The CODE System

The C.O.D.E System is an amazing framework that has guided our knowledge management and creative output since we discovered it.

CODE is a 4-step process conceived by Tiago Forte:

“Technology is constantly changing, but the heart of the creative process remains fundamentally the same:

capturing

organizing

distilling

expressing

To efficiently manage the information and knowledge that is relevant to you and your work and not feel overwhelmed, you need a workflow, a process that guides you and doesn’t change if you switch programs or applications.

CODE stands for Capture, Organize, Distill, Express. Let’s go through each of the concepts.

Capture

Saving valuable information from the internet and the world around you

It’s dangerous to start an information capturing habit without thinking about a filter that might work for you, be aware that your knowledge management system is not a personal wiki, you are not Google’s rival. Instead, capture the 10, 5 or 1% of anything

We recommend that you install your note-taking app’s web clipper, so that you don’t get distracted copying and pasting whatever it is you want to capture.

Another point that Tiago makes and that we would like you to embrace is that your ideas and opinion matter, that your perspective has something to offer . If you believe this, you will start to think that it is worth it to spend 15 seconds writing down whatever just came to mind. It is a radical act of trust, to think that your experiences are worth remembering and your ideas are worth being listened to.

Organize

Breaking that information into small chunks and preparing them for later use

Before you start organizing, you should have captured something into your system. It would be counterproductive to spend hours and hours creating a massive organization hierarchy with empty folders and based on complicated concepts.

We love the projects-first approach that the PARA method offers (read our blog post about PARA here), but most of all, we love the concept of organizing opportunistically. You don’t set time aside to organize your notes, instead, you spend time engaging with the knowledge that you have saved, and best-case scenario you bring a project forward, so that the information that you have captured has a context and a use case, which connects us with the next step.

Distill

Extracting the pieces of knowledge most relevant to your current goals

By now you have externalized your ideas by capturing them and you have organized them by projects, by actionability. Now it’s time to distill the main ideas of the information that you have in your system so that you are left with knowledge blocks that apply to you, to your context and the work that you are immersed in.

The approach that we propose here is the note-first approach. Instead of spending time coming up with a tagging or linking system for your knowledge, why don’t concentrate on the content of the notes, on the knowledge itself?

Tiago suggests Progressive Summarization as a way of distilling your notes further each time you stumble upon them. First you just bold what interests you, then you highlight the best of the bold passages, and lastly you summarize succinctly and in your own words what this note means to you and your work, putting your on spin on it.