4 ms·

You don't hear this take often, but I fully agree. I tried the second brain stuff myself. I attempted to create a personal wiki with all the software engineerin

You don't hear this take often, but I fully agree. I tried the second brain stuff myself. I attempted to create a personal wiki with all the software engineering knowledge I would come across. Knowledge about programming languages, networking, security, hardware... All of it was neatly organized in my wiki with interconnected notes. Whenever I learned something new about a topic, I would go back to that note and add it in. And then... then what? It turned out that I never reached out to any of these notes. Most of the useful knowledge is already right there, in my brain. I don't need a second brain for that. The knowledge that I used less frequently was easily refreshed by a quick Google search or ChatGPT. I didn't need to keep this knowledge in any form of personal wiki. Turns out that this personal wiki simply added more overhead to my day, since now anything I would learn would have to be written in a note. But what was really the point of this writing if it was never read? Right now I don't really keep any notes anymore, but I am not sure that this is the solution, either. As with all things, balance is probably the answer to all this note-taking; you probably want to keep notes of _some_ things, but you probably don't need to have a wiki with all of your knowledge, either.

kergonath 3y ago
> And then... then what? It turned out that I never reached out to any of these notes. Most of the useful knowledge is already right there, in my brain. I don't need a second brain for that. This sort of approach shines when you need to mobilise knowledge that fell out of your immediately accessible memory, e.g. 6 months after having done something for the last time. It’s not very well suited to fields that move too fast and where you never need to look back, because by then the knowledge is outdated and you need to find new solutions anyway. For me, it’s great because I have a handful of long-running projects concurrently and I switch between them every 3-4 month. Being able to easily mobilise project-specific knowledge after having spent enough time doing something else that I forgot the details is very useful. To be honest, I would love a LLM that I could use to extract information from my old pile of notes and my pile of scientific papers. I don’t think it would make notes useless, though. On the contrary it would make them much more valuable.
machomaster 3y ago
The biggest benefit one gets from notes comes from the mere fact of writing (not reading), when one has to think, write, paraphrase, edit what and how to write, and how this new info connects to the existing knowledge.
deafpolygon 3y ago
Honestly, I'm not sure I buy the second brain marketing myself either. If it's a knowledge-base then it probably has more value in a wiki. I use Obsidian as my daily journal, personal log and thinking partner. I have AuDHD and have a tendency to forget and I stress out when I can't remember things. Sometimes I need to make detailed plans and have it someplace accessible (phone) so I can stay on track. The E2EE Sync as part of the service was a plus (not happy with the Jan '24 changes to Sync but that's a different story). It works very well on my iPhone. As my journaling tool, I find it incredibly powerful to link to things I think about day-to-day. I can create a note about a topic I'm thinking about. (New notes automatically create a link to the current day, thanks to templates). At times, I will make a note on a particular media I've consumed (book, movies, etc.), put some things that I thought about it, and link it to the day I finished reading it. I do this for movies and other things. I often will forget that I've seen that movie already so a quick look-up can save me an hour of my time. When I revisit a day on the journal, I'm able to see backlinks to things that I have thought about, watched, read or have done in that day. It also helps me with my emotion dysregulation and working through what I'm going through. Sometimes it's hard to understand because I don't always remember clearly what's happening. It helps me with weekly review. It helps me understand how I'm using my time (time blindness) a little better and it does so in a frictionless way. Could I accomplish this with other tools? Yes. But: 1) I value my privacy above everything, 2) I wanted a tool that doesn't impose a certain philosophy on me, 3) it has a mobile app, and 4) e2ee sync service.
D13Fd 3y ago
I totally agree. I take tons of notes and rarely review them - but when I do, I really need the info. So my focus is to get the information recorded and to spend pretty minimal time formatting or otherwise messing with the notes. The important thing is just to get things recorded.

kergonath 3y ago

> And then... then what? It turned out that I never reached out to any of these notes. Most of the useful knowledge is already right there, in my brain. I don't need a second brain for that. This sort of approach shines when you need to mobilise knowledge that fell out of your immediately accessible memory, e.g. 6 months after having done something for the last time. It’s not very well suited to fields that move too fast and where you never need to look back, because by then the knowledge is outdated and you need to find new solutions anyway. For me, it’s great because I have a handful of long-running projects concurrently and I switch between them every 3-4 month. Being able to easily mobilise project-specific knowledge after having spent enough time doing something else that I forgot the details is very useful. To be honest, I would love a LLM that I could use to extract information from my old pile of notes and my pile of scientific papers. I don’t think it would make notes useless, though. On the contrary it would make them much more valuable.

machomaster 3y ago

The biggest benefit one gets from notes comes from the mere fact of writing (not reading), when one has to think, write, paraphrase, edit what and how to write, and how this new info connects to the existing knowledge.

deafpolygon 3y ago

Honestly, I'm not sure I buy the second brain marketing myself either. If it's a knowledge-base then it probably has more value in a wiki. I use Obsidian as my daily journal, personal log and thinking partner. I have AuDHD and have a tendency to forget and I stress out when I can't remember things. Sometimes I need to make detailed plans and have it someplace accessible (phone) so I can stay on track. The E2EE Sync as part of the service was a plus (not happy with the Jan '24 changes to Sync but that's a different story). It works very well on my iPhone. As my journaling tool, I find it incredibly powerful to link to things I think about day-to-day. I can create a note about a topic I'm thinking about. (New notes automatically create a link to the current day, thanks to templates). At times, I will make a note on a particular media I've consumed (book, movies, etc.), put some things that I thought about it, and link it to the day I finished reading it. I do this for movies and other things. I often will forget that I've seen that movie already so a quick look-up can save me an hour of my time. When I revisit a day on the journal, I'm able to see backlinks to things that I have thought about, watched, read or have done in that day. It also helps me with my emotion dysregulation and working through what I'm going through. Sometimes it's hard to understand because I don't always remember clearly what's happening. It helps me with weekly review. It helps me understand how I'm using my time (time blindness) a little better and it does so in a frictionless way. Could I accomplish this with other tools? Yes. But: 1) I value my privacy above everything, 2) I wanted a tool that doesn't impose a certain philosophy on me, 3) it has a mobile app, and 4) e2ee sync service.

D13Fd 3y ago

I totally agree. I take tons of notes and rarely review them - but when I do, I really need the info. So my focus is to get the information recorded and to spend pretty minimal time formatting or otherwise messing with the notes. The important thing is just to get things recorded.