# Book Information  Title:: [[Building a Second Brain]] Author:: [[Tiago Forte]] # Summary ## Why build a second brain? > Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. > - [[David Allen]] in [[Getting Things Done]] - Capture fleeting ideas before they evaporate - Translate consumed knowledge into original thought - Developing one's own body of knowledge / individuality - Remembering knowledge at opportune times - Clearing the mind to have more ideas, ask deeper questions, pursue bigger challenges - Be more persuasive (everything ultimately depends on persuading others, [[Everything is Sales]]) - Calmer mind because of the knowledge that it will be accessed ## Changing your relationship to information > A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention > - Simon, Economist - Instead of mindless consumption, favor rereading, reforumulating, and working through the implications of ideas - Consume only information that adds value to life and let go of the rest; fight the FOMO. - Digital information can be ceaselessly molded so it is a fundamentally different way of working from pre-internet era. ## Building new knowledge through [[CODE Method]] - Every creative, from philosophers with [[Commonplace Books]] to [[Taylor Swift]] follows a process to reliably turn new ideas into creative output. - **Capture** - Keep what resonates - Don't save too much! - What to capture - Inspiring - Useful - Personal - Surprising - **Organize** - organize for actionability - "Slow burn" - let thoughts simmer in the space - Don't use tags, it takes energy to apply tags to each note - Use the [[#Organizing with the PARA Method]] - **Distill** - Find the essence - Distill down the notes into something useful. - Each layer of highlighting should only be 10-20% of the original. - Knowledge Assets - Save time - Illuminate a concept - Learn from past experience - **Express** - Show your work - Share incomplete work so you can get feedback! - Use [[#Expressing with Intermediate Packets]] - The idea that [[Creativity]] is just mixing and matching existing parts is embedded in the CODE Method. ## Action-oriented [[Personal Knowledge Management]] - Stop trying to make your app perfect before writing down a single note, just take notes! - [[Personal Knowledge Management]] should support taking action - anything else is a distraction. [^1] - Avoid overly rigid and prescriptive organization methods because they make notes inflexible to life. - Complex systems aren't need to produce complex work! - Completed creative projects are the blood flow, they keep the whole system nourished, fresh, and primed for action! - Notes are things to use not things to collect. - A perfect system that you don't use because it's too finicky and fragile isn't perfect. It will fall apart as soon as your attention is elsewhere. ## Organizing with the [[PARA Method]] - The author got this idea from working with people in an Apple store - PARA stands for: - Projects - encounter the information right as it's most relevant - Areas - Resources - Archives - Very similar to organizing a kitchen for maximum production, instead of organizing by type you organize by actionability. ## Expressing with [[Intermediate Packets]] - Intermediate Products (that you can express) - Distilled notes - Outtakes - Works in Process - Final Deliverables - Other people's output - Benefits of using intermediate producsts - Interruption proof - Make progress in smaller chunks - Increase quality of work - Assemble IP to create whole pieces - Three ways to express - Remember: summarized content - Connect: use notes to tell a bigger story - Create: complete projects stress-free - By the time you sit down to write, you should already have all the pieces ready. - It becomes easier because you now have an _archipelago of ideas_ that you just build bridges in between. - How to make expressing easier - Dial down the scope - move everything else back to the future. - Project checklists, start and finish your projects in a consistent way. - Use [[Hemingway Bridges]] to put in the current status so you can kick start right away when you get back to it. [^1]: I personally really struggle with this! It's so fun to just build an endless system of knowledge and never actually do anything about it!