Keep only what resonates in a trusted place that you control, and leave the rest aside.

<ul><li>Switch context. Look at the material in different places.</li><li>Change the form. Sort your ideas and sources in different ways.</li></ul>

4. Can't see how it all ties together?

<ul><li>PARA is a powerful method for organizing and structuring your information. The PARA method involves four steps:</li></ul><ol><li>Projects : Break down your work and personal life into specific goals or tasks you are working on. Examples include writing a book, launching a new product, or planning a vacation. Projects are the specific goals or tasks you are working on.</li><li>Areas : Group your projects into broader categories. These cover general areas of your life. Areas include work, personal development and health.</li></ol>

Organize your Life with the PARA Method

<ul><li>Concept Mapping - This is similar to mind mapping. It involves mapping the relationships between different concepts or ideas. Concept maps can help you to understand and represent complex systems and processes.</li><li>Synthesizing & Summarizing - This involves condensing and simplifying info to better understand and remember it. You may use techniques such as highlighting, underling or creating summary notes.</li></ul>These tools and techniques help you capture, organize and use your knowledge and information more effectively.

<ul><li>Reflect on the information you have captured and organized. Review your notes regularly. Use your second brain to make decisions and generate new ideas.</li><li>Reflection is an important part of the process. It allows you to think about what you have learned and how you can apply it in your life. Assess the usefulness of the information and decide whether to keep it or discard it.</li><li>The Goal is to keep only the most valuable information and discard the rest.</li></ul>By following this code method, you will be able to process and make sense the information you capture.

4. EVALUATE

<ul><li>Capture your ideas, thoughts and knowledge as they come to you. You can do this by writing, speaking or using digital tools like note-taking apps or audio recording software. Do this immediately rather than trying to remember ideas.</li><li>By capturing the ideas as soon as they come to you, you can ensure that you don't lose them and can refer to them later.</li></ul>

1.CAPTURE

<ul><li>Try color commentary. Add your own annotations and thoughts inline in another color.</li><li>Hack sentences. Directly highlight and draw connections over a note to surface larger themes.</li></ul>

5. Can't make a source clear in your mind?

"For modern, professional note taking, a note is a "Knowledge building block" - a discrete unit of information interpreted through your unique perspective and stored outside your head."

<ul><li>Use temporary tags. Add status tags to notes.</li><li>Record a status summary. Write yourself a summary of where you left off.</li></ul>

3. Have trouble remembering where you left off?

<ul><li>Meta-plan, Plan the work, Work the plan,but also plan the work.</li><li>Dial it down. Turn big, ambitious ideas into small, achievable ones.</li></ul>

2. Intimated by the Scope?

<ul><li>Processing and synthesizing information is the fourth step in building a second brain. You can convert the information in your second brain into more useful and actionable forms</li><li>Tools & Techniques such as mind mapping and summarization can be handy.</li><li>Idea generation techniques, such as brainstorming or lateral thinking, can also be useful for processing and synthesizing information. These techniques involve generating as many ideas as possible on a particular topic. This will help you spark new insights and connections.</li></ul>

Process and Synthesize Information 

<ul><li>Have a central location where you can store all your captured and organized information. This could be a physical location, such as filing cabinet or a digital location, such as cloud-based storage system.</li><li>A central location for your second brain helps you to keep your ideas and information in one place. </li></ul>

3. DEVELOP

<ul><li>Our Brains are not well-suited to sorting large amounts of information. We are also constantly bombarded with distractions that make it difficult to focus and think clearly. So we need a system for capturing and organizing our thoughts, ideas and knowledge</li><li>The process of building a second brain is summed up in the CODE method. This consists of four key steps </li></ul><ol><li>CAPTURE</li><li>ORGANIZE</li><li>DEVELOP</li><li>EVALUATE</li></ol>

Use a Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

<ul><li>Organize your captured ideas in a way that makes sense to you and helps you access them easily. You can use tools such as notebooks, file folders or digital apps.</li><li>Organization helps you find what you are looking for more easily. You don't have to waste time searching for information.</li></ul>

2. ORGANIZE

4 . Develop a System: Build a personal knowledge base for capturing and organizing information. This system helps you to process and retain information more effectively, and to use it more efficiently. 5 . Learn and Improve: Aim to become more knowledgeable skilled and effective over time.

Various tools and techniques can be used to build a personal knowledge base or second brain<ul><li>Note - Taking - This involves capturing info in a structured and organized way. You might use outlines, lists or diagrams. Note taking helps you to process and retain info more effectively, and to use it more efficiently.</li><li>Indexing - This involves categorizing and organizing information in a logical and meaningful way. You may decide to use tags or labels. This helps you find and access specific pieces of info more easily.</li></ul>

Use Tools and Techniques to Build a Second Brain

<ul><li>Create an archipelago of ideas. Fill out a document with all your ideas and related resources.</li><li>List headings first. List all the headings and subheadings to fill in later.</li></ul>

1. Don't know where to start?

<ol><li>Develop a growth Mindset: Be willing to learn, grow and adapt. Seek out new information and experiences and be open to new ideas and perspectives.</li><li>Be Curious and explore: Take an active, exploratory approach to leaning and personal development. Have a curious and open-minded attitude. Be willing to seek out new experiences and challenge assumptions.</li><li>Have purpose and focus: Set clear goals and priorities Focus on the most valuable and relevant info.</li></ol>

There are Five Key Principles for Personal Knowledge Management (PKM)

You might meet stumbling blocks that disrupt the flow of your work. You can use techniques to overcome these issues and keep your work moving along. Lets look at some problems and how to solve them:

Workflow Strategies

<ul><li>Personal - Optimized for you informal and not aimed at a public presentation;</li><li>Unpublished - Messy, random, nonsensical, and not aimed at a particular outcome;</li><li>Open-ended - Constantly adding to and building your knowledge base;</li><li>Cross diverse media - Images, audio, video, tweets, books, articles, diagrams, sketches, code, demos, slides, websites, podcasts and more.</li></ul>

Your Notes should be:

<ul><li>Capturing and storing info is the first step in building a second brain. You can use tools and techniques to collect and save info in a centralized location</li><li>One of the most effective tools is a note taking app, such as Evernote, Notion or OneNote. These apps allow you to take notes on a variety of topics including texts, images and audio recordings. You can also use these apps to organize your notes into notebooks and folders. You can add tags and other metadata to help you find and categorize your notes.</li></ul>

Capture and Store Information

3 . Resources : Identify the tools and information you need to support your projects. These are your resources. They could include book on writing techniques, project management software or a travel itinerary template.4 . Archives : Create an archive to store past projects and information that you still want to keep accessible. Store your completed projects and the resources and notes associated with them, so you can come back to them later.By following a PARA method, you will be able to create a "second brain" that holds all the knowledge and ideas in single accessible place.

“One of my favorite books of the year. It completely reshaped how I think about information and how and why I take notes.” —Daniel Pink, bestselling author of Drive A revolutionary approach to enhancing productivity, creating flow, and vastly increasing your ability to capture, remember, and benefit from the unprecedented amount of information all around us. For the first time in history, we have instantaneous access to the world’s knowledge. There has never been a better time to learn, to contribute, and to improve ourselves. Yet, rather than feeling empowered, we are often left feeling overwhelmed by this constant influx of information. The very knowledge that was supposed to set us free has instead led to the paralyzing stress of believing we’ll never know or remember enough. Now, this eye-opening and accessible guide shows how you can easily create your own personal system for knowledge management, otherwise known as a Second Brain. As a trusted and organized digital repository of your most valued ideas, notes, and creative work synced across all your devices and platforms, a Second Brain gives you the confidence to tackle your most important projects and ambitious goals. Discover the full potential of your ideas and translate what you know into more powerful, more meaningful improvements in your work and life by Building a Second Brain.

Tiago Forte is one of the world’s foremost experts on productivity and has taught thousands of people around the world how timeless principles and the latest technology can revolutionize their productivity, creativity, and personal effectiveness. He has worked with organizations such as Genentech, Toyota Motor Corporation, and the Inter-American Development Bank, and appeared in a variety of publications, such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, and Harvard Business Review. Find out more at Fortelabs.com.