How Writers Can Organize Creative Work in a Second Brain
Photo by Filip Baotić on Unsplash
Creatives are prone to messy minds. We’re knowledge workers, relying upon information and ideas to create fantastic work. So it’s no wonder that our heads are often in the clouds, mulling over new story ideas and research notes, brainstorming plot events, and planning out the next steps we’ll take to produce, pitch, and market our projects.
As knowledge workers, we also spend a lot of time-consuming content produced by other creatives in our field. We turn to books, blogs, and podcasts to teach us about the writing craft and publishing industry, book marketing, and beyond.
To salvage some peace of mind, most of us have tried to store this information in multiple ways. We have Scrivener files and Word docs, browser bookmarks, notebooks and note-taking apps, voice memos, emails, and probably a few scrawled words on napkins, too.
All of this note-taking means that our brains no longer have to remember every idea and piece of information we’ve wanted to preserve. Instead, it has to remember where we’ve preserved them!
How can we find a way to wrangle all this chaos? That’s where intention comes into play, writer.
By taking the time to create a unified system for knowledge management, we can organize our creative work and get serious about writing with clarity and focus. To get started, allow me to break down my preferred knowledge management system and why I love it…
Harnessing the Power of a Second Brain
"Second brain" is a term coined by Tiago Forte, one of the world's foremost productivity experts, to describe a system of personal knowledge management that helps one collect, store, and organize ideas and information.
Curating a second brain can help free up the mental energy you need to create with focus and efficiency because it allows you to stop scrambling to keep hold of all the data slowly sifting through your brain. More importantly, you can reference the information you store in your second brain to develop and complete creative work with ease.
Who can benefit from creating a second brain? Anyone! In fact, most people already do. Any time you write a to-do list, save a recipe on Pinterest, or track a workout in an exercise app, you're storing information outside of your physical brain (in a second brain, if you will) for future reference.
However, if you're anything like most people, then you don't have an efficient second brain system in place.
Instead, you store information in various disconnected ways. Some of your notes may be digital while others are physical. Whatever the case, few are easy to find or reference. That’s why creating an intentional system for knowledge management can be such a game-changer.
As a writer, you can use a second brain to capture and organize all sorts of information, including:
Research notes and references
New story ideas
World-building notes
Writing exercises
Notes from books, blogs, and podcasts
Pre-writing work (e.g., outlines, character sketches)
Revision notes
Publishing and marketing plans
Passages from stories you love
Books you’d like to read
Small sources of inspiration (e.g., a historical fun fact, notes about a hobby you'd like to work into a future book)
You can also use a second brain to track various aspects of your writing life, such as your writing habit, your book listings, and important information about queries or magazine submissions.
How can you create a unified second brain?
Since most of us use computers to complete creative work, it makes sense to create a digital second brain, especially one that can sync across platforms and devices for easy access and collection no matter where you are or what you’re doing. That's why I love Notion, the note-taking and knowledge management app I first mentioned in my article on habit tracking earlier this year.
One of the great things about Notion is that it’s free for personal use. It also boasts a customizable interface and robust features that allow you to store and view information in a variety of formats, including calendars, databases, lists, Kanban boards, galleries, and more. Notion also frequently introduces new features that expand the app's capabilities without impacting its usability.
All this said, you could also create a second brain system in apps like Evernote, Microsoft OneNote, or Joplin, though each of these popular apps requires a small monthly subscription. Alternatively, you could take your system offline and use binders or file boxes to host your second brain.
No matter the tool you use to set up your system, an effective second brain meets three standards:
Simplicity — An effective second brain is streamlined; it's a single system or simple series of tools that makes stored knowledge easy to organize and access
Flexibility — An effective second brain is adaptable; it's easy to modify and reorganize as your (writing) life evolves over time
Practicality — The most effective second brain is the one you use; it's tailored to meet your needs and preferences, and it's easily accessible in your daily life
With these three standards in mind, consider which app or physical tool might work best for you.
Establishing & Organizing Your Second Brain
Within the personal knowledge management (PKM) community, there are various popular methods for organizing information in a second brain. Many articles tout the advantages of one method over another, as this one will. However, the best method is (once again) the one that works for you.
Before discovering Tiago Forte's work earlier this summer, I hadn't heard of personal knowledge management or the concept of a "second brain." I organized most of the information and ideas in my life in Notion using a method of my own making. While that method worked well enough, I've since streamlined my second brain using Forte’s PARA method of organizing information.
Rather than storing notes and data by topic, as most traditional knowledge management methods do, the PARA method organizes information based on its actionability. Forte breaks the concept of actionability down into four categories:
Projects — information relevant to active projects
Areas — information relevant to ongoing areas of responsibility in your life
Resources — information that might become relevant in the future
Archives — information that is no longer relevant or potentially relevant
Let’s take a look at how you can set up your second brain using the PARA method:
Step #1: Establish Your PARA Categories
To implement the PARA method, first create each of these four categories in your second brain. In Notion, I've created a page for each level of actionability in my sidebar. Alternatively, you could create four notebooks in Evernote or use four physical binders (or binder sections) for your second brain system.
Step #2: Create Relevant Subcategories
After establishing your PARA categories, it’s time to create folders, tabs, or sections for relevant subcategories.
In Projects, create subcategories for each of your active projects: your novels, short stories, upcoming book launches, and so on.
In Areas, create subcategories for each area of responsibility in your writing life. These areas might include research, world-building, social media, and book marketing — among other possibilities.
What's the difference between a Project and an Area?
Projects have clear deadlines or endpoints, whereas the areas section is for ongoing responsibilities. For example, you may not know the exact date when you’ll publish your novel, but you do know that you’ll finish the project one day. Therefore, your novel has an endpoint, making it a project.
Book marketing, on the other hand, is a lifelong endeavor for writers. This makes marketing an area of responsibility rather than a project.
In Resources, you may wish to create subcategories for interesting topics that aren’t yet relevant to your writing life. For example, you could make a section for notes on publishing if you haven’t yet finished writing your debut novel.
Alternatively, you could wait to create subcategories in the resources section until you have information you’re ready to input. After all, sometimes we don’t know what we’re interested in until we see it.
In Archives, you might consider adding sub-categories to organize any retired information. This isn’t necessary by any means, but it can be helpful. I enjoy having business and personal sub-folders in my archives, which I then further categorize by project or topic.
Step #3: Add Relevant Information
After establishing your PARA categories and subcategories, you can begin to add relevant information to each section. Think: research notes, plot outlines, story ideas… Anything goes!
If you aren't sure where to put a piece of information, consider its usefulness.
Let’s say that you’ve taken notes on an article about developing a successful book launch. If you’re currently planning for an upcoming book launch, then that’s an active project in your writing life.
If you actively market your books but don’t have a launch coming up soon, then this information will help you manage an area of responsibility in your writing life.
Finally, if you’re still drafting your debut novel and aren’t anywhere close to launching it, then marketing isn’t yet a project or area of responsibility for you. Store this information in resources instead.
If you ever decide that you're done launching books, then you would move this information to your archives. Your notes would still be accessible if you needed to revive them, but they’d no longer clutter your more useful information.
If this is the first time you’re setting up an intentional second brain system, then you probably have notes and information all over the place: story ideas in the Notes app on your phone, a voice memo containing dialogue on your iPad, several journals full of handwritten notes from craft books you’ve read — and let’s not forget the research links you’ve emailed to yourself over the years!
Inputting all of this information into your second brain may feel overwhelming. It can certainly be a time-consuming project. I’ve been there myself, which is why I can also tell you that the effort will be well worth your while when you have an organized, searchable second brain at your fingertips.
Knowing that I can access all of my ideas and anything I’ve learned about writing, publishing, and marketing with ease is incredibly powerful, and I’ve already seen a boost in productivity and focus since implementing this system over the past few weeks.
Curating New Information to Add to Your Second Brain
To make full use of your second brain, you’ll find it helpful to also have a system for consuming, curating, and inputting helpful information.
It’s easy enough to add your ideas to your second brain, especially if you're using a digital system that syncs across devices. But what about potential notes from all the books, blogs, podcasts, and Youtube videos you consume? I like to use several apps to easily add this information to Notion:
Airr — take notes and save audio clips as you listen to podcasts (note: currently iOS only)
Instapaper — save articles to read later; then highlight and take notes as you read
Readwise — imports notes, highlights, and social media posts from various sources (including Airr, Instapaper, and Kindle); then automatically export this information into Notion, Evernote, and other personal management apps
Your own method for gathering and curating information might look much simpler. For example, you could make a habit of jotting down book or article notes directly in your second brain. I do this with physical books I get from the library, and that method works just fine.
The point is to have a system for regular learning and information capture that helps you develop your knowledge of the craft, then put that knowledge into practice on a whim. Combine this system with one that also enables you to capture all the wonderful ideas in your head, and you’ll never lack clarity, inspiration, or focus in your writing life!
