In his book, Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte provides a wealth of information on becoming better organized. According to Tiago, a second brain is "a trusted place outside your head where you can collect and organize your most important ideas and insights, and use them to do your best work." For him "the ultimate goal of building a Second Brain is to help you lead a more fulfilling life with more ease and less stress.”Many of Tiago's ideas on how to organize information and how to choose the best apps for your personal way of doing things, are very helpful in getting started. Ultimately a second brain is nothing more that a modern day digital commonplace book. To build a your second brain Tiago suggests you follow what he calls "C.O.D.E" which stands for the following:- Capture - You can capture information from almost anywhere such as books, videos, discussions with other people, but you need to focus on capturing only the ideas that truly resonate with you. This will become what he calls your “knowledge building blocks.”
- Organize - Your Second Brain isn’t just a tool; it’s an environment and to get the most out of it, you need to organize it. There is no wrong to do this. Chuck everything into an app, set up nested folders, tag things, however you naturally organize thing in your brain can be replicated.
- Distill - Every idea and every piece of information you input has layers. It is important distill your information down into something that will be useful to you in the future. Write a brief summary, or highlight the main points of each note. Think about why you are saving this information, why is it important to you?
- Express - Use the material you’ve distilled to express your own points of view. Turn the ideas into something that you can share. Perhaps its an A&S project or some new garb. Perhaps it will become a class in which you can share it with others. Ultimately the goal is to do something with all the information you accumulate.
For more information check out these links:Tiago Forte's Website and Youtube channel