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

Twyla Tharp’s box reveals the true value of a simple container: it is easy to use, easy to understand, easy to create, and easy to maintain. It can be moved from place to place without losing its contents. A container requires no effort to identify, to share with others, and to put in storage when it’s no longer needed. We don’t need complex, sophi

The temptation when initially capturing notes is to also try to decide where they should go and what they mean. Here’s the problem: the moment you first capture an idea is the worst time to try to decide what it relates to. First, because you’ve just encountered it and haven’t had any time to ponder its ultimate purpose, but more importantly, becau

Knowing that nothing I write or create truly gets lost—only saved for later use—gives me the confidence to aggressively cut my creative works down to size without fearing that I’ve wasted effort or that I’ll lose the results of my thinking forever. Knowing that I can always release a fix, update, or follow up on anything I’ve made in the past gives

Habits reduce cognitive load and free up mental capacity, so you can allocate your attention to other tasks . . . It’s only by making the fundamentals of life easier that you can create the mental space needed for free thinking and creativity. —James Clear, author of Atomic Habits

One way to think of this is to “end with the beginning in mind,” a clever rephrasing of author Stephen Covey’s classic advice to “begin with the end in mind.”

You know things about how the world works that you can’t fully put into words. You understand human nature at a deep intuitive level. You see patterns and connections in your field that no other machine or human can see. Life has given you a set of experiences that provide you with a unique lens on the world. Through that lens you can perceive trut

The important thing isn’t where a note is located, but whether you can reference it quickly while staying focused on the project at hand.

Every goal, collaboration, or assignment we take on can be defined as a project, which gives it shape, focus, and a sense of direction.

Whatever you are building, there is a smaller, simpler version of it that would deliver much of the value in a fraction of the time.

Answer premortem* questions: What do you want to learn? What is the greatest source of uncertainty or most important question you want to answer? What is most likely to fail? Communicate with stakeholders: Explain to your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., what the project is about and why it matters. Define s