed, which could be far into the future. Resources are like the pantry—available for use in any meal you make, but neatly tucked away out of sight in the meantime. Areas are like the fridge—items that you plan on using relatively soon, and that you want to check on more frequently. Projects are like the pots and pans cooking on the stove—the items you are actively preparing right now."
"Taking notes during meetings is a common practice, but it’s often not clear what we should do with those notes. They are often messy, with the action items buried among random comments. I often use Progressive Summarization to summarize my notes after phone calls to make sure I’m extracting every bit of value from them."
"eventually you’ll have so many IPs at your disposal that you can execute entire projects just by assembling previously created IPs. This is a magical experience that will completely change how you view productivity. The idea of starting anything from scratch will become foreign to you"
"two activities your brain has the most difficulty performing at the same time: choosing ideas (known as selection) and arranging them into a logical flow (known as sequencing)."
"The more you outsource and delegate the jobs of capturing, organizing, and distilling to technology, the more time and energy you’ll have available for the self-expression that only you can do."
“important to separate capture and organize into two distinct steps:” (a mind cannot do both at the same time effectively).
“PARA isn’t a filing system; it’s a production system. It’s no use trying to find the “perfect place” where a note or file belongs. There isn’t one. The whole system is constantly shifting and changing in sync with your constantly changing life.”
“The practice of building a Second Brain is more than the sum of capturing facts, theories, and the opinions of others. At its core, it is about cultivating self-awareness and self-knowledge.”
“Most notes apps have an “inbox” or “daily notes” section where new notes you’ve captured are saved until you can revisit them and decide where they belong. Think of it as a waiting area where new ideas live until you are ready to digest them into your Second Brain.”
“For many people, their understanding of notetaking was formed in school. You were probably first told to write something down because it would be on the test. This implied that the minute the test was over, you would never reference those notes again.”
“It is when you begin expressing your ideas and turning your knowledge into action that life really begins to change. You’ll read differently, becoming more focused on the parts most relevant to the argument you’re building. You’ll ask sharper questions, no longer satisfied with vague explanations or leaps in logic. You’ll naturally seek venues to show your work, since the feedback you receive will propel your thinking forward like nothing else. You’ll begin to act more deliberately in your career or business, thinking several steps beyond what you’re consuming to consider its ultimate potential. It’s not necessarily about becoming a professional artist, online influencer, or business mogul: it’s about taking ownership of your work, your ideas, and your potential to contribute in whatever arena you find yourself in. It doesn’t matter how impressive or grand your output is, or how many people see it. It could be just between your family or friends, among your colleagues and team, with your neighbors or schoolmates—what matters is that you are finding your voice and insisting that what you have to say matters. You have to value your ideas enough to share them. You have to believe that the smallest idea has the potential to change people’s lives. If you don’t believe that now, start with the smallest project you can think of to begin to prove to yourself that your ideas can make a difference.”
“The ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. We have to jealously guard it like a valuable treasure. ”
High performance and and personal productivity is not a "natural state", it's like the skills of learning or problem solving that are taken granted by "normal" people (mainstream expectation is to believe that people are born with those skills and they can just get by with gaining knowledge and doing things). Thus majority of people don't really bother systematically to develop those skills as they feel "productive enough" and the real performance potential remains an unknown unknown to them. One needs a strong drive and reason to take up this journey. GTD and others will always remain classics (before the "digital" era personanal efficiency provided a clear competitive advantage) but recently the most influential books in this domain have been written by people who have developed their methods to cope with or compensate for shortcomings in their cognitive function/efficiency compared to "normal" people (i.e. ADHD, coping with chronic pain) or whose aim is to help people with such conditions to function more efficiently. This brings us to books like "The Bullet Journal Method", "Stolen Focus", "Mindsight" and the one here. I have a deep respect towards such individuals who despite their own mind's limits achieve world class performance and then dedicate themselves in empowering others with their findings and also significantly improving the performance of "the normal people" who value it. I should have read this book a few months earlier as the last systematic effort to "organize my digital life" took place in December last year when I based my research mainly on different blog articles and Youtube videos on the subject: eventually I came away with selecting Evernote as my digital information management platform and Todoist as task management tool (still need to work on integrating them more seamlessly into my everyday life). I have to say that there is definitely a lot of GTD and importance of habits (i.e. Atomic Habits) in this book (in some cases it's stated directly, in some cases not so much). There wasn't that much completely new information in this book, but it was definitely presented from a novel angle. The topic is definitely relevant just after reading a book about Superintelligence and AI.
I found the PARA method intesting as I have been struggling to find the top level categories for organizing information. PARA is based on a simple observation: that there are only four categories that encompass all the information in your life.
* Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now. Projects have a couple of features that make them an ideal way to organize modern work. First, they have a beginning and an end; they take place during a specific period of time and then they finish. Second, they have a specific, clear outcome that needs to happen in order for them to be checked off as complete, such as “finalize,” “green-light,” “launch,” or “publish.”
* Areas: What I’m Committed to Over Time As important as projects are, not everything is a project. For example, the area of our lives called “Finances” doesn’t have a definite end date.”
* Resources: Things I Want to Reference in the Future The third category of information that we want to keep is resources. This is basically a catchall for anything that doesn’t belong to a project or an area and could include any topic you’re interested in gathering information about
* Archives: Things I’ve Completed or Put on Hold Finally, we have our archives. This includes any item from the previous three categories that is no longer active. (out of sight, out of mind, but still searchable...).
Assimilating information through CODE (capture, organize, distill and express).
*Capture - to use actionably (or utility) as an information filter, shrinking down the magnitude and complexity of our learning curve. It forces to reflect what is important to make the notes more valuable later on, you become better at it the more you practice it.
*Organising according to PARA.
*Distillation recognises that behind every complex wall of text sits the essence of an idea that binds the text together (80/20 rule).
*Expression is about orchestrating the right "intermediate packets". In the second brain we rebuild and we can always reorganise and repurpose the packets according to how accessible they need to be for us to work through a new agenda (i.e. creating a view through existing content with tags... reminder here to check author's separate writings on using tags).
"Keep what resonates (Capture) Save for actionability (Organize) Find the essence (Distill) Show your work (Express)"
PROGRESSIVE SUMMARIZATION
A helpful rule of thumb is that each layer of highlighting should include no more than 10–20 percent of the previous layer. every time you “touch” a note, you should make it a little more discoverable for your future self.
“Anything you might want to accomplish—executing a project at work, getting a new job, learning a new skill, starting a business—requires finding and putting to use the right information. Your professional success and quality of life depend directly on your ability to manage information effectively. According to the New York Times, the average person’s daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes.1 A separate study cited by the Times estimates that we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day, five times higher than in 1986.2 Instead of empowering us, this deluge of information often overwhelms us. Information Overload has become Information Exhaustion, taxing our mental resources and leaving us constantly anxious that we’re forgetting something.”
“The three habits most important to your Second Brain include: Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work. Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything. Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.”
"There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us: Making our ideas concrete. Revealing new associations between ideas. Incubating our ideas over time. Sharpening our unique perspectives."
"Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end, early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks."
"For modern, professional notetaking, a note is a “knowledge building block”—a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head."
"it wasn’t jobs that required advanced skills or years of training that were predicted to fare best. It was jobs that required the ability to convey “not just information but a particular interpretation of information.”
"Every time you take a note, ask yourself, “How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self? Your notes will be useless if you can’t decipher them in the future, or if they’re so long that you don’t even try. Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes”
"Feynman’s approach was to maintain a list of a dozen open questions." (and whenever new general knowledge arose then test all those 12 questions against it).
"If you try to save every piece of material you come across, you run the risk of inundating your future self with tons of irrelevant information. At that point, your Second Brain will be no better than scrolling through social media." When you use up too much energy taking notes, you have little left over for the subsequent steps that add far more value: making connections, imagining possibilities, formulating theories, and creating new ideas of your own.
"The archives are like the freezer—items are in cold storage until they are needed, which could be far into the future. Resources are like the pantry—available for use in any meal you make, but neatly tucked away out of sight in the meantime. Areas are like the fridge—items that you plan on using relatively soon, and that you want to check on more frequently. Projects are like the pots and pans cooking on the stove—the items you are actively preparing right now."
"Taking notes during meetings is a common practice, but it’s often not clear what we should do with those notes. They are often messy, with the action items buried among random comments. I often use Progressive Summarization to summarize my notes after phone calls to make sure I’m extracting every bit of value from them."
"eventually you’ll have so many IPs at your disposal that you can execute entire projects just by assembling previously created IPs. This is a magical experience that will completely change how you view productivity. The idea of starting anything from scratch will become foreign to you"
"two activities your brain has the most difficulty performing at the same time: choosing ideas (known as selection) and arranging them into a logical flow (known as sequencing)."
"The more you outsource and delegate the jobs of capturing, organizing, and distilling to technology, the more time and energy you’ll have available for the self-expression that only you can do."
“important to separate capture and organize into two distinct steps:” (a mind cannot do both at the same time effectively).
“PARA isn’t a filing system; it’s a production system. It’s no use trying to find the “perfect place” where a note or file belongs. There isn’t one. The whole system is constantly shifting and changing in sync with your constantly changing life.”
“The practice of building a Second Brain is more than the sum of capturing facts, theories, and the opinions of others. At its core, it is about cultivating self-awareness and self-knowledge.”
“Most notes apps have an “inbox” or “daily notes” section where new notes you’ve captured are saved until you can revisit them and decide where they belong. Think of it as a waiting area where new ideas live until you are ready to digest them into your Second Brain.”
“For many people, their understanding of notetaking was formed in school. You were probably first told to write something down because it would be on the test. This implied that the minute the test was over, you would never reference those notes again.”
“It is when you begin expressing your ideas and turning your knowledge into action that life really begins to change. You’ll read differently, becoming more focused on the parts most relevant to the argument you’re building. You’ll ask sharper questions, no longer satisfied with vague explanations or leaps in logic. You’ll naturally seek venues to show your work, since the feedback you receive will propel your thinking forward like nothing else. You’ll begin to act more deliberately in your career or business, thinking several steps beyond what you’re consuming to consider its ultimate potential. It’s not necessarily about becoming a professional artist, online influencer, or business mogul: it’s about taking ownership of your work, your ideas, and your potential to contribute in whatever arena you find yourself in. It doesn’t matter how impressive or grand your output is, or how many people see it. It could be just between your family or friends, among your colleagues and team, with your neighbors or schoolmates—what matters is that you are finding your voice and insisting that what you have to say matters. You have to value your ideas enough to share them. You have to believe that the smallest idea has the potential to change people’s lives. If you don’t believe that now, start with the smallest project you can think of to begin to prove to yourself that your ideas can make a difference.”
January 31, 2024
Tiago Forte has written an easy to read and insightful book on the what, why, and how of keeping a “second brain” of notes that can serve you in all areas of life, especially creative endeavors.
I read ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ by Sonke Ahrens, which had a lot of helpful information (especially on learning and productivity) but ultimately frustrated me by not sharing examples and answering my biggest questions about his method. I wish I had read Forte’s book instead, although I'm glad I read both. I also wish I had read this in seminary and taken the method to heart even though I am grateful that I have used many of the principles in my hodge-podge note system that has worked well for me over the years.
Forte not only shares specific details of a method he recommends, he shared wise insight on being a productive creative. (The one line that hit me like a ton of bricks was: “shift as much of your time and effort as possible from consuming to creating.”)
If you’re a knowledge worker like a writer, teacher, or pastor, read this book and take it to heart. You won’t have to rely on your first brain as much and a properly-cultivated second brain will help you bear more fruit in nearly every endeavor.
I read ‘How to Take Smart Notes’ by Sonke Ahrens, which had a lot of helpful information (especially on learning and productivity) but ultimately frustrated me by not sharing examples and answering my biggest questions about his method. I wish I had read Forte’s book instead, although I'm glad I read both. I also wish I had read this in seminary and taken the method to heart even though I am grateful that I have used many of the principles in my hodge-podge note system that has worked well for me over the years.
Forte not only shares specific details of a method he recommends, he shared wise insight on being a productive creative. (The one line that hit me like a ton of bricks was: “shift as much of your time and effort as possible from consuming to creating.”)
If you’re a knowledge worker like a writer, teacher, or pastor, read this book and take it to heart. You won’t have to rely on your first brain as much and a properly-cultivated second brain will help you bear more fruit in nearly every endeavor.
September 27, 2023
In Forte's book, a digital method of collecting and organizing information is explored and referred to as a Second Brain. What stood out to me was the concept of divergence and convergence, as well as the examples of the Archipelago and the Hemingway Bridge being incorporated to help understand the idea. Additionally, it was interesting to see Taylor Swift's references appearing in self-help books as well.
September 27, 2022
There were some very useful bits in here and some articulations I definitely found useful.
The main thing I learned from this is that I’ve already got the system he’s describing but that I have a big challenge implementing “convergence” when the time is right.
If its fun and interesting and meditative for you to think about productivity (as with me), then this will certainly be an enjoyable read. If you’re not a personal knowledge management freak, I reckon this would sound too bizarre and theoretical. (For one thing, he gives way more theory than examples.)
Ill still be tempted to recommend it for spelling out some pieces of process that I’d learned but never articulated. But dont look for deep inspiration here; its a note taking book.
The main thing I learned from this is that I’ve already got the system he’s describing but that I have a big challenge implementing “convergence” when the time is right.
If its fun and interesting and meditative for you to think about productivity (as with me), then this will certainly be an enjoyable read. If you’re not a personal knowledge management freak, I reckon this would sound too bizarre and theoretical. (For one thing, he gives way more theory than examples.)
Ill still be tempted to recommend it for spelling out some pieces of process that I’d learned but never articulated. But dont look for deep inspiration here; its a note taking book.
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