Summary:

The CODE method is a strategy to manage digital hoarding, which is a common issue due to the overwhelming amount of information available online. The method consists of four steps:

1. Capture the most important information: Prioritize and save only the most relevant and useful content. The focus should be on content that is connected to your interests or sparks curiosity, rather than blindly saving what's suggested by algorithms or shared by contacts. A variety of digital tools, such as read-later apps, notes apps, or transcription apps, can be used for this purpose.
2. Organize by actionability: After capturing information, the next step is to organize it. The organization should be simple and flexible rather than rigid and hierarchical. Focus on what's actionable. Use the PARA framework for organization, which includes Projects (short-term, specific goals), Areas (long-term, managed over time), Resources (useful for later), and Archive (inactive content).
3. Distill info to its essence: This step involves distilling your notes into actionable, bite-sized summaries. This requires some upfront work but will make the information more easily usable in the future. Key terms should be defined, links to related resources can be added, and each interaction with a note should involve adding value to it.
4. Express your ideas: The final step is to actively use the information you’ve captured, organized, and distilled. Rather than passively consuming content, the goal is to actively create and share work. This could involve creating small, recyclable pieces of a project, like meeting notes or action items.

The CODE method encourages active creation over passive consumption, and emphasizes focusing on what's actionable. The goal is to transform overwhelming information into manageable, actionable, and useful content.

Organizing as you go helps minimize all that digital hoarding.

Photo: Stokkete (Shutterstock)

There’s so much to consume online, from the millions of pieces of content shared, sent, and watched on social media platforms every minute to the endless stream of news, data, and commentary being published. We are constantly faced with choices of what to watch and read, which leads to information overload, decision fatigue, and what creator Jorge Medina refers to as digital hoarding: saving stuff for later, like the million tabs you keep open (because FOMO) that you never return to. Instead of being inspired by content, he writes, we get overwhelmed—and ultimately less creative.

The “second brain” movement, a productivity framework created by Tiago Forte, suggests that we need external storage for saving information and resources, which frees up our actual brains to be more creative rather than trying to memorize and organize everything we’ve consumed.

A key building-block of your second brain is the CODE method, which helps you curate the content stream so it’s meaningful and helpful rather than overwhelming. Here’s how it works.

C: Capture the most important information

The first step is to keep only the things worth saving, or the most relevant and useful information. Forte suggests paying more attention to content that connects to something you care about, are curious about, or find intriguing rather than passively saving what’s sent to you by a contact or fed to you through an algorithm.

Practically, you can capture using a variety of digital tools, such as a read-later app, notes app, or transcription app. You can also highlight or annotate in an ebook app or save websites in a web clipper app.

O: Organize by actionability

Once you start saving, you’ll need to start organizing. Forte recommends keeping your organization simple and flexible rather than rigid and hierarchical and focusing on what’s actionable.

To organize along the spectrum of most to least actionable, use the PARA framework: