What is a second brain?
The second brain is a concept of saving and systematically reminding us of the insights, inspirations, ideas, and connections gained through our experience. As it sounds, building a second brain is about making a reliable system that would be outside the boundaries of your skin-and-bone which would eventually be used to store, organize, digest as well as transform information into creative output. A daily workflow of reading an article or book, listening to podcasts, and half-structured ideas go into the second brain. The stored information develops with time and merges into talks or illustrations. This concept increases our memory as well as improves our intellect using modern technology.
Why second brain?
Do you feed your brain with a lot of information, but you feel as if it is not leading to any fruitful result in your life? How many great ideas did you think at a point in time, and now you forgot them? How many times did you fail to take some action on the insights on a particular topic? How much helpful advice you got over the years did you retain? Do you face problems while managing all the information related to your business? Do you lose interest or are unable to track your ideas to organize all the material required to give shape to your creative projects? Have you ever wondered if you can save all this information and resurface it whenever needed?
These questions are very relevant as being a part of this ever-evolving world, we have a constant pressure to learn, improve ourselves and make progress. Every day we spend so much of our time reading, listening, or watch something informational. And yet, we hardly remember anything. Our brain is designed to store limited thoughts at a given point in time. Our brain is for building ideas and not for storing them. We cannot train our brains to store everything. We already have so much to remember, to think, and to do. Having access to a second brain certainly will reduce stress and anxiety levels as you would be assured that all your ideas and insights are being preserved.
By transferring our thinking to a second brain, we are going to free our biological brain so that it can imagine and create more or rather simply be present. It is just like setting up an environment digitally, which promotes peace of mind and gives more clarity. There is no doubt that technology is constantly changing as time moves on. Still, the process of creativity remains the same fundamentally – gathering information from the surroundings, breaking and arranging them into chunks, sorting out the best, dropping what is not required, and then expressing to the world through either writing, designing, speaking, teaching or creating.
Rather than seeing the cons, if we focus on the pros that the technology offers us, we can boost our creativity and shape our ideas to change our career, life, and business. Collaboration and organization are two of the missing pillars in the creative process of people in general, and adding these in the whole process can make your creative output twice as big. It can literally transform your raw ideas into actual knowledgeable assets. It is up to you how well you make use of these digitally available notes and knowledge for a project, or maybe your career advancement, or even for a new business venture.
Without access to such technology, our precious knowledge gets scattered and soiled at different places. We are unable to build a collection of these ideas that both can hold an appreciable value and can be used time and again. Since you already know how to capture and utilize anything, every other experience you face welcomes a new opportunity for learning and growing your own self.
Having a second brain lets you
Having a second brain helps you create, organize and express your ideas in a systematic way, leading to innovative breakthroughs both in your work as well as your life. It stores the collection of valuable insights and knowledge for the future. It creates a reliable structure for the creative projects to shape them further into actual assets. It unrolls patterns and connections that you would never expect and improve your thinking ability. With this kind of technology, reaching out to find any of the files or notes saved in the past becomes so handy. You can shape your notes to a new valuable artifact and get feedback from your peers. It enables you to come together as one to create some powerful insights and then share them with the world.
How to build a second brain?
Let’s see some of the guidelines mentioned below, which certainly are going to help you capture the most relatable and valuable piece of information in your second brain:
Capturing
Throughout the day, any thought that captures your mind, store it as soon as possible. Also, make a habit of saving anything you watch, read, or listen to so you can gather any relatable information in the future from these discrete parts.
Organizing
Instead of keeping your ideas category-wise, place them project-wise. Every time you visit the same knowledge base, expand it or cut it short, making it more organized. This would help in improving the overall system and also help you shape the idea easily with focused information. Keep only the information that you resonate with.
Creating your project
Adding a twist to already made ideas becomes easier as you start with a repository of knowledge collected over a period of time. You can use the already stored knowledge as building blocks to shape a bigger idea that you would not have thought otherwise.
Sharing and Collaboration
It is always important to get some feedback on your output to get better and improve your efficiency. Consider recommendations from your knowledge buddies and focus on gathering information in such a way as to save time. Try to form groups to share and consume information on common areas of interest.
Conclusion
The concept of the second brain is emerging as people understand the importance of retaining information. We intake a lot of information every day (every minute as a matter of fact) from our surroundings, in the form of reading, listening, and visualizing things. So, if we can’t retain all this information, there’s no point in consuming it. By developing a second brain, we can avoid cluttering of information, organize it and use it for our productivity.
