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

by Tiago Forte

Creativity Is Inherently Collaborative

The fundamental difficulty of creative work is that we are often too close to it to see it objectively. Getting feedback is really about borrowing someone else’s eyes to see what only a novice can see.

You will begin to see yourself as the curator of the collective thinking of your network, rather than the sole originator of ideas.

find yourself returning to again and again. These are the cornerstones of your work on which everything else is built, but you can’t usually know which notes are cornerstones up front. You discover them by sharing your ideas with others, and seeing which ones resonate with them.

Everything Is a Remix

Instead of thinking of your job in terms of tasks, which always require you to be there, personally, doing everything yourself, you will start to think in terms of assets and building blocks that you can assemble.

You Only Know What You Make

taking ownership of your work, your ideas, and your potential to contribute in whatever arena you find yourself in.

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.

begin unlocking your full creative potential.

We can’t expect ourselves to instantly come up with brilliant ideas on demand.

A creative endeavor begins with an act of divergence. You open the space of possibilities and consider as many options as possible.

The purpose of divergence is to generate new ideas, so the process is necessarily spontaneous, chaotic, and messy. You can’t fully plan or organize what you’re doing in divergence mode, and you shouldn’t try. This is the time to wander.

Convergence forces us to eliminate options, make trade-offs, and decide what is truly essential. It is about narrowing the range of possibilities so that you can make forward progress and end up with a final result you are proud of. Convergence allows our work to take on a life of its own and become something separate from ourselves.

If we overlay the four steps of CODE onto the model of divergence and convergence, we arrive at a powerful template for the creative process in our time.

The first two steps of CODE, Capture and Organize, make up divergence.

Distill and Express, are about convergence.

In divergence mode, you want to open up your horizons and explore every possible option. Open the windows and doors, click every link, jump from one source to another, and let your curiosity be your guide for what to do next.

If you decide to enter convergence mode, do the opposite: close the door, put on noise-canceling headphones, ignore every new input, and ferociously chase the sweet reward of completion. Trust that you have enough ideas and enough sources, and it’s time to turn inward and sprint toward your goal.

To create an Archipelago of Ideas, you divergently gather a group of ideas, sources, or points that will form the backbone of your essay, presentation, or deliverable. Once you have a critical mass of ideas to work with, you switch decisively into convergence mode and link them together in an order that makes sense.

An Archipelago of Ideas separates the 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).

He built himself a bridge to the next day, using today’s energy and momentum to fuel tomorrow’s writing.IV

You can think of a Hemingway Bridge as a bridge between the islands in your Archipelago of Ideas. You may have the islands, but that is just the first step. The much more challenging work is linking them together into something that makes sense, whether it is a piece of writing, the design of an event, or a business pitch.

The Hemingway Bridge is a way of making each creative leap from one island to the next less dramatic and risky: you keep some energy and imagination in reserve and use it as...

Write down ideas for next steps: At the end of a work session, write down what you think the next steps could be for the next one.

Write down the current status: This could include your current biggest challenge, most important open question, or future roadblocks you expect.

Write down any details you have in mind that are likely to be forgotten once you step away: Such as details about the characters in your story, the pitfalls of the event you’re planning, or the s...

Write out your intention for the next work session: Set an intention for what you plan on tackling next, the problem you intend to solve, or...

Dialing Down the Scope recognizes that not all the parts of a given project are equally important. By dropping or reducing or postponing the least important parts, we can unblock ourselves and move forward even when time is scarce.

Divergence and convergence are not a linear path, but a loop: once you complete one round of convergence, you can take what you’ve learned right back into a new cycle of divergence. Keep alternating back and forth, making iterations each time until it’s something you can consider “done” or “complete” and share more widely.

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 repeated set of actions you take as you encounter, work with, and put information to use. If we’re constantly scrambling to find our notes, drafts, brainstorms, and sources, not only do we waste precious time, but we also sabotage our momentum. At each step of CODE, there are habits that can help us be more organized so that our creativity has space to arise.

Project Kickoff Checklist comes in. Here’s my own checklist: Capture my current thinking on the project. Review folders (or tags) that might contain relevant notes. Search for related terms across all folders. Move (or tag) relevant notes to the project folder. Create an outline of collected notes and plan the project.

questions I use to prompt this initial brainstorm: What do I already know about this project? What don’t I know that I need to find out? What is my goal or intention? Who can I talk to who might provide insights? What can I read or listen to for relevant ideas?

Answer premortemI questions: What do you want to learn? What is the greatest source of uncertainty or most important question you want to answer? What is most likely to fail? Communicate with stakeholders: Explain to your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., what the project is about and why it matters. Define success criteria: What needs to happen for this project to be considered successful? What are the minimum results you need to achieve, or the “stretch goals” you’re striving for? Have an official kickoff: Schedule check-in calls, make a budget and timeline, and write out the goals and objectives to make sure everyone is informed, aligned, and clear on what is expected of them. I find that doing an official kickoff is useful even if it’s a solo project!

Mark project as complete in task manager or project management app. Cross out the associated project goal and move to “Completed” section. Review Intermediate Packets and move them to other folders. Move project to archives across all platforms. If project is becoming inactive: add a current status note to the project folder before archiving.

Answer postmortem questions: What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What can you improve for next time? Communicate with stakeholders: Notify your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., that the project is complete and what the outcomes were. Evaluate success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the return on investment? Officially close out the project and celebrate: Send any last emails, invoices, receipts, feedback forms, or documents, and celebrate your accomplishments with your team or collaborators so you receive the feeling of fulfillment for all the effort you put in.

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

Review and update my goals. Review and update my project list. Review my areas of responsibility. Review someday/maybe tasks. Reprioritize tasks.

Noticing that an idea you have in mind could potentially be valuable and capturing it instead of thinking, “Oh, it’s nothing.” Noticing when an idea you’re reading about resonates with you and taking those extra few seconds to highlight it. Noticing that a note could use a better title—and changing it so it’s easier for your future self to find it. Noticing you could move or link a note to another project or area where it will be more useful.

Noticing opportunities to combine two or more Intermediate Packets into a new, larger work so you don’t have to start it from scratch. Noticing a chance to merge similar content from different notes into the same note so it’s not spread around too many places. Noticing when an IP that you already have could help someone else solve a problem, and sharing it with them, even if it’s not perfect.

Keep what resonates (Capture) Save for actionability (Organize) Find the essence (Distill) Show your work (Express)