Building a Second Brain

Tiago Forte is the founder of his own productivity consulting firm, Forte Labs. He has worked with multiple organizations including Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank. His work has also been featured in the New York Times, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and other publications. Tiago Forte previously worked as a course designer for Skillshare.com, as instructor-in-residence for Startup Advisor, and as a project manager and teacher. He is a graduate of San Diego University.

The sheer amount of information that floods your brain every day is staggering. Rather than ignoring everything (information overload), a better approach is to develop your own personal knowledge management system or PKM. If you can do this effectively, what you end up doing is building a "Second Brain" — a method for organizing your digital life, and unlocking your creative potential.

A simple, intuitive process for creating and building a Second Brain is called C.O.D.E. and involves four steps:

1. What is a Second Brain? A Second Brain is your personal knowledge management system, where you store and organize for recall all the information that you acquire. It's kind of like a combination study notebook, journal, personalized encyclopedia, idea laboratory, and sketchbook. It is digital note-taking and organization on steroids. Your Second Brain will give you superpowers, and be the world's best personal assistant.

2. The C.O.D.E. method for building a Second Brain. The C.O.D.E. method is the four steps to remembering what matters most, and making it searchable and useful in the future. C.O.D.E. is really just the creative process which has stood the test of time, updated for the digital era. The steps are:

3. Making the right things happen. Building a Second Brain is all about standardizing the way you work, store, organize, and use the information you have and acquire. It's about putting digital tools to work so that your brain can do its best work, as you imagine, invent, innovate, and create.

Every day you get exposed to an avalanche of new information. Rather than ignoring it, store what resonates with you using digital tools. If you do this, it's like building a second brain, which will give you superpowers.

Hey, second book in a row on a building theme. This book is markedly different though. In BUILDING A SECOND BRAIN, productivity guru Tiago Forte sets out the case for developing your own personal knowledge management system or PKM. He suggests digital technologies such as clipping apps now allow people to get serious about organizing and then optimizing all the digital information you take an interest in. His central idea is if you put together an intuitive system for storing and organizing your digital information, you in effect build a second brain which for you can act as the world's best personal assistant.

I mean, I really like the concept. I also like the point he makes you're not trying to create something that is publication-ready for the world at large. Rather, this is your private knowledge collection. It's a combination study notebook, journal, personalized encyclopedia, digital note-taker, idea laboratory, and sketchbook. I can't speak for you, but to me that idea sounds really appealing. I certainly wish I have kept and categorized in some way all the great ideas I've ever been exposed to. That would be awesome.

The other good thing about this book is it's very hands-on and practical. Tiago Forte's method for building a second brain is C.O.D.E. — Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express. Very smart. Great ideas. Start building your second brain today.