To be able to make use of information we value, we need a way to package it up and send it through time to our future self. (Location 54)
I started to understand the mind-body connection and how my thoughts and feelings directly impacted the way my body felt. (Location 136)
Every bit of energy we spend straining to recall things is energy not spent doing the thinking that only humans can do: inventing new things, crafting stories, recognizing patterns, following our intuition, collaborating with others, investigating new subjects, making plans, testing theories. (Location 241)
the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the commonplace book was more than a diary or journal of personal reflections. It was a learning tool that the educated class used to understand a rapidly changing world and their place in it. (Location 252)
This digital commonplace book is what I call a Second Brain. Think of it as the combination of a study notebook, a personal journal, and a sketchbook for new ideas. (Location 278)
For modern, professional notetaking, a note is a “knowledge building block”—a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head. (Location 308)
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. (Location 348)
There are four essential capabilities that we can rely on a Second Brain to perform for us: Making our ideas concrete. Revealing new associations between ideas. Incubating our ideas over time. Sharpening our unique perspectives. (Location 440)
In its most practical form, creativity is about connecting ideas together, especially ideas that don’t seem to be connected. (Location 462)
This tendency is known as recency bias.4 We tend to favor the ideas, solutions, and influences that occurred to us most recently, regardless of whether they are the best ones. (Location 478)
If it feels like the well of inspiration has run dry, it’s because you need a deeper well full of examples, illustrations, stories, statistics, diagrams, analogies, metaphors, photos, mindmaps, conversation notes, quotes—anything (Location 500)
Note: if i procstinte somethinv its becausd i need more knowledge how fo do it
Introducing The CODE Method: The Four Steps to Remembering What Matters (Location 559)
Let’s preview each of the four steps of the CODE Method—Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express—and then we’ll dive into the details in the following chapters. (Location 571)
Capture: Keep What Resonates (Location 573)
The solution is to keep only what resonates in a trusted place that you control, and to leave the rest aside. (Location 583)
Organize: Save for Actionability (Location 592)
The best way to organize your notes is to organize for action, according to the active projects you are working on right now. Consider new information in terms of its utility, asking, “How is this going to help me move forward one of my current projects?” (Location 600)
There are relatively few things that are actionable and relevant at any given time, which means you have a clear filter for ignoring everything else. (Location 603)
Distill: Find the Essence (Location 606)
Every time you take a note, ask yourself, “How can I make this as useful as possible for my future self?” That question will lead you to annotate the words and phrases that explain why you saved a note, what you were thinking, and what exactly caught your attention. (Location 621)
Express: Show Your Work (Location 625)
If you care about a local cause such as public parks, you could create a plan to lobby the city council for more funding. (Location 644)
Think about your favorite athlete, musician, or actor. Behind the scenes of their public persona, there is a process they follow for regularly turning new ideas into creative output. The same goes for inventors, engineers, and effective leaders. Innovation and impact don’t happen by accident or chance. Creativity depends on a creative process. (Location 729)
You can capture those thoughts too! They could include: Stories: Your favorite anecdotes, whether they happened to you or someone else. Insights: The small (and big) realizations you have. Memories: Experiences from your life that you don’t want to forget. Reflections: Personal thoughts and lessons written in a journal or diary. Musings: Random “shower ideas” that pop into your head. (Location 764)
There is a way out of this situation. It starts with realizing that in any piece of content, the value is not evenly distributed. There are always certain parts that are especially interesting, helpful, or valuable to you. When you realize this, the answer is obvious. You can extract only the most salient, relevant, rich material and save it as a succinct note. (Location 866)
Don’t save entire websites—save a few screenshots of the sections that are most interesting. (Location 870)
Note: I could save sections i see and like or a folder called websites ideas
Capture Criteria #1: Does It Inspire Me? (Location 880)
There is a way to evoke a sense of inspiration more regularly: keep a collection of inspiring quotes, photos, ideas, and stories. Any time you need a break, a new perspective, or a dash of motivation, you can look through it and see what sparks your imagination. (Location 882)
Capture Criteria #2: Is It Useful? (Location 886)
For example, I keep a folder full of stock photos, graphics, and drawings I find both online and offline. Any time I need an image for a slide deck, or a web page, or to spark new ideas, I have a plentiful supply of imagery I’ve already found compelling ready and waiting. (Location 891)
Capture Criteria #3: Is It Personal? (Location 894)
I often save screenshots of text messages sent between my family and friends. The small moments of warmth and humor that take place in these threads are precious to me, since I can’t always be with them in person. (Location 898)
Capture Criteria #4: Is It Surprising? (Location 900)
Your Second Brain shouldn’t be just another way of confirming what you already know. We are already surrounded by algorithms that feed us only what we already believe and social networks that continually reinforce what we already think. (Location 910)
I can’t think of anything more important for your creative life—and your life in general—than learning to listen to the voice of intuition inside. It is the source of your imagination, your confidence, and your spontaneity. You can intentionally train yourself to hear that voice of intuition every day by taking note of what it tells you. (Location 941)
Capturing voice memos: Use a voice memo app that allows you to press a button, speak directly into your smartphone, and have every word transcribed into text and exported to your notes. (Location 982)
Capturing parts of YouTube videos: This is a little-known feature, but almost every YouTube video is accompanied by an automatically generated transcript. Just click the “Open transcript” button and a window will open. From there, you can copy and paste excerpts to your notes. (Location 984)
Thinking doesn’t just produce writing; writing also enriches thinking. (Location 1002)
Chapter 5 Organize—Save for Actionability (Location 1055)
The box gives you the opportunity to reflect on your performance. Dig down through the boxes archaeologically and you’ll see a project’s beginnings. This can be instructive. How did you do? Did you get to your goal? Did you improve on it? Did it change along the way? Could you have done it all more efficiently?” (Location 1101)
We know that the details of lighting, temperature, and the layout of a space dramatically affect how we feel and think. There’s a name for this phenomenon: the Cathedral Effect. (Location 1109)
One of the biggest temptations with organizing is to get too perfectionistic, treating the process of organizing as an end in itself. There is something inherently satisfying about order, and it’s easy to stop there instead of going on to develop and share our knowledge. (Location 1166)
Instead of organizing ideas according to where they come from, I recommend organizing them according to where they are going—specifically, the outcomes that they can help you realize. The true test of whether a piece of knowledge is valuable is not whether it is perfectly organized and neatly labeled, but whether it can have an impact on someone or something that matters to you. (Location 1326)
PARA isn’t a filing system; it’s a production system. It’s no use trying to find the “perfect place” where a note or file belongs. There isn’t one. The whole system is constantly shifting and changing in sync with your constantly changing life. (Location 1329)
Second, I learned that creating new things is what really matters. I’d see a fire light up in people’s eyes when they reached the finish line and published that slideshow or exported that video or printed that résumé. (Location 1379)
each time you start a new project, look through your archives to see if any past project might have assets you can reuse. (Location 1415)
Chapter 6 Distill—Find the Essence (Location 1432)
This is the third step of CODE, to Distill. This is the moment we begin turning the ideas we’ve captured and organized into our own message. It all begins and ends with notes. (Location 1477)
Your job as a notetaker is to preserve the notes you’re taking on the things you discover in such a way that they can survive the journey into the future. That way your excitement and enthusiasm for your knowledge builds over time instead of fading away. (Location 1500)
Progressive Summarization takes advantage of a tool and a habit that we are all intimately familiar with—highlighting—while (Location 1531)
The technique is simple: you highlight the main points of a note, and then highlight the main points of those highlights, and so on, distilling the essence of a note in several “layers.” (Location 1533)
saved it with two clicks to my read later app, where I collect bookmarks of everything I want to read, watch, or listen to. (Location 1539)
It was a casual conversation between the host and a course instructor named Meghan Telpner, who ran an online school called the Academy of Culinary Nutrition. (Location 1632)
Progressive Summarization is not a method for remembering as much as possible—it is a method for forgetting as much as possible. As you distill your ideas, they naturally improve, because when you drop the merely good parts, the great parts can shine more brightly. (Location 1687)
The Three Most Common Mistakes of Novice Notetakers (Location 1692)
Mistake #1: Over-Highlighting (Location 1694)