Fabian Untermoser

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Sep 24, 20243 min read

Second Brain

A digital support system.

Also see My Second Brain.

Benefits of a Second Brain

  • Consistently move your projects and goals to completion by organizing and accessing your knowledge in a results-oriented way

  • Transform your personal knowledge into income, taking advantage of a rapidly growing knowledge economy

  • Uncover unexpected patterns and connections between ideas

  • Reduce stress and “information overload” by expertly curating and managing your personal information stream

  • Develop valuable expertise, specialized knowledge, and the skills to deploy it in a new job, career, or business

  • Cultivate a collection of valuable knowledge and insights over time without having to follow rigid, time-consuming rules

  • Unlock the full value of the wealth of learning resources all around you, such as online courses, webinars, books, articles, forums, and podcasts

  • You’ll connect with new collaborators who you never would have imagined would find your work compelling,

  • You’ll find clients or customers, in some cases even when you weren’t seeking them.

  • Others will reflect back to you with reactions, comments and appreciation.

How to build a second brain?

  1. Capture worthy ideas and insights in a single, centralized place
  • Recurring themes and questions
  • Insightful, high value information
  • Resurface knowledge to stimulate future thinking

Make conscious, strategic decisions about what you consume digitally. Save articles for later and organize these articles by project. Keep only what resonates.

  1. Create connections
  • distill your notes into actionable, bite-sized summaries.
  • design notes for your future self in a consumable way
    • add links to resources
  • organize opportunistically and just-in-time
    • use the PARA organization system
    • similar to the Boyscout Rule, improve a note every time you touch it
  1. Create tangible results in the real world
  • stop consuming information passively, put it to use
  • create smaller, reusable units of work End each work session with an intermediate packet. This allows for more breaks and creates immediate value
  • share your work with the world
  • everything is in flux, everything is a work in progress

Tipps from Ali Abdaal

  • We only really internalize things that we create ourselves
  • Make it easier for your future self. Keep that in mind when creating notes, how your future self can most likely benefit from it.
  • Keep your Ideas moving! If you are not doing something with your notes, they are useless. The most important aspect is getting it on, not getting it right.

CODE

  • Capture (Highlights, Throughts, Ideas)
  • Organize (based on project, actionable)
  • Distill
  • Express (Create something from it)

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