Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

by Tiago Forte

Discoverability is an idea from information science

Highlighting is an activity that everyone understands, takes hardly any additional

Paradoxically, the more notes they collect, the less discoverable they become! This

Here is a snapshot of the four layers of Progressive Summarization:II Here’s an example of a note I captured from an article in Psychology Today.

“executive summary”

Progressive Summarization

Picasso’s Bull,

“campsite rule” applied to information—leave

Chapter 7 Express—Show Your Work

Verum ipsum factum (“We only know what we make”) —Giambattista Vico, Italian philosopher

“The biggest obstacle I had to overcome was my own fear and self-doubt—fear that maybe my work really wasn’t good enough, maybe I wasn’t smart enough; maybe the people telling me I couldn’t make it were right.”

“Use what you have; even if it seems meager, it may be magic in your hands.” Butler

myth of the writer sitting down before a completely blank page,

knowledge workers, attention is our most scarce and precious resource.

The ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world.

expressing your ideas earlier, more frequently, and in smaller chunks

“Intermediate Packets.” Intermediate Packets are the concrete, individual building blocks that make up your work.I For example, a set of notes from a team meeting, a list of relevant research findings, a brainstorm with collaborators, a slide deck analyzing the market, or a list of action items from a conference call.

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...

Final deliverables: Concrete pieces of work you’ve delivered as part of past projects, which could becom...

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

By “thinking small,” you can focus on creating just one IP each time you sit down to work,

Answers to common questions you receive via email

four retrieval methods are: Search Browsing Tags Serendipity

Manual navigation gives people control over how they navigate, with folders and file names providing small contextual clues about where to look next.

Browsing allows us to gradually home in on the information we are looking for, starting with the general and getting more and more specific.

browsing uses older parts of the brain that developed to navigate p...

Chapter 8 The Art of Creative Execution

“divergence and convergence.”

archipelago is a chain of islands in the ocean, usually formed by volcanic activity over long spans of time.

choosing ideas (known as selection)

arranging them into a logical flow (known as sequencing).

selection is divergent,

Sequencing is convergent,

Hemingway Bridge as a bridge between the islands in your Archipelago

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

Being organized is a habit—a

mise en place, a culinary philosophy used in restaurants around the world. Developed in France starting in the late 1800s, mise en place is a step-by-step process for producing high-quality food efficiently.

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.

Weekly Review to write down any new to-dos, review your active projects, and decide on priorities for the upcoming week.

Clear my email inbox. Check my calendar.

Clear my computer desktop. Clear my notes inbox. Choose my tasks for the week.

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

You adopted a default “blueprint” for how you treated incoming information—with anticipation, fear, excitement, self-doubt,

colors every aspect of your life.

The Fear Our Minds Can’t Do Enough

greater the burden you place on your biological brain to give you everything you want and need, the more it will struggle under the weight of it all.