10 Insights from Building a Second Brain
Book summary
In order to make sense of our complex work, literacy leaders need a second space beyond ourselves to understand, to create, and to communicate.
As a 16-year school principal, I have often struggled with managing or even remembering all the information that comes at me.
"Have I made enough classroom visits?"
"Of these three requests, which one is the highest priority?"
"Is everyone clear on the goals and implementation of our school learning plan?"
Thankfully, I read a very helpful book on this topic: Building a Second Brain: Remember Everything, Achieve Anything by Tiago Forte.
Forte has created a framework to organize all of the information we encounter within a digital environment. That space provides the structure to turn all this information into knowledge we can use and share. (This topic exists within the concept of "personal knowledge management".)
Here are 10 insights from the book that you might also find helpful in becoming a more knowledgeable and productive leader.
#1 - Writing has never been more important.
"We need a way to cultivate a body of knowledge that is uniquely our own, so when the opportunity arises - whether changing jobs, giving a big presentation, launching a new product, or starting a business or a family - we will have access to the wisdom we need to make good decisions and take the most effective action. It all begins with the simple act of writing things down." (p. 2, my emphasis)
Before I read Building a Second Brain, I would save anything I found interesting - on the Web, in my work, ideas that surfaced - to Evernote.
But I wouldn't necessarily do anything with it. I treated Evernote more like a mental junk drawer: throw anything in there that may some day be useful.
What I learned is that while saving something for the future is great, I need to also create an original response to what I am consuming; to add a personal note as to why I value it and make it more concrete.
I am now in the habit of writing at least one thing that resonated with me about the information I saved within the note.
#2 - We waste one day a week just looking for stuff.
"We go to work five days per week, but spend more than one of those days on average just looking for information we need to do our work. Half the time, we don't even succeed in doing that." (p. 18)
Being more diligent about writing down what resonates with me when I save information in Evernote, I am finding it easier to locate it when I need it.
One example: I was able to create a slide deck for a virtual presentation in about half the time I usually spend preparing. What I've learned is, I have a lot of the knowledge I already needed for the project. In the past, I would have searched far and wide for novel ideas. Now I just search my notes.
#3 - To increase our knowledge, we also need focus.
"So many of us share the feeling that we are surrounded by knowledge, yet starving for wisdom. That despite all the mind-expanding ideas we have access to, the quality of our attention is only getting worse. That we are paralyzed by the conflict between our responsibilities and our most heartfelt passions, so that we're never quite able to focus and also never quite able to rest." (p. 27)
Instead of a scarcity of information, we now face a scarcity of attention. This has led to spending more time on work, which has crept into our personal lives.
This has meant finding strategies in response to increase my focus. For instance, my email inbox often captures my attention from the important but seemingly less urgent priorities. Now I use Boomerang's "pause" feature to hold emails for an hour or two at a time while I engage fully in a project.
#4 - Our minds are made for analyzing and creating.
A recent study from Princeton University found that there is a certain kind of job that is least likely to be automated by machines in coming years. Surprisingly, it wasn't jobs that required advanced skills or years of training that were predicted to fare best. It was jobs that required the ability to convey 'not just information but a particular interpretation of information.'" (p. 37).
The idea of commonplace books, diaries, and journals for memorializing important information has been around for centuries. (See William Power's Hamlet's Blackberry for a historical tour of this topic.)
What's different about today's technologies is they not only store and organize important information for our brains. They also help us to search for information, find patterns, and create new knowledge and products. Getting some space from the information we value helps us to see it more clearly and then organize it in compelling ways for ourselves and others.
In fact, I am going back and forth between writing this article on a word processor and searching for examples related to the book within my notes.
#5 - Knowledge is about action.
"What is the point of knowledge if it doesn't help anyone or produce anything? Whether your goal is to lose weight, get a promotion, start a side business, or strengthen your local community, personal knowledge management exists to support taking action - anything else is a distraction." (p. 48)
This point has become a filter when I come across important information in my daily life and I think about saving and annotating it.
Here are a few questions I might ask myself.
"What makes this information valuable or unique?
"How might I use it or need it later on?"
"Who else besides myself would benefit from it?"
When in doubt, I save it to my "Inbox" folder and review it later to decide how to organize it.
#6 - Our ideas need structure.
"Your Second Brain isn't just a tool - it's an environment. It is a garden of knowledge full of familiar, winding pathways, but also secret and secluded corners. Every pathway is a jumping-off point for new ideas and perspectives. Gardens are natural, but they don't happen by accident. They require a caretaker to see the plants, trim the weeds, and shape the paths winding through them." (p. 85)
Prior to reading this book, I would organize my notes into random categories in Evernote based on common topics: PLCs, Quotes, Templates, Book Clubs.
Forte provides a structure in which to organize our notes and categories around:
Projects - current focus for learning, e.g. "Build a Community in Which I Want to Belong"
Areas of Responsibility - spaces housing important information, such as "Safety"
Resources - organized folders for the topics that previously constituted my notes app
Archives - categories with notes I no longer reference buy may find useful in the future
This framework (PARA for short) helps me decide to what level each piece of information is a priority.
#7 - The future of learning and work is project-centric.
"A project-centric way of working comes naturally in the creative and performing arts. Artists have paintings, dancers have dances, musicians have songs, and poets have poems. These are clearly identifiable, discrete chunks of work." (p. 91)
The challenge for knowledge workers like you and me is we don't always know if we are making an impact.
Also due to the abundance of information and scarcity of attention, it helps to organize our current focus around a few projects. These projects should be aligned with your priorities, have clear goals and a plan, and an anticipated timeline for completion. All of these parameters can change, but it helps to start with this level of clarity.
For instance, our library media technology specialist and I continue to partner around including the students in improving and co-creating the school library. The results were clear, for example the books the students selected on display. (You can read more about last year's project here.)
#8 - Communicate only what's essential.
"Distillation is at the very heart of all effective communication. The more important it is that your audience hear and take action on your message, the more distilled the message needs to be. The details and subtleties can come later once you have your audience's attention." (p. 119)
While this advice is geared more toward content creators, I found it helpful for work as a literacy leader too.
As an example, when I write the first draft of my Friday staff newsletter, I will then send a test email of it and read through it with an eye toward reduction. I will ask myself, "How can I say the same thing with less words?" Teachers' time is precious; we honor that through brevity and clarity.
#9 - Forgetting can be a feature, not a bug.
"The best stuff always sticks in your mind for an hour or two." (p. 131)
Maybe due to FOMO - fear of missing out - we feel the need to save everything in these digital spaces.
Yet the more we spend time saving for later, are we forgoing the opportunity in the present to actually apply the information we saved?
Forte recommends spending time regularly summarizing the key points or takeaways from a note we saved. This is best scheduled when actively engaged in a project. Take one note within that project, highlight the most relevant information, bold the key terms and ideas, and then write three or so bullet points at the top of the note that will make it more useful and findable later in the project.
#10 - Start projects that are already 80 percent done.
"Whatever you are responsible for creating - whether it is documents or presentations or decisions or outcomes - your Second Brain is a vital repository of all the bits and pieces you'll want in your front of you when you sit down to focus. It is a creative environment you can step into at any time, in any place, when it's time to make things happen." (p. 167).
I have been a habitual procrastinator.
Using this system of regularly summarizing notes and turning them into knowledge assets to use later has made the actual creation part of my work easier. The result is getting better at starting a slide deck for a presentation by doing a simple search in my notes app and discovering what is already ready and important. This also gives me added time to tinker and refine the small details.
The only critique I have for this book is there are so many great ideas. I need to go back through it and revisit them. Interested in joining me for a book study this fall on Building a Second Brain? Reply to this post.
Final Takeaway: Busy is not the same as being productive.
The root of productivity is "product".
Where do you keep the seeds of ideas for a future harvest?
What are we creating (and not just consuming) within our limited days?
How are we adding real value to our communities?
When we allocate time to create and share our unique knowledge with others, we help them be more successful and less stressed in our busy worlds.
And their response to what we create enhances our own lives as well.
"The process of knowing yourself can seem mystical, but I see it as eminently practical. It starts with noticing what resonates with you." (p. 234)
