Reflecting on a Second Brain

The concepts shared are from Tiago Forte’s Building a Second Brain and The PARA Method, two books that I read over summer holiday (yes, nonfiction is my flavor of “beach read” books).

Tiago makes the case for a second brain because we encounter and use tons of information in our daily lives, but do not have the capacity to store all of that information for future recall.

Implementing the second brain makes use of the CODE method:

1. Collect: start saving things that are relevant to you

2. Organize: move what you have collected into different buckets (aligned to Forte’s PARA framework)

3. Distill: highlight, annotate, and derive works from the things that you save

4. Express: essentially how you interact with content, regardless of what state it is

Organizing relies on the PARA framework to define where information lives in the second brain:

• Projects: things with finite timelines

• Areas: things with indefinite timelines 

• Resources: topics of interest

• Archive: things that are no longer relevant to the first three points

There are many different apps or tools to use to implement those concepts. Tiago provides practical advice and comparisons, and maintains an online resource as the marketplace evolves.

Whether implementing this for work or personal pursuits, there is significant value in having a standardized framework and system to track information.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of things to put into your second brain as someone driving digital transformation in your organization:

• Meeting notes (attendees, agenda, discussion points, action items)

• Emails with relevant information that isn’t part of attachments

• Documentation produced by your colleagues, consultants, and vendors

• Conferences you attend (notes; agendas; pictures of slides, booths, and business cards)

• Articles saved as screenshots, PDFs, or pictures of physical magazines

• Ideas on future things to change

• Inspiration from competitors or companies from different industries

• Materials related to completed projects or legacy systems (i.e. all of the points above that become your archive)

TLDR: Consider using Forte’s PARA and CODE frameworks for how you track information for future recall in your daily life (work and personal).