Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

I bought the book looking for productivity tips and a way to get organized. This book goes far beyond that and lays out a methodology of creativity. I was not expecting that and was pleasantly surprised. The book was clearly written and included good examples. While not explicitly giving me the task management/productivity tips I was looking for, it gave me a new fantastic way to organize my thinking and some ideas for how to create my own work and build on my thinking. I enjoyed it very much and even bought a copy for an entrepreneur friend of mine. Would highly recommend the read.

I already knew the author from many YouTube videos and podcast interviews. I decided to pick up this book because I'm spending a lot of time behind a screen and because I'm always looking for ways to improve my workflow. Especially for creating content for my YouTube channel and blog.In the introduction, Tiago makes it very clear that we're bombarded with information and that if you don't have a system to deal with this, you will feel overwhelmed. This resonated with me, and is in fact why I've been a heavy note taker for a while. Writing things down allows my brain to relax, knowing that everything is saved in my notes.The book is centered around the CODE principle (capture, organize, distill, express). And I feel that capturing is the most important part of it. Whenever you get an idea, you should have a system to place it into and keep track of it. I often have random ideas throughout the day, and I always write them down so I can capitalize on them at a later stage.For example: I rarely come up with an idea for a video and sit down to write the whole script in one go. Instead, I get random ideas over time. A better way of explaining something, a slick visualization that I can use, a cool play of words, etc. I capture these over time, so when I finally sit down to write a script for the video, I'm already halfway there.But I digress. To organize notes, Tiago suggests using his PARA system (projects, areas, resources, archive) but I found it to be too organized for my taste. I do have notes per project, and I do have an archive. But everything else just goes into a single folder, and I rely on the search feature to bring up a note whenever I need it.Here are some things that I picked up from the book and implemented in my daily life:* Have an inbox for notes & todos. In the past, whenever I came across something interesting, I kept the tab open in my browser until I had time to process it. Now, I store it in my inbox, which allow me to be "sloppy" when I don't have a lot of time and yet trust that it will be processed eventually.* Having a weekly review process where I look at my inboxes and process the items in it. That means taking ideas and putting them into the correct note (or making new ones), clearing files from my desktop and putting them into the correct place, or tagging tasks and assigning due dates to them.There are a few more concepts that I want to implement, but that's for another time.One negative about the book: there's nothing in here that you couldn't find in Tiago's blog posts or videos.In summary: I enjoyed the book. It has a clear structure and is really approachable. Will revisit in the future!

The short:Tiago Forte gives use a framework to tackle organization of our digital lives and to make technology finally work for us instead of becoming a burden.The good:Forte has three main concepts that help to organize your digital life and improve productivity (i.e. making the data you've capture) accessible and usable, instead of getting lost. Those three concepts are CODE, PARA, and Highlighting 2.0 (or Progressive Summarization).CODE: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express is a nice easy to remember acronym for the "second brain" and how we are to think of it.PARA: (Projects, Areas, Resource, Archive) is a subset of Organize and is how the "brain" is structured. Which changes the "normal" way we think of folder hierarchy in a very powerful way. Most of the things we do in our daily lives are Projects, but we save the data for a project in different "areas" and "resources" (i.e. unrelated folders) and aren't easy to find using browsing and thus create bloat that is never used and continues to grow, PARA is here to solve that.Lastly, Highlighting 2.0: is a powerful way to capture and distill the just of something you've read or written. So, that when you come back to it in 20 years you don't need to read it all over to understand why it was important in the first place (in less of course you wish to do so).The bad:About 50% of this book, probably more (particularly the first 100 pages or so), are portrayal, fluff, salesmanship, cheer-leading, and war stories mean to inspire the reader. Not only is this a huge waste of everyone's time, the author's system should inspire based upon it's own merits and because there was so much "extra", the book wasn't as practical and/or applicable as it could/should have been.This lack of applicability is evident in the fact that they author had to write a second book titled PARA to clarify and expound on the matter when he should have done so in this current book; and unfortunately, based upon what the author has said in this book, I doubt that his second book will truly clarify the matter. In fact, a review of "The PARA Method" by Dennis M says essentially that, "While it does expand on the method, you should be able to get everything you need from BASB".Additionally, Forte lays out a system that is more expansive than the scope of this book alone, leaving the reader to fend for themselves.Epilogue:This is a book that probably should have 5-stars, but tittered dangerously close to being 3-stars. The author has some good insights, he just doesn't execute the transfer of knowledge well in this book and thus the reader must fend for themselves to really implement what the author is trying to convey and will most likely take many reads/look-backs to fully grasp the fully utility of the message. My biggest gripe with this book, is that there's so much extra fluff and trying to sell you on the method and not enough instruction and application. Forte outlines the four methods to find data in his system, the first two being searching (which is easy enough), browsing (which Forte himself cite a study showing this is the preferred method by humans to sieve data) however due to the simplicity and flatness of his PARA system (as is) true browsing is seemingly impossible and it's not clear as how one should rectify this. Forte seems to suggest that we shouldn't worry about it, because not everything is going to be useful, but then why bother organizing at all if you can't find an item you need.

Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte is a book about how to organize and manage your knowledge in a way that makes it more accessible and useful.Author argues that our brains are not designed to store large amounts of information, and that we need to create a "second brain" to help us do this. This second brain can be a physical or digital system, but it should be a place where we can store all of our ideas, notes, and reference materials in a way that we can easily find and use them.The book is divided into four parts: Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express. In the Capture phase, he discusses how to collect information from a variety of sources, including books, articles, podcasts, and online courses. He also talks about how to take notes in a way that is both efficient and effective.The Organize phase is all about creating a system for storing your notes and information. Forte provides a number of different frameworks for organizing your second brain, and he also discusses the importance of using tags and labels to make your information easy to find.The Distill phase is about turning your notes and information into something that is more useful and actionable. Forte talks about how to summarize your notes, identify patterns and connections, and create new ideas.The Express phase is about sharing your knowledge with others. Author discusses how to create presentations, write articles, and publish your work online.Key points of the book:Our brains are not designed to store large amounts of information.We need to create a "second brain" to help us organize and manage our knowledge.A second brain can be a physical or digital system.The four phases of building a second brain are Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express.The Capture phase is about collecting information from a variety of sources.The Organize phase is about creating a system for storing your notes and information.The Distill phase is about turning your notes and information into something that is more useful and actionable.The Express phase is about sharing your knowledge with others.Overall, Building a Second Brain is a well-written and informative book that provides a comprehensive overview of the concept of a second brain. Forte's framework is easy to follow and understand, and he provides a number of practical tips and tools that you can use to build your own second brain.If you are interested in improving your productivity, creativity, and overall knowledge management, then I highly recommend reading this book.

I'm really disappointed about the new book I bought. I was looking forward to reading it, but when I opened it up, I realized that two pages were missing from the table of contents. Those two pages probably contained key information that I needed to fully understand the book. It's so frustrating to spend money on a book, anticipate learning from it, and then find out it's defective right from the start. I can't believe the publishers didn't catch this issue before the book was printed and sold.