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

by Tiago Forte

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.

a simple organizing technique lies at the heart of a creative process

Tharp calls her approach “the box.” Every time she begins a new project, she takes out a foldable file box and labels it with the name of the project,

Studies have shown that the environment we find ourselves in powerfully shapes our thinking.

No one questions the importance of having physical spaces that make us feel calm and centered, but when it comes to your digital workspace, it’s likely you’ve spent little time, if any, arranging that space to enhance your productivity or creativity.

Your Second Brain isn’t just a tool—it’s an environment. It is a garden of knowledge

Gardens are natural, but they don’t happen by accident. They require a caretaker to seed the plants, trim

organizes information based on how actionable it is, not what kind of information it is.

Instead of having to sort your notes according to a complex hierarchy of topics and subtopics, you have to answer only one simple question: “In which project will this be most useful?” It

The intention here is not to use a single software program, but to use a single organizing system