100mg caf hit surprisingly hard
26g soy / cocoa bev ; 75mg SIF ; 1g phytosterol
vitamin 37 min after caf w/ 1 Tbsp evoo for absorption support
not sure if it's more of a Beethoven "Ode to Joy" kind of morning or more Eurythmics "Doubleplusgood"
deli chicken / swiss sandwich
haircut / brows, wash up, trim nails
review stu debts
12:30 moarrr cafeeeeen with a good amount of water
hit the treadmill
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BASB ("Building a Second Brain", Forte, 2023) is about [a foundational life strategy] of [developing/strengthening personal habits] specific to being more [intentional and selective] about the kinds of [information] we [collect, curate, chew and digest].
The "selective" part: If a tidbit of information isn't actionable, and doesn't pertain to any of the dozen-ish personal projects we all have floating around, then dismiss the urge to take notes. The corollary: DO take notes when we DO encounter (or generate) actionable or at least personally pertinent information.
The selectivity filter: don't take notes that merely echo what you already know. Forte refers to an early (1948) axiom of the then-infant Information Science field: If it's not "surprising" then let's not dignify it with the term "information".
What Forte is dramatically calling a "second brain" is simply a note collection. The pre-digital era saw luminary thought leaders - Galileo, Darwin, Einstein, Reich - generating volumes of notebooks. Even that 2000-year-old classic of Stoic philosophy, Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations", is simply his journal of observations and reminders to himself; he never intended it to be preserved and passed down through generations and ages as some timeless roadmap for general consumption.
Forte's "second brain" terminology is an allusion to one particular function of the brain as a storage mechanism. All the decisional and creative association-weighing still belongs to the actual human mind.
For example, hard-cider-brewing was one of my passing curiosities 25 years ago - but realistically? Such a sugary alcohol bev is double poison to me. So even if I had workspace and budget to collect cider-brewing kit, I still wouldn't. Ergo cider-brewing lore doesn't belong in this "second brain"; it will never be actionable. On the other hand, I was an avid fiction reader throughout childhood, and I continue to take pleasure in reading (though I've grown very much more selective about what I read). So hearing about a new book that dovetails with my interests, would be a natural trigger to add that to my note-collection of "candidates for my next read". Taking notes on every book I do read isn't super necessary either - although the practice of intentionally chewing over, distilling and preserving notes about key themes, character development arcs, and resonances with other beloved books? That's healthy and supportable exercise for the "first brain" too.
The digital age comes with powerful yet fairly intuitive software tools for collecting, organizing, and in some cases even identifying relationships and resonances that underlie first-brain "aha" moments of insight and creativity. The software genre is "note-taking apps" and they range from simple and convenient (e.g. Google Keep, MS OneNote), to moderate learning-curve with more advanced connection-building features (Obsidian, LogSeq), to team brainstorming whiteboard. The chief important thing is to take notes at all; if the learning curve to leverage "insight" features and filesystems is overwhelming then just use familiar/comfortable and low-effort tools (G Docs, G Keep, project-specific spreadsheets).