What is a second brain?
The idea of a second brain comes from the author of the book Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte. In the book Getting Things Done (GTD), David Allen said that your mind is for having ideas, not for storing them, and the second brain leans into that. It revolves around how you should take and store your notes.
Why should you have a second brain?
Have you ever read a good book or article and couldn’t remember its important parts? It happens to all of us. We live in an age where information is so accessible, and there is so much of it that it’s impossible to remember all of it. I read a lot of books, and they give me ideas, thoughts, and reflections. If I don’t write them down, I’ll forget them. I come across articles that I don’t even know if I’ll get use out of when I read them. Just taking notes on whatever resonates with me has made me a lot more productive. In my case, I post a lot on social media, and I produce a lot of content, so it’s easy to see how I’ll get use out of the second brain. Tiago Forte argues that most of us have some sort of output, some sort of production. It might be a report, a presentation, or something else, but having a second brain makes it easier for us to produce, and we can more easily access our thoughts and ideas.
How do you build a second brain?
The second brain is actually quite simple. You first have to pick a note-taking app. I am personally using OneNote, but there are a lot of options. I have written some articles about different note-taking apps, so check them out. After you have chosen your note-taking app, you divide your notes into PARA: Projects, Areas of Responsibility, Resources, and Archive. Projects are everything in your life with a due date. That might be a house renovating project, it might be something at work. As long as it has a due date, it is a project. Areas are things in your life that do not have a due date but you consistently work on. My company is an area of responsibility. Taking care of my house is an area of responsibility, and so on. Resources I mainly use to put factual documents that do not fit elsewhere into my system. It might be an article I read that is not useful for me right now, an article on a topic that I am not working on, but I am interested in. The last thing is the archive. Here I put everything that I am done with. When I am done with a blog post, I put it into archives. When I am done with a project, I put it into archives. They will not clutter my note-taking app, but I will always be able to find them if they are needed. I also rely heavily on search when I want to find something, and in today’s day and age, with search engines inside of note-taking apps being so good, you can always search for something.
How do you take notes?
Here, Tiago uses the acronym CODE: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. The first part is to capture. I capture all of my notes during a week into my note inbox. It ranges between 10–20 notes every single week. Then it’s time to organize your notes. I do this once a week, every Sunday during my weekly review. Here I organize my notes into the right folders, projects, areas, resources, or archive. During my weekly reviews, I also distill my notes. My notes are often short, so there’s not a lot of distilling that needs to be done, but I highlight the most important part of the note and write a short summary. The last part of CODE is to express, and that is what I am doing right now. I write articles, make videos, and post on social media. I use my notes to avoid writer’s block and rely on them to have all the necessary facts for every article or video when I write them.
Conclusion:
The second brain is an excellent system for improving productivity, and Tiago’s book “Building a Second Brain” has revolutionized my life. I have been building out my note-taking system for a while now, and all my coworkers are impressed by the fact that I can easily recall something from a meeting or a fact we might need for a report. Little do they know that it is my note-taking system that makes me capable of doing that. If you have not read the book already, check it out, along with Tiago’s podcast and YouTube channel, and start building your second brain.
