All of us have moments when we struggle to absorb new information or recall something important. This book is a step-by-step guide by Tiago Forte on how to build a “Second Brain”—a digital information management system to help you remember, retrieve and fully utilize all sorts of information. This improves your productivity, your creativity, and your ability to achieve any goal. In this free version of Building a Second Brain summary, you’ll learn what the Second Brain is all about, how it works, and the 4-step CODE process to build a Second Brain.
What is The Second Brain?
We live in an information age where we’re surrounded by useful data. Yet, we don’t retain much of what we read or consume, and struggle to remember important facts and information. Tiago Forte created the Second Brain system to help him capture and manage information in various aspects of his life. This book is the culmination of what he learned after 10 years of research, experimentation, and teaching others to build their knowledge management systems.
A Second Brain is like an external brain where you can store and manage useful information. It’s similar to an external hard drive for a computer, or a digital pocket library that contains all the information you want to remember. Your Second Brain will probably be made up of a set of tools/apps (e.g. a note-taking app, calendar, email, to-do list) to store/retrieve critical information.
Why we need a Second Brain
A Second Brain makes ideas tangible, helps you to connect diverse ideas and nurture them over time, and gives you a ready pool of resources to present your views and ideas convincingly. It helps you to manage your personal knowledge in 3 stages:
• As a memory aid to help you remember things (e.g. facts, important dates, project details), and retrieve them easily in the future.
• As a thinking tool to help you associate ideas and see things from fresh perspectives; and
• As an innovation tool to help you combine different ideas and create something new and unique.
This frees up your mental capacity, so you can be more creative, productive, and focus your energy on achieving your goals in life. Do check out our complete 14-page Building a Second Brain summary for more information about the Second Brain’s capabilities and benefits.
Building a Second Brain: The CODE Method
Tiago Forte came up with the 4-step CODE System to help you develop a Second Brain systematically. Here’s an overview of the 4 steps:
Let’s take a quick look at what each step entails.
1. Capture what Resonates
Save noteworthy information that resonates with you, and store them in a location you can control.
For centuries, intellectuals, artists and successful people kept notebooks, sketchbooks, or journals where they recorded their thoughts and reflections. These served as personal knowledge banks where they could return to build on their content and ideas. Songwriters often compile “hook books” of song lyrics and music, software engineers build “code libraries”, and lawyers keep “case files”, and so on.
Forte explains what to capture, with additional tips on how to capture the info using various digital tools (such as read-later apps, web-clipper apps, notes apps, etc.). The key is to consolidate your notes in 1 place. Ideally, choose a note-taking app that:
- Can store multimedia content (images, sketches, audios);
- Is easy to use (no need for complex steps or formatting);
- Is open-ended (so you can add content anytime); and
- Is action-oriented (i.e. you can jot down random thoughts).
Feel free to learn more about note-taking in our free summary of How to Take Smart Notes.
2. Organize for Action
As you accumulate more notes, you’ll need to organize them. Categorize the materials according to the active projects that you’re working on, or how they’ll help to achieve your goals.
Do not sort your notes by generic categories. Organize the information by purpose or action. This gives you greater clarity, so you feel motivated to take action toward your goals.
Forte created the PARA Organizing System to reflect the 4 key types of information around us. You can use this system to file information where it’s the most useful or actionable. Briefly, PARA stands for:
- Projects: specific, short-term items that you’re actively working on right now.
- Areas: personal or professional responsibilities to be managed over the long-term, e.g. health, finance, recruitment.
- References: topics or information that don’t belong to a project and aren’t immediately actionable, but could be useful in the future, e.g. hobbies/interests research topics, or useful references.
- Archives: inactive items from the other 3 categories that you no longer use. Move them to this container to organize your workspace without losing any information
3. Distill the Essence
Our initial notes are like raw materials that must be processed and refined before they can become valuable assets. Filter your notes down to their essence, so you can find, use and share the ideas easily in future. It’s like how Einstein summarized his insights about energy into the well-known equation E=MC2.
Here, Forte presented a Progressive Summarization Technique to help you extract the most important points from your notes. The method basically involves highlighting your notes in layers, using different formats (e.g. bold, underline, written summary).
4. Express your Ideas
Show your work and test your ideas frequently to get feedback. Create a system to store and build on your intermediate work.
Don’t wait for complete or perfect information. Regularly test your ideas in small chunks, e.g. to critique or teach an idea, lobby for a cause, or create a solution. This allows you to gather ideas and feedback, and iteratively refine your ideas until you achieve your goals..
At the same time, use your Second Brain to capture your work-in-progress, which Forte calls “Intermediate Packets” or IPs. These include your notes, outlines, drafts, and feedback, which contain valuable insights that could be reused in future. Learn more about the types and benefits of IPs, and how get tips on how to capture, find and retrieve relevant IPs!
More tips and details about the 4 CODE steps can be found in our complete Building a Second Brain summary.
Improving your Creative Process with CODE
Creativity doesn’t happen randomly. The best creative minds strategize and develop habits that allow them to continually collect, process and combine raw materials to find new inspiration. By the time they sit down to create something, they already have the ingredients in place. The 4-step CODE Method is designed to standardize how you work, so you can concurrently maximize your creativity and productivity.
In our full summary, we’ll also elaborate on (i) how the 4 CODE steps relate to the Divergence-Convergence Loop (with 3 strategies for getting started), and (ii) 3 important habits to help keep your second brain organized.
Getting the Most from “Building a Second Brain”
The Second Brain isn’t just about finding/using the best tools. It’s about freeing your brain to do what it’s designed to do—to connect, innovate, learn, grow, and orchestrate your life. The more you use your Second Brain, the more it changes the way you think and see the world. You’ll find yourself feeling calmer and more focused, developing greater self-awareness, and experiencing a fundamental mindset shift (i) from scarcity to abundance, (ii) from consumption to creation, and (iii) from stress/obligation to serving and sharing with others,
Ready to dive into the details in this book and start building your second brain? Do check out our full book summary bundle that includes an infographic, 14-page text summary, and a 28-minute audio summary.
The book is packed with examples and tips to help you to understand and apply the CODE Method to create and maintain your Second Brain. You can find purchase the book here or visit buildingasecondbrain.com for more information and resources (such as the recommended tools/apps and tips for tagging).
Keen to keep learning and improving your memory? Do also check out our summaries for Ultralearning to find out how to learn anything quickly and systematically, how to build an Unlimited Memory, or go offline to master the art of journaling and reflection with The Bullet Journal Method.
About the Author of Building a Second Brain
Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential was written by Tiago Forte—an author, entrepreneur, and consultant, best known for his research and teachings on productivity. He’s the founder of productivity consultancy and training firm Forte Labs (fortelabs.co). He has worked with many global organizations, and taught thousands of people to improve their personal effectiveness, productivity, and creativity.
Building a Second Brain Quotes
“A Second Brain enables you to recall everything you might want to remember so you can achieve anything you desire.”
“If it feels like the well of inspiration has run dry, it’s because you need a deeper well.”
“In its most practical form, creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected.”
“We don’t need complex, sophisticated systems to be able to produce complex, sophisticated works.”
“Notetaking is like time travel—you are sending packets of knowledge through time to your future self.”
“In making decisions about what to keep, we inevitably have to make decisions about what to throw away.”
“As you distill your ideas, they naturally improve, because when you drop the merely good parts, the great parts can shine more brightly.”
“If there is a secret to creativity, it is that it emerges from everyday efforts to gather and organize our influences.”
Click here to download Building a Second Brain summary & infographic
