2/20/24, 3:19 PM Building a Second Brain: The Definitive Introductory Guide

 

Building a Second Brain: The Definitive

Introductory Guide
 POSTED IN BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN, EDUCATION, NOTE-TAKING, ORGANIZING, PRODUCTIVITY, WORKFLOW
ON MAY 1, 2023 BY TIAGO FORTE

LAST MODIFIED NOVEMBER 23, 2023

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes



This is an introduction to Building a Second Brain, the
proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your
creative potential.

How many brilliant ideas have you had and forgotten? How many insights
have you failed to take action on? How much useful advice have you slowly
forgotten as the years have passed?

We feel a constant pressure to be learning, improving ourselves, and making progress. We spend
countless hours every year reading, listening, and watching informational content. And yet,
where has all that valuable knowledge gone? Where is it when we need it?

Our brains just aren’t capable of remembering all these details since they can only store a few
thoughts at any one time. Fundamentally, our brains are for having ideas, not storing them.
Hi. Need any help?
Building a Second Brain is a methodology for saving and systematically reminding us of the
ideas, inspirations, insights, and connections we’ve gained through our experience. It provides a
clear, actionable path to creating a “Second Brain” – an external, centralized, digital

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repository for the things you learn and the resources from which they come. A Second Brain
ultimately expands our memory and our intellect using modern tools of technology.

Being effective in the world today requires managing many different kinds of information –
emails, text messages, messaging apps, online articles, books, podcasts, webinars, meeting
notes, and many others.


All of these kinds of content have value, but trying to remember all of it is overwhelming and
impractical. By consolidating ideas from these sources, you’ll develop a valuable body of work to
advance your projects and goals. You’ll have an ongoing record of personal discoveries,
lessons learned, and actionable insights for any situation.

We are already doing most of the work required to consume this content. We spend a significant
portion of our careers creating snippets of text, outlines, photos, videos, sketches, diagrams,
webpages, notes, or documents. Yet, without a little extra care to preserve these valuable
resources, our precious knowledge remains siloed and scattered across dozens of different
locations. We fail to build a collection of knowledge that both appreciates in value and can be
reused again and again.

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By offloading our thinking onto a Second brain, we free our biological brain to imagine,
create, and simply be present. We can move through life confident that we will remember
everything that matters, instead of floundering through our days struggling to keep track of
every detail.

Your Second Brain will serve as an extension of your mind, not only protecting you from the
ravages of forgetfulness but also amplifying your efforts as you take on creative challenges.


The Building a Second Brain Methodology will teach you how to:

1. Reduce stress and “information overload” by curating and managing your personal
 information stream

 2. Create a digital environment that promotes clarity and peace of mind

3. Unlock the full value of the wealth of learning resources all around you, such as online

courses, webinars, books, articles, forums, and podcasts
4. Find anything you’ve learned, touched, or thought about in the past within seconds
5. Spend less time looking for things and more time doing the best, most creative work you
are capable of
6. Cultivate a collection of valuable knowledge and insights over time without having to
follow rigid, time-consuming rules
7. Consistently move your projects and goals to completion by organizing and accessing
your knowledge in a results-oriented way
8. Turn work “off” and relax, knowing you have a trusted system keeping track of all the
details

So, how do you build your Second Brain?

To guide you in the process of creating your own Second Brain, I’ve developed a simple four-step
method called CODE, which stands for Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express.

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
These are the steps not only to build your Second Brain but also to work with
it going forward.


CODE is a proven process for consistently turning the information you consume into
creative output and concrete results. And it’s based on timeless principles that humans
throughout history have used to create anything imaginable.

The four steps of CODE are flexible and agnostic for any profession, role, or career and for
whatever notetaking methods and platforms you prefer. You’re probably already doing them
already in some form, whether you realize it or not.

Let me introduce you to each step, starting with Capture.

Capture only the most important information

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
The first step in building a Second Brain is “capturing” the ideas and insights you think are
worth saving. Ask yourself:

What are the recurring themes and questions that I always seem to return to in my work
and life?
What insightful, high-value, impactful information do I already have access to that could be
valuable?
Which knowledge do I want to interconnect, mix and match, and periodically resurface to
stimulate future thinking on these subjects?

Most of the time we tend to capture information haphazardly – we email ourselves a quick note,
brainstorm some ideas in a Word document, or take notes on books we read – but then don’t do
anything with it.

We are already consuming or producing this information, we just need to keep it in a single,
centralized place, such as a digital notetaking app like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, Notion,
Apple Notes, Obsidian or others. These apps facilitate capturing small “snippets” of text as well
as hyperlinks, images, webpages, screenshots, PDFs, and other attachments, all of which are
saved permanently and synced across all your devices.

By keeping a diverse collection of information in one centralized place, it is now free to intermix
and intermingle, helping us see unexpected connections and patterns in our thinking. This also
gives us one place to look when we need creative raw material, supporting research, or a
shot of inspiration.

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The following three guidelines will help you capture only the most relevant and useful
information in your Second Brain.

THINK LIKE A CURATOR

The second we pick up our mobile device or sit down in front of our computer, we become
immersed in the flow of juicy information we are presented with.

Much of this information is useful and interesting – articles written by experts that could make us

more productive, tips on exercise and nutrition, or fascinating stories from around the world.
But unless we make conscious, strategic decisions about what we consume, we’ll always be
at the mercy of what others want us to see.


Too often, we just passively react to the information that’s been shoved in front of us by other
people and algorithms.


How do you escape this reactivity loop?

Instead of immediately consuming what’s in front of you, save it so you can

revisit it later (at a time that’s reserved for consumption).

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Read-later apps such as Readwise’s Reader, Instapaper, or Pocket are designed for this
particular purpose. As you begin to collect content, you’ll be able to choose which sources to
consume in a deliberate way.

KEEP ONLY WHAT RESONATES

The word “capturing” often brings to mind an analytical way of thinking. But analysis is time-
consuming and tiring. In deciding which passages, images, theories, or quotes to keep, don’t
make it a highly intellectual, analytical decision.

Instead, your rule of thumb should be to save anything that “resonates” with you on an
intuitive level.

This is often because it connects to something you care about, wonder about, or find inherently
intriguing. By training ourselves to notice when something resonates with us at a deeper level,
we improve not only our ability to see opportunities, but also our understanding of ourselves
and how we work.

UTILIZE CAPTURE TOOLS

When you dive into the world of digital notetaking, you’ll soon come across an array of
specialized “capture tools,” designed to make capturing content in digital form easy and
even fun.

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The most common options include:

Ebook apps: Export your highlights or annotations from the books you’ve read
Read later apps: Save content you find online for later consumption and export your
highlights into your notetaking app
Basic notes apps: Capture snippets of text on the fly with these preinstalled apps on your
mobile device
Social media apps: “Favorite” content and export it to your notetaking app
Audio/voice transcription apps: Create text transcripts from spoken words
Web clipper apps: Save parts of web pages (often included as a built-in feature of
notetaking apps)

While some of these tools are free, others charge a small fee. Some work silently in the
background (for example, automatically syncing your ebook highlights with your notes app),
and others require some manual effort (such as taking photos of paper notebooks to save them
digitally).

In any case, the act of capturing takes seconds—to hit share, export, or save—and voilà, you’ve
preserved the best parts of whatever you’re consuming in your Second Brain.

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Since the software landscape is constantly changing, we’ve created a Resource Guide with
updated recommendations of the best capture tools, both free and paid, and for a variety of
devices and operating systems.

Organize for actionability



As you begin to collect notes on ideas that resonate with you, you will eventually feel the need to
organize them.

It can be tempting to try to create a perfect hierarchy of folders from the get-go, with the aim
of capturing every possible note you might ever come across. However, this approach is not only
time-consuming, but it also diverts your attention from what interests you now, requiring too
much effort.

Most people tend to organize information by subject, similar to the Dewey decimal system used
in libraries. For example, books might be classified under broad subject categories such as
“Architecture,” “Business,” “History,” or “Geology.”

When it comes to digital notes, simpler and more flexible organization methods are
preferable. Our priorities and goals can change quickly, so we should avoid organizing methods
that are overly rigid and prescriptive.

The best way to organize your notes is to focus on your active projects. When you encounter
new information, think about how it can help you move forward something you’re currently
working on.
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Surprisingly, focussing on taking action, will also help you combat information overwhelm.
There are relatively few things that are actionable and relevant at any given time, which makes it
easier to ignore everything else.

Organizing for action can provide a great sense of clarity because you know that everything
you’re keeping has a purpose and aligns with your goals and priorities. Instead of being a
hindrance to your productivity, organizing becomes a tool to enhance it.


The following three guidelines will help you organize the information in your Second Brain
effectively.


ADOPT THE PARA METHOD
After more than a decade of personal experimentation, teaching thousands of students, and
coaching world-class professionals, I’ve developed a way to organize information by

actionability.

It’s called PARA – a simple, comprehensive, yet extremely flexible system for organizing
any type of digital information across any platform.

Rest assured, adopting this approach will not only bring a sense of order to your life but also
equip you with valuable tools to manage the flow of information and accomplish any goal you
set for yourself.

The PARA Method is grounded in a fundamental observation: that all the information in your
life can be categorized into only four categories.

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Projects: short-term efforts (in your work or personal life) that you take on with a certain
goal in mind
Areas: Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time
Resources: Topics or interests that may be useful in the future
Archive: Inactive items from the other 3 categories

It might be hard to accept that a sophisticated and contemporary human existence like yours
can be reduced to just four categories. It may seem like you have more to manage than could
possibly fit into such a basic system.

However, that is precisely the objective. If your organizational system is as intricate as your life,
then the effort required to maintain it will deprive you of the time and energy necessary to
actually live your life.

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The system you use to manage information must be so effortless that it liberates your focus
rather than constraining it. Your system must provide you with time, not consume it.

START WITH A CLEAN SLATE

I found that the number one roadblock to implementing PARA or any other organizational
system is that most people think they have to sort ALL their existing notes and files into it.

I couldn’t think of a more boring, demotivating task. It would take you hours if not days!


And the result? You’ll probably feel just as overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information you
now have to manage as before.

Here’s what I recommend instead (it will take you less than 60 seconds to do):


Move all existing files to a folder titled Archive with today’s date.

Consider this folder a “time capsule” that preserves everything you had going on until this
precise moment. Now, it separates what was saved prior to today’s date from what you’ll save
from this point on.

That’s it! Your digital workspace is now completely clean so you can start over.

The best thing is that you’re not deleting anything. Whenever you need a file, you can always
pull it out of your Archive folder. But my guess is that you won’t need as many old notes as you
think you do.

ASK THREE QUESTIONS

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Now that you’re starting from a clean slate, how do you “process” any new items into the
appropriate PARA folders?

Ask yourself the following three questions to consider in which project, area, or resource a
given piece of information will be most relevant and useful.

What project would this be useful?

If none: Which area will this be useful for?
If none: Which resource does this belong to?
If none, it’s probably best to archive this information or not save it at all.

With some practice, this decision will only take you a few seconds.

I prefer to do this “filing” in one batch about once a week. I pull up my “Inbox” – a separate
folder as a temporary holding area where new items accumulate until I have time to put them in

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their proper place – and process 10-20 items in just a few minutes.

Don’t overthink where you’re going to put a certain piece of information within PARA.
Remember that you can almost certainly find anything again using a simple search.


Get the Second Brain Quickstart Guide



Our free 6-day email course will introduce you to the fundamentals
 of Building a Second Brain.

Your email address Send Me Lesson 1

Distill down to the essence

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Once you start collecting valuable knowledge in a centralized place, you’ll naturally start to
notice patterns and connections. An article you read on gardening will give you an insight into
online marketing. An offhand comment by a client will give you the idea of creating a webpage
with client testimonials. A business card you saved from a conference will remind you to follow
up and propose a collaboration.

You can greatly facilitate and speed up this process by distilling your notes into actionable,
bite-sized summaries.


It would be near impossible to review your 10 pages of notes on a book you read last year in the
midst of a chaotic workday, for example. But if you had just the main points of that book in a 3-

point summary, you could quickly remind yourself of what it contains and potentially apply it to
something you’re working on.

The following three guidelines will help you summarize and distill your notes into actionable,

useful tools for execution.

DESIGN NOTES FOR YOUR FUTURE SELF

A powerful mindset for interacting with our notes is to “design notes with your future self in
mind.”

Think of notetaking as time travel. You’re sending packets of knowledge through time to your
future self.

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So the challenge is: “How do I make what I’m consuming right now easily
discoverable for my future self?”

Every time you create a note or make an edit, you can make it just a little easier to find and
make use of next time.

This can include:

Defining key terms in case we forget what they mean

Inserting placeholders when we leave off so we know where to pick back up
Adding links to related websites, files, or emails that we’re likely to forget over time

By constantly saving packets of knowledge in a format that our future self can easily consume,
we follow a “pay it forward” strategy that we get to benefit from in the future!

SUMMARIZE PROGRESSIVELY, AT DIFFERENT LEVELS OF DETAIL

A common problem with notes is that they are too long and dense. You can’t afford the time it
would take to review and remind yourself of everything they contain. Executive summaries can
help, but often it is a challenge to identify what exactly the main point is in the first place.

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Progressive Summarization is a technique that relies on summarizing a note in multiple stages

over time.

You save only the best excerpts from whatever you’re reading, and then create a summary of
those excerpts, and then a summary of that summary, distilling the essence of the content at
each stage. These “layers” are like a digital map that can be zoomed in or out to any level of
detail you need.

Progressive Summarization allows you to read the note in different ways

for different purposes: in depth if you want to glean every detail, or at a
high level if you just need the main takeaway. This allows you to review a
note’s contents in seconds to decide if it’s useful for the task at hand.

DISTILL OPPORTUNISTICALLY, A LITTLE BIT AT A TIME

It can be tempting to spend a lot of time creating highly structured, perfect notes. The problem
is, you often have no idea which sources will end up being valuable until much later.

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Instead of investing a lot of effort upfront, distill your notes opportunistically, in small bits over
time

Your rule of thumb should be: add value to a note every time you touch it. This could include
adding an informative title the first time you come across a note, highlighting the most
important points the next time you see it, and adding a link to a related note sometime later.

By spreading out the heavy work of distilling your notes over time, you not only save time and

effort but ensure that the most frequently used (and thus most valuable) notes surface
organically, like a ski slope where the most popular routes naturally end up with deeper grooves.


Express your unique ideas and experiences


All of this capturing, organizing, and distilling has one ultimate purpose: creating tangible
results in the real world. Whether we want to lose weight, get a promotion at work, start a side
business, or contribute to a cause we believe in, the true purpose of learning is to turn our
knowledge into effective action.

With a substantial reserve of supporting material in your Second Brain, you never need to sit
down to an empty page and try to “think of something smart.” All creativity stands on the
shoulders of giants, and you have the benefit of already having the best ideas of those giants
documented in your notes!

What should you create?

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It depends on your skills, interests, and personality. If you are analytical, you could draw on a
group of articles you’ve read about Big Data to write a blog post summarizing where you think
machine learning is headed next. If you like to perform, you could borrow ideas from your notes
on YouTube cooking videos you’ve enjoyed to make one of your own. If you are campaigning for
investment in your local park, you could distill the minutes from past city council meetings into a
speaking agenda for your public comments at the next one.

With a Second Brain at your disposal, you always have something to inspire you, remind you,

support you, or guide you as you engage in the projects and interests that are important to you.
You can draw on the sum total of your life experience and learning, not just whatever you
can think of in the moment.


The following three guidelines will help you create more, better, and more meaningful creative
output for whatever purpose you decide is important.


DON’T JUST CONSUME INFORMATION PASSIVELY – PUT IT TO USE

A common challenge for people who love to learn is that they constantly force-feed themselves
more and more information, but never actually put it to use.

The goals and the experiences that would enrich their lives get endlessly postponed, waiting for
the “right” bit of knowledge they supposedly need before getting started.

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But information only becomes knowledge – something personal, embodied, grounded – when
we put it to use. That’s why we should shift as much of our effort as possible from consuming
information, to creating new things. The things we create – whether they are writing pieces,
websites, photographs, videos, or live performances – embody and express the knowledge
we’ve gained from personal experience.

Think of your Second Brain not as a warehouse where you simply store your most valuable
ideas, but as a factory that helps you turn those ideas into concrete results.


We all need to be part of bringing to life something good, true, or beautiful. Creating things
is not only deeply fulfilling, it can also bring us unexpected opportunities, introduce us to new

friends or collaborators, and have a positive impact on others – by inspiring them, entertaining
them, or informing them.


CREATE SMALLER, REUSABLE UNITS OF WORK
Once you start to curate a collection of valuable knowledge in external form, a very different way
of working becomes not only possible, but necessary.

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You will begin to think of your projects as made up of discrete parts.

I call them Intermediate Packets, which can include any kind of content we’ve already
mentioned: a set of notes from a team meeting, a list of relevant research findings, a brainstorm
with collaborators, a slide deck analyzing the market, or a list of action items from a conference
call, for example.

Instead of trying to sit down and move the entire project forward all at once, which is like trying
to roll a giant boulder uphill, a more effective approach is to end each work session – whether
it is 15 minutes or 3 hours – by completing just one Intermediate Packet.

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This allows you to work in smaller increments, making use of any available span of time, while
getting lots of feedback and taking frequent breaks.

Not only does this result in higher quality output, it fuels the motivation and the inspiration that
we need to do our best work. These Intermediate Packets can then be saved to your Second
Brain, and re-used the next time you have a similar need.

SHARE YOUR WORK WITH THE WORLD

There are many benefits all along the process of building a Second Brain: less stress, better
focus, more insights, and enhanced productivity. But the real payoff comes at the end, when
you create something out of the knowledge you’ve collected and share it with the world.


It can be tempting to wait until everything is “ready,” until you have all the information you think
you need, and all the sources have been double-checked and reviewed. But as you continually

curate and save pieces of content, review and summarize them, create a series of Intermediate
Packets, and then recycle them back into your Second Brain, you’ll start to realize that there is
no such thing as a finished product.

Everything is in flux, everything is a work in progress, and everything you put out there has an
implicit “version 1.0” attached to it.

This can be tremendously empowering – since nothing is ever final, there is no need to wait to
get started. You can publish a simple website now, and slowly add additional pages as you have
time. You can publish a draft blog post now, and make revisions later after you’ve received
feedback. You could even self-publish an ebook on the Kindle store, and any future updates to
the manuscript will be wirelessly synced to everyone who purchased the book.

By consistently sharing your work with others – whether that is your family, friends, colleagues,
or externally on social media – all sorts of benefits will start to materialize.

You’ll connect with new collaborators who you never would have imagined would find your
work compelling. You’ll attract clients or customers, in some cases even when you weren’t
seeking them. Others will reflect back to you their reactions and comments and appreciation
(and occasionally criticism). You’ll find that you are part of a community that shares your
interests and values.

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Accomplishing anything meaningful or important requires working with others, and the
incredible power of the internet now allows us to find each other no matter how obscure or
strange our interests.

The power of having a Second Brain


Each note in your Second Brain is a record of something you’ve experienced in your life –
whether that is from reading a book, having an interesting conversation, or completing a project
at work.


With all your most valuable ideas at your fingertips at all times, you never need to struggle
and strain to remember everything you’ve learned.

As your Second Brain gains momentum over weeks and months, you will start to become

different. You will no longer think about things in isolation, but as part of a network of ideas in
which everything affects everything else. You’ll realize that something you learned at work
about effective communication also applies to your family vacation debate. A random fact you
read in an airplane magazine will somehow end up being useful in a blog post you’re writing. A
lesson from Ancient Greek history you picked up from a podcast on your morning commute will
help you deal with a crisis at the office.

You will start to think in terms of the systems and principles that you’ve gleaned through
your summarizing and reviewing, and see them everywhere. Your mind will start to work
differently, learning to depend on this external tool to draw on resources, references, and
research far beyond what it can remember on its own. You will start to conceive of “your work”
as an integrated whole that you can actually point to, shape, and navigate in a direction of your
choosing. You’ll be more objective and unattached, because if any single idea doesn’t work out,
you know you have a huge trove of others ready to go.

Over time, you will start to recognize that everything you are learning and experiencing
makes sense. You can see, mapped in the notes you are cultivating, the underlying structure of
your life. Why you do things, what you really want, what’s really important and what isn’t.

Your Second Brain becomes like a mirror, reflecting back to you who you think you are, who you
want to be, and who you could become. Because you know how to capture and make use of
anything, every experience you have becomes an opportunity to learn and grow.

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As this self-understanding dawns, you will look around at the notes you’ve collected, and you
will realize that you already have everything you need to get started. You will start combining
the ideas together, forming new perspectives, new theories, and new strategies. Ideas about
society, about art, about psychology, about spirituality, about technology will start intermixing
and spawning ideas you’ve never consciously considered. You’ll be shocked, in fact, at the
elegance and power of what pops out of your notes.

This epiphany won’t just exist in your head. People can tell. They’ll start to notice that you can

draw on an unusually large body of knowledge at a moment’s notice. They will admire your
amazing memory, but what they don’t know is that you never try to remember anything. They’ll
admire your incredible self-discipline and dedication at developing ideas over time, not knowing

that you’ve created a system in which insights and connections emerge organically. They’ll be
impressed by your ability to produce so much creative output, but in reality, you never lock

yourself in a room to “crank out” some work. You just let your projects simmer until they’re
ready.

Building a Second Brain is an integrated set of behaviors for turning incoming information
into completed creative projects.

Instead of endlessly optimizing yourself, trying to become a productivity machine that never
deviates from the plan, it has you optimize an external system that is more reliable than you will
ever be. This frees you to imagine, to wonder, to wander toward whatever makes you come alive
here and now in the moment.

Your next steps

Here are three ways to start building your Second Brain:

1. Get the BASB Book: Learn the proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your
creative potential.
2. Join BASB Foundation: Build your Second Brain on your own time and at your own pace
with our self-paced course.
3. Join the next BASB live cohort: Build your fully functional Second Brain with the
momentum, accountability, and support of our team and like-minded Second Brainers.

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The beautiful visuals in this blog post were created by Andrew Nalband,
founder of Thunk Notes.
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