Course Roadmap Take your results from the Course Roadmap survey, plot them on the wheel below and join the dots. The center of the wheel is 1 and the outer edge is 10. The visual mapping of your results is designed to help you evaluate how best to focus and plan your progress through the course. Overall performance of my note-taking system and approach % My ability to capture + save notes from diverse sources My ability to design individual notes which are easily understandable My ability to share and collaborate on my notes My ability to use my notes to promote and sustain experiences of mental flow My ability to design individual notes which are easily discoverable My ability to sustain + improve my note-taking system over long periods of time My ability to make spontaneous, intuitive connections between notes My ability to retrieve information from my notes to support the task at hand My ability to use my notes to build and promote an interpretation or perspective The overall organization of my notes to support my creative output CAPTURE www.buildingasecondbrain.com ORGANIZE SHARE ©fortelabs.co Course Roadmap (example) Take your results from Course Roadmap survey, plot them on the wheel below and join the dots. The center of the wheel is 1 and the outer edge is 10. The visual mapping of your results is designed to help you evaluate how best to focus and plan your progress through the course. Overall performance of my note-taking system and approach 72 % My ability to capture + save notes from diverse sources My ability to design individual notes which are easily understandable My ability to share and collaborate on my notes My ability to use my notes to promote and sustain experiences of mental flow My ability to design individual notes which are easily discoverable My ability to sustain + improve my note-taking system over long periods of time My ability to make spontaneous, intuitive connections between notes My ability to retrieve information from my notes to support the task at hand My ability to use my notes to build and promote an interpretation or perspective The overall organization of my notes to support my creative output CAPTURE www.buildingasecondbrain.com ORGANIZE SHARE ©fortelabs.co Personal Knowledge Management Self-Assessment The following quiz is designed to help you determine which level you currently operate at when it comes to personal knowledge management. It contains a series of statements about your “digital notes” and “digital note-taking.” This could include all the places you’ve stored knowledge in a digital format, from files on your computer, to documents saved in Google Docs or Dropbox, to notes you’ve saved in a dedicated program like Evernote, OneNote, Bear, or Apple Notes. STEP 1: Check the box next to each statement that is true for you: Level 1: Storing information ☐ I regularly use apps to save information (i.e. documents, book notes, quotes, photos, drawings, screenshots, business cards, videos, recipes, etc.) on my computer or mobile device ☐ I feel confident that I can quickly and effectively capture any type of information in digital form ☐ When I need to save a piece of information, I know which location or program to put it in ☐ I know how to use the main features of the apps that I use ☐ I regularly draw on my saved files to remember things I wouldn’t have remembered anyway ☐ I have some kind of organizational structure for my documents, files, and notes ☐ I capture notes, highlights, and links from media I consume (books, articles, videos, podcasts) in a digital format ☐ I’m confident that I have access to all the digital files I need, anywhere I am ☐ I know where to find a specific piece of information when I need it ☐ I regularly learn new ways of capturing and organizing digital information TOTAL CHECKMARKS FOR LEVEL 1: www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co Level 2: Managing knowledge ☐ I regularly use a dedicated digital note-taking program (i.e. Evernote, OneNote, Bear, Simplenote, Google Keep, Zoho Notebook, Dropbox Paper, Notability, Apple Notes, etc.) ☐ I regularly use my mobile device to capture my thoughts, ideas, or things I learn ☐ I’m confident that most of my knowledge is captured in some external form, & securely backed up ☐ I enjoy capturing things in my digital note-taking program ☐ I often encounter notes containing valuable knowledge that I had forgotten about ☐ I often experiment with new ways of capturing, organizing, and sharing my ideas ☐ I frequently make new connections between ideas in my notes ☐ I regularly re-use knowledge or assets from previous projects in new projects ☐ My mind is more clear and able to focus because I know my digital note-taking system is “remembering” things for me ☐ My digital note-taking system gives me more time and energy than it takes to maintain TOTAL CHECKMARKS FOR LEVEL 2: Level 3: Enabling action ☐ I am selective about the knowledge I save, and focus most of my attention on the most surprising or useful parts ☐ I spend more time utilizing my existing knowledge than collecting more of it ☐ I often use my notes in completely unexpected contexts, or in unforeseen ways ☐ Using digital notes helps me better understand myself, my work, and my life ☐ My digital note-taking system makes me more creative, original, and productive than I would be without it ☐ I regularly deploy my insights in the real world, creating value for others ☐ Interacting with my note-taking system leaves me excited, refreshed and inspired www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co ☐ My digital note-taking system allows me to learn large, complex bodies of information quickly and effectively ☐ I often feel that my digital notes challenge and push my thinking in new directions ☐ I am able to take on more challenging, complex, and riskier projects because of the confidence I have in my digital note-taking system TOTAL CHECKMARKS FOR LEVEL 3: Level 4: Personal knowledge mastery ☐ My digital notes regularly give me insights into deep patterns of learning, growth, and performance in my work and life ☐ I can reliably produce creative breakthroughs using insights found in my digital notes ☐ All the tools I use for managing digital information are integrated and work seamlessly together ☐ I am interruption-proof, because my note-taking system allows me to quickly get back to whatever I was working on ☐ I often turn my notes into tangible external deliverables (reports, blog posts, videos, talks, slides, etc.) that create real value for others ☐ I know how to use my digital notes to rapidly learn and integrate new skills and capabilities, and put them to use in projects ☐ My digital notes allow me to “punch above my intellectual weight,” making compelling arguments and having an impact I wouldn’t be able to have otherwise ☐ I have the sensation that I am steadily accumulating priceless intellectual capital through every project and experience I take on ☐ My digital notes allow me to be more persuasive, building novel arguments with strong supporting evidence ☐ I have a bird’s eye view of my personal knowledge workflow, and continuously improve and refine it over time TOTAL CHECKMARKS FOR LEVEL 4: www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co STEP 2: Write down the totals for each level above: Level 1 Level 1: Storing information TOTAL: Level 2: Managing knowledge TOTAL: Level 3: Enabling action Level 4 Level 2 TOTAL: Level 4: Personal knowledge mastery TOTAL: Level 3 Take your scores and plot them on the wheel and join the dots. The center of the wheel is 0 and the outer edge is 10. The highest level for which you marked more than 5 statements “true” is most likely the level of PKM on which you operate. Please note that this is a subjective assessment, not a scientific diagnosis. STEP 3: Read your results Below you can read descriptions of each level, including the kinds of skills and experiences most commonly found at each one. Level 1: Storing information • You use digital tools competently, saving the information you come across to programs on your computer • You have a basic understanding of how these programs work, and their main features • You have some kind of organizational structure, although you may not feel completely comfortable with it • You invest in creating notes because you rely on them to remember information you wouldn’t be able to remember otherwise • You capture notes on the various media (books, articles, podcasts) you consume, although you may not do very much with those notes • You are comfortable backing up, searching for, and reviewing the files you save www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co Level 2: Managing knowledge • At level 2, you begin to capture not just factual information, but ideas and thoughts: things you learned, ideas you had, quotes that resonated, connections between concepts, metaphors and analogies, speculative brainstorms, etc. • You start putting a bit of yourself into your notes, not just collecting information from elsewhere • Note-taking becomes part of your everyday life, and you enjoy capturing notes from a wide variety of sources and throughout your day • You have a strong organizational structure and backup system, so you feel confident investing real time and effort in externalizing your most valuable knowledge onto these programs • Your notes start to function as a thought partner, reminding you of things you’d completely forgotten about, and you perform small experiments to improve how you take notes • The emphasis starts to shift from capturing more knowledge to putting it to use: you apply what you’ve collected in real projects • You have enough confidence in your note-taking system that you’re able to let go of remembering things, leaving your mind free to focus on the task at hand • Your notes give you back more time and energy than they take to maintain Level 3: Generating insights • At level 3, your attention turns to insights - the rare ideas that forge new connections, open up new possibilities, and shed light on how the world works • These insights are actionable, tangibly improving your learning, growth, and performance • You become pickier, focusing your attention on information that is directly related to practical problems you’re trying to solve • You strongly depend on your notes to enable your creativity and productivity, often using notes in completely unexpected ways, or having your thinking challenged by what they contain • With these tools at your disposal, you feel confident taking on bigger, more complex, and riskier projects than you would otherwise • Your externalized knowledge is easy to share and collaborate on with others, because it exists as tangible artifacts • You constantly deploy your insights to solve problems for others, creating value for them • Interacting with your note-taking system leaves you excited and inspired, and you know that you can successfully learn any body of knowledge by breaking it into parts and putting it through your system Level 4: Personal knowledge mastery • At level 4, you effectively have a second brain, and wield your knowledge and the knowledge of others like a weapon www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co • You direct it outwards, continuously creating new things (documents, blog posts, graphics, videos, talks, slides, etc.) out of the notes you’ve gathered, and using them to tell compelling stories, make persuasive arguments, and make things happen • You also direct it inwards, using your notes to understand deep patterns in your learning, thinking, and personal growth over time • All the digital tools you use are integrated and work seamlessly together, and help you produce creative breakthroughs on a reliable basis • All your work-in-progress is managed externally, not in your head, which makes you immune to interruptions and able to make progress in any span of time • You are able not only to learn new bodies of knowledge, but to develop new skills and capabilities • You have the experience of steadily accumulating a priceless store of intellectual capital with every note, and that store of knowledge helps you reliably punch above your intellectual weight • You have a global picture of your personal knowledge workflow, and can see how information flows through it to end up as tangible artifacts in the world • You understand both the strengths and weaknesses of your system, and know how to use the system to improve itself • You’re no longer just a manager of your knowledge; you have mastered it www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co 30 Ideas of Things to Save for Creative Inspiration Use this list of common kinds of content to give you ideas of things to save for creative inspiration. ☐ Book notes ☐ Interviews or FAQs ☐ Excerpts from online articles ☐ Templates & checklists ☐ Quotes ☐ Notes from webinars or online courses ☐ Notes from audiobooks or podcasts ☐ Brainstorms & mindmaps ☐ Screenshots and web bookmarks ☐ Slide presentations ☐ Voice memos ☐ Photos, graphics, and diagrams ☐ PDFs ☐ Notebook sketches ☐ Journal or diary entries ☐ Marketing/business ideas ☐ Email newsletters ☐ Meeting notes and recordings ☐ Project planning notes ☐ Work samples and portfolio ☐ Goals and dreams ☐ Productivity/health tips ☐ User manuals/guides ☐ Writing ideas/prompts ☐___________________ ___________________ ☐ Infographics and blog posts ☐ Travel ideas and plans ☐ ___________________ ___________________ ☐ Outlines and summaries ☐ Notes from classes or workshops ☐ ___________________ ___________________ ☐ Notes from conferences or events ☐ Reading list (or Already Read list) ☐ ___________________ ___________________ www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co More actionable PA R A C h e a t S h e e t A Universal System for Digital Organizing by Tiago Forte Completed or inactive things Archives Things I’m interested in Completed event Resources Science Fiction Inactive side project Areas Productivity Recipes Last year’s marathon Projects Product launch Health Gardening Past client project My roles and responsibilities Birthday party Travel Slide templates Things I’m actively working on Sales presentation Finances examples Marathon training Less actionable ©fortelabs.co Progressive Summarization Cheat Sheet book original link highlights best points saved excerpts article video A Te c h n i q u e f o r C r e a t i n g R e t r i e v a b l e N o t e s b y T i a g o F o r t e bold key points title Layer 5: Remix into new works Layer 4: Summarize in your words Layer 3: Highlight best points Layer 2: Bold key points Layer 1: Save most interesting excerpts ©fortelabs.co 10 Principles of Building a Second Brain Here are 10 of the most important principles to follow in building and maintaining your Second Brain. 1. Borrowed Creativity Creativity is not a mysterious force to be conjured from nothing – it emerges organically from practical efforts to gather, organize, and digest your own ideas, and the ideas of others. Before you create novel work of your own, you can prepare by gathering the ideas you encounter in your daily life in a single, trusted place outside your head. This makes it easier to see unexpected patterns and connections between ideas, leading to more powerful and unique insights in your work. 2. The Capture Habit Don’t play “catch and release” with your thoughts. Your ideas have value, but tend to arrive when you least expect them. By making it a habit to “capture” and save them, you can allow them to live forever in a trusted system that reflects your goals and interests. This also leaves your mind free and clear to come up with even more ideas. 3. Idea Recycling Ideas are not single-use only. They can outlive the projects they were originally a part of. Every document or deliverable you create represents valuable thinking you’ve done, and can be recycled and reused in future projects. By putting in a little extra effort to preserve your work for the future, you’ll never have to do the same work twice. 4. Projects Over Categories Instead of organizing ideas by category – such as “psychology,” “marketing,” or “economics” – which leads to silos that they can’t escape from, organize your ideas according to the projects where they will be most useful and actionable. Organizing your ideas according to which project they apply to also makes it easier to decide where they go, and easier to find when you need them. 5. Slow Burns Stop completing your projects via “heavy lifts” – grueling slogs of painful work where you create everything from scratch. There is another way – you can slowly gather ideas, in the background and over time, using www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co “slow burns.” Once the project gets underway, you’ll already have a rich collection of interesting ideas, insights, examples, facts, and illustrations that you can easily combine together without burning yourself out. 6. Start with Abundance Creativity flows from abundance. Instead of sitting down to a blank canvas and trying to think of something clever, start your creative process by sifting through a plentiful supply of interesting ideas, insights, and inspirations that you can build off of. Your Second Brain is the perfect place to collect this creative raw material. 7. Intermediate Packets Cranking out work in one big push or digesting information in one big gulp requires a lot of motivation and self-discipline, which are in scarce supply. By breaking down your work into a series of small, “intermediate packets,” you can make consistent progress while building up a reserve of useful knowledge. With these packets at your disposal, you’ll have many more options for how to combine and remix them into new things in the future. 8. You Only Know What You Make Don’t just passively consume huge volumes of information that soon gets forgotten. Instead, use what you’re learning to make new things. Applying what you learn in tangible projects not only helps the learning stick, it allows you to get feedback and incorporate the thinking of others to make it even better. 9. Make it Easier for Your Future Self If you make your notes a little better each time you touch them – a little more organized, a little more succinct, a little more clear – then your future self will find it easier and easier to access the knowledge you’ve saved. Instead of doing a lot of work upfront to organize your ideas, do it a little bit at a time, whenever it’s convenient. 10. Keep Your Ideas Moving Systems that must be perfect to be reliable are deeply flawed. Instead of trying to create a perfect organizational system before starting to create things, concentrate on consistently moving your projects and goals forward. Your Second Brain will evolve to suit your needs only when you put it to use in your daily work. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co 18 Productivity Tips for Working with Your Second Brain Here’s our top productivity tips for creatives looking to get more done by leveraging their Second Brain. 1. Collect your digital information in a note-taking app Creative work involves producing a lot of content, but we often manage it haphazardly. We email ourselves a quick note, brainstorm some ideas in a Word document, sketch some ideas in a notebook, or take some screenshots to use as models, but then don’t do anything with it. All of that valuable material remains scattered and forgotten in various places. By keeping all of the digital information you collect in one place (such as in a digital note-taking app like Evernote), you will always know where to look for creative inspiration. 2. Sort your files by project Often we organize our files by subject (for example, web design or stock photos), but this leaves us scrambling to find all the files related to a project, instead of actually working on it. By organizing your digital information according to the project it belongs to, you can create an immersive digital environment where everything you need is right at your fingertips. 3. Organize your notes opportunistically Instead of meticulously organizing your digital files upfront, which is difficult and time-consuming, it makes more sense to organize them opportunistically, a little bit at a time. By spreading out the heavy work of organizing your knowledge over time, you ensure that the best ideas slowly bubble up to the top. www.buildingasecondbrain.com 4. Design your notes for easy discovery The most important thing to keep in mind when “designing” your notes is that they need to be discoverable. This could include adding a more accurate title, tagging the note with related concepts, highlighting the most important parts for later review, or linking one note to another. 5. Share your work early and often One of the most powerful ways we learn and improve is by sharing our work with others. You can get inspired by how much they like it, or get valuable feedback when they don’t. With a “knowledge library” at your disposal, you always have something to share. Any time you get stuck or need a new perspective, you can easily share a note and ask for feedback from others, which can then fuel your creative process. 6. Make every project an experiment By saving your past work in a centralized place, you can afford to take creative risks, knowing all the work you do will be saved for the future. Your late night research can unexpectedly become a blog post. An explanation for a friend can become a useful tutorial on YouTube. A list of company resources can become an onboarding manual. As you learn to cultivate your knowledge library – effectively capturing, organizing, and sharing what you know in multiple formats – every project becomes an opportunity to learn and to grow. ©fortelabs.co 7. Dedicate each block of time to one thing Whether it’s 15 minutes or two hours, you want every work session to be intentional and focused on a tangible result. Deciding on the #1 priority for each work session helps you stay focused even as interruptions and distractions pop up. It’s ok to focus on responding to emails or administrative tasks, but make that decision intentional. 8. End each work session with a tangible deliverable Even if it’s not exactly the one you defined at the beginning, finishing off each work session with a tangible deliverable (like a document, a plan, or a decision) serves three purposes: it allows you to get feedback by showing it to others; it helps you pick up where you left off next time; and it saves key information outside your head, so you can relax. 9. Change the scope as you go along One way to ensure you finish each work session with a tangible deliverable is to change the scope of what you’re delivering. If it’s near the end of the work day and you won’t quite finish, drop a few non-essential features or parts so you have something to send to colleagues for feedback. You could make a list of the features you want to add from most to least important, and then add a few at a time. 10. Package up deliverables that could be of future use A lot of knowledge work is repeated – customer service emails use a similar template, project plans look pretty similar, and internal procedures are repetitive. If you notice you’ve created a potentially valuable asset (such as a checklist, template, or www.buildingasecondbrain.com instructions) take a little extra time to package it up for future re-use. 11. End with the beginning in mind As you finish each work session, think about how you can leave things so that it’s easy for your Future Self to pick up where you left off. Can you make a quick note of the pending tasks before heading out to lunch? Can you summarize key takeaways before closing out a project? This will save time later by making it easier to remember where things stand. 12. Use small gaps of time to prepare for long focus sessions The many small gaps in our workday – in between meetings, waiting for a phone call to start, or the last few minutes of the day – can sometimes feel like “wasted time." But these gaps can be put to good use by using them to prepare for the next big push: brainstorming lists of tasks, identifying your top priority, or taking care of small tasks so they don’t interrupt you later. 13. Set clear goals for the work session You can’t afford to spend time wondering what you should be working on, or getting distracted by emails and notifications. Start each work session by writing down exactly what you will accomplish on a Post-It note, and stick it on the side of your computer monitor or workspace. Don’t even think about doing anything else until it’s done. 14. Make it tangible Our minds need to see tangible evidence that progress is being made in order to get into flow. Instead of analyzing or brainstorming in your head, make it visible: type it out in a note-taking app, stick Post-Its on the wall, draw on blank pieces of paper, or arrange images or documents on a large table in front of you. Anything you can do to make knowledge work tangible will help. ©fortelabs.co 15. Make it challenging To get into flow, you need a challenge that is difficult enough to be interesting, but not so difficult that you give up. Try to calibrate the task at hand to just the right level: if you’re bored, make it more challenging by raising your ambitions or setting stretch goals; if you’re discouraged, make it easier by lowering your ambitions or breaking it into smaller chunks. 16. Add an element of risk The neurochemicals involved in flow were originally used to help you survive in nature. But you don’t need to bring a tiger into the office to get the same effect. Try adding an element of creative risk – by trying a new approach, a new medium, or a new tool – and your mind will engage more deeply with the task at hand. 17. Make it embodied The way our minds work is deeply linked to our bodies. Sitting for endless hours behind a computer screen, our intuitive bodily intelligence can easily be forgotten. Add physicality to your routine: quick walks around the block in between work sessions, some yoga or meditation in the morning, or crafts or hobbies involving manual skills. 18. Immerse yourself in rich environments Our creativity is fueled by things we encounter in our surroundings. By stimulating our senses with images, sounds, textures, smells, people, and experiences that are new and different, our imagination can incorporate these elements into our work. This can include mixing up your commute route, going to museums or concerts, or exposing yourself to new genres of music and movies. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co Building a Second Brain Overview Here is a summary of the Building a Second Brain philosophy and method, including 3 key takeaways from each stage of the process. 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 feel a constant pressure to be learning, improving ourselves, and making progress. 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. Building A Second Brain is a methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we’ve gained through our experience. It expands our memory and our intellect using the modern tools of technology and networks. This methodology is not only for preserving those ideas, but turning them into reality. It provides a clear, actionable path to creating a “second brain” – an external, centralized, digital repository for the things you learn and the resources from which they come. 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. We are already doing most of the work required to consume this content. We spend a significant portion of our careers creating snippets of text, outlines, photos, videos, sketches, diagrams, webpages, notes, or documents. Yet without a little extra care to preserve these valuable resources, our precious knowledge remains siloed and scattered across dozens of different locations. We fail to build a collection of knowledge that both appreciates in value and can be reused again and again. By offloading our thinking onto a “second brain,” we free our biological brain to imagine, create, and simply be present. We can move through life confident that we will remember everything that matters, instead of floundering through our days struggling to keep track of every detail. Your second brain will serve as an extension of your mind, not only protecting you from the ravages of forgetfulness but also amplifying your efforts as you take on creative challenges. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co The Building a Second Brain methodology will teach you how to: 1. Consistently move your projects and goals to completion by organizing and accessing your knowledge in a results-oriented way 2. Transform your personal knowledge into income, taking advantage of a rapidly growing knowledge economy 3. Uncover unexpected patterns and connections between ideas 4. Reduce stress and “information overload” by expertly curating and managing your personal information stream 5. Develop valuable expertise, specialized knowledge, and the skills to deploy it in a new job, career, or business 6. Cultivate a collection of valuable knowledge and insights over time without having to follow rigid, time-consuming rules 7. Unlock the full value of the wealth of learning resources all around you, such as online courses, webinars, books, articles, forums, and podcasts Part I: Remember The first step in building a second brain is “capturing” the ideas and insights you think are worth saving. Ask yourself: • What are the recurring themes and questions that I always seem to return to in my work and life? • What insightful, high-value, impactful information do I already have access to that could be valuable? • Which knowledge do I want to interconnect, mix and match, and periodically resurface to stimulate future thinking on these subjects? Most of the time we tend to capture information haphazardly – we email ourselves a quick note, brainstorm some ideas in a Word document, or take notes on books we read – but then don’t do anything with it. We are already consuming or producing this information, we just need to keep it in a single, centralized place, such as a digital note-taking app like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Bear, Notion, or others. These apps facilitate capturing small “snippets” of text, and can also store hyperlinks, images, webpages, screenshots, PDFs, and other attachments, all of which are saved permanently and synced across all your devices. By keeping a diverse collection of information in one centralized place, it is free to intermix and intermingle, helping us see unexpected connections and patterns in our thinking. This also gives us one place to look when we need creative raw material, supporting research, or a shot of inspiration. The following three guidelines will help you capture only the most relevant and useful information in your second brain. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co A) Think like a curator It is tempting to turn on our mobile device or computer and immediately become immersed in the flow of juicy information we are presented with. Much of this information is useful and interesting – articles written by experts that could make us more productive, tips on exercise or nutrition, or fascinating stories from around the world. 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. Instead, adopt the mindset of a curator – objective, opinionated, and reflective. 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. B) Organize your content by project How should you organize the content once you’ve captured it? Instead of organizing your files primarily by topic (for example, web design or psychology), which is time-consuming and mentally taxing, organize them according to the projects you are actively working on. This ensures that you are consuming information with a purpose – to advance your projects and goals – and only at a time and place where you’ll be able to put it to use. The PARA organizational system takes this principle – organizing information by when you would like to see it next – and applies it to your entire digital life. Instead of organizing each one of the information management tools you use in a completely different way, use your projects as universal categories across all of them. This helps reduce the fragmentation of your project files, without requiring you to only use one tool for everything. C) Keep only what resonates The word “organization” often brings to mind an analytical way of thinking. But analysis is time-consuming and tiring. In deciding which passages, images, theories, or quotes to keep, don’t make it a highly intellectual, analytical decision. 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. Part II: Connect Once you start collecting valuable knowledge in a centralized place, you’ll naturally start to notice patterns and connections. An article you read on gardening will give you an insight into online marketing. An offhand comment by a client will give you the idea of creating a webpage with client testimonials. A business card you saved from a conference will remind you to follow up and propose a collaboration. You can greatly facilitate and speed up this process by distilling your notes into actionable, bite-sized www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co summaries. It would be near impossible to review your 10 pages of notes on a book you read last year in the midst of a chaotic workday., for example. But if you had just the main points of that book in a 3-point summary, you could quickly remind yourself of what it contains and potentially apply it to something you’re working on. The following three guidelines will help you summarize and distill your notes into actionable, useful tools for execution. A) 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. This can include: • Defining key terms in parentheses in case we forget what they mean • Inserting placeholders when we leave off summarizing a source so we know where to pick back up • Adding links to related websites, files, or emails that we’re likely to forget over time By constantly saving packets of knowledge in a format that our future self can easily consume, we follow a “pay it forward” strategy that we get to benefit from in the future! B) Summarize progressively, at different levels of detail A common problem with notes is that they are too long and dense. You can’t afford the time it would take to review and remind yourself of everything they contain. Executive summaries can help, but often it is a challenge to identify what exactly the main point is in the first place. Progressive Summarization is a technique that relies on summarizing a note in multiple stages over time. You save only the best excerpts from whatever you’re reading, and then create a summary of those excerpts, and then a summary of that summary, distilling the essence of the content at each stage. These “layers” are like a digital map that can be zoomed in or out to any level of detail you need. Progressive Summarization allows you to read the note in different ways for different purposes: in depth if you want to glean every detail, or at a high level if you just need the main takeaway. This allows you to review a note’s contents in seconds to decide if it’s useful for the task at hand. C) Organize opportunistically, a little bit at a time It can be tempting to spend a lot of time to create highly structured, perfectionistic notes. The problem is, you often have no idea which sources will end up being valuable until much later. Instead of investing a lot of effort upfront, organize your notes opportunistically, in small bits over 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 www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co thus most valuable) notes surface organically, like a ski slope where the most popular routes naturally end up with deeper grooves. Part III: Create 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. With a substantial reserve of supporting material in your second brain, you never need to sit down to an empty page and try to “think of something smart.” All creativity stands on the shoulders of giants, and you have the benefit of already having the best ideas of those giants documented in your notes! What should you create? It depends on your skills, interests, and personality. If you are analytical, you could draw on a group of articles you’ve read about Big Data to write a blog post summarizing where you think machine learning is headed next. If you like to perform, you could borrow ideas from your notes on YouTube cooking videos you’ve enjoyed to make one of your own. If you are campaigning for investment in your local park, you could distill the minutes from past city council meetings into a speaking agenda for your public comments at the next one. With a second brain at your disposal, you always have something to inspire you, remind you, support you, or guide you as you engage in the projects and interests that are important to you. You are able to draw on the sum total of your life experience and learning, not just whatever you can think of in the moment. The following three guidelines will help you create more, better, and more meaningful creative output for whatever purpose you decide is important. A) Don’t just consume information passively – put it to use A common challenge for people who love to learn is that they constantly force feed themselves more and more information, but never actually put it to use. The goals and the experiences that would enrich their lives get endlessly postponed, waiting for the “right” bit of knowledge they supposedly need before getting started. 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. We all need to be part of bringing to life something good, true, or beautiful. Creating things is not only deeply fulfilling, it can also bring us unexpected opportunities, introduce us to new friends or collaborators, and have a positive impact on others – by inspiring them, entertaining them, or informing them. B) Create smaller, reusable units of work Once you start to curate a collection of valuable knowledge in external form, a very different way of working becomes not only possible, but necessary. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co You will begin to think of your projects as made up of discrete parts. I call them “intermediate packets,” which can include any kind of content we’ve already mentioned: a set of notes from a team meeting, a list of relevant research findings, a brainstorm with collaborators, a slide deck analyzing the market, or a list of action items from a conference call, for example. Instead of trying to sit down and move the entire project forward all at once, which is like trying to roll a giant boulder uphill, a more effective approach is to end each work session – whether it is 15 minutes or 3 hours – by completing just one intermediate packet. This allows you to work in smaller increments, making use of any available span of time, while getting lots of feedback and taking frequent breaks. Not only does this result in higher quality output, it fuels the motivation and the inspiration that we need to do our best work. These packets can then be saved to your second brain, and re-used the next time you have a similar need. C) Share your work with the world There are many benefits all along the process of building a second brain: less stress, better focus, more insights, and enhanced productivity. But the real payoff comes at the end, when you create something out of the knowledge you’ve collected and share it with the world. It can be tempting to wait until everything is “ready,” until you have all the information you think you need, and all the sources have been double checked and reviewed. But as you continually curate and save pieces of content, review and summarize them, create a series of intermediate packets, and then recycle them back into your second brain, you’ll start to realize that there is no such thing as a finished product. Everything is in flux, everything is a work in progress, and everything you put out there has an implicit “version 1.0” attached to it. This can be tremendously empowering – since nothing is ever final, there is no need to wait to get started. You can publish a simple website now, and slowly add additional pages as you have time. You can publish a draft blog post now, and make revisions later after you’ve received feedback. You could even self-publish an ebook on the Kindle store, and any future updates to the manuscript will be wirelessly synced to everyone who purchased the book! 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. Conclusion Each note in your second brain is a record of something you’ve experienced in your life – whether that is from reading a book, having an interesting conversation, or completing a project at work. With all your most valuable ideas at your fingertips at all times, you never need to struggle and strain to remember everything you’ve learned. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co As your second brain gains momentum over weeks and months, you will start to become different. You will no longer think about things in isolation, but as part of a network of ideas in which everything affects everything else. You’ll realize that something you learned at work about effective communication also applies to your family vacation debate.. A random fact you read in an airplane magazine will somehow end up being useful in a blog post you’re writing. A lesson from Ancient Greek history you picked up from a podcast on your morning commute will help you deal with a crisis at the office. You will start to think in terms of the systems and principles that you’ve gleaned through your summarizing and reviewing, and see them everywhere. Your mind will start to work differently, learning to depend on this external tool to draw on resources, references, and research far beyond what it can remember on its own. You will start to conceive of “your work” as an integrated whole that you can actually point to, shape, and navigate in a direction of your choosing. You’ll be more objective and unattached, because if any single idea doesn’t work out, you know you have a huge trove of others ready to go. Over time, you will start to recognize that everything you are learning and experiencing makes sense. You can see, mapped in the notes you are cultivating, the underlying structure of your life. Why you do things, what you really want, what’s really important and what isn’t. Your second brain becomes like a mirror, reflecting back to you who you think you are, who you want to be, and who you could become. Because you know how to capture and make use of anything, every experience you have becomes an opportunity to learn and to grow. As this self-understanding dawns, you will look around at the notes you’ve collected, and you will realize that you already have everything you need to get started. You will start combining the ideas together, forming new perspectives, new theories, and new strategies. Ideas about society, about art, about psychology, about spirituality, about technology will start intermixing and spawning ideas you’ve never consciously considered. You’ll be shocked, in fact, at the elegance and power of what pops out of your notes. This epiphany won’t just exist in your head. People can tell. They’ll start to notice that you can draw on an unusually large body of knowledge at a moment’s notice. They will admire your amazing memory, but what they don’t know is that you never try to remember anything. They’ll admire your incredible self-discipline and dedication at developing ideas over time, not knowing that you’ve created a system in which insights and connections emerge organically. They’ll be impressed by your ability to produce so much creative output, but in reality, you never lock yourself in a room to “crank out” some work. You just let your projects simmer until they’re ready. Building a Second Brain is an integrated set of behaviors for turning incoming information into completed creative projects. Instead of endlessly optimizing yourself, trying to become a productivity machine that never deviates from the plan, it has you optimize an external system that is more reliable than you will ever be. This frees you to imagine, to wonder, to wander toward whatever makes you come alive here and now in the moment. www.buildingasecondbrain.com ©fortelabs.co ©fortelabs.co 1 PKM Workflow Canvas Name 2 8 Top 10 Takeaways 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 3 12 Favorite Problems Default Capture 4 Workflow Strategies 7 Project List Layer 5: Layer 4: Layer 3: Layer 2: Layer 1: Layer 0: 5 Summarization Layers Project Completion 6
