Building a Second Brain: An Overview | Praxis

a summary of Building a Second Brain, my online course on capturing, organizing, and sharing your knowledge using digital notes...managing many different kinds of information – emails, text messages, messaging apps, online articles, books, podcasts, webinars, memos... trying to remember all of it is overwhelming ... consolidating ideas ... develop a valuable body of work ... an ongoing record of personal discoveries, lessons learned, and actionable insights for any situation...

our precious knowledge remains siloed and scattered... By offloading our thinking onto a “second brain,” we free our biological brain to imagine, create, and simply be present... protecting you from forgetfulness ... amplifying your efforts as you take on creative challenges...

Part I: Remember:... Think like a curator... unless we make conscious, strategic decisions about what we consume, we’ll always be at the mercy of what others want us to see...instead of diving in immediately, save them for future consideration... save anything that “resonates” with you on an intuitive level...

Part II: Connect:... notice patterns and connections... by distilling your notes into actionable, bite-sized summaries... “design notes with your future self in mind.”... Progressive Summarization... a note in multiple stages ... save only the best excerpts ... create a summary ... then a summary of that summary, distilling the essence ... add value to a note every time you touch it...

Part III: Create:... more, better, and more meaningful creative output... information only becomes knowledge – something personal, embodied, grounded – when we put it to use... writing pieces, websites, photographs, videos... embody and express the knowledge we’ve gained... Share your work with the world... everything is a work in progress...

You will no longer think about things in isolation, but as part of a network of ideas...