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Tiago Forte

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Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential Kindle Edition

by Tiago Forte (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 5,536 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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A WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
A FINANCIAL TIMES BUSINESS BOOK OF THE MONTH
A FAST COMPANY TOP SUMMER PICK

'Completely changed my life' - Ali Abdaal, YouTuber and Entrepreneur
'Reading this book feels like being let in on a secret. ... an absolute must read' - Ryder Carroll, author of The Bullet Journal Method

Discover the full potential of your ideas and make powerful, meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.

For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world's knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to create and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than being empowered by this information, we're often overwhelmed, paralysed by believing we'll never know or remember enough.

This eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. A trusted and organised digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes and creative work, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals. From identifying good ideas, to organising your thoughts, to retrieving everything swiftly and easily, it puts you back in control of your life and information.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A well-written, cogent, and useful manual for staying clear in the knowledge-worker world.

-- "David Allen, New York Times bestselling author"

About the Author

Tiago Forte is one of the world's foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review. Find out more at Fortelabs.co.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1: Where It All Started Chapter 1 Where It All Started
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

—David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

One spring day during my junior year of college, for no apparent reason, I began to feel a small pain in the back of my throat.

I thought it was the first sign of a flu coming on, but my doctor couldn’t find a trace of illness. It slowly got worse over the next few months, and I began to visit other, more specialized doctors. They all arrived at the same conclusion: there’s nothing wrong with you.

Yet my pain continued getting worse and worse, with no remedy in sight. Eventually it became so severe that I had trouble speaking or swallowing or laughing. I did every diagnostic test and scan imaginable, desperately looking for answers for why I was feeling this way.

As months and then years passed, I began to lose hope that I would ever find relief. I started taking a powerful anti-seizure medication that temporarily relieved the pain, but there were terrible side effects, including a numbing sensation throughout my body and severe short-term memory loss. Entire trips I took, books I read, and precious experiences with loved ones during this period were wiped from my memory as if they never happened. I was a twenty-four-year-old with the mind of an eighty-year-old.

As my ability to express myself continued to deteriorate, my discouragement turned to despair. Without the ability to speak freely, so much of what life had to offer—friendships, dating, traveling, and finding a career I was passionate about—seemed like it was slipping away from me. It felt like a dark curtain was being drawn over the stage of my life before I even had a chance to start my performance.
A Personal Turning Point—Discovering the Power of Writing Things Down
One day, sitting in yet another doctor’s office waiting for yet another visit, I had an epiphany. I realized in a flash that I was at a crossroads. I could either take responsibility for my own health and my own treatment from that day forward, or I would spend the rest of my life shuttling back and forth between doctors without ever finding resolution.

I took out my journal and began to write what I was feeling and thinking. I wrote out the history of my condition, through my own lens and in my own words, for the first time. I listed which treatments had helped and which hadn’t. I wrote down what I wanted and didn’t want, what I was willing to sacrifice and what I wasn’t, and what it would mean to me to escape the world of pain I felt trapped within.

As the story of my health began to take shape on the page, I knew what I needed to do. I stood up abruptly, walked over to the receptionist, and asked for my complete patient record. She looked at me quizzically, but after I answered a few questions, she turned to her files and began making photocopies.

My patient record amounted to hundreds of pages, and I knew I would never be able to keep track of them on paper. I started scanning every page on my family’s home computer, turning them into digital records that could be searched, rearranged, annotated, and shared. I became the project manager of my own condition, taking detailed notes on everything my doctors told me, trying out every suggestion they made, and generating questions to review during my next appointment.

With all this information in one place, patterns began to emerge. With my doctors’ help, I discovered a class of afflictions called “functional voice disorders,” which included problems with any of the more than fifty pairs of muscles required to properly swallow a piece of food. I realized that the medications I was taking were masking my symptoms, and in the process making it harder to hear what they were telling me. What I had was not an illness or infection that could be eradicated with a pill—it was a functional condition that required changes in how I took care of my body.

I began to research how breathing, nutrition, vocal habits, and even past experiences in childhood can be manifested in the nervous system. I started to understand the mind-body connection and how my thoughts and feelings directly impacted the way my body felt. Taking notes on everything I learned, I devised an experiment: I would try a few simple lifestyle changes, such as improving my diet and regular meditation, combined with a series of voice exercises I learned from a voice therapist. To my shock and amazement, it began to work almost immediately. My pain didn’t disappear, but it became far more manageable.I

As I look back, my notes were as important in finding relief as any medicine or procedure. They gave me the chance to step back from the details of my condition and see my situation from a different perspective. For both the outer world of medicine and the inner world of sensations, my notes were a practical medium for turning any new information I encountered into solutions I could use.

From then on, I became obsessed with the potential of technology to channel the information all around me. I began to realize that the simple act of taking notes on a computer was the tip of an iceberg. Because once made digital, notes were no longer limited to short, handwritten scribbles—they could take any form, including images, links, and files of any shape and size. In the digital realm, information could be molded and shaped and directed to any purpose, like a magical, primordial force of nature.

I started using digital notetaking in other parts of my life. In my college classes, I turned stacks of disheveled spiral-bound notebooks into an elegant, searchable collection of lessons. I learned to master the process of writing down only the most important points from my classes, reviewing them on demand, and using them to compose an essay or pass a test. I had always been a mediocre student with average grades. My early schoolteachers would regularly send me home with report cards noting my short attention span and wandering mind. You can imagine my delight when I graduated from college with a nearly straight-A grade point average and university honors.

I had the misfortune of graduating into one of the worst job markets in a generation, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Faced with few employment opportunities in the United States, I decided to join the Peace Corps, an overseas volunteer program that sends Americans to serve in developing countries. I was accepted and assigned to a small school in the eastern Ukrainian countryside, where I would spend two years teaching English to students aged eight to eighteen.

Working as a teacher with few resources and little support, my notetaking system once again became my lifeline. I saved examples of lessons and exercises anywhere I found them: from textbooks, websites, and USB drives passed around by other teachers. I mixed and matched English phrases, expressions, and slang into word games to keep my energetic third graders engaged. I taught the older students the basics of personal productivity—how to keep a schedule, how to take notes in class, and how to set goals and plan their education. I will never forget their appreciation as they grew up and used those skills to apply to universities and succeed in their first jobs. Years later, I still regularly receive messages of gratitude as the productivity skills I taught my former students continue to bear fruit in their lives.

I returned to the US after two years of service and was thrilled to land a job as an analyst at a small consulting firm in San Francisco. As excited as I was to start my career, I was also faced with a major challenge: the pace of work was frantic and overwhelming. Moving straight from rural Ukraine to the epicenter of Silicon Valley, I was utterly unprepared for the constant barrage of inputs that is a normal part of modern workplaces. Every day I received hundreds of emails, every hour dozens of messages, and the pings and dings from every device merged into a ceaseless melody of interruption. I remember looking around at my colleagues and wondering, “How can anyone get anything done here? What’s their secret?”

I knew only one trick, and it started with writing things down.

I started taking notes on everything I was learning using a notetaking app on my computer. I took notes during meetings, on phone calls, and while doing research online. I wrote down facts gleaned from research papers that could be used in the slides we presented to clients. I wrote down tidbits of insight I came across on social media, to share on our own social channels. I wrote down feedback from my more experienced colleagues so I could make sure I digested it and took it to heart. Every time we started a new project, I created a dedicated place on my computer for the information related to it, where I could sort through it all and decide on a plan of action.

As the information tide receded, I started to gain a sense of confidence in my ability to find exactly what I needed when I needed it. I became the go-to person in the office for finding that one file, or unearthing that one fact, or remembering exactly what the client had said three weeks earlier. You know the feeling of satisfaction when you are the only one in the room who remembers an important detail? That feeling became the prize in my personal pursuit to capitalize on the value of what I knew.
Another Shift—Discovering the Power of Sharing
My collection of notes and files had always been for my own personal use, but as I worked on consulting projects for some of the most important organizations in the world, I started to realize that it could be a business asset as well.

I learned from one of the reports we published that the value of physical capital in the US—land, machinery, and buildings for example—is about $10 trillion, but that value is dwarfed by the total value of human capital, which is estimated to be five to ten times larger. Human capital includes “the knowledge and the knowhow embodied in humans—their education, their experience, their wisdom, their skills, their relationships, their common sense, their intuition.”1

If that was true, was it possible that my personal collection of notes was a knowledge asset that could grow and compound over time? I began to see my as-yet-unnamed Second Brain not just as a notetaking tool but as a loyal confidant and thought partner. When I was forgetful, it always remembered. When I lost my way, it reminded me where we were going. When I felt stuck and at a loss for ideas, it suggested possibilities and pathways.

At one point some of my colleagues asked me to teach them my organizing methods. I found that virtually all of them already used various productivity tools, such as paper notepads or the apps on their smartphones, but that very few did so in a systematic, intentional way. They tended to move information around from place to place haphazardly, reacting to the demands of the moment, never quite trusting that they’d be able to find it again. Every new productivity app promised a breakthrough, but usually ended up becoming yet another thing to manage.

Casual lunchtime chats with my colleagues turned into a book club, which became a workshop, which eventually evolved into a paid class open to the public. As I taught what I knew to more and more people and saw the immediate difference it made in their work and lives, it began to dawn on me that I had discovered something very special. My experience managing my chronic condition had taught me a way of getting organized that was ideal for solving problems and producing results now, not in some far-off future. Applying that approach to other areas of my life, I had found a way to organize information holistically—for a variety of purposes, for any project or goal—instead of only for one-off tasks. And more than that, I discovered that once I had that information at hand, I could easily and generously share it in all kinds of ways to serve the people around me.
The Origins of the Second Brain System
I began to call the system I had developed my Second Brain and started a blog to share my ideas about how it worked. These ideas resonated with a much wider audience than I ever expected, and my work was eventually featured in publications such as the Harvard Business Review, The Atlantic, Fast Company, and Inc., among others. An article I wrote about how to use digital notetaking to enhance creativity went viral in the productivity community, and I was invited to speak and teach workshops at influential companies like Genentech, Toyota, and the Inter-American Development Bank. In early 2017, I decided to create an online course called “Building a Second Brain” to teach my system on a wider scale.II In the years since, that program has produced thousands of graduates from more than one hundred countries and every walk of life, creating an engaged and inquisitive community where the lessons in this book have been honed and refined.

In the next couple of chapters, I’ll show you how the practice of creating a Second Brain is part of a long legacy of thinkers and creators who came before us—writers, scientists, philosophers, leaders, and everyday people who strived to remember and achieve more. Then I’ll introduce you to a few basic principles and tools you’ll need to set yourself up to succeed. Part Two, “The Method,” introduces each of the four steps you’ll follow to build a Second Brain so you can immediately begin to capture and share ideas with more intention. And Part Three, “The Shift,” offers a set of powerful ways to use your Second Brain to enhance your productivity, accomplish your goals, and thrive in your work and life.

I’ve shared my story with you because I want you to know that this book isn’t about perfectly optimizing some kind of idealized life. Everyone experiences pain, makes mistakes, and struggles at some point in their lives. I’ve had my fair share of challenges, but at each stage of my journey, treating my thoughts as treasures worth keeping has been the pivotal element in everything I’ve overcome and achieved.

You may find this book in the “self-improvement” category, but in a deeper sense it is the opposite of self-improvement. It is about optimizing a system outside yourself, a system not subject to your limitations and constraints, leaving you happily unoptimized and free to roam, to wonder, to wander toward whatever makes you feel alive here and now in each moment.

I. I was aided in this effort by my involvement with the Quantified Self community, a network of local meetup groups in which people share their stories about how they track their health, productivity, mood, or behavior to learn more about themselves.
II. Interested readers can find out more at buildingasecondbrain.com/course.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B09MDNDYYF
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Profile Books (June 14, 2022)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 14, 2022
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7009 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #132,110 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #57 in Business Office Skills
- #78 in Time Management in Business
- #143 in Time Management (Books)

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Tiago Forte

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Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review. Find out more at Fortelabs.co.

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A Game-Changer for Productivity and Organization!

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2024

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Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte has truly transformed the way I approach productivity and organization. This book is nothing short of a revelation for anyone looking to supercharge their creative thinking and streamline their workflow.

From the very first chapter, I was captivated by Forte's insightful perspective on digital note-taking and knowledge management. His comprehensive framework, known as the "PARA" method, provides a clear roadmap for organizing your digital life. It's not just about managing information; it's about unleashing your creative potential.

What sets this book apart is its actionable advice. Forte not only explains the concepts but also offers practical, step-by-step instructions on how to implement them in your daily routine. His emphasis on using modern digital tools effectively is a game-changer in a world overflowing with information.

Furthermore, Building a Second Brain is more than just a productivity manual. It delves into the philosophy of knowledge management, helping you cultivate a lifelong habit of learning and growth. I particularly appreciate Forte's insights on creativity and idea generation, which have helped me become more innovative and adaptable.

I can confidently say that this book has transformed my life. It's a must-read for professionals, students, and anyone seeking to harness the power of their digital world. Building a Second Brain is a treasure trove of wisdom and practical guidance that will undoubtedly leave a lasting impact on your personal and professional life. Highly recommended!

11 people found this helpful

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Dijon A. Henderson

5-star idea, 3-star book.

Reviewed in the United States on January 7, 2024

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The short:

Tiago Forte gives use a framework to tackle organization of our digital lives and to make technology finally work for us instead of becoming a burden.

The good:

Forte has three main concepts that help to organize your digital life and improve productivity (i.e. making the data you've capture) accessible and usable, instead of getting lost. Those three concepts are CODE, PARA, and Highlighting 2.0 (or Progressive Summarization).

CODE: Capture, Organize, Distill, Express is a nice easy to remember acronym for the "second brain" and how we are to think of it.

PARA: (Projects, Areas, Resource, Archive) is a subset of Organize and is how the "brain" is structured. Which changes the "normal" way we think of folder hierarchy in a very powerful way. Most of the things we do in our daily lives are Projects, but we save the data for a project in different "areas" and "resources" (i.e. unrelated folders) and aren't easy to find using browsing and thus create bloat that is never used and continues to grow, PARA is here to solve that.

Lastly, Highlighting 2.0: is a powerful way to capture and distill the just of something you've read or written. So, that when you come back to it in 20 years you don't need to read it all over to understand why it was important in the first place (in less of course you wish to do so).

The bad:

About 50% of this book, probably more (particularly the first 100 pages or so), are portrayal, fluff, salesmanship, cheer-leading, and war stories mean to inspire the reader. Not only is this a huge waste of everyone's time, the author's system should inspire based upon it's own merits and because there was so much "extra", the book wasn't as practical and/or applicable as it could/should have been.

This lack of applicability is evident in the fact that they author had to write a second book titled PARA to clarify and expound on the matter when he should have done so in this current book; and unfortunately, based upon what the author has said in this book, I doubt that his second book will truly clarify the matter. In fact, a review of "The PARA Method" by Dennis M says essentially that, "While it does expand on the method, you should be able to get everything you need from BASB".

Additionally, Forte lays out a system that is more expansive than the scope of this book alone, leaving the reader to fend for themselves.

Epilogue:

This is a book that probably should have 5-stars, but tittered dangerously close to being 3-stars. The author has some good insights, he just doesn't execute the transfer of knowledge well in this book and thus the reader must fend for themselves to really implement what the author is trying to convey and will most likely take many reads/look-backs to fully grasp the fully utility of the message. My biggest gripe with this book, is that there's so much extra fluff and trying to sell you on the method and not enough instruction and application. Forte outlines the four methods to find data in his system, the first two being searching (which is easy enough), browsing (which Forte himself cite a study showing this is the preferred method by humans to sieve data) however due to the simplicity and flatness of his PARA system (as is) true browsing is seemingly impossible and it's not clear as how one should rectify this. Forte seems to suggest that we shouldn't worry about it, because not everything is going to be useful, but then why bother organizing at all if you can't find an item you need.

45 people found this helpful

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Willi Bradburn

Lots to learn but easy to read

Reviewed in the United States on April 21, 2024

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I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would. I expected to learn a new way of approaching productivity and creativity. I didn't expect the book to be as easily read and relatable.

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T.H.H.

I loved this book so much, I bought a copy for my husband too!

Reviewed in the United States on February 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

To say this book was life changing, would be an understatement. If only with this book had been written ten years ago! Of course, the note taking tools of ten years ago didn’t lend themselves to this method as well as modern tools do, but I would’ve found a way to make it work. For my entire adult life, I’ve tried and failed to find a system that works for me. A way for me to create what I called a personal knowledgebase that covered all aspects of my life, but what Tiago Forte calls a Second Brain. I had a system I used in the 90s in Microsoft Outlook. I created “contacts” with various notes and information I wanted to be able to easily access, then peppered it with keywords to search on. But as one job led to another and another, I lost that repository. I’ve used folders, notebooks, and even invested in The Paper Tiger, a method that relied on search terms and tags to find information, but everything ultimately left me feeling more frustrated than helped.

Enter Evernote, Notion, and similar apps. I discovered Notion before I discovered this book. I began using it to store information I had once stored in Microsoft OneNote, due do the markdown language capabilities and robust database support. As I learned how to use Notion, I stumbled upon Thomas Frank. He’s not only a Notion guru, but a Second Brain evangelist. I bought Tiago Forte’s book shortly after watching Frank’s first video. But as I read the book, the more I realized that Notion wasn’t really the right tool for me. The ability to create a folder structure and areas the way my brain works, was hindered by the complexity of Notion. That was the opposite of what I needed.

When I finished Forte’s book, I simultaneously stumbled upon a post on Medium about another note-taking app called Nimbus Note. I did the free two week trial, and by the end of the first day, I knew that Nimbus more closely aligns with how I personally took the lessons from Forte’s book and applied them to my life. Since then, I’ve become more organized, more resourceful, and more importantly as an author, more creative! Being able to spend more time brainstorming and less time digging through my notes has added a level of focus I didn’t know I was capable of.

I loved this book so much, I bought a paperback copy for my husband and he’s adopting these techniques as well!

59 people found this helpful

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Marcelo Marques

Mais do que algumas dicas de organização

Reviewed in Brazil on March 30, 2024

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O autor se esforçou para mostrar não só os fundamentos que judiado seus ensinamentos, mas também pasta explicar os benefícios possíveis e a fontes das suas pesquisas sobre o tema. Pode pôsteres uma leitura longa, mas bela muito a pena

One person found this helpful

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Georgina Vazquez

Ayuda a organizar tu información personal y profesional

Reviewed in Mexico on April 12, 2024

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Es un libro muy práctico, pero muy bien fundamentado.

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Steven Paschak

Superb and Unexpected

Reviewed in Canada on August 8, 2023

Verified Purchase

I bought the book looking for productivity tips and a way to get organized. This book goes far beyond that and lays out a methodology of creativity. I was not expecting that and was pleasantly surprised. The book was clearly written and included good examples. While not explicitly giving me the task management/productivity tips I was looking for, it gave me a new fantastic way to organize my thinking and some ideas for how to create my own work and build on my thinking. I enjoyed it very much and even bought a copy for an entrepreneur friend of mine. Would highly recommend the read.

2 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Presents some very good ideas

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 26, 2024

Verified Purchase

Tiago goes a bit deeper than you first expect. I picked up some things that I think will be genuinely useful.

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Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organise Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential Kindle Edition

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