The Topic
Second Brain - Personal Knowledge Management. When we talk about personal knowledge, often we do not have a proper way to manage it. Some through note-taking, some draw a mind map out, and many other ways to "store" the knowledge. Yet, if we have proper management for our personal knowledge, in the long run, we will definitely benefit from it.
The idea of the second brain is when we come across some interesting things, we will put the information into a management system. With that, we can revisit the system and use the information/knowledge into other content creation.
The Learning Points
There are ten fundamental points to set up the second brain which are as below:
Borrowed Creativity
Creativity is about remixing different elements. Therefore, I personally always emphasize that creativity is trainable. When we have more access to different resources, the better chance that we can achieve creativity. Hence, to be creative, it involved a lot of hard work like reading, exploring the unknown territory, and also learning. As the saying goes "Good artists copy, Great artists steal", when we have an accumulation to more information in our "Second Brain" then it will be easier for us to establish a connection between different information which ultimately create some new perspective.
Capture Habit
The brain is suitable for having ideas but not good in store. As I remembered, our brain capacity has around 1,000 Terabytes which is surprisingly not as much as we think. Imagine that in a lifetime plus losing capacity due to old age, we may end up with around 1 Terabyte of memory that could become our lifetime memory. Therefore, capturing information and put it in our "second brain" which is digital note-taking application like Notion, this will help.
So "Capture" the idea as soon as we have it by stopping and put it in the system. The challenging part is to make it into a habit.
Idea Recycling
There are always ideas that we throw out from our brain but not necessarily useful at the moment. By keeping it into the "second brain" that enables us to recycle and use the idea whenever we see fit. The essence is to build different blocks of ideas that we could reuse it whenever we are building-specific project.
Projects Over Categories
Usually, we take notes and categorize them into different genres like marketing, education, business and so on. However, this is not that efficient as most of the time we do not see much connection for all the notes taken with categorization.
So the way we going to do it is by creating flow and project list. First off, all the notes will be dump into a general box where it is not assigned to anything. Then, create a list of project that I am working on, for example, the white paper for vertical farming. So anything that is related and usable by the project will be put under the project with the category tag.
Slow Burns
Slow burns vs heavy lifting. By thinking that I need to finish a project like the white paper within a short period of time with a different kind of expectation, that would, by all means, prevent me for starting. This is one kind of mentality that got me away from "failing" something which is not pleasant for me.
Hence, setting different BIG projects that I am working on or want to work on, then split all the projects into small parts that I could do alternatively and in a small amount of time to gradually complete the project without even realizing. This reminds me of how the OKR system works where we have a large goal and with certain KPI to capture how far we are from the goal that we set.
Start With Abundance
Usually starting with a blank page is hard as we have no idea on where to begin with. With "second brain", we have collectively gathered different information that may be related to the project we want to work on and start from that point.
Take it like diving into a knowledge treasure trove that I had personally collected for years to find the right treasure to utilize.
Intermediate Packets
Meaning to say in every project, it is not one big chunk of the information under one "topic". Like in a thesis, there will be always different chapters that focus on a specific discussion like introduction, arguments, findings and so on.
Thus, building our own intermediate packets like knowledge block and able to drag and drop into a different occasion where we see fit is one skill that is very helpful.
You Only Know What You Make
Often times, we come across different interesting contents and read up different books, but how much can we really internalize and make the knowledge from the contents into ours? That would require us to proactively MAKE the contents received and put it into our "second brain".
Start taking notes and build the "second brain" as soon as possible.
Make It Easier For Your Future Self
This is a game of compounding where I am accumulating resources for my future self and make my future self a better life. Other than accumulating money which most of us does, we seldom think that by accumulating "notes" can be rewarding as well!
Do not assume that my future self to be more intelligent than the current self. Thus, it is important to put it in plain words about any concepts, words that I have come across and made it accessible to me at any point of the time.
Keep Your Idea Moving
We tend to stuck in perfectionism on doing something like building my Notion's library. Meaning to say, the categorization, project listing, grammar & vocabulary may not be perfect, it is absolutely fine. The most important is the output and the notes itself. This is because we can always refer back to the notes by using FIND function in the app.
So meaning, just keep moving and keep improving the system. It is always bad and not user friendly at the starting point, as long as we start doing it and experiment on it. It will get better!
Inspiration
To me, having a good knowledge management system is my goal all the while but I keep failing. I had notes were taken on NOTES app on iPhone, Evernote which is an on and off thing and recently using Good Notes which is quite a user friendly for me. But I could not stick with anyone of them. Hence, I need to make up my mind on how I am going to put things together. When it comes to idea, it is important that I am able to note it down as soon as possible. So that would be NOTES app on iPhone or even voice recorder. Then, I will transfer copy and paste my notes into NOTION which would be arranged accordingly to fit into my projects. As for Good Notes, it will be another way for me to take notes and eventually I will also need to recreate the notes into NOTION that can be put into words and also allocate to a specific project.
Can't wait to start this habit where I could really build this ASSET that would be useful and generate possible income for me as well in the near future! So just keep writing and keep taking notes.
Reference
Website: https://www.buildingasecondbrain.com/
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