Building Second Brain — Chapter 4: Capture What Resonates

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

Table of Contents

About The Book
About The Page
The Summary
— What is your favorite problems?
— Capture Criteria: How to avoid keeping too much (or too little)?
— — Capture Criteria 1: Does It Inspire Me?
— — Capture Criteria 2: Is It Useful?
— — Capture Criteria 3: Is It Personal?
— — Capture Criteria 4: Is It Surprising?
— Ultimately, Capture What Resonates
— The Surprising Benefits of Externalizing Our Thoughts
The Value
The MindMap
Outro

About The Book

I’ve written a story to introduce this book :

Building Second Brain — ToC

About The Page

This story will tell us the summary of the third part of this book, which is: Chapter 3: Capture What Resonates

You can find the ToC from the link above

The Summary

Everything not saved will be lost

Information is food for the brain. It’s no accident that we call new ideas “food for thought”

• A second brain gives us a way to filter the information stream and curate only the very best ideas we encounter in a private, trusted place.

Knowledge assets can come from either the external world or internal thoughts. External knowledge could include:

• Highlights. Insightful passages from books or articles
• Quotes. Memorable passages from podcasts or audiobooks you listen to
• Bookmarks and favorites. Links to interesting content
• Voice memos. Clip recorded on your phone
• Meeting notes. Notes you take about what discussed during the meeting
• Images. Photos or images that you find inspiring or interesting
• Takeaways. Lessons from courses, conferences, or presentations you’ve attended

Innovation and impact don’t happen by accident or chance. Creativity depends on a creative process.

What is your favorite problems?

Inspired by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman, called Twelve Favorite Problems .

Feynman’s approach was to maintain a list of dozen open questions.

When a new scientific finding came out, he would test it against each of his questions to see if it shed any new light on the problem. This cross-disciplinary approach allowed him to make connections across seemingly unrelated subjects while continuing to follow his sense of curiosity

Feynman’s approach encouraged him to follow his interests wherever they might lead. He posed questions and constantly scanned for solutions to long-standing problems in his reading, conversations, and everyday life. When he found a solution, he could make a connection that looked like others like a flash of unparalleled brilliance

Ask yourself, “What are the questions I’ve always been interested in?”

The power of your favorite problems is that they tend to stay fairly consistent over time.

Guides:

• Ask people close to you what you were obsessed with as a child
• Don’t worry about coming up with exactly twelve (it doesn’t matter)

Use your list of favorite problems to make decisions about what to capture: anything potentially relevant to answering them.

Capture Criteria: How to avoid keeping too much (or too little)?

Once you have a list of questions, you want Second Brain to answer, it's time to choose specifically which pieces of information will be most useful.

• Don’t save entire chapters of a book
• Save only select passages

The biggest pitfall I see people falling into once they begin capturing digital notes is saving too much

Capture Criteria 1: Does It Inspire Me?

Inspiration is one of the most rare and precious experiences in life. It is essential to fuel for doing your best work, yet it’s impossible to call up inspiration on demand.

Capture Criteria 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.

Capture Criteria 3: Is It Personal?

One of the most valuable kinds of information to keep is personal information

• Your own thoughts
• Reflections
• Memories
• Mementos

Capture Criteria 4: Is It Surprising?

A simple definition of information by Claude Shannon is, that which surprises you.

Ultimately, Capture What Resonates

We know from neuroscientific research that “emotions organize-rather than disrupt-rational thinking”. When something resonates with us, it is our emotion-based, intuitive mind telling us it is interesting before our logical mind can explain why.

From the book Designing for Behavior Change:

Our intuitive mind learns, and responds, even without our conscious awareness

If you ignore that inner voice of intuition, over time it will slowly quiet down and fade away. If you practice listening to what it is telling you, the inner voice will grow stronger

I can’t think of anything more important for your creative life-and your life in general-than learning to listen to the voice of intuition inside. It is a source of your imagination, your confidence, and your spontaneity.

You can intentionally train yourself to hear that voice of intuition every day by taking note of what it tells you

The Surprising Benefits of Externalizing Our Thoughts

Often ideas occur to us at the most random times. Your Second Brain gives you a place to corral the jumble of thoughts tumbling through your head and park them in a waiting area for safekeeping.

Benefits:

• First, you are much more likely to remember information you’ve written down in your own words
• Writing creates new knowledge that wasn’t there before. Each word you write triggers mental cascades and internal associations, leading to further ideas, all of which can come tumbling out onto the page or screen. Thinking doesn’t just produce writing; writing also enriches thinking
• Reactivity loop, the hamster wheel of urgency, outrage, and sensationalism that characterizes so much of the Internet. The moment you first encounter an idea is the worst time to decide what it means. You need to set it aside and gain some objectivity

With Second Brain as a shield against the media storm, we no longer have to react to each idea immediately or risk losing it forever.

The Value

The most important thing from this summary is, we all know that we must filter incoming information, especially living in an era of information like now, the question is what kind of information do we need to save? This chapter teaches us how to determine that kind of important information. The definition of “important” will be different for each person, it’s relative.

The biggest pitfall I see people falling into once they begin capturing digital notes is saving too much

The MindMap

Outro

A Second Brain works like a commonplace book in the past, but it doesn’t mean we have to save all of the information in it.

With Second Brain as a shield against the media storm, we no longer have to react to each idea immediately or risk losing it forever.

But we have to remember to filter information that needs to save

The biggest pitfall I see people falling into once they begin capturing digital notes is saving too much