A life hack for knowledge workers
Tiago Forte's smash hit is a practical, if rudimentary, primer on personal knowledge management in the 21st Century.
I made it several yers too late to this book, but I still appreciated a lot of Tiago Forte’s advice on note-taking for 21st Century knowledge work in Building a Second Brain.
I think a lot about what we need to know and how we need to think in order to thrive in today’s working world (hence my obsession with mental models), and I see Forte’s manual as the perfect practical complement to this.
Those of us who read all the time and occasionally need to write about it will benefit from this book’s very pragmatic approach to organizing knowledge. Some of it is fairly elementary, but it’s a good jumping-off point.
I now have my own Second Brain thanks to this book, and I can’t stress enough how useful it is in any creative process. However, I can’t give full credit to Forte for the design of my own second brain. That goes to Elizabeth Filips, whose video on her Notion Second Brain was my blueprint for building my own.
Author: Tiago Forte
About: Note-taking and personal knowledge management in the 21st Century
Rating: 3/5
Favourite quote: “[In the professional world,] it’s not at all clear what you should be taking notes on. No one tells you when or how your notes will be used. The “test” can come at any time and in any form.”
Did you read Building a Second Brain? Let me know what you thought.
Related reads:
How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning, and Thinking (Sönke Ahrens, 2022 [2nd ed.])