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

Think of yourself not just as a taker of notes, but as a giver of notes—you

To attain knowledge, add things every day. To attain wisdom, remove things every day. —Lao Tzu, ancient Chinese philosopher

You take ten minutes before the meeting starts to organize your notes.

Notice that some of these questions are abstract, while others are concrete. Some express deep longings, while others are more like spontaneous interests. Many are questions about how to live a better life, while a few are focused on how to succeed professionally. The key to this exercise is to make them open-ended questions that don’t necessarily

I’ve learned that completed creative projects are the blood flow of your Second Brain. They keep the whole system nourished, fresh, and primed for action. It doesn’t matter how organized, aesthetically pleasing, or impressive your notetaking system is. It is only the steady completion of tangible wins that can infuse you with a sense of determinati

The second way that people use their Second Brain is to connect ideas together. Their Second Brain evolves from being primarily a memory tool to becoming a thinking tool.

The true test of whether a note you’ve created is discoverable is whether you can get the gist of it at a glance.

There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us: Making our ideas concrete. Revealing new associations between ideas. Incubating our ideas over time. Sharpening our unique perspectives.

Your Second Brain gives you a place to corral the jumble of thoughts tumbling through your head and park them in a waiting area for safekeeping. Not only does this allow you to preserve them for the long term; there are multiple other profound benefits that come from the simple act of writing something down. First, you are much more likely to remem