Kevin De Baerdemaeker

Building a Second Brain

Modified 2022-09-23

Highlights

CH2: What is a second brain?

Instead of empowering us, this deluge of information often overwhelms us. Information Overload has become _Information Exhaustion,_ taxing our mental resources and leaving us constantly anxious that we’re forgetting something.

Research from Microsoft shows that the average US employee spends 76 hours per year looking for misplaced notes, items, or files.3 And a report from the International Data Corporation found that 26 percent of a typical knowledge worker’s day is spent looking for and consolidating information spread across a variety of systems.4 Incredibly, only 56 percent of the time are they able to find the information required to do their jobs. In other words, we go to work five days per week, but spend more than one of those days on average just looking for the information we need to do our work. Half the time, we don’t even succeed in doing that.

For centuries, artists and intellectuals from Leonardo da Vinci to Virginia Woolf, from John Locke to Octavia Butler, have recorded the ideas they found most interesting in a book they carried around with them, known as a “commonplace book.”II

CH3: How a second brain works

CODE”—Capture; Organize; Distill; Express\*\_

Adopting the habit of knowledge capture has immediate benefits for our mental health and peace of mind. We can let go of the fear that our memory will fail us at a crucial moment.

CH4: Capture - Keep What resonates

Knowledge assets can come from either the _external world or your inner thoughts._ External knowledge could include: Highlights: Insightful passages from books or articles you read. Quotes: Memorable passages from podcasts or audiobooks you listen to. Bookmarks and favorites: Links to interesting content you find on the web or favorited social media posts. Voice memos: Clips recorded on your mobile device as “notes to self.” Meeting notes: Notes you take about what was discussed during meetings or phone calls. Images: Photos or other images that you find inspiring or interesting. Takeaways: Lessons from courses, conferences, or presentations you’ve attended.

As you start collecting this material from the outer world, it often sparks new ideas and realizations in your _inner world._ You can capture those thoughts too! They could include: Stories: Your favorite anecdotes, whether they happened to you or someone else. Insights: The small (and big) realizations you have. Memories: Experiences from your life that you don’t want to forget. Reflections: Personal thoughts and lessons written in a journal or diary.

there are four kinds of content that aren’t well suited to notes apps: Is this sensitive information you’d like to keep secure? The content you save in your notes is *easily accessible from any device, which is great for accessibility but not for security*. Information like tax records, government documents, passwords, and health records shouldn’t be saved in your notes. Is this a special format or file type better handled by a dedicated app? Although you could save specialized files such as Photoshop files or video footage in your notes, you’ll need a specialized app to open them anyway, so there’s no benefit to keeping them in your notes. Is this a very large file? Notes apps are made for short, *lightweight bits of text and images*, and their performance will often be severely hampered if you try to save large files in them. Will it need to be collaboratively edited? Notes apps are perfectly suited for individual*, private use, which makes them less than ideal for collaboration. You can share individual notes or even groups of notes with others, but if you need multiple people to be able to collaboratively edit a document in real time, then you’ll need to use a different platform.

Twelve Favorite Problems inspired by Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman. 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 answer).

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. Capture Criteria #1: Does It Inspire Me? Capture Criteria #2: Is It Useful? Capture Criteria #3: Is It Personal? Capture Criteria #4: Is It Surprising?

Not to mention, if you make reading and learning into unpleasant experiences, over time you’re going to find yourself doing less and less of them. The secret to making reading a habit is to make it effortless and enjoyable.

There is even significant evidence that expressing our thoughts in writing can lead to benefits for our health and well-being.11 One of the most cited psychology papers of the 1990s found that “translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes.”

It’s important to keep capturing relatively effortless because it is only the first step.

CH5: Organize - Save for Actionability

If there isn’t a current project that your note would be useful for, we have a couple of other options of where to put it, including dedicated places for each of the main “areas” of your life that you are responsible for, and “resources,” which is like a personal library of references, facts, and inspiration.

One of the biggest _temptations with organizing is to get too perfectionistic, treating the process of organizing as an end in itself_

With the PARA system, every piece of information you want to save can be placed into one of just four categories: Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now. Areas: Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time. Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future. Archives: Inactive items from the other three categories.

Examples of areas from your personal life could include: Activities or places you are responsible for: Home/apartment; Cooking; Travel; Car. People you are responsible for or accountable to: Friends; Kids; Spouse; Pets. Standards of performance you are responsible for: Health; Personal growth; Friendships; Finances. In your job or business: Departments or functions you are responsible for: Account management; Marketing; Operations; Product development. People or teams you are responsible for or accountable to: Direct reports; Manager; Board of directors; Suppliers. Standards of performance you are responsible for: Professional development; Sales and marketing; Relationships and networking; Recruiting and hiring.

Any one of these subjects could become its own resource folder. You can also think of them as “research” or “reference materials.”

Inside these folders live the files that I use to execute each project. He

You might save a note on coaching techniques to a project folder called “Coaching class,” for a class you’re taking. Later, when you become a manager at work and need to coach your direct reports, you might move that note to an area folder called “Direct reports.” At some point you might leave that company, but still remain interested in coaching, and move the note to resources. One day you might lose interest in the subject altogether and move it to the archives.

Projects are what’s currently relevant to me. Areas, are information about my responsibilities. While resources is about my interests.

I want to give the same advice to you: don’t make organizing your Second Brain into yet another heavy obligation. Ask yourself: “What is the smallest, easiest step I can take that moves me in the right direction?”

Notice what’s on your mind: What’s worrying you that you haven’t taken the time to identify as a project? What needs to happen that you’re not making consistent progress on? Look at your calendar: What do you need to follow up on from the past? What needs planning and preparation for the future? Look at your to-do list: What actions are you already taking that are actually part of a bigger project you’ve not yet identified? What communication or follow-up actions you’ve scheduled with people are actually part of a bigger project? Look at your computer desktop, downloads folder, documents folder, bookmarks, emails, or open browser tabs: What are you keeping around because it is part of a larger project?

CH6: Distill — Find the Essence

You’re watching a YouTube video on home renovation now, but that knowledge can be put to use only in a few months, when you move into your new place.

Progressive Summarization takes advantage of a tool and a habit that we are all intimately familiar with—highlighting—while leveraging the unique capabilities of technology to make those highlights far more useful than anything you did in school.

This is what I call “layer one”—the chunks of text initially captured in my notes. Notice that I didn’t save the entire article—only a few key excerpts.III By limiting what I keep to only the best, most important, most relevant parts, I’m making all the subsequent steps of organizing, distilling, and expressing much easier. If I ever need to know the full details, I have the link to the original article right there at the bottom.

There is one more layer we can add, though it is quite rarely needed. For only the very few sources that are truly unique and valuable, I’ll add an “executive summary” at the top of the note with a few bullet points summarizing the article in my own words. The best sign that a fourth layer is needed is when I find myself visiting a note again and again, clearly indicating that it is one of the cornerstones of my thinking. Looking only at the points I’ve previously bolded and highlighted in layers two and three makes it far easier to write this summary than if I was trying to summarize the entire article all at once.

Progressive Summarization helps you focus on the content and the presentation of your notes,IV instead of spending too much time on labeling, tagging, linking, or other advanced features offered by many information management tools. It gives you a practical, easy thing to do that adds value even when you don’t have the energy for more challenging tasks. Most importantly, it keeps your attention on the substance of what you’re reading or learning, which is what matters in the long term.

Have you ever found yourself visiting the same Wikipedia article again and again or trying to remember something from that one article you read weeks ago? By saving the best excerpts from Wikipedia articles you read, you can create your own private encyclopedia with only the parts that are most relevant to you.

Almost two years later, I was finally ready to hire my first employee. I remember the feeling of anxiety as I prepared to take on this major financial commitment, not to mention the responsibility of managing a direct report. Luckily, I had a handful of highly actionable notes saved in a resource folder called “Hiring.” To get started, I moved the entire folder from resources to projects. Then I spent about thirty minutes to review the notes it contained and highlight the most relevant takeaways.

Picasso’s act of distillation involves stripping away the unnecessary so that only the essential remains. Crucially, Picasso couldn’t have started with the single line drawing. He needed to go through each layer of the bull’s form step-by-step to absorb the proportions and shapes into his muscle memory. The result points to a mysterious aspect of the creative process: it can end up with a result that looks so simple, it seems like anyone could have made it. That simplicity masks the effort that was needed to get there.

The rule of thumb to follow is that every time you “touch” a note, you should make it a little more discoverable for your future selfVII—by adding a highlight, a heading, some bullets, or commentary. When the opportunity arrives to do our best work, it’s not the time to start reading books and doing research. You need that research to already be done.

The true test of whether a note you’ve created is discoverable is whether you can get the gist of it at a glance. Put it aside for a few days and set a reminder to revisit it once you’ve forgotten most of the details. When you come back to it, give yourself no more than thirty seconds and see if you can rapidly get up to speed on what it’s about using the highlights you previously made.

CH7: Express - Show your Work

There are few things more satisfying than the feeling of making consistent progress.

Reusing Intermediate Packets of work frees up our attention for higher-order, more creative thinking. Thinking small is the best way to elevate your horizons and expand your ambitions. There are five kinds of Intermediate Packets you can create and reuse in your work: 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 during past projects. Final deliverables: Concrete pieces of work you’ve delivered as part of past projects, which could become components of something new. Documents created by others: Knowledge assets created by people on your team, contractors or consultants, or even clients or customers, that you can reference and incorporate into your work.

There are certain notes in your Second Brain that are disproportionately valuable, that you will 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. It is by sharing our ideas with other people that we discover which ones represent our most valuable expertise.

The CODE Method is based on an important aspect of creativity: that it is always a remix of existing parts. We all stand on the shoulders of our predecessors. No one creates anything out of a pure void.

CH8: The Art of Creative Execution

Through the simple acts of capturing ideas, organizing them into groups, distilling the best parts, and assembling them together to create value for others, we are practicing the basic moves of knowledge work in such a way that we can improve on them over time.

at some point you must start discarding possibilities and converging toward a solution. Otherwise, you will never get the rewarding sense of completion that comes with hitting “send” or “publish” and stepping back from the canvas or screen knowing you got the job done.

How do you create a Hemingway Bridge? Instead of burning through every last ounce of energy at the end of a work session, reserve the last few minutes to write down some of the following kinds of things in your digital notes: 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 subtle considerations of the product you’re designing. 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 a certain milestone you want to reach.

Set a timer for a fixed period of time, such as fifteen or twenty minutes, and in one sitting see if you can complete a first pass on your project using only the notes you’ve gathered in front of you. No searching online, no browsing social media, and no opening multiple browser tabs that you swear you’re going to get to eventually. Only work with what you already have.

CH9: Essential Habits of Digital Organizers

I like to start by creating a blank note and doing a brainstorm of any thoughts that come to mind.

Review Intermediate Packets and move them to other folders. Third, I’ll look through the folder for the completed project to identify any Intermediate Packets I created that could be repurposed in the future. This could include a web-page design to be used as a template for future sites, an agenda for a one-on-one performance review, or a series of interview questions that might come in handy for future hires.

Most notes apps have an “inbox” of some kind where new notes collect until they’re ready to be reviewed. This “batch processing” takes only seconds per note, and you can complete it within a few minutes. I don’t highlight or summarize them. I don’t try to understand or absorb their contents. I don’t worry about all the topics they could potentially relate to. I want to save all that thinking for the future—for a time and place when I know what I’m trying to accomplish and am seeking a knowledge building block to help me get there faster. This weekly sorting process serves as a light reminder of the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past week, and ensures I have a healthy flow of new ideas and insights flowing into my Second Brain.

A Monthly Review Template: Reflect for Clarity and Control While the Weekly Review is grounded and practical, I recommend doing a Monthly Review that is a bit more reflective and holistic. It’s a chance to evaluate the big picture and consider more fundamental changes to your goals, priorities, and systems that you might not have the chance to think about in the busyness of the day-to-day. Here’s mine: Review and update my goals. Review and update my project list. Review my areas of responsibility. Review someday/maybe tasks. Reprioritize tasks.

Here are some examples: 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.

There’s no need to review or summarize notes on a strict timeline; we’re not trying to memorize their contents or keep them top of mind.

CH10: Path of Self-Expression

For example, driving a car or recognizing a face. We can try to describe how we do these things, but our explanations always fall far short. That’s because we are relying on tacit knowledge, which is impossible to describe in exact detail. We possess that knowledge, but it resides in our subconscious and muscle memory where language cannot reach.

Are you hoping to remember more? Focus on developing the practice of capturing and organizing your notes according to your projects, commitments, and interests using PARA. Are you hoping to connect ideas and develop your ability to plan, influence, and grow in your personal and professional life? Experiment with consistently distilling and refining your notes using Progressive Summarization and revisiting them during weekly reviews.

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Tiago Forte

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