Thread by @azolyak

I just finished Building A Second Brain Cohort 13. #Tweetstorm of my key learnings and takeaways. TLDR, you should try BASB if you want to clarify your point of view (philosophy) and increase your contribution to people and the world. #BASB #BASB13 #personaldevelopment

💡1 - Before starting BASB, I read a lot of Forte Lab’s free blog posts. You can learn about the core concepts of BASB - PARA and CODE at fortelabs.co/blog/basboverv…. BASB was created by Tiago Forte @fortelabs.

💡2 TLDR BASB really creating your own creative process to leverage your information, knowledge, and wisdom. What you "create" is limitless - clarifying your personal philosophy, getting better at your job, starting a blog, starting a business. Whatever needs creativity.

💡3 BASB leverages the idea of creating a system for thinking with things - in this case thinking with your tools (ex. Evernote). To think and create on a level that would be hard or impossible without additional tools and processes. #BASB #AugmentedIntelligence

💡4 What differentiates BASB from other productivity systems is its focus on expressing - aka putting your contribution out into the world. #Contribution could take many shapes - sharing your wisdom in a blog post, coaching another person, making candles and selling them on Etsy.

💡5 #PARA = projects, areas of responsibility, resources, and archives. Projects = projects (objective + deadline). Areas = responsibilities (ex. your job, your blog, your health, your dog), resources = interests (without any clear responsibility). Archive = archived.

💡6 Resources might become projects or areas in the future (ex. making cheese, being a coach). They’re often slow burns over months or years. The magic is having a place to collect potentially useful information so it’s there for your future self. #BASB

💡7 IMHO PARA is also tremendously clarifying, helping me to get clear on these buckets in my mind (clarifying my mental models of projects, commitments, and interests). #BASB

💡8 I think of PARA as projects, responsibilities, interests, and archives. So PRIA. Which I suppose is hard to remember and pronounce. Which is probably why Tiago
@fortelabs
choose PARA. 😆

💡9 PARA is an organizational structure that you overlay on the tools you use (ex. Evernote) which helps you to organize information and focus on your contribution (ex. sharing your learning as a product manager via a blog). #BASB

💡10 #BASB is the foundation; you create your own system on top of BASB adapting it to your needs. It’s spacious working for many different people and situations. The BASB community is a lovely place to learn from others' examples, incorporating pieces into your system.

💡11 #CODE = capture, organize, distill, and express. The process side of #BASB. Capture = saving useful info. Organize = organizing, Distill = compressing info > knowledge & wisdom; also for future discoverability. Express = using info for doing, creating - and ideally sharing.

💡12 Capture is about “what’s interesting or #resonant” as criteria for filtering what you capture. I love this perspective as it’s more “feeling” than “thinking”. It’s more “follow your bliss” vs “follow your brain”. It’s intuitional.

💡13 Organizing is about organizing for your future self. How will you use that information in the future? Make a bet and organize the information for that purpose. For example, which project? If no project, which area? #BASB

💡14 Organizing is also about organizing for using information ASAP. Information is perishable. You’ll forget about it. It will become less relevant. It’s the component of creativity that’s “right time, right palace”. Use it or lose it. #BASB

💡15 Distilling can look like bolding, highlighting, summarizing to make key ideas more discoverable. It is often writing down takeaways in your own words. It can also look like Intermediate Packets. #BASB

💡 16 Intermediate Packets = distilling and compressing information for use. Ex making a shortlist of options, creating a sketch, summarizing an idea. Aligns with the idea of applying, evaluating, and creating from learning models like Bloom’s Taxonomy cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pag….

💡17 Intermediate Packets can be valuable themselves (ex. Tweet, a blog post) and can be reused to create other things and bigger things (a talk, a book, etc). Your domain of application might have types of packets (ex. designer = wireframes, comps, designs, workflows, etc).

💡18 I like the idea of #BASB “letting you trust that you can forget information”. In other words, you know and trust information is captured and organized so it will be there when you need it. And thus you can forget about it in your active memory.

💡19 I also like the idea of #BASB as maximizing being in a state of #flow. Flow states are highly pleasurable IMHO. BASB helps to do more doing, creating, and contributing, and less information hoarding. Doing, creating, and contributing have a high potential for flow.

💡 20 #BASB13 had 10 mentors who had gone through the program previously. These office hours were a place to focus on the specific tools and interests of the mentors. They were a great way to dig into a niche with other people taking BASB, sharing examples and challenges.

💡 21 Big Idea - Give every piece of information (an idea, an example, a quote, etc) a job to do. It should be part of a project, an area of responsibility, a growing area of curiosity (ex. a big question). If there's no job, why are you capturing it or organizing it? #BASB

💡 22 Big Idea - #BASB is about creating and contributing. It’s not about information hoarding. This is the hardest part for most people. Sharing is hard, often w/ self-judgement involved “no one cares”, “I don’t have anything useful to contribute”, etc. The BASB community helps.

💡23 Big Idea - The BASB community is a partial antidote to fear and self-judgment, seeing how other people have overcome this challenge is normalizing. The community is also a supportive place to partner with others for taking scary steps forward together.

💡 24 Big Idea - Lead with questions. For example, if you have a project, the next "task" can be a question. ex "what tools could I use to bootstrap this?" A "plan" can be incremental and discovery-based. #BASB

💡 25 Big Idea - For projects, consider "what's the minimum viable path" to getting something done. Asking "how can I glue together a few existing ideas, tools, etc to create something?" I call this the "glue mindset" vs creating everything from scratch. #BASB

💡26 Big Idea - It's really hard to say no to options, information, ideas. But saying no is necessary to creating and making your contribution. Tiago calls this "convergence grief". It's hard. Naming it and understanding it's a common challenge helps. #BASB

💡27 Big Idea - Smaller intermediate packets are helpful to me, each one being a single concept. This makes them easier to discover, combine, etc. I like Tiago’s mental model of “rummaging through the Lego bin" when trying to create something new. "What could I create?" #BASB

💡28 Big Idea - 12 Favorite Problems is the idea that you should always know your 12 favorite curiosities. This is helpful as a compass and filter when capturing information. It pairs well with the idea of following what’s interesting and resonant. #BASB

💡29 Big Idea - I was really surprised to see people taking BASB for the 2nd, 3rd, 5th time. These people were often working on an area of their BASB system (ex. expressing). I love this idea of having a place to work on my system in a community. I’ll certainly be back. #BASB

💡30 I really loved BASB as you can probably tell. While I made a lot of progress in my own tools and system, I know it will take time for it to evolve. I look forward to that journey. Have you taken #BASB? What were your biggest takeaways?