Omar Zenhom (0:00)

Foreign. Welcome to the hundred dollar MBA show. Because a better you is a better business. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher, Omar Zenholm. And today's episode is a must read episode. On our must read episodes, I share with you a book that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I share with you its takeaways, its insights, and why you should read it too. Today's must read is Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. This book focuses on a method for personal knowledge management called the second brain approach. When I first heard about this, I was a little bit skeptical. This methodology is designed to help you organize your digital information to improve your productivity and creativity. In today's episode, I'm gonna share with you my favorite takeaways from this book. The key concepts that really hit me hard. It was like a gut punch. But also how the book has change changed my mind about having a second brain and what that all means. Anyway, so let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Before I decided to buy this book, I read the summary and I heard so many great things about this book from friends. But I wasn't totally sold because I'm in two minds when it comes to, you know, organizing your thoughts, your ideas in digital format versus analog. I have always been a journal kind of guy. I like to have a notebook with me all the time, write down my notes, write down thoughts, write down things I want to get done. I just find it to be more intuitive, easier, more creative than having a digital version of that. I just find it very cumbersome to take out my phone, find the app, open up a new document or find the document I'm writing the notes in and then type and then, oh, I'm, you know, there's some typos here, I gotta change it because my fingers are moving in the wrong direction. Whatever it might be, it's just easier for me to just grab my notebook that has a pen inside. I just click my pen open and I just write down notes. But I said, let's stop for a moment. Just because it's easier doesn't mean it's better. Let's see if I can learn something from this book and maybe apply it to either my analog life or start a new digital life. So what is the second brain method? What is this concept? Forte, the author, believes in this idea of personal knowledge management which involves capturing, organizing and sharing your knowledge. He argues that by offloading information from our biological brains to, to a digital second brain, we can enhance our ability to generate new ideas. And manage complex projects. The idea here is that you put your ideas somewhere so that you don't forget them, leaving room for you to generate new ideas. And that resonated with me because that's why I have my notebook with me all the time. I always like to write down my ideas, write down thoughts, write down little insights I learned in a movie or a TV show or maybe even a book I'm reading, right? So the point here is your brain can't hold everything. It can't recall everything. So let's just put it somewhere so that if we do want to recall it, we can do that. And Forte believes the best way to do this is through digital tools. We'll get into those in a moment. But the point here is that you can find them anytime you want and you can organize them later on. But it's the same concept of, like, dumping your ideas somewhere so that you have more room for new ideas. Now, what are some of the benefits of a second brain? Well, he believes, Thiago Forte, the author, that it improves your memory, your creativity, and your ability to tackle more ambitious projects. Since your mental space is freed up because you're not trying to remember all this information that you've gathered before. I can totally resonate with this. This is totally true in my experience, when you write something down. And the reason why I have my notebook with me all the time is because there's this nagging feeling that I gotta put this down somewhere because I will forget it or I will let this idea slip through my mind. And that's why I write it down. So this is totally true, this idea of the second brain. And what I'm realizing as I was reading the book is, you know, I've been doing this. I've been doing the second brain method, but just with a notebook and not a digital format. And maybe the digital format might be the next step forward for other benefits that I'll discuss later. But it reminds me of any great creative. Any great creative has this idea of inspiration, will hit them at any time. Ideas pop up. You could be on vacation, you could be walking on the beach, you could be driving, right? And an idea will pop up. And the thing is, is that I probably won't take my notebook everywhere, probably take my phone everywhere. And now my opinion of this digital second brain is starting to change, Right? I'm just sharing my experience as I was reading this book and learning from it. It also reminded me of one of my favorite comedians, Jerry Seinfeld. Jerry Seinfeld is known for Having a paper and pen next to his bed because sometimes he'll wake up in the middle of the night, he'll have an idea, he have a joke, you have a concept, a bit that he may want to work on. He just writes it down. In fact, there's an episode of Seinfeld where he jot something down and scribbles something down and he can't read it in the morning and he's asking all his friends and strangers even, what does this say? What does this say? On this piece of paper I wrote, I scribbled down can't make it out. But the point here is that creatives understand the power of good ideas and inspiration and they need to capture it immediately. There's a concept in this book called the Code methodology. And there are four steps to this Code methodology and code is an acronym, C O D E. The first step, C is Capture. Forte stresses the importance of capturing information effectively. This includes taking notes on materials that resonate with you. And this ensures that the information is saved in a retrievable format, meaning that you are learning something new. It really resonates with you. You jot it down and you're able to retrieve it at will anytime. So capture is the first part of the code methodology. Second step is organize. This step involves structuring and organizing the captured information in a way that makes it easily accessible so you can easily find this. Tiago Forte in the book introduces various tools and techniques for digital organization, including tagging, categorizing and using a specialized software. And we'll talk about the different digital options there. Step three is distill. This is the D in code. The process of distilling involves reviewing and condensing information into its most valuable parts. This step ensures that your second brain contains high quality, dense information that can be easily referred and used. This is the step that probably most people skip because it means you have to go back to your notes, go back to your information and actually summarize it to still clean it up. Basically so that when you go back to it, you can easily comprehend it and use it. And lastly, E in the Code Methodology Express, Tiago Forte advocates for the active use of captured knowledge through creative expression and sharing it with others. When you share what you've learned with others, this helps solidify the information and turn personal insights into valuable outputs or information for others. So like they say, the best way to make sure you master something is to teach it. You learn something and then you teach it to others, or you share it with others and that information becomes rock solid. Part three in this book is all about implementing your second brain. How do you actually get this done? How do you put this together? How do you get started? Well, he talks about some of the tools and technologies you can use. There's a lot of different tools out there to do this a lot. And I used to use a lot of these tools. I still use some of them. I have my own opinions on them. But here are some of them he says that you can use. Evernote. Remember Evernote? This is one of the first kind of second brain tools that became really popular in the early 2010s. You can use a very popular app that has really basically taken over productivity apps in general, and it's called Notion. Notion is a really monstrous app, meaning it could do a lot of things and it can get quite complicated or even a little bit intimidating on how to use it. But Notion is actually one of those tools that will do pretty much anything you want, and it will be the ultimate second brain tool. But there is a learning curve. Some people love Google Docs. I'm a big fan of Google Docs. I use Google Docs a lot. I outline and script and write all my videos and prepare for my podcast episodes. With Google Docs. It's easy, it's simple. But it's not as robust as something like Notion, meaning it's not easy to organize multiple types of ideas or notes. It's like loose leaf paper or having a single notebook versus having a bunch of notebooks on a bookshelf. But my advice to you is don't get overwhelmed by all the different products or services or softwares that you could use. Just choose one that is easy to use or one that you're already using. And that could be your notes app inside of your phone or Google Docs or Word or whatever it might be. And then once you get the ball rolling and you start using it, you can migrate it to something more sophisticated once you have more needs, something like Notion. There are two other bits in part three that I really love. Forte offers advice on developing good habits and routines to support your ongoing building of your second brain. He emphasizes consistency, you know, review cycles and integrating the new information that you get into your second brain to maintain a effective system that's organized. He also offers case studies, real world examples of people doing this. Different professions using a second brain to enhance their work and personal life. Finally, part four, beyond productivity. There's a very interesting bit in this part called philosophical and ethical considerations. Thiago Forte touches on the broader implications of outsourcing cognitive tasks to technology. He discusses the potential impacts on memory, cognitive and even identity who you are as a person. I like the fact that he's balanced and he kind of points out, hey, let's keep an eye on these things. The book concludes with a future vision where personal knowledge management is commonplace, deeply integrated with things like AI and significantly affecting how individuals learn and work. This part's really juicy. I'm gonna let you read it when you pick up the book Building a Second Brain is a Practical Guide. I really found it very helpful to kind of open my mind to this concept and be a little bit more accepting and start building new habits. I love my notebook. I love my analog, but it could be the starting point of my process of building a second brain, transferring that information, maybe do that distilling part in digital format so I can easily find information, search for it, and always have it with me when I'm on the go. I highly recommend you pick up Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte. It's a very practical, easy read and it'll get you thinking about how you actually consume information, how much do you retain it and how you're able to recall it easily. A lot of us, we consume a lot of information and read a lot of things and we watch a lot of movies and we take a lot of online courses, but we don't really retain a lot because we don't have a system. This is a system on a silver platter. Thanks so much for listening to the hundred RMBA show. I hope you love what you hear. If you do smash that subscribe button. Make sure you follow the show. By subscribing to the show, you help the show grow. And when the show grows, we continue to produce incredible episodes for for you, help you build an amazing business. Thank you so much in advance for doing that. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. This is a book you need to take notes on, right? This is a book that you need to have a notebook with or, you know, a Google Doc or notion tab open because it's a practical how to step by step type of book. Yes, there are some mindsets, there are some thoughts that are shared that change your mindset, but you need to really take notes because it's going to allow you to take action later on on implementing what you learn in the book. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.