Your Brain's Not Broken: Use This Notes System

our main brain is not meant for storing information we're very bad I'm worse than average in real life if we need to create neural connections they either need to be traumatic enough to be stuck there forever or they need to be repeated again and again and we just don't have the luxury to do that the thought that I have on the bus a feeling that I have randomly when someone says something that's not going to stick but sometimes we get that sometimes read a book and suddenly you see the world differently but you can't adopt that lens forever this means I'm never not ready to talk about something because it's there it's my brain this is Elizabeth I've made the connections it wouldn't make sense to anyone else in this video I'm going step by step through Elizabeth Phillips second brain so your whole second brain is in one team one page there's no folders there's no files there's no tags so I'll do these maybe two or three times a year oh wow very very writing oh that is even more extreme than I do this does not get better the less you work on them I was like oh this is the most beautiful thing I've ever heard let's dig in starting with capture how notes enter Elizabeth's second brain I used to start with just pen and paper because I had this romantic notion that if you're right if I had it just feels so nice and all that stuff that it's awful it's just not sustainable there's too much information so I've switched to digital now when I started creating a second brain it starts just with books and I would recommend it just starts with books or the main thing that you capture is because you don't want to over complicate it like read wise for this it's just like the ultimate up and it just connects everything together it's like a personal assistant that you pay really well so you don't feel too guilty um so every time that you see something interesting but you're not in the mood it's just there and it goes oh no I'll sort that for you later and it just grabs it because it connects to all these apps that I mentioned it's on my Twitter on my notion on every book that I read on my podcast on my audiobooks read wise just gets rid of anxiety and then it all goes to notion my main one would probably be Kindle I tend to read quite a lot of books on it's easy it's highlightable it just can take notes on it it's really really good insta paper an interesting app where you can use offline which I quite like so if I'm in the tuber I'm traveling somewhere it's quite good it's kind of like your own curated newspaper of sorts yeah so if there's any online article or newsletters that I quite like I just share it to insta paper and then it strips down all the images and it just creates this really like clean empty just information thing I really really I'm the same I'm a hardcore insta pay for user as well and then you can highlight there as well the same way as in Kindle I quite like Twitter I've gotten into it this last year um I hated it before you have to find the right little corner of nerds that it just like it's an explosion of really cool book recommendations I love my Twitter book recommendations Apple Books I used to use in the past before I had a Kindle error I have here I don't really like it it's like a podcast capture thing I listen to a lot of podcasts and I still haven't optimized for a podcast and for audiobooks why do you feel the need to have different ways of capturing it depends on the type of book if it's a super information dense book that I know I will need to highlight a lot I will not buy the audiobook because there's no points I'll probably get a Kindle and then I'll highlight because I know that those will be saved automatically I call books fluffy when there's like 20 examples for one thing and it could this whole book should have been a tweet and I'm like oh so frustrated but it's kind of good anyway those type of books will definitely get the audiobook only and then I'll write it down as I'm listening the main notes that I want to take and then in the middle I'll kind of get both of them together if I need to I do something super similar it's like there's a spectrum from as you put it like information dense to fluffiness you know when I'm going on walks or driving often I will purposefully listen to fluffy books yes right yeah because I'm just like why fight the situation yes why like endanger My Life by trying to like save bookmarks on the audiobook you can choose not just the source but the capture method based on basically your context I think as you go further down the line you realize no but I'm getting input from a lot more sources than just the things that I read I use Apple notes a lot I just love this app it's so simple and that's all I need all I need is something that opens on One Tap just has a piece of paper I just want to write things down when things happen throughout my day I love going through the National Gallery for example and there's so many paintings there every time I go I'll see a painting and have a different thought about it there is one that I saw recently the Enchanted Castle Painting it's just this girl sitting outside of her castle it made it into a note which then made it into a video for me so this is kind of the process that it goes through oh great example whenever I talk to people about second brains they always treat it as words and information pictures are a really good thing to capture that whenever I see a piece of art it reminds me or makes me think of something I'll connect it to something else so I think art is a good thing to capture and I want to start capturing music too especially classical pieces often make me feel something specific and I'm like oh what is this and then I'll connect that to something else I'm starting to do that too it's like yeah you can put yourself into different emotional states which is incredibly powerful when it comes to task management or life organization I need to not overdo it with task management but also I have to get some structure otherwise it's utter chaos um the smallest reminder for something we'll just go a task in my calendar and on the day I'll just but I do this do this do that so that's kind of where I put my um where I capture I massively over schedule answering someone's text thinking about a project they'll be repeating tasks on my calendar I'm also very comfortable with ignoring them I'm not very rigid with these as we talked I realized that every part of Elizabeth's system is built so she never has to ask what to do next or how something will get captured I accepted I have a very poor memory but that I'm a very passionate person it's the pain of oh I had this really cool thought earlier what was it what was it I have this so many times that thing might come back to me two months later and I'm like I can't believe I almost lost this every time that I have an instinct of oh this is a cool thought or oh what did that make you feel why specific always there's always a bigger story here and that's the story I'll capture once Elizabeth captures everything she needs to the read wise app takes those ideas and sends them into notion to be organized when everything comes to me twice it all ends up up being in one page and this is everything that we saw here so all the tweets all the highlights from different things will all come to realize in one space for me this is the Highlight that I took and then I what does this mean to me it means that nothing is too Niche this is the message these are just the notes that I took from the book as I read it two or three times a year when I'm in the mood I'll create separate cards out of the important notes and only the important things will go there oh two to three times a year that's the only time to update my sister oh that is even more extreme batch processing than I do I love it throughout the year all I do is I'll highlight and I'll capture that thought in my notes or on read wise um so if it's a Kindle I'll just create a separate note and then this will then go into my actual segments this is all based on the settle Caster method I found it through how to read smart notes which is a book based on loveman's system so loveman was absolutely prolific in how much output he created how is this man able to do so much so basically what he did he had these boxes and he would write down everything that he would highlight or any piece of information that a part of a study or something from book he pieced information into small little Snippets and he wrote it on a card and then he would label the card with a name so he created these cards and he used to put these in a filing system box the thing that I love about his system is that he was the first person who separated capture from distill or organized every piece of information was very distinct he would then be able to connect them with one another and find rare connections between the different pieces of information what I did is kind of create the same card system on notion where every single thing here every single page is a separate card and interesting it's like each one of these little blocks is like a digital equivalent of like an index card exactly oh cool all of them will have a title the title sometimes might be the highlight itself so the Highlight here is that words determiology into something the human mind can't grasp which isn't much and I always have the source which is the book new Earth for everything I'll have what does this mean to me this is a short card but sometimes cards might be two three paragraphs in which case I'll use your um Progressive summarization my favorite thing in the world they just felt like bold I'll highlight I'll have a book and it will have 200 highlights in it out of those maybe 60 are very important to me and these will be turned into specific cards so this is a study that found that 60 of arguments couples have are about the same things that they were having arguments uh five years ago so I was like this is really cool this is a very cool study to quote I connected it to a year after winning the lottery people tend to be just as happy as they used to be before winning the lottery so it's kind of this this view of if we keep doing the same things we'll get the same results we need to change things up once Elizabeth processes her reading highlights into personalized note cards these new ideas are ready to move on to the next stage but sometimes Elizabeth organizes certain cards one step further a process note means basically anything this is most highlights most quotes will fall here studies I keep separately because I'm optimizing for a future where I know that I'll be able to back up the things that I say with some evidence so all of these will come only from these will be studies themselves so there's a progressive summarization here so so I have rules for example because I quite like to mention rules especially on YouTube rules tend to be quite sexy where you say oh they're 30 pool which is that people just love it for some reason so I keep rules separate because I know that they're quite attractive to mention I'll have articles because I know that these come from people that perhaps I could reach out to um I have courses but I think the second brain will definitely be here these are things that are are found from courses I've unfortunately for the last few years not read a lot of literature now that Elizabeth has established her main areas of Interest she can plug in all the note cards she created earlier into those topic categories this was the note and this is the message that I got from the note now we go to the actual second brain and this is what it looks like this is where all the cards eventually end up at this one this will be a bit of explaining because it's it can look like a bit of a hectic situation these are all the things and all the topics I'm interested in in life I have life design I have yourself this is very big but it's kind of getting to know yourself mental Frameworks I have emotions people so success productivity creativity branding communication learning storytelling science writing medicine wow and reading for yourself and politics so these are the main things in life that Elizabeth is interested in and then what I do is I come up with a strong statement that I don't necessarily need to believe that relates to this topic so for example a straightforward life is depressing this is a strong statement I don't need to believe it I can't believe it to some extent but I will prompt myself to make a strong strong statement on everything you should live life like the ancient Greeks you have different stages in your life first you go to war and then you are a merchant and then you're a philosopher if you live long enough you need to have something good that you do every day modern beauty is making us miserable these are tabs that I open up in my mind beliefs that I want to contradict or beliefs that I want to have but crucially need to be quite controversial because they need to spice things up in my mind everything here is one of the cards so every one of these will be one of the cards that we saw from earlier from the musings I'll separate information into three sources so I have primary secondary and tertiary sources but a primary source will be something that's very closely related to what we're saying I didn't do any mental gymnastics here they're both talking about productivity a secondary source is something that's a bit less connected where it's a bit more wild the connection that we've made here or it's a contradictory statement it says the exact opposite to it and a tertiary sources I had to write down why I thought this was related because it has nothing to do with it this is the the super crazy connections um in my course I call them the three C's so there's connected contradictory and crazy so that's the crazy note which is no one else would realize why you've made this and I need to explain oh no this is related to this thing all the cards that I get will fall into these and every card can fall into 10 or 20. so let's say we had the card now that couples fight a lot about the same things five years ago in my mind this has something to do with self-improvement and understanding yourself it has something to do with connections with people it has something to do with the way that you approach life I'll go here and I'll say okay this definitely has to do with life design in my life design studies I'll put in uh pause there we go so I'll add it here and then I'll go hmm what else does this have to do with it has to do with we need breaks from ourselves to that so I'll add it here I'll basically do the same thing I'll keep the card in mind and I'll scour my second brain I'll go it has to do with this it has to do with this it has to do with this it has to do with this so it creates this super random connections because I've primed my brain to think think from the framework of couples fighting and approach note-taking or approach observing nature and how would you connect these things with one another it's like you're putting on a lens and then seeing what do I see but I like that it's the lens of the source which you already encountered in the real world I already decided is interesting already even formulated in a way that is inherently kind of spicy and catchy and the next time that I approach something next time that I want to make a video on how to find the perfect couple or how to have a happy relationship because I can go to that card and I can see oh I also connected this earlier and then I can make these crazy connections and it comes up with something creative or cool um to talk about so your whole second brain is in one thing one page there's no folders there's no files there's no tags yeah if something goes in a folder for me I'll never find it again this was the only thing that I couldn't adopt from my next decorations so sorry because I have Auto blasphemy it's okay this is like it just needs everything in one place what I also like about this is your main categories in that leftmost column is kind of similar to how I think about 12 favorite problems yes it's like the recurring long-term interest rate but you've used such sort of long-term open-ended like interests or questions as the core organizing principle of your second brain so say more about this numbering system this is something I've always been curious about with translators that'll cast into digital on paper index cards these are the core way that you identify notes but what value does that give in digital where you can always just like link to another so for example if I I want to talk let's say I want to make a video on why being incompetent is a good thing and competence guarantees flow this is the statement and because it's named 9 a3d I know that this has come from 9a3 and I know that this has come from 9A I know that this has come from nine so when I do my research I have one two three four that I want to open up and see what's in them because it's going to be interesting rather than just statements so I guess you can link them but just the number system works easier for me because I know where it came from you're threading ideas together even if they don't appear together just like you would with the next card yeah exactly I I kind of love stuff like this people sometimes say oh no that's from the past that's from paper wallpaper note taking worked for like hundreds or thousands of years and so most if not all of my techniques that I teach also apply to paper note taking highlighting folders uh 12 favorite problems I kind of like that that callback to the Past yes it just makes it more portable and it's like easier to access because it's digital but it is very much based on that um card system Elizabeth is the garden inner note-taking style gardeners are obsessed with using digital notes to discover and develop their unique ideas over time to figure out your own note-taking style watch this video next I refuse to believe that anyone is not creative at the moment that you realize that everyone who's ever created anything has been exactly the same as you that's the moment that your life changes you're starting from a blank page and you don't have any clue and you're saying you don't have any passions I don't have any clear passions I love that I wish I had that I've planned for it my whole life but I think that there's this other kind of mathematical way of approaching the same results

Channel: Tiago Forte

Views: 337,479

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Id: LflU3FqZ6h4

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 13 2022