Information. I was drowning in it.
In notebooks. On bits of paper. On my phone. In articles, papers and web-pages scanned or stored into Evernote. And in an incomprehensible mess of nested folders on my computer.
My web browser bristled with tabs marking useful stuff to read. Books had turned-down corners, highlighted passages, sticky tabs marking bits that I might want to go back to. Then there were the podcasts, the YouTube clips, the TED talks and masterclasses, the online courses… Plus: where the hell did I put that important letter from my accountant?
I had a constant feeling of being behind, or of losing or forgetting something important. And when I did want to use something or refer back to it, there were often long, frustrating searches to find it again.
If any of this feels familiar, I’ve found a solution.
Now, my life is more organised.
I no longer spend hours looking for a quote I recall seeing – without remembering where, exactly. Key ideas from each book I read are neatly summarised, and easy to find. I can quickly access my notes on podcasts, courses or talks. Or recall what was said in a meeting, and what my next action steps are.
With tech, I rarely have to learn to do the same thing twice. I just look up how I did it last time, and find either a quick map with keyboard shortcuts, or a step-by-step checklist if it was a more complicated task.
Interesting newsletters or online articles I want to read are all stored in my read-later app, Readwise, which I open whenever I have a few minutes. Videos and podcasts are queued up in the apps I use to watch or listen, in a logical order.
Most of all, I no longer feel overwhelmed. I don’t need to remember so much. When I need a reference, a letter, to remember my next step, I can find it. In fact, it will often resurface, even if I’ve forgotten it. When I want to read, watch or listen to something, I know exactly where I’ve saved it.
I’ve been building a second brain.
This is a system created by Tiago Forte, who explains it clearly in his book, Building A Second Brain. I don’t often say this about books, but for me it’s been life-changing.
It builds on the Zettelkasten system invented by Niklas Luhmann, an extraordinarily productive and eclectic 20th-century German academic who published 58 books and hundreds of articles over a 30-year time period, advancing innovative thought across several academic disciplines. He also raised his three children alone after the death of his wife, so no one could accuse the man of shirking.
Luhmann’s secret was the paper notes he kept in a series of slip-boxes – or Zettelkasten. These contained his notes on everything he read and studied, but also his own thoughts and the connections between it all. (If you’re interested in knowing more, Sonke Ahrens’ 2016 book How To Take Smart Notes is aimed at academic writers, but it lays out the system clearly.)
But we now live in the 21st century.
We have information coming at us from all kinds of devices, apps and messaging services. We read books but also listen to audiobooks, or read them digitally. We also have a bewildering number of places in which to store our data.
Paper seems an inefficient and wasteful way of keeping notes. And why would we put it all in one place, when we can have it stored and backed up in the cloud, and retrieve what we need from anywhere?
Forte’s system expands on the Zettelkasten concept of smart notes, and Dave Allen’s highly-rated systems for Getting Things Done. But it adapts these for the digital era.
I’ve recommended it to friends and clients, and the second brain system divides people: it’s love or hate, with little in between. For me, it’s changed everything.
I’ve always told myself that I thrived on chaos.
And I think there is still a room for a degree of mess and chaos in any creative life. But it’s been a huge relief to create a central space outside my own brain where I keep all my inputs, my projects, my next steps. And streamlining my tech so it all feeds into this system and out into my daily to-do list at the right time.
Not having to keep track of everything has freed up my creativity. I’m mainly using my mind to develop ideas, not to remember information.
Writing my weekly blog posts has become much easier as I’ve got into the habit of saving even the vaguest ideas as they come to me. When I’m ready to develop one of these further, I have a growing library of useful notes to draw on: quotes, approaches and ideas read in books or gleaned from podcasts, talks and courses.
As I write down ideas in my notes, I’m also putting concepts into my own words and making links with other thoughts or resources on the same subject. So when I come to use them and share them, I have chunks of pre-written text to play with.
Will I ever feel fully organised?
Probably not. I have more than 30 years of chaotic folders on my computer, and I doubt I’ll ever sift through all the data I have stored. But every time I open or search for a file for any reason, I quickly move it into the new system, making it easier to find next time.
I’m a voracious reader, and I listen to a lot of podcasts. As a coach working with creative professionals, I also learn lots from my brilliant clients. Having a place to store what I’ve learned, and to consider how I might apply it in my own life or share it with you has made almost everything I do faster and easier.
Everyone’s Second Brain will be different.
That’s the beauty of it. It’s a way of capturing what you’re interested in, building on your ideas, documenting and improving your processes, and making connections between projects and information that might not immediately appear to have anything in common at all.
It’s a notebook, personal journal, sketchbook for new ideas. It’s a place to take notes, organise projects, help you manage your life.
The notes you create inside it are building blocks of knowledge, units to be used and reused. And the beauty of a second brain is, you don’t even need to remember that you have them.
So how does a Second Brain work?
Essentially, Forte’s system is a four-step process he labels with a handy acronym, CODE: Capture, Organise, Distill and Express.
1. Capture
Capture insights and ideas as notes, keeping anything that resonates with you, or that excites your curiosity. Try to make whatever you write useful for your future self: explain why you’ve saved it, how you might use it, what it connects with or reminds you of.
To stay on top of this and do it as efficiently as possible, he recommends using the following tools:
A note-taking app:
I use mem.ai (not an affiliate link; I’m just a massive fan) and it has been a life-changer. It easily stores everything from Twitter threads to web pages, and I like the clean, simple interface. But you might prefer Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, or a host of others.
Which one is best? The one that you enjoy using, and access regularly.
A read-later app:
This stores webpages, tabs, podcasts and anything else you consume online or want to save for later. I use Readwise, but again there are lots more including Pocket, Safari’s Reading List feature, Instapaper, Matter, Raindrop..
Notebooks:
I’m a writer. So I still use notebooks and scraps of paper. But I now make time at the end of each working day if possible – or the end of the week if not – to transfer anything useful into my second brain. I then recycle the paper or put a line through the item in my notebook, so that I know it’s been captured.
A task manager:
This is where you keep your immediate to-do list, the next steps in a big project. I use Things 3, which has a clean, uncluttered interface and synchs across all of my Apple devices. But there are many alternatives. Again, the best one for you is always the one you’ll actually use.
2. Organise
Organise your notes into the right containers at regular intervals. And create opportunities to review them regularly and connect the dots between different notes and ideas.
Forte goes into detail on where to store what, and when to use folders/notebooks/tags/whatever else your apps use to sort things. I’m find his suggestions very helpful. My iMac especially was chaos. The simple five-folder system he explains in the book has made retrieving anything easier.
Once you have the basics in place, you can easily adapt it to the way you work, and the materials and information you work with.
3. Distill
Distill key insights. This is where your second brain becomes more than just an efficient storage system. It becomes an engine for creativity.
Every time you save a new note, try to make it useful for your future self. Explain why you saved it, what you were thinking, what caught your attention. Connect it to other notes and ideas you remember. (Most digital note-taking apps make it easy to create links between notes.)
Each time you access a note again, summarise it further, revise it or add new thoughts or connections. This turns your notes into a living, evolving, interconnected web that reflect your current thinking and ideas, not just dead, stored information.
If I’m short of ideas or want a perspective on something, I now just delve into my second brain for a while, distilling old notes and following the breadcrumb trails I’ve left for myself. And I invariably find something to spark interest, a new idea to expand on or a direction to try.
4. Express
Finally, share your insights with others. It’s how we learn and crystallise our thinking. Knowledge only becomes useful when it is used and shared. And the second brain helps you do that quickly and easily.
This could be information you send to clients, resources you share with friends and colleagues, interesting quotes or information you post online.
Here’s what it looks like in my creative life;
- When I’m writing, I have a rich source of ideas, references, quotes, other things I’ve read or seen that might be relevant. I can do this by searching categories or keywords in my note-taking app, but its AI also finds these for me, and makes suggestions about related notes as I write.
- I no longer just recommend books to coaching clients. I can also send them my notes and summary of the key points. Or links to other books and resources on the same subject.
- If I’m sending them a link to a relevant podcast or talk, I can often tell them that the meaty parts come 22 minutes in, then near the 50-minute mark, because that too was in my notes.
- If they’re struggling to do something on their website, with their mailing list or other tech, I might have a checklist mapping out my process, or links to a YouTube video, an article or whatever I used to learn it myself.
It’s easy to retrieve these little snippets and pass them on, because I no longer have to spend ages looking through paper notebooks or my browser history to find them.
This might sound complicated.
But it actually saves time and effort, and gets increasingly useful, over time. Most of us already document our processes in some way. To-do lists on scraps of paper, for instance. Getting into the habit of keeping this information changes everything.
Last year, for instance, I delivered a workshop helping creatives to find their focus. It took a lot of time to create, set up, and promote.
I recently decided to do a new workshop series. Instead of starting from scratch, I had the promotional copy I created last time. Instructions on how to set up the sales page, plus templates. Canva templates for my social media posts. Instructions to set up the workshop in my booking software. And the slide deck I created for the workshop itself, with notes on what worked, and where the audience’s attention seemed to flag.
Even though the new workshops were different, I had a framework, a process to follow and refine.
This is common sense, of course. But even if I did keep this sort of information before, it was scattered in so many different places that it took an age to find. This time, I just typed “focus workshop” into mem.ai’s search bar, and it was all there.
How to use your Second Brain for creative work
Forte has useful suggestions on how to apply all of this to our creative work. It’s particularly applicable to knowledge workers and to writers, but I think any creative would find them helpful.
Forte also offers practical ways of organising a project. He goes into detail on how to get clear on your aims and organise the work. Then you spend a few minutes recording what you’ve learned and analysing what went well and what could be improved, before archiving everything in case you need parts of it again.
This is just an overview.
I could go into more detail. But if this has resonated with you, read Building A Second Brain and go deeper, or take a look at the resources on Tiago Forte’s website. Srini Rao of The Unmistakeable Creative podcast also has a set of informative videos on using mem.ai to build your second brain. This is a good one to start with.
It might all sound complicated, but once you start applying the system, it simplifies everything. And it sets you up for far more of the random connections that inspire creative ideas.
I’ve been building my second brain for a few years now, and it feels like a rich, rotting compost heap. Everything I’ve thrown in there had mixed and fermented and it’s now fertile ground for ideas and inspiration.
At the start of this post, I mentioned an important letter from my accountant. It’s been scanned and stored for reference. At the same time, I pulled out key tasks I need to do this tax year, each of which will pop up in my task manager a few days before they’re due.
This took me five minutes. It will save Future Me waking up in the middle of the night worried, then getting up, emptying drawers and spreading papers everywhere trying to find it, and remember what I needed to do.
That’s the biggest gift of my second brain: peace of mind.
What do you think?