Every day, we encounter hundreds of pieces of information online while working or mindlessly browsing the internet. Not all of them are equally important, and you can’t read all of them instantly. In addition, it’s impractical to remember all the information and every little detail that you read.
That’s why you need to develop a system for storing and organizing information so that you can retrieve and utilize it whenever you need it. And, this is where the concept of the second brain comes in.
The fun part is that the concept is not related to any physical organ. It is about a digital repository system that allows you to clear mental declutter.
Read on to learn more about the idea and how to best use the information you encounter in your daily life.
What is the Second Brain method?
Productivity expert Tiago Forte developed the concept of the Second Brain in his book Building a Second Brain. And, in shortened form, it is known as the BASB method.
Tiago realized the importance of information in our daily lives. That’s why he developed the BASB method to help us store information in a systematic way so that we can access it in the future.
It’s a digital information management system where you can capture thoughts, ideas, notes, and every piece of information that you want to keep. The system allows you to consolidate the information in a single, easily accessible location and retrieve it whenever needed.
Having a structured space for information can alleviate the burden on your brain, as your brain does not need to remember and retain lots of information. Consequently, your mind gets the freedom to think, imagine, and stay calm.
Instead of being overwhelmed with information, you can develop a system with all the information at your fingertips. It will help you take the right actions, remain stress-free, and experience significant growth in productivity.
How does the Second Brain method work?
The second brain system works based on the CODE framework. Tiago introduced this framework to build an external brain for digital knowledge management. CODE stands for Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express. The method revolves around these four elements.
To develop a second brain, you have to follow the CODE steps, and here is an overview of the steps.
1. Capture
It is the first step of the system, where you need to gather information from various sources, such as ideas, thoughts, articles and videos that resonate with you. Develop a habit of capturing information, but don’t think about filtering; capture it as you encounter it.
Here are a few tips to follow –
- Capture everything relevant to your work and interest, which you find inherently intriguing.
- Use a single location, such as Evernote, Notion, or OneNote, to capture notes, images, screenshots, PDFs, and attachments. These apps are great for permanently saving information and syncing across all devices.
- Leverage Read-later apps such as Pocket, Instapaper, or Readwise Reader to save things to read later instead of consuming what’s in front of you.
2. Organize
The second step of the CODE framework is to organize the materials you’ve captured. The goal is to make the information retrieval process simple and easy.
Here, Tiago suggested the PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives) method to organize the captured materials into four categories. Here is an overview of each element:
- Projects: Short-term items and specific goals related to your work or personal life.
- Areas: The responsibilities you want to manage over the long term, e.g. health, finance.
- Resources: Everything you’re interested in and may be useful in the future, e.g. hobbies, valuable references.
- Archives: Inactive items of other categories that are done and no longer in use. Move them in this category so that you do not lose the information.
3. Distill
This stage involves simplifying, summarizing and extracting valuable insights from the information. The goal is to refine your notes and collected data into actionable steps and bite-sized summaries.
Here, Tiago Forte suggested the Progressive Summarization Technique, which helps find essential information later.
The technique involves five layers, and they are –
- Layer 1: Save the most interesting excerpts,
- Layer 2: Bold the key points
- Layer 3: Highlight the best points,
- Layer 4: Summarize in your own words,
- Layer 5: Remix the information into new works.
However, not all layers apply to all notes. It depends on the value of a note.
4. Express
The purpose of building a second brain is not just to store endless information and forget about it. Its ultimate objective is to turn passive information into active knowledge and take action to create results in the real world.
With enough resources and supporting materials in your second brain, you can create something new or apply it to your project effortlessly. Here are some tips to effectively use your second brain.
- Use Information: Apply new knowledge immediately. Set goals, break down steps, and reinforce learning by teaching. Use tools to organize effectively.
- Create smaller and reusable Units: Break projects into Intermediate Packets (IP). Develop templates, document IPs, and automate routine tasks.
- Share your work: Release early versions for feedback. Choose active platforms, engage with your audience, and collaborate. Monitor performance and adjust as needed.
How to Build a Second Brain in 5 Steps
Now that you’ve got the idea of the CODE system and how the Second Brain method works, it’s time to set up a second brain for you.
However, many people find the method confusing because of different acronyms (e.g. CODE, PARA, IPs) and how to get started. Here are five simple steps that you can follow to build your second brain.
Step#1: Decide what you want to capture
The first step toward building a second brain is identifying your interests and needs to capture things like articles, screenshots, and videos.
Decide what you want to learn and explore that’s truly relevant to your interests and career.
Then, specify the areas of your personal and professional life in which you want to capture information. Some example areas are Personal, Side Hustle, Health and Fitness, and Investment.
Step#2: Choose the toolkits to capture
Now, you need to choose the tools to capture the information you encounter each day. However, you can’t expect a single app to fulfill all your needs while building a second brain. It’s about creating a digital ecosystem that includes various capture tools. But, a note taking app is a must to keep everything in one place.
Here is a list of tools and apps for your digital information management system. Based on your working style and preferences, pick one from each category.
- Note Taking apps: Evernote, Notion, Workflowy, OneNote
- Read-later apps: Readwise’s Reader, Instapaper, or Pocket
- Ebook apps: Apple Books, Kindle
- Web clipper apps: web.hypothes.is, web-highlights
- Audio/voice transcription apps: Otter, Apple Voice memo, Notta
Learn about more tools for time management and productivity from this blog post: The Best Time Management Tools for Every Need
Step#3: Set up the system with PARA
After you select the tools and finalize a note taking app, your next step is to create an organizational structure based on PARA (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives). Here is how to do it.
Create folders for Projects, Areas, Resources and Archives in your note taking app (Notion, Evernote or Workflowy app). Here is what each folder will contain-
- Projects: In this section, add the things related to active projects—work projects and personal ones. These are ongoing responsibilities with due dates. Instead of adding everything whimsically, add the most relevant and actionable items.
- Areas: This section will contain topics for ongoing areas of responsibility, but there are no set due dates. Here, you can add topics that are relevant to you, such as finance, health, parenting, writing, and so on. Remember that these items may turn into projects over time.
- Resources: This folder is like your bookshelf, where you can collect items that interest you. These could be useful but don’t have any immediate purpose. Here, you do not need to be judicious, like in the projects and areas sections.
- Archives: This section stores completed projects, outdated information, and anything useful for future reference. It will initially remain empty, but as you complete your projects, you will move the items into this folder.
Setting up a system like this may take some time initially, but this is a one-time task. The benefit of using a second brain will undoubtedly outweigh the initial time investment.
However, if you use the Notion App, many second brain templates are available in free and paid versions. One free Notion Second Brain Template is Second Brain by Rosidssoy.
You can download this template in your notion, customize it, and use it to build your second brain.
Step#4: Process the information
It’s the ‘Distill’ stage of the CODE system, where you have to extract essential insights from the captured information. As we learned before, the goal here is to turn the information into bite-sized summaries and actionable steps.
Here are the things to do to process collected data.
- Connect your read-later app with a note taking app. For instance, connect Readwise to Evernote. Highlight the key points of ebooks and articles as you read using Readwise; your highlights will automatically appear in your note taking app.
- Create a summary of the highlighted points. Write a concise, coherent summary that clarifies the essence of the information. For complex topics, apply additional layers of summarization to distill and refine the information further.
- Make data discoverable easily. Add tags or metadata to your notes and collected items to make it easier to find and cross-reference relevant information later.
Step#5: Schedule reviews
The second brain system is not like set and forget. It is essential to review periodically to get the most out of the information you collect in the system.
Set aside 30 minutes weekly to revisit your notes, analyze new information and improve your organizing system. During this time, you should accomplish the following things –
- Declutter your digital workspace,
- Update your to-dos based on new information
- Prioritize tasks for the week.
Regular analysis will ensure that your second brain is relevant and accurate. It will also improve over time as your thoughts and projects evolve.
The Benefits of Building A Second Brain (BASB)
The key reason for building a second brain is to keep the brain decluttered. But that’s not all; BASB offers more benefits in terms of knowledge management. Here are some benefits discussed.
1. Avoid information overload
We encounter hundreds of information daily from webinars, videos, articles, discussions, and various sources. Such bursts of information result in information overload in our brains. Having a second brain allows you to organize and summarize relevant information and focus on critical details.
2. Reduce mental clutter
With a second brain, you can jot down all information in a single place. You don’t need to memorize all the information, as you can retrieve it when needed. It lets you free up mental space and focus on the tasks at hand. As a result, you can collect more ideas without worrying about forgetting them.
3. Effortless retrieval of knowledge
With the BASB method, you can collect as much information as you want. The best part is that the process allows you to retrieve information effortlessly. Its categorization system helps you find information quickly, and the summarization technique saves time by avoiding irrelevant information.
4. Improved productivity
Because of the second brain, you can capture and organize information in a structured way. Since it helps retrieve information quickly, you can utilize it whenever needed. As you have an external system to save your information, you can offload remembering tasks. Your creativity and productivity improve since your mind becomes clutter-free because of the second brain.
5. Collaboration and sharing
Since you can capture information in a digital workspace, your second brain system becomes a valuable knowledge-sharing tool. You can easily share your collection or a part of the collection with colleagues, teams, or others. Also, you can allow them to collaborate. As a result, others can benefit from your curated knowledge, and they can help you enrich your second brain.
Summary and The Next Step
Now that you’ve got a necessary idea about the second brain and its benefits. It’s time to set up an external brain for you to avoid information overload and clutter. To get started, select a note taking app and create folders for PARA. The rest of the things will become clear as you work on this. Over time, the brain will evolve as you review it periodically and make necessary changes in the system based on situations.
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