Building a Second Brain — Overview

By Tiago Forte — read the original.

Kyle’s reading notes from March 2020. Tiago Forte’s text is quoted; the lines marked Concern: and the bracketed asides are Kyle’s own reactions as he read.

Notes

• Key Ideas
  • How many brilliant ideas have you had and forgotten? How many insights have you failed to take action on? How much useful advice have you slowly forgotten as the years have passed?
  • We spend countless hours every year reading, listening, and watching informational content. And yet, where has all that valuable knowledge gone? Where is it when we need it? Our brain can only store a few thoughts at any one time. Our brain is for having ideas, not storing them.
  • Being effective in the world today requires managing many different kinds of information – emails, text messages, messaging apps, online articles, books, podcasts, webinars, memos, and many others. **All of these kinds of content have value, but trying to remember all of it is overwhelming and impractical. **
  • By consolidating ideas from these sources, you’ll develop a valuable body of work to advance your projects and goals. You’ll have an ongoing record of personal discoveries, lessons learned, and actionable insights for any situation.
• Steps
  • ^^Remember (Capture)^^
    • What are the recurring themes and questions that I always seem to return to in my work and life?
      • Portfolio Ideas
    • What insightful, high-value, impactful information do I already have access to that could be valuable?
      • Google Drive, work, Evernote, Notion, email (work and personal)
    • Which knowledge do I want to interconnect, mix and match, and periodically resurface to stimulate future thinking on these subjects?
    • “Think Like a Curator”
      • “But unless we make conscious, strategic decisions about what we consume, we’ll always be at the mercy of what others want us to see.”
      • “As you come across social media updates, online articles, and podcasts throughout your day, instead of diving in immediately, save them for future consideration. As you begin to collect content, you’ll be able to choose which sources to consume in a deliberate way.”
        • Concern: I’ve definitely been in this mode of “save everything and maybe associate it with some other ideas” but I never find time to come back to that content and make it actionable
    • Organize Content By Project
      • I sometimes think of my Portfolio Ideas as projects, but in many ways they are just big umbrella categories. The New City is a big umbrella, #malls are a little umbrella, but none of them are projects
    • Keep Only What Resonates
      • Instead, your rule of thumb should be to save anything that “resonates” with you on an intuitive level. This is often because it connects to something you care about, wonder about, or find inherently intriguing. By training ourselves to notice when something resonates with us at a deeper level, we improve not only our ability to see opportunities, but also our understanding of ourselves and how we work.
  • ^^Connect^^
    • “Design notes for your future self
      • A powerful mindset for interacting with our notes is to “design notes with your future self in mind.” Every time we create a note or make an edit, we can make it just a little easier to find and make use of next time.
    • Summarize progressively, at different levels of detail
      • Summarize what you read and then create a summary of that summary
    • Organize opportunistically, a little bit at a time
      • Your rule of thumb should be: **add value to a note every time you touch it. This could include adding an informative title the first time you come across a note, highlighting the most important points the next time you see it, and adding a link to a related note sometime later. **By spreading out the heavy work of organizing your notes over time, you not only save time and effort, but ensure that the most frequently used (and thus most valuable) notes surface organically, like a ski slope where the most popular routes naturally end up with deeper grooves.
  • ^^Create^^
    • Overview
      • **All of this capturing, summarizing, connecting, and organizing has one ultimate purpose: creating tangible results in the real world. **Whether we want to lose weight, get a promotion at work, start a side business, or contribute to a cause we believe in, the true purpose of learning is to turn our knowledge into effective action.
    • Don’t just consume information passively – put it to use
      • But information only becomes knowledge – something personal, embodied, grounded – when we put it to use. That’s why we should shift as much of our effort as possible from consuming information, to creating new things. **The things we create – whether they are writing pieces, websites, photographs, videos, or live performances – embody and express the knowledge we’ve gained from personal experience. **
    • Create smaller, reusable units of work
    • Share your work with the world
      • Reminded me of Austen Allred book on Growth Hacking Operational Skills
        • Read Secret Sauce: The Ultimate Growth Hacking Guide by Austen Allred books-to-read
      • By consistently sharing your work with others – whether that is your family, friends, colleagues, or externally on social media – all sorts of benefits will start to materialize. You’ll connect with new collaborators who you never would have imagined would find your work compelling. You’ll find clients or customers, in some cases even when you weren’t seeking them. Others will reflect back to you their reactions and comments and appreciation (and occasionally criticism). You’ll find that you are part of a community that shares your interests and values. Accomplishing anything meaningful or important requires working with others, and the incredible power of the internet now allows us to find each other no matter how obscure or strange our interests.