Introduction The Promise of a Second Brain

How often have you tried to remember something important and felt it slip through your mental grasp?

Perhaps you were having a conversation and couldn’t remember a fact that would have convincingly supported your point of view. Maybe you conceived of a brilliant new idea while driving or in transit, but by the time you arrived at your destination, it had evaporated. How often have you struggled to recall even one useful takeaway from a book or article you read in the past?

As the amount of information we have access to grows, such experiences are becoming more and more common. We’re flooded with more advice than ever promising to make us smarter, healthier, and happier. We consume more books, podcasts, articles, and videos than we could possibly absorb. What do we really have to show for all the knowledge we’ve gained? How many of the great ideas we’ve had or encountered have faded from our minds before we even had a chance to put them into practice?

We spend countless hours reading, listening to, and watching other people’s opinions about what we should do, how we should think, and how we should live, but make comparatively little effort applying that knowledge and making it our own. So much of the time we are “information hoarders,” stockpiling endless amounts of well-intentioned content that only ends up increasing our anxiety.

This book is dedicated to changing that. You see, all the content you consume online and through all the different kinds of media you have at your disposal isn’t useless. It’s incredibly important and valuable. The only problem is that you’re often consuming it at the wrong time.

What are the chances that the business book you’re reading is exactly what you need right at this moment? What are the odds that every single insight from a podcast interview is immediately actionable? How many of the emails sitting in your inbox actually require your full attention right now? More likely, some of it will be relevant now, but most of it will become relevant only at some point in the future.

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. 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.

I’ll show you how this simple habit is the first step in a system I’ve developed called Building a Second Brain, which draws on recent advancements in the field of PKM—or personal knowledge management.^I In the same way that personal computers revolutionized our relationship with technology, personal finance changed how we manage our money, and personal productivity reshaped how we work, personal knowledge management helps us harness the full potential of what we know. While innovations in technology and a new generation of powerful apps have created new opportunities for our times, the lessons you will find within these pages are built on timeless and unchanging principles.

The Building a Second Brain system will teach you how to:

• Find anything you’ve learned, touched, or thought about in the past within seconds.
• Organize your knowledge and use it to move your projects and goals forward more consistently.
• Save your best thinking so you don’t have to do it again.
• Connect ideas and notice patterns across different areas of your life so you know how to live better.
• Adopt a reliable system that helps you share your work more confidently and with more ease.
• Turn work “off” and relax, knowing you have a trusted system keeping track of all the details.
• Spend less time looking for things, and more time doing the best, most creative work you are capable of.

When you transform your relationship to information, you will begin to see the technology in your life not just as a storage medium but as a tool for thinking. Like a bicycle for the mind,^II once we learn how to use it properly, technology can enhance our cognitive abilities and accelerate us toward our goals far faster than we could ever achieve on our own.

In this book I will teach you how to create a system of knowledge management, or a “Second Brain.”^III Whether you call it a “personal cloud,” “field notes,” or an “external brain” as some of my students have done, it is a digital archive of your most valuable memories, ideas, and knowledge to help you do your job, run your business, and manage your life without having to keep every detail in your head. Like a personal library in your pocket, a Second Brain enables you to recall everything you might want to remember so you can achieve anything you desire.

I’ve come to believe that personal knowledge management is one of the most fundamental challenges—as well as one of the most incredible opportunities—in the world today. Everyone is in desperate need of a system to manage the ever-increasing volume of information pouring into their brains. I’ve heard the plea from students and executives, entrepreneurs and managers, engineers and writers, and so many others seeking a more productive and empowered relationship with the information they consume.

Those who learn how to leverage technology and master the flow of information through their lives will be empowered to accomplish anything they set their minds to. At the same time, those who continue to rely on their fragile biological brains will become ever more overwhelmed by the explosive growth in the complexity of our lives.

I’ve spent years studying how prolific writers, artists, and thinkers of the past managed their creative process. I’ve spent countless hours researching how human beings can use technology to extend and enhance our natural cognitive abilities. I’ve personally experimented with every tool, trick, and technique available today for making sense of information. This book distills the very best insights I’ve discovered from teaching thousands of people around the world how to realize the potential of their ideas.

With a Second Brain at your fingertips, you will be able to unlock the full potential of your hidden strengths and creative instincts. You will have a system that supports you when you are forgetful and unleashes you when you are strong. You will be able to do and learn and create so much more, with so much less effort and stress, than was ever possible before.

In the next chapter, I’ll tell you the story of how I built my own Second Brain, and the lessons I learned along the way about how you can build one for yourself.

1. I. The field of PKM emerged in the 1990s to help university students handle the huge volume of information they suddenly had access to through Internet-connected libraries. It is the individual counterpart to Knowledge Management, which studies how companies and other organizations make use of their knowledge.
2. II. This metaphor was first used by Steve Jobs to describe the future potential of the personal computer.
3. III. Other popular terms for such a system include Zettelkasten (meaning “slip box” in German, coined by influential sociologist Niklas Luhmann), Memex (a word invented by American inventor Vannevar Bush), and digital garden (named by popular online creator Anne-Laure Le Cunff).