Building a Second Brain

Metadata

• Author: Tiago Forte

Highlights

How many of the great ideas we’ve had or encountered have faded from our minds before we even had a chance to put them into practice? — location: 75

We spend countless hours reading, listening to, and watching other people’s opinions about what we should do, how we should think, and how we should live, but make comparatively little effort applying that knowledge and making it our own. — location: 76

disposal isn’t useless. It’s incredibly important and valuable. The only problem is that you’re often consuming it at the wrong time. What are the chances that the business book you’re reading is exactly what you need right at this moment? What are the odds that every single insight from a podcast interview is immediately actionable? How many of the emails sitting in your inbox actually require your full attention right now? More likely, some of it will be relevant now, but most of it will become relevant only at some point in the future. To — location: 81

To be able to make use of information we value, we need a way to package it up and send it through time to our future self. We need a way to cultivate a body of knowledge that is uniquely our own, so when the opportunity arises—whether changing jobs, giving a big presentation, launching a new product, or starting a business or a family—we will have access to the wisdom we need to make good decisions and take the most effective action. It all begins with the simple act of writing things down. — location: 85

PKM—or personal knowledge management. — location: 90

The Building a Second Brain system will teach you how to: Find anything you’ve learned, touched, or thought about in the past within seconds. Organize your knowledge and use it to move your projects and goals forward more consistently. Save your best thinking so you don’t have to do it again. Connect ideas and notice patterns across different areas of your life so you know how to live better. Adopt a reliable system that helps you share your work more confidently and with more ease. Turn work “off” and relax, knowing you have a trusted system keeping track of all the details. Spend less time looking for things, and more time doing the best, most creative work you are capable of. When you transform your relationship to information, you will begin to see the technology in your life not just as a storage medium but as a tool for thinking . — location: 94

In this book I will teach you how to create a system of knowledge management, or a “Second Brain.”* Whether you call it a “personal cloud,” “field notes,” or an “external brain” as some of my students have done, it is a digital archive of your most valuable memories, ideas, and knowledge to help you do your job, run your business, and manage your life without having to keep every detail in your head. — location: 105

Those who learn how to leverage technology and master the flow of information through their lives will be empowered to accomplish anything they set their minds to. At the same time, those who continue to rely on their fragile biological brains will become ever more overwhelmed by the explosive growth in the complexity of our lives. — location: 113

It is the individual counterpart to Knowledge Management, which studies how companies and other organizations make use of their knowledge — location: 126

Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. —David Allen, author of Getting Things Done — location: 144

For both the outer world of medicine and the inner world of sensations, my notes were a practical medium for turning any new information I encountered into practical solutions I could use. — location: 181

Because once made digital, notes were no longer limited to short, handwritten scribbles—they could take any form, including images, links, and files of any shape and size. In the digital realm, information could be molded and shaped and directed to any purpose, like a magical, primordial force of nature. — location: 184

I started using digital notetaking in other parts of my life. In my college classes, I turned stacks of disheveled spiral-bound notebooks into an elegant, searchable collection of lessons. I learned to master the process of writing down only the most important points from my classes, reviewing them on demand, and using them to compose an essay or pass a test. — location: 186

I learned from one of the reports we published that the value of physical capital in the US—land, machinery, and buildings for example—is about $10 trillion, but that value is dwarfed by the total value of human capital, which is estimated to be five to ten times larger. Human capital includes “the knowledge and the knowhow embodied in humans—their education, their experience, their wisdom, their skills, their relationships, their common sense, their intuition.” 1 If that was true, was it possible that my personal collection of notes was a knowledge asset that could grow and compound over time? — location: 218

At one point some of my colleagues asked me to teach them my organizing methods. I found that virtually all of them already used various productivity tools, such as paper notepads or the apps on their smartphones, but that very few did so in a systematic, intentional way. They tended to move information around from place to place haphazardly, reacting to the demands of the moment, never quite trusting that they’d be able to find it again. Every new productivity app promised a breakthrough, but usually ended up becoming yet another thing to manage. — location: 225

approach to other areas of my life, I had found a way to organize information holistically—for a variety of purposes, for any project or goal—instead of only for one-off tasks. And more than that, I discovered that once I had that information at hand, I could easily and generously share it in all kinds of ways to serve the people around me. — location: 233

a way to organize information holistically—for a variety of purposes, for any project or goal—instead of only for one-off tasks. And more than that, I discovered that once I had that information at hand, I could easily and generously share it in all kinds of ways to serve the people around me. — location: 234

Part Two, “The Method,” introduces each of the four steps you’ll follow to build a Second Brain so you can immediately begin to capture and share ideas with more intention. And Part Three, “Making Things Happen,” offers a set of powerful ways to use your Second Brain to enhance your productivity, accomplish your goals, and thrive in your work and life. — location: 248

I nformation is the fundamental building block of everything you do. — location: 269

Information Overload has become Information Exhaustion, taxing our mental resources and leaving us constantly anxious that we’re forgetting something. — location: 277

Instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge through the Internet was supposed to educate and inform us, but instead it has created a society-wide poverty of attention.* — location: 278

It’s time to acknowledge that we can’t “use our head” to store everything we need to know and to outsource the job of remembering to intelligent machines. — location: 287

Every bit of energy we spend straining to recall things is energy not spent doing the thinking that only humans can do: inventing new things, crafting stories, recognizing patterns, following our intuition, collaborating with others, investigating new subjects, making plans, testing theories. — location: 290

The practice of writing down one’s thoughts and notes to help make sense of the world has a long legacy. For centuries, artists and intellectuals from Leonardo da Vinci to Virginia Woolf, from John Locke to Octavia Butler, have recorded the ideas they found most interesting in a book they carried around with them, known as a “commonplace book.” — location: 297

you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality. * — location: 310

Commonplace books were a portal through which educated people interacted with the world. They drew on their notebooks in conversation and used them to connect bits of knowledge from different sources and to inspire their own thinking. — location: 312

The media landscape of today is oriented toward what is novel and public —the latest political controversy, the new celebrity scandal, or the viral meme of the day. Resurrecting the commonplace book allows us to stem the tide, shifting our relationship with information toward the timeless and the private — location: 314

Instead of consuming ever-greater amounts of content, we could take on a more patient, thoughtful approach that favors rereading, reformulating, and working through the implications of ideas over time. Not only could this lead to more civil discussions about the important topics of the day; it could also preserve our mental health and heal our splintered attention. — location: 317

The Digital Commonplace Book Once our notes and observations become digital, they can be searched, organized and synced across all our devices, and backed up to the cloud for safekeeping. Instead of randomly scribbling down notes on pieces of paper, hoping we’ll be able to find them later, we can cultivate our very own “knowledge vault” so we always know exactly where to look. — location: 322

This digital commonplace book is what I call a Second Brain. Think of it as the combination of a study notebook, a personal journal, and a sketchbook for new ideas — location: 329

However you decide to use it, your Second Brain is a private knowledge collection designed to serve a lifetime of learning and growth, not just a single use case. — location: 332

For many people, their understanding of notetaking was formed in school. You were probably first told to write something down because it would be on the test. This implied that the minute the test was over, you would never reference those notes again. Learning was treated as essentially disposable, with no intention of that knowledge being useful for the long term — location: 350

In the professional world: It’s not at all clear what you should be taking notes on. No one tells you when or how your notes will be used. The “test” can come at any time and in any form. You’re allowed to reference your notes at any time, provided you took them in the first place. You are expected to take action on your notes, not just regurgitate them — location: 355

No longer do we have to write our thoughts on Post-its or notepads that are fragile, easy to lose, and impossible to search. — location: 372

after a morning spent fighting fires, she’s far too scatterbrained and tired to focus. Like so many times before, Nina lowers her expectations, settling for chipping away slowly at her ever-expanding to-do list full of other people’s priorities. — location: 386

She sits down at the computer, and the questions begin: “Where did I leave off last time? Where did I put that file? Where are all my notes?” By the time Nina gets set up and ready to go, she’s far too tired to make real progress. — location: 390

a pervasive feeling of discontent and dissatisfaction—the experience of facing an endless onslaught of demands on their time, their innate curiosity and imagination withering away under the suffocating weight of obligation. — location: 400

failure is just more information, to be captured and used as fuel for your journey. — location: 445

There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us: Making our ideas concrete. Revealing new associations between ideas. Incubating our ideas over time. Sharpening our unique perspectives — location: 501

In other words, the jobs that are most likely to stick around are those that involve promoting or defending a particular perspective — location: 554

Until now we’ve talked mostly about gathering the ideas of others, but the ultimate purpose of a Second Brain is to allow your own thinking to shine. — location: 549

It just means you don’t yet have enough raw material to work with. If it feels like the well of inspiration has run dry, it’s because you need a deeper well full of examples, illustrations, stories, statistics, diagrams, analogies, metaphors, photos, mindmaps, conversation notes, quotes—anything that will help you argue for your perspective or fight for a cause you believe in. — location: 565

the centerpiece of your Second Brain: a digital notetaking app. — location: 571

digital notes apps have four powerful characteristics that make them ideal for building a Second Brain. They are: — location: 575

Multimedia: — location: 576

Informal: — location: 578

Action-oriented — location: 584

All four of the above qualities are shared by paper notes, but when we make them digital, we can supercharge these timeless benefits with the incredible capabilities of technology—searching, sharing, backups, editing, linking, syncing between devices, and many others. — location: 585

Buildingasecondbrain.com/resources — location: 592

Most important of all, don’t get caught in the trap of perfectionism: insisting that you have to have the “perfect” app with a precise set of features before you take a single note. It’s not about having the perfect tools—it’s about having a reliable set of tools you can depend on, knowing you can always change them later — location: 597

Remembering, Connecting, Creating: The Three Stages of Personal Knowledge — location: 600

Eventually, the third and final way that people use their Second Brain is for creating new things. They realize that they have a lot of knowledge on a subject and decide to turn it into something concrete and shareable. — location: 618

Seeing so much supporting material ready and waiting gives them the courage to put their own ideas out there and have a positive impact on others. — location: 619

“CODE”—Capture; Organize; Distill; Express. — location: 631

our goal should be to “capture” only the ideas and insights we think are truly noteworthy — location: 650

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. — location: 688

Why is it so important to be able to easily find the main point of a note? Because in the midst of a busy workday, you won’t have time to review ten pages of notes on a book you read last year—you need to be able to quickly find just the main takeaways. — location: 692

Every time you take a note, ask yourself, “How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?” That question will lead you to annotate the words and phrases that explain why you saved a note, what you were thinking, and what exactly caught your attention. — location: 695

Express: Show Your Work All the previous steps—capturing, organizing, and distilling—are geared toward one ultimate purpose: sharing your own ideas, your own story, and your own knowledge with others. — location: 700

A common challenge for people who are curious and love to learn is that we can fall into the habit of continuously force-feeding ourselves more and more information, but never actually take the next step and apply it. We compile tons of research, but never put forward our own proposal. We gather untold business case studies, but never pitch one potential client. We study every piece of relationship advice available, but never ask anyone out on a date. — location: 705

Information becomes knowledge —personal, embodied, verified—only when we put it to use. You gain confidence in what you know only when you know that it works. Until you do, it’s just a theory. — location: 711

This is why I recommend you shift as much of your time and effort as possible from consuming to creating. — location: 713

You can send out a draft of a piece of writing now and make revisions later when you have more time. The sooner you begin, the sooner you start on the path of improvement. — location: 726

In her notes she can write down (and reread, edit, and riff off) any snippet of lyrics or melodic hook that flickers through her mind. She can take her notes everywhere, access them from anywhere, and send them within seconds to a wide network of producers and collaborators using the same device. — location: 789

Creativity depends on a creative process . — location: 818

Innovation and impact don’t happen by accident or chance. Creativity depends on a creative process . — location: 817

As you start collecting this material from the outer world, it often sparks new ideas and realizations in your inner world. You can capture those thoughts too! They could include: Stories: Your favorite anecdotes, whether they happened to you or someone else. Insights: The small (and big) realizations you have. Memories: Experiences from your life that you don’t want to forget. Reflections: Personal thoughts and lessons written in a journal or diary. Musings: Random “shower ideas” that pop into your head. — location: 854

We need an external medium in which to see our ideas from another vantage point, and writing things down is the most effective and convenient one ever invented. — location: 863

Is this sensitive information you’d like to keep secure? The content you save in your notes is easily accessible from any device, which is great for accessibility but not for security. Information like tax records, government documents, passwords, and health records shouldn’t be saved in your notes. — location: 873

Is this a special format or file type better handled by a dedicated app? Although you could save specialized files such as Photoshop files or video footage in your notes, you’ll need a specialized app to open them anyway, so there’s no benefit to keeping them in your notes. — location: 876

Is this a very large file? Notes apps are made for short, lightweight bits of text and images, and their performance will often be severely hampered if you try to save large files in them. — location: 878

Will it need to be collaboratively edited? Notes apps are perfectly suited for individual, private use, which makes them less than ideal for collaboration. You can share individual notes or even groups of notes with others, but if you need multiple people to be able to collaboratively edit a document in real time, then you’ll need to use a different platform. — location: 880

Twelve Favorite Problems: A Nobel Prize Winner’s Approach to Capturing — location: 883

Feynman’s approach was to maintain a list of a dozen open questions. — location: 899

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. — location: 899

Ask yourself, “What are the questions I’ve always been interested in?” This could include grand, sweeping questions like “How can we make society fairer and more equitable?” as well as practical ones like “How can I make it a habit to exercise every day?” It might include questions about relationships, such as “How can I have closer relationships with the people I love?” or productivity, like “How can I spend more of my time doing high-value work?” — location: 915

The goal isn’t to definitively answer the question once and for all, but to use the question as a North Star for my learning. — location: 943

Take a moment now to write down some of your own favorite problems. Here are my recommendations to guide you: Ask people close to you what you were obsessed with as a child (often you’ll continue to be fascinated with the same things as an adult). Don’t worry about coming up with exactly twelve (the exact number doesn’t matter, but try to come up with at least a few). Don’t worry about getting the list perfect (this is just a first pass, and it will always be evolving). Phrase them as open-ended questions that could have multiple answers (in contrast to “yes/no” questions with only one answer). Use your list of favorite problems to make decisions about what to capture: anything potentially relevant to answering them. — location: 944

Capture Criteria: How to Avoid Keeping Too Much (or Too Little — location: 953

Your first instinct might be to save the article in its entirety. It’s high-quality information, so why not preserve all of it? The problem is, it’s an in-depth how-to article that is thousands of words long. Even if you spend the twenty or thirty minutes it would take to consume it now, in the future you’ll just have to spend all that time reading it again, since you’ll have forgotten most of the details — location: 956

in any piece of content, the value is not evenly distributed — location: 964

You can extract only the most salient, relevant, rich material and save it as a succinct note. — location: 965

The best curators are picky about what they allow into their collections, and you should be too. With a notes app, you can always save links back to the original content if you need to review your sources or want to dive deeper into the details in the future. — location: 968

Thinking like a curator means taking charge of your own information stream, instead of just letting it wash over you — location: 973

Capture Criteria #1: Does It Inspire Me? — location: 978

Inspiration is one of the most rare and precious experiences in life. It is the essential fuel for doing your best work, yet it’s impossible to call up inspiration on demand. You can Google the answer to a question, but you can’t Google a feeling. — location: 978

There is a way to evoke a sense of inspiration more regularly: keep a collection of inspiring quotes, photos, ideas, and stories. Any time you need a break, a new perspective, or a dash of motivation, you can look through it and see what sparks your imagination. — location: 980

Capture Criteria #2: Is It Useful? — location: 984

Capture Criteria #3: Is It Personal? One of the most valuable kinds of information to keep is personal information—your own thoughts, reflections, memories, and mementos. — location: 992

Like the age-old practice of journaling or keeping a diary, we can use notetaking to document our lives and better understand how we became who we are. — location: 993

No one else has access to the wisdom you’ve personally gained from a lifetime of conversations, mistakes, victories, and lessons learned. No one else values the small moments of your days quite like you do. I often save screenshots of text messages sent between my family and friends. The small moments of warmth and humor that take place in these threads are precious to me, since I can’t always be with them in person. — location: 994

It takes mere moments, and I love knowing that I’ll forever have memories from my conversations with the people closest to me. — location: 997

Capture Criteria #4: Is It Surprising? — location: 998

We have a natural bias as humans to seek evidence that confirms what we already believe, a well-studied phenomenon known as “confirmation bias.” 6 — location: 1000

The renowned information theorist Claude Shannon, whose discoveries paved the way for modern technology, had a simple definition for “information”: that which surprises you. — location: 1002

Your Second Brain shouldn’t be just another way of confirming what you already know. We are already surrounded by algorithms that feed us only what we already believe and social networks that continually reinforce what we already think — location: 1009

Our ability to capture ideas from anywhere takes us in a different direction: By saving ideas that may contradict each other and don’t necessarily support what we already believe, we can train ourselves to take in information from different sources instead of immediately jumping to conclusions. — location: 1011

Ultimately, Capture What Resonates — location: 1015

if you take away one thing from this chapter, it should be to keep what resonates. — location: 1016

We know from neuroscientific research that “emotions organize—rather than disrupt—rational thinking. — location: 1026

The authors’ conclusion: “Our intuitive mind learns, and responds, even without our conscious awareness — location: 1037

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. — location: 1038

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 the 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. — location: 1041

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.* Many capture tools are even able to identify and save this information automatically. Also, it’s often helpful to capture chapter titles, headings, and bullet-point lists, since they add structure to your notes and represent distillation already performed by the author on your behalf. — location: 1045

Ebook apps, which often allow you to export your highlights or annotations all at once. — location: 1058

Read later apps that allow you to bookmark content you find online for later reading (or in the case of podcasts or videos, listening or watching). — location: 1059

Basic notes apps that often come preinstalled on mobile devices and are designed for easily capturing short snippets of text — location: 1061

Audio/voice transcription apps that create text transcripts from spoken words. — location: 1063

Other third-party services, integrations, and plug-ins that automate the process of exporting content from one app to another. — location: 1064

But in any case, the act of capture takes only moments—to hit share, export, or save—and voilà, you’ve preserved the best parts of whatever you’re consuming in your Second Brain. — location: 1068

Make no mistake: you will continue to — location: 1070

No matter how many different kinds of software you use, don’t leave all the knowledge they contain scattered across dozens of places you’ll never think to look. Make sure your best findings get routed back to your notes app where you can put them all together and act on them. — location: 1072

Capturing quotes from podcasts: Many podcast player apps allow you to bookmark or “clip” segments of episodes as you’re listening to them. Some of them will even transcribe the audio into text, so you can export and search it within your notes. — location: 1084

Capturing parts of YouTube videos: This is a little-known feature, but almost every YouTube video is accompanied by an automatically generated transcript. Just click the “Open transcript” button and a window will open. From there, you can copy and paste excerpts to your notes. — location: 1088

Capturing excerpts from emails: Most popular notes apps include a feature that allows you to forward any email to a special address, and the full text of that email (including any attachments) will be added to your notes. — location: 1091

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. — location: 1097

The Surprising Benefits of Externalizing Our Thoughts — location: 1095

First, you are much more likely to remember information you’ve written down in your own words. Known as the “Generation Effect,” 10 researchers have found that when people actively generate a series of words, such as by speaking or writing, more parts of their brain are activated when compared to simply reading the same words. — location: 1099

Thinking doesn’t just produce writing; writing also enriches thinking. — location: 1107

There is even significant evidence that expressing our thoughts in writing can lead to benefits for our health and well-being. 11 One of the most cited psychology papers of the 1990s found that “translating emotional events into words leads to profound social, psychological, and neural changes.” In a wide range of controlled studies, writing about one’s inner experiences led to a drop in visits to the doctor, improved immune systems, and reductions in distress. Students who wrote about emotional topics showed improvements in their grades, professionals who had been laid off found new jobs more quickly, and staff members were absent from work at lower rates. The most amazing thing about these findings is that they didn’t rely on input from others. No one had to read or respond to what these people wrote down—the benefits came just from the act of writing. — location: 1108

With a Second Brain as a shield against the media storm, we no longer have to react to each idea immediately, or risk losing it forever. We can set things aside and get to them later when we are calmer and more grounded. We can take our time slowly absorbing new information and integrating it into our thinking, free of the pressing demands of the moment. I’m always amazed that when I revisit the items I’ve previously saved to read later, many of them that seemed so important at the time are clearly trivial and unneeded. — location: 1118

Notetaking is the easiest and simplest way of externalizing our thinking. It requires no special skill, is private by default, and can be performed anytime and anywhere. Once our thoughts are outside our head, we can examine them, play with them, and make them better. — location: 1122

On average I capture just two notes per day — location: 1130

gives you the opportunity to reflect on your performance. Dig down through the boxes archaeologically and you’ll see a project’s beginnings. This can be instructive. How did you do? Did you get to your goal? Did you improve on it? Did it change along the way? Could you have done it all more efficiently?” — location: 1213

We know that the details of lighting, temperature, and the layout of a space dramatically affect how we feel and think. There’s a name for this phenomenon: the Cathedral Effect. 2 Studies have shown that the environment we find ourselves in powerfully shapes our thinking. — location: 1222

One of the biggest temptations with organizing is to get too perfectionistic, treating the process of organizing as an end in itself. There is something inherently satisfying about order, and it’s easy to stop there instead of going on to develop and share our knowledge. — location: 1283

Even though areas have no final outcome, it is still important to manage them. In fact, if you look at the list above, these areas are critical to your health, happiness, security, and life satisfaction. While there is no goal to reach, there is a standard that you want to uphold in each of these areas — location: 1348

Only you can decide what those standards are. For our purposes, it helps tremendously to have a place dedicated to each of them. That way you always have somewhere to put any thought, reflection, idea, or useful tidbit of information relevant to each important aspect of your life. — location: 1353

With the PARA system, every piece of information you want to save can be placed into one of just four categories: Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you’re working on now. Areas: Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time. Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future. Archives: Inactive items from the other three categories. — location: 1296

Here’s an example of what the folders in my notes app look like with PARA: — location: 1381

Where Do I Put This?—How to Decide Where to Save Individual Notes Setting up folders is relatively easy. The harder question that strikes fear into the heart of every organizer is “Where do I put this?” — location: 1411

the moment you first capture an idea is the worst time to try to decide what it relates to. — location: 1416

This is why it’s so important to separate capture and organize into two distinct steps: “keeping what resonates” in the moment is a separate decision from deciding to save something for the long term. Most notes apps have an “inbox” or “daily notes” section where new notes you’ve captured are saved until you can revisit them and decide where they belong. — location: 1419

Instead of organizing ideas according to where they come from , I recommend organizing them according to where they are going —specifically, the outcomes that they can help you realize. — location: 1456

The true test of whether a piece of knowledge is valuable is not whether it is perfectly organized and neatly labeled, but whether it can have an impact on someone or something that matters to you. — location: 1457

PARA isn’t a filing system; it’s a production system. — location: 1459

we have to minimize the time we spend filing, labeling, tagging, and maintaining our digital notes. — location: 1466

They had repeatedly postponed their creative ambitions to some far-off, mythical time when somehow everything would be perfectly in order. Once we set that aside and just focused on what they actually wanted to do right now, they suddenly gained a tremendous sense of clarity and motivation. — location: 1497

The first is that people need clear workspaces to be able to create. We cannot do our best thinking and our best work when all the “stuff” from the past is crowding and cluttering our space. That’s why that archiving step is so crucial: you’re not losing anything, and it can all be found via search, but you need to move it all out of sight and out of mind. — location: 1509

creating new things is what really matters — location: 1512

Move Quickly, Touch Lightly — location: 1518

She saw that my standard approach to my work was brute force: to stay late at the office, fill every single minute with productivity, and power through mountains of work as if my life depended on it. That wasn’t a path to success; it was a path to burnout. — location: 1520

didn’t know how to set my intentions, craft a strategy, and look for sources of leverage that would allow me to accomplish things with minimal effort. — location: 1523

Look at your to-do list: What actions are you already taking that are actually part of a bigger project you’ve not yet identified? — location: 1534

Notice what’s on your mind: What’s worrying you that you haven’t taken the time to identify as a project? What needs to happen that you’re not making consistent progress on? — location: 1531

Look at your computer desktop, downloads folder, documents folder, bookmarks, emails, or open browser tabs: What are you keeping around because it is part of a larger project? — location: 1537

Although you can and should use PARA across all the platforms where you store information—the three most common ones besides a notetaking app are the documents folder on your computer, cloud storage drives like Dropbox, and online collaboration suites like Google Docs— — location: 1545

Each time you finish a project, move its folder wholesale to the archives, and each time you start a new project, look through your archives to see if any past project might have assets you can reuse. — location: 1548

Distill—Find the Essence To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. —Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher — location: 1570

Coppola’s strategy for making the complex, multifaceted film rested on a technique he learned studying theater at Hofstra College, known as a “prompt book.” He started by reading The Godfather novel and capturing the parts that resonated with him in a notebook—his own version of Twyla Tharp’s box. But his prompt book went beyond storage: it was the starting point for a process of revisiting and refining his sources to turn them into something new. The book was made from a three-ring binder, into which he would cut and paste pages from the novel on which the film was based. — location: 1590

He started with an initial read of the entire novel, noting down anything that stuck out to him: “I think it’s important to put your impressions down on the first reading because those are the initial instincts about what you thought was good or what you didn’t understand or what you thought was bad.” — location: 1599

He broke down each scene according to five key criteria: a synopsis (or summary) of the scene; the historical context; the imagery and tone for the “look and feel” of a scene; the core intention; and any potential pitfalls to avoid. — location: 1602

you need to be able to store something quickly and save any future refinement for later. — location: 1629

In this sense, notetaking is like time travel—you are sending packets of knowledge through time to your future self. — location: 1630

In my experience, life is constantly pushing and pulling us away from our priorities — location: 1633

The most important factor in whether your notes can survive that journey into the future is their discoverability —how easy it is to discover what they contain and access the specific points that are most immediately useful. — location: 1645

Discoverability is an idea from information science that refers to “the degree to which a piece of content or information can be found in a search of a file, database, or other information system — location: 1647

To enhance the discoverability of your notes, we can turn to a simple habit you probably remember from school: highlighting the most important points. — location: 1652

the more notes they collect, the less discoverable they become! This realization tends to either discourage them from taking any notes in the first place, or alternatively, to keep switching from one notetaking tool to another every time the volume gets overwhelming. Thus, they miss out on most of the benefits of their knowledge compounding over time. — location: 1661

Distillation is at the very heart of all effective communication. The more important it is that your audience hear and take action on your message, the more distilled that message needs to be. The details and subtleties can come later once you have your audience’s attention. — location: 1668

Progressive Summarization — location: 1674

The technique is simple: you highlight the main points of a note, and then highlight the main points of those highlights, and so on, distilling the essence of a note in several “layers.” — location: 1676

This is what I call “layer one”—the chunks of text initially captured in my notes. Notice that I didn’t save the entire article—only a few key excerpts. — location: 1687

If I ever need to know the full details, I have the link to the original article right there at the bottom. — location: 1691

All I have to do is bold the main points within the note. This could include keywords that provide hints of what this text is about, phrases that capture what the original author was trying to say, or sentences that especially resonated with me even if I can’t explain why. — location: 1696

Look only at the bolded passages you identified in layer two and highlight only the most interesting and surprising of those points. This will often amount to just one or two sentences that encapsulate the message of the original source. — location: 1706

the four layers of Progressive Summarization:* — location: 1679

I recommend using bullet points to encourage yourself to make this executive summary succinct. Use your own words, define any unusual terms you’re using — location: 1718

The Three Most Common Mistakes of Novice Notetakers — location: 1849

Mistake #1: Over-Highlighting — location: 1851

The rule of thumb to follow is that every time you “touch” a note, you should make it a little more discoverable for your future self* —by adding a highlight, a heading, some bullets, or commentary. — location: 1876

The effort we put into Progressive Summarization is meant for one purpose: to make it easy to find and work with our notes in the future. — location: 1896

Distilling makes our ideas small and compact, so we can load them up into our minds with minimal effort. — location: 1897

If you can’t locate a piece of information quickly, in a format that’s convenient and ready to be put to use, then you might as well not have it at all. Our most scarce resource is time, which means we need to prioritize our ability to quickly rediscover the ideas that we already have in our Second Brain. — location: 1898

Start by saving only the best excerpts from that piece of content in a new note, either using copy-paste or a capture tool. This is layer one, the initial excerpts you save in your Second Brain. Next, read through the excerpts, bolding the main points and most important takeaways. Don’t make it an analytical decision—listen for a feeling of resonance and let that be your guide for what to bold. These bolded passages are layer two. Now read through only the bolded passages, and highlight (or, if your notes app doesn’t have a highlighting feature, underline) the best of the best passages. The key here is to be very picky: the entire note may have only a few highlighted sentences, or even just one. Not only is that fine, it represents a highly distilled and discoverable note. These highlights are layer three, which is distilled enough for most use cases. — location: 1907

Put it aside for a few days and set a reminder to revisit it once you’ve forgotten most of the details. When you come back to it, give yourself no more than thirty seconds and see if you can rapidly get up to speed on what it’s about using the highlights you previously made. You’ll quickly be able to tell if you’ve added too many highlights or too few. — location: 1914

Express—Show Your Work Verum ipsum factum (“We only know what we make”) —Giambattista vico, Italian philosopher — location: 1955

maintain her routine of waking before dawn each morning to write. The emerging Octavia made three rules for herself: Don’t leave your home without a notebook, paper scraps, something to write with. Don’t walk into the world without your eyes and ears focused and open. Don’t make excuses about what you don’t have or what you would do if you did, use that energy to “find a way, make a way. — location: 1977

If there is a secret to creativity, it is that it emerges from everyday efforts to gather and organize our influences — location: 2023

How to Protect Your Most Precious Resource As knowledge workers, attention is our most scarce and precious resource. — location: 2024

The ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. We have to jealously guard it like a valuable treasure. — location: 2027

if you’re stuck on a task, break it down into smaller steps. — location: 2048

a “rough draft” you create as part of the process of making something new. — location: 2054

it’s not enough to simply divide tasks into smaller pieces—you then need a system for managing those pieces. Otherwise, you’re just creating a lot of extra work for yourself trying to keep track of them. — location: 2055

Instead of waiting until you have multiple uninterrupted hours—which, let’s face it, is rare and getting rarer—you can look at how many minutes you have free and choose to work on an IP that you can get done within that time, even if it’s tiny. Big projects and goals become less intimidating because you can just keep breaking them down into smaller and smaller pieces, until they fit right into the gaps in your day. — location: 2094

Third, Intermediate Packets increase the quality of your work by allowing you to collect feedback more often. Instead of laboring for weeks in isolation, only to present your results to your boss or client and find out you went in the wrong direction, you craft just one small building block at a time and get outside input before moving forward. You’ll find that people give much better feedback if they’re included early, and the work is clearly in progress. — location: 2097

Those four retrieval methods are: Search Browsing Tags Serendipity — location: 2160

It is for the unforeseen and the unexpected that tags really shine. — location: 2193

I don’t recommend using tags as your primary organizational system. It takes far too much energy to apply tags to every single note compared to the ease of searching with keywords or browsing your folders. — location: 2206

Second, serendipity is amplified by visual patterns. This is why I strongly suggest saving not only text notes but images as well (which is difficult to do in other kinds of software such as word processors — location: 2224

Our brains are naturally attuned to visuals. We intuitively absorb colors and shapes in the blink of an eye, using far less energy than it takes to read words — location: 2226

“I instinctively knew that just sending a long article to friends usually doesn’t do anything, but because the text I am sending has been highlighted they can do a quick scan of it. — location: 2245

He saved all the transcripts from his conversations, plus obituaries, photos, and other related documents into the PARA project folder for each memorial, so he could see it all in one place. Instead of spending five to seven hours at the end of all his interviews to distill everything he had heard, he began spending fifteen minutes after each interview to highlight only the parts that resonated. — location: 2256

It doesn’t matter what medium you work in; sooner or later you must work with others. — location: 2279

The transformation comes from the fact that smaller chunks are inherently more shareable and collaborative. — location: 2283

It is much easier to show someone a small thing, and ask for their thoughts on it, rather than the entire opus you’re creating. It’s less confronting to hear criticism on one small aspect of your work, at an early stage when you still have time to correct it, than getting a negative reaction after months of effort. You can use each little piece of intermediate feedback to refine what you’re making—to make it more focused, more appealing, more succinct, or easier to understand — location: 2285

looking for every opportunity to share your outputs and gain some clarity on how other people are likely to receive it. — location: 2291

get feedback as early and often as possible, because you know it is much easier to gather and synthesize the thoughts of others than to come up with an endless series of brilliant thoughts on your own. — location: 2293

Giving credit where credit is due doesn’t lessen the value of your contribution—it increases it. — location: 2313

seek out ways of acquiring or outsourcing the creation of these assets to others, instead of assuming you have to build them all yourself — location: 2322

it’s about taking ownership of your work, your ideas, and your potential to contribute in whatever arena you find yourself in. It doesn’t matter how impressive or grand your output is, or how many people see it. It could be just between your family or friends, among your colleagues and team, with your neighbors or schoolmates—what matters is that you are finding your voice and insisting that what you have to say matters. You have to value your ideas enough to share them. — location: 2338

Building a Second Brain is really about standardizing the way we work, because we only really improve when we standardize the way we do something — location: 2399

don’t have to reinvent the basics from scratch every time. — location: 2401

Divergence and Convergence: A Creative Balancing Act If you look at the process of creating anything, it follows the same simple pattern, alternating back and forth between divergence and convergence. — location: 2414

It’s painful to cut off options and choose one path over another. There is a kind of creative grief in watching an idea that you know is full of potential get axed from a script or a story. This is what makes creative work challenging. — location: 2457

It’s so easy to open up dozens of browser tabs, order more books, or go off in completely new directions. Those actions are tempting because they feel like productivity. They feel like forward progress, when in fact they are divergent acts that postpone the moment of completion. — location: 2460

An archipelago is a chain of islands in the ocean, usually formed by volcanic activity over long spans of time. — location: 2477

To create an Archipelago of Ideas , you divergently gather a group of ideas, sources, or points that will form the backbone of your essay, presentation, or deliverable. Once you have a critical mass of ideas to work with, you switch decisively into convergence mode and link them together in an order that makes sense. — location: 2478

The underlined links (which appear in green in my notes) are the sources I’m drawing on as research. Clicking a link will lead me not to the public web, where I can easily get distracted, but to another note within my Second Brain containing my full notes on that source.* There I will find all the details I might need, as well as a link back to the original work for my citations. — location: 2483

Below each source, I’ve copied and pasted only the points I specifically want to use in this particular piece of writing. This Archipelago of Ideas includes external sources as in my example above, but also notes I’ve taken based on my own thoughts and experiences. This gives me the best of both worlds: I can focus only on the relevant points right in front of me, but all the other details I might need are just a click away. The bolds and highlights of Progressive Summarization help me quickly determine which parts are most interesting and important at a glance. — location: 2487

The Archipelago of Ideas technique is a contemporary reinvention of the age-old practice of outlining—laying out the points you want to include up front, so that when it comes time to execute all you have to do is string them together — location: 2491

Creating outlines digitally instead of on paper offers multiple major advantages — location: 2494

The outline can link to more detailed content —instead of trying to cram every last point onto the same page, you can link to both your own private notes and public resources on the web, which helps avoid overloading the outline with too much detail. — location: 2498

The goal of an archipelago is that instead of sitting down to a blank page or screen and stressing out about where to begin, you start with a series of small stepping-stones to guide your efforts. First you select the points and ideas you want to include in your outline, and then in a separate step, you rearrange and sequence them into an order that flows logically. — location: 2509

The Hemingway Bridge: Use Yesterday’s Momentum Today — location: 2514

Besides his prolific works, Hemingway was known for a particular writing strategy, which — location: 2517

Hemingway was known for a particular writing strategy, which I call the “Hemingway Bridge.” He would always end a writing session only when he knew what came next in the story. Instead of exhausting every last idea and bit of energy, he would stop when the next plot point became clear. This meant that the next time he sat down to work on his story, he knew exactly where to start. He built himself a bridge to the next day, using today’s energy and momentum to fuel tomorrow’s writing.* You — location: 2517

you keep some energy and imagination in reserve and use it as a launchpad for the next step in your progress. — location: 2524

reserve the last few minutes to write down some of the following kinds of things in your digital notes: — location: 2527

Write down ideas for next steps: — location: 2528

Write down the current status — location: 2529

Write down any details you have in mind that are likely to be forgotten once you step away — location: 2531

Write out your intention for the next work session: Set an intention for what you plan on tackling next, the problem you intend to solve, or a certain milestone you want to reach. — location: 2533

To take this strategy a step further, there is one more thing you can do as you wrap up the day’s work: send off your draft or beta or proposal for feedback — location: 2538

The next time you sit down to work on it again, you’ll have their input and suggestions to add to the mix of material you’re working with. — location: 2540

The scope refers to the full set of features a software program might include — location: 2544

“Dial Down the Scope.” — location: 2543

developing a long-term strategy. The — location: 2550

—there are always constraints we must work within. — location: 2559

The problem isn’t a lack of time. It is that we forget that we have control over the scope of the project. We can “dial it down” to a more manageable size, and we must if we ever want to see it finished — location: 2565

You can’t wait until everything is perfect. — location: 2568

Dialing Down the Scope recognizes that not all the parts of a given project are equally important. By dropping or reducing or postponing the least important parts, we can unblock ourselves and move forward even when time is scarce. — location: 2569

Your Second Brain is a crucial part of this strategy, because you need a place to save the parts that get postponed or removed. — location: 2571

That doesn’t mean you have to throw away those parts. One of the best uses for a Second Brain is to collect and save the scraps on the cuttingroom floor in case they can be used elsewhere. — location: 2574

Knowing that nothing I write or create truly gets lost—only saved for later use—gives me the confidence to aggressively cut my creative works down to size without fearing that I’ve wasted effort or that I’ll lose the results of my thinking forever. Knowing that I can always release a fix, update, or follow up on anything I’ve made in the past gives me the courage to share my ideas before they’re perfectly ready and before I have them all figured out. — location: 2578

Whatever you are building, there is a smaller, simpler version of it that would deliver much of the value in a fraction of the time. — location: 2582

the chicken-and-egg problem of creativity: you don’t know what you should create, but you can’t discover what people want until you create something. — location: 2592

added several constraints to the project, such as the budget we were willing to spend, and a deadline — location: 2623

These constraints helped us reduce the scope of the project to something reasonable and manageable. — location: 2624

Move Fast and Make Things — location: 2626

Make an outline with your goals, intentions, questions, and considerations for the project — location: 2630

Set a timer for a fixed period of time, such as fifteen or twenty minutes, and in one sitting see if you can complete a first pass on your project using only the notes you’ve gathered in front of you — location: 2640

This first pass could be a plan, an agenda, a proposal, a diagram, or some other format that turns your ideas into a tangible artifact — location: 2643

Ask yourself, “What is the smallest version of this I can produce to get useful feedback from others?” — location: 2647

building a Hemingway Bridge to the next time you can work on it. List open questions, remaining to-dos, new avenues to explore, or people — location: 2649

If you find that you can’t complete the first iteration in one sitting, start by building a Hemingway Bridge to the next time you can work on it. List open questions, remaining to-dos, new avenues to explore, or people to consult. Share what you’ve produced with someone who can give you feedback while you’re away and save their comments in a new note in the same project folder — location: 2648

If you feel resistance to continuing with this project later, try Dialing Down the Scope. Drop the least important features, postpone the hardest decisions for later, or find someone to help you with the parts you’re least familiar with. — location: 2652

Once you’re finished with your first iteration, have gathered feedback, and collected a new set of notes to work with, you’ll be ready for whatever comes next. — location: 2656

Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks … It’s only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity. —James Clear, author of Atomic Habits — location: 2672

If we’re constantly scrambling to find our notes, drafts, brainstorms, and sources, not only do we waste precious time, but we also sabotage our momentum. — location: 2684

This fundamental tension—between quality and quantity—is a tension we share as knowledge workers. We also must produce work to an extremely high standard, and we must do it fast, continuously, all year long. We are like sprinters who are also trying to run a marathon. — location: 2690

Developed in France starting in the late 1800s, mise en place is a step-by-step process for producing high-quality food efficiently. — location: 2693

They learn to keep their workspace clean and organized in the flow of the meals they are preparing — location: 2695

In the kitchen, this means small habits like always putting the mixing spoon in the same place so they know where to find it next time; immediately wiping a knife clean after using it so it’s ready for the next cut; or laying out the ingredients in the order they’ll be used so that they serve as placeholders — location: 2696

It gives them a way to externalize their thinking into their environment and automate the repetitive parts of cooking so they can focus completely on the creative parts. — location: 2700

We also receive a constant stream of inputs and requests, have too little time to process them, and face many demands requiring simultaneous attention. For us as well, the only time we have available to maintain our systems is during the execution of our regular work. — location: 2703

There’s no time that’s magically going to become available for you to stop everything and completely reorganize your digital world. — location: 2705

Your business won’t last long if you turn customers away because you’re “maintaining your systems.” It’s difficult to find the time to put the world on hold and catch your breath. We tend to notice our systems need maintenance only when they break down, which we then blame on our lack of self-discipline or our failure to be sufficiently productive. — location: 2707

Building a Second Brain is not just about downloading a new piece of software to get organized at one point in time; it is about adopting a dynamic, flexible system and set of habits to continually access what we need without throwing our environment (and mind) into chaos. — location: 2709

The three habits most important to your Second Brain include: Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work. Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything. Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self. You can think of these habits as the “maintenance schedule” of your Second Brain — location: 2717

What most people are missing, however, is a feedback loop—a way to “recycle” the knowledge that was created as part of past efforts so it can be used in future ones as well. This is how investors think about money: they don’t get the profits from one investment and immediately spend it all. They reinvest it back into other investments, creating a flywheel so their money builds on itself over time. — location: 2729

your investments of attention can likewise compound as your knowledge grows and your ideas connect and build on each other. — location: 2736

Before they taxi onto the runway and take off, airline pilots run through a “preflight checklist” that tells them everything they need to check or do. It ensures they complete all the necessary steps without having to rely on their unreliable brains. — location: 2741

Every goal, collaboration, or assignment we take on can be defined as a project, which gives it shape, focus, and a sense of direction. — location: 2748

Here’s my own checklist: Capture my current thinking on the project. Review folders (or tags) that might contain relevant notes. Search for related terms across all folders. Move (or tag) relevant notes to the project folder. Create an outline of collected notes and plan the project — location: 2750

What do I already know about this project? What don’t I know that I need to find out? What is my goal or intention? Who can I talk to who might provide insights? — location: 2761

What can I read or listen to for relevant ideas? — location: 2763

look through any existing folders that might contain information relevant to the new project I’m starting, including related templates, outlines, and outtakes from previous projects. — location: 2766

This is in stark contrast to searching the open Internet, which is full of — location: 2776

search through a collection of exclusively high-quality notes free of fluff and filler. This is in stark contrast to searching the open Internet, which is full of distracting ads, misleading headlines, superficial content, and pointless controversy, all of which can throw me off track. I — location: 2775

Move (or tag) relevant notes to the project folder. — location: 2780

The important thing isn’t where a note is located, but whether you can reference it quickly while staying focused on the project at hand. — location: 2782

My goal is to end up not just with a loose collection of ideas. It is to formulate a logical progression of steps that make it clear what I should do next. — location: 2785

5. Create an outline of collected notes and plan the project — location: 2783

The important thing to remember as you move through this checklist is that you are making a plan for how to tackle the project, not executing the project itself — location: 2790

Once you do, you’ll have a much better sense of how much time it will take, which knowledge or resources you’ll need access to, and what your challenges will likely be. — location: 2793

Here are some other options for actions you might want to include in your own version: Answer premortem * questions: What do you want to learn? What is the greatest source of uncertainty or most important question you want to answer? What is most likely to fail? — location: 2796

Communicate with stakeholders — location: 2800

what the project is about and why it matters. — location: 2801

Define success criteria: What needs to happen for this project to be considered successful? What are the minimum results you need to achieve, or the “stretch goals” you’re striving for? — location: 2802

Have an official kickoff: Schedule check-in calls, make a budget and timeline, and write out the goals and objectives to make sure everyone is informed, aligned, and clear on what is expected of them. I find that doing an official kickoff is useful even if it’s a solo project! — location: 2804

Part of what makes modern work so challenging is that nothing ever seems to finish. — location: 2809

This is one of the best reasons to keep our projects small: so that we get to feel a fulfilling sense of completion as often as possible. — location: 2811

Calls and meetings seem to stretch on forever, which means we rarely get to celebrate a clear-cut victory and start fresh. This is one of the best reasons to keep our projects small: so that we get to feel a fulfilling sense of completion as often as possible. — location: 2810

Here’s my checklist: Mark project as complete in task manager or project management app. Cross out the associated project goal and move to “Completed” section. Review Intermediate Packets and move them to other folders. Move project to archives across all platforms. If project is becoming inactive: add a current status note to the project folder before archiving. — location: 2815

A task manager is a dedicated app for keeping track of pending actions, like a digital to-do list.* — location: 2825

1. Mark project as complete in task manager or project management app. — location: 2822

Cross out the associated project goal and move to “Completed” section. Each project I — location: 2828

2. Cross out the associated project goal and move to “Completed” section. Each project I work on usually has a corresponding goal. I keep all my goals in a single digital note, sorted from short-term goals for the next year to long-term goals for years to come. — location: 2827

I like to take a moment and reflect on whether the goal I initially set for this project panned out. If I successfully achieved it, what factors led to that success? How can I repeat or double down on those strengths? If I fell short, what happened? What can I learn or change to avoid making the same mistakes next time? — location: 2830

I add a new note to the project folder titled “Current status,” and jot down a few comments so I can pick it back up in the future. — location: 2853

Answer postmortem questions: What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What can you improve for next time? — location: 2861

Communicate with stakeholders: Notify your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., that the project is complete and what the outcomes were. — location: 2863

Evaluate success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the return on investment? — location: 2865

You won’t even consider starting something new without querying your Second Brain to see if there is any material you can reuse. — location: 2876

Allen recommends using a Weekly Review to write down any new to-dos, review your active projects, and decide on priorities for the upcoming week. — location: 2882

I suggest adding one more step: review the notes you’ve created over the past week, give them succinct titles that tell you what’s inside, and sort them into the appropriate PARA folders. — location: 2883

A Weekly Review Template: Reset to Avoid Overwhelm — location: 2887

Clear my email inbox. Check my calendar. Clear my computer desktop. Clear my notes inbox. Choose my tasks for the week. — location: 2891

Any action items I find get saved in my task manager, and any notes I capture get saved in my notes app. — location: 2897

3. Clear my computer desktop. Next, I clear the files that have accumulated on my computer desktop. I’ve found that if I let them accumulate week after week, eventually my digital environment gets so cluttered that I can’t think straight. Any files potentially relevant to my projects, areas, or resources get moved to the appropriate PARA folders in my computer’s file system. — location: 2901

5. Choose my tasks for the week. There’s one final step in my Weekly Review. It’s time to clear the inbox in my task manager app. By this point, there are likewise a number of tasks that I’ve captured from my email, calendar, desktop, and notes, and I take a few minutes to sort them into the appropriate projects and areas. The final step of my Weekly Review is to select the tasks I’m committing to for the upcoming week. Because I’ve just completed a sweep of my entire digital world and taken into account every piece of potentially relevant information, I can make this decision decisively and begin my week with total confidence that I’m working on the right things. — location: 2917

It’s important that the project list remains a current, timely, and accurate reflection of your real-life goals and priorities. Especially since projects are the central organizing principle of your Second Brain — location: 2935

3. Review my areas of responsibility. Now it’s time to do the same for my areas of responsibility. I’ll think about the major areas of my life, such as my health, finances, relationships, and home life, and decide if there’s anything I want to change or take action on. This reflection often generates new action items (which go into my task manager) and new notes (which get captured in my notes app). — location: 2937

Area notebooks often contain notes that become the seeds of future projects. For example, I used an area folder called “Home” to collect photos for the home studio remodel I mentioned previously. Even before it was an active project, that broader area gave me a place to collect ideas and inspiration so it was ready and waiting the moment we decided to get started. — location: 2941

I’ll take a few minutes to go through my “someday/maybe” tasks just in case any of them have become actionable — location: 2946

Review and update my goals. Review and update my project list. Review my areas of responsibility. Review someday/maybe tasks. Reprioritize tasks. — location: 2926

A Monthly Review Template: Reflect for Clarity and Control — location: 2922

noticing” habits—taking advantage of small opportunities you notice to capture something you might otherwise skip over or to make a note more actionable or discoverable. — location: 2955

Notes, on the other hand, can easily be put on hold any time you get busy, without any negative impact. — location: 2966

Your — location: 2992

A Perfect System You Don’t Use Isn’t Perfect — location: 2992

The entire point of building a Second Brain and pouring your thoughts into it is to make those thoughts less vulnerable to the passage of time. — location: 3001

Our knowledge is now our most important asset and the ability to deploy our attention our most valuable skill — location: 3035

It is all too easy to default to collecting more and more content without regard to whether it is useful or beneficial to us. — location: 3119

It is driven by fear—the fear of missing out on some crucial fact, idea, or story that everyone is talking about. — location: 3121

It also tells us that we don’t need to consume or understand all of it, or even much of it. — location: 3127

Like a compassionate but unyielding teacher, reality doesn’t bend or cave to our will. It patiently teaches us in what ways our thinking is not accurate, and those lessons tend to show up across our lives again and again. — location: 3130

Keep what resonates (Capture) Save for actionability (Organize) Find the essence (Distill) Show your work (Express) — location: 3232

Choose a capture tool. I recommend starting with a read later app to begin saving any article or other piece of online content you’re interested in for later consumption. Believe me, this one step will change the way you think about consuming content forever. — location: 3252

Get set up with PARA. Set up the four folders of PARA (Projects; Areas; Resources; Archives) and, with a focus on actionability, create a dedicated folder (or tag) for each of your currently active projects. — location: 3254

Make a list of some of your favorite problems, save the list as a note, and revisit it any time you need ideas for what to capture. Use these open-ended questions as a filter to decide which content is worth keeping. — location: 3257

Automatically capture your ebook highlights — location: 3259

Break the project down into smaller pieces, make a first pass at one of the pieces, and share it with at least one person to get feedback. — location: 3267

Choose a project that might be vague, sprawling, or simply hard, and pick just one piece of it to work on—an Intermediate Packet — location: 3265

Schedule a Weekly Review. Put a weekly recurring meeting with yourself on your calendar to begin establishing the habit of conducting a Weekly Review. To start, just clear your notes inbox and decide on your priorities for the week. From there, you can add other steps as your confidence grows — location: 3271

If I could leave you with one last bit of advice, it is to chase what excites you. When you are captivated and obsessed by a story, an idea, or a new possibility, don’t just let that moment pass as if it doesn’t matter. Those are the moments that are truly precious, and that no technology can produce for you. Run after your obsessions with everything you have. Just be sure to take notes along the way. — location: 3290

How to Create a Tagging System That Works — location: 3301

Buildingasecondbrain.com/bonuschapter — location: 3309

I’ve compiled a bonus chapter on how to create a tagging system for your Second Brain following the principle of actionability. Although not essential for getting started, tags do provide an extra layer of organization that can be useful as your knowledge collection grows. — location: 3307

https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/resources . — location: 3318