Building your second brain

Time to read: 3 min

Can you recall what you´ve ate three days ago? Maybe, but it is hard or at least becomes near impossible if you go back two weeks ago.

The ability of our mind to hold knowledge is limited. Remembering things is difficult and short-term memory is finite. It is difficult to juggle daily to-do´s and appointments in your head. Your mind is designed around coming up with ideas and solving problems but it becomes clogged with unnecessary things. We come across so many different ideas and interesting things on a daily basis that it is impossible to keep them all in mind.

“Your mind is for having ideas not for holding them.” – David Allen

According to the guardian we consume so much data to fill 174 newspapers every day. This shows how futile the attempt to hold information in your mind really is.

Moreover, we established last week that daily studying is important. But this seems to be a contradiction to the fact that we can´t hold onto all the knowledge and wisdom.

The solution lies in technology.

It would be great to have a hard drive for your brain a second brain to store information and free your first brain up for thinking.

So why not get a yourself second brain to store all the interesting information you come across. It may be easier than you think.

You could use any storage method pen and paper, a notebook or digital storage methods like notion. I personally use notion to store anything interesting I come across.

The first step is to write things down.

I have created a library of knowledge I come across which resonates with me. I capture quotes, book notes, the content of videos or podcasts and interesting thoughts.

I personally prefer digital note taking over analogue because it gives multiple benefits like cross device access, the ability to search your database and to easily reorganise information.

Digital devices are becoming better at an insanely fast rate almost exceeding human capabilities in form of ai. So why not use this to your advantage and build a second brain in the digital space where you can use new technologies.

The ultimate creation the creative and problem-solving abilities of our human mind and the storage and organisation features of modern technology.

In your effort to building something like a second brain don´t overthink a structure because it will come on its own. I personally have started capturing information around six months ago and the structure of my second brain has changed over time. That’s the beauty of technology it is formless. You can change structure as often as you want.

Another benefit documentation of information has is that it can help you learn. The way we get information is ineffective for comprehension. Learning has to be an active process to be transferred into long-term memory but gathering information is mostly a passive process. A way to actively comprehend knowledge is to write it down in your own words. Furthermore, if you still forgot the information you are able to revisit your library.

Todays era is all about knowledge and the transfer of knowledge. Creating a knowledge database will help you in the transfer of knowledge because you already summarized and organised information ready for later use.

Remember, life rewards the prepared.