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

Automatically capture your ebook highlights. Set up a free integration to automatically send highlights from your reading apps (such as a read later or ebook app) to your digital notes (see my recommendations at Buildingasecondbrain.com/resources).

Keep what resonates (Capture) Save for actionability (Organize) Find the essence (Distill) Show your work (Express)

doing things from a spirit of service. I believe most people have a natural desire within them to serve others. They want to teach, to mentor, to help, to contribute. The desire to give back is a fundamental part of what makes us human.

Review and update my goals. Review and update my project list. Review my areas of responsibility. Review someday/maybe tasks. Reprioritize tasks.

Clear my email inbox. Check my calendar. Clear my computer desktop. Clear my notes inbox. Choose my tasks for the week.

Evaluate success criteria: Were the objectives of the project achieved? Why or why not? What was the return on investment? Officially close out the project and celebrate: Send any last emails, invoices, receipts, feedback forms, or documents, and celebrate your accomplishments with your team or collaborators so you receive the feeling of fulfillmen

Answer postmortem questions: What did you learn? What did you do well? What could you have done better? What can you improve for next time? Communicate with stakeholders: Notify your manager, colleagues, clients, customers, shareholders, contractors, etc., that the project is complete and what the outcomes were.

Capture my current thinking on the project. Review folders (or tags) that might contain relevant notes. Search for related terms across all folders. Move (or tag) relevant notes to the project folder. Create an outline of collected notes and plan the project.

Your Turn: You Only Know What You Make My favorite quote about creativity is from the eighteenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico: Verum ipsum factum. Translated to English, it means “We only know what we make.”