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by
Tiago Forte
As people set out on their Second Brain journey, there are three stages of progress I often observe—and even encourage. Those stages are remembering, connecting, and creating.
The first way that people tend to use their Second Brain is as a memory aid. They use their digital notes to save facts and ideas that they would have trouble recalling otherwise: takeaways from meetings, quotes from interviews, or the details of a project, for example.
Their Second Brain evolves from being primarily a memory tool to becoming a thinking tool.
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 is a map for navigating the endless streams of information we are now faced with every day.
Capture: Keep What Resonates
Like a scientist capturing only the rarest butterflies to take back to the lab, our goal should be to “capture” only the ideas and insights we think are truly noteworthy.
The solution is to keep only what resonates in a trusted place that you control, and to leave the rest aside.
Don’t make it an analytical decision, and don’t worry about why exactly it resonates—just look inside for a feeling of pleasure, curiosity, wonder, or excitement, and let that be your signal for when it’s time to capture a passage, an image, a quote, or a fact.
Instead of jumping at every new headline and notification, we can choose to consume information that adds value to our lives and consciously let go of the rest.
Organize: Save for Actionability
Because our priorities and goals can change at a moment’s notice, and probably will, we want to avoid organizing methods that are overly rigid and prescriptive.
The best way to organize your notes is to organize for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, “How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?”
Organizing for action gives you a sense of tremendous clarity, because you know that everything you’re keeping actually has a purpose. You know that it aligns with your goals and priorities.
Instead of organizing being an obstacle to your productivity, it becomes a contributor to it.
Distill: Find the...
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There is a powerful way to facilitate and speed up this process of rapid association: distill your notes down to their essence.
Every time you take a note, ask yourself, “How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?” That question will lead you to annotate the words and phrases that explain why you saved a note, what you were thinking, and what exactly caught your attention.
Your notes will be useless if you can’t decipher them in the future, or if they’re so long that you don’t even try. Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes—you are giving your future self the gift of knowledge that is easy to find and understand.
Express: Show Y...
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A common challenge for people who are curious and love to learn is that we can fall into the habit of continuously force-feeding ourselves more and more information, but never actually take the next step and apply it.
Everything not saved will be lost. —Nintendo “Quit Screen” message
A Second Brain gives us a way to filter the information stream and curate only the very best ideas we encounter in a private, trusted place.
Over the course of her career, Swift has released five documentary films revealing her creative songwriting process. In all of them, she can be found with her head buried in her phone. As she says: “I disappear into my phone because my phone is where I keep my notes and my phone is where I’m editing.”
Creating a Knowledge Bank: How to Generate Compounding Interest from Your Thoughts
This practice continues among creatives today. Songwriters are known for compiling “hook books” full of lyrics and musical riffs they may want to use in future songs. Software engineers build “code libraries” so useful bits of code are easy to access. Lawyers keep “case files” with details from past cases they might want to refer to in the future. Marketers and advertisers maintain “swipe files” with examples of compelling ads they might want to draw from.
Knowledge isn’t just wise quotations from long-dead Greek philosophers in white togas. It’s not just the teachings found within thick textbooks written by academics with advanced degrees. In the digital world we live in, knowledge most often shows up as “content”—snippets of text, screenshots, bookmarked articles, podcasts, or other kinds of media. This includes the content you gather from outside sources but also the content you create as you compose emails, draw up project plans, brainstorm ideas, and journal your own thoughts.
The meaning of a thought, insight, or memory often isn’t immediately clear. We need to write them down, revisit them, and view them from a different perspective in order to digest what they mean to us. It is exceedingly difficult to do that within the confines of our heads.
While you can eventually learn to capture from dozens of different sources, it’s important to start small and get your feet wet before diving into the deep end.
Twelve Favorite Problems: A Nobel Prize Winner’s Approach to Capturing
You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!”
As told in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick,5
To be read
Ask yourself, “What are the questions I’ve always been interested in?” This could include grand, sweeping questions like “How can we make society fairer and more equitable?” as well as practical ones like “How can I make it a habit to exercise every day?”
The key to this exercise is to make them open-ended questions that don’t necessarily have a single answer.
Take a moment now to write down some of your own favorite problems. Here are my recommendations to guide you: Ask people close to you what you were obsessed with as a child (often you’ll continue to be fascinated with the same things as an adult). Don’t worry about coming up with exactly twelve (the exact number doesn’t matter, but try to come up with at least a few). Don’t worry about getting the list perfect (this is just a first pass, and it will always be evolving). Phrase them as open-ended questions that could have multiple answers (in contrast to “yes/no” questions with only one
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Capture Criteria: How to Avoid Keeping Too Much (or Too Little)
It starts with realizing that in any piece of content, the value is not evenly distributed. There are always certain parts that are especially interesting, helpful, or valuable to you. When you realize this, the answer is obvious. You can extract only the most salient, relevant, rich material and save it as a succinct note.
The best curators are picky about what they allow into their collections, and you should be too.
Thinking like a curator means taking charge of your own information stream, instead of just letting it wash over you. The more economical you can be with the material you capture in the first place, the less time and effort your future self will have to spend organizing, distilling, and expressing it.II
Capture Criteria #1: Does It Inspire Me?
There is a way to evoke a sense of inspiration more regularly: keep a collection of inspiring quotes, photos, ideas, and stories. Any time you need a break, a new perspective, or a dash of motivation, you can look through it and see what sparks your imagination.
Capture Criteria #2: Is It Useful?
Sometimes you come across a piece of information that isn’t necessarily inspiring, but you know it might come in handy in the future. A statistic, a reference, a research finding, or a helpful diagram—these are the equivalents of the spare parts a carpenter might keep around their workshop.
Capture Criteria #3: Is It Personal?
One of the most valuable kinds of information to keep is personal information—your own thoughts, reflections, memories, and mementos. Like the age-old practice of journaling or keeping a diary, we can use notetaking to document our lives and better understand how we became who we are.
Capture Criteria #4: Is It Surprising?
The renowned information theorist Claude Shannon, whose discoveries paved the way for modern technology, had a simple definition for “information”: that which surprises you.7 If you’re not surprised, then you already knew it at some level, so why take note of it?
Sometimes you come across an idea that is neither inspiring, personal, nor obviously useful, but there is something surprising about it. You may not be able to put your finger on why, but it conflicts with your existing point of view in a way that makes your brain perk up and pay attention. Those are the ideas you should capture.
Ultimately, Capture What Resonates
