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

without our thoughts as distractions, we are left to sit with uncomfortable questions about our future and our purpose.

Imagine how absurd it would be to organize a kitchen instead by kind of food: fresh fruit, dried fruit, fruit juice, and frozen fruit would all be stored in the same place, just because they all happen to be made of fruit. Yet this is exactly the way most people organize their files and notes—keeping all their book notes together just because they

You don’t need to go out and hunt down insights. All you have to do is listen to what life is repeatedly trying to tell you. Life tends to surface exactly what we need to know, whether we like it or not. Like a compassionate but unyielding teacher, reality doesn’t bend or cave to our will. It patiently teaches us in what ways our thinking is not ac

every time you “touch” a note, you should make it a little more discoverable for your future self*—by adding a highlight, a heading, some bullets, or commentary. This is the “campsite rule” applied to information—leave it better than you found it.

There have been habits and skills that seemed impossible to master, that you now can’t imagine living without.

Nowadays, almost everyone needs a way to manage information. More than half the workforce today can be considered “knowledge workers”—professionals for whom knowledge is their most valuable asset, and who spend a majority of their time managing large amounts of information.

Every minute we spend trying to mentally juggle all the stuff we have to do leaves less time for more meaningful pursuits like cooking, self-care, hobbies, resting, and spending time with loved ones.

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?

the eighteenth-century philosopher Giambattista Vico: Verum ipsum factum. Translated to English, it means “We only know what we make.”