Book: Building a Second Brain

🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences

1. Building a second brain is more about discovering the real you
2. Offload the complexity and information overload of modern life into a second brain and free your brain to live in the moment
3. Use notes and focus on how to use them, not where they come from. Define projects/goals you’re working on and turn notes into output/content.

✨ How I Discovered It Got tipped by a friend a few years ago on the productivity tips from Ali Abdaal. This year (2022) I checked some other YouTube channels and Tiago Forte came along with building a second brain.

🧑‍🏫 Who Should Read It?

• Knowledgeworkers (who are basically creating output every day)
• Everyone who wants to understand themselfs better
• Everyone that lives in a hamsterwheel, opening your eyes in the morning where your brain is already working on ideas and todos and not forgetting stuff, packed up email inboxes and meetings and not getting things done you really want to

☘️ How the Book Changed Me

• I now think more and more about what (not) to capture in my second brain. Capture what resonates.
• The PARA system as described as a way of managing your second brain is all about actionability. Put your notes there where you might need them in the future or maybe the next minute. Define your projects, create output.

📒 Summary + Notes

• We consume a lot of information all day, with all the media at your disposal all day its incredibly important and valuable, the only problem is that you’re often consuming it at the wrong time.
  • Whats the chance that the business book you’re reading is exactly what you need right now? Some of it will be relevant now, and some of it will be relevant somewhere in the future.
• The media landscape right now is novel and public (the latest political controversy, a celebrity scandal, or the meme of the day). ^92d6c2
  • Shift relationship with information to timeless and private. Instead of consuming all day we spent time on reformulating and revisiting ideas over time. It could also preserve our mental health and heal our attention span.
• Notes as knowledge building blocks
  • In past centuries only the elites needed commonplace books; writers, politicians, philosophers, scientists. Nowadays almost everyone needs a way to manage information, more than half of the workforce today can be considered “knowledge workers”
• As a knowledge worker
  • Where does your knowledge live? It seems like a lofty concept for scholars and academics, but at the most practical level it all begins with the act of taking notes
  • The understanding of note taking was probably formed in school, in the professional world:
    • Its not clear on what you should be taking notes
    • No one tells you how they will be used
    • The “test” can come at any time in any form
• Incubate ideas over time, we draw only on the ideas we have access to at that time. For example doing a brainstorm: it relies on ideas we come up with at that time. What are the chances that the most creative ideas will instantly be at top of mind?