Building a Second Brain

Building

Second

Brain

A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

 Find anything you've learned, touched, or thought about in the past within seconds.

Organize your knowledge and use it to move your projects and goals forward more consistently.

Save your best thinking so you don't have to do it again.

Connect ideas and notice patterns across different areas of your life so you know how to live better.

Adopt a reliable system that helps you share your work more confidently and with more ease.

Turn work "off" and relax, knowing you have a trusted system keeping track of all the details.

Spend less time looking for things, and more time doing the best, most creative work you are capable of

PART ONE The Foundation Understanding What's Possible

Chapter 1

Where It All Started

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

-David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

Chapter 2

What Is a Second Brain?

We extend beyond our limits, not by revving our brains like a machine or bulking them up like a muscle-but by strewing our world with rich materials, and by weaving them into our thoughts. -Annie Murphy Paul, author of The Extended Mind

Chapter 3

How a Second Brain Works

It is in the power of remembering that the self's ultimate freedom consists. I

am free because I remember. -Abhinavagupta, tenth-century Kashmiri philosopher and mystic

The Superpowers of a Second Brain

There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us:

1. Making our ideas concrete.

2. Revealing new associations between ideas.

3. Incubating our ideas over time.

4. Sharpening our unique perspectives.

Code method Capture

Organize

Distill

Save for

Find the

Keep what

resonates

actionability

essence

Express

Show your work

PART TWO The Method The Four Steps of CODE

Chapter 4

Capture-Keep What Resonates

Everything not saved will be lost.

-Nintendo "Quit Screen" message

Knowledge assets can come from either the external world or your inner thoughts. External knowledge could include:

Highlights: Insightful passages from books or articles you read.

Quotes: Memorable passages from podcasts or audiobooks you listen

to.

Bookmarks and favorites: Links to interesting content you find on the web or favorited social media posts.

Voice memos: Clips recorded on your mobile device as "notes to self."

Meeting notes: Notes you take about what was discussed during meetings or phone calls.

Images: Photos or other images that you find inspiring or interesting.

Takeaways: Lessons from courses, conferences, or presentations you've attended.

Stories: Your favorite anecdotes, whether they happened to you or someone else.

Insights: The small (and big) realizations you have.

Memories: Experiences from your life that you don't want to forget.

Reflections: Personal thoughts and lessons written in a journal or diary.

Musings: Random "shower ideas" that pop into your head

What Not to Keep

The examples I've shared may seem so expansive that you're wondering if there is anything you shouldn't keep in your Second Brain. In my experience, there are four kinds of content that aren't well suited to notes apps:

Is this sensitive information you'd like to keep secure? The content you save in your notes is easily accessible from any device, which is great for accessibility but not for security. Information like tax records, government documents, passwords, and health records shouldn't be saved in your notes.

Is this a special format or file type better handled by a dedicated app? Although you could save specialized files such as Photoshop files or video footage in your notes, you'll need a specialized app to open them anyway, so there's no benefit to keeping them in your notes.

Is this a very large file? Notes apps are made for short, lightweight bits of text and images, and their performance will often be severely hampered if you try to save large files in them.

Will it need to be collaboratively edited? Notes apps are perfectly suited for individual, private use, which makes them less than ideal for collaboration. You can share individual notes or even groups of notes with others, but if you need multiple people to be able to collaboratively

Your second Brain 

Ebook apps, which often allow you to export your highlights or annotations all at once.

Read later apps that allow you to bookmark content you find online for later reading (or in the case of podcasts or videos, listening or watching).

Basic notes apps that often come preinstalled on mobile devices and are designed for easily capturing short snippets of text.

Social media apps, which usually allow you to "favorite" content and export it to a notes app.

Web clippers, which allow you to save parts of web pages (often included as a built-in feature of notes apps).

Audio/voice transcription apps that create text transcripts from spoken words.

Chapter 5

Organize-Save for Actionability

your work.

Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in

Gustave Flaubert. French novelist

How PARA Works: Priming Your Mind (and Notes) for Action

With the PARA system, every piece of information you want to save can be placed into one of just four categories:

1. Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you're working on now.

2. Areas: Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time.

3. Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future.

4. Archives: Inactive items from the other three categories.

Examples of areas from your personal life could include:

Activities or places you are responsible for: Home/apartment; Cooking; Travel; Car.

People you are responsible for or accountable to: Friends; Kids; Spouse; Pets.

Standards of performance you are responsible for: Health; Personal growth; Friendships; Finances.

In your job or business:

Departments or functions you are responsible for: Account management; Marketing; Operations; Product development.

People or teams you are responsible for or accountable to: Direct reports; Manager; Board of directors; Suppliers.

Standards of performance you are responsible for: Professional development; Sales and marketing; Relationships and networking; Recruiting and hiring.

Projects are most actionable because you're working on them right now and with a concrete deadline in mind.

Areas have a longer time horizon and are less immediately actionable.

Resources may become actionable depending on the situation.

Archives remain inactive unless they are needed.

Organizing Information Like a Kitchen-What Am I Making?

Chapter 6

Distill-Find the Essence

every day.

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things

-Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher

4

Executive summary

3

Highlighted passages

2

Bolded passages

1

Captured notes

Chapter 7

Express-Show Your Work Verum ipsum factum ("We only know what we make")

Giambattista Vico, Italian philosopher

The emerging Octavia made three rules for herself:

1. Don't leave your home without a notebook, paper scraps, something to write with.

2. Don't walk into the world without your eyes and ears focused and open.

3. Don't make excuses about what you don't have or what you would do if you did, use that energy to "find a way, make a way."

There are five kinds of Intermediate Packets you can create and reuse in your work:

Distilled notes: Books or articles you've read and distilled so it's easy to get the gist of what they contain (using the Progressive Summarization technique you learned in the previous chapter, for example).

Outtakes: The material or ideas that didn't make it into a past project but could be used in future ones.

Work-in-process: The documents, graphics, agendas, or plans you produced during past projects.

Final deliverables: Concrete pieces of work you've delivered as part of past projects, which could become components of something new.

Documents created by others: Knowledge assets created by people on your team, contractors or consultants, or even clients or customers, that you can reference and incorporate into your work.

PART THREE The Shift

Making Things Happen

Chapter 8

The Art of Creative Execution

Creative products are always shiny and new; the creative process is ancient

and unchanging.

-Silvano Arieti, psychiatrist and author of Creativity: The Magic Synthesis

Chapter 9

The Essential Habits of Digital Organizers

Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks... It's only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and

creativity.

-James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

Chapter 10

The Path of Self-Expression

An idea wants to be shared. And, in the sharing, it becomes more complex, more interesting, and more likely to work for more people.

-adrienne maree brown, writer and activist

Bonus Chapter

How to Create a Tagging System That

Works