Even our brains need their sweet company.
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It’s pretty fascinating to think about how our brain is carrying literally everything we have ever seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt, and learned throughout our lives. All the little fragments of existence from our birth to this very moment are stored somewhere within our brains. Considering the amount of information it holds, we could send it into overdrive, affecting both our productivity and performance.
It has been said that brains are for creating ideas, not for storing them. There are tons of ways on how to keep our brains healthy and organized. One click on YouTube, and you’ll probably see a meditation video instructing your brain to relax, whichever works for you. Another technique is to sort out those scribbles of thoughts by building a second brain.
Basically, It’s Like A Flash Drive For The Brain
Coined by productivity expert Tiago Forte, the second brain is creating a system – outside your physical skin-and-bone bodily boundaries – for storing, organizing, and eventually transforming information.
Simply put, a second brain acts like an external flash drive or an extension of your brain. It could be something tangible, like a journal or a planner. It could also be digital, which is more common, in the form of a Notion page, an online tracker, or simply your Notes app. It is allotting a new outlet for thoughts or to-do lists where it can physically be seen by the eye.
Translating important information outside your brain and into a physical and tangible outlet prevents it from slipping into your mind as you go about your day. With the world continuously feeding your brain with both necessary and unnecessary information, some things might slip out of it while trying to contain everything that’s going on around you. Offloading information onto a second brain will provide more space and air for creativity to flow freer.
The C-O-D-E Methodology
So, how does one build a second brain? Tiago Forte, the originator of Building A Second Brain, has identified four elements that are key players in forming the second brain: Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express or CODE.
CAPTURE tells you to take notes efficiently by listing all the information that resonates with you. From recipes to links to birthday gift ideas, Write. It. Down. Capture also asks you to list everything in a single centralized space of your choice. Examples are Notion, Google Docs, Notes App, or even a physical planner.
ORGANIZE tells you not to just dump all your ideas mindlessly. Instead, Forte proposed the PARA method: Projects, Areas, Resource, Archive, which is a comprehensive system that keeps all your information stored in an orderly manner.
DISTILL tells you to transform long and exhaustive information into bite-sized summaries. Adding value to a note and making sense of it will make it easier for you to go back to it once you need it in the future.
EXPRESS tells you to translate the past few steps out into the real world by creating a concrete product of what used to be thoughts and words on paper. Putting all your note-taking and information dumping into use might just be one of the most fulfilling things you can do with this productivity technique.
By utilizing the different advancements and innovations brought about by fast-evolving concepts and technology, we are able to create such techniques that help enhance the quality of our performance as functioning members of society. Additionally, isn’t it just satisfying to look back and have tangible evidence of what used to be ideas alone?
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