Inquisitive.me

We consume more information than ever before. Articles, books, podcasts, videos—each one promising insight, clarity, or the next big idea. And yet, more often than not, what stays behind is a vague feeling of “this was interesting”, while the actual content slowly fades away.

At some point, I realized the problem wasn’t a lack of good information—but the absence of a way to work with it. I didn’t want to remember everything. I wanted to remember what mattered, connect ideas, and actually use what I learned—without drowning in notes, highlights, or open tabs.

That’s when I came across the idea of a Second Brain.

What Is a Second Brain? 🧠

A Second Brain is essentially a notebook—just digital, more structured, and far more reliable than our own memory.

The concept comes from Tiago Forte and grew out of a very human problem: his brain could no longer (or no longer wanted to) store all the information he needed daily or might need someday. More importantly, he didn’t want to burden his mind with remembering everything.

For birthdays, appointments, to-do lists, recipes, or phone numbers, we already rely on countless apps. Some things we happily delegate—many others we still try to keep in our heads.

Information from articles, scientific papers, books, or podcasts fades quickly thanks to Hermann Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve. We don’t (and can’t) recall everything constantly. We tell ourselves we’ll remember something important, get distracted for a moment, and seconds later it’s gone. The frustration usually comes afterward—I should have written that down.

How often are you in a conversation, wanting to add something meaningful, but can’t—because that one article or paper only exists as fragments in your memory? Often you can’t even remember the title to look it up. I was annoyed by this for years. A simple notes app didn’t help, because what I was missing wasn’t a tool—it was a system.

Tiago Forte came to the same conclusion. He decided that remembering should be outsourced to intelligent machines. But without a clear structure, notes don’t help—they disappear into digital noise.

Tiago Forte came to the same conclusion. He decided that remembering should be outsourced to intelligent machines. But without a clear structure, notes don’t help—they disappear into digital noise.

Every time we try to remember what we planned to do today, what we must not forget, or what we need to prepare for tomorrow, we waste valuable mental energy. Energy our brain could use for what it does best: discovering, inventing, developing, and creating.

This constant mental juggling keeps us from focusing on what actually matters—self-care, hobbies, and meaningful time with other people.

One challenge when building a Second Brain is that we often don’t know why we’re taking notes. No one tells us how, when, or where they’ll be used. There’s no test at the end, like in school. Notes can become useful anytime—or never.

That’s why one thing matters most: a Second Brain should help simplify and structure complex thoughts. Think of it like a puzzle. If you sort the pieces by shape or color, the picture becomes easier to see.

A Second Brain also helps uncover unexpected connections. Because each of us brings different experiences and perspectives, we combine information in unique ways. Over time, this leads to new ideas.

This is also why certain professions won’t disappear. Only humans can take nuanced perspectives and connect ideas in meaningful ways. A Second Brain can therefore act as a memory aid, a thinking tool, a way to connect ideas, and a support for creating something new.

What a Second Brain is not for:
It’s not meant to store information you can retrieve in seconds with a quick Google search. Don’t clutter your Second Brain with facts that are easily accessible elsewhere.

Instead, use the CODE Method to build a system that captures what truly matters to you—insights, connections, and ideas that would otherwise get lost.

The CODE Methode 👾

In his book, Tiago Forte introduces the CODE Method—a framework that helps your Second Brain do what it’s actually meant to do.

Capture: Keep What Moves You 🤸🏻‍♀️

We live in a world of abundance. The internet gives us access to endless information, but not everything deserves our attention. Too much input overwhelms and exhausts the brain.

It’s like giving a five-year-old sugar all day long. Anyone who’s experienced that knows how it ends.

When consuming and collecting information, imagine yourself as a biologist who only wants to catch the rarest butterflies—the ones that haven’t been fully explored yet. The guiding principle is simple: keep what resonates with you.

It’s that moment when something clicks. A sentence puts into words what you couldn’t. A connection appears where there was none before. It’s a gut feeling—sometimes vague at first—but one you can train over time.

Use these four questions as guidance:

1. Does it inspire me? You can’t google a feeling.
2. Is it useful? Ideally, you already see how you might apply it.
3. Is it personal? Meaningful memories belong here too.
4. Does it surprise me? Did I genuinely learn something new?

Organize: Store It for Action 🗂️

To prevent captured information from vanishing into a digital black hole, it needs structure.

Most people organize notes by topic. The problem: there is no universal system for knowledge. Even biologists struggle to classify new species within existing frameworks—trust me, I know. It’s ridiculously hard to classify certain species properly. I’ve spent hours sitting in front of a microscope, trying to figure out which category an animal actually belongs to.

In a Second Brain—where new information constantly flows in—this problem is even bigger. That’s why the most effective approach is to organize by action, not by topic.

This also reduces effort later on. Tiago Forte calls this Slow Burn: by collecting and refining information over time, you build an internal structure that pays off when you need it.

We often expect our brain to produce great ideas on demand—brainstorming. In reality, this usually leads to recency bias: we favor recent ideas simply because they’re easier to recall, not because they’re better. Forte calls this Heavy Lift.

To support this process, he introduces the PARA Method:

• 🔬 Projects → things you’re actively working on; they have a clear start, end, and outcome (e.g. renovating a bathroom, building a website).
• 🖥️ Areas → ongoing responsibilities without a finish line (e.g. health, finances).
• ⚛️ Resources → topics that interest you and might be useful later (e.g. reading lists, quotes, ideas).
• 🗂️ Archive → completed or paused items from the other categories.

Together, CODE and PARA turn your Second Brain into a system that supports clarity, creativity, and sustainable thinking.

Distill: Find the Essence ⚗️

This step is about creating a compact, simple, and easily accessible package of information for your future self.

Don’t see yourself merely as someone who takes notes—see yourself as someone who passes them on. Distilling knowledge is a gift you give to your future self. And that future self is impatient, busy, and short on time.

To earn their attention, you need to reduce information to its core. Few words should carry a lot of meaning—similar to the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule.

This is where Progressive Summarization becomes useful. It happens in four stages:

1. Capture a note. This can be long—a book passage, a blog post, meeting notes, or a YouTube video.
2. Highlight the most important parts (for example, in bold).
3. From those highlighted sections, emphasize the key ideas again (for example, by color).
4. Finally, write your own short summary based on what remains.

This last step has two powerful effects: the generation effect, which activates multiple areas of the brain, and detachment gain, where writing or speaking creates new ideas by loosening internal mental connections.

Common mistakes when distilling notes:

1. Highlighting too much → it becomes overwhelming, as if nothing were highlighted at all. Less is more.
2. Highlighting without intention → distill only once you have a potential use in mind, and make notes increasingly easier for your future self to rediscover.
3. Making highlighting harder, not easier → follow the same rule as during capture: highlight only what truly moves you.

Express: Show Your Work 💼

Knowledge is the only asset that grows when it is shared.

Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

If you want collected, organized, and distilled information to turn into knowledge, you have to use it. Otherwise, what’s the point?

Shift your mindset from passive consumption to creation. Share ideas. Tell stories. Teach, explain, or simply write things down for yourself. By this point, most of the work is already done. What remains is to enrich your notes with experience, insights from other fields, and your own interpretation—and then turn them into something tangible.

It doesn’t matter whether that product is just for you, something you use to explain an idea, or something you share publicly.

Use what you have. Even if it seems small, it can become something magical in your hands.

Octavia Estelle Butler

To make creating easier, Tiago Forte suggests forming Intermediate Packets (IPs). Think of them as individual LEGO bricks. The more bricks you have, the easier it becomes to build something meaningful.

Intermediate packets can be distilled notes, ideas that didn’t make it into a previous project, or knowledge reused from earlier work. They can also include insights from colleagues or clients you regularly reference.

Their biggest advantage: they’re never final. You can adapt them at any time. This allows for continuous feedback without the risk of having to discard an almost-finished project. They’re also easier to work on—you focus on small units, see progress faster, and stay motivated.

With enough intermediate packets, projects can be completed quickly—this is Slow Burn in action.

They also increase the chance of serendipity. While searching, combining, and rearranging knowledge blocks, unexpected connections often emerge. Many ideas and inventions are born from such chance discoveries.

When you read with the intention to create, you consume differently. You’re more focused, less satisfied with shallow explanations, more likely to research further and question gaps in logic.

An idea is just a thought until it’s applied. Only through use does information turn into knowledge.

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📝 Key takeaways

• A Second Brain is not about storing everything—it’s about capturing what truly matters to you.
• Don’t save information you can easily find again with a quick Google search. Save insights, connections, and ideas.
• Use the CODE Method to turn information into something useful:
  • Capture what moves you.
  • Organize notes by action, not by topic.
  • Distill information so your future self can understand it at a glance.
  • Express your ideas by using and sharing them.
• Distilling notes is a gift to your future self—keep them simple, clear, and intentional.
• Knowledge only becomes valuable when you use it. Creation beats passive consumption.
• Reading, listening, and learning with the intention to create leads to deeper understanding and better retention.

A Second Brain isn’t meant to fight information overload by storing more—it helps you think more clearly, connect ideas, and create with intention.

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Thanks for spending this time with me. Keep exploring, stay open to new ideas, and remember—growth is a journey, not a destination.

Take care,

Carina 🦊