Second brain §

Building a Second Brain is a book by Thiago Forte, who also uses the PARA system for organizing your life, a method for Personal Knowledge Management.

There’s a nice youtube-video that discusses the 10 principles of building a second brain.

Here’s a nice visual guide

Borrowed Creativity §

Creativity doesn’t happen in a vacuum, it’s about remixing things that already exist. You combine and tweak things in your own way, and that is creative output.

The capture habit §

Off-load your working memory by recording things in a separate system.

Idea recycling §

Ideas are not single-use, instead we use them over and over again in different projects.

Projects over categories §

Don’t obsess over categories, instead try to associate the things that you capture to ongoing projects.

Slow burn vs heavy lifts §

Heavy lifting means doing very focused and isolated work during a short time-span. Slow burns are projects that occur over a longer time and on a slow-burner. You gather things over time.

Start with abundance §

We tend to start from a blank page with our creative output. However, by collecting things in something like a second brain, whenever we output something we’ll be able to draw from a vast library of things you have gathered over time.

Intermediate packets You can break down creative outputs in smaller content blocks, and re-use individual blocks in different contexts.

You only know what you make §

Basically the Feynman technique

Make it easier for your future self §

Provide enough context and information so that you are able to follow along later when you’ve forgotten the concept.

Keep your ideas moving §

Don’t fall into the trap of perfecting your system FIRST, then creating output. Just get moving and work things out as you go along.