Why Building a Second Brain?
I just finished reading “Building a Second Brain” by Tiago Forte, even though I didn’t feel inclined to start this book. Nonetheless, I now recommend everyone to read to organize their digital life and let creativity flow.
I like and recommend this book not only for its content and tips on how to organize one’s digital (and analogical) life but mainly for building upon ideas that are relevant for everyone who is willing to life a more fulfilling and exciting life. In this article, I will explain why.
I would like to start with one quote from the book.
Your Second Brain isn’t just a tool — it is an environment. It’s a garden of knowledge full of familiar, winding pathways, but also secret and secluded corners. […] Gardens are natural, but they don’t happen by accident. They require a caretaker. It’s time for us to put more intention into the digital environments where we now spend so many of our waking hours. (Building a Second Brain, Tiago Forte)
I find this quote particularly interesting since, after all the practical tips, practices and apps he shares in his book, he claims the Second Brain is actually the environment that you create around you. An environment in which we organize for ideas, processes, feelings and much more to be created and to exist — that’s why he illustrates this idea with the symbol of a garden.
If you have a garden (I don’t, I have plants in several different pots. But this analogy can be similar in this context), you understand that way better than I do. As I see my plants develop and grow, I realize this idea of “setting the conditions for growth” and, similarly “organizing an environment for creativity” even more. The plants have their own potential and their own ways of doing what they do. I am certainly not in a position to tell the plants what they should or shouldn’t do (and even if I were, I wouldn’t) but I am in the position to give them what they need, to support their growth by putting them in a room with more or less sun, by giving them water or changing their soil. And, in this picture, we are creating right here, you are the plant of your own environment.
Everybody needs a good place to work, to sleep, to have dinner, and to have fun. It is very difficult to work, for instance, when 3 dogs are playing and barking around you. For some people it may be relaxing but, I am assuming that for the majority of people, it can be very distracting and even infuriating. So, an optimal environment for you to work is one without barking dogs. This choice for “optimal work environment” varies in degree depending on the person but what is certain is that we all need to be in a place where we feel our best to then create from our best. And that’s exactly what Forte is saying in the context of the digital life.
What I like about the book as well is that what he talks about is not trivial at all, even though he writes in a clear, easy, and informative manner. This seemingly obvious and straightforward message hides very complex ideas beneath it. One of those (he even mentioned in the book) is the “Extended Mind Theory”
What is the Extended Mind Theory?
The cognitive processes that make up the human mind can reach beyond the boundaries of [the] individual to include as proper parts aspects of the individual’s physical and sociocultural environment (Oxford Bibliographies)
Our traditional sense of cognition is that the brain is the ‘source’ or the ‘main computer’ of information and everything else is an apparatus, a scaffolding that supports the existence of this central machine placed inside our skull. One of the theories that came to oppose this idea is the one of Extended Mind. In this sense, proponents of this theory argue that other features of the world, such as the environment around us, are deeply connected and as important for our sense-making of the world, our cognition, and identity creation as the brain itself.
Extended cognition in its most general form occurs when internal and external resources become fluently tuned and deeply integrated in such a way as to enable a cognitive agent to solve problems and accomplish their projects, goals, and interests (Oxford Bibliographies)
The great example Forte brings in his book is the one of “Commonplace Books”, a practice being used for centuries by the world’s most prestigious and intelligent people. Having a book as an artifact to write down ideas, thoughts, and questions about the world seems to have something to do with being able to “think better”, to reflect on your own presuppositions in a way that wouldn’t be possible if your thoughts were kept in your “brain”. If such an ‘external’ notebook seems to enhance the quality of an important high cognitive practice, such as thought, reflection and logical thinking, then it follows that the theory of the extended mind is fundamental to our cognitive apparatus.
What does Complexity have to do with it?
Cognitive science as complexity science (CSCS) has been presented as an interdisciplinary framework for the investigation of cognition. Within this approach, cognition is treated as a complex systems phenomena that exhibit the following four key features: emergence, nonlinearity, self-organization, and universality. In order to fruitfully conduct research on systems with those properties, CSCS employs a range of concepts, methods, and theories that are integrated from systems theory, nonlinear dynamical systems theory, and synergetics. (Luis H. Favela)
For several years, since the development of the field of cognitive science and cognitive psychology, the general idea of cognition is one that “the brain is a decoding machine”, which means that the center of cognition, the brain, is going to receive input and information from the external world (such as light, sound, touch, etc…) and decode through mechanistic processes and, finally, express that information to the world as output. And that’s what we mean by interpretation and perception, for example. In this sense, the world out there is “known” and the function of the brain is one of understanding the external world and putting it out.
Even though this approach is extremely valid and explains several activities we do as humans, why do we have so many communication issues? Why is it so difficult to agree on an action plan when running a business? Why some people see blue and black whiles others see white and gold? If the world was known and humans were simply decoding information from the outside, we wouldn’t have so many issues in our society, specially with regards to interpretation and perception.
There is a huge body of knowledge (that is beyond the scope of this text) that have been questioning this perspective for years and it has brought several insightful ideas to bear. But here, I would like to focus on a very dichotomous ways of thinking about cognition and the importance of Forte’s book. And that’s when complexity comes to life.
Based on the previous idea illustrated, we could think about the creative process to be one of this kind:
However, a more adequate view of the complexity of human cognitive /creative processes could be the following:
In this sense, the process of creating something happens in context, happens as we interact with objects over time, as we dedicate time to create a space in which we feel immersed in, where you don’t waste time to look for important files and break the momentum, the “create flow” you have just created. A space in which you use your time to “lose yourself” in the act of creating rather than doing something else. Here, we are focusing on quality of the work rather than the quantity because, we are enabling outcomes to come to life as we do the work rather than simply achieving a given outcomes we set for ourselves because, sometimes, the outcomes is not necessarily what we should be focusing on in the first place.
It is a very different way to interpret how we understand the world to be. This image is a lot more representative of this idea Forte is claiming as well as the authors of the Extended Mind Theory and Complexity Theory. Here, it is possible to see the importance of these other elements to make the whole picture of what creative process looks like compared to the previous one.
And this difference is substantive due to some of the features in complex systems, as mentioned previously by Favela (2023), such as self-organization, non-linearity and emergence, for example. And that’s what we exploring deeper in the next post.
Conclusion
Building a Second Brain is not simply additional to the creative work: it is an essential part of it. Once we think about the creative process with consideration of this last image rather than a very linear and “extractive” perspective, we understand that our environment plays a crucial part in how we think, what we think and why we think. These aren’t just separate aspects of cognitive processes, these are foundational to what we do and who we are.
References
Clark, A., & Chalmers, D. (1998). The extended mind. Analysis, 58(1), 7–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8284.00096
The extended mind thesis. (n.d.). obo. https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780195396577/obo-9780195396577-0099.xml
Favela, L. H. (2020). Cognitive science as complexity science. WIREs Cognitive Science, 11(4). https://doi.org/10.1002/wcs.1525
Favela, L. H., & Amon, M. J. (2023). Reframing cognitive science as a complexity science. Cognitive Science, 47(4). https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13280
Forte, T. (2022). Building a second brain: A proven method to organize your digital life and unlock your creative potential. Simon & Schuster.
