The design and UX isn't done, Rob and Abbie, okkurrrr! 😌
A review by sleepyjo1
Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte
5.0
This isn't really a "self help book" in the traditional sense, because instead of working on internal systems, this book is about creating external ones that then in turn enrich our inner lives.
I found this to be quite insightful, and I'm very excited about building my own second brain with Obsidian. Even with less than a month of usage, I can already see the benefits of implementing the CODE system (create, organize, distill, express), and I can already notice myself finding interesting links between notes that I wouldn't have ordinarily linked together. I feel like I'm building my own personal wikipedia that'll only increase in personal value as time goes on.
Here are my top 3 personal insights I gained from reading this (spoilers? I guess?):
1) Building a second brain is a massive optimization on top of our biology. It really ties back to the quote "your brain is for having ideas, not holding them". As a programmer, I think of it like Dynamic Programming, or the idea that instead of constantly recomputing already known inputs, 1 hugely powerful optimization is to simply store results as they come, and searching for them if they're ever required in the future. That's one of several huge benefits that the second brain has.
2) It's about creating a system that's usable, not necessarily one that's perfect. As someone who's a bit OCD, I have a tendency to want to create a beautiful organizational system for the sake of having that system itself. However, one thing that Tiago stresses greatly is to instead focus on organizing things based on their utility. And this could even mean leaving stuff in the inbox for a while until you actually need it in a certain folder. It's a simple but empowering idea that removes a significant amount of friction that would previously hold me back. This idea is well encapsulated in his PARA system, which encourages organization in order of Projects, then Areas of responsibility, Resources, then Archives.
3) Creativity doesn't have to be just a 100% spontaneous, on the spot process. We can actually dissect it a bit to make it more achievable. One key insight here is that creating is actually a process of "diverging" then "converging", which just means that one framework we can implement in the creative process is to first explore all of our options, and then combine and remix from our list. While it seems a little obvious now, having that explicit and framework of "diverge and then converge" is actually quite helpful and insightful.
I believe that in this age of information overload, Tiago's book is important and I would highly encourage everyone to give this a shot. You don't even need to do anything super fancy with a second brain like Obsidian or whatnot; even Apple Notes can make a great system!
I found this to be quite insightful, and I'm very excited about building my own second brain with Obsidian. Even with less than a month of usage, I can already see the benefits of implementing the CODE system (create, organize, distill, express), and I can already notice myself finding interesting links between notes that I wouldn't have ordinarily linked together. I feel like I'm building my own personal wikipedia that'll only increase in personal value as time goes on.
Here are my top 3 personal insights I gained from reading this (spoilers? I guess?):
1) Building a second brain is a massive optimization on top of our biology. It really ties back to the quote "your brain is for having ideas, not holding them". As a programmer, I think of it like Dynamic Programming, or the idea that instead of constantly recomputing already known inputs, 1 hugely powerful optimization is to simply store results as they come, and searching for them if they're ever required in the future. That's one of several huge benefits that the second brain has.
2) It's about creating a system that's usable, not necessarily one that's perfect. As someone who's a bit OCD, I have a tendency to want to create a beautiful organizational system for the sake of having that system itself. However, one thing that Tiago stresses greatly is to instead focus on organizing things based on their utility. And this could even mean leaving stuff in the inbox for a while until you actually need it in a certain folder. It's a simple but empowering idea that removes a significant amount of friction that would previously hold me back. This idea is well encapsulated in his PARA system, which encourages organization in order of Projects, then Areas of responsibility, Resources, then Archives.
3) Creativity doesn't have to be just a 100% spontaneous, on the spot process. We can actually dissect it a bit to make it more achievable. One key insight here is that creating is actually a process of "diverging" then "converging", which just means that one framework we can implement in the creative process is to first explore all of our options, and then combine and remix from our list. While it seems a little obvious now, having that explicit and framework of "diverge and then converge" is actually quite helpful and insightful.
I believe that in this age of information overload, Tiago's book is important and I would highly encourage everyone to give this a shot. You don't even need to do anything super fancy with a second brain like Obsidian or whatnot; even Apple Notes can make a great system!