Building a Second Brain, page 5
I’m here to tell you that that is no way to live your life. Information becomes knowledge—personal, embodied, verified—only when we put it to use. You gain confidence in what you know only when you know that it works. Until you do, it’s just a theory.
This is why I recommend you shift as much of your time and effort as possible from consuming to creating.V We all naturally have a desire to create—to bring to life something good, true, or beautiful.9 It’s a part of our essential nature. Creating new things is not only one of the most deeply fulfilling things we can do, it can also have a positive impact on others—by inspiring, entertaining, or educating them.
What should you create?
It depends on your skills, interests, and personality. If you are highly analytical, you could evaluate the many options for camping gear and create a list of recommended products to share with your friends. If you like to teach, you could record your favorite dessert recipe and post it on social media or a blog. If you care about a local cause such as public parks, you could create a plan to lobby the city council for more funding.
All these actions—evaluate, share, teach, record, post, and lobbyVI—are synonyms for the act of expression. They all draw on outside sources for raw material, they all involve a practical process of refinement over time, and they all end up making an impact on someone or something that matters to you.
Information is always in flux, and it is always a work in progress. Since nothing is ever truly final, there is no need to wait to get started. You can publish a simple website now, and slowly add additional pages over time. You can send out a draft of a piece of writing now and make revisions later when you have more time. The sooner you begin, the sooner you start on the path of improvement.
I’ve introduced a lot of new concepts and terms, and I know at this point it can seem a little overwhelming. It may feel like you have to learn and do a lot of new things to be able to build a Second Brain.
Here’s the surprising truth: you are already doing most of the work required.
You are already learning new things—you couldn’t stop if you wanted to. You already consume interesting ideas—note the dozens of tabs you likely have open in your browser. You already put in so much effort to keep track of all the information you need for your studies, your job, or your business. All you need is a slightly more intentional, more deliberate way to manage that information, plus a few practical habits to ensure it gets done.
In Part Two, I will show you how to use the CODE steps to radically expand your memory, intelligence, and creativity. For each step, I’ll share a set of practical techniques that you can implement today that will begin to yield benefits tomorrow. Techniques that don’t require any advanced technology—only the everyday devices and apps you have in your pocket and on your desk right now.
I. Many people who follow the CODE methodology continue to use paper for their notes. Many even find that they take more notes on paper once they have a way of capturing those notes digitally and saving them in a secure place. It’s not black-or-white. It’s about choosing the right tool for the job. This book is focused primarily on the potential of digital notes.
II. Most notes apps provide ways of exporting your notes in standard formats that can then be imported into other apps. I personally have switched platforms twice (from Microsoft Word to Google Docs, and then later to Evernote) and expect to switch to new platforms regularly in the future as technology advances.
III. In a wonderful coincidence, recent research by neurophysiologists May-Britt Moser and Edvard Moser at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology indicates that the human brain remembers information using a “grid code”—a part of the brain involved in spatial reasoning. They speculate that “the grid code could therefore be some sort of metric or coordinate system” that can “uniquely and efficiently represent a lot of information.”
IV. The word “productivity” has the same origin as the Latin verb producere, which means “to produce.” Which means that at the end of the day, if you can’t point to some kind of output or result you’ve produced, it’s questionable whether you’ve been productive at all.
V. The consumerist attitude toward information—that more is better, that we never have enough, and that what we already have isn’t good enough—is at the heart of many people’s dissatisfaction with how they spend their time online. Instead of trying to find “the best” content, I recommend instead switching your focus to making things, which is far more satisfying.
VI. Other synonyms for expression include publish, speak, present, perform, produce, write, draw, interpret, critique, or translate.
PART TWO
The Method
The Four Steps of CODE
Chapter 4
Capture—Keep What Resonates
Everything not saved will be lost.
—Nintendo “Quit Screen” message
Information is food for the brain. It’s no accident that we call new ideas “food for thought.”
It’s clear that we need food and water to survive. What may not be so clear is that we also need information to live: to understand and adapt to our environment; to maintain relationships and cooperate with others; and to make wise decisions that further our interests.
Information isn’t a luxury—it is the very basis of our survival.
Just as with the food we put into our bodies, it is our responsibility and right to choose our information diet. It’s up to us to decide what information is good for us, what we want more of and less of, and ultimately, what we do with it. You are what you consume, and that applies just as much to information as to nutrition.
A Second Brain gives us a way to filter the information stream and curate only the very best ideas we encounter in a private, trusted place. Think of it as planting your own “knowledge garden” where you are free to cultivate your ideas and develop your own thinking away from the deafening noise of other people’s opinions.
A garden is only as good as its seeds, so we want to start by seeding our knowledge garden with only the most interesting, insightful, useful ideas we can find.
You may already consume a lot of content from many different sources, but perhaps never put much thought into what you do with it afterward. Maybe you are already a diligent organizer, but you’ve fallen into a habit of “digital hoarding” that doesn’t end up enriching your life. Or, if this is all completely new to you, you may be starting at square one.
No matter your situation, let’s start at the very beginning—how to use the first step of CODE to begin building your own private collection of knowledge.
Building a Private Collection of Knowledge
Taylor Swift is an icon of modern pop and country music and one of the best-selling music artists in history. Her nine chart-topping albums have sold over two hundred million copies worldwide and earned her a long list of awards, including eleven Grammy Awards. Not only does she appear in lists of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, her influence has transcended music and placed her on such lists as the Time 100 and Forbes Celebrity 100.1
Over the course of her career, Swift has released five documentary films revealing her creative songwriting process. In all of them, she can be found with her head buried in her phone. As she says: “I disappear into my phone because my phone is where I keep my notes and my phone is where I’m editing.”2 In her notes she can write down (and reread, edit, and riff off) any snippet of lyrics or melodic hook that flickers through her mind. She can take her notes everywhere, access them from anywhere, and send them within seconds to a wide network of producers and collaborators using the same device. Any feedback they send back can go right into her notes as well.
In an interview about how she wrote the smash hit “Blank Space,”3 Swift says, “I’ll be going about my daily life and I’ll think, ‘Wow, so we only have two real options in relationships—it’s going to be forever or it’s going to go down in flames,’ so I’ll jot that down in my notes… I’ll come up with a line that I think is clever like ‘Darling I’m a nightmare dressed like a daydream’ and I just pick them and put them where they fit and construct the bridge out of more lines that come up within the last couple of years… ‘Blank Space’ was the culmination of all my best ones one after the other.”
For Swift, writing songs is not a discrete activity that she can do only at certain times and in certain places. It is a side effect of the way her mind works, spinning off new metaphors and turns of phrase at the most unexpected times: “I’m inspired to write songs at any time of day, when I’m going through something or when the dust has settled and I’m over it. It can be anything. I’ll just be doing dishes or something, or in the middle of an interview, and I could get an idea in my head that just kind of sticks out as, ‘That could be a hook, that could be a pre-chorus, that’s a first line.’ ” She goes on to explain why it’s so important to her to capture those fleeting thoughts right as they appear: “I kind of have to capitalize on the excitement of me getting that idea and see it all the way through or else I’ll leave it behind and assume it wasn’t good enough.”
Even after all her success, even Taylor Swift needs a system to carry her ideas from inception all the way to completion. By integrating her notetaking with her daily life, she’s able to use language and analogies that are rooted in everyday feelings and experiences, forging a powerful connection with her fans who call themselves “Swifties.” Listening to her albums is like following Swift on a journey of self-discovery, each album chronicling what she was experiencing and who she was becoming in each chapter of her life.
This story sheds light on how even the world’s most successful and prolific creatives need support systems to pursue their craft. It’s not a matter of having enough raw talent. Talent needs to be channeled and developed in order to become something more than a momentary spark. Actor and comedian Jerry Seinfeld, arguably the most influential comedian of his generation, wrote in his book Is This Anything?:
Whenever I came up with a funny bit, whether it happened on a stage, in a conversation or working it out on my preferred canvas, the big yellow legal pad, I kept it in one of those old-school accordion folders… A lot of people I’ve talked to seemed surprised that I’ve kept all these notes. I don’t understand why they think that. I don’t understand why I’ve kept anything else. What could possibly be of more value?
Think about your favorite athlete, musician, or actor. Behind the scenes of their public persona, there is a process they follow for regularly turning new ideas into creative output. The same goes for inventors, engineers, and effective leaders. Innovation and impact don’t happen by accident or chance. Creativity depends on a creative process.
Creating a Knowledge Bank: How to Generate Compounding Interest from Your Thoughts
In Chapter 2, we looked at the history of commonplace books, kept by intellectuals and writers in previous centuries. For them, the purpose of information was clear: to inform their writing, speaking, and conversation. Knowing how they were going to be putting ideas to use gave them a powerful lens for seeing which ones were worth the trouble of writing down.
This practice continues among creatives today. Songwriters are known for compiling “hook books” full of lyrics and musical riffs they may want to use in future songs. Software engineers build “code libraries” so useful bits of code are easy to access. Lawyers keep “case files” with details from past cases they might want to refer to in the future. Marketers and advertisers maintain “swipe files” with examples of compelling ads they might want to draw from.
The challenge for the rest of us is how to apply this same lens to the work we do every day. What kinds of information are worth preserving when we don’t know exactly how we’ll be putting it to use? Our world changes much faster than in previous eras, and most of us don’t have a single creative medium we work in. How can we decide what to save when we have no idea what the future holds?
To answer that question, we have to radically expand our definition of “knowledge.”
Knowledge isn’t just wise quotations from long-dead Greek philosophers in white togas. It’s not just the teachings found within thick textbooks written by academics with advanced degrees. In the digital world we live in, knowledge most often shows up as “content”—snippets of text, screenshots, bookmarked articles, podcasts, or other kinds of media. This includes the content you gather from outside sources but also the content you create as you compose emails, draw up project plans, brainstorm ideas, and journal your own thoughts.
These aren’t just random artifacts with no value—they are “knowledge assets” that crystallize what you know in concrete form.I
Knowledge isn’t always something “out there” that you have to go out and find. It’s everywhere, all around you: buried in the emails in your inbox, hidden within files in your documents folder, and waiting on cloud drives. Knowledge capture is about mining the richness of the reading you’re already doing and the life you’re already living.
Sometimes these assets are quite mundane—the agenda from last year’s financial planning off-site repurposed for next year’s meeting. At other times that knowledge is lofty and grand—your in-depth notes from a book on history that could change how you think about the world. Or anything in between. A knowledge asset is anything that can be used in the future to solve a problem, save time, illuminate a concept, or learn from past experience.
Knowledge assets can come from either the external world or your inner thoughts. External knowledge could include:
Highlights: Insightful passages from books or articles you read.
Quotes: Memorable passages from podcasts or audiobooks you listen to.
Bookmarks and favorites: Links to interesting content you find on the web or favorited social media posts.
Voice memos: Clips recorded on your mobile device as “notes to self.”
Meeting notes: Notes you take about what was discussed during meetings or phone calls.
Images: Photos or other images that you find inspiring or interesting.
Takeaways: Lessons from courses, conferences, or presentations you’ve attended.
Look around you and notice that you already have many of these. It may be disorganized, spread around in different places, and saved in different formats, but it’s there. Just notice that you’ve already spent the effort to create or acquire it. All you need to do is gather it up and plant it as the first seeds in your knowledge garden. Soon I’ll show you how to do that.
As you start collecting this material from the outer world, it often sparks new ideas and realizations in your inner world. You can capture those thoughts too! They could include:
Stories: Your favorite anecdotes, whether they happened to you or someone else.
Insights: The small (and big) realizations you have.
Memories: Experiences from your life that you don’t want to forget.
Reflections: Personal thoughts and lessons written in a journal or diary.
Musings: Random “shower ideas” that pop into your head.
The meaning of a thought, insight, or memory often isn’t immediately clear. We need to write them down, revisit them, and view them from a different perspective in order to digest what they mean to us. It is exceedingly difficult to do that within the confines of our heads. We need an external medium in which to see our ideas from another vantage point, and writing things down is the most effective and convenient one ever invented.
Perhaps you have some hesitation about writing down such personal thoughts in a piece of software rather than a private journal. While it’s always up to you what you choose to note down, remember that your Second Brain is private too. You can share certain notes if you want to, but by default everything inside is for your eyes only.
For now, choose the two to three kinds of content from the two lists above that you already have the most of and already value. Some people favor inner sources of knowledge, some people are biased toward the outer world, but most people are somewhere in between. While you can eventually learn to capture from dozens of different sources, it’s important to start small and get your feet wet before diving into the deep end.
What Not to Keep
The examples I’ve shared may seem so expansive that you’re wondering if there is anything you shouldn’t keep in your Second Brain. In my experience, there are four kinds of content that aren’t well suited to notes apps:
Is this sensitive information you’d like to keep secure? The content you save in your notes is easily accessible from any device, which is great for accessibility but not for security. Information like tax records, government documents, passwords, and health records shouldn’t be saved in your notes.
Is this a special format or file type better handled by a dedicated app? Although you could save specialized files such as Photoshop files or video footage in your notes, you’ll need a specialized app to open them anyway, so there’s no benefit to keeping them in your notes.
Is this a very large file? Notes apps are made for short, lightweight bits of text and images, and their performance will often be severely hampered if you try to save large files in them.
Will it need to be collaboratively edited? Notes apps are perfectly suited for individual, private use, which makes them less than ideal for collaboration. You can share individual notes or even groups of notes with others, but if you need multiple people to be able to collaboratively edit a document in real time, then you’ll need to use a different platform.
Twelve Favorite Problems: A Nobel Prize Winner’s Approach to Capturing
