Well, I confess that I fell for the title. I often wish I could have a second brain, and I guess I’m not the only one. How many brains would you wish for yourself? I would love one for work and one extra for my personal life with family and friends, and if that’s not too much to ask one more for dreams and creative projects. Anyway, I got sidetracked… When I heard this book mentioned by podcasters (I think it was Laura Tremaine from 10 Things to Tell You, and/or Sarah Hart-Unger from The Shubox and Best of Both Worlds) I thought I would give it a try.

Well, it was mostly ok. It starts with the revolutionary concept of Commonplace book, but wait, that was the 16th century revolution. Then it goes on with revolutionary concepts to Capture, Organize, Distill and Express (aka CODE), and introduce another acronym, PARA, for Projects, Areas, References, and Archives. All in all, it’s not bad ideas if you have no idea where to start and suck at note-taking. But it’s not useful to me, as a middle-aged, fairly organized person. Whatever content there is in the book is stretched and plumped: it could be a few blog posts long and be equally good.

I think the book sort of shot itself in the foot (well, a book’s foot, that would be a footnote?) when it recommends not to keep whatever doesn’t resonate with you. Well, in my case, it didn’t, so one could say I followed the book’s recommendations.