- Tiago Forte’s course on capturing, organizing, and sharing your knowledge using digital notes
- We spent countless hours receiving information yet we only retain a small percentage of it
- Because our brain is for having ideas, not storing them
- ==Building a second brain is a methodology for saving and systematically recalling us of the ideas, inspirations, insights and connections we have gained through experience==
- Moving the task of remembering information allows our biological brain to do the things it is good at
- Consolidation of the different sources of experience to create a ongoing live document is the goal
- Part 1: Remember
- First step of the second brain is to capture the ideas and insights you think are worth saving
- Most of the time, this capturing process is haphazard and fragmented
- ==We need to be deliberate== - I have tried various systems to capture knowledge and still trying to find one that I can do consistently and find value from
- Think like a curator - instead of funneling all the experience in, try to be objective, opinionated, and reflective
- Organize your content by project - by grouping information with projects it gives them purpose
- Keep only what resonates - training ourselves to notice what resonates in a deep level will improve our senses to discover opportunities
- Part 2: Connect
- With enough information, certain things will trigger your pool of knowledge and you can connect new ideas with stored insights
- This process can be made deliberate by distilling my notes into actionable, bite-sized summaries
- Design notes for future self - edit it constantly for my future self
- ==Summarize progressively==, at different levels of detail - notes have to be light and easy to digest. Progressive summary helps with this by saving only the best parts and summarizing chunks of these parts every once in a while and then summarize those summaries
- Organize opportunistically - because you can’t forecast how these notes will be useful in the future, don’t try to optimize from the get go. Instead ==try to optimize the notes each time I use it, so the most useful ones rise to the top organically==
- Part 3: Create
- All the work is to allow me to create tangible results in the real world
- With this second brain, I can create something and draw on everything I have experienced throughout life
- Don’t consume passively, put it to use - this is a common trap for people who likes learning, they never put new knowledge to use but rather learn and learn non-stop without end
- Create smaller, reusable units of work - think of solving small chunks of work instead of an entire project