My writing process has completely changed since I finished reading the book Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte last month.

The book itself outlines a phased technique for note taking called the CODE method after the names of its phases: capture, organize, distill, and express. I like to think of it as a pipeline for transforming notes into creative self expression. In today’s post I’ll break down how I used the CODE method to write this blog.

Capture

The C in CODE stands for capture. As I’m going about my day and consuming my regular content, I pause to capture any interesting thoughts or ideas as notes in my digital note taking app. I’m currently using an app called Notion that makes it easy to synchronize my notes between devices. It’s important for me to make this step as quick and easy as possible so that I’ll actually follow through with taking notes in the moment.

An easy mistake to make here is to take too many notes, bogging down later phases. My goal here isn’t to be continuously taking Cornell notes on every book and article I read. The author recommends that you only capture what resonates with you. For this article the process began by listening to the audio book of Building a Second Brain, pausing to take simple notes at points that felt important. I used a single page for capturing all of my notes from the book.

Organize

The next phase, and arguably the most critical, is to organize my notes. Here the author recognized and corrected a fatal mistake I’ve been making. Rather than organizing my notes around topics, as has always seemed intuitive to me, I am now organizing my notes around projects. This ensures that the notes I’m taking are located as close as possible to where they’re most likely to be used.

When I first started taking notes on Building a Second Brain, the page I used landed in a kind of inbox space inside of Notion. I even intentionally skip the organize step as I’m taking notes so that the capture step is kept as frictionless as possible. At least once a week I set aside some time to organize the (hopefully) several notes that have built up in the landing area of my digital note taking app.

The book Building a Second Brain describes a method for organizing notes based on actionability known as the PARA method. Tiago Forte even admits here to having a thing for four letter acronyms. In writing this article, I only needed to make use of the P for projects and the final A for archives. Any notes that are relevant to an active project are moved into that project’s space first, and when a project is completed I move it into an archive.

While organizing my notes I moved the page for Building a Second Brain into a project folder for writing this blog. After publishing this blog, I moved the project folder and my notes on Building a Second Brain into my project archives. If I ever start a new project that involves Building a Second Brain, a part of my project prep will be to collect any relevant notes and move them into the new project folder.

Distill

The next phase in CODE is distillation. After notes are captured and organized it becomes easier to find them, but they’re still not optimized for use in the moment that you need them. Even if I only capture what resonates, I don’t usually have time to re-read every note I’ve taken on a subject when I need to make use of the ideas I’ve collected. In the distill step the author describes a process of progressive summarization that trends your notes towards optimization for usage in the moment of creation. As is typical for Tiago Forte, this process is broken down into four layers of distillation.

The first layer is simply the captured note, which the author compares to soil from which our own ideas and expressions can grow. To make a captured note easier to read when I start referring to it repeatedly, I’ll add a second layer by bolding the most important passages. I did this to my notes on Building a Second Brain as soon as I added the note to my project folder, knowing that I would return to it repeatedly while writing this blog. The author points out that it’s best to only distill notes that will be immediately useful in a project.

The third layer makes it even easier to quickly spot the main ideas in a given note. After bolding the most relevant passages, the author’s proposed third layer is to highlight key phrases inside the bolded passages. I took this step in my notes on Building a Second Brain while reviewing it just before writing, and it immediately paid off.

Express

The final phase of the CODE method is expression. In this phase I constrain myself to using only the notes I’ve captured and distilled as fuel for creating something new and my own, in this case a blog post. The author emphasizes refusing to wait until you feel perfectly prepared before sharing what you know with others, but rather to express your ideas early, often, and in smaller chunks. I alluded to this in another blog post about evolutionary writing.

For this blog I sat down with freshly distilled notes and wrote an outline and a first draft in a single session. I came back on another night and wrote the second draft before editing and publishing. In each session I referred only to my distilled notes on Building a Second Brain while writing. After publishing this blog post, I reflected on ideas for future blog posts before moving my project folder for this blog into my project archives.

The CODE method is a simple and structured pathway to regular self expression. I’ve always been fascinated by creativity born from constraints, and so this method suits me perfectly. I’d love to know how it goes if you decide to give the CODE method a try in your own writing.