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Building a second brain

I have been a long time Evernote user. My first note was dated 30 July 2011, which makes me a user of close to 9 years. Taking notes should be easy right? Just dump into Evernote and forget about it. However, a recent simple task of clean up the desktop” turned into an overhaul of my information management system. I’ve also learnt a new term related to this - PKB or Personal Knowledge Base.

I haven’t been sucked into such a nerdy rabbit hole for a long time now. Most of the time, researching something new is just out of interest, and it wouldn’t last more than an hour. This one has already taken days and I am still digging. What is it that makes the innocent task of cleaning up my desktop become such a nightmare? If you care to join me, let me introduce you to the world of building your second brain, a personal knowledge base (PKB).

Why do you need a second brain?

In short, we live in a world where the information tap now is gushing in rather than dripping in. Merely dumping everything in your favourite note taking app is no longer a worthwhile exercise - you will never want to use that dumpsite, so why save in the first place?

My reason for saving has been to allow me to retrieve it when I need it. I wouldn’t know when I need it, but I would like to know that it’s there when I do. What I didn’t appreciate is that I am now curating my own personal wikipedia - a compendium of knowledge that is important to me.

Because of this importance, I will need to take good care of what and how I put in. This is the second brain that I need to tap on. In the world of Marvel, this is JARVIS to Ironman. In fact, Ironman did make a reference to Evernote in the movie. So why am I dumping Evernote now?

From dumping to curating

I recently picked up SQL and Python skills on Datacamp. I used Atom to note down some of the syntax as a reminder to myself. Later I transferred these to Evernote together with some of the PDFs provided on each chapter. I found out I couldn’t have code blocks in Evernote. Maybe I have been too used to the simplicity of Markdown that I find Evernote difficult to read and write. That’s when I started searching around to see if there are alternatives.

While scouting around, I came across a UX designer who uses Notion as his second brain. It is quite an interesting read who then led me to other similar articles too. That’s where I learn about PARA and how I should be thinking about organising digital information.

In summary, I am now migrating all my notes to an app called Bear. And I am not just migrating the dumpsite, I am also curating it, like a museum. I am taking extra care of the topics I assign to the notes I put in, plus I am also experimenting. Because Bear uses tags rather than categories (see why you should ditch categories in favour of tags), i can remove tags and replace them or keep both (or more) in one note until they don’t make sense to me anymore. I don’t need to pre-load my mind to come up with the most spectacular future version of my personal wiki, just whatever works now and change if I have to.

I’m sure this will not be the last you’ll hear about this, but if you have more inputs on this, I would like to hear from you!

bear on a boat

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