Workbook for

Building a Second Brain

A Proven Method to Organize Your

Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative
Potential

By Tiago Forte

Book Worm Publishing

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Note to Readers:

This is a plagiarism-free summary and analysis based on

Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your
Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago
Forte. This e-book is meant to enhance your original reading
experience, not supplement it.

We strongly encourage you to purchase the original

book here: https://amzn.to/3Pxmoyo
Table of Contents

Key Takeaways ....................................................... 2

Chapter 1: Where It All Started ............................... 6
Chapter 2: What Is A Second Brain? ....................... 9
Chapter 3: How a Second Brain Works ................. 15
Chapter 4: Capture- Keep What Resonates ........... 23
Chapter 7: Express—Show Your Work .................. 55
Chapter 8: The Art of Creative Execution .............. 64
Chapter 9: The Essential Habits of Digital
Organizers ........................................................... 69
Chapter 10: The Path of Self-Expression ............... 79
Thank You! ........................................................... 84
1
 Key Takeaways

1) Writing things down is a key part of building a

Second Brain.

2) Just like commonplace books, which were journals

creatives and scholars alike used to jot down their
ideas, a Second Brain gives you the power to
harness knowledge you learned.

3) The Second Brain is a system that allows you to

keep information over time and make connections
that help sharpen your perspective. This method
uses a system called CODE: capturing, organizing,
distilling, and expressing to help you build it.

4) Capturing what resonates with you is the first tenet

of the CODE system.

5) Organizing for action is essential. This

organization includes a method too called PARA
which stands for Projects, Areas, Resources, and
Archives.

6) Distilling is keeping the essence of knowledge. You

can do this with Progressive Summarization and
several layers of highlighting that are meant to be
easy. If you miss something, it is OK.

2
7) Expressing is the final step in CODE, which
basically means to produce your work. Everything
about the Second Brain revolves around creating
projects. Create building blocks for your projects
called Intermediate Packets to make producing
new work more efficient.

8) Divergence and Convergence are two

complementary perspectives when creating.
Divergence is finding all sorts of perspectives while
convergence involves whittling down what is
absolutely essential to make your projects a reality.

9) Organize your work as you go and include weekly

and monthly reviews to reflect on your progress.

10) Use your first brain to manage your work and have
your Second Brain to keep the knowledge you’ve
earned to continue making progress on future
work.

3
Introduction: The Promise of a Second Brain

It is difficult to access new facts as our brains are being

overloaded with a wealth of new information. Often, we
learn new information at the wrong time and have trouble
applying. The first step to building a Second Brain is in
writing down this information.

Using this Building a Second Brain System will teach you to:

• Find anything you’ve learned in your brain within seconds.

• Organize knowledge and use it to progress on your projects
and goals consistently.
• Save your best thinking.
• Connect ideas and patterns to help you live better.
• Use a system that allows you to share your work with
confidence.
• Turn work “off” because you know you have a great system.
• Spend more time doing creative work since you now spend
less time looking for things.

This Second Brain system will help you manage information

much more efficiently so you can achieve what you would
desire. This is something everyone from engineers to
students to executives wish they knew how to do. Those who

4
can leverage information and technology are at a good
vantage point to realize the potential of their ideas.

In the next chapter, we’ll discuss the story of how the author
came upon this technique of building a Second Brain and the
lessons learned along the way so you can do this too.

5
Chapter 1: Where It All Started

One day in the Tiago Forte’s junior college, he got an

unexplained sore throat. However, there was nothing doctors
could find wrong with him. Forte started taking an anti-
seizure medicine as the ailment worsened, but the side effects
included memory loss. This inability to express himself
ruined his prospects of living a fulfilling life.

A Personal Turning Point- Discovering the

Power of Writing Things Down

Taking responsibility, Forte decided to write down his

ailments and treatments that he had taken. This led to an
epiphany in which he asked for his patient record. He scanned
the hundreds of pages of his record and became the project
manager of his condition.

Patterns emerged in his study of his own condition and

eventually he realized that the use of his notes were helping
him find relief for his condition. He became obsessed with
digital note taking and realized this act of digitizing
information was the tip of the iceberg.

6
It helped him with his classes in college, and he learned to
take the most important points in his class which he could
then use to review them on demand.

Upon graduating, the author joined the Peace Corps and

taught in a Ukrainian school, where his digital note taking
ability helped him teach his students well. When he returned,
he got a job at a consulting firm in San Francisco, where he
soon realized he was faced with the challenge of a frantic work
environment.

Writing things down helped him with his work, and he soon
became the go-to person in his office for knowing important
information.

Another Shift- Discovering the Power of

Sharing

The use of notes had been for personal use for the author, but
then he realized he could use his notes as a business asset.
Human capital, which includes human knowledge, is an
estimated five to ten times larger than the $10 trillion of value
of physical capital in the US.

Work colleagues asked the author to teach his information

management techniques which became evolved into a paid

7
class open to the public. This way of organizing information
is holistic and helpful for many different purposes.

The Origins of The Second Brain System

This system is the author’s Second Brain and top companies

soon had the author teaching them his ways which have been
featured in articles in the Atlantic, Harvard Business Review
and Fast Company. This practice is a part of a long legacy of
great thinkers who strived to learn and achieve more based on
principles learned in the next chapters of this book.

There are four steps which will be introduced in Part Two of

this book, followed by Part Three, which will go over how to
use this Second Brain to accomplish goals. This method is
higher than self-improvement and is more about optimizing
a system outside of oneself.

8
Chapter 2: What Is A Second
Brain?

Your ability to manage information effectively is what leads to

success. The average person consumes around 34 gigabytes of
information daily, and another study by the New York Times
suggests we consume 174 full newspapers worth of content
daily which is five times more than in 1986.

Information wealth has led us to be exhausted and has created

a society-wide poverty of attention. We constantly spend
more than a day of our workweek looking for the information
we need, and only succeed at doing so half of the time.
Recognizing that we can use machines to help us remember
rather than just the same brains the first modern humans
used will be instrumental to our success.

Using technology in a new way requires a change in how we

think. Doing so will allow us to spend time that would be
wasted finding information to be used for the thinking that
only humans can do such as crafting stories, inventing new
things, and testing new theories among other activities
unique to us.

9
The Legacy of Commonplace Books

Artists and intellectuals have recorded ideas they have found

interesting for centuries in a notebook that is referred to as a
“commonplace book.” At one time, educated people would
read, transcribe fragments they read into their own
notebooks, and connect bits of knowledge from various
sources of knowledge.

The return of the commonplace book using the methods in

this book will help heal our dwindling attention and be
supercharged through the intentional use of technology. This
historical practice used now could be more flexible and
convenient thanks to modern advances.

The Digital Commonplace Book

We have the opportunity to create a more robust,

commonplace book. This book is what is referred to as the
Second Brain and is a multipurpose tool that can be adapted
to your changing needs over time.

This is a private tool that is your laboratory for creating new

ideas before you use them in the real world, and as you begin
to understand that we use technology to enhance our

10
thinking, you will see Second Brains everywhere. Just as a
calendar helps you remember dates, a smartphone extends
your ability to communicate, and cloud storage helps extend
your brains memory, we can also add digital note taking to the
mix.

Rethinking Notetaking: Notes as Knowledge

Building Blocks

In the past, only the intellectual elites needed commonplace

books, but now, everyone needs a system to manage
information. Knowledge begins with the simple tradition of
taking notes.

Our notetaking practice learned in school is obsolete because

of its differences in the professional world. Notetaking in the
professional world includes a lack of clarity of when to take
notes, when and how they will be used, and you are expected
to take action based on whatever notes you took that can be
referenced at any time if you took them in the first place,
which is very unlike what you learned in school.

A note in the professional notetaking world is a building block

of knowledge. The format of the note is irrelevant; all that
matters is that the note is interpreted by you. Notetaking
through the cloud means your notes go with you wherever you
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go and can be found in an instant rather than the fragile,
difficult to find paper notes of the past.

A Tale of Two Brains

We paint the picture of two separate people, one with a

Second Brain, and one without, to understand the benefit of
the Second Brain.

The first person, Nina, is without the Second Brain and has a
constant hum of anxiety related to the feeling of a constant
barrage of information and tasks that are woefully prioritized.
Nina has tasks that she knows would benefit her, but ends up
taking tasks, as a professional, that someone else asks her to
do instead. By the time she can gather her information to
complete a task that she knows would help her realize her full
potential, Nina is too tired to continue.

Nina’s story is common, driven from real messages from real

people, and reflects the dissatisfaction those without a Second
Brain have because they are not accomplishing their own
heartfelt passions.

A different picture emerges, also derived from real people, but

this time it’s those with a Second Brain. You go to work with
the same level of responsibilities and worries as anyone else,

12
but this time, your Second Brain helps you come up with great
ideas.

By the time lunch has arrived, you have collected a wealth of

information that is useful for your work meeting, and you
present them thoughtfully with the goal of getting the best
possible outcome.

As the days, weeks, and months pass, you notice changes in

your thinking. Your brain is no longer the bottleneck of your
potential because you have a Second Brain, and you only need
to take action to accomplish your goals rather than doing
more research. Even failure is simply information to be used
later, and you are now able to take on bigger, more
meaningful challenges.

Leveraging Technology as Thinking Tools

Scholars throughout the past century have envisioned how

technology could change mankind for the better, yet in some
ways, we are further from that vision than ever before since
some of us end up spending hours searching for that lost
information.

13
It is time to realize the vision of technology’s earliest pioneers
not only to be productive, but to lead more fulfilling lives
using this extended mind.

14
Chapter 3: How a Second Brain
Works

Think of the Second Brain as a personal assistant. Knowing

what that assistant does is integral to using it effectively.
There are four main capabilities of the Second Brain, the one
basic tool to get started, how your Second Brain will evolve to
serve you over time, and an introduction to the four steps of
the CODE method that is at the heart of this process.

The Superpowers of the Second Brain

A Second Brain does the following:

1) Makes your ideas concrete.

2) Helps connect new things between ideas.

3) Grows our ideas gradually.

4) Sharpens your unique perspective.

15
Second Brain Superpower #1: Make Our
Ideas Concrete

James Watson, an American biologist, and James Crick, an

English physicist, discovered that the structure of DNA was a
double helix. Using physical models and with the knowledge
of DNA’s constraints, these scientists solved the structural
puzzle of the double helix.

Just like these scientists solved the structural issue of DNA

with the approach of physically puzzling it together, we take
our information into a tangible medium that can be
rearranged, observed, edited, and combined together.

Second Brain Superpower #2: Reveal New

Association Between Ideas

Neuroscientist Nancy C. Andreasan discovered that “Creative

people are recognizing relationships, making associations
and connections.” Organizing various forms of information in
your Second Brain will help you combine information in a way
that would be impossible otherwise. The more diverse the
information you place in your Second Brain, the more original
the ideas you derive from it will be.
16
Second Brain Superpower #3: Incubate Our
Ideas Over Time
We tend to expect ideas to come to us instantly and accept
them regardless of whether they are the best ones we come up
with. This is called recency bias.

Developing ideas over time through the Second Brain is

similar to cooking a pot of stew which simmers and lets the
ingredients brew to their maximum tastiness. This approach
to ideas allows you to gradually accumulate new ideas,
turning the passage of time toward your advantage.

Second Brain Superpower #4: Sharpen Our

Unique Perspectives
The ultimate purpose of a Second Brain is to allow your
thinking to shine. The kind of job that won’t go away in the
future is the one that involves a particular interpretation of
information, such as storytelling.

For example, writer’s block is simply a lack of information.

17
Choose a Notetaking App: The Neural Center
of Your Second Brain

A digital notetaking app is at the center of forming a Second

Brain. These apps have four components that make them
ideal for building your Second Brain, which are:

• Multimedia: A notetaking app can store all kinds of content

in one place, so you never have an issue knowing where to
put something.

• Informal: It’s easy to place your notes because there’s no

need for perfection when taking notes.

• Open-Ended: Because taking notes is a continuous process,

notes are ideal for free-form exploration.

• Action-oriented: Notes are designed to capture stray

thoughts, allowing you to focus on the task at hand.

Taking notes digitally has all the features of regular

notetaking but supercharges them through the capabilities of
technology.

Another good place to look for a notetaking app is to look

through at the apps you already have. Don’t be a perfectionist
in choosing an app because it’s more important to have a
reliable tool to facilitate personal knowledge management.

18
Remembering, Connecting, Creating: The
Three Personal Stages of Personal
Knowledge Management
Remembering, connecting, and creating are the three stages
of progress.

People use the Second Brain, firstly, as a memory aid. One

lead designer start-up, Camille, saves excerpts of reports in
her work designing electric vehicle charging stations in the
form of PDFs, which she can then add comments to because
she saves them in her notes.

Secondly, people use their Second Brain to connect ideas

together. An oncologist, Fernando, uses his notes on his
patients to find ways to treat them more effectively.

Finally, people use their Second Brain to create things.

Terrell, a young father of three who works a demanding job,
uses his Second Brain to balance his full-time career with his
side gig.

Each of these individuals has used their Second Brain in ways

that complement what is going on in their lives.

19
Introducing the CODE Method: The Four
Steps to Remembering What Matters

There is a four-part method called CODE, or Capture,

Organize, Distill, and Express, that will guide you in the
process of creating your Second Brain. This method is a map
for navigating the endless flow of information. Let’s preview
each of these steps.

Capture: Keep What Resonates

Instead of haphazardly writing things down and then losing

them, capture what truly resonates and keep it in a place you
can control. If the information incites wonder, pleasure, or
sparks your curiosity, that is your cue to keep it.

Knowing what information resonates with you teaches you

about yourself and provides an intuitive solution to
consuming important information.

Organize: Save for Actionability

Organize your information for the purpose of taking action

based on your current projects since your projects will guide
you. Organizing in this manner will give you clarity as it will
streamline your information based on what is truly
important.
20
Distill: Find the Essence
Distilling your notes for essence will help speed up the process
of rapid association. Being able to find the quick takeaways
will save you time. Make yourself a giver of notes rather than
a taker. You are giving your future self the knowledge you are
gaining now.

Express: Show Your Work

Personal knowledge should be geared to help you take action.

Anything else is a distraction. A lot of curious people fall into
the challenge where they gather information but do nothing
with it. Information becomes knowledge when it is put to the
test and used.

Action will help you be fulfilled and doing so will have a

positive impact on others. Evaluating, sharing, teaching,
recording, posting, and lobbying are all acts of expression that
are synonymous with taking action.

Information is always being processed and evolving. You

must start now because you can always go back and make
revisions on whatever it is you are expressing later. You are
already taking action; now it is time to do so in a more
intentional way.

21
In Part Two, you will learn to use the CODE steps to expand
your memory, intelligence, and creativity.

22
Chapter 4: Capture- Keep What
Resonates

We need information to live. Just like the food we eat, the

information we consume is important.

Your Second Brain is like a garden, filled with knowledge, that

you must cultivate with only the best information. We begin
using the first step of the CODE method.

Building a Private Collection of Knowledge

Taylor Swift is a top artist who uses her phone to aid her in
her creative songwriting process. Her songs are a culmination
of her experiences and are a side effect of how her mind
works. She capitalizes on capturing her ideas when they
occur.

Jerry Seinfeld details his writing process in his notetaking.

When people realize he’s kept so many notes in an accordion
style folder, he’s surprised at their shock. Jerry feels there is
nothing of more value to him than his notes.

Anyone regularly creating depends on the creative process

because new ideas don’t happen by chance.

23
Creating a Knowledge Bank: How to
Generate Compounding Interest From your
Thoughts

The practice of keeping a “commonplace” book continues

today amongst creatives. Knowing what knowledge to save for
most people is a challenge that depends on broadening the
definition of knowledge.

In our digital world, knowledge presents itself as content, not

only from outside sources but from our own personal work.
Such knowledge assets include anything that can be used to
solve a future task.

External knowledge that might be helpful includes highlights,

quotes, bookmarks, favorites, voice memos, meeting notes,
images, and takeaways from presentations you have attended.

The thoughts gained from this external knowledge can

include stories, insights, memories, reflections, and musings.

Pick two mediums from the above lists and see which you
have collected the most. Use these mediums and start small,
as you will eventually learn to capture multiple mediums in
your Second Brain.

24
What Not to Keep

While the information kept in your Second Brain can be

expansive, it’s a good idea to know what isn’t well-suited for
most note taking apps. This includes sensitive information,
special formats and file types better handled by an app
dedicated to that information, large files, and collaborative
work.

Twelve Favorite Problems: A Nobel Prize

Winner’s Approach to Capturing

An insight inspired by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard

Feynman the author calls “Twelve Favorite Problems”
informs one on how to make the decision on what information
to keep in your Second Brain. Richard Feynman, who
contributed across many different fields, revealed the basis of
this insight in an interview: he keeps twelve of his favorite
problems in mind, and every time he hears a new trick or a
new result, he tests it against each of his twelve problems.

Feynman keeps these problems in his head, even if some lay

dormant, and this cross-disciplinary approach allows him to
make connections across seemingly unrelated subjects.

25
Once, in the school cafeteria, Feynman saw a plate flying
through the air, and his observations helped him discover a
neat relation between the plate’s wobble and spin, which also
suggested a deeper underlying principle. When asked what
the use of what others perceived as unimportant information
was, he said it didn’t matter, and regardless, these seemingly
trivial insights led him to his Nobel prize-winning work.

Ask the questions you’ve always been interested in. This can
include a broad spectrum of topics, ranging from making the
world a better place to finding a way to get to bed early to how
to make decisions with more confidence.

The key to these questions is to make them open-ended and

invoke your personal curiosity. Ask your childhood friends
what you were obsessed with as a kid to find what sparks your
imagination. These interests will most likely still fuel your
adult imagination.

As a child, the author was obsessed with organizing his Legos,

and believed he could make the perfect spaceship with these
Legos if he had the right organizational system. This question
of how creativity can emerge from chaos taught the author
many things, and the point is to use the question as a North
Star rather than finding a definitive answer.

26
Find these questions and phrase them as open-ended. Don’t
worry about the number of questions or being perfect—just
do it. This will inform what to capture into your Second Brain.

Capture Criteria: How to Avoid Keeping Too

Much (or Too Little)
After you have decided which questions resonate with you,
you can choose which pieces of information will be most
useful. Remember that in any piece of content, the value is not
evenly distributed so you must extract the most relevant
material as a succinct note.

Being picky about what you save will help make sure that you
don’t get inundated with too much information which is a
common pitfall that affects many. You can always save links
to websites with more information if you end up finding
something interesting that might require a deeper dive.

Just like a curator, you must be a good judge of what goes in

your collection of information, and the following are four
criteria to help you decide which information is best.

27
Capture Criteria #1: Does It Inspire Me?

You may be able to Google information, but you cannot

Google the feeling of inspiration. For example, the author
saves testimonials from his past customers to remind him
that his work does matter which keeps him going in his own
work.

Capture Criteria #2: Is It Useful?

Just like carpenters keep odds and ends, you can do this too
if it is deemed useful. The author keeps images of things he
finds both online and offline which come in handy when he
needs to make presentations. You can do the same with
statistics, references, research findings, or anything of that
nature that equivocates to a “spare part.”

Capture Criteria #3: Is It Personal?

No one can replace the memories you create or the wisdom

you gain personally through your own experiences. Saving
bits of wisdom gleaned from these personal moments will
ensure you have access to what makes you, you forever.

28
Capture Criteria #4: Is It Surprising?

We tend to save information we already know to confirm

beliefs we already have, a phenomenon known as
“confirmation bias.” We should instead save information that
surprises us and doesn’t fit into our neat mold if we are to
change how we think.

Saving these surprising ideas can train us to take in

information from different sources to avoid jumping to
conclusions. You must capture things that can help change
your mind to help your work constantly improve.

Ultimately, Capture What Resonates

Keeping what really resonates with you will help you use your
energy rather than bog you down with too much note taking.
It must be effortless and enjoyable if you are going to make it
a habit. The special feeling of resonance can be characterized
by your specific reaction: your heart skips a beat, or your
sense of time slows down. This reaction is a big clue that
something is “noteworthy.”

Emotions organize rational thinking. Before our logical mind

can make sense of something, your intuitive mind will
resonate with what is truly worthy of your attention. Our
intuitive mind learns even without our conscious awareness.

29
Training yourself to listen to what resonates with you will also
train you to better listen to your intuition.

Other details that are helpful when saving notes include

capturing key information, which will help you organize your
notes.

Beyond Your Notetaking App: Choosing

Capture Tools
There are certain capture tools that can make your note taking
easy and even fun. These options include:

• eBook apps

• Read later apps

• Basic note apps

• Social media apps

• Web clippers

• Audio/voice transcription apps

• Other third-party services, which automate the process of

exporting content from one app to another

30
Because there are many apps, some which work silently in the
background, while others require your manual attention, you
must remember to have your notes exported to your specific
notes app so they are all in one place and you can act on them.

Here are some popular ways to use capture tools:

• Capture passages from eBooks.

• Capture excerpts from online articles or web pages.

• Capture quotes from podcasts.

• Capture voice memos.

• Capture snippets of Youtube videos.

• Capture excerpts from emails.

• Capture content from other apps.

The Surprising Benefits of Externalizing Our

Thoughts
Writing down your thoughts will make it more likely that
whatever it is you are learning will stick. Writing will also
create mental cascades from which you may draw new ideas
and enrich your thinking.

There are other benefits from writing your emotions down,

such as profound social, psychological, and neural changes.
31
Improved immune systems, reductions in distress, and
overall improvement can also come from writing.

Writing can also help you be objective since it allows you to

set aside the idea in your mind. Once our thoughts are outside
our head in our Second Brain, we can realize their full
potential.

Your Turn: What Would This Look Like If It

Was Easy?
What are you most familiar with? The author captures just
two notes daily on average. What would it look like for you to
do the same? Try out the apps mentioned earlier and see
where they take you as you begin on your journey.

If you find yourself stuck, remember that the digital world is

malleable and never permanent. Use the steps of CODE one
at a time as you gain confidence.

32
Chapter 5: Organize— Save for Actionability

Twyla Tharp, one of the most inventive choreographers of

modern dance, details her “Box” method for creating dances.
Every time she starts a new project, she labels a box with the
name of the project.

During her project with Billy Joel, the “Box” method proved
invaluable. Tharp begins each box project with a stated goal
which she writes down and puts it in the box. The material
collected in the box inspired the members of her team when
working on the project.

Because she filled up twelve boxes with material, Tharp was

able to add her own creativity. The box connects her with her
work, and even when it is on the back burner, she knows she
can always come back to the box.

Finally, the box allows her to view her past accomplishments

and look back on them with pride. Putting one’s work in a
container makes it easy to use, understand, create, and
maintain. Such a simple system allows you to create complex
works.

33
The Cathedral Effect: Designing a Space for
Your Ideas

Where we are affects how we think. A large space may have us

thinking abstractly, while a smaller space would have one
thinking concretely.

Just like we put effort into maintaining our physical space, we

should maintain our digital environment so we can get be free
to create. Organizing a digital workspace is the next step in
building a Second Brain so you can do your best thinking.

Organizing for Action: Where 99 Percent of

Get Stuck (And How to Solve It)
Once you begin to capture your ideas consistently, you will
encounter a new problem. You will need to organize your
information as your Second Brain gets bigger.

The best way to organize your information is by project. The

author created the PARA method, which stands for Projects,
Areas, Resources, and Archives. This allows you to place your
information based on how it is actionable rather than what
the type of information is.

34
PARA guides you in sorting your ideas based on goals. The
intention will be to use a single organizing system which will
help you move seamlessly between the apps in your Second
Brain you will use. The purpose of PARA is to make
organization a simple task rather than an endless endeavor.

How PARA Works: Priming Your Mind (and

Notes) for Action
You can save every piece of information you want in one of
four categories:

1. Projects

2. Areas

3. Resources

4. Archives

35
Projects: What I’m Working on Right Now

Projects have features that make them ideal for organizing.

They begin and end, meaning they have a definite timeline.
Second, they have a specific outcome.

The project-centric approach is making its way to knowledge

work. This trend is known as the “Hollywood model” named
so after how films are made. It is common in this approach for
groups to assemble across different teams, departments, and
even companies, then disband once the project is finished.

Such projects could include:

• Projects at work

• Personal Projects

• Side Projects

Defining your work in terms of projects will increase your

productivity and help you say no to what is not important.

36
Areas: What I’m Committed to Over Time

Not everything we do is a project. An area such as finances are

an ongoing responsibility with no end date. Your relationship
to whatever area you might have determines how you manage
the information for it. Examples of personal areas include:

• Activities or places you are responsible for

• People you are responsible or accountable to

• Standards of performance you are responsible for

Work areas:

• Departments or functions you are responsible for

• People or teams you are responsible for or accountable to

• Standards of performance you are responsible for

Knowing what standards you set depends largely on your

personal decisions and goals.

37
Resources: Things I Want to Reference in the
Future

Examples include:

• Topics you are interested in

• Subjects you are researching

• Useful information you want to reference

• Hobbies and passions

These resources are similar to school notebooks you may have

had as a student—one per subject.

Archives: Things I’ve Completed or Put on

Hold

This can include anything from the previous categories that is

no longer active. This can include:

• Complete or canceled projects

• Areas of responsibility you are no longer committed to

• Resources that are no longer relevant

38
This part of PARA is important because it allows you to
declutter your digital workspace while also letting you keep it
in case you need it in the future.

What PARA Looks Like: A Behind-the-Scenes

Snapshot
PARA includes the top-level folders with smaller subfolders
in each part. Active projects per person can range from five to
fifteen, and notes on each subject can range from just a few to
hundreds.

This hierarchy of folders includes three levels: top-level PARA

categories, the project folder, and the notes themselves. This
means you can access your notes very quickly.

In archives, we have folders for every interesting topic. This

category is specifically to avoid cluttering the rest of your
digital workspace.

PARA can be used across any place you store information, and
the hierarchy stays the same which keeps things simple.

39
Where Do I Put This?— How I Decide Where
to Save Individual Notes
Asking where to put something is an organizers most feared
question. The moment you capture something is the worst
moment to decide where it goes.

Capturing and organizing must be two distinct steps. Doing

this will make the process of capturing easier and allows you
to make the organizational decision later.

PARA comes into play once you’re organizing your notes.

Since PARA is organized for actionable purposes, the decision
of where to place notes becomes as easy as possible.

• Projects are most actionable.

• Areas have a longer time horizon and are not as

immediate.

• Resources may become actionable.

• Archives are only as needed.

40
This gives us a convenient checklist:

1. In which project will this be useful?

2. Or, in which area will it be useful?

3. Or, in which resource does it belong?

4. Finally, if it doesn’t match, place in archives.

Basically, you place a file where it is useful the soonest. This

PARA system also forces you to realize you have the
knowledge you need, and must take action on your personal
projects.

Organizing Information Like a Kitchen— What Am I

Making?

PARA and the way kitchens are organized have parallels.

We can think of the archives like the freezer, where we keep

items for a future date. The pantry can be likened to resources
which might get used but are tucked away. Areas are items
that can be used soon, which are in the fridge. Projects are
immediate like the pots and pans which get used immediately
to prepare a meal.

Now imagine if a kitchen was organized by kind of food—it

wouldn’t work, just as organizing your notes by kind of
information wouldn’t work. Instead, you should organize

41
your notes according to the need, just as a kitchen is organized
according to how accessible it needs to be.

Organize ideas by what their outcome may be. PARA is a

production system rather than a filing system. The focus
shouldn’t be the “perfect place;” it should be actionability.

Because we organize for actionability, it may be constantly in

flux. This is because our priorities can change at any moment,
and therefore, we must minimize time spent organizing. The
purpose of a single note can change over time, so keep that in
mind when organizing.

Completed Projects Are the Oxygen of Your Second

Brain

Knowing the purpose of one’s efforts will help you organize in

the PARA system. Forte learned this as a part-time employee
at an Apple store where he helped customers organize their
files. When he realized he couldn’t make a dent in their
organization merely organizing files by type, rather than by
purpose, he realized things had to change.

He realized customers bought Apple computers because they

wanted to achieve something. He archived things that weren’t
relevant for his customers, who ended up feeling relief that
they wouldn’t lose their work, but also that the irrelevant files

42
were no longer in the way. They could focus on getting things
done.

Customers who worked with Forte never complained about

his filing advice, and instead told him wonderful stories of
their creative successes and the impact they had on their lives.

Forte learned that people need clear workspaces in order to

create. Then he learned that creating things really matters; his
customers eyes would light up when they completed a project.
What really matters are the tangible wins, not the beauty of
how something is organized.

43
Your Turn: Move Quickly, Touch Lightly

One of the Forte’s mentors saw that he worked with brute

force and was on a path to burnout. She advised him to “move
quickly and touch lightly.”

Take the smallest, easiest step toward progress. Ask yourself,

which projects are you committed to moving forward? You
can think of what might be on your plate by:

• Noticing what’s on your mind

• Looking at your calendar.

• Looking at your to-do list.

• Looking at what you are keeping around because it is part

of a larger project.

Start organizing with just your notes app and begin by only
creating project folders to organize your information. Move
finished projects to your archives folders, and then go through
your archives when starting a new project for information
that might help you on your new projects.

Keeping your digital space clear and gathering information

only for active projects will give you the confidence and clarity
to act on your work. PARA is a dynamic system which is
constantly in flux and changes based on your project needs.

44
45
Chapter 6: Distill—Find the Essence

In 1969, Paramount Pictures executives were desperate to

find a director for a gangster film and picked a novice outsider
named Francis Ford Coppola who made the hit movie, The
Godfather.

Coppola went on to make a complex story that was a

metaphor for American capitalism. His approach to
interpreting this story involved reading the novel, The
Godfather, and writing down the parts that resonated the
most with him. This notebook was a starting point for him to
refine and revisit his sources to turn them into something
new.

His approach involved writing down first impressions of the

novel on his first reading. He also broke down each scene to
five key points: a synopsis, historical context, image and tone
for the scenes “look and feel,” the core intention, and potential
pitfalls to avoid. He distilled the essence of each scene.

His notebook was his way of telling his future self how to
direct the film. He considered his notebook his most
important asset in making the film. Using our notes is the
third step of the CODE process, which is to distill.

46
Quantum Notetaking: How to Create Notes
for an Unknown Future

Our notes need to be used, but most notetakers don’t know

what to do once they’ve done this much with their notes. It is
crucial to separate capturing your notes from organizing
them.

Collecting memories is important so they don’t fade away and

are ready for when you need them in the future.

Discoverability—The Missing Link

The discoverability, the degree to which a piece of
information can be found, of your notes determines if they
survive into the future. This is an element that is missing from
most notes.

Think of your future self as being impatient and needing to

find whatever it is you wrote down immediately. Highlight
whatever stands out. You need to distill the information for
your future self to give yourself the most concise, effective
presentation of the information at hand.

47
Highlighting 2.0: The Progressive
Summarization Technique

Progressive summarization uses highlighting to distill notes

into something useful. Highlight the main points of a note,
then highlight the main points of those highlights until you
reach the essence. Highlighting into several layers is very
effective at making your notes discoverable.

A fourth layer, an executive summary, is used when you keep

looking at the same notes repeatedly. Use bullet points for
your summary, and you will have speedy recall which you
need to move through a diverse set of notes.

Zooming In and Out of Your Map of

Knowledge
Going through the different layers of your progressive
summary you can decide how in-depth you want to go in your
notes. Because the multiple layers can be changed while not
leaving out anything, you can go back to the earlier layer and
try again.

This method helps you focus on content and presentation of

your notes rather than spending too much time doing
meaningless management tasks. It allows you to do

48
something practical and easy while adding value to your
notes.

Four Examples of Progressive

Summarization
You can add multiple layers in this method when dealing with
text. Such texts include Wikipedia articles, blog posts, podcast
interviews, and meeting notes.

49
Wikipedia Articles

You can create your own encyclopedia by highlighting the

parts most relevant to you. Doing so can save you time, and
you can look back on it and distill it further in the future.

Online Articles

When casually reading and listening, you are most exposed to

a diverse set of subjects which is perfect for getting special
tidbits of insight.

Forte read articles on hiring, which he saved to his resources

folder and ended up using years later.

Podcasts and Audio

Forte listened to a podcast on the education business, which

he simply enjoyed on a long drive. With no time to write notes
on the drive, he distilled it by only writing down what stuck
with him at the end of the drive. This is a great way to distill
information since the best bits usually stick around for an
hour or two after digesting them.

50
He later used this information to start an executive coaching
tier in his online coaching business. You never know where
your best ideas can come from.

Once, one of Forte’s friends simply talked to him about

building a home studio, which he then distilled into a
convenient shopping list when he finally made his way to a
local hardware store.

Picasso’s Secret: Prune the Good to Surface

the Great
Picasso’s Bull, a work by Pablo Picasso, offers a masterclass in
how distillation works. Picasso preserved each image of his
process in studying a bull’s essential form.

Each image in this work of art captures Picasso’s distillation

process. The final form is a single line which still captures the
essence of the bull. He couldn’t have started with the final
image because each distillation led him to capture the
simplicity through his serious effort.

Another example of distillation are Ken Burns documentaries

where only a tiny percentage of the footage he captures, with
a ratio as high of 50-to-1, makes it into the final cut of his film.

51
Progressive summarization is a method of forgetting as much
as possible in order to let what’s truly great about something
shine brightly.

The Three Most Common Mistakes of Novice

Notetakers

The following are a few guidelines to avoid common pitfalls in

note taking.

Mistake #1: Over-Highlighting

Most people make the mistake of highlighting too much. Less

is more. Notes are more like bookmarks meant to signal what
is interesting.

Each level of highlighting should include no more than 10 to

20 percent of the previous layer.

Mistake #2: Highlighting Without a Purpose in Mind

Highlight when you’re getting ready to create something.

Using the highlights for purpose will save you time. Being
conservative with your highlighting time will virtually
guarantee that you do only do it when necessary. Leave each
note better than you found it.

52
Mistake #3: Making Highlighting Difficult

Rely on your intuition to tell you when a passage is interesting

as opposed to bogging yourself down when highlighting. This
practice of distilling is at the heart of excellent
communication and helps you strip away unimportant
details.

53
Your Turn: Keep Your Future Self In Mind

Progressive Summarization has the purpose of making it easy

to find and work with your notes later. Going through each
layer and finding what really resonates with you is important
in this distilling process.

You can check if something is discoverable is by seeing if you

can get the gist of it in one glance. As you keep doing this, you
will improve. In the next chapter, we will look at the final step
of CODE, which is expressing your point of view.

54
Chapter 7: Express—Show Your
Work

Octavia Estelle Butler was born in June 1947. Known as

“Estelle,” she was an easy target of childhood bullying and
grew to believe she was socially hopeless. As a result, she went
inward toward her own imagination, and grew aspirations to
become a writer.

As a child, she was discouraged from her teachers to write

science fiction, despite later becoming an award-winning sci-
fi author. Realizing she could write better stories than what
was available to her at the time, “Estelle” dubbed herself a
more confident “Octavia” and took jobs that allowed her to
save her mental energy for writing.

Her three rules were:

1. Don’t leave home without something to write with.

2. Don’t walk into the world without being observant.

3. Don’t make excuses; find a way.

55
She studied anything and everything to inform her writing.
She treated science fiction as a way of viewing the future. Her
work even resonated with readers during the 2020 pandemic.

She drew on her life to create some extraordinary work which

she saved in her own meticulous journals. The lesson learned
is that a creative must draw on real-life experiences that are
organized and collected effectively to add richness to their
work.

How to Protect Your Most Precious Resource

Attention is a knowledge worker’s most precious resource,
and we must protect it. Recycling knowledge gained from the
attention we spent working on our project is imperative to
making sure we can make the most of our attention spent.

Expressing your ideas early allows you to gather feedback,

which is then drawn into your Second Brain. This feedback is
then the starting point for the next iteration of your work.

Intermediate Packets: The Power of Thinking

Small

Breaking up your tasks into smaller pieces isn’t enough; you

need to have a system to manage these tasks. The individual

56
building blocks that make up your work are called
“Intermediate Packets.”

These Intermediate Packets can be:

• Distilled notes

• Outtakes

• Work-in-process

• Final deliverables

• Documents created by others

Managing these small building blocks one at a time will help

you become interruption proof as you are not managing
everything all at once. You’ll also make progress in any span
of time because having multiple uninterrupted hours is rare.

The quality of your work will also increase because you’ll be

able to get outside input much sooner. Finally, you’ll have so
many Intermediate Packets available to execute entirely new
projects from simply arranging previously created IPs.

57
Assembling Building Blocks: The Secret to
Frictionless Output

Ask yourself how to acquire or assemble each individual

component of a project you are working on. Using a similar
project template to fill out, you can rely on examples, which
will help your creativity thrive.

You already have some of the IPs necessary for your project;
building a Second Brain is simply intentionally structuring
what you are already doing. Using your Second Brain will help
you save time and resources—a vast improvement from
simply using your unreliable, biological brain.

58
How to Resurface and Reuse Your Past Work

Finding your IPs when you need them can be a challenge.

There are four retrieval methods for these that simplify the
difficulty of this challenge. They are:

1. Search

2. Browsing

3. Tags

4. Serendipity

Retrieval Method #1: Search

Using the search function with your note taking app is one of
the easiest ways to find your IPs. It is most useful when you
know what you are looking for.

Retrieval Method #2: Browsing

Browsing gives a user manual control of how we navigate,

providing contextual clues to help us hone in on what we are
looking for. Using a variety of features such as sorting a list of
notes by different criteria makes it easier to browse what you
are searching for.

59
Retrieval Method #3: Tags

Tags in your notes are also helpful for browsing because they
help you make a connection within your Second Brain that
might not be so straightforward. You can go through relevant
items, tag them for later use, and look at them more closely
when you have time.

Retrieval Method #4: Serendipity

Although this method cannot be planned for, we can create

ideal conditions for it.

When using the previous retrieval methods, you can broaden

your focus. You can also use visual patterns to aid serendipity.
Sharing ideas introduces the element of the other person’s
reaction which is often unpredictable. This draws not only on
your first and Second Brains, but also on that of others.

Three Stages of Expression: What Does It

Look Like to Show Our Work?

Refining knowledge management skills requires

remembering, connecting, and creating. Let’s look at all three.

Remember: Retrieve an Idea Exactly When It’s Needed

60
Benigno is a business consultant whose goal was to build a
Second Brain to better understand cryptocurrency. He used
the CODE method and wrote a progressive summary on a
long crypto article he found interesting, and easily explained
it to his friends which saved them time.

Connect: Use Notes to Tell a Bigger Story

A pastor in Colorado, Patrick, used his notes to tell the story

of peoples’ lives at their memorials. Rather than spending
hours sifting through his notes on interviews with the family,
he would take time after each interview to write a summary
with highlights of that person’s life.

This act of taking only what resonated gave him the freedom
to creatively express patterns that his clients weren’t able to
see and give meaning to his eulogies.

Create: Complete Projects and Accomplish Goals

Stress-Free

Rebecca, a professor of educational psychology, used digital

notes to create her teaching presentations. She built her
Second Brain, and rather than having to block out large

61
chunks of time, she was able to save time with the IPs she
saved up to produce her work effortlessly.

Creativity is Inherently Collaborative

Reframing your work into smaller chunks, or IPs, allows you

to harness the shareable and collaborative nature of creativity
you need to succeed. Sharing small chunks also makes
feedback easier and more immediate.

Sharing our ideas with others allows us to see which ones truly
valuable.

Everything Is a Remix
An important aspect of creativity is that it is always a remix of
existing parts. We take from our predecessors and stand on
the shoulders of their creative accomplishments.

Borrow aspects of others’ work rather than taking all of it.

Kitbashing, a process for taking prefabricated commercial
kits and recombining the parts to create new models, is a
process that reflects this creative practice.

Taking your intellectual assets and reassembling them will

boost your ability to make new projects.

62
Your Turn: You Only Know What You Make

When you take charge of your work, it becomes more

meaningful; you are more involved with it, and your
understanding will be elevated. Your work can change lives,
and if it you don’t believe that, try doing the smallest project
to begin proving to yourself that this is the case.

Self-expression will help you unlock your true potential.

63
Chapter 8: The Art of Creative
Execution

Forte’s father was an artist who spent time gathering ideas for
his paintings and was an example of exemplary time
management and life balance. His father taught him that
planning for your work and gathering ideas are tantamount
to producing creative work.

Building a Second Brain is all about standardizing behavior

that relies on the fundamental principles of creativity. One
such pattern is called “divergence and convergence.”

Divergence and Convergence: A Creative

Balancing Act
When you are first creating something, you are gathering
information in an act of divergence that explores new
pathways. Once we have enough options, we converge and get
rid of options. Convergence allows you to narrow the scope of
your creative work so that you come up with what is truly
essential.

From engineers to storytellers, the act of divergence and

convergence is laid out in their creative process. Divergence
is outlined in the first two steps of CODE: capture and
64
organize. The next steps, distill and express, are about
converging, or getting rid of the unessential to begin realizing
our ideas.

The Three Strategies I Used to Bring Creative

Work Together

Distinguishing between the two modes of divergence and

convergence will help you decide where to begin when
starting a project. Of the two modes, convergence is the most
difficult for most creatives as it forces one to simply get the
job done.

These next three strategies will help you complete your

projects and avoid the pitfalls of convergence.

1. The Archipelago of Ideas: Give Yourself Stepping-

Stones

To do this, gather ideas that form the backbone of your work.

This process is a contemporary reinvention of outlining as it
uses your digital tools to help you complete your work. It has
multiple advantages, including:

• It is far more malleable and flexible.

• You can link to more detailed content.

65
• It is interactive and can use multimedia.

• It is searchable.

• It can be accessed and edited from anywhere.

This digital outlining process helps you choose and arrange

your ideas. It helps ease the process of divergence and
convergence by creating a series of stepping-stones to guide
you through your work.

2. The Hemingway Bridge: Use Yesterday’s

Momentum Today

Hemingway would stop his writing only after he decided

what he would write the next day. Use today’s energy and
mental imagination to fuel tomorrow’s work. You can do this
by:

• Writing ideas for next steps.

• Writing your current project status.

• Writing down details that you have in mind that you might
forget.

• Writing out your intention for your next work session.

66
You can send this work-in-progress to friends for immediate
feedback.

3. Dial Down the Scope: Ship Something Small and Concrete

4. Scope is a software term used to describe the full set of

features a program might have. Dialing down the scope
means getting rid of some these features and preventing
overly difficult things from bogging your project down.

As creators, we must sometimes dial things down to be able

to complete our work. Using our Second Brain, we can save
parts that get cut out for later use.

Sharing before your perfectionist self is ready will also allow

you to receive feedback from others and give you the
confidence to continue moving forward in your work.
Divergence and convergence are a loop that gets reiterated
until you can consider something really “done” to share more
widely.

Divergence and Convergence: Behind the

Scenes of a Home Project
Forte shares how he used the three techniques above to
remodel his garage into a home office.

He first created an Archipelago of Ideas, or a digital outline,

filled with different sections he thought would be relevant. As
67
he took more notes throughout the process, and distilled
them, he then used Hemingway bridges to plan his next steps.
He then had to dial down the scope and moved certain aspects
of the project to a “someday” section which he saved in his
Second Brain. Because of these steps, he was able to make his
home studio.

Your Turn: Move Fast and Make Things

Try executing a new project. Go to the Projects part of your

PARA system and start from there. Get all your usable
material from your notes into one place for this project.

Begin by setting time aside to make a quick outline without

going and doing more research. Build a Hemingway Bridge if
you can’t complete this step in one sitting. If you’re really
having trouble, dial down the scope and get through the first
iteration of this project.

68
Chapter 9: The Essential Habits of
Digital Organizers

Balancing order and creativity is something that your Second

Brain will help you do. Organization is a habit that you can
develop with each step of CODE.

The Mise-en-Place Way to Sustainable

Creativity
Mise-en-Place is a habit chefs have developed in order to
efficiently cook great meals continuously. Rather than
stopping everything to clean the kitchen, they keep their
workplace clean during the flow of their cooking.

This automated series of steps, such as always wiping down a

knife after using it, allows the chefs to focus on the creative
aspect of cooking. Much like cooks, we need to keep our
workspace, or Second Brain, clean through good habits.

The three most important habits to keep your Second

Brain efficient are:

• Project Checklists

69
• Weekly and Monthly Reviews

• Noticing Habits

The Project Checklist Has The Key to Staring

Your Knowledge Flywheel

You don’t need a Second Brain to consume and then produce.

However, having one makes great use of the knowledge that
you will build because it allows you to recycle it for future use.

Treating your attention like an investment which yields

interest will help you compound even more knowledge. Two
key moments in your project are when you start and when you
finish your project.

Checklist #1: Project Kickoff

Having a checklist for starting your projects ensures you don’t

leave your success to chance. Here’s the author’s checklist:

• Capture current thinking

• Review relevant folders

• Search for related terms

• Move relevant notes to your project folder

70
• Create an outline

1. Capturing current thinking.

This step begins when you first think of the project. It can be
a messy step usually involving brainstorming and an outline.
Use bullet points to keep the information compact if possible.

2. Review folders that contain relevant information.

Progressive Summarization and PARA come in handy in this

step. Distilled notes help. Take care to not get bogged down
or go on a tangent as your goal is to keep the momentum
moving forward.

3. Search for related terms.

This is where good note taking comes into play as the distilled
versions of your notes will keep you focused on the task at
hand.

4. Move relevant notes to your project folder.

Being able to reference a note quickly is an important goal for

this step.

71
72
5. Create an outline

Create an Archipelago of Ideas with the goal of creating a

logical progression of steps rather than a haphazard collection
of ideas.

Think of this checklist as a first pass that takes no more than

twenty or thirty minutes. You can start off with this checklist
as a starting point but then customize it to fit your needs.

Some options for your own checklist might include:

• Answer premortem questions

• Communicate with stakeholders

• Define success criteria

• Have an official kickoff

Checklist #2: Project Completion

Once a project is finished, you don’t want to limit yourself to

merely celebrating. Rather, you want to learn from the
experience and document useful notes for later use. Here’s
the author’s checklist:

1. Mark project as complete.

73
Check your digital task manager for pending actions to make
sure the project is truly finished.

2. Cross out the project goal.

Cross out the goal and reflect on it. Write down your
completed goals for motivation when you need it.

3. Review IPs and move them to folders.

Your notes are by-products of quality thinking. Save anything

you think could be relevant to certain folders for future
projects. This is a forgiving decision as you may miss some
things.

4. Move project to archives.

Archiving projects makes sure that projects don’t get lost and
confused with future projects.

74
5. Add a current note if project is becoming inactive
before archiving.

For projects that may get postponed, write down a status on

why it was postponed and other relevant details. Adding a
Hemingway Bridge will also help you make sure you can bring
it back to life should you come back to it.

When you pass through a Project Completion Checklist, you

should do so quickly to minimize time spent on something
that may not work in the future. You can summarize what you
archive so that you can come back to it.

Think of these steps as a scaffolding structure to make sure

your past work can stand on its own.

The Review Habit: Why You Should Batch

Process Your Notes (and How Often)

Write down new to-dos, review your active projects, and

decide on priorities for the next week. Give your notes
succinct titles and place them in the appropriate PARA
folders. In the next section, you’ll look at the details of
conducting Weekly and Monthly Reviews.

75
A Weekly Review Template: Reset to Avoid
Overwhelm

Forte’s weekly checklist looks like this:

1. Clear my email inbox.

2. Check my calendar.

3. Clear my computer desktop.

4. Clear my notes inbox.

5. Chose my tasks for the week.

A Monthly Review Template: Reflect for

Clarity and Control

1. Review goals.

This includes crossing off completed goals, changing the

scope of goals, or adding new goals.

2. Review and update project list.

This includes updating project folders and archiving canceled

or completed projects.

76
3. Review areas of responsibility.

This is a review of major life areas where you can decide where
you want to take action.

4. Review someday/maybe tasks.

This is a special category, as some of these future tasks might

become possible due to life changes.

5. Reprioritize tasks.

Some tasks become irrelevant as the months change while

others emerge. Consider this a holistic review of your goals
and projects in mind.

The Noticing Habits: Using Your Second

Brain to Engineer Luck

Doing things little by little when it comes to noticing what

notes could be useful or which ones could get moved, etc.,
needs to happen in the flow of your life.

These actions are made in mere moments in response to

changes in your life. Organizing as you go will happen as a
result of spending more time in your digital work
environment.
77
Your Turn: A Perfect System You Don’t Use
Isn’t Perfect
The habits such as Project Kickoff and Completion, Weekly
and Monthly Reviews, and Noticing habits are all meant to be
done in-between your work time. Don’t wait for the perfect
time to do these things, as the time may never come. The
purpose of your Second Brain is to make your thoughts
invulnerable to time.

Rather than focus on making your system perfect, you need to

make sure you are building a working system that is used
daily.

78
Chapter 10: The Path of Self-
Expression

Our knowledge is now our most valuable asset. Changes in

how we need to think include being able to sift through an
endless stream of information.

Mindset Over Toolset—The Quest for the

Perfect App
We set our own limits rather than the tools we use. It is our
attitude toward information that shapes how we see and
understand the world around us.

The Fear Our Minds Can’t Do Enough

Your mind was meant for more than just solving problems,
and you shouldn’t overburden it. As you build a Second Brain,
your perspective will change, and you will gain confidence in
achieving your dreams because you have a powerful system
behind you amplifying the effectiveness of your every move.

79
Giving Your First Brain a New Job

Delegate the job of remembering to your Second Brain, and

allow your first brain to be the manager of completing your
projects.

Building your Second Brain is a personal journey which will

free you and open a realm of possibility.

The Shift from Scarcity to Abundance

We must view information through the lens of abundance

rather than through the lens of scarcity so we can better
process the infinitely available information of the web.

Viewing information through the Abundance Mindset is a

shift that will allow information to serve us rather than waste
our time with low-value work and information.

The Shift from Obligation to Service

As we begin to collect more information in our Second Brain,

we start to do things less out of obligation, and more in the
spirit of service to help others. As we help others with the
knowledge we gain, it becomes more valuable as we can
connect and work better with others.

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With your Second Brain, you can help not only yourself, but
others as well and be a force for good.

The Shift from Consuming to Creating

Polyani’s paradox is the idea that we know more than we can
explain. Tacit knowledge is in our subconscious where
language cannot reach. This knowledge is the kind of
knowledge that will be the last to be automated.

Your Second Brain can help you uncover what makes you tick
and will help you learn facets of your own identity. This search
outside of yourself to find what’s within yourself will fulfill
you.

Our Fundamental Need for Self-Expression

The author’s initial journey of building a Second Brain which
started with his unexplained throat pain helped him reach
two discoveries. The first was meditation and mindfulness
which taught him that he was not his thoughts.

His second great discovery was public writing. This led him to
discover that we all have a need to express ourselves.

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Your Turn: The Courage to Share

Start sharing to see what value you have to offer to the world
with your unique perspective. We are all in this together, and
with your Second Brain, you can do anything you want.

Final Thoughts: You Can Do This

Keep what works for you in this system and the techniques
learned throughout this book. If you have trouble with it, you
can always fall back on CODE which is:

• Keep (Capture) what resonates.

• Save (Organize) for actionability.

• Find (Distill) the essence.

• Show (Express) your work.

Ask yourself what you are trying to do and focus on moving

projects forward. Here are some starting points you can use:

1. Decide what you want to capture.

2. Choose your notes app.

3. Choose a capture tool.

4. Get set up with PARA.

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5. Get inspired by identifying your twelve favorite problems.

6. Automatically capture eBook highlights.

7. Practice Progressive Summarization.

8. Experiment with just one Intermediate Packet.

9. Make progress on just one deliverable.

10. Schedule a Weekly Review.

11. Assess your note taking proficiency.

12. Join the Personal Knowledge Management community on

social media.

Chase after what excites you and take notes along the way.
Don’t be afraid, and remember that you have succeeded
before in learning new things.

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 Thank You!

Book Worm Publishing is run by hard-working college

students. All royalties are used to pay off student debt, buy
books, rent housing, continuing education, and grow our
publishing company. Readers like you make our
continued success possible!

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