Building a Second Brain - Excerpt

Intro

Building a Second Brain is THE ultimate handbook for creators. Any creator.

Reading it I could finally shed much of my mental baggage I've been carrying for longer than I can remember. Projects never finished, folders lingering around filling me constant guilt as I never got back to them, nothing ever fully being done.

With the urge of creation comes all the pitfalls one can get stuck on. The book's methods helped me to focus my efforts and regularly take a step back, look at the big picture, make myself unstuck on complex problems. I cleaned up all my old hard drives, my browser favorites, inbox, my notes scattered around Evernote, Google Keep and the old drive's "stuff" folders.

Learning about this unlocked a ridiculous amount of productivity I never understood how others achieve. I can not be grateful enough.

Old brain, new environment

Do you ever feel overwhelmed by the things you should be remembering, let it be facts or tasks? Our brain have very limited short term working memory. Not surprising, our brain was optimized for hunting mammoths and fit into small communities. Mapping our environment thoroughly was never before a key element for our survival, we just lack the hardware. But the beauty of the human brain is how we can train it: once we're aware of these limitations, we can choose to optimize for that.

In this new, no-longer-mammoth-hunting environment, unless one takes control of their digital space and information consumption habits, time easily slips away without meaningful, measurable results. So how and what do we optimize?

Optimize

Information consumes attention, hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. It is our most precious resource as knowledge workers, hence the ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world.

Instead of just herding information, we need a flexible pipeline of processing, which has clear inputs and outputs.

First step is capturing and remembering what comes our way, as it's generally way more than what we can hold in our brain at once. So let's take notes!

Note taking in School vs Life

In university, there is a clear motive: pass the tests, qualify.

In life, these goals are much less obvious. No one tells you when, where or how your notes will be useful.

The goals in life of collecting information is to

Tiago has came up with the following clear pipeline for information:

CODE: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express

  1. Capture the new info that "resonates", so you'll remember. Do not capture everything, think like a curator. The more economical you are with info the less time your future self has to spend with the rest of the pipeline. Find a centralized place for gathering knowledge, use only one place for your notes!

  2. Organize for action: meaning instead of "just saving it", ask yourself the question: "How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?" - "what project might it be useful for?"

  3. Distill: reduce what you've collected to it's essence. Assume that until proven otherwise, no note will ever be useful. Be conservative when summarizing notes. Use Progressive Summarization technique (later).

  4. Create new things! Expressing and sharing fuels the process with motivation and gets us through the hard parts. The end of the process is the prize, the presentable output that can be consumed by others and gives the whole process its meaning.

The first two steps are divergence: gathering new info, research, expand, the latter two steps are convergence: where we distill, reduce the info, grab the essence.

So let's see each step in a little more detail.

Capture

Found information? Record it!

Organize

How to figure out where stuff goes?

PARA: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives
  1. Projects: creating a folder for it creates a frame, declares commitment.
    • The goal is to gather all the necessary info you will need, so when you are ready to sit down next time, you know where to look and where to start, easing the cognitive load.
    • Projects have definitive goals and measurable results. The list should be active, timely, and an accurate reflection of current priorities.
    • Tiago only starts projects that are already "80% done"
    • Define SMART Goals:

assets/smart-goals.webp

  1. Areas: topics you are interested in but they are not really have a specific end-goal in mind. When enough is collected and you figured out a goal, consider making a project folder for it, move it up the chain.
  2. Resources: things that click or useful but do not really fit any of the current projects or areas that are of interest. When enough is collected on a topic, consider making an area of it.
  3. Archive: once a project is done or no longer of interest, skim through the notes, and see if any of the files can be used in another active project/area. Move the notes there, then archive the rest, so that it's accessible, but not in sight.

Distill

We have information, organized, it's time to find what to do with it.

Create

The purpose of knowledge is to be shared. Pick a format, and express yourself using this technique as a guideline for the creative process.

If there is a secret to creativity, it is that it emerges from everyday efforts to gather and organize our influences. The myth of the writer sitting down before a completely blank page, or the artist at a completely blank canvas, is just that—a myth.

Unless you take control of those virtual spaces and shape them to support the kinds of thinking you want to do, every minute spent there will feel taxing and distracting.

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day.

Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher

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