Why you need a second brain.

The Next Big Idea Daily newsletter?(SUBSCRIBE)?is written by me,?Michael Kovnat, and gathers insights from today’s leading non-fiction authors. It’s a companion to our?Next Big Idea Daily?podcast, available on?Apple?or?Spotify.

How’s your brain? How’s it doing keeping track of all your appointments and commitments, your friends' phone numbers, that useful idea from the article you read this morning? Is it generating exciting ideas and helping you achieve your goals?

My brain feels a little worse for wear these days. Even with the help of a calendar, an address book and other high- and low-tech interventions, it’s clear that the wetware I'm carrying in my skull, as remarkable as it is, just didn't evolve to handle the torrent of information that now comes at me on a daily basis.

If you're like me, you might want to set yourself up with a second brain.

My guest this week is productivity expert Tiago Forte , author of the book Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. At heart, the system that Tiago recommends is simply to take notes. Just writing things down is a remarkably powerful way to save mental energy and free up your brain to exercise its unique creative powers.

Hear Tiago explain how to capture the insights all around you.

But of course, there's more to it than just jotting things down. Tiago offers a step-by-step approach to building a searchable, digital system that not only stores information, but provides you with the raw materials you need to make things -- business plans, life decisions, original art, hilarious jokes. A well-made electronic brain lets your organic brain be its best self.

In our conversations, Tiago offers up timeless creative principles that can be super-charged with his second brain system, like:

• Think small.
• Diverge before you converge.
• Prune the good to surface the great.
• You only know what you make.

Have a listen, and if you hear anything that resonates, do yourself a favor and write it down. Capturing those great ideas that whiz past you every day is the first step in creating a truly useful second brain. For additional tips and resources, get the book and check out Tiago's website. Your first brain will thank you.

Next week...

Do you have your dream job? Maybe you're better off without it, says Simone Stolzoff , author of the new book The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life From Work. We'll talk about how your career fits in with the rest of your life and why "follow your passions" could be a trap.

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