One of the biggest challenges of modern life is information overload.
From messages, meeting invites, notifications, documents that people are sending us, plus the
content we like to consume, books, podcasts, YouTube videos, those are all information too.
And sometimes you just feel stuck and you don't know why.
It's this feeling that you can't find what you're looking for even though you know you saved it.
If you ever have that experience, I'm here to tell you it's not your fault. You're trying to lead a
modern 21st century life with a Paleolithic brain that did not evolve for that.
You can say but I'm leaving. So we turn to our digital productivity apps to carry some of the
load. In this video, I'm talking about my action reference framework.
It's a simple way to put every piece of information exactly where it goes. Think about your
second brain, which is what I call my digital system for managing information.
Think about it in terms of two hemispheres.
Just as your biological brain processes information differently in the two hemispheres, so does
your digital brain. On the left, the more analytical side, we have action. Things you have to do
like tasks, to-dos, and meetings. On the right, the more free-form creative side, we have
reference. Things you want to think about, learn, refer to, and possibly incorporate into your
work at some point in the future. This distinction between actionable information and
reference information originally comes from David Allen's book Getting Things Done. As
information comes into your world, the first decision you'll need to make is a simple yes/no
question. Is this something I need to do soon or not? For example, let's say a piece of
information comes in, which is file taxes. Is that something that you need to do in the short
term or just something that you're keeping for future reference?
Clearly, something that you need to do. It's an action. So I'm gonna put it on this side. The
actions that you need to take in your day-to-day life, you don't want them to get lost in this sea
of interesting stuff. They need to be pulled out and put in a separate place where you give
them more of your attention.
But remember I said there are two decisions you need to make. For the action side, the second
question is, does this action need to be taken at a specific time?
Yes or no? Things like meetings, zoom calls, events you're attending, those can't happen
whenever you feel like it.
They are highly time specific, like 2 p.m. on a Tuesday, so they should go in the perfect app
design for that, a calendar app.
I personally use Google Calendar, a free service used by millions of people because it's
completely reliable and allows me to send and receive meeting invites between myself and
others.
But you also have the option of using a client calendar app that syncs with the Google
Calendar servers. Now, if an action doesn't need to happen at a specific time, then it can go in
your task manager, which is a fancy name for a to-do list app. I recommend starting with a free
app like Apple's Reminders app or whatever comes built in on your devices. I've used a task
manager app called Things for many years because it's beautifully designed, super fast and
responsive, and makes it easy to save links to emails and websites.
But now let's take the example of, say, writing a personal essay. That doesn't have an exact
time that it needs to happen in, and so I'm going to put it on the actionable side. It is still an
action you'll have to take, but this one is going to go in your task manager.
We've talked about the action hemisphere. Now let's turn our attention to the other
hemisphere, which is the reference side.
Once again, we have two options. The first one is a Notes app. Notes apps are a place to store
bits of digital content, text, images, links.
The power of a digital Notes app is that it's casual. You just dash off a thought or drop in a
photo or paste a link without having to worry about exactly how it's formatted.
I think of my notes as a working environment, like a studio or a laboratory.
When I sit down to work, the first thing I do is open up my Notes app because that is where I
am actually doing the work.
But not everything can go in a Notes app. There are a few kinds of content such as a PDF or a
file that's too large, or a shared document like a Google Doc that should go in your general file
storage instead.
So for example, quote from a book, first question is, is it actionable or not? It's not actionable.
And then between these two options, is it something that needs to be maintained in its
current format? Or is it very large? Not really. So it can go in the Notes app.
Now let's take another example. Let's say you're doing some research and you save a useful
PDF. The content in PDFs often can't easily be turned into other formats. Definitely goes on the
reference side, but can't be turned into notes.
And so we'll keep it in file storage on something like Google Drive.
Begin thinking about your productivity as a system. It's something apart from yourself that you
can step back and design and change.
When you start to feel that sense of information overload rising, instead of succumbing to it or
thinking there's something wrong with you, ask yourself a question. What is going wrong in my
system that is creating this feeling? In other words, it's not you. It's your system.
If you're wondering how to organize these different parts of your second brain, which is where
a lot of people struggle, that's why I created Para. Para cuts across all four of these systems,
giving you a single way to organize all information, regardless of where it's located.
Check out our Para series to learn more.
