Building A Second Brain – Scott Young and Tiago Forte

Interview Transcript
[00:00:14] Scott: Well, I am really excited today to be talking to Tiago forte
because he has written a very interesting book, "Building A Second Brain",
which is all about how do you take smart notes, how do you organize all the
information in your life, how do you think better etc. And I think this is a very
useful topic.

This is a conversation I've really wanted to have because my audience often

asks me, "how should I take notes"? And I how should do this and that. But I
don't really see myself as much of an expert and I feel like I often struggle with
note-taking tools and systems. So, I'm very happy to be having this conversation
even for my own selfish benefit with Tiago right now.

So maybe you can just kick things off. Just tell us what is the idea behind
building a second brain and why do you think it's important.

[00:00:56] Tiago: Yeah, absolutely. I'm super happy to be here. Scott, I've
watched your trajectory over the past few years, and we actually share a
publisher. I remember calling you for a reference.

[00:01:12] Scott: Yeah. So, I was really on the ground floor of this book here
because we both worked with Stephanie.

[00:01:19] Tiago: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are definitely all sorts of
connections between our work. The one you mentioned. I, for years, had the
same question. As a professional learner, a lifelong learner, someone who loves
reading books and taking classes and listening to podcasts and all that stuff. I
always noticed, the teacher or the instructor, the expert always says these little
lines, like, "take note of that". Or note this down and reflect on it later. And
every time they would say that, my ears would perk up and I would just think
"that's the part I need help with"!

That taking notes and revisiting those notes in a systematic way, was this big
hole in my in my process to learning anything. I never found a satisfactory
solution and that's why I had to create one. It's kind of just this assumption that
people know how to take notes. And I think actually we don't.
[00:02:24] Scott: I'll talk from my own experience. I have not in the past been
the best note taker. I've been reasonably good when it's in a class and there's an
exam at the end, so, you know you have some sort of constraint. I have got to
write what was covered in the lecture and review it and that kind of thing.

But in real life there's no exam. Potentially any information could apply to any
other point, in time in the future. And if you're like me, you consume a lot of
information, you're reading all sorts of interesting stuff. I mean, we're both
writers. So, the potential connections of where this might be useful is, it's never
super organized. You're always looking for those- so that's an interesting story,
or that's an interesting idea and you're linking it together.

And I'll give you my process. What I would typically do is think, I need to be
more organized about this, and I'm going to start taking notes. And I'll get my
Evernote and I'll get the browser plugin and I'll just start clipping things, clip,
clip, clip, clip, clip.

And then all of a sudden, I have a million things stored in my Evernote and I am
actually scared to look at it afterwards. I don't want to open it because there's
just too much stuff. Later, I realized that I'm not looking at these notes ever
again. I'm just being clipping things and sending them to the void.

So, you talk about this in the book. And I really want your expert opinion here,
what am I doing wrong? And for anyone else who can relate to my experience
where you've tried to do note taking, and it's just been sending things into the
void, what are we doing wrong and how can we do it better?

[00:03:53] Tiago: Yeah. You know, I actually wouldn't say that that's
necessarily wrong. I would just say it's a phase. It's a phase that I think is
actually helpful to go through. I think the basic problem is that for all of human
history, we lived in an environment of information scarcity. So, all of our
mindsets and habits in our approaches are designed for scarcity, right?

You hear a negative insight. Oh, I got to keep that because it's going to go up in
smoke, but suddenly just in the past, like 0.0001% of human history, we've
switched all of a sudden to an environment of total abundance, hyper
abundance. And all of those instincts are incorrect but actually lead us astray.

I'd say it's good even to go through, what I call it the hoarding phase. Go
through it, go through a phase where you're keeping every single quote you
come across, go through a phase where you're web clipping, every website. But
then when you reach that point that you mentioned that you've reached, where
you go to the other side of the coin, your future self goes back to all this stuff
you've collected realizes - what I think is the important realization to have,
which is that when you collect everything, you might as well collect nothing.
When you try to save all the knowledge you end up not having any knowledge
that's accessible. If you save everything you end up just creating a huge amount
of work for your future self to organize, distill and review and boil down that to
its essence.

So, what I encourage people to think of is think about the signal in the noise.
This comes from like information theory. There's always noise. The noise of the
internet, the noise of social media, the noise of even reading a book. There's a
lot of filler. But what is the signal? How can you distill and extract just the main
point, the main takeaway, the main nugget from all that noise. And often what
that leads to, that whole cycle of realization, is taking far fewer notes in the first
place.

[00:05:55] Scott: So you have come up with this system called "CODE". Tell
us a little bit about this, because I think this kind of capture, in a nutshell, the
four phases that you talk about in taking proper notes. And, this sort of links to
what we were just talking about that, you can get very focused on the collecting,
but maybe not so much on the distilling.

[00:06:23] Tiago: Yeah. You know, CODE is really my framework for the
creative process. And it's funny and almost embarrassing how long it took me to
arrive at that. It's the simplest framework. But those take you the longest to
define. I remember one day I was sketching on my notepad, the different steps
that I kept observing in my students. And I thought C is collect? No, it's more
like capturing. And then O it was organizing. And R, is it refining or reviewing?
No, I think it's distilling. And before I even knew what I was doing, CODE
jumped out. Yeah, it was, it was literally CODE. Wow, this has just of emerged
from a decade of experience.

What I'm really trying to do is just standardize the creative process. And for
some people that sounds, you know, kind of sack religious, it sounds offensive.
It sounds like I'm oversimplifying creativity and I am. But I found for myself, I
just can't sit down every day at a 'blank' anything, a blank desk of blank screen,
a blank canvas. And invent how I am going to approach my work that day.

I need a process. I need a system. And what CODE does is it gives me steps. I
can basically look at any project I'm working on and I can ask, "Is a time to
capture [C] more information related to this project? Sometimes you just, you
just don't have enough to work with. You don't have enough raw material.
Sometimes you just need more info.

Is a time to organize [O] the info I already have? All right, once I have 5, 10, 20
notes, it's pretty clear. I have something I need to organize.

Is it time to distill [D] the information that I've organized? Did I boil it down to
the main takeaways?

Or have I done all the preliminary steps? Or is it time to just express [E]
myself? Is it time to just express my own point of view? It gives me like a
checklist to run through, every time I sit down to work.

[00:08:19] Scott: Well, so this brings me to my next question. I've done some
interviews and the questions that I would sometimes get, which I wasn't always
a huge fan of, "how did you write this book?" Because it sort of implies there's
maybe not that much to say about the content of the book. You get too much
into the, how did you write the book? But it's worth asking in your case,
because your book is about organizing and researching for the creative process.
And having gone through that journey myself, I was very aware of this kind of
finished product and that there was a lot of little pieces that were assembled.

You did a good job of pulling together stories and science. I know that there
was the 90% below the iceberg, for what actually manifested in the book here.
So tell me a little bit about your process and how you went about writing the
book. And in particular, how did your note taking system fit into the research
and development.

[00:09:24] Tiago: Yeah. I should write a post on it some time. It will be the
most meta thing ever. You know how I use my brain to write a book about
second brains!

[00:09:34] Scott: And then you're going to write an article about how you wrote
that article!

[00:09:38] Tiago: Infinite regress! I have my whole content pipeline planned

out for years in advance! You know, there's so many principles I used. In fact, it
was, it was almost funny at some points I would get stuck. Like you do when
you take on any big creative projects. And then as I'm looking at my notes and
my content, think, what if I used my own advice?! Maybe, that would work!
A few things come to mind. One is chunking. I mean, chunking was so
important. And this is something I talk about in the book. People really
underestimate how much, 'what they think is a single task' is really 'a project'. I
see people all the time. I love to look over their shoulders at their to-do lists.
People will put on their to do list, "write the manuscript for my book". As if
they're just going to sit down and in 15 minutes, just do that, right? Even
something like, buying new headphones. I don't know about you, but for me
buying new headphones, it's a research project! I have to research all these
things.

And so what I invite people to do is look at your to-do list. If there's anything
that is stuck, that you just can't seem to get started, you can't seem to make
progress on, it's very likely that thing is not a task, it's a project. And once you
realize it's a project, you have to step back and create some structure.

You have to do what's sometimes called meta work. You have to think about,
what are the steps? What is the goal I'm trying to achieve? What are the
constraints? What are some milestones I'm going to reach along the way? And I
think sometimes people are embarrassed to do that for just one of their personal
projects. It feels like over doing it. But I don't think so.

So for writing a book, you might think that's a project. It's not. It's actually like
20 to 30 separate projects. You know this! All the little pieces. In the beginning
of the whole project was just finding an agent, and that was a whole thing
within itself.

Conversations to have, referrals to get, interviews to do, requirements to write

down - all these things. Once that little, tiny mini project was done, it was
finding an editor. Just to work with me on the proposal. And again, and that was
a two, three-month long project, with all these little details to track. So, step-by-
step, I really just ask myself, what is the tiniest chunk that I can bite off? That is
manageable and not overwhelming that I can have some sort of win, or reach
some sort of milestone, that is then the trigger for the next stage. And at this
point, with the book coming out, in about a month, I 've probably done 15 or 20
separate projects and I still have five or 10 left.

[00:12:24] Scott: Oh, yeah. I can tell you for sure, that the person who thinks
the book is done once they've finished writing it, no, it goes on and it goes on!

I think there is an, there's an idea. "Just do it. Don't do any planning, don't do
any preparation, and just take action. You know, quit thinking about it. There is
a kind of reflexive, gut instinct that if you're sitting around making notes or
doing things like these, you're doing something wrong. And, I reject that advice
in part, because of the very reason you just talked about. When you put, "write
book" on your to-do list, there's no task there. That's not actually a task, that's is
a million tasks. And it's the very complexity that we deal with when we're doing
difficult things that often is what overwhelms us. And I also think this is
something worth stating that a project, like you're talking about, writing a book
has many, many moving parts. Let's put it that way.

You know, I'm a big fan of James Clear. He wrote that foreword for my book.
And I really like habits. But I also know, in the sort of the wake of that, a lot of
people got the idea that just doing something 15 minutes a day, and it's the exact
same thing as how you do complicated work.

And what you just said about, well, actually writing a book is like 30 projects.
And each of those projects is 30 tasks. A lot of them maybe are only done once.
Like getting the agent is only done once. That's not something you do, 15
minutes every day. That's a one-time thing.

And so I wanted to talk to you about this because I think we are really in sync
on this level of, what a lot of our work in learning and note-taking and
organizing is about is, how do you tackle really complicated projects that don't
have it just a simple, 'just show up every day'. quality. You have to deal with the
fact that there's tons of information out there. There's lots of people you have to
contact. There are many little individual steps. What do you think about that?

[00:14:41] Tiago: Completely. I'm also a huge fan of James. He's helped me a
lot too on my book writing journey. But I think it's like that quote, 'the opposite
of every great truth is also a great truth'.

Have you heard that? It's like truths are not these single points. Absolutes.
Usually when someone says a truth, it is on a spectrum. And both of the ends of
the spectrum are true or have value, but also the points in between. Let's take
habits, for example. Habits are, I mean, of course, insanely important, insanely
valuable, crucial to your health, your finances, your relationships, all these
things, but not everything is a habit. By a long shot. Right?

I kind of compare it to marathons or sprints. Some things are marathons. Here,

it's all about staying in the race, consistent progress, right? Your absolute speed
at any given point in the marathon is not so important. As long as you're moving
forward, as long as you don't collapse on the side of the road, you're running the
marathon.
Sprints are really what I’m interested in. When I look back on my life, yes,
habits were important, but there were these moments in my career and in my
business where there was an opportunity. There was a window of opportunity,
something arose. And I had to generate, I had to sprint, I had to generate a
tremendous amount of momentum in a short amount of time to take advantage
of that opportunity.

And that wasn't a matter of habits. It wasn't a matter of routines. It was a matter
of having the research in place even before I knew how it was. So, that's what a
second brain is. I'm a writer too. That's my main creative medium. I'm
constantly doing research. By the time I decide to start writing something, it's
way too late to do research, right?

If I'm going to write an article on, on X topic, I can't start reading books on that
topic or else it's going to take weeks and months. So in a weird way, I have to
always be doing research and saving little nuggets in my second brain. So when
that opportunity presents itself, I've already done all the research. All I have to
do is pull it together. So, I'd say it's kind of like marathons or sprints. You really
need both.

[00:16:53] Scott: So, one idea, and this is also something related to it is a lot of
people think about notes in terms of expanding their memory. So this is
something like, you have your internal memory and you have your external
memory and you use that to go locate things that you can't remember.

One of the ideas that you bring up, which I think is true as I noticed it in my
own work, is that notes are also a tool for thinking. That it's the having notes
next to each other, that you notice relationships that you couldn't necessarily
notice in your head. And I mean, I think both of us would probably agree that
you kind of only figure out what you think about something until you've written
a lot about it.

It's just through the act of writing, of sort of permuting through all the possible
ideas that you're going through, that you're like, oh no, no, no. This is actually
what I think about this. I couldn't just figure that out in my head. So, tell me a
little bit about how you use note taking, not just to save things, but also to think
about things.

[00:17:47] Tiago: Yeah. I think extending your memories is the first stage, it's
like the gateway, it's the stepping stone. Actually, in the book, I have these three
stages that I see people move through in the maturity of their second brain.
Remember, Connect and Create.
So 'Remember' has to come first because until you free up some space, that has
to be the first step. I don't know about you, but I don't exactly have like tons of
just free bandwidth laying around. My bandwidth tends to be filled, more or
less. And so it's kind of like, when you're going to reorganize your house, you
have to move some things out first. Move them into the living room or into the
garage or outside or to the storage space. You have to create some space to
work in. So that's why, I describe a second brain in the first place as an
extension of your memory. Just offload. Get the 20%, 30%, 40% or 50% of
stuff that you just have to remember and memorize. It doesn't really add value.
It's just kind of sitting there. Offload it into an external storage system.

But as you alluded to, once you do that, things start to happen. Right? It's kind
of like that saying 'more is different', but in this case, it's 'less is different'. Less
is different when you free up that bandwidth.

Suddenly you have some room to think. You have some space to wonder and to
wander and to ideate. And when you look at these externalized ideas, the stuff
that you've just offloaded from your own mind, you move into the second
phase- which is- Connect.

You start to draw little connections. Oh, this is related to this! I'm doing some
gardening and having some insights about gardening that also apply to how to
use organic marketing for my business. Like these really unorthodox,
unexpected connections. And once you've had some of those and you can
literally create those connections, like the links in between your notes, you
move to the third phase, which is Create.

Once you have a critical mass of connections between ideas and they exist in an
external place, I find people almost can't help, but want to create theories or
create stories or create presentations or pieces of writing or new products or side
gigs.

There's this fundamental human creative nature that I think we have, even
among people who insist that they're not creative or their work is not creative, et
cetera, which I don't believe. And I disagree with them. Creativity just rises to
the surface once you have all these building blocks in front of you.

[00:20:24] Scott: So, I want to nerd out a little bit here with you. I think you
know David Allen; he has a little blurb on the top of your book. I know you
have some, personal relationship with "Getting Things Done". If the people
listening to me right now have never heard of David Allen's book "Getting
Things Done", then they should definitely also read that book.
That is the classic book that I think all of the productivity writers go through at
some point. Where you think, oh wow, this person really has got a system. And
so, I know Getting Things Done has obviously had some influence on your
work. And, I know also it's a little bit less well-known, but definitely in the note
taking community it's not unknown- and that is the Zettelkasten system. And
they also have a similar role.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about this, because obviously your approach
kind of draws on sort of these two, let's call them 'traditions'. What do you think
are the overlaps, the differences between how you think about it and how they
think about it? I mean, I'm not here to cause fights between you and other
people, but just to reflect on where you see your approach and your philosophy
fitting in with some of these other systems that are out there.

[00:21:33] Tiago: Yeah, I think it's very closely related. It's super closely
related. This is something I emphasize in the book is the history. I'm really a fan
of history. I think to understand the present and the future, you have to
understand the past. And part of a second brain, by the way, is tracking your
sources, tracking the lineage of your ideas.

GTD had an enormous influence on me. That's really how I started my career. I
was teaching GTD. I was sort of an unauthorized provider of a GTD training.
What David Allen did in my view was simply create a process by which a
particular kind of information, which was actionable information, to create 'to
do' tasks that could be turned from these vague, what he calls open loops, these
vague worries, anxieties in your mind, lurking in the back of your
consciousness, into clear, actionable concrete to do's. In a system that you
trusted to surface them, to track them and to finish them. That's what GTD did.
And I so appreciate that he spent decades really exploring the implications of
that and boiling it down to its absolute simplicity. I hope I have the longevity to
do something similar, but when I set out to start teaching, building a second
brain, it was really to do that same thing for all the other kinds of information.
All the non-actionable information, the notes, the reference, the lists, the quotes,
the research, the highlights, everything else, right.

There are only two kinds of information actionable and non-actionable. That
pretty much covers everything. So that's the relationship with GTD, which is
super compatible.

And then the Zettelkasten is even more related. I mean, that's almost the modern
kind of inspiration for the revival of this whole idea. Which was used by this
German sociologist, Nicholas Lumen in the mid 20th century. He used it to
write articles and books and papers, and he used index cards on paper.

I think one big difference that I'm making is really making the leap and
committing to digital. Many of the principles I teach can be applied to paper,
but I think at some point, recently we've crossed a threshold where our devices
are so ubiquitous, the software is strong enough and powerful enough and easy
to use enough, connectivity is almost universal, that I'm now comfortable
saying, you know what - paper is fine for some purposes, but what I'm teaching,
my recommendation is to go all-in on digital. That's the primary difference.

[00:24:08] Scott: So, so this is a good point to ask my follow-up question,

which is that I remember reading the book and noting that, it's very difficult to
talk 'tools' in a book that you hope is going to be around 20 years from now,
because then you end up recommending something. Then you go to their
website that has a 504 gateway error! I've made that mistake. I remember in my
early days of writing, I recommended a to-do list software, which was literally
just 'to-do lists'. It didn't have any other features. And I put it in there. It's just as
good as any, and then I'm getting emails later- oh yeah, that software doesn't
exist anymore. It's a very simple thing. There's a million to-do list softwares, but
you end up committing to something that the developers don't support or
something gets better. However, we're having a podcast right now and in the
ephemeral media, that is the internet. So, anyone who's listening to this and
we're now aged and don't look as youthful! If you're listening to us, go to
Tiago's website and he'll have some update in 2042 or whatever, if this podcast
is still around!

What do you recommend? What do you use for tools? What what's the tech
stack that you recommend people get started with? Are there pros and cons?
Are there criteria you use to evaluate these decisions like, this is really
important. People get tricked by these bells and whistles, but they're not so
important.

[00:25:33] Tiago: Yeah, this was really one of the central challenges of the
book. I mean, to the point that it was almost difficult getting a publishing deal
because the publishers were like, we work on 5–10-year time spans, at least.
And you're going to write a book on software, why not just like publish a PDF?
Why not just put this on your wall?

And, I strongly considered that! But I think what convinced me to ultimately go

forward with it, is that there are some timeless principles. There are some
concepts that stand the test of time. My straightforward solution to that was
simply, every time it got to the point to recommend a specific product, I just
stopped and I said, check out the second brain resource guide [which is now live
actually, just as of this week]. So, you can put it in the show notes.

[00:26:25] Scott: Where do people go? If they're listening to this and they're
driving their car and they want to pull up their phone?

[00:26:28] Tiago: No, no, don't do that! Go to "buildingasecondbrain.com".

You can go there and there'll be a link to it. It's a completely free public
resource. I also linked to many places throughout the book. And all it is, is just a
step-by-step process of determining what is your note taking style? First of all, I
actually joke that you don't choose a note-taking, note-taking chooses you.
Because it's so personal. It's so related to your temperament, your personality
and your goals, the way that you naturally think about information.

So, we have four archetypes, including a video that describes what each one is.
And then I introduce you to some of the different categories of second brain
apps. Because it's not just note taking apps, there's web clippers, there's audio or
video transcription apps, there's PDF readers, there's eBook readers etc.

There are probably a dozen different kinds. And then at the end, we have a
comprehensive directory, naming specific products with the links to their
websites, the kind of operating system that they function on, the type of second
brain it is. And we're committing to updating that, essentially indefinitely, to
just to keep it relevant and timely.

[00:27:50] Scott: That's very cool. I'm definitely after this, going to check out
and figure out what my style is. This is like a personality test. I like that. So, one
of the things that I thought was really interesting about this book, especially in
light of what we're talking about. About this being sort of for 'creative work and
ideas and learning', not necessarily tasks, not necessarily the kind of busy
executive stereotype that I think Getting Things Done sometimes falls into.

Is the idea of organizing notes in terms of the action situations that they might
be required. So you talk about this 'PARA system', in terms of organizing things
for action. And I think this goes back to my original problem that I talked about-
you get all these notes and then you're like, ugh, I got to go through them...

How do you organize your notes so that they become actionable? So that they
come up for you at the right time? So that they're set up in your ecosystem so
that when you need to know something, you encounter it again.
[00:28:58] Tiago: Yeah, totally. I think that's the driving principle of much of
what I teach is. You know, there's a lot of reasons to take notes. There are some
reasons that are more appreciative. Like, there's a joy, an inherent joy in
thinking for sure. But I think what I'm most interested in or what I care about or
what makes the biggest difference to people's lives, I think, and their careers
and their businesses is "completed creative projects". To me, that is the unit of
progress that is most relevant in today's modern world. A completed creative
project. Not something you're working on, not something you're thinking about
and not something you're collecting research on, but when you can point to a
specific result, a specific outcome that is done, it's finished, it's delivered, it's
shipped. There is an end point.

That means you get to, first of all, step away. You get to offload something
from your workload. But also, that's where the reputation comes from. That's
where you build connections. That's where you prove what you're talking about.

That's where you create impact for others. And the modern knowledge work
often doesn't come to conclusions. Everything is, every version of the website is
just the next version, right? Every version of the document, every version of the
memo, every version, everything is just kind of ongoing, ongoing, ongoing that
I think we have to actually put some intention to having things finish, having
things come to conclusions.

And so, PARA is my framework for organizing. It stands for the four categories
of information. It encompasses everything you might ever want to keep, which
are: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives. But they come in a certain order
of priority.

The first one, as you noted, is Projects, which is the first-class citizen. The first,
the top of the hierarchy. And all it means is to just, I mean, it really couldn't be
simpler. It's just to identify your current active projects. That step alone, we do
this in my course. I lead people live through the process of doing that. Just that
alone is so clarifying.

If you ask the average person, what are the currently active projects? They can't
really tell. They have a vague idea. Others are very unclear. But it's just making
a list - this is what I'm committed to, this is what I've decided is going to
happen. And then once you've done that, you've done 90% of the work of
setting up PARA, which is to just create a notebook or folder or tag or
whatever, scheme your note taking app uses for each one of your active
projects.
When you create a container for something, you start to see more of the things
that could go in there. It's like having a placeholder. So, when you create these,
empty notebooks or folders, suddenly you realize everything you touch that's
related to your projects, which is most things, can just with one motion, be put
right into the corresponding notebook. Which means the next time you work on
that project; you just go right to that notebook and you have everything related
to it in one place.

[00:32:02] Scott: So, I want to end on a kind of a personal story. I really liked
the discussion of your father, because he was an artist, or is an artist, has had an
influence on how you think about creative work. Which, I mean, my parents
aren't artists. A lot of people here probably don't have artistic parents, but how
did that influence your thinking about not only the creative process, but how
creative work actually happens and how it actually gets done as opposed to
maybe the mythos that surrounds it?

[00:32:32] Tiago: Yeah. It has such a profound impact. Growing up, it was like
living in two worlds because, he'd paint these beautiful, imaginative, colorful
paintings. And everyone came over to the house or they saw the website or
they'd see his art in a gallery- they had this, I could just tell they had this image
of him, that was like the 'classic artists'. And they saw him as this mystical,
spontaneous, completely structureless, imaginative person. Which he is. But I
saw what happened behind the scenes. I saw the other side of the equation,
which is my dad is so structured. He's so systematic, everything functions,
according to a principle. Every time he approaches a painting, he is approaching
it from a very systematic way. That is what allowed him to be prolific. To not
get bogged down for weeks and months on one painting. It allowed him to earn
a living from it. Which is an enormous accomplishment in any field. And
allowed them to raise four kids in Southern California, which is an even more
difficult accomplishment.

I think that's what so many, whether they call themselves artists or creatives or
writers, or just knowledge workers are missing today. They have a gift, they
have some talent, they have some good ideas. They have opportunities. They
have all the pieces of the puzzle. But they're just missing that systematic
process, mostly because they just didn't have a model.

Most of our models come from movies or films, right? Or it's that classic just
free form, just no principles, no structure, no process. And I just think that's not
realistic.
[00:34:24] Scott: I love that. And I think that really reflects a lot of my ideas
about creativity that I think we romanticize the insight and often not the
persistence and effort and indeed what you talk about- the systematicity of it.

So, I want to thank you for chatting with me and helping me with some of my
own note taking issues. I really recommend everyone to check out a Tiago
Forte's book. I think if you liked Ultralearning or even if you hated
Ultralearning, they're very similar books in a way that they work well together.
Because I often talk about learning and what's going on in your head and Tiago
is often talking about what's going on paper or computer to sort of compliment
that. And I think they're both really important parts of the puzzle. So, I want to
turn it to you. Is there anything else that you'd like to say, is there anywhere that
you'd like to send people direct them? If they're listening to this?

[00:35:15] Tiago: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. And I would,
I would echo that. Note-taking as a great compliment to any personal growth,
personal development or self-improvement pursuit. Whatever you're learning,
whatever that is, using all the techniques that Scott talks about in his book - it's
just a place to document it. It's just your, your journal, your log, the companion
to your personal learning. So, I encourage you to check out,
buildingasecondbrain.com. There you'll find links to all of our free content, to
the book, to the course, it's really the central hub. Thanks for having me on
Scott.

[00:35:54] Scott: It was great chatting with you.