This post remind me ideas from an "anti-productivity" book: "Four Thousand Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman. The gist of it is that you have finite time, and infinite wants. Even if the infinite wants...
This post remind me ideas from an "anti-productivity" book: "Four Thousand Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman. The gist of it is that you have finite time, and infinite wants. Even if the infinite wants are limited to a "smaller set" of reading every book and remembering every interesting ideas, they still are infinite. If you try to fight the infinite with your finite time, you will lose and stress yourself out. I can highly recommend "Four Thousand Weeks" and its sequel, "Meditation for Mortals" if you feel like you are being stressed out by productivity issues.
I never really got the whole second brain working. Likely something to do with my first brain not having the level of order needed to begin with. I still very much value documenting things from...
I never really got the whole second brain working. Likely something to do with my first brain not having the level of order needed to begin with. I still very much value documenting things from time to time, but only when I am sure I need to reference it back at some point. Generally speaking this is more "technical" documentation and stuff and small reminders.
I do keep a notebook around (one of those fancy e-paper writing thingies) and write a lot in there. But the writing I do in there has a very different purpose. I wrote about that a while ago.
The author mentions this
PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it - and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.
And that is exactly what I also found trying various systems to just categorize data. The writing I do serves the opposite purpose, I do it to work through the insight and potentially gain new insights. It brings order to chaos, not by categorizing but by working through thoughts and internalizing them in my first brain.
I also feel like a lot of these systems work against you in that they keep you always on edge. On the lookout for actionable items and ideas you need to note down. The action of writing it down at that moment purely for the sake of documenting also serves to interrupt the chain of thought it originated from. In a different thread from a while ago I waffled on a bit about how I am trying to not grab my phone as a default in situations where I have "nothing to do". Specifically because those moments actually do provide me with moments to think and come to new insights.
With a second brain system I would again be grabbing for my phone just to document the thoughts but not engaging with them.
Overall I often feel like that for many people in the "obsidian" space. Certainly the folks I often encounter on youtube advocating for certain workflows it has becomes a goal in itself. Not a means to an end, the activity has become "doing obsidian right" or whatever other tool they fancy. The idea of actually documenting what is important almost has become secondary. At least that is the impression I often get.
So congrats to the author of this article on figuring this out.
I really resonate with what you say here. "Actionable items and ideas" is a really good way to explain it. It feels like the most you document your thoughts, the "better" they become in a way....
I also feel like a lot of these systems work against you in that they keep you always on edge. On the lookout for actionable items and ideas you need to note down. The action of writing it down at that moment purely for the sake of documenting also serves to interrupt the chain of thought it originated from. In a different thread from a while ago I waffled on a bit about how I am trying to not grab my phone as a default in situations where I have "nothing to do". Specifically because those moments actually do provide me with moments to think and come to new insights.
I really resonate with what you say here. "Actionable items and ideas" is a really good way to explain it. It feels like the most you document your thoughts, the "better" they become in a way. It's like you're constantly looking to do something with them. Every thought serves a greater purpose that you must do something. Thoughts must become actions.
Truth is, I was kinda aiming towards that and I'm happy I stumbled upon this article and your comment to make me realize that I actually enjoy the way I do it now.
I've written hundreds of random thoughts in the last year, I'm proud of a lot of them, but I use them as building blocks for fun thoughts. They are stashed somewhere in a folder I call "random thoughts" and I don't plan to revisit them, really. The simple act of writing them down, be able to clearly make sense of an idea, is enough to make me happy. I honestly just love thinking about stuff, I've always done so. There were times where I purposefully refused a ride home from friends, simply because I wanted to walk with my own thoughts.
Anyways, I'll say the same as you, I'm really happy that the author was able to free himself and start anew. It seems to have greatly helped his present and future happiness.
I noticed something similar in college while trying to force myself to take notes. I'm not a note taker by default. It's something I really need to force myself to do. I noticed over time that if...
I noticed something similar in college while trying to force myself to take notes. I'm not a note taker by default. It's something I really need to force myself to do.
I noticed over time that if I just didn't take notes and instead just paid attention to the lecture and did the reading, I'd do better on tests than a lot of my classmates who were meticulous note takers and studiers. They'd write well organized, readable notes that they'd pour over later for hours and hours. I just sat in class, paid attention to what the professor said, asked questions where appropriate, and thats about it.
Eventually I just abandoned the idea of taking notes altogether, and although I wasn't the best student in the world, I did decently well in college and almost never studied.
Thats followed me to adulthood. I write things down I need to do, or things I think I'll forget (although I'm a horrible judge of this and end up overestimating my memory a lot). I know note taking would help me remember some more, but it would cost me way more than it would get me.
I think lots of people are bad at note taking in class. You’re not supposed to transcribe the lecture, you’re supposed to listen to the lecture and note the larger themes and important facts. It’s...
I think lots of people are bad at note taking in class. You’re not supposed to transcribe the lecture, you’re supposed to listen to the lecture and note the larger themes and important facts.
It’s just a way to keep yourself from losing focus while you critically listen to a lecture. Most of what a professor says can be found in the textbook later if you forget something.
I've had lots of "school success" classes that tell you to take notes - one of them I was actually required to take just a few months ago, actually - and exactly zero of them have ever said that...
I've had lots of "school success" classes that tell you to take notes - one of them I was actually required to take just a few months ago, actually - and exactly zero of them have ever said that notes are just a tool to keep you focused on the lecture. Every single one of them tells you to take detailed (but not too detailed) notes to refer to later for study. Yes, they can be a tool to help you focus, but that's not what people are generally using notes for.
To be fair, though, I actually agree with you. I only take notes when there's something I know I won't be able to remember accurately later, such as formulas and specific dates. I actually think that the way these classes teach students to take notes is bad. I can't think of a worse notetaking system than Cornell notes, which these classes often tout as the best of the best.
I am similar, although the right level of notes for me is just above zero. I do best when I write down something. It doesn’t have to be something useful, just anything. The physicality of writing...
I am similar, although the right level of notes for me is just above zero. I do best when I write down something. It doesn’t have to be something useful, just anything. The physicality of writing notes helps it stick in my brain. But if I try to make them meaningful or detailed, I start to learn less.
This is similar to me. I took notes, but they were horrendously disorganized and unreadable; essentially useless to look back at. I figured out that I was really just taking notes to keep my hands...
This is similar to me. I took notes, but they were horrendously disorganized and unreadable; essentially useless to look back at. I figured out that I was really just taking notes to keep my hands busy, and actually learning by listening to the lectures.
When I went to a phase/experiment where I wrote down my thoughts and ideas for later use in a second brain type of system, I discovered that my notes simply documented the thought process, but not...
I also feel like a lot of these systems work against you in that they keep you always on edge. On the lookout for actionable items and ideas you need to note down. The action of writing it down at that moment purely for the sake of documenting also serves to interrupt the chain of thought it originated from.
When I went to a phase/experiment where I wrote down my thoughts and ideas for later use in a second brain type of system, I discovered that my notes simply documented the thought process, but not in a useful way. For a particular idea, I ended up with the final idea in my head and on paper I had several notes that described the lead-up to it. It looked a bit like the work of a "thinking" LLM.
My mind tends to ruminate on things that I experience as a problem, until it finds a solution. The solution can then be applied somewhere and is useful. The in-between stages before that are not. At least they're not worth the effort of interrupting the flow and writing them down.
I used obsidian in the past as a customizable task management interface for work and I liked it somewhat. It took me about a week to get it to a workable state, but it was a nice system. I don’t...
I used obsidian in the past as a customizable task management interface for work and I liked it somewhat. It took me about a week to get it to a workable state, but it was a nice system.
I don’t get how people would use obsidian for trying to organize tons of information, though. I like to hand write notes when I’m trying to learn something new or organize my thoughts. Transcription and cataloging into some second brain software would just be extra work.
I use a remarkable tablet for note taking currently as the writing feel is about 85% as good as real paper vs the 40% I was getting with an iPad. It also has nothing besides note taking and pdf viewing, so I don’t get distracted by notifications. Now that all my notes are saved digitally and don’t take up extra physical space, I can actually carry them around and reference them when needed.
My hope is that since AI excels at categorization and handwriting transcription is getting much better, my notes can be automatically indexed in the future. It’s really a killer AI task since most people don’t like organizing their notes and most people can’t afford an assistant/secretary to do it for them.
Obsidian was a lifesaver for me when I started having brain fog so bad that I’d lose track of a thought seconds after it came to me. It felt like I was trying to hold onto balloons with fragile...
Obsidian was a lifesaver for me when I started having brain fog so bad that I’d lose track of a thought seconds after it came to me. It felt like I was trying to hold onto balloons with fragile strings.
Most of my notes from this time are not actually as bad as they could have been. The act of writing things down has always been helpful for me. Typing isn’t the same, but I type so quickly that I was able to get thoughts down before I lost them. I’m not sure I actually managed to retain anything from this time period, I spent a lot of time on leetcode at the time and remember being terrified that most of the questions were taking me a day or more to complete.
Sure, some of this is true. But I do think in connections often enough that I find having a place where I have thoughts on separate pages that I can link together useful. I like doing a 'lazier'...
The “second brain” metaphor is both ambitious and (to a degree) biologically absurd. Human memory is not an archive. It is associative, embodied, contextual, emotional. We do not think in folders. We do not retrieve meaning through backlinks. Our minds are improvisational. They forget on purpose.
Sure, some of this is true. But I do think in connections often enough that I find having a place where I have thoughts on separate pages that I can link together useful.
I like doing a 'lazier' version for my second brain in Obsidian which isn't too much pressure. I have sort-of a system, but there will be weeks that go by where I don't follow them and then I'll start it back up again. I use it more as an extended journaling tool and central space for keeping track of everything I like/interests me. It's not all 'insights' about the world, but more insights about myself. I think it's helped not having a 'goal' for my second brain. I don't track word counts or files or even strictly follow templates. I have folders, but only for the 'format' of the source or note (Books/Articles/Workshops/Movies/Shows/People). No tags, not even headings in notes sometimes. It's more just text that I can connect together, creating my own hyperlinked version of interests.
Perhaps having my system of not having a system has been the most helpful of all.
Most of my daily notes are in an "autodelete" chat so they're automatically deleted after a month. These are mostly to-dos, random ideas, links, etc. Once in a while I scroll up to the top of the...
Most of my daily notes are in an "autodelete" chat so they're automatically deleted after a month. These are mostly to-dos, random ideas, links, etc.
Once in a while I scroll up to the top of the chat and look through the notes that will get deleted soon, and check if there are any that I want to move to more permanent storage. Usually, an idea that I wanted to keep at the moment I thought of it gets "stale" after a few weeks and then I no longer feel the need to keep it.
While i didn't employ your "autodelete" approach, years ago i did use chat (i think it was xmpp) in my own, private room..and used it as a sort of reminder area, as well as a sort of dumping...
While i didn't employ your "autodelete" approach, years ago i did use chat (i think it was xmpp) in my own, private room..and used it as a sort of reminder area, as well as a sort of dumping ground for really short-lived ToDos. Well, in a pinch, it works for a general dumping ground with the intent to properly save it in a more suitable other place. But, the downside is that chat is so fast for me to dump stuff into that i did not think whether the thing should preserved or not...and the accumulation became quickly unsustainable. I still use a private, individual chat room as a rare dumping ground, but as fast as possible i move stuff out of there...and never use it as a reminder. Nowadays i keep my ToDos app and my chat always open and quick to access on my mobile.
I use a Discord sever for that purpose. Since it's an entire server and not just a single chat, I have multiple chats that move at different speeds. Reminders, medication times, some regexes I use...
I use a Discord sever for that purpose. Since it's an entire server and not just a single chat, I have multiple chats that move at different speeds. Reminders, medication times, some regexes I use a lot, books I mean to read for /r/fantasy bingo for a theme I'm doing next year, my jamba juice order (aloha pineapple no banana sub peaches, no greek yogurt sub orange sherbert) (that's an entire channel)
I'm glad to hear a discord server works for your flow! After i posted my previous comment, i looked back at my private chat room...and realized that i have been using FAR less than i remember. I...
I'm glad to hear a discord server works for your flow! After i posted my previous comment, i looked back at my private chat room...and realized that i have been using FAR less than i remember. I mean, i still use it only for a very temporary dumping area of links (to be moved elsewhere)...but noticed that lately (I'd say over the last 10 months to 1 year), i guess i have been using mobile app text editor FAR more than chat. (I use Markor, but of course any other mobile text editor would do more than fine.) I suppose the minor advantage of my text files is that i drop them in an area that i sync between mobile and laptop...so while still not as organized as i would like to be, at least they all live under a single folder and are very easy to search. Of course, that accommodates dumping of temporary data, since still using my mobile ToDo app. ;-) I love that we live in a time where we have access to such an array of myriad tools to help us manage stuff.
Using localized, private AI models to “chat” with previous thoughts is pretty neat, and a use case for archiving thoughts via notes over time. Linking ideas as well is pretty neat.
Using localized, private AI models to “chat” with previous thoughts is pretty neat, and a use case for archiving thoughts via notes over time. Linking ideas as well is pretty neat.
As a start, I'm sure you could get away with replacing a full Language Model with a Sentiment Analysis/Language Interpreter. The model takes a prompt, interprets it in a CRUD framework and it...
As a start, I'm sure you could get away with replacing a full Language Model with a Sentiment Analysis/Language Interpreter. The model takes a prompt, interprets it in a CRUD framework and it passes that request to the correct integration point. Would work with calendars, notepads and other simple data sets, so long as the information is properly sorted or tagged. And then it talks back to the user with templated responses incorporating the data gathered.
Its no natural language machine interaction, but at least you can be sure that the information is factual and accurate.
This sounds a lot like virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. Properly formatting all the data and ensuring every utility has a usable API is an endless problem to my...
This sounds a lot like virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. Properly formatting all the data and ensuring every utility has a usable API is an endless problem to my understanding.
I use Obsidian plugin Smart Connections and use Ollama for local only LLM models such as Deepseek-R1. There’s another plugin for Obsidian called Copilot. You can use local LLMs or cloud based ones...
I use Obsidian plugin Smart Connections and use Ollama for local only LLM models such as Deepseek-R1. There’s another plugin for Obsidian called Copilot.
You can use local LLMs or cloud based ones with an API.
I think there is the pruning and deleting part that people forget when accumulating knowledge: One has to continue refining the content of the notes, and reference things only when needed. Of...
I think there is the pruning and deleting part that people forget when accumulating knowledge: One has to continue refining the content of the notes, and reference things only when needed. Of course we have the tendency to keep everything we ever came across: It's why people take screenshots of things and take photos of events that they never come back to: It's a safety that "What I need is there" and thus one can process it later, except it never happens. I would like to think that since the human brains benefit by forgetting, we also would benefit by writing and discard it. Especially for processing adverse events.
While i fully agree that the "pruning and deleting" part are very important, i have challenges with it sometimes. The slippery slope that i encounter is that sometimes i begin to focus on tweaking...
While i fully agree that the "pruning and deleting" part are very important, i have challenges with it sometimes. The slippery slope that i encounter is that sometimes i begin to focus on tweaking "my setup", or tweaking how i store my files...and which is nothing more than knowledge management porn...so, instead of clearing stuff out, i end up wasting time tidying things up that aren't worth tidying up most of the time. Its more OCD-adjacent, i'll admit. However, when it doesn't descend into such a waste of time, i agree that it helps to feel freer. sometimes - again, when it works out positively - i actually absorbed some really great insights, since i more deeply reflect on whatever it is that i double-read. So, yeah, when it works, it really can be powerful...But for me, about half the time, its a risky thing that can manifest as a waste of time. :-)
People love that computers can functionally keep data exactly the same forever, but the fact of the matter is that being able to forget things is basically a superpower. What happens if you have a...
People love that computers can functionally keep data exactly the same forever, but the fact of the matter is that being able to forget things is basically a superpower. What happens if you have a computer with a storage device that is completely full? It stops functioning properly, and it can't fix itself; it needs a person to intervene and manually delete data.
I’ve found them useful but that’s because I literally have a job organizing digital data. The one thing that annoys me is no great way to consolidate/query data on a non proprietary system, that...
I’ve found them useful but that’s because I literally have a job organizing digital data.
The one thing that annoys me is no great way to consolidate/query data on a non proprietary system, that I’m aware of.
Obsidian stores in .md files, which I like, but you really have to jump through hoops with data view to make dynamic pages like “things I’ve been meaning to watch”.
Tags work up to a point but they’re not great for more complex logic and still don’t naturally display super clean. I’d like to hit a landing page and see all my stuff not always be in the search section.
I suffer from terrible note rot, both personally and at work. Things that seem important get overcome by events, or displaced by other priorities, or I simply have more goals than time to complete...
I suffer from terrible note rot, both personally and at work. Things that seem important get overcome by events, or displaced by other priorities, or I simply have more goals than time to complete them.
The structure I've found that works best is to have a single note where I always put new things at the top. Usually, I'm adding something relatively short term - a few weeks at most - such as a list of things I need to get for my daughter's birthday, or a todo list for an upcoming free Saturday. Stuff that doesn't get done gets pushed down the note. I usually don't scroll down into the list unless I have unstructured free time and I'm looking for ideas about how to spend it.
I have a similar "one not to rule them all" for my todo list at work. I might take notes in during a meeting in a separate note. Nine times out of ten, I send these meeting notes out and never refer to them again. It was that way in college - the act of writing them was what was important. If I have an action item for myself, I will usually add it to the todo note.
What I really wonder about with this second brain stuff is what a properly structured and prompted AI could do with it. We're getting into some RAG stuff at work, so I'm interested to see how that unfolds. I'd really like to have an AI as a true personal assistant - be able to tell it to remember stuff and have it keep that information somewhere and bring it back when it becomes relevant. I think the meta reasoning and plan/act stuff I see Cline and Claude Code do could be a pattern for this kind of thing.
Like others, I never got a "second brain" working. I tried a few times, because everyone on the internet that uses them swears by their mothers that it's great, but it never clicked for me. I'm...
Like others, I never got a "second brain" working. I tried a few times, because everyone on the internet that uses them swears by their mothers that it's great, but it never clicked for me. I'm more of a "random" and quick note taker, I just need to write down whatever I need in the fastest way possible, I don't have the patience to decide/look for the "right" place to store a page and then moving them around... Honestly, at least for me, that part of the process is a waste of time. Maybe for others it helps saving time later, but for me I don't think it would.
I use Anytype nowadays (it's like Notion, but privacy focused and local), and I just have two spaces: personal and work. For work, I have two categories, one is for "permanent" things, like IP addresses, our team email addresses, useful queries that I reuse, etc, and the other is for tasks that I need to complete, and these tasks have just one flag, which is either complete or not.
So what I do when I need to write something down at work is, always have anytype open in the work space, and whenever I need to write something down, I click on a single button and then start typing. I don't waste time organizing or anything and, if for some reason I need to find something later, I can just use the search feature.
For me, the act of writing is the useful part. It helps me organize and verbalize my thoughts. So even if I never referenced my notes (I do), they'd still have been useful. In practice, in use...
For me, the act of writing is the useful part. It helps me organize and verbalize my thoughts. So even if I never referenced my notes (I do), they'd still have been useful.
In practice, in use Obsidian as a personal knowledge cache. When I want I know something, if it's something I've put in a note, it'll probably be close to the exact thing I want. If not, I'll do a web search and write the note for next time.
If you're turning notetaking into the activity itself, then deleting them all makes sense. But otherwise you're losing a lot of (hopefully) good reference material. In an age of increasingly tenuous access to accurate information, I need my notes more than ever.
I made a post on this fairly recently. Many of the author's remarks reflect my experience. His thoughts on the subtopic "The Mistaken Metaphor of the Brain" are spot on. Eliminating useless...
I made a post on this fairly recently. Many of the author's remarks reflect my experience. His thoughts on the subtopic "The Mistaken Metaphor of the Brain" are spot on. Eliminating useless pathways is an essential part of generating knowledge. I agree 100%. Unlike the author, though, I have no wish to restart. I have a list of notes, yes, but that is all that it is. It's a dumb list. And I only add what I think is important. I let my brain do its healthy deletion.
I love this line Sounds like the author made the best personal decision in the moment. That said, a part of me wishes to see what would happen if you fed all those notes into an LLM to analyze...
I love this line
The act of deletion is not a failure of recordkeeping. It is a reassertion of agency.
Sounds like the author made the best personal decision in the moment. That said, a part of me wishes to see what would happen if you fed all those notes into an LLM to analyze themes, patterns, and priorities. Too late now, obviously, but it could've been fun.
I use Obsidian, but I've yet to ever go back to anything I've put in my 'Second Brain'. I currently use it more as my plaintext version of raindrop.io or pinboard. I wish I was the kind of person...
I use Obsidian, but I've yet to ever go back to anything I've put in my 'Second Brain'. I currently use it more as my plaintext version of raindrop.io or pinboard. I wish I was the kind of person who benefitted from such a system, but I'm apparently not one of them.
Some alternatives to deleting notes: Progressive Summarization, a concept by Tiago Forte. Maps of Content, a concept that I first learned from Nick Milo.
Some alternatives to deleting notes:
Progressive Summarization, a concept by Tiago Forte.
Maps of Content, a concept that I first learned from Nick Milo.
This post remind me ideas from an "anti-productivity" book: "Four Thousand Weeks" by Oliver Burkeman. The gist of it is that you have finite time, and infinite wants. Even if the infinite wants are limited to a "smaller set" of reading every book and remembering every interesting ideas, they still are infinite. If you try to fight the infinite with your finite time, you will lose and stress yourself out. I can highly recommend "Four Thousand Weeks" and its sequel, "Meditation for Mortals" if you feel like you are being stressed out by productivity issues.
I never really got the whole second brain working. Likely something to do with my first brain not having the level of order needed to begin with. I still very much value documenting things from time to time, but only when I am sure I need to reference it back at some point. Generally speaking this is more "technical" documentation and stuff and small reminders.
I do keep a notebook around (one of those fancy e-paper writing thingies) and write a lot in there. But the writing I do in there has a very different purpose. I wrote about that a while ago.
The author mentions this
And that is exactly what I also found trying various systems to just categorize data. The writing I do serves the opposite purpose, I do it to work through the insight and potentially gain new insights. It brings order to chaos, not by categorizing but by working through thoughts and internalizing them in my first brain.
I also feel like a lot of these systems work against you in that they keep you always on edge. On the lookout for actionable items and ideas you need to note down. The action of writing it down at that moment purely for the sake of documenting also serves to interrupt the chain of thought it originated from. In a different thread from a while ago I waffled on a bit about how I am trying to not grab my phone as a default in situations where I have "nothing to do". Specifically because those moments actually do provide me with moments to think and come to new insights.
With a second brain system I would again be grabbing for my phone just to document the thoughts but not engaging with them.
Overall I often feel like that for many people in the "obsidian" space. Certainly the folks I often encounter on youtube advocating for certain workflows it has becomes a goal in itself. Not a means to an end, the activity has become "doing obsidian right" or whatever other tool they fancy. The idea of actually documenting what is important almost has become secondary. At least that is the impression I often get.
So congrats to the author of this article on figuring this out.
I really resonate with what you say here. "Actionable items and ideas" is a really good way to explain it. It feels like the most you document your thoughts, the "better" they become in a way. It's like you're constantly looking to do something with them. Every thought serves a greater purpose that you must do something. Thoughts must become actions.
Truth is, I was kinda aiming towards that and I'm happy I stumbled upon this article and your comment to make me realize that I actually enjoy the way I do it now.
I've written hundreds of random thoughts in the last year, I'm proud of a lot of them, but I use them as building blocks for fun thoughts. They are stashed somewhere in a folder I call "random thoughts" and I don't plan to revisit them, really. The simple act of writing them down, be able to clearly make sense of an idea, is enough to make me happy. I honestly just love thinking about stuff, I've always done so. There were times where I purposefully refused a ride home from friends, simply because I wanted to walk with my own thoughts.
Anyways, I'll say the same as you, I'm really happy that the author was able to free himself and start anew. It seems to have greatly helped his present and future happiness.
I noticed something similar in college while trying to force myself to take notes. I'm not a note taker by default. It's something I really need to force myself to do.
I noticed over time that if I just didn't take notes and instead just paid attention to the lecture and did the reading, I'd do better on tests than a lot of my classmates who were meticulous note takers and studiers. They'd write well organized, readable notes that they'd pour over later for hours and hours. I just sat in class, paid attention to what the professor said, asked questions where appropriate, and thats about it.
Eventually I just abandoned the idea of taking notes altogether, and although I wasn't the best student in the world, I did decently well in college and almost never studied.
Thats followed me to adulthood. I write things down I need to do, or things I think I'll forget (although I'm a horrible judge of this and end up overestimating my memory a lot). I know note taking would help me remember some more, but it would cost me way more than it would get me.
I think lots of people are bad at note taking in class. You’re not supposed to transcribe the lecture, you’re supposed to listen to the lecture and note the larger themes and important facts.
It’s just a way to keep yourself from losing focus while you critically listen to a lecture. Most of what a professor says can be found in the textbook later if you forget something.
I've had lots of "school success" classes that tell you to take notes - one of them I was actually required to take just a few months ago, actually - and exactly zero of them have ever said that notes are just a tool to keep you focused on the lecture. Every single one of them tells you to take detailed (but not too detailed) notes to refer to later for study. Yes, they can be a tool to help you focus, but that's not what people are generally using notes for.
To be fair, though, I actually agree with you. I only take notes when there's something I know I won't be able to remember accurately later, such as formulas and specific dates. I actually think that the way these classes teach students to take notes is bad. I can't think of a worse notetaking system than Cornell notes, which these classes often tout as the best of the best.
I am similar, although the right level of notes for me is just above zero. I do best when I write down something. It doesn’t have to be something useful, just anything. The physicality of writing notes helps it stick in my brain. But if I try to make them meaningful or detailed, I start to learn less.
This is similar to me. I took notes, but they were horrendously disorganized and unreadable; essentially useless to look back at. I figured out that I was really just taking notes to keep my hands busy, and actually learning by listening to the lectures.
When I went to a phase/experiment where I wrote down my thoughts and ideas for later use in a second brain type of system, I discovered that my notes simply documented the thought process, but not in a useful way. For a particular idea, I ended up with the final idea in my head and on paper I had several notes that described the lead-up to it. It looked a bit like the work of a "thinking" LLM.
My mind tends to ruminate on things that I experience as a problem, until it finds a solution. The solution can then be applied somewhere and is useful. The in-between stages before that are not. At least they're not worth the effort of interrupting the flow and writing them down.
I used obsidian in the past as a customizable task management interface for work and I liked it somewhat. It took me about a week to get it to a workable state, but it was a nice system.
I don’t get how people would use obsidian for trying to organize tons of information, though. I like to hand write notes when I’m trying to learn something new or organize my thoughts. Transcription and cataloging into some second brain software would just be extra work.
I use a remarkable tablet for note taking currently as the writing feel is about 85% as good as real paper vs the 40% I was getting with an iPad. It also has nothing besides note taking and pdf viewing, so I don’t get distracted by notifications. Now that all my notes are saved digitally and don’t take up extra physical space, I can actually carry them around and reference them when needed.
My hope is that since AI excels at categorization and handwriting transcription is getting much better, my notes can be automatically indexed in the future. It’s really a killer AI task since most people don’t like organizing their notes and most people can’t afford an assistant/secretary to do it for them.
Obsidian was a lifesaver for me when I started having brain fog so bad that I’d lose track of a thought seconds after it came to me. It felt like I was trying to hold onto balloons with fragile strings.
Most of my notes from this time are not actually as bad as they could have been. The act of writing things down has always been helpful for me. Typing isn’t the same, but I type so quickly that I was able to get thoughts down before I lost them. I’m not sure I actually managed to retain anything from this time period, I spent a lot of time on leetcode at the time and remember being terrified that most of the questions were taking me a day or more to complete.
Sure, some of this is true. But I do think in connections often enough that I find having a place where I have thoughts on separate pages that I can link together useful.
I like doing a 'lazier' version for my second brain in Obsidian which isn't too much pressure. I have sort-of a system, but there will be weeks that go by where I don't follow them and then I'll start it back up again. I use it more as an extended journaling tool and central space for keeping track of everything I like/interests me. It's not all 'insights' about the world, but more insights about myself. I think it's helped not having a 'goal' for my second brain. I don't track word counts or files or even strictly follow templates. I have folders, but only for the 'format' of the source or note (Books/Articles/Workshops/Movies/Shows/People). No tags, not even headings in notes sometimes. It's more just text that I can connect together, creating my own hyperlinked version of interests.
Perhaps having my system of not having a system has been the most helpful of all.
Most of my daily notes are in an "autodelete" chat so they're automatically deleted after a month. These are mostly to-dos, random ideas, links, etc.
Once in a while I scroll up to the top of the chat and look through the notes that will get deleted soon, and check if there are any that I want to move to more permanent storage. Usually, an idea that I wanted to keep at the moment I thought of it gets "stale" after a few weeks and then I no longer feel the need to keep it.
While i didn't employ your "autodelete" approach, years ago i did use chat (i think it was xmpp) in my own, private room..and used it as a sort of reminder area, as well as a sort of dumping ground for really short-lived ToDos. Well, in a pinch, it works for a general dumping ground with the intent to properly save it in a more suitable other place. But, the downside is that chat is so fast for me to dump stuff into that i did not think whether the thing should preserved or not...and the accumulation became quickly unsustainable. I still use a private, individual chat room as a rare dumping ground, but as fast as possible i move stuff out of there...and never use it as a reminder. Nowadays i keep my ToDos app and my chat always open and quick to access on my mobile.
I use a Discord sever for that purpose. Since it's an entire server and not just a single chat, I have multiple chats that move at different speeds. Reminders, medication times, some regexes I use a lot, books I mean to read for /r/fantasy bingo for a theme I'm doing next year, my jamba juice order (aloha pineapple no banana sub peaches, no greek yogurt sub orange sherbert) (that's an entire channel)
etc
I'm glad to hear a discord server works for your flow! After i posted my previous comment, i looked back at my private chat room...and realized that i have been using FAR less than i remember. I mean, i still use it only for a very temporary dumping area of links (to be moved elsewhere)...but noticed that lately (I'd say over the last 10 months to 1 year), i guess i have been using mobile app text editor FAR more than chat. (I use Markor, but of course any other mobile text editor would do more than fine.) I suppose the minor advantage of my text files is that i drop them in an area that i sync between mobile and laptop...so while still not as organized as i would like to be, at least they all live under a single folder and are very easy to search. Of course, that accommodates dumping of temporary data, since still using my mobile ToDo app. ;-) I love that we live in a time where we have access to such an array of myriad tools to help us manage stuff.
Using localized, private AI models to “chat” with previous thoughts is pretty neat, and a use case for archiving thoughts via notes over time. Linking ideas as well is pretty neat.
I've been thinking for a while that this would be a neat use for an LLM. Do you have any recommendations on how to get started?
As a start, I'm sure you could get away with replacing a full Language Model with a Sentiment Analysis/Language Interpreter. The model takes a prompt, interprets it in a CRUD framework and it passes that request to the correct integration point. Would work with calendars, notepads and other simple data sets, so long as the information is properly sorted or tagged. And then it talks back to the user with templated responses incorporating the data gathered.
Its no natural language machine interaction, but at least you can be sure that the information is factual and accurate.
This sounds a lot like virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. Properly formatting all the data and ensuring every utility has a usable API is an endless problem to my understanding.
I use Obsidian plugin Smart Connections and use Ollama for local only LLM models such as Deepseek-R1. There’s another plugin for Obsidian called Copilot.
You can use local LLMs or cloud based ones with an API.
I think there is the pruning and deleting part that people forget when accumulating knowledge: One has to continue refining the content of the notes, and reference things only when needed. Of course we have the tendency to keep everything we ever came across: It's why people take screenshots of things and take photos of events that they never come back to: It's a safety that "What I need is there" and thus one can process it later, except it never happens. I would like to think that since the human brains benefit by forgetting, we also would benefit by writing and discard it. Especially for processing adverse events.
While i fully agree that the "pruning and deleting" part are very important, i have challenges with it sometimes. The slippery slope that i encounter is that sometimes i begin to focus on tweaking "my setup", or tweaking how i store my files...and which is nothing more than knowledge management porn...so, instead of clearing stuff out, i end up wasting time tidying things up that aren't worth tidying up most of the time. Its more OCD-adjacent, i'll admit. However, when it doesn't descend into such a waste of time, i agree that it helps to feel freer. sometimes - again, when it works out positively - i actually absorbed some really great insights, since i more deeply reflect on whatever it is that i double-read. So, yeah, when it works, it really can be powerful...But for me, about half the time, its a risky thing that can manifest as a waste of time. :-)
People love that computers can functionally keep data exactly the same forever, but the fact of the matter is that being able to forget things is basically a superpower. What happens if you have a computer with a storage device that is completely full? It stops functioning properly, and it can't fix itself; it needs a person to intervene and manually delete data.
I’ve found them useful but that’s because I literally have a job organizing digital data.
The one thing that annoys me is no great way to consolidate/query data on a non proprietary system, that I’m aware of.
Obsidian stores in .md files, which I like, but you really have to jump through hoops with data view to make dynamic pages like “things I’ve been meaning to watch”.
Tags work up to a point but they’re not great for more complex logic and still don’t naturally display super clean. I’d like to hit a landing page and see all my stuff not always be in the search section.
I suffer from terrible note rot, both personally and at work. Things that seem important get overcome by events, or displaced by other priorities, or I simply have more goals than time to complete them.
The structure I've found that works best is to have a single note where I always put new things at the top. Usually, I'm adding something relatively short term - a few weeks at most - such as a list of things I need to get for my daughter's birthday, or a todo list for an upcoming free Saturday. Stuff that doesn't get done gets pushed down the note. I usually don't scroll down into the list unless I have unstructured free time and I'm looking for ideas about how to spend it.
I have a similar "one not to rule them all" for my todo list at work. I might take notes in during a meeting in a separate note. Nine times out of ten, I send these meeting notes out and never refer to them again. It was that way in college - the act of writing them was what was important. If I have an action item for myself, I will usually add it to the todo note.
What I really wonder about with this second brain stuff is what a properly structured and prompted AI could do with it. We're getting into some RAG stuff at work, so I'm interested to see how that unfolds. I'd really like to have an AI as a true personal assistant - be able to tell it to remember stuff and have it keep that information somewhere and bring it back when it becomes relevant. I think the meta reasoning and plan/act stuff I see Cline and Claude Code do could be a pattern for this kind of thing.
Like others, I never got a "second brain" working. I tried a few times, because everyone on the internet that uses them swears by their mothers that it's great, but it never clicked for me. I'm more of a "random" and quick note taker, I just need to write down whatever I need in the fastest way possible, I don't have the patience to decide/look for the "right" place to store a page and then moving them around... Honestly, at least for me, that part of the process is a waste of time. Maybe for others it helps saving time later, but for me I don't think it would.
I use Anytype nowadays (it's like Notion, but privacy focused and local), and I just have two spaces: personal and work. For work, I have two categories, one is for "permanent" things, like IP addresses, our team email addresses, useful queries that I reuse, etc, and the other is for tasks that I need to complete, and these tasks have just one flag, which is either complete or not.
So what I do when I need to write something down at work is, always have anytype open in the work space, and whenever I need to write something down, I click on a single button and then start typing. I don't waste time organizing or anything and, if for some reason I need to find something later, I can just use the search feature.
Inspired by this, I just hit "mark all as read" on my RSS reader, and set tabs older than a month to close automatically. It's surprisingly freeing!
For me, the act of writing is the useful part. It helps me organize and verbalize my thoughts. So even if I never referenced my notes (I do), they'd still have been useful.
In practice, in use Obsidian as a personal knowledge cache. When I want I know something, if it's something I've put in a note, it'll probably be close to the exact thing I want. If not, I'll do a web search and write the note for next time.
If you're turning notetaking into the activity itself, then deleting them all makes sense. But otherwise you're losing a lot of (hopefully) good reference material. In an age of increasingly tenuous access to accurate information, I need my notes more than ever.
I made a post on this fairly recently. Many of the author's remarks reflect my experience. His thoughts on the subtopic "The Mistaken Metaphor of the Brain" are spot on. Eliminating useless pathways is an essential part of generating knowledge. I agree 100%. Unlike the author, though, I have no wish to restart. I have a list of notes, yes, but that is all that it is. It's a dumb list. And I only add what I think is important. I let my brain do its healthy deletion.
I love this line
Sounds like the author made the best personal decision in the moment. That said, a part of me wishes to see what would happen if you fed all those notes into an LLM to analyze themes, patterns, and priorities. Too late now, obviously, but it could've been fun.
I use Obsidian, but I've yet to ever go back to anything I've put in my 'Second Brain'. I currently use it more as my plaintext version of raindrop.io or pinboard. I wish I was the kind of person who benefitted from such a system, but I'm apparently not one of them.
Some alternatives to deleting notes: