Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

The media could not be loaded.  I've read 100s of books, but this is my very first Amazon review for a good reason. The ideas in this book have been life changing--even life saving. As an entrepreneur, husband, and new dad, I can’t recommend this book "Building a Second Brain" highly enough. Thank you to my Second Brain—Nosnorb Kroy—for supporting me in expressing what you are reading and the video I made!I was really excited to read this long-anticipated book, and it did not disappoint. In fact, it was during my son's first seven weeks of life--between hundreds of soothing sessions and household chores--that I actually read/listened to this book. Afterwards, I was so inspired that I created a new website called “Two Brains One Heart”.After 15 years of trying dozens of approaches to work/creativity/productivity, “Building a Second Brain” is DIFFERENT and WORKS. How so? BASB is about building a powerful external system AND simultaneously developing lifelong internal habits. Furthermore, that system and those habits are designed based in new perspectives that are aligned with living and working in the Information Age and leverage the unprecedented technologies at everyone’s fingertips at this time.You will see that you are totally in the driver’s seat of changing your system (Second Brain), then as you change your system, it will start changing you (First Brain). There is a symbiotic relationship between your two brains, and herein lives a key driver to the great transformational power of building a Second Brain.----CONCLUSION-----If you are drowning in the tumultuous ocean of today's Information Age, or if you dream of actualizing more in your life, I believe this book is the right direction. But like Tiago did, as I have, only you can travel your own journey. It can start with this book, reading one page, capturing one idea, and implementing one action at a time.Why keep doggy-paddling for dear life until ultimate exhaustion? Grab this book, open it up, digest it, and TAKE ACTION. You will learn how to build your watercraft to survive and eventually thrive.BASB was born out of Tiago's personal suffering from a terrible medical diagnosis, but once he conceived his Second Brain, he nurtured and built it over time. A decade later he is heroically on his way to helping millions of others.Tiago has transparently shared about how he poured his blood, sweat, and tears into birthing this book. In the end, he persevered to realize this gigantic undertaking of writing a mainstream published book, out of his deep desire to distill the best of what he knows so that as many people around the world could realize their fullest potential with a Second Brain as well. Like a child that takes a village to raise, Tiago graciously credits the community of support that has made his journey and this book possible. With this all said, I deeply THANK Tiago and everyone who had a hand in his life and in this book.If this is resonating, please don't let the moment pass. Do what feels right. Just go. One small step, or one giant leap at a time.Bronson York Chang / Nosnorb Kroy~ ~ ~ ~ ~“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sail. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain

I will start by saying that I genuinely could not be more impressed with the subject matter expertise and the instruction presented. If you have ever felt like you're drowning in information with no real way to make it anything other than noise, or if you have ever felt like all your creativity is locked behind a wall of "tasks" that do nothing more than maintain your rut, please please please pick up this book.I've been a blogger, note-taker, creative and knowledge worker for years, and I learned more from this book than I did in years on my own. And if a book's worth can truly be measured by the impact it makes on your life, then 5 stars isn't enough. I was putting things into practice as I was reading them, changing how I did things to incredible effect in each chapter. I've already seen huge impacts, and I'm about to read it again for another pass!In the interest of fairness (and to ensure I don't come across as a drooling sycophant), I will offer some criticism. A fair amount of the word count in the book is Forte continuing to espouse the virtues of Personal Knowledge Management, of "Building A Second Brain." He isn't wrong, of course, but I didn't need convincing - and probably most people reading this book won't need nearly as many examples, anecdotes, and inspiring stories as Forte presents. Each one is individually good, but the actionable content in the book stands on its own merits.And I truly mean that - the actionable content in the book is so good it's easily going to become my most-recommended book just based on the last few weeks alone. And if nothing else, capturing the content that most resonated with me into more easily-referenced notes was a perfect first exercise for my own Second Brain!Highly, highly, HIGHLY recommended. Tiago Forte, you're brilliant!

I found Tiago Forte through his YouTube channel where he has some amazing resources to help you build a “Second Brain.” In the book, he shares how he overcame his own personal struggles as well as practical advice that you can start implementing right away. I actually teared up reading, since I’ve been trying to move my passion projects forward despite my own health issues and challenges. I’ve read and experimented with so many productivity strategies, but the ideas in this book have truly helped me to build my own systems that allow me to experience a sense of ease and flow, while focusing on goals that matter most. If you feel overwhelmed by information overload, trying to juggle all the different areas of life, or procrastinating on creative goals, and in need of clarity & inspiration, then this is a must-read!

This powerful, mindful, insightful book has changed my relationship knowledge and myself from one of struggle and scarcity to abundance and self efficacy based on the idea that technology is now advanced enough that we don’t have to remember everything anymore. We never could, but were taught to try. Now we can create a “second brain”, a personal knowledge management system. Tiago Forte distills this into understandable, actionable, reproducible, yet customizable processes. I have already started and will return to this book again and again. Life changing read.

I had low expectations from this book and still feel disappointed.The content of the book is: 1. make notes 2. organize files in projects, areas, resources and archives (para) 3. start generating output based on your notes. That is not worth more than a blog post post Getting Things Done. The rest of the book is filler material in the form of anecdotes and it is hard to find any actionable content because of all the fluff.The bonus chapter advertised in the TOC is only provided as a PDF, you are forced to provide your E-Mail address, before getting an E-Mail with the link.

I pre-ordered this book with very high expectations, fortunately Tiago meets them. I find his system to be helpful for people like me who are semi-structured. We want structure and are willing to put in the effort to build and organize digital lives in a structured way but just don't know how to turn our wants for structure into an actionable method with structure.Only suggestion I'd make is to get to the point in the book much quicker. The book really starts in chapter 4 or 5. Before chapter 4's ending and chapter 5's beginning I felt like there was plenty of style but the substance was missing. Once chapter 4 started to close out and 5 started, then it really hit me that the book has real substance and insight.

The initial explainers and diagrams were good, but the next two thirds dragged on.There's no real guidance for merging personal and multiple client brains together.For example I'm considering iCloud files and Apple notes for personal, Google drive for client A and Microsoft drive for client B. The clients don't want their IP in my personal space, nor anywhere outside of their domain.I also struggle with encouraging PARA folders in multiple tools (email, files, notes, etc) rather than trying to centralise everything in one holistic tool, for example it leads to inconsistencies or worse confusion if you're not quite sure which tool its in.Search tools help of course, but I got the impression that the author has the luxury of working for himself and therefore the luxury of not having to sandbox files between different domains.That being said, I'm excited to try and adopt many suggestions, which to be honest their blog covers far more succinctly than the book.

Having seen many blogs and youtubers talking about personal informatuon management i decided to research into the feasibility of such systems helping me with my poor memory and recall issues.I recently read Dr. Rangan Chatterjee's book Happy Mind, Happy Life and i have found the techniques the Tiago describes in his book that there is a lot of synergy in the two core concepts.I will be definitely taking on board their guiding principles moving forward.

The second brain idea and method is fantastic. It isnt necessarily anything new but takes what is out there and shows how to build your system. I like the fact that it is system agnostic and is more based on the processes. I also understand that you need some background to show how you arrived at deciding how everything should work but there was just far too much background. If it was rewritten with more examples of how different people had setup their system that would be much much better.