The Second Brain and the Evolution of Note-Taking

Ever feel overwhelmed by all the random bits of info and ideas floating around in your head? This week's episode dives into the concept of a "Second Brain" - a system for capturing, organizing and recalling that information later from the depths of your noggin.

Whether you're a student, writer, or just someone constantly discovering new interests, building a Second Brain could be a game-changer for making sense of it all. Join me for a laid-back chat about taking the clutter out of your mind and turning it into something useful!

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Hello, I'm Shawn Carter and this is the grind XP podcast, a casual coffee chat that explores leveling up in life and creatively engaging with others to share in that process. This week, I'm going to be chatting about the second brain organization system and really diving into where it came from, what it's done for me over the last 10 years that I've been implementing it in some form or another, and ways that you can dig into this organization system yourself.

Thanks To take away some of those benefits that might help you in your daily life. So go ahead and grab your coffee or tea and let's dive right in.

All right. So right off the top, I want to [00:01:00] apologize for last week's episode being so incredibly long. It was not supposed to be an hour long.

It actually ended up being like an hour and 25 minutes long. There were a few stops I had to edit out and pauses that I got to cut, but there were also portions of that recording that I just had to chop entirely to bring that as close to an hour as I possibly could. And I know hour long podcasts are a lot to dive into and can be a little bit taxing.

So my goal is to keep these a little bit shorter, a little bit more friendly. and reserve those hour long or more episodes for when we have something we really need to like dive into maybe with like a guest or discussing something that really can't be broken up over multiple episodes which might actually be the format, uh, in the future is to kind of take those longer topics and kind of cut them up into multiple episodes.

. An hour was a lot to edit. . So in the episode last week, I [00:02:00] had a lot of fun editing it and kind of playing with the volume and the equalization, the compression learned a lot about that.

Very happy with where I'm at with that. So far, this one is hopefully going to be a lot of fun as well. But it was also a lot to learn while also trying to edit an hour and 25 minute long recording. So I'm gonna try to save myself a little bit of time this week and really stick to the timetable that I have for this episode.

So let's dive into it. This week we're going to be talking about the second brain organization system. I just call it the second brain. I didn't realize until digging into that specific terminology, uh, last week that the second brain is also something that's referred to within like medicine [00:03:00] for, uh, Your gut health, like in reference to your gut, because a lot of our processing powers apparently also tied to our guts, which I've heard a little bit about here and there, like, it's definitely something that I've come across in the past, like, there's a lot of emotional regulation that happens there, we definitely have to dig into that and I will happily do a whole episode on what I learned about that, but that is often referred to as a second brain. So I had to be very specific in my wording when pulling up references for Pulling up some information on some authors and some key people that we'll talk about later who've implemented this or been instrumental in kind of bringing this idea, uh, to the general productive community.

I don't know if you really would call it that, but yeah, that's, that's, I had to be very, very careful with my searches there to make sure that was [00:04:00] Not spending a lot of time Digging through medical articles when really what I need to be doing was digging through Completely different information. So but let's go ahead.

Let's dive in first thing we're gonna cover is kind of a brief overview of what the second brain is as well as the Get things done methodology, so the second brain is a method of knowledge management that Helps to People efficiently store, organize, and also then retrieve information. 

The system is designed to act as an external digital extension of our biological brain. So if you ever been that person, or maybe you are that person who see something cool. Get some cool information is given a really neat article that you would love to read again later, or maybe someone shares the name of a particular company that you'd like to follow up with, [00:05:00] or maybe someone mentioned a really good author that you should check out.

And you were in a situation where you couldn't immediately write it down, or you couldn't, you know, you just logged it away in your brain. You said, yeah, I'll just remember that for later. And then coming back to that, Who knows when, you know, it could be the next day. It could be later that day. Could be two weeks from then.

Um, if your memory didn't accurately track or log that information, you might be stuck going, Oh, what was that thing that I needed to remember? And I've been that person so much of my life, um, being autistic and probably a little bit ADHD out of sight, out of mind. Happens all the time. And I have learned about myself pretty early on in my adult life that I needed to start just writing things down.

Not because I was necessarily going to forget them, but because I didn't know what I was going to forget. There are some things that I [00:06:00] have stashed away in my brain that I still remember that make zero sense as to why I remember them..

So. I don't have, I have no, I don't know why some of the stuff gets stashed, but some of it doesn't, some of it just doesn't ever make it into my brain where it needs to be. Or maybe I just don't have the ability to recall it as easily as I would like. And as I've gotten older, I've noticed that I have a harder time recalling some information.

The more technical it is, like if it's numbers or dates, I have a hard time remembering those. If I can attach a memory to something like, Oh, I was at dinner with this person and we were talking about this topic and they said X, I did that a lot, kind of just automatically, I'd cross my fingers and go, remember this for later.

This is what's going on. This is what's happening. And here's the thing that I need to remember. And [00:07:00] that worked a lot of the time, but I still ended up forgetting stuff. So I got very used to the idea of just, let's just stash this information and, or let's just write this information down and we'll come back to it later.

So the second brain is essentially that now there's a lot more to it. It is an entire system. Um, So it is important to look at it and be like, Oh, it's just, you know, it's the same thing, you know, it is very true that there is nothing new under the sun. And we just kind of rehash the same stuff over and over again, resurrect old stuff and relabel it rebranded.

And the second brain system is very much one of those things that it feels like people have kind of, done this in the past and it's not really a new thing. It really is not a new thing. We've been doing this kind of thing for a long time, but every so once in a while it gets brought back with maybe a new spin on it or a new coat of paint that [00:08:00] makes it a little bit more approachable, or maybe it takes systems that people already had been using or previous versions of that systems that people have been using that maybe weren't as efficient or maybe didn't work for them as well.

And it repackages them in a way that makes them a little bit more doable. You have to go all the way back to this idea called the commonplace books. And these books were things that were unique to the one person who had them. So it was all their own ideas, their important information. , anything that was unique to them, anything that they needed to capture and.

Put somewhere where they would never forget it. Think of it as like your grandma, knowing she needs to never forget the passwords that she has for every website that she's on, putting it all into a little book, um, that's what a commonplace book was. And there are still people who use commonplace books. We'll talk about that a little bit more later on, but these commonplace books are these little, , second storage systems for information that the person didn't want to forget because [00:09:00] who knows what would happen, they might forget the name of that person or the date that they were supposed to do X, Y, and Z.

They didn't want to forget that. So they had a commonplace book and everybody had one . I shouldn't say everybody, people who use them had these, and this was fairly popular for a while. I've, I thought it was kind of like a niche thing, but I've run across a lot of academic people in history who have all done some version of this, , with a book, making sure that they saved all of that relevant information for later.

And I suppose for someone who does a lot of research, this is probably. Nothing new. A lot of people are very organized or have to be very organized when it comes to doing their research. Um, but for the average person, this might not be something that they immediately think of having. And for me, I know this was a thing I will get into like kind of my history with kind of putting my own system together and then eventually coming around to the idea of the second brain and kind of taking some popular ideas from the last few years and kind of putting those into my system and making it really work for me.

But. [00:10:00] The average person probably doesn't have, um, a really good idea for how that kind of works. So, um, the whole goal of the second brain system is instead of relying on our memory, which can be faulty to kind of store these things, make sure that we do remember them and then are able to retrieve them later on.

, the second brain system really takes digital tools. That's kind of the new thing here. It takes digital tools to help you capture. Clarify, organize all of these ideas, notes, inspirations, insights that we encounter on a daily basis and put them into something that we can then retrieve later. Um, this way we can kind of free our brain from the task of having to remember and focus on thinking and creating and making these connections.

And we just know that they are in these things. I've heard some people say like, Oh, this sounds really like, like it's not challenging your brain. You can challenge your brain and I [00:11:00] highly encourage everybody to like actively work on, , memory exercises, make sure that your brain is healthy. We talked about this a little bit last week, , but sometimes you're not able to do that.

So if you wanted to have essentially like a second system or second spot where you know that you can always go back to that thing and pull up something that you forgot about later, you know, you're not going to lose it because, you know, of one thing or another. , now one of the key people that got me into this really was, uh, Tiago Forte. So if you look up second brain, you will find the name Tiago Forte very closely attached to it. He has done some incredible marketing, , around his book that he released. about the second brain system, the PARA method, that kind of thing.

, a lot of his ideas and a lot of the stuff that he pulled out from or was influenced by was also David Allen. Uh, David Allen was someone who popularized the idea of the GTD method or the get things done, , method. Um, [00:12:00] Tiago really contributed mostly the PARA system, P A R A system. to how he kind of, , captured information and organized it and then, , made sure that he could retrieve it later.

Um, but I'll be very honest. I sat down, I read this book, I got really excited about it. And my thoughts about a quarter of the way into the book were, this is the literary version of this should have been an email. It really should have been an article. Like, it is not that complex. Um, a lot of the stuff that he put into that book, none of it was really that new.

There was a lot of fluff. I would say for every one nugget of great information. There was like 10 other things that were just completely pointless and felt like you just could skip it. Now, don't get me wrong. I read the entirety of the book. I really wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing out on [00:13:00] any of those systems and make sure that I could really get into the meat of it and make sure I pull all of that usefulness out of it.

End of the day though, I would highly recommend you don't even bother picking up the book. It's not, not worth it. Not worth the time that you're going to waste on that. You could very easily go anywhere else. We'll talk about resources later, but you go anywhere else on the internet and find really good resources to kind of help you get up and running with your own second brain system.

And realistically, you just want to, you want to get some of the basics and then just kind of build your own system from there. We'll talk a little bit more about how I kind of did that, but I found that to be far more helpful. Now, when it comes to David Allen and the GTD method that I found super, super useful again, did not buy a book for this one, but found a few really good articles that really boiled down the key points, which we'll go into in depth.

Uh, but those key points are capture, clarify, organize, review, and then [00:14:00] engage. And we'll go into each one of those in a little bit more detail here in just a second. But those five key parts to the GTD method are fairly easy to understand. And I found that just having a good idea of what each one of those meant and exploring that through.

other people's experiences with the system and how they kind of found it useful to their own second brain system. A lot of that informed me well enough to know the basics of what was going on and then to expand on the pieces that I felt I needed to dive into a little bit deeper. So, um, but let's dive into like understanding the second brain a little bit more in depth. So as far as current modern knowledge management, um, we all have digital devices on us majority of the time.

Unless you know, you're, [00:15:00] you're living a, you know, let's say a more disconnected life or something like that. Most people do have a phone on them, do have a computer at home or something to that effect. Most phones nowadays are just miniature computers that you can do almost anything from. Uh, I do a lot from my phone, which is why my phone is one of the most important pieces of tech that I own.

And because we have these information super highways in our hands where we can access the whole of the knowledge of everything that's out there. We wind up ingesting and coming across a lot of information. In very quick succession throughout our days, I forget what the exact number is, but there are apparently, there's like so many different hundreds of points throughout the day where you are seeing and are able to engage on new information.

And we don't a lot of times because we just either don't have the time, which is valid. Sometimes we just don't have the [00:16:00] time. We're never going to have the time. There's no point in stressing about that. Um, other times we don't have the time right now, but we want to take the time later. And most people just look at that and go, I'm going to log that away for later.

And if their memory is working the way that it's supposed to, they will remember that later and be able to recall everything that they needed to. For a lot of people, they don't. And one of the things that second brain system really wants to help people tackle, um, is making sure that you're cataloging that stuff and also taking some of the.

Burt with the weight or the burden off your brain to try to remember all of those things. Remember me talking about earlier, my system for kind of remembering stuff back when my brain was a little bit younger was to cross my fingers and go, remember this person, this place, this is what we're talking about.

This is the thing I need to remember. That was my system, but that actually took a lot of, okay. specific steps to [00:17:00] remember to do that every single time to then process that and then hope that it worked. So I'm giving my brain all of this extra work when in reality, I could just open my phone up, jot a quick note down, come back to that later.

The second brain is really to help your, your own brain have more time to think creatively, explore, do the things that it wants to do, especially when it's in the moment , without having the burden of also having to follow up and store all of these other things that might be important at the time as well.

Let's say you're in the middle of being creative. You're in a flow state and you come across some information that you know that you want to come back to later. It's better for you to be able to quickly go, Hey, I want to come back to that later and keep going with your current train of thought than it would be to stop, derail yourself a little bit, get out of that flow system, find a way to [00:18:00] remember what it is that you're remembering.

or dive into that thing specifically and then come back to what you were doing originally. Doing, . I know for me, It has made it so much easier for me to go into conversations or go into meetings or projects and know that there's not this additional pressure of I got to remember everything or I got to Jot down every little thing that's going to come up because I need to be able to like recall everything that's there when I can fully engage in the moment and be present and engage with the conversation or with the learning that's happening at that time, I can let myself, let my brain do its thing, explore, revel in being in that learning space and anything that I need to follow up with later gets to go into that second brain where I will not forget about it, where it will have.

It's own little journey through several different steps to make sure that I can retrieve that all later. And that's what we're going to dive into more. [00:19:00] Let's go into the, some of the core principles of the second brain just in general.

And how you can kind of make that, , an effective implementation of this system. So we talked about the capture, clarify, organize, review, engage from David Allen's, , get things done method. , let's talk about each individual one here, capture. Is the really the practice of recording all potentially useful information as soon as you encounter it.

Um, this principle was first introduced by David Allen. In his get the getting things done methodology. And a lot of people have just kind of taken it from there and been like, yes, this is great. We're going to, this is step number one, capture everything.

And I have not run into someone in the productivity space who has not referenced the capture piece being the most important part. So it is, it is something that [00:20:00] everyone is stuck with, but once you capture that, then you move on to clarify. And that is the process of kind of transforming that captured information into a clear and actionable format.

What this means is making sure that you're not just storing information that is. Kind of half baked, , or maybe it doesn't have enough information attached to it that you're not going to know what you were talking about. One of my favorite ways to do the capture piece, , is to make sure that I'm capturing an entire article.

Or if I've captured the URL for the article, I make sure to grab the relevant and important pieces of that article that I wanted to focus on for later. Now I don't work on the organization of the editing. That comes next. I don't do that right away. What I do is I capture the messy, initial, just a fistful grab of this thing that I want to make sure that I remember for later.

And I stuff it somewhere so that I can come back to it and refine and clarify that at [00:21:00] a later date. Thanks. Then let's move into the organization part of that. Now, going from that messy, you can think of it as like a, a bucket or a bag that Everything that you've wanted to run that you've run across, you've wanted to capture is like this piece of paper.

You just grab that piece of paper. It was like a, it's like a wad of paper. You just shoved it into that bag. The organization process can usually happen either at the end of your day. I'm not very good at this or at the end of your week. 

I'm really good at doing it once a week. I'm really bad at doing on a daily basis, but I do have some days where I had the thing that I wanted to come back to. And I will go in, in the evening at some point in time and go through and just kind of organize everything that I'd run through. And I've had a lot of different ways of capturing things.

So, , it looks different depending on what I'm Organization system I've, I've been using to kind of capture stuff. , but this will, , the, the way that you [00:22:00] kind of organize is very, very important for then being able to retrieve that stuff later on. And this is where that PARA system, the P A R A system that Tiago talked about.

This is where a lot of people kind of implement that system. So the PARA systems stands for projects, areas, resources, and archives. And this structure kind of helps just. Make sure that you can later on pull all of this information out. Kind of think of it as like a files, you know, filing system on your computer.

And then you have the reflect, , principle to, or part of that system, which is making sure that, make sure that you regularly review and update your notes to ensure that they're remaining relevant and useful. Now, this is the system where after you already have stuff in there, being able to periodically go through your stuff and make sure that one, it's.

important or good for you to save that for later. Um, I do this probably about once every three months. So like once a quarter, I've Skip that once and went like six months. And then [00:23:00] I was trying to go through a lot of information, kind of doing a little bit of a spring clean, and that can get very tedious.

So I do recommend doing this on a regular basis. Um, but this process is really going through and making sure that your stuff is organized, making sure that the way that your organization system is working is set up in a way that actually works for you and making sure that you don't have a lot of duplicates or a lot of information that.

Uh, maybe isn't relevant because of new information that you've, that you've received. So kind of pruning out stuff you don't need to use, making sure that any notes that you have or reflections that you have or new information that you gained around a specific topic or piece of information that you had stored, making sure to update all of that.

And it can go by very quickly. Like if you have a good consistent system for it, it can be a very quick process, but, um, it is a very important part to kind of maintaining, , your second brain. Um, And then the last one is engage. And that's actively utilizing all of that information that's stored in your second brain to assist you in decision [00:24:00] making, problem solving, creative and errors.

This is the retrieval portion of this system and the ability to say, Oh, I had this author who is super, super important. And I know where to go to in my system because they are under, , important authors with the topic of philosophy, from the last 20 years. And I know that they were, , key or they'd written, you know, several books here, here, here, and here, pull them out.

Boom. There it is. There's that information being able to like pull that information out when you need it is super important. If you can't retrieve the information, it's no good. Like, why bother storing it if you're never going to be able to pull it back out again? At that point in time just becomes kind of a digital garbage can with stuff settling to the bottom that you are never going to touch again.

So being able to, , organize, refine, making sure to clarify after you're capturing things initially, and then making sure that [00:25:00] you know how to retrieve that stuff later when you do.

All of that is super, super key. So that's capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. , now all of that was super, super helpful from David Allen's perspective. , there are a lot of other pieces to this, uh, like power learning and, um, building additional knowledge frameworks. Um, all of that is very, very important.

The thing that I think has been the most important for me though, when it came to really understanding why this system was important, was systems thinking. And systems thinking is very different from analytical thinking in that analytical thinking wants to break everything down and understand all of the different pieces.

Systems thinking is a way to approach any problem that looks at how each individual piece actually is part of the whole. So how all of these individual pieces are impacting each other. I'm not giving a very good [00:26:00] explanation of what systems thinking is. I could go in a whole discussion on systems thinking that's not really super relevant for this outside of just saying like, this was super, super key for me.

And I think if you want to get into like a second brain system for yourself, Start simple, get in there and just do it. But eventually come back around to system thinking, because that really did roll things back a little bit for me to go, Oh, now I get why all of this is important because now I understand how these different pieces of information then affect other pieces of information or how this part of my system impacts other pieces of my system.

And maybe I need to tighten this up or clean this up or make this more efficient or maybe eliminate one piece entirely so that the rest of it can work the way that it needs to. Um, understanding how things move from capture to clarify, to organize, to reflect, then to engage and how in turn engage affects capture and, you know, reflect affects organize and organize [00:27:00] affects capture as well as clarify, like all, how all these things work together.

A lot of that is easier to understand now that I have A way to approach it through systems thinking. So I highly recommend that you dive into that. 

All right, let's go ahead and dive into some specifics in my process of learning about second brain. , I have found that it makes the most sense to keep it as simple as possible.

I think it's very easy, especially in the productivity space. And I say productivity space is a very general with no particular emotion attached to it. Even though I know a lot of people, myself included, can get kind of jaded about the productivity space and productivity influencers. A lot of productivity influencing is just people trying to sell their content, sell their product.

Nothing, nothing wrong with that, nothing against them. , I don't think that that product is always good. I think a [00:28:00] lot of times it's a lot of fluff and I think a lot of it is people just taking advantage of there's nothing new under the sun. So let's repackage this to make money off of it. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, but I think you can run into a lot of subpar information that you kind of waste your time on.

And I think that's where some of the negative emotions come from. Uh, when you come, when you come to the productivity space, . But there's a lot that I, I do, I get, I get a small thrill out of productivity hacks. Um, and sometimes it's just stuff that I've already, I already know this stuff, but somebody decided to write a small article or a book or put out a YouTube video talking about the same thing, but how they do it.

And it's a little bit different. It reminds me like, Oh yeah, that was a good system. I should go back to that. Or I should try that out again. Now that my life is in a different spot, try it out, find things that you like about it. , but the one thing that I have found is it's super, super important not to go too hard all at [00:29:00] once.

, I built up to this gradually and even building up to it gradually, I still wound up trying to take on too much at once. , after kind of diving into the second brain concept a few years ago to really understand, what it was and how to implement it. There were so many people, , like Thomas Frank, who's an incredible YouTuber.

, he talked about this, his second brain system inside of Notion. And I was familiar with the product Notion and really loved it and was like, Oh, what is this second brain thing? Really dove into it and was like, Oh my gosh, this system is incredible. Really jumped into it, started trying to build this whole thing out and then start, tried to take all of this complex.

, software and the, the complex system that I had tried to build in it, according to, you know, some YouTube tutorials, I then tried to immediately jump into having a super complex second brain system, all inside of this platform that I had really [00:30:00] honestly not used as much as I should have the way that it is.

is intended to be used. And it was overwhelming and I lost it and stopped and reverted to some much simpler systems to kind of store things. Um, so . Keep it very, very simple. Start small and experiment with different tools. So I started probably, Ooh, my gosh.

10 or 15 years ago, um, but the Evernote software got really popular within the spaces that I was paying attention to at the time, probably about 12, 15 years ago, actually it had to have been about 15 years ago. Yeah. Um, but they were going for this idea of like, go paperless. Like eliminate paper from your day to day.

Like, why do you need all of this stuff in the mail? Why do you need a printer? Why [00:31:00] do you need a scanner? Why do you need a fax machine? Like so much can be digital. So why not do that? And one of the things that I loved about Evernote's app on my phone at the time was they had the ability to capture receipts because I was one of those people who saved tons of receipts.

So I started using their system to kind of capture my receipts and I would throw the receipt away. So I had all the information. It was easily searchable. It was a fantastic app for that. And I started just logging everything. And I realized that as I was getting important information, stuff that I could quickly scan with my phone and then have a digital version of it available in this app for later, I became a big power user, started organizing and creating my own storage system and for filing system within Evernote.

And really started to think about the things that I was capturing in my day to day life and storing away the things that I could for later. I didn't have a really [00:32:00] good effective routine or habit kind of built around making sure that I was capturing every little thing, but I did start Diving into some of the early examples of some of the best capture tools that we have today.

So again, the app on your phone, being able to quickly take a picture and have it searchable later. , the web clipper ever know how to web clipper, which I'd never used a web clipper before that, but they had a web clipper and would allow me to capture different articles. . And I started building entire files or documents that were related to specific topics that I wanted to learn more about. So Evernote was really where I got into that. And I used Evernote for years. Um, really helped me eliminate paper almost entirely from my life. . And then over time that kind of expanded out into a mess, a real mess. , As different apps have come through the system, I've kind of used those. I used the bear app at one point in time, which is kind of the alternative. It was like a minimalist alternative to Evernote.

The capture step was really missing from a lot of their stuff. It was more of a writing app. It's a fantastic app, [00:33:00] beautiful app, but did not have the tools that I needed to really do the capture part of the system, uh, the way that I needed to. 

And then over time, a few different apps popped up here and there, but never really found anything that really worked the way that I wanted it to. the native apps on my iPhone have been the best because they're readily available. I can use the Siri virtual assistant to. Add things to those native apps very, very easily.

, but that's the capture step for me. And, and it's super, super important for me to like really have a good capture step. That way I can, , make sure that I'm getting the things that I want to get. at least somewhere. Now, in recent years, I've shifted to dumping a lot of stuff into, , one database within Notion.

So the app Notion got really popular within the tech space. A lot of people were using it to kind of be like an internal wiki.

, but I was more interested early on in it [00:34:00] for the personal side of things, like being able to store and stash stuff. I really wanted to use it as kind of a journal because that's where I saw the most value.

Um, it's a lot more complex than that, and there's a lot more versatility and a lot more utility to it than that. And I started to discover that when I dove into the second brain stuff with a few different people on the internet so I decided to dive into that and I've now shifted to kind of having a full second brain system kind of built into my Notion.

I call it LifeOS. 

But notion is kind of what I've just shifted to using, and it is where all of my second brain information, you know, stays the capture process obviously happens across a lot of different tools. I also use like otter. ai to do voicemail capture. Um, I use the note app, as I said, for just jotting down quick notes or writing down things that I need to record in like meetings or in conversations, um, and then on top of that, I also then have the notion web clipper and that honestly is probably something that I [00:35:00] use more than I do actually just saving a tab in Safari to make sure that I grab a website or grab an article and send that into just this general folder that I have, , within notion.

Now once it's in Notion, , that's when it starts, it goes through that clarifying stage where I kind of look at what I saved, whether it's an article or an entire page, or maybe a screenshot. And I crop that screenshot down to exactly what I need to know, information that's relevant to that. , I will take a recording or a video and I will clip that video down to the relevant pieces, uh, with context to make sure that I have that.

Part of the clarification step for me is making sure that I'm only sorting quality stuff out there. And there are a few different steps to that process. You can go really heavily into those within any of the discussions on actually utilizing the clarifying process and how it looks. There's several steps to kind of boiling that down. Tiago Forte actually goes through quite a bit of it in [00:36:00] his book.

Um, making sure to refine all of that. is a pretty important part. And I'm not, I'm not great at it. I will sometimes just take the whole article and say, it's all relevant, save it. Um, but I have found a lot of value in making sure to kind of distill down that information the way that I want it to, but more important for me is just capturing as much as I can and making sure that the relevant stuff is there and is searchable.

So one of the things that I do when I am adding something to my system, organizing in that organization stage. One of the things I do is I make sure that the media or the information that I've captured is also scannable or searchable within whatever the tool is. , this is super useful for me when it comes to like cooking and recipes and stuff like that, but also in things like job hunting, if I'm wanting to look for specific things that are relevant, , to the job hunt that I'm on, , I make sure that I include all of that information that can be indexed and then searched, , inside of the system that I'm using.[00:37:00] 

Speaking of job hunting, like more, some, it's one of the many things that I use this second brain system for that's helped make my life so much easier. , I have an entire database system for every step of the way, uh, whenever I have to go on the job hunt.

, I have things logged. Down to the company with its own page with relevant information about its rating, satisfaction rating, salary bans, that kind of stuff. Any information that I need to collect on that company, , all of that information goes into that company's page.

Um, and then I have specific steps and I, I transitioned everything through its own process. So every job entry in that database for the job hunt becomes its own kind of mini project that we update with different statuses. Um, I love that system. . I also use it for trip planning, , for going on vacation. I like to plan every Key step to the trip. I don't like to over plan or over manage the trip, but the important [00:38:00] stuff I do like to have locked down, ready to go. , same goes with like moving.

, I like to have those planned out and ready to go and organized and scoped out and timelined, um, a month or two in advance just so that I have all the important stuff out of the way and I can just focus on being in the moment when the day actually comes. , it's super helpful for career planning, making sure that I'm taking all of this information that I've stored about a specific career or a specific job or specific field, being able to track my process over time.

, the changes I've made, the moves that I've made, goals that I've set and my progress towards those goals, having all of that information is kind of sitting in a second brain. I'm not necessarily going to remember those numbers. We talked about how terrible I am with numbers earlier. Now having to worry about those numbers and just be able to have it right there and available to me in this particular section of my second brain, super handy, super useful.

It's fantastic for working out, being able to sketch out or track, , where I've been. And there are [00:39:00] fantastic apps for this. , but I found that over the years that I've been tracking my own, process of working out changes that I've made in my nutrition or in my workout, my routines, , the changes in my weight over time.

I have so much data around that, that I have now centralized into one spot and I can really have all of that information easily available if I want to pull it up, , rather than having to have an app or three apps that have all of that information spread out across all of them. , 

. Uh, I am someone who loves to follow a recipe. I can't necessarily remember every step to a recipe. So having that recipe, even if I've made it a hundred times, having that recipe there really does help keep me on track and make sure that I don't screw anything up. , I also have a lot of information attached to those recipes, whether it's, uh, changing how something was done, adjusting for preferences, altitude, that kind of stuff.

, being able to reference who the original. Person was who came up with that recipe where that article was featured [00:40:00] that kind of stuff all of that's there I love having such a Complex system that is still very easy to retrieve information from Readily available at any point in time So if it's not completely obvious and I'm really going into this now, it's not completely obvious.

It's been a huge help for me Being able to have all of this information available and not have to stress about trying to remember everything, it really does make the process much, much easier for me. And has made my life a lot easier, um, with kind of pulling that stuff up. So, uh, but let's get on to practical tips for you.

If you would like to implement the second brain into your own day to day life, um, As I mentioned before, skip most of the books. There are some good ones out there. If you're big on reading, maybe grab, , David Allen's , but honestly, you'll find most of the information that you need [00:41:00] from articles and YouTube videos.

Look up either one of those. There are a hundred people talking about it. They're all saying the same thing. Get familiar with that and apply the pieces that seem useful to your project. , I would, I would highly recommend getting very familiar with David Allen's get things done method that has been kind of core to making all of this work for me.

And I think for most people, what, you know, people have different organizational systems. Tiago Forte's power system is. It's own thing and it's useful to some people, but core to that is the GTD method. So I think get very, very familiar with that. , there are some fantastic resources out there, um, to do is has a fantastic article on, , get things done, the method and how their app kind of factors into it.

I love to do this. It's a great app. I don't personally use it all that much. , but a lot of people I know do. And I found it , super valuable. So check that one [00:42:00] out. , and then, as I mentioned before, explore systems thinking. If you really get into this, um, dive into how it differs from analytical thinking and how you can start to approach some of the problems that you're running into in your life from a systems thinking perspective, rather than analytical perspective.

Um, a lot of that will help you understand. The tools and the systems that you're using a little bit better. , I would also recommend starting as simple as possible to start off with. , David Allen is famous for saying, keep it simple above everything else. You know, you could have the most impressive filing system and organization to your second brain, but if you can't use it and it's frustrating to use because it's not simple enough for you to use, you're never going to use it.

It's useless at that point. You've wasted all that time. So start simple. Start stuffing stuff into your notes app, put folders on your notes app and organize those things into folders. As you get familiar with a simple system, you will find ways to make that simple system more complex and allowing it [00:43:00] to naturally evolve from that, maybe following some of the formats that you learn in the second brain systems that are very popular out there right now.

A lot of that can be, , helpful at that point in time, but don't jump into that. , also find a tool that works for you. You're going to hear a lot of people pushing notion, or at least when I was really diving into this a few years ago, people were really pushing notion as the way to set up your second brain system.

And he more recently, I've heard more and more people going, Oh no, obsidian. Obsidian is the way to go for your second brain system. Find what works for you. If it's Obsidian, if it's Notion, if it's Evernote, , find what works for you and go with that. Um, it does not have to be one of those tools. I personally do recommend Notion.

Obsidian is also very, very good. , I think Evernote still really excels in the capture side of things. But I didn't find their organization as great. , but use what works for you and try them all out. , see which one meets your needs for the moment [00:44:00] and go with that.

You'll, you'll use if it's fun. I found Evernote very fun, probably more fun than Notion. , as I got more technical and more complex. in the kind of software that I needed to organize and do the things that I wanted to do, Notion became more fun. , so you may have your own personal evolution through different tools, but use what, use what works for you.

, I would also highly recommend that you build that weekly clarify, organize, and clean up routine, to your week. As you get more comfortable, you can expand into daily organization routines. , I think a lot of people start with the daily and then quickly burn out because it's a lot to get used to and you start to get kind of overwhelmed with kind of trying to organize everything.

If you just set aside some time every weekend to do it, You'll get into a system of doing it on a regular basis. . The big one to make sure to remember is make sure at least quarterly you're getting in there and cleaning everything up.

That refine is so, so important to make sure that the [00:45:00] information that is still there is very, very relevant for you. And you'll have a different approach to doing the refining process. I would recommend look up a few different, , resources on how people have done the refining process.

There's a lot out there. YouTube has been a great help in finding. other people who have their own refining system and how they kind of approach it. Do what, do what's easy for you and do what works for you. Do your research. , some people that I would recommend taking a look at as you're kind of digging into the second brain system. Um, look at Robert Greene.

Um, he's an interesting person. , he's very famous for the 48 laws of power and the art of seduction. , the 48 laws of power is very controversial. A lot of people think that it's a book that is dangerous because it is a book all about manipulation.

It is a way to educate yourself on. How to have power over other people. [00:46:00] And I was curious to read this book, not from a, I need to be able to manipulate other people, but because I grew up in a household that was very manipulative. And I found that understanding the methods of manipulation by the people who were in power, made them less manipulative.

impactful and , it made them work less on me. And so I dug into his book a little bit. But that's what he's popular for. Aside from that, he also has, um, a lot on organization systems and how he writes and what he finds , super useful.

So I found a lot of his stuff on that topic. Very, very good. So, Take from that what you will. , another incredible person to look into is Anne Lamott. , she's a political progressive writer and a novelist as well. And she talks a lot about how to improve your writing and is been really big on what I would consider like the capture side of things.

She talks about writing, , really shitty first drafts [00:47:00] and she, you know, Her process really is all about that. Capture everything, capture every idea, put it down on your paper, write it and then go back and do that clarification step and clarify and clarify and clarify. She has several, she has her own process for how she does that kind of stuff, but I found a lot of her work to be very, very helpful for understanding the importance of capturing as much as you can, but then also balancing that with a good clarification process.

Someone else who is really important or really interesting, I would say. I found this stuff more interesting than I did actually find it, but practically useful, but Nicholas Luhmann, I think that's the name is right. He's a sociologist from, I believe the late 1800s, early 1900s. , he's German. who invented the, invented or maybe made famous the slip box system.

And the idea there was that he had a lot of little paper slips that had pieces of information that he wanted to remember. And he had a catalog or a filing system in these big wooden boxes. It looks a lot like [00:48:00] the, , the old, , library catalog. And he had all of these slips of paper that were organized and he was a very interesting guy.

. I found him more just curious and just fascinating. On this topic of like organizing your, your thoughts and your information. Um, if you have some time, definitely recommend checking him out.

Very interesting guy. , another person, uh, Maria Popova, , she was a big advocate of having a commonplace book. So if you want to dive more into the commonplace book and how it's used, um, dive into her, she's the creator of. , she has a lot of commentary on art, literature, and philosophy, all very interesting.

This is kind of how I found her, , but really didn't dive into her use of the commonplace book until I started getting into the second brain system. 

, and then. If you, if you really are curious about like the PARA method, which I've mentioned a few different times here, that organizational system, look at Tiago Forte. [00:49:00] Um, a lot of his stuff is going to be gated , but there are a lot of people out there who talk about the PARA method, and you can gain most of the information that you need to know about that.

Um, I think That kind of wraps it up for, for relevant information and resources. , please, if you have questions about second brain, this is a very short time. Like we've already gotten a little bit over what I wanted to, but this is something that I find incredibly fascinating. 

It is a very personal thing. There are a lot of really good systems out there for how we, you know, catalog organize and make sure that all of this information is available to us later. , I think I found a pretty good system.

I do like the general second brain system that most people are familiar with. There are a lot of variations within that by different people. Um, , it can become very unique to each individual person and it will grow and evolve into something that is very unique to you.

So as you get comfortable with some of the basics of these systems, [00:50:00] it will become more your thing, your system, your organization, um, but please feel free to reach out and ask questions.

If you have this , DM me on Instagram, , reach out to me via our contact form on the website. Would love to engage in more conversations around this and. If it's of interest to you, I will be happy to upload, uh, more of my own systems and some of the pieces of my system that I think can be taken as like a bite sized piece and add it to your own systems.

I'll start adding more of those to the website if there's interest for that. Um, I know my job hunting, , Chunk of my system is actually super, super interesting to a lot of people. I don't think it's , super unique, but I do think that I've put a lot of work into kind of putting it together inside of notion so that it all kind of works for me.

And if people are interested, I'd be happy to write an article and give you the template for that. So you can kind of dig into that yourself. [00:51:00] That kind of wraps it up for a sec, gang.

Um, I think being able to just kind of hit this at the top with, , Kind of an overview of, of what the second brain is. Maybe you weren't familiar with that and we've been able to kind of talk about what that is.

You have a better idea of what that is. If you're completely lost after having listened to me, then I clearly need to work on that a little bit better. Um, but I think also being able to just kind of understand the core principles of capture, clarify, organize, reflect, and engage. I think those really do kind of help to summarize the important pieces so that there's a lot that can be tacked on and added on.

And that's where some of the customization and some of the real additional conversation kind of gets added in. There's a lot of additional fluff and a lot of opinions that kind of then formulate how your larger system kind of works. But those, those five pieces are like core to, , making it work for you.

And then hopefully you found some of the Information on both my experience as well as some of the tools that I've used. Um, the way that I came, kind of came around to it, starting very [00:52:00] simple and then getting more complex as I got used to that system and kind of got adjusted to systems thinking and looking at the way that I stored the information that I wanted to retrieve for later in different ways and kind of, you know, found out what worked for me.

So much going on there, but anyway, let's go ahead and wrap this up for this week. Thank you for taking the time, , to sit down and listen to this. , , Time is our most precious commodity, as I say every week, and it means a lot that you spent some of your time with me. , hopefully this has all been, uh, well worth it. Next week, , we are actually going to be going over, , motivation. And how that works, , some tips on what I've found really have worked for me for motivation.

I'm someone who struggles a lot with motivation and have found that cultivating discipline or having systems in place for how I get myself [00:53:00] motivated and Disciplined to stay motivated have been super, super helpful. And I've been using a lot of that recently to kind of keep some of these creative projects going.

So, , I'd like to dive into that a little bit. Hopefully it'll be a shorter episode where we can really just focus on some key stuff that I think help will help anybody be great evergreen content. And we'll cover all of that next week. , If you like what you've heard so far today,, please feel free to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast fix. Um, also feel free to share with a friend. You can also follow us on Instagram. Uh, at Grind dot exp, , where all of our updates happen.

Mostly you see the podcast go up every single week there. , you can also visit the website@www.grindxp.art, where you can find all the previous episodes with articles and the relevant [00:54:00] information associated with that, , all in one spot. Um, but yeah, so I get out there, grind one experience point at a time and I will see you all next week.