My friend, in case you wonder why this note digest article took so long, I have been taking on new responsibilities of a full-time job as a digital marketer at an e-commerce company. As I embark on this new journey, regretfully, I have less time for my passion for writing. That is why the insight takes longer than usual. I hope you enjoy! Before you start, this article will take you 39 minutes to read, that is why it is divided by titles, subtitles and pictures. Feel free to take a break in the middle or select the part you deem the most valuable to you.
Summary
In this book, Tiago Forte provides his personal experience along with how to work in a system to boost productivity and creativity. The framework I personally find valuable includes Hemingway bridge (for gapping working sessions), archipelago (for idea gathering), PARA method (systematically restore and retrieve knowledge) and CODE process (for taking notes).
Four groups of readers will find this as an interesting read:
1/ IT worker
2/ Knowledge worker (I belong to this category）
3/ People who need to multitask often (I belong to this category)
4/ Creative workers (those work in these creative industries)
Key takeaways
Don`t trust logic. Trust your gut somtimes! You never know when that random info might save the day.
Get yourself a system, buddy. Even though this book's got all the tips, It is your own burden to put those system to use. By doing so, you will see the fruit it yields.
Love those routines! Keep that second brain firing with weekly (for admin) and monthly reviews (for reprioritization). Who knew your brain needed a performance review?
A chapter-by-chapter outline
An outline that help you to decide what to read and what not to read:
Outline of Tiago Forte's Book "Building a Second Brain"
#### Introduction
- Purpose of the Book
- Explain the need for a "second brain" in managing information overload.
- Introduce the concept of a personal knowledge management system.
#### Chapter 1: The Problem with Modern Information Overload
- Information Overload
- The challenges of managing vast amounts of information in the digital age.
- The impact of information overload on productivity and creativity.
- Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)
- Introduction to PKM as a solution to information overload.
#### Chapter 2: The PARA Method
- Overview of PARA
- Introduction to the PARA method: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives.
- Implementing PARA
- Step-by-step guide to organizing information using the PARA system.
- Benefits of PARA
- How PARA enhances focus and clarity.
#### Chapter 3: CODE – Capture, Organize, Distill, Express
- Capture
- Techniques for capturing ideas and information efficiently.
- Organize
- Strategies for organizing captured information.
- Distill
- Methods to distill information into actionable insights.
- Express
- Ways to express and share knowledge effectively.
#### Chapter 4: The Archipelago of Ideas
- Concept of the Archipelago of Ideas
- Visualizing ideas as islands that can be connected.
- Techniques for Idea Management
- Strategies for managing and linking ideas.
- Application Examples
- Real-world examples of using the archipelago of ideas.
#### Chapter 5: The Hemingway Bridge
- What is the Hemingway Bridge?
- Explanation of the Hemingway Bridge concept.
- Applying the Hemingway Bridge
- Techniques for maintaining momentum in creative work.
- Case Studies
- Examples of the Hemingway Bridge in action.
#### Chapter 6: Dialing Down the Scope
- Why Dial Down the Scope?
- The importance of narrowing focus to manage projects effectively.
- Techniques for Focusing Scope
- Practical methods to dial down the scope of projects.
- Benefits of a Narrow Focus
- How a narrow focus can enhance productivity and results.
#### Chapter 7: Building Your Second Brain
- Concept of a Second Brain
- Defining the second brain and its role in personal productivity.
- Tools and Technologies
- Recommended tools and technologies for building a second brain.
- Integration Strategies
- How to integrate the second brain into daily life and work.
#### Chapter 8: Maintenance and Continuous Improvement
- Maintaining the System
- Tips for maintaining and updating the second brain system.
- Continuous Improvement
- Strategies for continuously improving personal knowledge management.
- Long-Term Benefits
- The long-term benefits of having a second brain.
#### Conclusion
- Recap of Key Concepts
- Summary of the main ideas and techniques covered in the book.
- Future Directions
- Encouragement to readers to keep evolving their second brain.
- Final Thoughts
- Closing thoughts on the importance of personal knowledge management.
#### Bonus Chapter: Personal Stories and Reflections
- Author’s Journey
- Tiago Forte’s personal journey in developing his second brain.
- Lessons Learned
- Key lessons and insights from the author’s experience.
- Encouragement
- Motivation for readers to start building their own second brain.
Detailed notes
A seemingly hopeless situation
Tiago felt hopeless due to communication struggles, distractions, and chronic pain questions. Through meditation, he found clarity, control, and a passion for writing. Sharing personal narratives is crucial and empowering.
Key Points:
Tiago faced hopelessness from communication issues and chronic pain concerns.
Meditation helped him gain control and clarity, sparking a love for writing.
Sharing personal stories is empowering and impactful.
CODE in action
For progress and delight, use the CODE steps: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express.
Focus on moving one project at a time to avoid overwhelm.
Remember more by capturing and organizing with PARA framework (don't worry for now, will explain later).
Experiment with progressive summarization (I will explain) and revisiting notes weekly.
Produce more with less stress by focusing on one thing at a time.
How do you do better from capturing to Expressing in your day-to-day?
1. Decide what you want to capture and identify 2-3 types of content.
2. Choose a notes app.
3. Select a capture tool.
4. Set up PARA folders (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) and create project-specific folders.
5. Identify your 12 favorite problems and use them as a filter for content.
6. Automatically capture ebook highlights.
7. Practice Progressive Summarization.
8. Experiment with an intermediate packet for complex projects.
9. Make progress on a project deliverable using second brain notes.
10. Schedule a weekly review to establish the habit.
11. Evaluate and improve note-taking proficiency.
How does an ideal work day look like according to the author?
1. Morning Routine: After your morning shower, jot down any ideas as digital notes on your smartphone.
2. Chilling and Reflecting: While relaxing, your mind might start working out new strategies and pondering their implications. If you realize challenges you haven’t considered on your way home, record a quick audio memo on your phone. This will be automatically transcribed and saved in your notes.
3. Handling Office Communications: When the office bombards you with emails, chat messages, and phone calls, be ready to save them as notes in your second brain. This practice helps you withhold judgment and gather a range of feedback before deciding on a course of action.
4. Thinking Deeper: Instead of wasting time, think deeper and create value. Consider the ultimate purpose of your project.
5. Preparing for Afternoon Meetings: Before the afternoon meeting, review the strategies you have thought of. Curate many notes, including ideas, strategies, objectives, challenges, questions, concepts, contributions, and reminders.
6. Organizing Notes: Take 10 minutes before the meeting to organize your notes. Divide them according to their priority. Set aside low-priority notes, keep the remaining one-third in a separate list for reference, and turn the other one-third into an agenda for the meeting.
7. Problem Solving and Collaboration: Be prepared to consider the biggest problems from a few different angles, map out many possible solutions, and think about the big-picture importance. Incorporate feedback from colleagues into your recommendations. Argue for your point of view while staying open to the perspectives of your team. The goal is to stay present and guide the conversation to the best possible outcome, making use of everyone’s unique perspectives and recording those insights into your second brain.
8. Working with Information: Working with information in this integrated way leads to natural changes. Patterns emerge, showing why you do things, what you want, and what really matters. Your developed brain becomes like a mirror, teaching you about yourself and reflecting back the ideas worth keeping and acting on. Your mind becomes so intertwined with the system that you accomplish much more than on your own.
9. Memory and Processing: Never try to remember a large amount of information by simply processing it. It may seem like you are putting in a lot of effort to others, but you are just planting seeds.
10. Acting with Confidence: There is no need to prepare or wait since you just need to be present and act on what you already know and have, which is laid out in many details.
11. Asking Deeper Questions: This approach gives you the confidence to ask deeper questions and pursue bigger challenges. You can’t fail because you capitalize on failure itself, liberated from the limitations of a single biological brain.
Unlock your excellence with these 4 superpower
1. Make Your Ideas Concrete: Transforming abstract thoughts into tangible, actionable items.
2. Revealing New Associations Between Ideas: Discovering unexpected connections that can lead to innovative insights.
3. Incubating Our Ideas Over Time: Allowing ideas to mature and develop through a process of gradual refinement.
4. Sharpening Our Unique Perspective: Enhancing and clarifying our individual viewpoints and ideas.
### First Superpower: Make Our Thoughts Concrete
Only when we declutter our mind of complex ideas by turning those into concrete, retrievable forms can we think clearly and start to work with those ideas effectively. Digital notes turn vague concepts into tangible entities that can be observed, rearranged, edited, and combined. We can interact with our ideas visually and manipulate them manually, even if they exist in a virtual form.
The skills we have developed for dealing with the outside world go beyond those we have for dealing with the internal world, according to Deborah Chambers.
### Second Superpower: Reveal New Associations
Creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected. Creative people are better at recognizing relationships, making associations, and forming connections.
#### How It Works
By keeping different kinds of material in one place, we facilitate connections and increase the possibility of noticing unusual associations. It's like playing Scrabble, where you rearrange the letters until a word jumps out. This is similar to how the second brain works.
### Third Superpower: Incubate Ideas Over Time
This involves a slow burn, leveraging a latent period of associations. Use your second brain to let ideas rest and develop over time.
### Fourth Superpower: Hone Our Unique Perspective
Conveying interest, not just information, is a key advantage for job prospects, according to a study from Princeton. Developing a point of view needs support material. Creative block or being tongue-tied can easily hinder us if we don't have support.
We need notes to keep our creative juices running.
### 4 Qualities of Notes
1. Multimedia: Incorporate different types of media.
2. Messy: Allow notes to be informal and spontaneous.
3. Open-Ended: Keep notes free from rigid expectations.
4. Action-Oriented: Focus on actionable insights and tasks.
### 3 Cautions
1. Keep Note App Choice Personal: Choose an app that suits your personal preferences and workflow.
2. Start Simple and Unsophisticated: Begin with a straightforward approach and avoid overcomplicating the process.
3. Don’t Get Stuck on Perfection: Avoid getting bogged down by the need for perfection; it's more important to keep moving forward.
Three Steps of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM): Remember, Connect, Create
#### Step 1: Remember
Saving information serves as a memory aid. It's about recalling facts and ideas, including takeaways from meetings, quotes from interesting sources, and details of a project.
Example: Camille, a Quebec designer, transforms PDFs into notes, importing the findings most relevant to her work. She then adds annotations and comments to these notes, enhancing their usefulness.
#### Step 2: Connect Ideas Together Using Your Second Brain (SB)
As a thinking tool, the second brain makes ideas gravitate toward each other and encourages cross-pollination.
Example: Fernando, an oncologist, uses his second brain to organize patient notes. He connects his training and research to the needs of his patients. The information he codes includes health history, the duration of the condition, current treatments, and key features of tumors.
#### Step 3: Create
A supportive system gives you confidence to create.
Example: Terrell uses his second brain to keep track of video ideas and production details. By doing so, he successfully runs a YouTube channel on parenting while balancing his side gig with his full-time career. These notes are also flexible and can adapt as the seasons of his life change.
### Conclusion
Implementing the three steps of PKM—remembering, connecting, and creating—requires patience but leads to a well-organized and productive system that supports personal and professional growth.
Use CODE as a Four-Part Method to Create Your Second Brain
A modern app to create a commonplace book.
C for Capture: Keep what resonates
O for Organize: Save for actionability
D for Distill: Find the essence
E for Express: Show your work
### Capture:
Adopt the perspective of a curator, making intentional decisions about what information you want to fill your mind with.
- Capture only the ideas and insights you think are noteworthy.
- Reduce the effort to retrieve it. Make it less disconnected and scattered.
- Solution: Keep only what resonates in a trusted place that you control and set the rest aside.
- Immediate benefits for mental health and peace of mind. Let go of the fear that your memory will fail you at a crucial moment.
### Organize for Action:
An easier and lighter way of organizing: organize for action. Ask how this is going to help you move forward with one of your current projects.
- Have a clear filter to clear out those not actionable or relevant.
- Organize for action produces a sense of clarity, knowing everything you keep has a purpose aligning with your goals and priorities, contributing to your productivity.
### Distill: Find the Essence
Once you’ve captured ideas in a central place and organized them for action, begin to notice patterns and connections.
- Every note can be the seed of an idea, reminding you of what you already know and think about a topic.
- An article you read could provide insights into growing your customer base.
- An offhand testimonial from a client could give you the idea to create a webpage with all your client testimonials.
- A business card could remind you of a good conversation you had with someone you can reach out to for coffee.
1. Convey a core message in a sentence or two. Distill it into essence.
2. Quickly find the main takeaways.
3. If you’re reminded why you read it, you won’t need to remind yourself by spending hours rereading it.
4. Ask every time you take a note: How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?
5. Your note is useless if you can’t decipher it in the future or if it’s so long you don’t bother trying.
### Express: Show Your Work
A common challenge: we can fall into the habit of continually force-feeding ourselves more and more information but never taking the next step.
- It’s easy to delay and postpone the expressions that can enrich our lives.
- Information becomes knowledge only when we put it to use. Gain confidence in what you know only when you know that it works.
- Shift as much time and effort as possible from consuming to creating.
Why should you create?
- It depends on your skills and can be as small as a social post about a camping product or as big as a plan to lobby the city council for more funding.
- All those actions are acts of expression.
1. Draw on sources of raw material.
2. Involve a practical process of refinement over time.
3. End up making an impact on someone or something that matters to you.
Information is always a work-in-progress.
- You can start one page on your website and refine it later.
- The sooner you start, the sooner you can achieve the process.
Using Your Phone as a Go-To Place for Notes
Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift uses her phone as her go-to place for notes. She takes notes, accesses them, sends them, and gets feedback through her phone. When she wrote the smash hit "Blank Space," her idea was that in relationships, there are two options: go big or go home. Or in her words: going forever or down in flames.
These notes could be hooks, pre-choruses, or first lines.
She either gets excited by an idea and keeps it, or she leaves it, assuming it's not good enough.
Feyman
According to Richard Feynman, a renowned physicist who also led a rich life, he revealed his strategy in an interview: keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, even though they might largely remain inactive.
Every time you hear or read a new trick or research, test it against these problems to see if it holds up.
By doing so, he maintained a list of open questions. Use this approach to make unusual connections between fields.
For example, he might immediately take mental notes when he noticed a dinner plate wobbling as it spun. Observing the motion of the insignia on the plate, he saw that the spin and wobble did not occur at the same pace. So he thought they were related in a 2-1 ratio between the plate’s wobble and spin, suggesting a deeper underlying principle at work.
He found it fun, intuitive, and it sparked curiosity regardless of its utility. Follow your interests and establish habits like this for fun.
The Standard of Capturing: To Avoid Capturing Too Much or Too Little
Imagine you come across a marketing blog post. The problem with saving all of it is that it might be too long. In the future, you might forget what it contains, and you will have to spend time rereading it all over again.
Know that value is not evenly distributed; only a certain part is interesting, helpful, and valuable to you. Don’t risk overwhelming your future self with too much information.
Have a place where you can always access the original content.
### Four Criteria Tiago Suggests to Help Decide What Information is Worth Keeping
1. Does it Inspire New Ideas?
Evoke a sense of inspiration regularly: quotes, photos, ideas, and stories.
Have an inspiration folder to go to when you need those inspirations.
Example: Tiago’s customer testimonials received over the years.
2. Is it Useful?
Carpenters keep odds and ends in a corner of their workshop, e.g., nails and washers, scraps of lumber cut off from larger planks, and metal and wood pieces.
Sometimes a piece of information is not inspiring but might be useful in the future. Stats, references, research findings. For example, keep a folder full of photos, graphics, and drawings.
3. Is it Personal?
Your own thoughts, reflections, memories, and mementos. Wisdom personally gained.
Example: Tiago’s screenshots of text messages sent between family and friends. Small things that are precious and stand out to him.
4. Is it Surprising?
Seek what does not confirm what we already believe.
According to Claude Shannon, information is what surprises you. Surprise is an excellent barometer for information that does not fit neatly into our understanding, which potentially changes how we think.
5. Capture What Resonates
Make reading effortless and enjoyable, so you can read more. Listen for what interests you, feels moving, or surprises you.
"I often find a piece of content resonates with me in ways that I cannot explain. Its true potential is unlocked later."
### Capturing the Details
Capture not only the information but also the context: web address, title of the page, the author or publisher, and the date.
Our intuitive mind learns and responds without awareness. Bodies start to stress when their conscious minds are about to use a losing deck. Stress is an automatic response that occurs because the intuitive mind realized something was wrong long before the conscious mind noticed anything was amiss.
Change Definition of Knowledge to Tackle the Unknown Utility Aspect at the Moment
### Challenge:
Knowing the value of knowledge even before we know how we will use it. Most of us don’t have a single core medium we work in.
### Simple Solution:
Change the definition of knowledge.
### Solution:
Songwriters, software engineers, lawyers, marketers, and advertisers all keep reference materials for future use.
Jerry Seinfeld stored notes in accordion folders.
Emotions aid rational thinking and intuition often precedes logic.
It's crucial to capture and easily access thoughts.
Expressing thoughts improves health and well-being.
Translating emotional events into words leads to social, psychological, and neural changes.
Writing about inner experiences boosts health and resilience.
Capturing content outside your mind helps avoid reactivity on the internet.
Using a second brain helps process information calmly and thoughtfully.
Capture is about maximizing life's experiences.
Apply what you capture in real life to benefit from it.
Twyla Tharp`s Creative Method
According to Gustave Flaubert, "Be regular and orderly in your life so that you may be violent and original in your work."
Twyla Tharp, a renowned dance choreographer, uses the approach called “the box” to organize her creative efforts. When she begins a new project, she takes out a foldable file box and labels it with the name of the project. This gives her a sense of purpose and helps her get organized, even if she doesn’t know exactly where she is going yet. Writing a name on the box signifies that she has started her work.
She puts related items into her box, including notebooks, news clippings, CDs, videotapes, books, and photos for inspiration. Keeping everything in one place allows her to return regularly for resources.
Originally detached and distinct elements (like characters in different songs) fit together in the same narrative once combined.
Simple goals like “keep it simple” or “strive for perfection” remind her of what she was thinking at the beginning and help her when she loses her way.
For her collaboration with Joel, she has two goals: first, to understand and master the role of narrative in dance; second, to pay her dancers well.
So she writes “tell a story” and “make dance pay” on two blue index cards and puts them into the box. Naturally, the box acts as an anchor that connects her to her original impulse.
1. Use these cards to share with the team.
2. Include personal items like Joel’s childhood home in Long Island.
The organizer also adds her creativity to her collection. For instance, a set of notes about an early song of Joel's called "She’s Got a Way," full of innocence and sweetness, is transformed into something harsher after morphing. The choreographer also asks Joel for his thoughts and contributions.
PARA Makes Organizing Tasks Straightforward!
1. Projects: Short-term efforts in your work or life that you are working on now.
2. Areas: Long-term responsibilities you want to manage over time.
3. Resources: Topics or interests that might be useful later.
4. Archives: Inactive items from those three categories.
Para, think about parallel.
Projects:
- Begin and end with a specific clear outcome that needs to happen in order for them to be checked off as complete, such as finalize, felt, laugh, or publish.
- Work projects: site design, slide deck for conference, development project schedule, plan recruitment drive.
- Personal projects: finish Spanish course, plan vacation.
- Side projects: blog post, research microphone for podcast.
Areas:
- Think of areas as job responsibilities in life that you formally or informally take ownership of.
- It includes home, cooking, travel, and car.
- People you are responsible for or accountable to: friends, kids, spouse, pets.
- Standards of performance you are responsible for: health, personal growth, friendships, finance.
- At work: departments and functions, people or teams, standards of performance you are responsible for.
You have standards for an area, like a level of cholesterol, or spending time with family every night. Only you can decide what those standards are. It helps to have a place dedicated to each of them. Always have a place to put any thoughts, reflections, ideas, or information pieces related to each important aspect of life.
Resources:
- Anything that does not belong to projects or areas. For example:
- Interested topics like architecture or beer brewing.
- Research topics like ones you are currently exploring.
- Useful information you might want to reference: stock photos, product testimonials.
- Hobbies or passions like jazz or tea.
Any of these can become its own resource folder.
Archive:
- Things you have completed or put on hold:
- Includes areas of responsibility you are no longer committed to.
- Resources no longer relevant (hobbies you lose interest in or subjects you no longer care about).
Think of a cold storage which does not clutter your workspace. Save resource space for those pieces of information you do not need but decide to keep considering they might be used later.
Why it matters: the Use of Separating Capturing and Organizing:
- Notice what resonates but leave the decision of what to do with them to a different time.
Use a list to decide where a note should go:
- In which project will this be most useful?
- In which area will this be most useful?
- If none, which resource does it belong to?
- If none, put it into archive.
Put notes not only in the place where they are most useful but in a place where they will be useful the soonest.
Use organization by actionability to fight procrastination. PARA pulls distant dreams closer into the here and now. Organization is focused on the goal to move our goals forward.
Decide where an idea goes based on whether it can have an impact on someone or something that matters to you.
Changing Purpose of Note(s) Over Time
The purpose of a single note or group may change over time as your needs and goals change, churning and surfacing new pieces of insights from the deep waters of your experience.
Example from the Author:
When the author worked as an Apple consultant as a new grad in California, he took the files they migrated to a new folder titled "archive" plus the date during the one-hour consultation session. For example, Archive7-1-24. As a result, they no longer postponed their creative grand ambitions to some "far-off and strange" time when everything would be perfectly in order. Instead, they stayed focused on the present moment, gaining a sense of clarity and motivation. And no unhappy customer ever returned to accuse him of losing their old files.
Using PARA to Identify the Structure of Your Work and Life:
Using PARA helps you identify the structure of your work and life, what you are committed to, what you want to change, and where you want to go.
The Importance of Archiving:
First, it is important to archive things. Do not cloud your brain with past documents and crowd and clutter your space.
The Excitement of Completion:
Second, people get excited when they reach the finish line and get things done, such as printing the resume. The completion of “creative” projects nourishes the system and primes you for action. Steady completion of tangible wins keeps you excited, no matter how small the victories.
Your Turn: Move Quickly, Touch Lightly:
The path to burnout is staying late in the office, filling every minute with productivity, and powering through mountains of work as if your life depended on it. The path to success is knowing how to set intentions, craft a strategy, and look for sources of leverage to accomplish things with minimum effort. Avoid making obligations heavy. Ask yourself what the smallest, easiest step is that you can take to move in the right direction.
Questions to Ask Yourself:
- What projects are you currently committed to moving forward?
- What is worrying you that you haven’t identified as a project? What needs to happen so you are making consistent progress?
- Look at your calendar: What do you need to follow up on from the past? What needs planning and preparation for the future?
- Look at your to-dos: Are there actions you have already taken that are part of a bigger and unidentified project? What commitments or follow-up actions scheduled are part of a bigger project?
- Look at your computer desktop, downloads folder, documents folder: Is there anything you keep that is part of an unidentified project?
Organizing Your Work with PARA
The purpose of a single note or group may change over time as your needs and goals evolve. This process helps churn and surface new pieces of insights from the deep waters of your experience.
#### Real-World Example
When the author worked as an Apple consultant in California, he would create a new folder titled "archive" plus the date during each one-hour consultation session. For example, "Archive7-1-24". This practice prevented the postponement of grand creative ambitions to some "far-off and strange" future time when everything would be perfect. Instead, the focus remained on the present moment, providing clarity and motivation, and ensuring no unhappy customers returned to complain about lost files.
### Using PARA to Identify Structure
Using PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives) helps you identify the structure of your work and life, what you are committed to, what you want to change, and where you want to go.
### The Importance of Archiving
First, it is crucial to archive things to avoid clouding your brain with past documents and cluttering your space.
### The Excitement of Completion
Second, people feel excited when they reach the finish line and get things done, such as printing a resume. The completion of "creative" projects nourishes the system and primes you for action. Steady completion of tangible wins keeps you excited, no matter how small the victories.
### Your Turn: Move Quickly, Touch Lightly
The path to burnout involves staying late in the office, filling every minute with productivity, and powering through mountains of work as if your life depended on it. The path to success involves setting intentions, crafting a strategy, and finding sources of leverage to accomplish things with minimal effort. Avoid making obligations heavy. Ask yourself what the smallest, easiest step is that you can take to move in the right direction.
### Questions to Ask Yourself
- What projects are you currently committed to moving forward?
- What is worrying you that you haven't identified as a project? What needs to happen to make consistent progress?
- Look at your calendar: What do you need to follow up on from the past? What needs planning and preparation for the future?
- Look at your to-dos: Are there actions you have already taken that are part of a bigger and unidentified project? What commitments or follow-up actions are part of bigger projects?
- Look at your computer desktop, downloads folder, and documents folder: Is there anything you keep that is part of an unidentified project?
### Starting with Projects to Avoid Empty Containers
Each time you start a new project, look through archives to see if past projects have reusable assets. The "magic number" is 4, the highest number we can count at a glance and hold in our minds without extra effort.
How did Francis Coppola distill the essence?
### Distilling the Essence
Francis Coppola, the director of "The Godfather," started with an initial read of the novel, noting anything that stood out to him. He valued jotting down initial instincts of what was good, confusing, or bad after the first reading. He then added his interpretations, distilling and rebuilding his unique rendition of the story. He broke down each scene according to five key criteria: a synopsis of the scene, his context, image and tone for the look and feel of the scene, core intention, and potential pitfalls to avoid. He aimed to be concise in summarizing each scene.
### Reviewing Firsthand Notes
Coppola reviewed his firsthand notes to understand what was really going on in his book. He included margin comments labeled "Hitchcock" to remind him of how the famed thriller director would have framed a shot or slowed down a series of actions.
### The Importance of Capturing and Distilling
Our job as notetakers is to port the notes we take on the things we find in a way that can survive the ultimate enemy of mankind: time. This way, your enthusiasm for your knowledge builds over time rather than fades away.
Deciding to capture and distill takes extra effort to turn fragmented resonance and knowledge into actionable assets. The building blocks of our capturing process ultimately make the final product more impactful.
### Discoverability: Making Notes Useful
The most important factor to achieve note discoverability is how easy it is to discern what they contain and access the specific points that are useful at the moment.
#### How to Increase Discoverability
Discoverability refers to how easy it is for a piece of information or content to be found in a search of a file, database, or other information systems.
Highlighting caters to future demanding customers who are impatient and busy, and who don’t have time to pore through page after page of details to find hidden gems. We need to sell them on the value of the notes we are taking now, increasing buy-in to make them believe in the value of the present endeavor. Think of it as a package sent to the future.
The modern paradox is the volume versus discoverability.
Don’t bury your requests near the bottom of a massive chunk of text. Identify the most urgent questions that you need them to respond to.
The technique of progressive summarization involves highlighting the main points of a note, then highlighting the main points of those highlights, and so on.
A snapshot of four layers of progressive summarization includes:
1. Executive summary
2. Highlighted notes
3. embolden notes
4. Captured notes
The author himself highlights passages using a read-later app synced so the highlighted passages are automatically saved in his notes, including a link to the source. In the bottom layer, save the full detail of the link at the bottom, and only have an excerpt with the link to the source. In the third layer, use bold or italics to emphasize the main point within the note—keywords or hints of the text, phrases that capture what the author was trying to say, or sentences that inexplicably resonate with him. In the second layer, highlight with colors that stand out to you.
For those valuable sources, add an executive summary at the top of the note with a few bullet points summarizing the article in your own words. Revisiting a note many times is key. The goal is to keep it succinct and keep your future self in mind.
#### Layers of Progressive Summarization
The layers of progressive summarization give you control over how much you interact with your notes. For the first time, dive into details and nuances. When revisiting, you may want to only look at the highlights given last time. Customize your attention span based on the current need. Progressive summarization essentially gives a digital map to zoom in or out depending on your attention, time, and the details you want to see. You can zoom in and zoom out depending on the purpose, whether you want to see the gist or examine one specific research finding.
With the map at hand, you can find what you are looking for even when you don’t know exactly what you are looking for. Highlighting can feel risky, but you can always return to the original version at any time.
Progressive summarization focuses on the content and the purpose of your notes. It keeps your attention on the substance of what you are reading and learning.
Distilling in Action Under the Pressure of Time
The author put a note into a resource folder labeled "Economics." After a few months, when he searched for information on wages, he took a few moments to bold key statements and highlight the most important ones to get a gist.
He used this information to speak on the subject for ten seconds after he heard a speaker mention this term. Then, he searched for it in his notes as if he were a subject matter expert.
It is helpful even if you don’t have a chance to take notes on the spot and take them afterwards because your mind still retains the most interesting parts, filtering out something else.
In a time-sensitive situation, when preparing for a launch campaign for a new version of their online course, he had only two ways of preparation. He went through the notes and found within an area folder labeled "Online Education" the points that resonated with him. It freed up his time to implement another idea from Telpner’s interview and added another executive for the coaching tier.
In a daily situation, when talking with someone who has sound design experience, he jotted down the note. Sometime later, while driving by the local hardware store on the way home, he realized he could pop in and get some recommended supplies. Then he searched for "Home Studio" and found this note. Then, he bolded the items he needed to purchase, buried among other suggestions he had made.
Below his original notes, he copied and pasted the bolded items. Then he had a convenient shopping list for reference while browsing the store.
#### Mistake 1: Overhighlighting
Use notes as a signpost rather than authoritative text.
A rule of thumb is each layer of highlighting should include no more than 10-20% of the previous layer.
#### Mistake 2: Highlighting without a Purpose
Highlight when you are ready to create something.
An example use of distilling: preparation by highlighting his notes from his last call and drawing out decision points and action items into an agenda. Then he comes off as well-prepared and saves the billed time.
Another example: when creating a blog, start by highlighting the most interesting points from a group of notes that he thinks will be relevant to the topic at hand. Then start writing, just like warming up as an athlete.
Know that notes are not necessarily useful. So be conservative with spending time on them.
A rule of thumb is every time you touch a note, make it more discoverable for your future self.
#### Mistake 3: Making Highlighting Difficult
Follow your intuition with highlighting rather than analyzing, interpreting, or categorizing, which will break your flow.
Just as you listened for a feeling of interest resonance in deciding what content to save, the same rule applies to distilling insights.
What moves you, captures your attention, excites you, or provokes you. Like the same criteria for capturing it.
A sign of successful distilling is the ability to grab more immediate attention—the artwork is compressed.
Mindfully practice distilling as an art of reduction every day. In conversation, working, and leadership.
Organize new information/content consumed in media, organize them into PARA. Or keep those floating around your email inbox or a read-later app.
How Do You Share Your Truth Like Octacia Butler?
Butler's dedication to her work and her ability to foresee and question the trajectory of societal developments made her a visionary author whose influence continues to resonate in contemporary literature.
The best work of butler comes from simply asking, “What if this goes on?” based on the current development of things.
Butler keeps the tidbits of her life in her journals, composition books, speeches, library call slips, essay and story drafts, school notes, calendars, and datebooks.
What are the knowledge assets you are creating today that will be the most reusable in the future? What are the building blocks that will move your projects forward tomorrow? These help us navigate through time.
Express is to refuse to wait until you have everything perfectly ready before you share what you know.
Express earlier, more frequently, in smaller bits.
You need a system to manage small bits after breaking down a project into small pieces.
Those building blocks are called by Tiago Forte as Intermediate Packets (IP). They include: distilled notes, outtakes that did not make it into a past project but are reusable in the future; works in progress like documents, graphics, agendas, or plans; final deliverables; and documents created by others.
Thinking small and focusing on creating one IP each time you sit down to work without worrying about how viable it is or whether it will be used in the exact way you envisioned.
Our creativity thrives on examples. When we have a template to follow, we gather those randomly splattered ideas into useful forms.
We cannot know which note is most valuable upfront. We know by sharing.
Small Habits for Combating Procrastination
There is no divide between our inner selves and our digital lives: the beliefs and attitudes that shape our thinking in one context inevitably show up in other contexts as well.
Instead of confronting a terrifying blank page, I’m looking at a document filled with quotes: from letters, from primary sources, from scholarly papers, and sometimes even my own notes.
Once you have a critical mass of ideas to work with, you switch decisively into convergence mode and link them together in an order that makes sense.
Write down ideas for next steps: At the end of a work session, write down what you think the next steps could be for the next one.
Write down the current status: This could include your current biggest challenge, most important open question, or future roadblocks you expect.
Write down any details you have in mind that are likely to be forgotten once you step away: such as details about the characters in your story, the pitfalls of the event you’re planning, or the subtle considerations of the product you’re designing.
Write out your intention for the next work session: Set an intention for what you plan on tackling next, the problem you intend to solve, or a certain milestone you want to reach.
You’ll have a rich set of jumping-off points and next steps waiting for you.
When I return to the project, I can combine the results of my past thinking with the power of a good night’s sleep and put them together into a creative breakthrough.
Dialing Down the Scope
Instead of postponing the release of the app, which might prove disastrous in the face of looming competition and only delays the learning they need, the development team starts “dialing down” features as the release date approaches. For instance, the social network feature gets postponed to a future version.
Postponing our goals and desires to “later” often ends up depriving us of the very experiences we need to grow.
We start to lose motivation as the time horizon stretches out longer and longer. Things get lost or go out of date.
The problem isn’t a lack of time; it is that we forget that we have control over the scope of the project.
Dialing Down the Scope recognizes that not all parts of a given project are equally important.
By dropping, reducing, or postponing the least important parts, we can unblock ourselves and move forward even when time is scarce.
One good use of our second brain is to collect and save the scraps on the cutting-room floor in case they can be used elsewhere.
Having a system and knowing that nothing I write or create truly gets lost gives me the creative confidence to continue to push the boundaries.
Knowing that I can always release a fix, update, or follow up on anything provides reassurance.
Dialing Down the Scope is a way of short-circuiting that paradox and testing the waters with something small and concrete, while still protecting the fragile and tentative edges of your work.
Time is scarce. So, using the dialing down the scope method, we identified the most outlandish of our plans and decided to save those for a later stage. I moved those ideas to their own “someday/maybe” section of my outline to revisit later. My wife and I also added several constraints to the project, such as the budget we were willing to spend and a deadline to have the remodel done by a certain date.
One more thing you can do as you wrap up the day’s work: send off your draft, beta version, or proposal for feedback.
Kick off a project
Here are some questions to ask when starting a project: Is there a book or article you could extract some excerpts from as inspiration?
Are there websites that might have resources you could build upon?
Are there podcasts by experts you could subscribe to and listen to while commuting or doing household chores?
Are there relevant Intermediate Packets (IPs) buried in other projects you’ve worked on in the past?
What is the smallest version of this I can produce to get useful feedback from others?
Waste today could be treasure tomorrow. And how do you keep these?
Even if you have to abandon something, your only goal is to get all the potentially usable material in one place. Move all the notes and IPs you might want to use into a new project folder.
The importance of habits:
Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks. It’s only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity.
Three habits essential for knowledge workers to build a second brain:
Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work.
Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything.
Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.
This is exactly how I want you to treat your attention—as an asset that gets invested and produces a return, which in turn can be reinvested back into other ventures. This is how you can ensure your knowledge grows and compounds over time like a high-yield asset.
Before they taxi onto the runway and take off, airline pilots run through a “preflight checklist” that tells them everything they need to check or do.
Here are some questions I use to prompt this initial brainstorm:
What do I already know about this project?
What don’t I know that I need to find out?
What is my goal or intention?
Who can I talk to who might provide insights?
What can I read or listen to for relevant ideas?
Three Habits
Three habits essential for knowledge workers to build a second brain are:
1. Project Checklists: Ensure you start and finish your projects in a consistent way, making use of past work.
2. Weekly and Monthly Reviews: Periodically review your work and life and decide if you want to change anything.
3. Noticing Habits: Notice small opportunities to edit, highlight, or move notes to make them more discoverable for your future self.
This is exactly how I want you to treat your attention—as an asset that gets invested and produces a return, which in turn can be reinvested back into other ventures. This is how you can ensure your knowledge grows and compounds over time like a high-yield asset.
### This is what Tiago does when reviewing:
Tiago captures thoughts about the project and creates the first note inside a project folder dedicated to all related notes. This step can and should be messy: he pours out all his random musings, potential approaches, links to other ideas or topics, and reminders of people to talk to.
He has a variety of folders, each containing a curated set of notes, highlighted and summarized, so he can rapidly recall what they’re about. He chooses a handful of folders that seem most relevant to what he’s starting, including those for projects, areas, resources, and archives. Then he quickly scans any notes inside that look interesting, taking care to keep the momentum going so he doesn’t get bogged down anywhere. Now is not the time to go on tangents that will only distract him from moving forward.
Next, he searches for related terms across all folders. This step helps him perform searches for any notes he might have missed. Sometimes valuable ideas are buried in unexpected places, which he may not find through browsing alone.
A premortem is a useful practice, similar to a postmortem used to analyze how a project went wrong, except performed before the project starts. By asking what is likely to go wrong, you can take action to prevent it from happening in the first place.
You leave behind one identity and step into another—an identity as the orchestrator and conductor of your life, not its passenger.
The paradox of hoarding is that no matter how much we collect and accumulate, it’s never enough. You don’t need to go out and hunt down insights. All you have to do is listen to what life is repeatedly trying to tell you. Life tends to surface exactly what we need to know, whether we like it or not.
Finally, it's about letting go of the things we thought we needed to survive but that no longer serve us.
Understand Your Creative Process
Divergence: The Creative Process
- Divergence is about generating new ideas, making it a spontaneous, chaotic, and messy process. It's not something you can fully plan or organize, and it’s a time to wander and explore.
- Examples of divergence include Taylor Swift’s notes, Twyla Tharp’s box, Francis Ford Coppola’s prompt book, and Octavia Butler’s commonplace notebooks, which all serve to gather outside inspiration, explore new paths, and expose oneself to new influences.
- Designers diverge by collecting samples and patterns, talking to users to understand their needs, or sketching possible solutions.
- Photographers diverge by taking photos of interesting subjects, juxtaposing different kinds of photos, or experimenting with new lighting or framing techniques.
Convergence: Turning Ideas into Reality
- Convergence allows our work to take on a life of its own, becoming something separate from ourselves.
- The purpose of convergence is to organize and refine ideas, turning them into tangible outputs.
- Writers converge by making outlines, laying out plot points, and writing a first draft.
- Designers converge by deciding on a problem to solve, building wireframes, or translating their designs into graphics files.
- Photographers converge by choosing the shots for a collection, archiving unused images, and printing their favorites.
The Role of Intermediate Packets (IPs)
- Intermediate Packets (IPs) are abbreviated as IPs, which also stands for Intellectual Property, highlighting their value and reusability. You created them, you own them, and you have the right to use them repeatedly in future projects.
- One of the best practices is to "only start projects that are already 80 percent done." This means committing to finishing projects where most of the work to capture, organize, and distill the relevant material is already done, minimizing the risk of starting something that can’t be finished.
The Impact of Small Ideas and Routine
Believing in Small Ideas
- You have to believe that the smallest idea has the potential to change people’s lives. Start with the smallest project you can think of to prove to yourself that your ideas can make a difference.
Routine and Innovation
- Innovation and problem-solving depend on a routine that systematically brings interesting ideas to the surface of our awareness. By considering as many options as possible, you open the space of possibilities.
Starting vs. Finishing
- Should you start something new or finish something you’ve already started? This decision can be difficult, especially when there is a sense of creative grief in watching a potentially valuable idea get discarded.
- Divergent acts, like generating new ideas, often feel like forward progress but can postpone the moment of completion.
### Maximizing Your Reading and Attention
- You'll read differently, focusing more on the parts most relevant to the argument you're building.
- You'll ask sharper questions, avoiding vague explanations or leaps in logic.
- You'll naturally seek venues to show your work, as the feedback you receive will propel your thinking forward like nothing else.
- You’ll begin to act more deliberately in your career or business, thinking several steps beyond what you’re consuming to consider its ultimate potential.
Reengineer Your Luck (for valuable ideas)
- Use your Second Brain (SB) to reengineer luck by capturing potential valuable ideas rather than dismissing them.
- Note what resonates with your reading and take the extra effort (even just seconds) to highlight it.
- When you notice a note could use a better title, change it so it’s easier for your future self to find.
- Notice if you can move or link a note to another project or area where it will be more useful.
- Notice opportunities to combine two or more Intermediate Packets (IPs) into a new, larger work for future use, such as a highlight for social media.
- Notice a chance to merge similar content from different notes into the same note, so it’s not spread around too many places.
- Notice when an IP that you already have can help someone else solve a problem, and share it with them as early as possible.
Information Accessibility and Utilization:
- Humanity’s challenge was how to acquire scarce information when access to it was limited. People contributed labor, not ideas.
- Now, we are tuned to data, constantly updated and delivered via a big network.
The Main Tenets of a Second Brain:
- The system of a second brain is forgiving. The point of building a second brain and pouring thoughts into it is to let us pick up where we left off when we have the time or motivation.
- There is no need to capture everything. Trust that the good will come.
- There is no need to clear the inbox frequently.
- There is no need to review or summarize notes on a strict schedule. The goal is not to memorize their contents or keep them top of mind.
Forgiving Organization:
- Make forgiving decisions about where to put something when organizing notes or files within PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives).
- Any system that must be perfect to be reliable is deeply flawed.
- We are not building an encyclopedia of organized knowledge. Instead, we are building a working system that must function well and be a regular part of our everyday lives.
What We Review and Why We Review?
Monthly Review (Grounded and Holistic)
1. Review and Update Goals
- Reflect on successes and accomplishments.
- Analyze unexpected events and lessons learned.
- Check off completed goals, add new ones, or adjust existing goals.
2. Review and Update Project List
- Archive completed or canceled projects.
- Add new projects and update active ones.
- Ensure the list reflects current goals and priorities to capture the best ideas.
3. Review Areas of Responsibility
- Identify any changes in responsibilities.
- Generate new action items and ideas.
- Maintain area notebooks as seeds for future projects.
4. Review Someday/Maybe Tasks
- Revisit long-term aspirations (e.g., learning Mandarin, planting an orchard).
- Keep track of dreams that may become achievable.
5. Reprioritize Tasks
- Reevaluate tasks based on a holistic view of goals and projects.
- Adjust priorities monthly as things change.
### Weekly Review
1. Clear Email Inbox
- Address lingering emails from the past week.
- Identify new actions required and follow-ups.
2. Check Calendar
- Review past and upcoming weeks for meetings and appointments.
- Prepare for future events and follow up on past ones.
3. Clear Computer Desktop
- Declutter desktop files.
- Move relevant files to PARA folders or remove unnecessary ones.
4. Clear Note Inbox
- Batch process all notes.
- Quickly decide which PARA folder each note belongs to, creating new folders as needed.
5. Choose Tasks for the Week
- Sort tasks from calendar, desktop, and notes into projects and areas.
- Select and commit to tasks for the coming week.
### Routine and Innovation
- Make Reviews a Habit
- Complete weekly reviews every 3-7 days.
- Keep digital workspaces organized regularly.
- Use a digital checklist for easy reference.
### Key Actions
- Reengineer Luck with Your Second Brain
- Capture valuable ideas instead of dismissing them.
- Highlight resonant reading material.
- Retitle notes for easier future access.
- Move or link notes to relevant projects or areas.
- Combine IPs into larger works.
- Merge similar content from different notes.
- Share IPs that can help others solve problems early.
### Forgiving Organization
- Trust in Selective Capture
- No need to capture everything; trust that valuable content will emerge.
- Avoid frequent inbox clearing; focus on regular, intuitive organization.
- Make forgiving decisions about note and file organization within PARA.
### Practical Tips
- Work with a Forgiving System
- Build a functional system integrated into daily life.
- Aim for practicality over perfection.
- Ensure the system evolves with your needs and priorities.
Hemingway Bridge
Hemingway always completed a writing session at the point when the next plot had become clear. This method makes each creative leap from one idea to the next less dramatic and risky. By keeping his energy and imagination in reserve, he used it as a launchpad for the next step in his progress.
Similarly, at the end of a working session, write down clear ideas for the next steps.
Document the current status, including the biggest challenges, important open questions, or future roadblocks to expect.
Write down any details you have that are likely to be forgotten once you step away, such as characters, pitfalls in events you plan, or cons of a product design.
Lay out your intentions for the next work session:
- What tasks you plan to tackle
- Problems you intend to solve
- Goals you aim to reach
Share this intermediate packet with a friend, family member, colleague, or collaborator, and tell them it’s still a work in progress. Ask them to send you their thoughts on it so that next time you will have their input and suggestions to work with.
By being mindful of making your next move easier, you also give other people more time to work.
An Application
Every time a project becomes inactive, do the following:
- To easily pick up your thought process, you can mark the project status and jot down a few comments like why it became inactive, the last action taken, who was working on it, what role it played, and any lessons or best practices learned.
How to Decide When to Transition from Divergence to Convergence
Short answer: It depends. Everyone can be different.
Longer answer: Open the windows and doors, click every link, jump from one source to another, and let your curiosity guide you on what to do next.
Trust that you have enough input and enough resources and time to turn inward and sprint toward your goal.
The more imaginative and curious you are, the more diverse your interests and the higher your standards of perfection. It is harder to transition from divergence to convergence.
What is the Archipelago of Ideas?
AI (Archipelago of Ideas) is a technique for adding value with creative work, usually in a creative endeavor. Named after a quote by Steven Johnson, it involves gathering a group of ideas, sources, or points that will support your essay, presentation, or deliverable. Once you have enough, switch to convergence mode immediately.
For example, use PS (Progressive Summarization) to decide what is interesting and important. Notes are used as stepping stones.
Project Completion Process
1. Mark Project as Complete in Task Manager or PM App
- Ensure all tasks are completed before moving forward.
2. Cross Out Assigned Project Goals and Move to Completed Section
- Tiago keeps all goals in a single digital note, sorted from short-term to long-term.
- Take a moment to reflect on whether the goals set for this project were achieved, and ask these questions:
- What factors led to that success?
- How can I repeat or double down on these strengths?
- What happened if I fell short?
- What can I learn or change to avoid making the same mistakes next time?
- The time spent thinking about these questions depends on the project's size. Large team collaborations might justify hours of in-depth analysis, while small side projects might need only a few minutes of reflection.
- Use the second brain to keep track of both big and small goals.
- Crossing out small goals helps maintain motivation.
3. Review the Intermediate Packets (IP) and Move Them to Other Folders
- When a project is completed, look through its folders to identify IPs valuable for future use.
- Adopt a perspective that sees each document and file as tangible by-products, making it easier to pick up where you left off.
- Move relevant items to other projects or folders, which helps with future searches.
4. Move Project to Archives Across All Platforms
5. If a Project Becomes Inactive: Add a Current Status Note to the Project Folder Before Archiving
- Out of sight, out of mind.
- It's empowering to realize you can put a project in cold storage and let go of the mental toll of keeping it in mind.
- Answer post-mortem questions:
- What did you learn?
- What did you do well?
- What could you have done better?
- What can you improve for next time?
- Communicate with stakeholders: managers, colleagues, clients.
- Success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the ROI?
- Officially close out the project, send any last emails, invoices, receipts, and feedback.
- Use the checklist not to make work rigid and formulaic, but to help start and finish cleanly and decisively, avoiding orphaned commitments that linger with no end in sight.
As this article comes to an end. I realized how I missed the fun of writing and sharing and the urge of writing since professional life should give me more time for writing, and what I do for a hobby will inevitably split over to what I do for a day job. I wish I could write to you again very soon and will be happy if you can find something for yourself. Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn to let me know (@Steve (Shixiong) Zhou). Dualistically, I either go by Steve or Shixiong.
Steve is a thinker, innovator, practitioner of digital marketing and digital experience design with a master degree at the University of Waterloo. His day-time job is to use technology and AI-driven content help marketing. When he is not hard at work, he likes reading, writing and trading. He writes about productivity, trading and business opportunities in his blog: 1000 book notes and dedicates to deliver insights for you from the books he read to simplify your life.
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