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Chapter Page
Introduction: The Promise of a Second Brain 1
Part 1 The Foundation Understanding What's Possible
1. Where It All Started 9
2. What Is a Second Brain? 17
3. How a Second Brain Works 33
Part 2 The Method the Four Steps of Code
4. Capture-Keep What Resonates 53
5. Organize-Save for Actionability 81
6. Distill-Find the Essence 113
7. Express-Show Your Work 145
Part 3 Making Things Happen
8. The Art of Creative Execution 175
9. The Essential Habits of Digital Organizers 197
10. The Path of Self-Expression 223
Bonus Chapter: How to Create a Tagging System That Works 243
Additional Resources and Guidelines 244
Acknowledgments 245
Notes 249
Index 253

Chapter 1: Where It All Started
Chapter 1 Where It All Started
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.

―David Allen, author of Getting Things Done

One spring day during my junior year of college, for no apparent reason, I began to feel a small pain in the back of my throat.

I thought it was the first sign of a flu coming on, but my doctor couldn’t find a trace of illness. It slowly got worse over the next few months, and I began to visit other, more specialized doctors. They all arrived at the same conclusion: there’s nothing wrong with you.

Yet my pain continued getting worse and worse, with no remedy in sight. Eventually it became so severe that I had trouble speaking or swallowing or laughing. I did every diagnostic test and scan imaginable, desperately looking for answers for why I was feeling this way.

As months and then years passed, I began to lose hope that I would ever find relief. I started taking a powerful anti-seizure medication that temporarily relieved the pain, but there were terrible side effects, including a numbing sensation throughout my body and severe short-term memory loss. Entire trips I took, books I read, and precious experiences with loved ones during this period were wiped from my memory as if they never happened. I was a twenty-four-year-old with the mind of an eighty-year-old.

As my ability to express myself continued to deteriorate, my discouragement turned to despair. Without the ability to speak freely, so much of what life had to offer―friendships, dating, traveling, and finding a career I was passionate about―seemed like it was slipping away from me. It felt like a dark curtain was being drawn over the stage of my life before I even had a chance to start my performance.
A Personal Turning Point―Discovering the Power of Writing Things Down
One day, sitting in yet another doctor’s office waiting for yet another visit, I had an epiphany. I realized in a flash that I was at a crossroads. I could either take responsibility for my own health and my own treatment from that day forward, or I would spend the rest of my life shuttling back and forth between doctors without ever finding resolution.

I took out my journal and began to write what I was feeling and thinking. I wrote out the history of my condition, through my own lens and in my own words, for the first time. I listed which treatments had helped and which hadn’t. I wrote down what I wanted and didn’t want, what I was willing to sacrifice and what I wasn’t, and what it would mean to me to escape the world of pain I felt trapped within.

As the story of my health began to take shape on the page, I knew what I needed to do. I stood up abruptly, walked over to the receptionist, and asked for my complete patient record. She looked at me quizzically, but after I answered a few questions, she turned to her files and began making photocopies.

My patient record amounted to hundreds of pages, and I knew I would never be able to keep track of them on paper. I started scanning every page on my family’s home computer, turning them into digital records that could be searched, rearranged, annotated, and shared. I became the project manager of my own condition, taking detailed notes on everything my doctors told me, trying out every suggestion they made, and generating questions to review during my next appointment.

With all this information in one place, patterns began to emerge. With my doctors’ help, I discovered a class of afflictions called “functional voice disorders,” which included problems with any of the more than fifty pairs of muscles required to properly swallow a piece of food. I realized that the medications I was taking were masking my symptoms, and in the process making it harder to hear what they were telling me. What I had was not an illness or infection that could be eradicated with a pill―it was a functional condition that required changes in how I took care of my body.

I began to research how breathing, nutrition, vocal habits, and even past experiences in childhood can be manifested in the nervous system. I started to understand the mind-body connection and how my thoughts and feelings directly impacted the way my body felt. Taking notes on everything I learned, I devised an experiment: I would try a few simple lifestyle changes, such as improving my diet and regular meditation, combined with a series of voice exercises I learned from a voice therapist. To my shock and amazement, it began to work almost immediately. My pain didn’t disappear, but it became far more manageable.I

As I look back, my notes were as important in finding relief as any medicine or procedure. They gave me the chance to step back from the details of my condition and see my situation from a different perspective. For both the outer world of medicine and the inner world of sensations, my notes were a practical medium for turning any new information I encountered into practical solutions I could use.

From then on, I became obsessed with the potential of technology to channel the information all around me. I began to realize that the simple act of taking notes on a computer was the tip of an iceberg. Because once made digital, notes were no longer limited to short, handwritten scribbles―they could take any form, including images, links, and files of any shape and size. In the digital realm, information could be molded and shaped and directed to any purpose, like a magical, primordial force of nature.

I started using digital notetaking in other parts of my life. In my college classes, I turned stacks of disheveled spiral-bound notebooks into an elegant, searchable collection of lessons. I learned to master the process of writing down only the most important points from my classes, reviewing them on demand, and using them to compose an essay or pass a test. I had always been a mediocre student with average grades. My early schoolteachers would regularly send me home with report cards noting my short attention span and wandering mind. You can imagine my delight when I graduated from college with a nearly straight-A grade point average and university honors.

I had the misfortune of graduating into one of the worst job markets in a generation, in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Faced with few employment opportunities in the United States, I decided to join the Peace Corps, an overseas volunteer program that sends Americans to serve in developing countries. I was accepted and assigned to a small school in the eastern Ukrainian countryside, where I would spend two years teaching English to students aged eight to eighteen.

Working as a teacher with few resources and little support, my notetaking system once again became my lifeline. I saved examples of lessons and exercises anywhere I found them: from textbooks, websites, and USB drives passed around by other teachers. I mixed and matched English phrases, expressions, and slang into word games to keep my energetic third graders engaged. I taught the older students the basics of personal productivity―how to keep a schedule, how to take notes in class, and how to set goals and plan their education. I will never forget their appreciation as they grew up and used those skills to apply to universities and succeed in their first jobs. Years later, I still regularly receive messages of gratitude as the productivity skills I taught my former students continue to bear fruit in their lives.

I returned to the US after two years of service and was thrilled to land a job as an analyst at a small consulting firm in San Francisco. As excited as I was to start my career, I was also faced with a major challenge: the pace of work was frantic and overwhelming. Moving straight from rural Ukraine to the epicenter of Silicon Valley, I was utterly unprepared for the constant barrage of inputs that is a normal part of modern workplaces. Every day I received hundreds of emails, every hour dozens of messages, and the pings and dings f

“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.