Building a second brain, What's that?

Read this article to understanding the new trend, "building a second brain" that is changing the way we learn, we organize and collaborate with each other. Invest less than 10 minutes to feel less anxious and have more meaningful learning. Make your life easier for your future self. The second brain is so powerful that I decided to make share mine, so you can learn from it.

Let's do it!

Learning has become a rat race. It's mandatory to learn every year, every month, every day. But we are bombarded with so much information that makes us feel like we are always late.

'Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.' - David Allen

My theory of the brain as a computer.

I would like you to imagine your brain like a computer, like a CPU. A CPU is a machine that processes information quickly and has a small memory for holding only the information that needs now to process. When that information is not necessary, the information is stored in another memory and after that into another. The computer needs 3 types of hardware to store information to function properly but with our brain, we only have one, one that is superb processing information but not storing it. One that is constantly removing information to be able to store the new one.

An average person consumes 175 newspapers a day that makes our brain go nuts. But what if we could build a second brain?

My notebook, my treasure.

For many of us, our lives are surrounded by many notebooks, with information distilled by us, information that has a lot of value, but it is trapped in the paper, in notebooks stored around our houses.

Two years ago, I decided that I needed was to create a system that allowed me to consume the information I need it quickly that allowed me to be more creative. But my journey led me to something so great that I couldn't predict. I'm not talking about a new tool. I'm talking about a new trend that will change your learning process forever.

The notebook limitations

Most of us love paper and even with powerful tools, paper in some cases still the king. There is some magic that the iPad or other electronic devices don't give you. But is also the worst way to store information. How many minutes and hours do you spend trying to reach information?

When I had discovered the bullet journal I was shocked. Never in my life I have ever kept so much information from the books and the content that I was learning.

I had written 200 hundred pages of valuable information in only 10 months, but after 13 months I realized the hard truth. Most of the content that I beautify design and draw there was going to end up on a shelf with my other hundreds of notebooks.

It would be been impossible for me to consume that information out of my home, so most of the time I would be unreachable. A thousand hours spent seem, at that time, a waste of time. There has to be a better way.

A second artificial brain to have a place where you can store all the information.

Source: Tiago forte

As I said, in the beginning, our mind is flooded with information: the one that other people produce but also the ton of information that we produce.

If you're a bookworm like I am, you probably end up with too many books, and notebooks full of drawing, notes, and even mind maps and our mind is not prepared to store so much information, so we keep forgetting important things. It's worth it to have so much content trap in sheets of paper, so difficult to find and consume. How many hours have you spent looking for that article that you want to share with your friend? How many hours have taken you to find it on your computer? And at your work?

A second brain is as Maggie Appleton says: "a reliable system – outside your physical skin-and-bone bodily boundaries – for storing, organizing, digesting, and eventually transforming information into Good Creative Output." In essence, a second brain is a knowledge management system, developed by Tiago Forte in a course called: "Building a second brain".

It's like the method of Marie Kondo but for your brain. Holding ideas, articles, and to-do's in our brain is making us more anxious, more distracted as Carl Newport call: "state of fragmented attention". That's why we actively store the information that we don't need, at this moment, in our digital tools.

Having one source of truth makes are much happier, frees us from that wasted time looking at files, and makes us be more focused on what's going on now, and more creatives.

The three elements of creativity by Kirby Ferguson

A second brain gives you the ground to work with the three-basic mechanism to be creative, As Kirby Ferguson explains in his Ted video: Everything is a remix.

1. Copy:

The learning and acquisition of in-depth knowledge are through copy. Johann Sebastian Bach came from a family of musicians, but his brother forbidden him to be a musician. In the evening, Bach, under the moonlight, copied the sheet music and notes of other musicians for learning. That way of learning was so profound an influence in his music that is characterized by it.

2. Transform:

Taking old media to transform into new media. Hurt, from Nine Inch Nails was launched in 1995, but It wasn't a success until Johnny Cash launched his remix. This not only happens in music, you can take as an example the Ghost chair designed by Philippe Stark or the frozen yogurt of Cristina Tossi.

3. Combine:

The Combine method is simple: take one idea and combine it with another idea. A perfect example is the product "la siesta" designed by Hector Serrano. He took a "botijo" and added the shape of the plastic water bottle that made the product handier, so it's lighter but also with better aesthetics.

Leave in your brain only the good stuff.

A creative solution is made of pieces, like a puzzle. In your brain, you leave what's important at the moment, and store the other pieces inside your second brain.

For me, has been a tremendous difference. Now I live more fully what I'm experiencing at this moment. I don't feel bad when I see that my favorite author just wrote an article and I don't have enough time to read it. Because I have a place, in my second brain, where is going to be stored, and I will use it when I need it. And that's also another key element: Consuming information when you want it not when the other wants you to do it.

You are probably thinking now that this is great, but no matter how good you name it or place a document that you will mysteriously lose it. And yes set a name and place for documents, it's hard to do, but here is where Tiago's P.A.R.A Method had exceeded my expectations.

P.A.R.A: The best way to keep your files organize.

Tiago's gives an astonishing and simple way to organize all your digital files on all your devices with P.AR.A: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archive.

As Tiago Forte says: "A universal system for keeping your files organize, like P.A.R.A, would have to be by these principles"

• Projects: Are a group of tasks linked to a goal with a deadline. In my case, I don't have a deadline for my projects yet because I don't have a lot of time.
• Area: A sphere of activity with standards to be maintained over time. This categorization is hard, is the most abstract, but critical for success. I like to see areas as an infinite progress bar, An Area is where you stored all you need to keep improving and visualize your current state.

In my open brain you can see this as an example of the area: Personal development but it's different depending on the person because each of us needs it for different things, another great example is Marie Poulin with is one of my idols in this area.

• Resources: A topic or theme of ongoing interest, all the articles, books or wherever content of a specific topic,
• Universal: Encompassing any conceivable kind of information from any source.

I use Notion because it let you embed YouTube videos directly, The Pygmalion Effect and the Power of Positive Expectations - YouTube - HeroicImaginationTV, Notion makes you be able to have notes and video in at the same place.

• Flexible: Able to work with any project or activity you take on, now and in the future
• Simple: Not requiring any time-consuming maintenance, cataloging, tagging, or reorganizing beyond a bare minimum
• Actionable: Integrating seamlessly with task management and project management methods.
• Cross-platform: Able to be used with any application, now existing or yet to be developed

In my case, I use it on Mac, Google Chrome, Gmail, and Notion. Works perfectly in all of them.

• Outcome-oriented, structuring information in a way that supports the delivery of valuable work

In my open brain I don't have the info inside resources. I prefer having them more easily accessible and separated by type of consumption that I do:

• In the Inbox hub, I have the info grouped by themes and is the info that is not mine and my highlights.
• In the personal library, I have my notebooks with the permanent information wrote by me and grouped in themes.
• In content, all the content that I produce for others to consume.
• In books, all the books that I have or will read with highlights. Probably this section will end up inside the Inbox hub.
• Modular: Allowing different levels of detail to be hidden or revealed, depending on the needs of the current task
• Opportunistic: In the good sense, taking advantage of work already being performed, instead of requiring dedicated overhead time.
• In Notion I have all the info related, I can go to TOP SPEAKERS and see all the info that I have gathered about Steve Jobs or Tiago Forte. Then if I want to understand better the OKR's methodology I can go to my notebook OKR's or if I prefer to improve my personal development I can go to my area of Personal development. I choose how and when I consume the info.

Now it's time to put it into practice! Let's start your knowledge base!

Don't start copying My open brain, you will end up frustrated. I will keep teaching you how to do it, don't worry, today is not the day.

"Rome wasn't built in one day"

1. Start using P.A.R.A in one tool. You can use Gmail, Notion, or whatever tool you like.

2. Create these 4 categories:

Projects: You will tag all the info related to a specific project.

Areas: All the info that you need to improve an area or the current status.

• Home: You will tag all the bills, to-do's, or even house renovation projects.
• Personal development: All the videos, articles, or books that have information that makes you improve.

Resources: All the content that you find interesting now.

Archives: Projects, areas or resources that are no longer important, but you want to keep.

• Old projects that are not relevant today.
• Old area like university.
• Tutorials about a tool that you no longer use today, but you could use in the future.

3.Make it attractive and use it for a week:

Add emojis if you can, but the most important thing is that you force yourself into using the system at least for a week.

Thank you to read the article, I will be writing articles in the future to help you to build your second brain, if you don't want to lose it subscribe to my newsletter, also join our group to be in contact with more people building a second brain ;)

If you want to use Notion I recommend you this extension

If you want to go deeper into the topic