Building a Second Brain

Goodreads

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59616977-building-a-second-brain

The book in 3 sentences:

• Teaches how to manage knowledge, note taking, and disciplines to create and maintain a second brain.
• Outlines procedures to capture, organize, distil and use those notes to its highest efficiency.
• Details methods to use this organized information to productively create things.

Quotes that stood out:

All that is not saved will be lost.

- Nintendo ‘Quit Game’ screen

To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things everyday.

- Lao Tzu, Chinese philosopher

Notes:

The CODE Method of notetaking

1. C: Capture

• Capture ideas that excite you. Capture ideas that pertain only to your goal.
• To reduce friction use a basic note taking app (like google keep) to take notes immediately when they appear, then at the end of the day you can take some time off to load those ideas onto your second brain.

2. O: Organize

• Your second brain is a kitchen. You will need some ideas like pots and pans (very essential), some ideas will be like the fridge (will need sometimes), some ideas are like the pantry (will need them very occasionally) and finally some ideas are like the cold storage (Ideas that youl need very rarely)
• This is the PARA method to organize such ideas. There’s more here: The PARA Method
  • P: Projects
    • Projects are the goals that you are focused on at the moment. If you find an idea that can improve your situation in the project you are working on, then it belongs to this folder/MOC.
  • A: Areas of responsibility
    • These are areas of responsibility that you are not as primarily focused on like projects, but you cannot escape them (eg: personal finance, parenting, etc). Any note that you believe can improve this, will belong to this folder/MOC.
  • R: Resources
    • This is a folder/MOC to hold all the random topics, hobbies that you are interested in. It is rare that you will have to use the info in this folder, but if you have to, everything is inside this in an organized manner.
  • A: Archive
    • This is a place to hold all the ideas that have lost their use (eg: ideas of a hobby that you no longer like, ideas of a project that has ended, etc)
    • This is a folder to hold all the ideas that dont belong to the first 3 categories.
    • You can put any obsolete idea in here without any fear, you can retrieve them with a single search if necessary

3. D: Distill

• Distillation is obtaining the very essence from a piece of content.
• If you read an article that you know is a new idea, then it makes no sense to just bookmark it and leave for later. Your future self is an impatient customer who has no time to read through tomes of info.
• It is your job to distill the information (in this case the article) multiple times to get the most important quotes/parts.
• You can use the technique of multiple distillation to obtain the essence. First take the most important passage. Then on the first distillation, underline just the most important bits of that passage. Then on the second distillation, highlight the most important bits of the most important bits.
• It should take mere seconds to get upto speed, if you read the highlighted bits. If your future self needs a better look, he can read the underlined part. If your future self needs to learn about the topic in detail, then he can read the entire passage.

4. E: Express

• Expression is the most important part of this process. There’s no point in taking notes, painstakingly organizing and distilling them if you’re not going to put them to use.
• Do not be a perfectionist and try to create your dream right from start to finish. You are more likely to give up on your project entirely if you do that. Instead create a MVP (minimum viable product), something tiny that you can show your audience or friends and gain feedback from.
• Hemingway Bridges: If you are working on something, and you need more than one session to finish the job, the next time when you resume working on the project you can notice that it takes a considerable amount of mind power to retrieve the state you were in the last time you were working on this project. To avoid this, create a Hemingway Bridge which is a note that completely gets you up to speed the moment you resume your work.

Project Jumpstart Checklist

• Review folders/MOCs/Tags that might contain relevant notes
• Search for related terms across all folders/MOCs
• Move or tag the relevant notes to a project MOC
• Create an outline of the collected notes and plan the project.

Project End Checklist

• Mark project as done/complete in the task manager and project manager app.
• Cross out the project goal and move it to the completed section.
• Review intermediate packets and move them to the relevant folders.
• Move project to the archive across all platforms.
• If project is becoming inactive: Add a hemingway bridge detailing the current status of the project before moving it to the archive folder.

Weekly Checklist

• Write down any new To-Do’s
• Review your active projects
• Decide on priorities for the upcoming week

Monthly Checklist

• Review and update your goals
• Review and update your project list
• Review areas of responsibility. Add new ones if you have any.
• Review Someday/Maybe tasks
• Reprioritize tasks.

Ideas:

• Leverage technology to master the flow of information. Become empowered to do anything you set your mind to.
• If you rely on your fragile biological brain you will eternally be overwhelmed by the explosive growth of complexity in your life.
• Always note only the ideas that surprise you. If the info doesn’t shake you up, which means you already knew about it to some extent, which makes it unworthy of noting it down.
• Always note only the ideas that pertain to your current goals, somehow. Do not note down random tidbits of info that is of no use to you by any means.
• Do not try and define what a note means after you take it. It is the worst time to do that. Safely store the note somewhere you can get back to, when youre more calm and level headed.
• Your future self is the employer, you are the employee. You are not a note ‘taker’, you are a note ‘giver’. Make concise, distilled and sensible notes that your future self can read in a jiffy and be caught up to speed.
• Completed creative projects are the blood flow of the second brain. No matter how trivial it is, you need to complete creative projects using the second brain for it to flourish, grow and improve.
• Being organized is not work. It is a habit. It is a repeated set of actions you take as you encounter, work with, and put information to use.

Mise en place

• It is a culinary philosophy used by chefs all around the world.
• It is a step by step process for producing high quality food efficiently.
• Chefs cannot afford to stop the whole kitchen to clean up, they need to clean up simultaneously when they are working.
• This is how you must treat your second brain. Do not stop the entire day to capture, organize, distill your notes. Do it simultaneously when you do your normal routine.

• Move your completed projects, however big or small to a separate folder/MOC called the hall of fame (or something less cheesy). Whenever you feel demotivated it is good practice to come back to this MOC to remind yourself and motivate yourself.

Chase what excites you.

- Tiago Forte