Intermediate Packets

tags:: Second Brain on/note-taking Writing
up:: Second Brain
author:: Tiago Forte

Your goal is to find and curate the best, most special Lego blocks and then only at then end put them together. (In your notes, these are Evergreen Notes).

If we consider the focused application of our attention to be our greatest asset as knowledge workers, we can no longer afford to let that intermediate work disappear.

Thinking small is the best way to elevate your horizons and expand your ambitions.

Advantages:

• You become interruption proof because you can load an IP in your mind instead of the entire project
• You’ll be able to make progress in any span of time
• The quality of your work increases because you ask for feedback earlier and more often
• You’ll have to many IPs at your disposal that you can execute entire projects from assembling IPs

Types of intermediate packets:

• Distilled notes
• Outtakes
• Work-in-process
• Final deliverables
• Documents created by others

You can sit down to purposefully create an IP but it is far more powerful to notice the IPs you have already produced and then take an extra moment to save them to your Second Brain.