🎯 My good friend and YouTuber Sara Loretta made a video about how she uses a notion template to manage her yearly and quarterly goals. It reminded me of Ali Abdaal’s video on a similar subject and how he organizes his second brain in notion. Down the rabbit hole of notion videos I went, and watched hours and hours of YouTube on Building A Second Brain.

🧠 Oh and I just finished reading the book on the same subject too. It made me realize I actually have no idea what I’m doing with my life. I’ve been following a path that seems logical and straight forward but that’s just my academic path. There are a number of things I want to do in life and I actually have no plan, no idea, and no preparation for when and how I’ll be able to do those things. As Tiago Forte says,

A project without a goal is a hobby 🎨; a goal without a project is a dream 💤.

🪂 I want to do sky diving some day but since there is no “on going project” attached to it, it’s a dream. I regularly write the newsletter but I don’t have a “goal” attached to it, so it’s a hobby. And while there is nothing wrong with dreams and hobbies, when it comes to getting things done and accomplishing results, projects and goals are what bring about meaningful results.

✅ So, I’m sorting out my life now. I’m clearly organizing my priorities in terms of P.A.R.A. which is an acronym for

1. Projects
2. Areas of Responsibility
3. Resources
4. Archives

🧠 This acronym together with PKM which stands for Personal Knowledge Management and B.A.S.B. which is another 4 letter acronym for Building a Second Brain (you can tell Tiago loves 4 letter acronyms) has been the focus of my attention for the past few weeks ever since I started feeling I have no plan for my life. And now I kinda do. Reading the book, and watching hours of YouTube, wasn’t all in vain for once. Although organizing my life is still a work in progress, I’ve managed to do the following in last two weeks:

• 📂 Organized my Desktop Folders, Notion, Apple Notes, and Google Drive Folders into P.A.R.A and moved all of my previous knowledge into Archives Folder (it’s just another folder, not delete so nothing is lost if I need it)
• 📝 Created a list of on going projects and created their relevant folders
• 🔖 Created my own notion template for building a second brain and started organizing my notes
• 📆 Started planning my wedding reception and honeymoon and surprisingly breaking it down into projects, tasks, and adding all relevant resources and notes into one place made it seem all easy and manageable
• 🇨🇦 Finally submitted my Canadian Permanent Residence Application and trust me, having this P.A.R.A methodology helped A LOT

So is this a magic formula that is a one stop solution to organizing your whole life? Yes, kinda. I mean that’s the whole point of it really. I’ve been feeling much more relaxed mentally for the past few weeks and I genuinely feel like I can safely offload some of my brain’s worries into my digital second brain for safekeeping. I have less of that nagging feeling of “I’m forgetting something, there was something I was supposed to do, or there was something I was supposed to remember”. So yeah, that’s pretty life changing for me. Do check out Tiago’s book if you’re into this type “organizing my life” kinda thing. It’s very liberating.

❓ Question for you:

If I have the choice between preventing my brother Saad from burning a building, or saving another burning building with 100 people in it, what should I choose? What if the other building has 500 people, or a 1000, or 10,000?

❤My Favourite Things

🎬YouTube Video:

Mark Rober’s new studio is pretty cool. I loved watching it, I’m guessing you will too.

📕Book:

Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte of course. You can get it on amazon or listen to it for free if you sign up for an audible trial using this link.

📝Quote:

Before we do anything with our ideas, we have to “off-load” them from our minds and put them into concrete form. Only when we declutter our brain of complex ideas can we think clearly and start to work with those ideas effectively. Building a Second Brain - Tiago Forte

🎶Music:

American Pie by Don McLean has been on my mind. May be I listened to it too much during the Part Time YouTuber Academy.

🔍I’m Learning:

I’m learning how to relate my life’s areas of responsibility to different projects that I’m working on and then link those projects to concrete goals and tasks so I can keep track of my progress on them and later look back on everything I accomplished.

Oh and an update on my typing tracking using touch typing, I hit 43 wpm for the first time using touch typing only.

I see that you’ve made it to the end. If you liked this blogpost, check out the other stuff I talk about on my YouTube Channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!😉

Sadia Khaf

A channel about higher education abroad, scholarships, and career advice. 

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