--- # Building a Second Brain in Obsidian MD ## Rough Draft According to Tiago Forte, > we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day > -- Tiago Forte According to Tiago Forte, we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers worth of content each and every day. > we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day > -- Tiago Forte > 🚧 > I'm not surprised; with the amount of books, articles, and videos I consume, it's hard to keep track of everything I learn. Instead of working on my outputs, I drown in the sea of bookmarks and scattered ideas. Thankfully, his book on Building a second brain helps create a system to feel in control of our knowledge, which frees up our brain to focus on what's most important: thinking and creating. In this video, I'll share how I've implemented the essential principles from the book into practical use cases with my favorite note taking app Obsidian. By following the CODE method to process information or the PARA method to organize your notes, you can make the most of the content you consume. Side note, the vault I'm going to be referencing for this video is my recently made obsidian starter vault, which you can learn more about in the description. Without any further ado, let's start at the beginning of the personal knowledge management process. ### CODE If you don't already know, the CODE framework is a 4 step pipeline for transforming knowledge into action. #### Capture The first step is to capture all the ideas in your life generated from the content you consume and experiences you have. These can come in the form of book notes, shower thoughts, or mere journal entries. ##### Inputs First I'll go over how I consume content. I have different workflows to capture each input type, since you don't really handle a book the same way you do a personal eureka moment. While I'm consuming something I want to take notes on, I create a new note with the respective template to record any ideas and highlights. Here's an example on how I would add an article into my obsidian vault - At my inputs note where I can click on this button - But you can also run this command - First I would run the command to create a new input using the quickadd plugin - the template automatically generates the title, start date, and time of creation. - I'll set the status to consuming, which is orange - Jump to these cursor checkpoints, alt + 8 - and paste the link of the article here - As I read, I just highlight using raindrop io and record any ideas or thoughts on the thoughts header - If you use readwise or pocket, there's community plugins to let you sync highlights, but I'm fine with just manually copy and pasting To keep track of my inputs, I have a note that uses queries to sort my inputs based on their status. Dataview, the plugin I use to create these queries, also lets me display relevant information I set like the finished date and my personal rating. You can also modify its sorting criteria, which in my case brings the most recently modified files to the top. ##### Thoughts Aside from media, I also capture any personal thoughts Create a new note - For example, Lets say the article i read sparked an idea I want to elaborate on - I run a command to create a new thought note - Let's name it too much content to consume - Link the idea - From there, I have guiding headers I use to further flesh out the idea. - Context would be the article - feelings would be my current state of mind - thoughts are just to brain dump - future plan helps come up with an actionable takeaway - use - I also have a note to organize all these, but this time the notes are organized by the kind of thought `#thoughts/memories` - anecdotes and experiences `#thoughts/reflections` - personal thoughts and lessons `#thoughts/musings` - random shower ideas The process I follow to create the note is the same as an input, but instead of notes i have different prompts i answer Now that we have some information in our vault, it's time to organize it. #### Organize There are three main methods I use to organize information. - The PARA method is the main structure of the vault, which helps store information based on its actionability - The Zettelkasten method is a form of note taking that promotes the connection of notes to come up with new ideas. Instead of keeping notes from a certain book all in the same note, you would separate it into different ones by concept, and link them all together. - Lastly, the evergreen note methodology is similar to the zettelkasten method, but adds different stages to help keep track of and grow your forest of notes. - Lastly, I have a main home note for quick access to all these different parts of my vault ##### PARA In the para method, your information is divided into four parts: - Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives Tiago Forte implements his para organization using folders, but I instead use the linking capabilities of Obsidian for more freedom. You can't place a note in two different folders, but in reality, information can be applied in different places, so linking allows for those one to many connections between notes Nonetheless, Obsidian still lets you use folders if you want to keep things simple. Each category has its own main note to organize the information available. ###### Projects Projects are a series of tasks related to a goal with a deadline. My workflow heavily relies on my project note template, which helps me both plan and keep track of my progress. Go through template - Create a new project to make a video - As you can see, it automatically creates a new folder in projects and moves it there - Set status - Fill in deadline and area - Next I plan - I follow the OKR framework to keep it simple - Primary objective of the project - Key results to act as steps towards achieving it and to help clarify when the objective is completed - Obstacles to plan for solutions - Expected timeframe to link it to relevant weeks i'm planning on working on it during - Now I can create a kanban note using this button, and it will open up a new board where I can start adding tasks - Can add a date to it, which then makes it show up on the daily note of its respected day - Once I finish a task, I can then archive it to hide it - If I need to, I can create a new note based on the task - Link the kanban to the note - In the resources header I can link to any relevant notes or external links After creating a project, I can then access it different ways - Main hub note has active projects query - Have a projects note to view all of them - Can see them in weekly reviews as the future week's plan ###### Areas Tiago defines areas as long-term personal things with no end date It can include identities like being a parent, partner, writer or programmer, or it can also include responsibilities like physical health, finances, friends, and your car Thanks to Obsidian's customizability, I decided to make my areas more dynamic than a simple folder Area notes will include more personal notes to self and thoughts important to you, as well as information that's generally universal to everyone To organize it all, I have an area note template that organizes the notes linked to it based on their type using even more dataview queries Take for example this area on building a second brain - I have related projects like the 4 step roadmap included in the starter vault to help you get used to the workflows - Inputs like building a second brain - Relevant notes like the overview of the vault to help keep track of all the features of the vault ###### Resources Next up is resources, which is where the rest of the note taking methodologies like zettelkasten and maps of content come into play. This wasn't mentioned in thebook, but if you're going to use Obsidian, you have to utilize the potential of connecting your notes. Instead of a dedicated resource template to base my notes off of, I use maps of content. These notes, which are also known as mocs, are used as launching pads into the rest of your notes. They don't contain much information themselves. A moc can be created for any topic and themes of ongoing interest. it can be a topic like productivity or personal knowldge management, or an activity like video games or note taking. If you're a bit confused, here's an example. Personal knowledge management moc - First I have a notes header to add further structure to the notes I link to - In this case I divide the notes into practices and tools - If you don't directly link the note, it will just be shown in a query - which are then separated based on their note type - has a resource tag so it shows in my resources Notice how I can have PKM separated into both an area and a resource. One acts an area for my actual implementation, and one acts as a map of content for more general principles. ###### Archives After certain notes are no longer in use, it's time to hide them in an archives section. Unfortunately the nature of links make it hard to keep track what notes are archived and what notes aren't. As of now, I only have it set to things in the actual folder. If you're using folders instead of links, Tiago recommends you reduce clutter by first put everything in archives. As you start using notes, you can then start to move it into projects, areas, or folders #### Distill Now you know how to organize your notes, but how do you make the switch from highlights to tangible concepts? - To distill the knowledge I consume, Tiago recommends to progessively summarize your notes. This method is best for larger notes like books - After extracting highlights from our resources, we go through three rounds of summarization - First, we read through our highlights and bold the essential sentences and parts - Second, you highliglight the key words in those bolded places to make it easy to skim, like if they were headers of an article - Lastly, we take the highlighted passages and conver them into an executive summary that organizes the key ideas - It gives us multiple layers of depth to our resources, to complement the potential different use cases we may need for it - Of course, this process would be quite time consuming, so I usually only do it for inputs that I 100% know I'll need in the future - After distilling the information, you can then use evergreen notes and connections to link it with the rest of your knowledge management ##### Evergreen notes Evergreen notes consist of atomic-sized, independent ideas that are then connected with related ideas. They are continually revisited and refined as we come across more information in the resources we consume. As we grow these notes, we begin to build a forest of ideas. They can come in [[Types of notes#Knowledge-Based Notes|various forms]] to act as building blocks for the overall structure of our thought navigation. ![[Types of notes#Knowledge-Based Notes]] In my greenhouse note, I keep track of the progress of my evergreen notes. - ![[Managing and growing evergreen notes#Principles]] - After creating progressively summarizing a note, lets mix it in with the rest of our notes - Create a new note - Dan Koe's Content Creation Cycle - Create headers for each part of the cycle - Fill your mind with content - Managing inputs - A single text snippet can be all it takes for a waterfall of ideas and questions to emerge - Empty your mind - Mindfulness helps empty our minds from thought - Create already existing links to my notes on the topics - ## Use your mind #### Express And now, it's time to put your notes to use. To flesh out ideas and think of their potential use cases, I use my brainstorming template to both curate and synthesize information related to a specific idea - I use this to brainstorm for content creation, but you can also use this just to further develop your understanding and transfer your findings into already existing notes - I also have a problem-solving brainstorming template for when I want to come up with a solution using my notes Let's use the brainstorming template to come up with the ideas and structure for this new Obsidian video - Topic will be building a second brain in obsidian Brainstorming template - Create - Write topic - Building a second brain in Obsidian - Brain dump - It's currently full of air though so we can go to the next step which is linking - References - Link any related inputs or notes - BASB - PARA method - Code method - Zettelkasten and evergreen notes - Organized ideas to be turned into notes - Para in Obsidian MD - CODE method in Obsidian MD - Potential outputs - Video you're watching To make the creation phase easier, Tiago recommends a 4 level process for retrieving information related to your note. - Search for direct keywords - Browsing to look from relevant folders - Tags - Serendipity - Makes most out of randomly inputting material for diverse connections - Amplified by visual patterns - Use the [[]] Since notes are organized by concepts, they are reusable for other projects and outputs. ### Conclusion If you find these workflows related to your personal knowledge management needs, all the things I've mentioned come ready to use in my Starter Vault. For the first week of this video's release, I'll be giving 25% off using the discount code ULTIMATE25. You will get: ✅ **Lifetime access** to future updated versions ✅ Over 100 notes that include the templates and notes used in this video, as well as the notes I've taken on personal knowledge management ✅ My essential Obsidian plugins and hotkeys to make note taking fun and easy ✅ A 4-step interactive roadmap **built into the Obsidian vault** to help you go from beginner to pro. Learn personal knowledge management, learn Obsidian MD, then learn how to use the workflows provided in the vault. Anyways, if you found the video helpful, be sure to like and subscribe for more content like this. Consider watching more of my videos, apparently the algorithm thinks you'll like this video Apparently this video was recommended to you by the all-knowing algorithm, so you should postpone your mindless scrolling and watch another productive video :) This has been John Mavrick, stay mindful