Building A Second Brain Book Review + Abridged
Overview
Building a second brain is a book that is a product of productivity gurus, by a productivity guru, and for productivity gurus. It succeeds in its goal of communicating note-taking systems to help people organize their lives better, but while it has drip in its core, it drowns in what can only be described as surplus productivity making it into the book. The information management skeleton is intuitive and concise. It strips information management down into its core and helps you build up your personal structure from that core to make it work for you. Information is broken down into 4 categories, and the production pipeline is broken down into 4 steps. This keeps things short, simple, and clean, so where did the other 100 pages come from?
This book has two types of padding that likely triple the length of the book. The first is the less egregious of the two: over-explaining. Multiple times, the book explains a concept well, then immediately has another chapter that is much longer explaining the same concepts again. While I would claim it was unnecessary and the book should have cut some of the explaining, I will say it as less egregious because it is overall productive to understanding. People using this as their first gateway into note-taking may find it useful, whereas those reading to increase understanding won't miss anything by skipping it.
The second type is where the book becomes a slog: anecdotes. Throughout the entire book, there are constant anecdotes ranging in duration from a paragraph to an entire chapter. They detail how people have been generally helped by having any form of note-taking system, from Einstein to random people the author knows with only a first name given. Where this could have been productive and an opportunity to go into detail about how that person sets up their notes, giving ideas to readers as to different ways to personalize their note-taking experience, it usually ends up at a dead end that simply states X person took notes and it was good. At first, it was interesting and motivating, but by halfway through the book, I found myself saying “that entire chapter didn't need to exist.” It seems that the author wanted to flex the memory that their notebook can contain, and show off how many people they can remember because of their second brain, but forgot that being able to use your second brain to produce more content doesn't mean it makes a good book.
At this point, you may be asking yourself “But Oncle Spencer, you said the core was good but have done nothing but complain, what is the good in the book?” Well, let me tell you.
Abridged
Our brains are great for a lot, but constantly remembering everything isn't their strong suit and can get stressful or annoying. Leaving this to notes, which are great at retaining information, frees up your brain to simply not have to worry about any of that. To organize everything from what you've read to work to personal projects, Tiago Forte recommends 4 core categories for notes that will make up your second brain:
Projects: Active projects you are working on. This can include work, school, personal, or anything that you need to keep track of as you do it.
Areas: Things you're generally working on, but are much more abstract and larger in scope. Where a project may be “make my meal plan for the week”, an area might look something like “becoming a better chef.” A project should have a definitive start and end point, where an area is more akin to an area of improvement long-term.
Resources: Pieces of information that may be useful down the line. Sometimes the right information is at the wrong time. Maybe you read a book with some great information, but you're currently busy with other things. Take that information, put it here, and maybe down the line you'll come back to it and find it useful.
Archive: A place for completed or stale projects. When a project is done, you may want to revisit the resources you used to make it, but it is very rare to revisit that project itself. When a project is complete, move it here. If a project is delayed or becoming stale, with little new development (or little involving you), you can also put it in another folder here, to come back to without letting it fill up your active projects.
- As a side note, try to have some form of meaningful celebration for project completion. The time spent completing the project is near zero whereas the time spent working on it is significant. Celebration helps motivate you to work towards something, and makes completion more than a moment to move to the next task.
If you are just looking to get started and are wondering how to bring all your old notes over, any current project notes or very important documents can be brought over, just throw anything else you want into your archive in a file called 'old notes.' You can also just leave them. Don't let converting old notes be a giant project, it will only discourage you or burn you out before you start. Chances are you won't need to go back much if at all, and starting something fresh with a good structure can be freeing, letting you get away from the slog of old, messy, or rigid notes.
Forte recommends using this new second brain for the production of something new. You can take in random information and store it, but that doesn't make it useful, and can become tedious over time. When you produce something with the information you have, it makes your second brain useful instead of just serving as mass storage. The production pipeline is generally two parts: gathering information and refining it. Forte breaks this down a bit more.
- Collect: Gather useful information as well as information that seems meaningful to you (This is the intake information into your second brain)
- Organise: Organise the information you have gathered (This is the structure of your second brain)
- Distill: Making the information concise and usable outside of its original context. (This is refining notes that you take instead of just copying whole articles into your notes)
- Express: making something with the information you have.
As you make projects, the recommended strategy is to make a rough draft and then build it into a full project. This can generally be done by some slightly personalized method of the above. One thing he does stress is you do not delete information. If something seems like it shouldn't be there despite being related to the same topic, keep it at the bottom of the rough draft just in case. Sometimes connections are made that will make it useful, and sometimes you forget something you just had that would be useful now.
Where to take notes
Forte has a website that helps people find what tools to use for their note-taking experience. There are lots of note-taking applications, and they all work. Don't stress about finding the perfect application. Find one that seems around right, then mould it to work for you.
My recommendation: Obsidian. Obsidian chads are yet to take an L.
Their recommendations based on archetypes:
- The Architect. Someone who wants to plan, wants to create something, and wants to be able to create structures and stay organized: Notion, Craft.do
- The Gardener. Someone who wants to work 'bottom-up', gathers ideas and lets connections between ideas emerge organically. These are based more on linking ideas together. Obsidian, Roam
- The Librarian. Someone who wants a straightforward structure for collections and easy retrieval. Evernote, Notion
- Students. People who have short-term priorities and just need to get things done pretty quickly with information mostly coming from new sources. Forte recommends Apple notes, Google Keep Notes, but I recommend just doing the same thing in any other app and then collecting them all in a 'University Archive' file that gets thrown into the archive after. The PARA structure will likely help with university work in the long run.
My Setup
Just in case you want to see my personal setup for some ideas.
My PARA structure
The numbers are just to sort it in a specific way. I made it three characters because I thought it looked cooler. – Files: Stores things like screenshots, PDFs, templates, etc for use elsewhere. This is a utility folder – Projects: This is for things I am currently working on – Resources: This is for my research, it is full of all my sources, with different folders for things like articles, documentaries, courses, or theory. This helps me separate what I can use as a primary source in an academic paper vs what I have heard and can look into farther – Archive: Old, completed, or stale projects – Zettelkasten: I use this to store lots of small specific notes that I take away from my resources or think up on my own. It's kind of just a throw box for all of my ideas and things I've learned to come back to later. I believe Forte would put this in resources, but I personally separate it just because it makes sense to me. – Home. This is just a place that more or less mirrors the folders but is just more visually appealing. It is a place where I can jot down quick thoughts to process later, look at all my projects, and quickly see each of their closest due dates
Other Setups
There are a ton of people who have setups all over YouTube or other blogs that are useful to check out to help you get started. Just remember to start with a bare-bones skeleton and add what you need from there. Other people's ideas may have something that works for them, but may just not be the right fit for you. The goal is to make a long-term note-taking structure that is suited to your needs. Don't sweat getting it right at first, you won't, just get started and adapt your note-taking as you go.
Walking through the pale moonlight phone tapped, I think and my minutes is hella low
Oncle Spencer