# Foundations ## CODE Capture, Organize, Distill, and Express 1. **Capture:** Focus on capturing ideas and insights that personally resonate with you. 2. **Organize:** Keep your notes organized minimally with the PARA method, allowing for easy retrieval when needed. 3. **Distill:** Extract the essence of your notes to maximize impact and clarity. 4. **Express:** Utilize your captured, organized, and distilled thoughts to express yourself through various creative outputs. ## ARCHETYPES > [!info] The 4 Notetaking Styles: How to Choose a Digital Notes App as Your Second Brain - Forte Labs > Tiago guides you through the process of choosing the perfect notes app for you, taking into account your personal notetaking style. > [https://fortelabs.com/blog/the-4-notetaking-styles-how-to-choose-a-digital-notes-app-as-your-second-brain/](https://fortelabs.com/blog/the-4-notetaking-styles-how-to-choose-a-digital-notes-app-as-your-second-brain/) ### The Architect Note-taking Style: Building Systems Architects want to fit all their information into an all-encompassing “ultimate system” with a clear hierarchy. The same way a real architect needs a precise blueprint that details exactly where each part of a building goes, information architects tend to use a single overarching goal as the driving force in their knowledge collection. * Architects are ideally suited to large-scale projects that demand significant resources, where a plan is needed in advance. * They excel at interpreting every piece of information through the lens of their overarching principles, and fitting it all into an elegant framework that many kinds of people can make sense of and act on. * They are masters of structure, using a systems mindset, and making tradeoffs between form and function. * The pitfall Architects must avoid is inappropriately “force fitting” information into the system when it doesn’t fit. Because their thirst for order is so strong, they may sometimes ignore information that doesn’t fit with their mental model or follow a favored approach when the situation has changed and it no longer makes sense. Their need for consistency often leads Architects to plan their system upfront. If their needs change, the system needs to be rearchitected from scratch at significant cost. * Often Architects seek out collaborators with other styles that balance and complement these tendencies. - Succeeding at knowledge management as an Architect requires you to make executive decisions about how you want your notes to work: the hierarchy of pages or folders, which categories you want to use, where an index or table of contents is needed, or which columns should be included in a database, for example. - Apps like Notion and Craft are well-suited to architecting your knowledge as part of a holistic system.Though your style can and will change over time, we’ve found that most people have a “home base” where they get started. As your confidence builds you can always learn to master the other styles as well. But for now, choose a notes app that aligns with how your brain works. If you are curious about the other note-taking styles, check our blogpost on this topic.