what are you doing with that second brain of yours?
a brief history of my stumbling through "productivity" and what i need to do to not be overwhelmed with digital noise
in 2016 through 2020 i was a productivity coach for non-profit advocacy types in d.c.; as a software design nerd (not a designer, just an aesthetic nerd!) the best i could do for my clients was recommend digital organization systems or trendy new to-do apps that promised the world but really just gave more confusion and customer service.
i had to leave the coaching scene because productivity was not what my clients needed; they needed peace of mind and inner resources that could deal with overwhelm. and a virtual assistant to take care of the rest.
but i respected my clients for attempting to push their way into project management systems because they were heads of cash-strapped non-profits who couldn’t afford more than an undergraduate with dreams of getting other people to try out a cool to-do list.
thankfully i didn’t suggest to my clients the “second brain” concept, originally popularized by David Allen of “Getting Things Done” fame (he is why most to-do/notes apps have an catch-all “inbox” before categorizing tasks and information in folders or tags), and more recently Tiago Forte with his book “Building a Second Brain”.
a quote from David Allen helps summarize the intent of the second brain:
Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.
with the second brain, you would throw all your ideas, notes, and thoughts into a program’s inbox and then sort it later, and make everything more actionable.
awesome, except for people like me who want to collect everything that surrounds a topic, to the point that i’m just hoarding information i won’t even look at.
i won’t call this a limitation of the system than a limitation of my own inner systems that always wants the full breadth of information about a topic before feeling like i have a good handle on it.
i’m a data hoarder. i download youtube videos and convert them into mp3s and transcripts so i can feed them into my notes app or ai so i can ask it questions.
i downloaded all the yoga instructional videos from a yogi on a popular streaming service so i didn’t have to continue paying for the annual fee.
i copied and pasted all the content from a course that i have unlimited access to, just so i can have it in a different textual format.
i have a lot of tools to keep everything i ever liked on my computer. and now there are copies in iCloud and Google Drive.
so there’s a second brain for you. and it’s near useless in practice.
where do i have the time to look back at all this information i filed away? i really don’t, and it just takes up server space in several parts of America.
but there are so many productivity apps like evernote and instapaper that offer to save whole website pages to file for later. the demo videos show a convincing “why” (when you don’t have time to read it now, or to mark it up in their service), but in practice that why nearly vanishes—for people like me.
my 1st realization: if i’m not reading this article now, i’m not likely to ever read it.
there’s a lot of stuff on new york times or wall street journal that piques my interest—but should i save it for later? absolutely not. all that’ll do is make more noise in my rss app.
my solution: if i really want to read it, and can’t read it now, i’ll keep a tab open for it to give me a chance to read it. it’s likely that i’ll come back to my computer and wonder why at all this article is here and close the tab. but it gives the article a chance without filling up my other services with noise.
my 2nd realization: copy-pasting information from a website to my notes app/google doc/markdown editor will not make me want to interact with it in any different way than i did by just reading it.
i thought to myself: what better way to build my second brain than pasting all of the text from a course i’m studying into one document? i spend 20-40 minutes copying and pasting everything.
and then i never look at it again because it’s this tome of info that i don’t have any attachment to.
it’s such a trap for me to save website text in a different format. i doubt many other people do such a thing but my hoarder tendencies get to me and i waste too much time on it.
my solution: if i really want this information actionable and useful for later, i need to use my own writing to summarize and pick out what is important to me.
Ted Gioia of The Honest Broker has a great rundown of his ways of taking notes. first, he marks up the book he’s reading with notes. second, he writes a couple paragraph summary of the book. third, he writes down his own ideas that he got out of reading the book.
this is simple stuff, but what i realize is that just about everything on my computer needs to be personally created. instead of digital internet noise, i am surrounded by my own active, engaged understanding with everything i’ve read.
this makes me more deliberate with what i read, more cognizant of what i think of things i read about, and makes me a more active consumer in general. this will also spark ideas for writing; doing always makes me a more productive writer.
this second realization is very much an extension of my earlier post, “self-discovery through grand theft", where i make it apparent that we will begin to know ourselves a lot more by actively stealing (rewriting) over passively stealing (copying).
my 3rd realization: the brain is action-oriented—all acquired knowledge contributes to decision-making and action. my second brain should be just as action-oriented and not focused on knowledge storage at all.
the problem for most second brain users is the information that’s stored is there to have it, not particularly use it. it’s a passive resource that can be convenient at times, but most of the time a distraction because having to sift through it for the real action content is mental energy and time wasted.
my solution: i believe that for digital files like an ebook or pdf, we need to take our notes and get rid of it. the function of this file was to be read and learned from, not stored forever.
if it has other functions like re-reading or is part of another objective, keep it of course, but if it was just so it can be read, why file it away if you took your notes?
i need to ask myself: what is the original intent for this file being downloaded to my computer? did i take my notes on it? if yes, is there another reason why it should still be on my computer?
in summary: don’t save digital noise, collect your notes on files you actually do read, and get rid of information you are storing “just in case”.
why come back to this kind of subject 5 years after dropping it?
the self-improvement “power users” like myself are arriving at a new era where information is pouring in like a waterfall, and people like myself feel like we need to bottle it up as it pours all over us, as if it’s going to be gone by tomorrow.
it’s here to stay, and we need to step back from the information overload and really sink our teeth into specific topics and knowledge that enhance our ability to do good for ourselves and others.
i’ve done too much skimming and saving-for-later, wasting a lot of time organizing a second brain without actually using that brain.
where do we run into this wheel-spinning in other parts of our lives? is it because we’re avoiding something actually important to do?
let’s work to reduce what we have into the actionable and the empowering—and leave the rest in the internet ether for later or to never engage with. it’ll always be waiting if we really need it.
by taking notes on the stuff we do interact with, we can commit to action with a confidence that’s only built on full engagement with our knowledge, rather than passive storage.
this is another way we can be active in our lives.
thanks for reading,
—dom
p.s. for those like Gioia that already have very active systems for learning, please let me know how you work with your notes! i continue to be a productivity nerd, even if i am not looking for the clientele.