Building a Second Brain

A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

by Tiago Forte

Hardcover, 240 pages

Published Aug. 2, 2022 by Atria Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-9821-6738-7
OCLC Number:: 1285772060

(21 reviews)

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, …

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.

8 editions

andbenn reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Productivity - how to organize and take notes

4 stars

The author is a productivity guru/expert. This is his first book that essentially walks you through why it's important to keep electronic notes, as well as how to organize electronic notes to essentially become your second brain.

He recommends proceses to review and plan that should help an open reader to align and improve their day/week.

The concepts are rather simple and easy to grasp. I don't doubt that his premise of information overlode isn't incorrect. I read this as I wanted to organize my notes better, and it really helped me think and plot that out.

Custard Rock reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Building a Second Brain Review

4 stars

This a different approach to enhancing your workflow and allowing you to recall information to fuel your creativity using the technology around us. This approach might not work for everyone but I think everyone can take something away from it.

ssweeny reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Definitely some good stuff in here

3 stars

There is some very useful advice here for how to better keep and organize bits of information, but there's also lots of filler.

greystar reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Review of 'Building a Second Brain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This was just fine. Really good ideas about
- figuring out what to capture
- organizing information
- using the system to accomplish goals
- care and feeding for the information system

It didn’t deal with what software to use and focused on how and why. Waaay to long and full of long anecdotes though. Worth a skim.

Taylor reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Review of 'Building a Second Brain' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

We all keep notes in some form, and this is the most effective framework for a personal note database that I've seen. It covers from beginner to expert. Forte's method is flexible and effective for capturing, organizing, distilling, and sharing your notes in a variety of ways.

Rob’t reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Disappointing

2 stars

I chose this book because of its title, as I'm an avid user of Obsidian Notes & Obsidian refers to creating your second brain. Knowing that Forte wasn't discussing Obsidian as such, I was hoping to get some valuable ideas to apply to note-taking. Overall I was disappointed. But on the positive side, I did finish the book as much as I was tempted to call it quits.

Clara reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Review of 'Building a Second Brain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This book should have been half its size. I did enjoy the content (the practical stuff), but the writing was repetitive and included many anecdotes that didn't add to the book. It also had some "self-help"/"motivational" content that really grinds my gears ("if you follow this book's advice you'll be smarter, more creative, your skin will clear, your crops will grow, etc /s).

Still, I extracted value from the book and would recommend at least a quick skim read for those who are interested in the subject.

marksutherland reviewed Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte

Review of 'Building a Second Brain' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A guide to developing a Personal Knowledge Management system that is platform agnostic, focusing on the structures and processes that support it.

There are some good ideas in here and unlike other productivity gurus who imply their system is all you need he seems to encouraging cannibalising his advice to fit your own system. That might be an area where the book is lacking, there is not much advice on developing a system that fits you personally, but then it's hard to think what advice you could give there that isn't either vague or too specific.

One thing that is interesting is that you can see the influence of his second brain on the content of the book, and while it follows the modern conventions of productivity books it has a distinct style of its own.

My main concern is that the approach he's advocating can easily fuel the proliferation of mediocre content that mashes anecdotes together to produce the appearance of wisdom. It could also support more substantial works, it is after all describing a class of technology and not prescribing particular outputs but as with all productivity systems it would be easy to mistake the means for the ends.

Overall a decent addition to the modern productivity cannon, worth chewing over if you're into this stuff.