Building a Second Brain

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

7h 25min runtime; narrated by André Santana, 272 pages

English language

Published June 14, 2022 by Simon and Schuster Audio.

ISBN:
978-1-7971-4387-3
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
1330205449
Audible ASIN:
B09MGFGV3J
3 stars (20 reviews)

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 …

8 editions

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 …

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Subjects

  • Creative ability
  • Thought and thinking

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