Building a Second Brain - Book Notes

This is the first post in the "Book Notes" series. In this series I will post my personal notes I take as I read books .. They summarise the main points that resonated with me and I can reread it in the future to refresh my knowlege I gianed from reading the book .. it is referenced so I can go back to the book if I need anymore details. This is a link if you want to grab a copy of the book, it is a good read and I do recommend it.

Author: Tiago Forte Date Started: 2022-12-11 Date Finished:

Notes

Chapter 1 : Where it All Started

• More than fifty pairs of muscles required to properly swallow a piece of food. (p.11)

• I took notes during meetings, phone calls and while doing research online. I wrote down facts gleaned from research papers that could be used in presentation slides, insights I came across on social media and feedback from more experienced colleagues. (p.13)

• Every time we started a new project, I created a dedicated place on my computer for the information related to it. (p13)

Chapter 2 : What is a Second Brain ?

• The average person consumes 34 GB of information daily, equivalent of 174 full newspapers. (p.17)

• We go to work 5 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. (p.18)

• A note is a "knowledge building block". (p24)

Chapter 3 : How a Second Brain Works ?

• There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us:

1. Making our ideas concrete.

2. Revealing new associations between ideas.

3. Incubating our ideas over time.

4. Sharpening our unique perspectives. (p.34)

• Heavy Lifting Vs. Slow Burn (Don't tackle a project all at once in one setting, rather tackle it in small pieces over an extended period of time) (p.36)

The Three Stages of Personal Knowledge Management :

1. Remembering.

2. Connecting.

3. Creating. (p.40)

The CODE Method

1. Capture : Don't make it an analytical decision, and don't worry about why exactly it resonates, just look inside for a feeling of pleasure, curiosity, wonder, or excitement, and let that be your signal for when it's time to capture a passage, an image, a quote, or a fact. (p.45)

2. Organise : The best way to organise your notes is to organise for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, "How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects? " (p.48)

3. Distill : "Distill your notes down to their essence", this is a powerful way to facilitate and speed the process of notes association. It might take hundreds of pages and thousands of words to fully explain a complex insight, but there is always a way to convey the core message in just a sentence or two. (p.47)

• Every time you take a note, ask yourself, "How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self ?" (p.47)

• Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes - you are giving your future self the gift of knowledge that is easy to find and understand.(p.47)

Chapter 4 : Capture -- Keep What Resonates

• With the abundance of content all around us, it can be hard to know exactly what is worth preserving. I use an insightful exercise to help people make this decision easier. I call it "Twelve Favorite Problems", inspired by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in you mind, every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, "How did he go it? He must be a genius!". (p.61-62)

• Ask yourself, "What are the questions I've always been interested in?".
  

  • "How can I make it a habit to exercise every day?"

  • "How can I spend more of my time doing high-value work?"

  • "How do I live less in the past, and more in the present?"

  • "How do I build an investment strategy that is aligned with my mid-term and long-term goals and commitments?"

  • "What does it look like to move from mindless consumption to mindful creation?"

  • "How can I work through the fear I have of taking on more responsibility?"

  • "How do I start reading all the books I already have instead of buying more?"

  • "How can I speed up and relax at the same time?"

  • "How can I make decisions with more confidence?"

• The key to this exercise is to make them open-ended questions that don't necessarily have a single answer. The power of you favorite problems is that they tend to stay fairly consistent over time, even as we move between projects, jobs, relationships, and careers, our favorite problems tend to follow us across the years. (p63-65)

• Once you have identified the kinds of questions you want your Second Brain to answer, it's time to choose specifically which pieces of information will be most useful.

• In any piece of content, the value is not evenly distributed. So, don't save entire chapters of a book, save only select passages. Don't save entire websites, save a few screenshots of the sections that are most interesting.

• You can always save links back to the original contents if you need to review your sources or want to dive deeper into the details in the future.

• The more economical you can be with the material you capture in the first place, the less time and effort your future self will have to spend organizing, distilling, and expressing it.

• Recommendation : Capture %10 of the original content in your notes at most. (p.66-67)

Capture Criteria (p.68)

1. Does it inspire me ? : To evoke a sense of inspiration more regularly, keep a collection of inspiring quotes, photos, ideas and stories. For example, I keep a folder full of customer testimonials I've received over the years.

2. Is it useful ? : Sometimes you come across a piece of information that isn't necessarily inspiring, but you know it might come in handy in the future. A statistic, a reference, a research finding, or a helpful diagram-- these are the equivalents of the spare parts a carpenter might keep around their workshop.

3. Is it personal ? : Your own thoughts, reflections, memories and mementos. (Journaling, diary, screenshots of text messages sent between family and friends).

4. Is it surprising ? : If you're not surprised, then you already knew it. If what you're capturing doesn't change your mind, then what is the point ?

• Ultimately, capture what resonates.

• It's a good idea to capture key information about the source of a note, such as the original web page address, the title of the piece, the author or publisher and the date it was published. (even if the original web page disappears, you can use the web archive htttp://archive.org/web )

The Benefits of Writing Things Down

• You are much more likely to remember information you've written down in your own words. Known as the "Generation Effect". Writing things down is a way of "rehearsing" which makes them far more likely to stick.

• Each word you write triggers internal associations, leading to further ideas.

• Thinking doesn't just produce writing, writing also enriches thinking (this is called "Detachment Gain"). (p.77)

• It's important to keep capturing relatively effortless because it is only the first step. You need to do it enough that it becomes send nature, while conserving your time and energy for the later steps when the value of the ideas you've found can be fully unleashed. (p.79)

Chapter 5

The PARA System

With the PARA system, every piece of information you want to save can be placed into one of just four categories:

1. Projects: Short term efforts in your work or life that you are working on now.

2. Areas: Long term responsibilities you want to mange over time.

3. Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future.

4. Archives: Inactive items from the other three categories. (p.90)

Examples of projects:

• At work : Complete webpage design, create a presentation for a meeting.

• Personal : Finish a course, plan a vacation.

• Side projects : Publish a blog post, research best laptop to buy. (p.91)

Examples of areas (personal):

• Activities of places you are responsible for: Home, Cooking, Travel, Car.

• People you are responsible for or accountable to: Friends, kids, spouse.

• Standards of performance you are responsible for: Health, Personal growth, friendships, finances.

Examples of areas (work):

• Departments or functions you are responsible for: Account management, marketing, operations.

• people or teams you are responsible for or accountable to: Direct reports, manager, suppliers.

• Standard of performance : professional development, networking, hiring, sales and marketing. (p.93)

Resources

A catchall for anything that doesn't belong to a project or an area and could include any topic you are interested in. For example:

• What topics are you interested in ?

• What subjects are you researching ?

• What useful information do you want to be able to reference ?

• Which hobbies or passions do you have ?

Archives

Includes any item from the previous three categories that is no longer active. For example :

• Projects that are completed or canceled.

• Areas that you are no longer committed to maintaining.

• Resources that are no longer relevant. (p.95)

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Quotes

• (A second brain is) A system that supports you when you are forgetful and unleashes you when you are strong. (p.5)

• Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. (p.9)

• You can't fail, because failure is just more information to be captured and used as fuel for your journey. (p.29)

New Words

• Epiphany : a moment of sudden and great revelation or realization.(p.10)

• Marginalia : refers to the marks made in the margins of a book or other documents, including scribbles, comments, annotations, critiques, doodles, or illustrations. (p.21)

• Recency Bias : we tend to favor the ideas, solutions, and influences that occurred to us most recently regardless of whether they are the best ones. (p.36)