“a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”

Herbert A. Simon

The quote above appears in “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte, which I finished reading last week. I strongly relate to it, and that book helps me reflect on my personal knowledge management.  

TL;DR – find a personal knowledge management method that works for you (e.g., the PARA method). It does not have to be perfect. You don’t have to shift everything. Just get it started and adjust as you go. 

Here are a few thoughts I had while reading the book –

1. Progressive Summarization – the progressive summarization technique reminded me of a joke my uncle told me a while back – a student in his first semester asked the lecturer how to prepare best for the exam. She tells him – after every class, summarize your class notes. At the end of each week, summarize all the daily summaries. At the end of each month, summarize the weekly summaries and so on. On the week before the exam, summarize the summary from the day before. They meet just before the exam, and she asks him how it went. He answers – “great, I was able to summarize everything into one word – bullshit.”

2. Divergence and Convergence – In my first or second semester in the university, I took a class on academic writing. They told us that a good academic essay is built like an hourglass. It starts with a very wide question or statement, then narrows down to a specific claim or private case, and finishes with the broader picture, zoom out, etc. See more here. Divergence and convergence are the same. You start very scattered, then connect the dots, focus, reach some advancement, and repeat.

3. Hemingway’s bridges – “The “Hemingway Bridge” is a technique used by author Ernest Hemingway in which he would stop his writing for the day only AFTER he knew what was coming next.” (here). Each of us has its own hooks that help him or her restart the next time. A few years ago, I read Hila Noga’s post about getting your programming flow going, and it is Hemingway’s bridge for developers.

4. Blog as an interface – I initially created the blog so it would be easier for me to search for links I once saw and to share with other people. One can view it as some interface to my second brain. I am still in the process of thinking about which methods are right for me to adapt from the book.

5. Listening to an e-book – I’m a big fan of highlighting and writing comments in books, papers, etc. The audiobook format is challenging for me in this aspect, and moreover, I usually listen to an e-book while doing other things like walking or driving, which misses some of the second brain practice. I still need to figure out how to tackle this. On the other hand, I use writing and notes of all kinds to unload my brain and as an easier way to access them in the future. I was very happy that the topic of offloading was widely discussed in the book.