Lumos Notes
39
B. Building A Second Brain
By Tiago Forte
My summary
- BASB is a framework for offloading information from your brain into a central digital hub
- My 3 takeaways
- PARA method is key to creating a single-source of truth that is agnostic of all tools. It sorted by most actionable to least actionable and is highly flexible allowing your digital notes to keep up with the fast pace of life.
- CODE focuses on distilling your notes organically, allowing what resonates most with you to decide whether it should be captured or not. It includes two modes – Divergence and Convergence – to aid in identifying the most productive focus in the moment. It also emphasizes the importance of distilling notes down to their essence, setting your future self up for success
- Do what only you can do: View the world with an open mind and curate your own digital workspace. You do not need to put all the pressure of productivity on your brain, you can leverage the world and your second brain to free yourself up to focus on what matters most.
- BASB could have been shorter. Many chapters felt overly verbose and some advice wasn’t specific or practical enough
Chapter 1-4 / track 3-7
- In any piece of content the value is not evenly distributed (BASB)
- Does it inspire me
- Is it useful
- Is it personal
- It it surprising
- List the 4 types that should not be in notes (BASB)
- Generic Information: Common knowledge or information easily found elsewhere.
- Raw Data: Unprocessed data that hasn’t been analyzed or synthesized.
- Entire Books/Articles: Instead, capture key insights or ideas.
- Random Ideas: Ideas without a clear connection to your interests or goals.
Chapter 5 / track 8
Organize for action
- try to tag or add to a folder for specific project when you take notes
- Any note that isn’t relevant or actionable can be placed in Resources
- Archive: Projects cancelled, areas no longer responsible for, resources or subjects that you don’t care about or are no longer relevant
- Inside each top level folders, projects and areas get their own folders then notes go inside each of those folders
- In resources: each topic gets a folder
- The moment you capture an idea is the worst time to decide where to organize it —> Place in Inbox
- Place an item where it will be useful and by when it will useful the soonest
- Organize like a kitchen: by where they’re going not where they come from
- Projects: pots and pans
- Areas: fridge
- Resources: pantry
- Archive: freezer
- Creating new things is what really matters
Chapter 6 / Track 9
Distill to its essence
- Notes are things to use not just collect
- Highlight the most important points
- The more important your audience hear and take action on your message, the more distilled it needs to be
- Progressive summarization
- Layer 1: captures notes
- Layer 2: bolded passages
- Layer 3: highlighted passages
- Layer 4: executive summary
- Within each layer highlight only the most important or surprising pojnts
- ❌ Mistakes
- Highlighting too much: aim for 10-25%
- Highlighting without a purpose: wait until you have a specific project in mind
- Making highlighting difficult: rely on intuition to know what’s interesting or relevant
Chapter 7 / Track 10
Express, show your work
- Break your work into Intermediate packets
- Outtakes (ideas that didn’t make the cut but could be used in the future)
- Deliverables
- Documents
- Deliver in smaller bits and include people early for feedback
- View your work as an assembly process of building blocks and consider what can be acquired either from your Second Brain or existing work / templates
- There is a cost to you when you think you have to solely produce everything from scratch. It is unrealistic
- 4 methods for retrieval of intermediate packets
- Search: save in a central place and don’t waste time looking
- Browsing: turn to manual navigation for more control
- Tags: folders can isolate ideas, tags provide more fusion and allow the original hierarchy to be preserved
- Bonus chapter on tags: basb.com/bonuschapter
- Serendipity: keep your search broad at first. Sharing with others provides useful feedback
- Creativity is inherently collaborative, borrow someone else’s perspective
Chapter 8 / track 11
- Two types of work modes
- Divergence: a time for wandering (C + O)
- Convergence: collect and narrowing the range of (D + E)
- Archipelago: build a series of stepping stones of ideas and topics
- Sequencing: Create an outline of your findings and keep it high level then link to your own notes on specific topics (avoid going back to internet)
- Start with abundance
- Hemingway Bridge: end with the beginning in mind. After each session you keep some energy in reserve as a launchpad for the next step in your process
- Dial down the scope: thin slices!
Chapter 9 / track 12
- 3 habits for organizational productivity
- Project checklists: make use of past work and work consistently
- Weekly / monthly reviews: reevaluate often
- Noticing habits: find small ways to improve every day
- Project kickoff checklist: 20-30m max, just planning not doing
- Capture my current thinking on the projects
- Review tags and folders
- Search related terms
- Move or tags relevant notes for project
- Create outline of collected notes and plan project
- Project completion checklist
- Mark project as complete in tasks
- Cross out goal and move to completed
- Review intermediate packets and move to other folders
- Move project to Archives in all platforms
- If inactive, add a status note before archiving
- Give yourself the freedom to not feel like you have to make progress all the time
- Reflect as much as possible to improve for next time
- Batch process notes
- Review your work weekly and active projects
- Review the notes from the past week and move to appropriate PARA folder
- Avoid getting sucked in to the content, let your future self review when it’s relevant
Chapter 10 / track 13
- Mindset over Toolset
- The more weight you place on performing, the less space you have for imagination and creativity
- Give your first brain a job – your brain does not have to do all the remembering
- From scarcity to abundance
- We’ve been conditioned to the idea that information is fleeting and we must collect as much as possible
- We only need a few seeds of wisdom. Listen to what life is repeatedly trying to tell you
- Obligation to service
- Faced with the evidence of all that you know, there is a growing inner feeling to no longer wait to give back to the world
- There are problems in the world that you are specifically equipped to solve
- Consuming to creating
- What you capture is reflecting something that is already within you
- Capturing acts as hooks to pull these truths out of you
- Self expression is a fundamental need
- Ex: Mindfulness & writing in public
- Give yourself freedom to adjust the system so it continues to serve you
- Don’t hesitate to step back and reprioritize at any point
- 12 practical steps
- Decide what you want to capture
- Choose your notes app (https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/resources)
- Choose a capture tool / read later app
- Setup PARA
- Identify 12 favorite problems
- Automatically capture e-book highlights
- Practice progressive summarization
- Review intermediate packets
- Make progress on one deliverable
- Schedule a weekly review with yourself
- Assess notetaking proficiency
- Join the PKM community online
- Chase what excites you