• We are surrounded by lot of knowledge that we consume everyday but ,we are not making use of it away to improve our creative endeavours. Imagine the possibilities of using it and how beneficial it will be. Building a second brain with note taking can help us achieve that
  • There are four main super powers of Second brain
    1. Make Our Ideas Concrete
    2. Reveal New Associations Between Ideas
    3. Incubate Our Ideas Over Time
    4. Sharpen Our Unique Perspectives
  • In order to achieve this four superpowers, CODE is a technique used to build the second brain with the help of note taking app
  • Capture, take notes of ideas and insights that resonates with us
  • Organise, Use PARA P(Project)A(Area)R(Resource) Archive method to organise the capture notes
    • Project, this is something that we are currently working on, e.g Planning a Cruise trip
    • Area This will contain anything that is part of our life, e.g Finance
    • Resource Anything that will be deemed useful , that come in handy in future e.g. a blogpost on recipe that you might want to try in future
    • Archive.Move all completed projects, resource or other notes that are not useful in near time
  • Distill, Filter the notes captured to their fine essence. e.g writing a progressive summarisation like this.
  • Express, Sharing the knowledge you have gained with others to make it beneficial
  • We can start with Twelve Favorite Problems technique to get started with building your second brain. As suggested by Richard Feyman in his words Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. e.g How can I become financially independent . These questions have to be open ended So it will drive to seek answer in different domains and increase the chance of getting a unique solution and some revelation.
  • Three mistakes when building a second brain
    1. Over-Highlighting
    2. Highlighting without purpose
    3. Making Highlighting Difficult
  • Building a Second Brain is really about standardising the way we work
  • Creativity is all about creating a balance between divergence and convergence of ideas. Perfecting this is more of an art and it comes only with practice
  • Archipelago of Ideas: Give Yourself Stepping-Stones vs The Hemingway Bridge: Use Yesterday’s Momentum Today
  • Some other techniques discussed
    • Project Checklists
      • Project Kickoff
      • Project Completion
    • Weekly and Monthly Reviews:
    • Noticing Habits