"when it comes to our personal productivity, measurement has always been incredibly challenging. Knowledge work especially is extremely inconsistent from person to person, or even from one project to another."

"Every measure of quality in work output is so subjective, that the only meaningful evaluations tend to be performance reviews based on the opinions of the people we work with."

"4-stage process for knowledge management, known as CODE"

"Capture: Saving valuable information from the internet and the world around you Organize: Breaking that information into small chunks and preparing them for later use Distill: Extracting the pieces of knowledge most relevant to your current goals Express: Turning your knowledge into creative output that has an impact on others"

"Level 1: Storing Information"

"mostly for one-time, practical tasks like keeping a grocery list, notes from a meeting or phone call, or saving bookmarks from websites. You may even occasionally save notes from sources you consume"

"Level 2: Managing Knowledge"

"your notes begin to work as a thought partner, reminding you of things you’d completely forgotten and surfacing unexpected connections between ideas. The emphasis shifts from capturing more information, to putting to use the knowledge you already have."

"Level 3: Enabling Action"

"You become more discerning and selective about the information you consume, strongly preferring only the highest quality, most substantive sources that directly relate to the goals you are working toward."

"The benefits of your system extend beyond your personal goals and begin to impact the people around you. You make your most valuable knowledge available to others in concrete form, such as through a website, blog, social media feed, podcast, or product."

"Level 4: Personal Knowledge Mastery"

"Your knowledge works as a system greater than the sum of its parts, pulling in new material almost of its own will and effortlessly sorting and distilling it to support your long-term projects and goals. There is a constant output from your Second Brain into the external world"

"You know that you are not only accumulating a priceless store of intellectual capital, but an encyclopedia of tacit and experiential knowledge that is unique to you."

"Your notes track patterns in your thinking and learning over time, helping you understand your own evolution and direct it intentionally."

"P.A.R.A. stands for Projects — Areas — Resources — Archives, the four top-level categories that encompass every type of information you might encounter in your work and life."

"A project is “a series of tasks linked to a goal, with a deadline.”"

"An area of responsibility is “a sphere of activity with a standard to be maintained over time.”"

"A resource is “a topic or theme of ongoing interest.”"

"Archives include “inactive items from the other three categories.”"

"Projects always fall into Areas."

"Knowledge work requires not only our time and effort, but also our engagement and creativity. For that reason, personal motivation is the prime problem that supersedes all other problems."

"your Project List will change nearly every week. This creates a rhythm and a momentum of project completion to maintain your motivation. It generates the constant novelty that the latest research suggests is essential for satisfaction."

"Projects require you to be laser-focused, to ruthlessly drive toward an outcome, to smash through or circumvent obstacles, to ignore distractions (i.e. people). Areas, on the other hand, require mindfulness, balance, flow, and human connection."

"a project without a corresponding goal is known as a “hobby.” If you’re not committed to or haven’t fully articulated the outcome you want, you must be doing it just for fun."

"if you have a goal without a corresponding project, that’s called a “dream.” You may desire it with all your heart and soul, but without an active project, you are not in fact currently making any progress."

"define your projects, or they will define you"

"P.A.R.A. gives you the best of both worlds: the consistency of centralization, with the adaptability of decentralization."

"The entire hierarchy is four categories wide (projects, areas, resources, archives), and no more than four levels deep"

"The number four has been called “magic” due to research indicating it seems to be the natural limit of all sorts of cognitive processes, from working memory to object-tracking to rapid enumeration."

"Reading is the closest thing we have to thinking another’s thoughts. It’s long and sometimes ponderous, but that work is required to wrap yourself in another person’s paradigm. Which is the first step in madly letting go of your own."

"the ability to read is becoming a source of competitive advantage in the world"

"What has become exceedingly scarce (and therefore, valuable) is the physical, emotional, attentional, and mental capability to sit quietly and direct focused attention for sustained periods of time"

"Google found that increasing the number of results per page from 10 to 30 took only half a second longer, but caused 20% of people to drop off."

"Getting Things Done cites the work of Dr. Roy Baumeister, who has shown that “uncompleted tasks take up room in the mind, which then limits clarity and focus.” The risk of cognitive dissonance at not being able to finish a long article (much less a book) keep us from even beginning it."

"Actionable info ≠ Reference info ≠ To Read pile"

"Task manager ≠ Evernote ≠ Pocket"

"Procrastination is the most powerful force in the universe. It will find a way"

"Instead of pushing a new piece of info through from intake to processing to consumption without any scrutiny, I’m creating a pool of options drawn from a longer time period, which allows me to make decisions from a higher perspective, where those decisions are much better aligned with what truly matters to me."

"Highlight > Share > Share to Evernote > Save"

"There’s another way to learn faster: assimilate and build on the ideas of others. Sure, you won’t understand every tacit lesson their experience gave them, but you can incorporate many of them, and in a fraction of the time it would take you to make every mistake yourself."

"Ideas are high leverage agents. They become more so when arranged in highly cross-referenced networks. The only tool we have available that is capable of both creating and accessing these networks on demand is the human brain."

"the two that Read It Later apps can help with: Increasing consumption of long-form content (which is presumably more substantive) Better filtering"

"What has become exceedingly scarce (and therefore, valuable) is the physical, emotional, attentional, and mental capability to sit quietly and direct focused attention for sustained periods of time."

"The quality of a workflow’s outputs is fundamentally limited by the quality of its inputs. Garbage in, garbage out."

"1 | INCREASING CONSUMPTION OF LONG-FORM CONTENT"

"Using your friends as your primary filter for new ideas ensures you remain the dumbest person in the room, and contribute nothing to the conversation."

"3. ASYNCHRONOUS READING"

"This is one of the least understood barriers to reading in our fragmented timescape."

"There is something deeply, deeply unsatisfying about repeatedly starting something and not finishing it."

"“uncompleted tasks take up room in the mind, which then limits clarity and focus.”"

"The risk of cognitive dissonance at not being able to finish a long article (much less a book) keep us from even beginning it."

"Read It Later apps address this by simply saving your progress in a given article, allowing you to pick back up at a different time, or on a different device, and clearly marking items as “read” once you’re finished."

"It is a question of focus. Why don’t you use your task manager to keep track of content (i.e. “Read this article”)? Because the last thing you want to see when you cuddle up with your hot cocoa for some light reading is the hundreds of tasks you’re not doing."

"2 | BETTER FILTERING"

"Procrastination is the most powerful force in the universe. It will find a way."

"I have a different approach: waiting periods. Every time I come across something I may want to read/watch, I’m totally allowed to."

"The only requirement is I have to save it to Pocket, and then choose to consume it at a later time."

"Bringing this back to filtering, not only am I saving time and preserving focus by batch processing both the collection and the consumption of new content, I’m time-shifting the curation process to a time better suited for reading, and (most critically) removed from the temptations, stresses, and biopsychosocial hooks that first lured me in."

"What I’m essentially doing is creating a buffer."

"Every productivity tool eventually becomes a victim of its own success. In this case, I’ve become so dependent on Pocket that bugs really affect me."

"As the inimitable Venkatesh Rao has written, we’re moving from a world of containers (companies, departments, semesters, packages, silos) to a world of streams (social networks, info feeds, main streets of thriving cities, Twitter). Problems and opportunities alike resist having neat little boxes drawn around them. There’s way too much to absorb. Way too much to even guess what you don’t know."

"the first step he proposes is “exposing yourself to as many different diverse streams as possible.”"

"When you’re immersed in a stream, the faster it goes, the more novel perspectives and ideas you’re exposed to."

"There’s another way to learn faster: assimilate and build on the ideas of others."

"Sure, you won’t understand every tacit lesson their experience gave them, but you can incorporate many of them, and in a fraction of the time it would take you to make every mistake yourself."

"Surely there is no power, no control, no understanding, not even a reason for being, much less acting, in the notion or experience that there is no certainty in any worldview. But, in fact, everyone who has managed to entertain that idea, for a moment or for a lifetime, has found it to be the basis for radical empowerment. If no paradigm is right, you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose."

"In the end, it seems that mastery has less to do with pushing leverage points than it does with strategically, profoundly, madly letting go."

"The amazing thing about ideas is that it takes zero time for one to change your paradigm. It happens in time, but takes no time, like an inter-dimensional wormhole, one entangled particle in your brain mirroring its twin across a chasm even more vast than the universe — the chasm between two minds."