Consider Building Your Second Brain

Brains are great for having ideas, but not so good at storing them: Here’s where technology can step in.

In the early 1990s, I enjoyed playing a popular computer game called SimCity. The aim of the game was to build a city from a few acres of empty green land and a small budget. It might not sound that exciting, especially compared with the immersive games of today, but there was something compelling and satisfying about building a city from nothing. Watching it grow and connect to something bigger.      

I thought of SimCity when I began building a ‘second brain’ last year. You might ask what’s wrong with my first brain. Well, fortunately nothing. It’s served me well so far. The brain is a phenomenal piece of human architecture, but it’s not perfect.

Brains are great for having ideas, but not so good at storing them. The cognitive psychologist George A. Miller put forward the seminal idea in 1956 that most adults can only store between 5 and 9 items in their short-term memory. It holds true.

• How many great ideas have you forgotten?

• How many insights from non-fiction books have you failed to take action on?

• How much good advice have you received but can’t remember?

If these questions (and your answers) struck a chord, maybe it’s time to explore building a second brain using new intuitive tools like Notion, Roam, Obsidian and Mem (which is in public beta testing). I’ll show you how and why. But first, let’s cover the question you’re likely asking now. Just what is a second brain?

A second brain explained

A second brain is a personal knowledge system held online (the cloud). Think of it as a modern upgrade on the paper filing cabinet, which sat in millions of homes and offices in the twentieth century. These cabinets held and organised entire personal and professional lives. They still do in some homes and offices.

In the online personal knowledge system, information is saved and organised. But through technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI), our information can be linked. This helps us see patterns in our thinking, improves our understanding, and generates new ideas. Something the paper filing cabinet can’t do. 

Losing our ideas and drowning in unmanageable personal data

We know the brain isn’t great at storing short-term information. We often lose the ideas and insights our brain can generate every day if we don’t record them. That could hinder our personal and professional goals.

Then there is the genuine challenge of how to organise all our personal information, most of which exists in digital form today. Our digital lives have grown unwieldy, with thousands of photos, screenshots, notes, text messages, and bookmarked tabs scattered across multiple devices and accounts. It feels like it would take a year to organise them.

There are existing organisational tools that help, such as Google Photos, iOS Notes and Evernote, but a second brain system offers a more comprehensive and structured solution for those inclined and willing to put in the effort.

A second brain isn’t about storing everything. Instead, it’s about being selective. I recommend starting with the things that interest you most in your personal and professional life. In my second brain, I save and organise information on subjects like running technique, insights from the books I’ve read, and my personal and professional goals. They are often linked.  

Indeed, many people today are committed to self-improvement and continuous learning. They see it as important steps in their professional and personal development. So we need a system that can capture and refine all that knowledge and learning.

Harnessing our ideas now and for the future

Your captured information is knowledge you may use now or in the future. We never know how the insights we capture today might be momentous in the future. This is something the author and founder of the Unmistakable Creative podcast, Srini Rao, stresses; “our greatest work comes from using a compass, not a map.”

This is the real value of the second brain - using our stored and acquired knowledge and insights to create. Now or in the future. This value creation could benefit the wider world, your local community, family and friends, or just yourself.

As an example, this series of articles developed from my second brain. As I reviewed my personalised notes from various books, articles, and podcasts, I identified themes for articles that could be of value.

Perhaps your second brain enables you to launch a business venture, or develop insights that can help solve real-world problems, or further hone your craft in a skill important to you. Or even just be a place to record your thoughts and perspectives for your children and grandchildren. A treasure trove of your life.

Creating and organising your second brain

Building your second brain starts by choosing your workspace tool. I mentioned these earlier and there are advantages to each. I use Notion, which has grown from one million users to 20 million users in two years. It’s free and available on desktop, mobile and tablet so you can access your synchronised information however and whenever you want. I recommend watching the tutorial videos online first. Start small, experiment, and don’t get overwhelmed.

To organise the information in your chosen tool, we can turn to the excellent work of Tiago Forte and his PARA method. In this organisational system, Forte suggests we only use four category folders - Projects, Archives, Resources and Areas. These four categories should cover every type of information you encounter in your professional and personal life. More details on his PARA method are available online. I’ve found his system effective and I recommend it.

Unlock skills you never thought you had and ideas that inspire

Perhaps this all sounds like too much hard work, or you’re too busy. But as author Tim Ferris says, “you don’t find the time to do something, you make the time to do things.” If the idea of a second brain resonates, make it a daily habit, say, thirty minutes every day.

Building a second brain takes time. It’s just like the SimCity computer game. You build piece by piece, watching how it connects. Think of it as an ongoing life project, building something of substance. You’re collecting the knowledge most important to you. It may unlock skills you never thought you had, or ideas that inspire.

As people lose precious hours every day on the distracting and attention-grabbing world of social media, building a second brain can be a force for good. A deliberate way to take control of your life and steer it in the direction you want.

Two brains may be better than one after all.