To John Watson, Sherlock Holmes was a mystery. He seems to have a vast amount of knowledge about many esoteric things but drew a complete blank when it came to common knowledge, like the fact that the Earth orbits the Sun.
Holmes explains:
“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
Holmes explains:
“I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it.
Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge, you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”
Holmes might have been happy to discover a 21st century phenomena: a second brain.
Holmes may have had to restrict all of his knowledge to keep his brain attic from becoming so cluttered that he would not be able to find the information he needed for a particular situation, but the same is not true of you.
Holmes may have had to restrict all of his knowledge to keep his brain attic from becoming so cluttered that he would not be able to find the information he needed for a particular situation, but the same is not true of you.
For years I have taken notes when reading or when encountering intriguing ideas. I have ended up with countless notebooks, sticky notes, and highlighted books with little ability to easily access the things I thought were important or to connect the ideas among them.
While there is a learning curve to mastering the note taking systems Forte and Abdaal talk about (which means it takes some time and effort), the benefit of being able to quickly access all the cool things you read and heard and to make something useful out of that seems worth the effort.
Ten key ideas Abdaal sums up from the Tiago course are:
- Borrowed creativity - Remix stuff you learn.
- Capture the habit - When we run across something that really resonates with us, take time to make it part of what you do.
- Idea recycling - Keep track of the stuff we are creating so we can reuse them for other things.
- Projects over Categories - Focus on projects, i.e. creating stuff.
- Slow Burns - Develop some things slowly over time (like a course, or book, etc.)
- Intermediate packets - Work with Chunks of Content that can be discussed separately.
- Start with abundance - Use stuff you have collected over time; so you start from stuff you have.
- Only you know what you make - Internalize things we have created ourselves.
- Make it easier for your Future Self - Create a resource your future self will find helpful.
- Keep your ideas moving - Avoid trap of perfectionism.
"It really doesn't matter what's in your second brain... unless you're doing something with that information; unless you're turning it into something, sharing something, or applying it to your life in some certain way, it's completely useless." - Ali Abdaal
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Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Tiago Forte or Ali Abdaal, or any of the others out there teaching people how to create and use a second brain. I just think their ideas are cool and make a lot of sense.