How To Use the Fieldstone Method to Build Your Second Brain

“Great ideas emerge from assembling small insights over time.” — JD Meier

Your ability to curate, collect, and synthesize information is an incredible advantage when it comes to innovation.

I collected inspiration, ideas, and insights for years at Microsoft.

Eventually, I realized that the process I use is what Gerald Weinberg would call the Fieldstone Method.

When you use the Fieldstone Method, you are creating notes for your Future Self to inspire innovation and creativity.

Gerald Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method is a concept he introduced in his book on writing, Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method.

This approach to writing and idea generation is based on the metaphor of building a stone wall.

You collect fieldstones that are then used to construct the wall piece by piece.

In the context of writing, a “fieldstone” represents an idea, anecdote, fact, or any piece of inspiration that a writer comes across.

As Weinberg puts it, “snatches of writing, photos, diagrams, quotations, pictures, and references that you find interesting. . . .”

What is the Fieldstone Method?

Weinberg suggests that you should collect your fieldstones as you find them, without immediately worrying about how they will fit into the final structure of your work.

The Fieldstone Method involves several key steps:

1. Gathering: Collecting ideas, insights, and pieces of information whenever and wherever you encounter them.
2. Storing: Keeping these ideas in a manner that they can be easily accessed later, such as in notebooks, files, or digital tools.
3. Retrieving: Going through your collection of ideas when working on a project to find the ones that fit.
4. Assembling: Organizing and piecing together your ideas to form a coherent narrative or argument.
5. Polishing: Refining and editing the assembled work until it meets your standards.

This method emphasizes the non-linear nature of creative work and encourages you to remain open to inspiration at all times.

You can leverage your collected “fieldstones” to build your stories, essays, or any written work, much like constructing a wall one stone at a time.

It’s a flexible approach that can reduce the pressure of having to come up with ideas on the spot, making the writing process more natural and enjoyable.

James Clear Says Time Unlocks Insights

Some people say that saving ideas and insights for the future is silly.

Others say, it’s the only way to set the stage for serendipity.

Here’s how James Clear puts it:

“It is nearly impossible to have your best idea the first time you think about something.

The most likely way to uncover important insights is to frequently revisit a problem. The longer you’re in the game, the more ideas bubble up to the surface.

Time unlocks insights.”

If You Wait Until You Need It, It’s Too Late

In my experience, if you wait until you need it, it’s too late.

Some ideas and insights take time to absorb and appreciate or to see how they fit, or how they fit together.

That’s why I like the Fieldstone Method.

It’s a deliberate strategy to collect interesting and potentially useful stones, so that you can build a beautiful structure in the future, even if you don’t know what it will exactly be or look like yet.

The Fieldstone Method makes it OK to collect information you might not need, that just as easily might turn out to be the key to turning insights into innovation.

By setting a stage for serendipity, you set a better stage for innovation.

How To Use the Fieldstone Method with Evernote

You can use the Fieldstone Method with Evernote to collect, organize, and develop your ideas (fieldstones) into a coherent project or narrative.

By adapting the Fieldstone Method to Evernote’s versatile platform, you create a dynamic system for developing your ideas from inception to completion, all within a single, organized environment.

Here’s how to apply this method within Evernote:

1. Setting Up Your Collection System

• Create a Dedicated Notebook: Start by creating a new notebook in Evernote specifically for your project or writing endeavor. Name it in a way that reflects its purpose, like “Fieldstone Collection.”
• Use Tags Wisely: Establish a tagging system for different types of ideas, sources, or themes. Tags like “Character Ideas,” “Plot Twists,” or “Research” can help you categorize and later retrieve your fieldstones.

2. Gathering Fieldstones

• Capture Ideas Anytime, Anywhere: Whenever an idea strikes, use Evernote’s mobile app to jot it down immediately. If you come across interesting articles, images, or videos online, use Evernote’s Web Clipper to save these directly into your dedicated notebook.
• Record Voice Memos: If you’re not in a position to write, use Evernote’s audio note feature to record your thoughts.

3. Organizing and Refining Your Fieldstones

• Review Regularly: Set aside time to regularly review your collected fieldstones. This can be weekly or monthly, depending on your project’s timeline.
• Consolidate Similar Ideas: Merge notes that revolve around similar concepts or themes. Evernote allows you to merge notes easily, helping to synthesize ideas.
• Expand and Elaborate: Open a fieldstone note and start expanding on the idea. Add more details, thoughts, or how it might fit into your larger project.

4. Assembling Your Project

• Create a Structure: Once you have a substantial collection, start organizing your fieldstones into a structure that resembles your project’s outline. You might create separate notes for different chapters, sections, or topics.
• Drag and Drop to Reorder: Use Evernote’s feature to reorder notes within a notebook to match your project’s structure. This physical act of moving notes around can help you think about the flow and coherence of your project.

5. Polishing and Finalizing

• Refine Each Section: Work through each note, refining and polishing the text. If you’re working on a writing project, this is where you turn bullet points and fragmented thoughts into complete sentences and paragraphs.
• Export if Necessary: If your final project needs to be in a different format or platform, use Evernote’s export features to move your work, maintaining its organization.  Given limited options, this might mean a lot of copy + pasting.

6. Sharing and Feedback

• Collaborate: Share your Evernote notebook with trusted peers or collaborators to get feedback. They can leave comments directly on your notes.

Additional Tips

• Use Templates: Evernote offers templates for various purposes, including project planning and writing. These can provide a structured starting point for your fieldstones.
• Integrate with Other Tools: Evernote integrates with tools like Google Drive, making it easy to link to related documents or spreadsheets that may not be directly stored in Evernote.

How To Use the Fieldstone Method with Notion

You can use the Fieldstone Method with Notion to significantly enhance your ability to collect, organize, and develop your ideas into a coherent project.

Applying the Fieldstone Method with Notion’s comprehensive features supports a dynamic and flexible approach to developing your ideas from inception to completion, all within a visually organized and interconnected environment.

Notion’s flexibility as an all-in-one workspace makes it an ideal tool for this method.

Here’s how to apply the Fieldstone Method within Notion:

1. Setting Up Your Workspace

• Create a New Page: Start by creating a new page in Notion dedicated to your project. Consider this page as your central hub for the Fieldstone Method.
• Database for Fieldstones: Within your project page, create an inline database (choose either a table or a board view) to serve as your collection of fieldstones. Title it appropriately, e.g., “Idea Collection.”

2. Gathering Fieldstones

• Capture Ideas: Whenever an idea strikes, add a new entry to your database. You can do this from anywhere using Notion’s mobile app. Each idea should be a new page within your database.
• Use Properties: For each fieldstone (idea page), utilize Notion’s properties feature to categorize your ideas. Create properties for themes, types (quote, concept, research, etc.), relevance, and any other criteria relevant to your project.
• Integrate Multimedia: Notion allows you to embed or attach various types of media (images, videos, web links). Use this feature to enrich your fieldstones with visual inspiration or reference material.

3. Organizing and Refining Your Fieldstones

• Regular Review and Organization: Schedule regular sessions to review your collected ideas. Use tags and filters to sort through them and identify patterns or themes.
• Develop Ideas Further: Open individual fieldstone pages to expand on the idea. Add more details, thoughts, related research, or how it might fit into your larger project. You can even link pages to each other if they are related.

4. Assembling Your Project

• Create a Project Structure: As your collection grows and you start to see how fieldstones can fit together, create a new page or database in Notion for structuring your project. This could be an outline, chapters for a book, or sections of a report.
• Move and Connect Ideas: Drag and drop your fieldstone pages into the structure you’ve created, placing them where they fit best within your project’s framework. Use Notion’s linking feature to connect relevant ideas across different parts of your project.

5. Polishing and Finalizing

• Iterate and Refine: Work through each section of your project, refining the content for coherence, flow, and impact. Notion’s block-based setup allows you to easily rearrange sections or chapters as needed.
• Collaborative Feedback: Share your Notion workspace with collaborators or mentors to gather feedback. They can leave comments directly on your pages or suggest edits.

6. Publishing or Exporting Your Work

• Exporting: Once your project is finalized, you can export your Notion pages if you need to format or publish your work in another tool or platform.
• Public Sharing: Alternatively, Notion allows you to share pages publicly, turning your project into a shareable website if desired.

Additional Tips

• Templates: Leverage Notion’s template gallery for project management or writing templates that might give you a structured starting point.
• Integrations: Although Notion is a standalone tool, consider how it might work in tandem with other tools you use, possibly through manual integration or simply by linking between tools.

What is a Second Brain?

A “Second Brain” is a concept popularized in the areas of productivity and personal knowledge management.

It refers to an external, digital system used to store, organize, and retrieve information, ideas, and insights that individuals encounter in their daily lives.

This system acts as an extension of one’s cognitive capacities, freeing up mental space by offloading the task of remembering every piece of information and instead focusing on creativity and problem-solving.

How To Build a Second Brain

Tiago Forte developed a methodology to build a Second Brain that revolves around what he calls CODE and PARA.

To build a Second Brain, start by implementing the CODE framework.

Complementing this, employ the PARA method to structure your digital environment into Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives, ensuring a streamlined, actionable system that enhances personal knowledge management and productivity.

Let’s take a quick walkthrough of CODE and PARA to see how they work:

CODE: Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express

CODE is a framework, developed by Tiago Forte, designed to enhance personal knowledge management and productivity, particularly in the context of building a Second Brain.

It stands for Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express, representing a systematic approach to managing the information you encounter daily.

Here’s a breakdown of each step in the CODE process:

1. Capture: This step involves gathering information, ideas, insights, and inspirations as they come to you, without immediately worrying about organization. The key is to ensure that these “fieldstones” are not lost, using digital tools like note-taking apps, voice memos, or any system that allows you to quickly and easily save information for later retrieval.
2. Organize: Once you’ve captured information, the next step is to organize it in a way that makes sense for you. This could involve categorizing notes by topic, project, or any other system that helps you know where to find information when you need it. Effective organization minimizes time spent searching for information and maximizes efficiency.
3. Distill: After capturing and organizing your information, the distillation process involves reviewing and synthesizing this information to extract key insights, patterns, and actionable items. This step is crucial for turning raw information into valuable knowledge that can inform decisions, spark creativity, or solve problems.
4. Express: The final step of the CODE framework is about sharing or applying the knowledge you’ve gathered and refined. This could be through writing, speaking, creating, or any form of output that communicates your insights to others or incorporates them into your work. Expressing what you’ve learned not only solidifies your understanding but also contributes value to your community or field.

PARA Method

The PARA Method is a system for organizing digital information, developed by Tiago Forte, that is based on the principle of actionability.

It suggests that all information can be divided into four distinct categories: Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives.

Here’s a breakdown of each category:

1. Projects: Defined as a series of tasks with a specific objective that you aim to complete within a defined period. Projects are short-term efforts, whether in your professional or personal life, that move you towards a goal. Each project should have a clear endpoint or deliverable.
2. Areas: These are long-term responsibilities or aspects of your life and work that require ongoing attention and management but don’t have a specific end date. Examples might include health, finances, or career development. Unlike projects, areas are maintained over time and don’t have a final completion state.
3. Resources: This category encompasses information that you find interesting or valuable and might want to refer back to in the future. Resources are not immediately actionable but are organized by topic or interest for potential use in projects or areas of responsibility.
4. Archive: Contains items that are no longer active or immediately relevant but are worth keeping for future reference or historical purposes. Archiving helps keep your active workspace decluttered while ensuring that you can still access important information from completed projects, outdated areas, or resources that are no longer of interest.

By organizing information into these four categories, the PARA Method helps maintain a clean and efficient digital environment, reducing information overload and making it easier to find what you need, when you need it.

This method is flexible and can be adapted to various digital tools and platforms, making it a versatile system for personal knowledge management and productivity.

10 Principles of Building a Second Brain

Tiago Forte shares10 principles you can use to get started building your Second Brain:

1. Borrowed Creativity: Creativity flourishes by gathering and connecting your ideas with those of others, fostering unique insights.
2. The Capture Habit: Consistently save your spontaneous ideas in a dedicated system to nurture and revisit them later.
3. Idea Recycling: Reuse and repurpose your past work and ideas across multiple projects to save time and effort.
4. Projects Over Categories: Organize ideas by relevant projects rather than broad categories to enhance accessibility and actionability.
5. Slow Burns: Accumulate ideas over time to enrich projects with diverse insights without the stress of last-minute efforts.
6. Start with Abundance: Kickstart your creative process with a wealth of pre-collected ideas and insights to inspire innovation.
7. Intermediate Packets: Break work into manageable chunks to sustain motivation and enrich your repository of knowledge.
8. You Only Know What You Make: Solidify learning and improve through the active application of knowledge in real-world projects.
9. Make it Easier for Your Future Self: Gradually refine your notes to enhance clarity and accessibility for future use.
10. Keep Your Ideas Moving: Prioritize progress over perfection in organizing ideas, allowing your system to adapt with use.

12 Steps to Build a Second Brain

Tiago Forte outlines 12 steps you can use to get started building your Second Brain.

Here is a summary of the steps:

1. Decide What You Want to Capture: Identify two to three key areas of content that interest you for your digital note-taking endeavors.
2. Choose Your Notes App: Select a digital notes app that aligns with your personal note-taking style and preferences.
3. Choose a Capture Tool: Begin using a ‘read later’ app like Instapaper or Pocket to save online content for future reference.
4. Get Set Up with PARA: Organize your digital workspace using the PARA method, creating folders for Projects, Areas, Resources, and Archives to enhance note actionability.
5. Get Inspired by Identifying Your Twelve Favorite Problems: List your top twelve problems as inspiration filters for what content to capture and revisit.
6. Automatically Capture Your eBook Highlights: Use tools like Readwise or IFTTT to automatically send highlights from your reading apps to your digital notes.
7. Practice Progressive Summarization: Employ multiple layers of highlighting to summarize notes, enhancing interaction and understanding.
8. Experiment with Just One Intermediate Packet: Break down a complex project into manageable pieces, focusing on one “Intermediate Packet” for initial development and feedback.
9. Make Progress on One Deliverable: Apply workflow techniques to make significant progress on a specific project deliverable using your Second Brain notes.
10. Schedule a Weekly Review: Establish a routine for a Weekly Review to organize your notes inbox and set priorities, enhancing notetaking efficiency.
11. Assess Your Note-taking Proficiency: Evaluate and improve your note-taking skills with the Productivity Potential Quiz.
12. Join the PKM Community: Engage with the Personal Knowledge Management community online to stay updated on #PKM, #SecondBrain, #BASB, and #toolsforthought.

How to Relate the Fieldstone Method to the Second Brain Process

By relating the Fieldstone Method to the Second Brain process, you can create a powerful system for managing knowledge and fostering creativity.

The Fieldstone Method provides a helpful metaphor for gathering information and storing it in your Second Brain, turning inspiration into action.

Here is a way to think of how you can combine the Fieldstone Method with a Second Brain for better innovation:

1. Collection as Foundation: Both the Fieldstone Method and the Second Brain concept emphasize the importance of collecting ideas, insights, and information as they occur. In the Fieldstone Method, these are akin to individual “fieldstones” that you gather. In the Second Brain, these pieces of information are stored as notes, images, links, or documents.
2. Organization for Accessibility: The Fieldstone Method involves sorting and storing your collected “fieldstones” so they can be easily accessed later, which mirrors the Second Brain’s principle of organizing information in a way that makes retrieval intuitive and efficient, often through tagging, categorizing, or thematic databases.
3. Integration and Synthesis: In the Fieldstone Method, individual pieces (fieldstones) are eventually assembled into a coherent whole, such as a story, article, or project. Similarly, the Second Brain encourages the synthesis of collected information into new ideas, projects, or solutions, leveraging the connections and relationships between disparate pieces of information.
4. Evolution Over Time: Both methods recognize the value of revisiting and refining ideas over time. The Fieldstone Method’s step of polishing reflects the iterative process of improving and expanding upon initial thoughts, much like the Second Brain’s practice of regularly reviewing and updating notes to reflect new insights or understandings.
5. Tool Utilization: The implementation of both methods can be significantly enhanced by digital tools. For the Fieldstone Method, tools like Evernote or Notion can serve as repositories for the fieldstones, offering features for tagging, linking, and organizing. These same tools are often recommended for building a Second Brain, providing a versatile platform for managing personal knowledge.

Build Better Breakthroughs a Fieldstone at a Time

When it comes to innovation and creativity, the journey is often paved with the collection of seemingly disparate ideas and insights.

This is much like the fieldstones scattered across a vast landscape.

The Fieldstone Method, as articulated by Gerald Weinberg, serves as a methodology for writing as well as a way to collect and curate building blocks for innovation itself.

The Fieldstone Method teaches us the power of observation, the value of collecting experiences, and the art of piecing together the mosaic of your thoughts into a coherent narrative or solution.

By embracing tools like Evernote and Notion, you extend this methodology into your digital life, transforming the way you organize, connect, and evolve your ideas.

This approach reminds you that innovation is a process of continuous growth and adaptation, where collecting individual “fieldstones” of knowledge helps you build the foundations for your future breakthroughs.

Leverage every snippet of inspiration as a steppingstone towards creating impactful and enduring innovations.

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