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

by Tiago Forte

Introducing The CODE Method: The Four Steps to Remembering What Matters To guide you in the process of creating your own Second Brain, I’ve developed a simple, intuitive four-part method called “CODE”—Capture; Organize; Distill; Express.

CODE was actually one of the last things I added to my methodology. I was brainstorming late one night in the apartment in Mexico City where my wife Lauren and I lived at the time. I kept sketching different combinations of words on my notepad to visualize the overarching process of turning inputs into results. Suddenly, the word CODE jumped out at me. It fit the 4 steps perfectly, and also happened to spell out a real English word. I jumped to my feet in excitement and yelled “Yes!!!!” at the top of my lungs because this felt like the last missing piece I needed to write this book. This is also a perfect example of how curating ideas in your Second Brain leads to really unexpected breakthroughs: you start collecting interesting ideas, and eventually they seem to merge together and reach a critical mass and a brilliant insight just pops out at you!