Building a Second Brain

Text in black are quotes; text in green are my notes. I sometimes write in Spanish.

• The solution is to keep only what resonates in a trusted place that you control, and to leave the rest aside. When something resonates, it moves you on an intuitive level. Often, the ideas that resonate are the ones that are most unusual, counterintuitive, interesting, or potentially useful. Don’t make it an analytical decision, and don’t worry about why exactly it resonates—just look inside for a feeling of pleasure, curiosity, wonder, or excitement, and let that be your signal for when it’s time to capture a passage, an image, a quote, or a fact. #

• The best way to organize your notes is to organize for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, “How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?” #

• 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. Your notes will be useless if you can’t decipher them in the future, or if they’re so long that you don’t even try. Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes—you are giving your future self the gift of knowledge that is easy to find and understand. #

• I’m here to tell you that that is no way to live your life. 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. This is why I recommend you shift as much of your time and effort as possible from consuming to creating. #

• 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? #

• If what you’re capturing doesn’t change your mind, then what’s the point? #

• I’ve given you specific criteria to help you decide what is worth capturing, but if you take away one thing from this chapter, it should be to keep what resonates. Here’s why: making decisions analytically, with a checklist, is taxing and stressful. It is the kind of thinking that demands the most energy. When you use up too much energy taking notes, you have little left over for the subsequent steps that add far more value: making connections, imagining possibilities, formulating theories, and creating new ideas of your own. #

• Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work. —Gustave Flaubert, French novelist #

• 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. When we are in a space with high ceilings, for example—think of the lofty architecture of classic churches invoking the grandeur of heaven—we tend to think in more abstract ways. When we’re in a room with low ceilings, such as a small workshop, we’re more likely to think concretely. #

• I eventually named this organizing system PARA,* which stands for the four main categories of information in our lives: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives. These four categories are universal, encompassing any kind of information, from any source, in any format, for any purpose.† #

• The temptation when initially capturing notes is to also try to decide where they should go and what they mean. Here’s the problem: the moment you first capture an idea is the worst time to try to decide what it relates to. First, because you’ve just encountered it and haven’t had any time to ponder its ultimate purpose, but more importantly, because forcing yourself to make decisions every time you capture something adds a lot of friction to the process. This makes the experience mentally taxing and thus less likely to happen in the first place. #

• 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. #

• Using PARA is not just about creating a bunch of folders to put things in. It is about identifying the structure of your work and life—what you are committed to, what you want to change, and where you want to go. #

• When you initially capture a note, you may have only seconds to get it into your Second Brain before the next meeting, urgent task, or crying child comes calling. Not nearly enough time to fully understand what it means or how it might be used. When you first capture them, your notes are like unfinished pieces of raw material. They require a bit more refinement to turn them into truly valuable knowledge assets, like a chemist distilling only the purest compound. This is why we separate capturing and organizing from the subsequent steps: you need to be able to store something quickly and save any future refinement for later. #

• 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. #

• Progressive Summarization helps you focus on the content and the presentation of your notes,* instead of spending too much time on labeling, tagging, linking, or other advanced features offered by many information management tools. It gives you a practical, easy thing to do that adds value even when you don’t have the energy for more challenging tasks. Most importantly, it keeps your attention on the substance of what you’re reading or learning, which is what matters in the long term. #

• 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. This is the “campsite rule” applied to information—leave it better than you found it. This ensures that the notes you interact with most often will naturally become the most discoverable in a virtuous cycle. #

• * I like to think of layer one as the “soil”—an excerpt from a source or my own thinking (whether as words, drawings, images, or audio) I initially capture into my notes. They are like the ground on which my understanding will be built. Layer two is “oil,” as in “I’ve struck oil!,” conveniently represented by black, bolded text. Layer three is “gold,” which is even more valuable, and shines in highlighter yellow in many apps. Layer four is the “gems,” the most rare and illuminating finds that I’ve distilled in my own words as an executive summary. #

• As knowledge workers, attention is our most scarce and precious resource. The creative process is fueled by attention at every step. It is the lens that allows us to make sense of what’s happening, to notice what resources we have at our disposal, and to see the contribution we can make. The ability to intentionally and strategically allocate our attention is a competitive advantage in a distracted world. #

• This inherent unpredictability means that there is no single, perfectly reliable retrieval system for the ideas contained in your notes. Instead, there are four methods for retrieval that overlap and complement one another. Together they are more powerful than any computer yet more flexible than any human mind. You can step through them in order until you find what you’re looking for. Those four retrieval methods are: Search Browsing Tags Serendipity #

• Creative expression isn’t always about self-promotion or advancing our own career. Some of our most beautiful, creative acts are ones in which we connect the dots for others in ways they wouldn’t be able to do themselves. #

• Don’t take the work of others wholesale; borrow aspects or parts of their work. The shape of a banner on a web page, the layout of a slide, the style of a song—these are like the ingredients you put in a blender before hitting the button and mixing it into your own recipe. Of course, cite all your sources and influences, even if you don’t strictly have to. #

• My favorite quote about creativity is from the eighteenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico: Verum ipsum factum. Translated to English, it means “We only know what we make.” To truly “know” something, it’s not enough to read about it in a book. Ideas are merely thoughts until you put them into action. Thoughts are fleeting, quickly fading as time passes. To truly make an idea stick, you have to engage with it. You have to get your hands dirty and apply that knowledge to a practical problem. We learn by making concrete things—before we feel ready, before we have it completely figured out, and before we know where it’s going. #

• 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. To get stronger, you need to lift weights using the correct form. A musician relies on standardized notes and time signatures so they don’t have to reinvent the basics from scratch every time. To improve your writing, you need to follow the conventions of spelling and grammar (even if you decide to break those rules for special effect down the road). #

• An Archipelago of Ideas separates the two activities your brain has the most difficulty performing at the same time: choosing ideas (known as selection) and arranging them into a logical flow (known as sequencing). The reason it is so difficult to perform these activities simultaneously is they require different modes: selection is divergent, requiring an open state of mind that is willing to consider any possibility. Sequencing is convergent, requiring a more closed state of mind focused only on the material you already have in front of you. #

• 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. #

• This is where the Project Kickoff Checklist comes in. 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. #

• Here are some questions I use to prompt this initial brainstorm: 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? What can I read or listen to for relevant ideas? #

• It’s tremendously comforting to know that I don’t need to make constant progress on everything all the time. #

• The purpose of knowledge is to be shared. What’s the point of knowing something if it doesn’t positively impact anyone, not even yourself? Learning shouldn’t be about hoarding stockpiles of knowledge like gold coins. Knowledge is the only resource that gets better and more valuable the more it multiplies. #

• When you encounter an idea that resonates with you, it is because that idea reflects back to you something that is already within you. Every external idea is like a mirror, surfacing within us the truths and the stories that want to be told. #

• I discovered something through that experience: that self-expression is a fundamental human need. Self-expression is as vital to our survival as food or shelter. We must be able to share the stories of our lives—from the small moments of what happened today at school to our grandest theories of what life is about. #