Top Lessons and Thoughts From Building a Second Brain

Below are the highlights from the post I just published. To read the full post with highlights from the book go here

My Thoughts

This is a great book for anyone who is not familiar with the concept of Second Brain or haven't yet encountered PKM. The reason I gave it such a low grade is that for me there wasn't much new information.

This doesn't mean that the book won't work for you. If you are new to this, then go ahead, read it, Tiago is indeed one of the best experts in the field. If, on the other hand, you are familiar with the Second Brain narrative, then you don't need to read this. It is unlikely, that you will pick up anything new.

Tiago has some fantastic writings in the blog format at fortelabs, but this book (in my personal opinion) is just a collection of these posts. I would strongly recommend you check out those first and then consider the book.

Despite all of the things I have said above, I still made some notes that might prove useful in the future. Some of the highlights are great summarizations of the ideas that Tiago talks about, thgouhout the book. You can check them out below.

Summary

• Creating a digital archive (or the Second Brain) with learning, ideas and anthing else that sparks your interest is something that anyone can and should do to thrive in the digital world that we live in today.

• Your professional success and quality of life depend directly on your ability to manage information effectively.

• There are 4 key components to your Second Brain (CODE framework):

  • Capture - You need to make it as easy as possible to capture ideas, whether from your own head or from reading a book or an article.
  • Organize - You need a system to organize there ideas. For that Tiago proposes the PARA system, discussed later.
  • Distill - Just saving ideas won't do you any good, you need to activly summarize and imrpove the notes you are taking. This is the key to meaningful ideas.
  • Express - The purpose of knowledge is to be shared. What’s the point of knowing something if it doesn’t positively impact anyone, not even yourself? Learning shouldn’t be about hoarding stockpiles of knowledge like gold coins. Knowledge is the only resource that gets better and more valuable the more it multiplies.

• PARA Method is one of the most efficient and simplest method to organize your work accoridng to Tiago. PARA stands for:

  • Project - is for projects (duh) with a clear end goal in mind. For example, "write a review on 'Building a Second Brain'"
  • Area - is for things that don't have an end goal but are ongoing in your life, for example, "Finances", "Cooking", "Journaling", etc.
  • Resource - Is for general topics that you are interested in, this is where you will put notes, ideas, highlights, that are not most immediate to any of your projects. For example, "Neuroscience", "Coding", "American History", etc.
  • Archive - Is for projects, resources, or areas that are no longer useful to you. Though, generally, you will be putting "projects" here. You don't want to delete things, only archive, since that way you will be able to look them up later, and leverage the power of search that most applications have.

• The three habits most important to your Second Brain include:

  • Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work. The purpose of using project checklists isn’t to make the way you work rigid and formulaic. It is to help you start and finish projects cleanly and decisively, so you don’t have “orphaned” commitments that linger on with no end in sight.
  • Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything.
  • Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.