Building a second brain

BY MARY-ELIZABETH HARMON
Founding Mother, Chard & Stripes

Y’all, y’all, y’all, it’s happened again only worse than last time:

Instead of having notes on scraps of paper in a stack, I have a bag full of them!

I wish I were joking but I’m not. So this week, …

I’m starting to build a second brain Tiago Forte “PARA” style.

Tiago’s a guy who’s spent over 10 years researching and experimenting with a way to organize our digital lives (or make it that way in my case). You can meet and get started with him here.

Tiago’s system is called The PARA Method and I have high hopes.

PARA = Projects, Areas, Resources, Archives.

These are four categories that can contain every kind of information we’ll ever encounter. So instead of facing 13 folders when I open my Dropbox, I’ll axe 9 and I’m feeling calmer just by the thought of it.

I won’t try to paraphrase the method since the master has done so in this blog post. Note you’ll need to pay for Part 2. At some point: Tiago and team are making changes so it’s not available now. But, …

You can buy his books, take his course or learn with him on YouTube.

Are you ready to start building your second brain?

Step 1 would be to pick the right app for your note taking style.

At first, I picked Notion but I’m going to reassess that today.

After that, I can pick from a number of YouTube videos where Tiago or other PARA converts show newbies how to get started in different apps.

OK, I’m ready to start building a wonderful, clickable brain so I’m outta here.

P.S. I decided to build my second brain in Notion after all, and have free resources to share by a guy called Thomas Frank in case you’re interested in Notion too.

Thomas has templates for making a second brain using the PARA Method (and an endorsement from Tiago) in his Ultimate Brain course, which I got for $49 bucks using the discount code UBLAUNCH.