I don't think I do the second brain thing well but keeping some detailed notes (using a daily note at a scratch pad for one off queries, small scripts etc) and occasionally branching them off into dedicated markdown files like "Database debugging" or "MongoDB" has saved me a lot of time on aggregate.

There seems to be two schools of thought for "second brain" stuff:

1. Those who kind of semi-obsessively write down every little thought, semi-obsessively catalogue everything, etc.

2. Those who use the idea of "writing helps you think", where the second brain functions in support of this

Personally I find 2 quite valuable, and although I could "think about programming all the time" (or one of my other interests), I find it helpful to have f.ex. exact quotes from some book at hand (and various other Obsidian-related things)

Writing does help you think... but only if you write. Dumping a bunch of stuff into a "second brain" is not you writing. Keeping a journal is you writing. Those serve similar functions, but keeping a journal is more intentional and requires you to think critically about your inputs and decide what to record and how, which is the thinking part that comes with writing. That summarization that LLMs are doing for people is removing a significant portion of the thinking, which results in a loss of capability and soundness of mind.

100%. The term "second brain" is getting kind of a bad rep because of people using the dump+AI method. I don't think Tiago Forte who, as far as I know, coined the term meant doing that, at least based on his book on the subject.

I’m in a third school: memory recall ability does not scale to meet the needs of interests and responsibilities. I’ll take all the help I can get.

I keep obsidian vaults mostly to augment recall, and often all it takes is a small cue to reveal that thing I couldn’t remember. I’ve found LLMs helpful for translating my question into search criteria - “agentic search” is magic.

I suspect for many people productivity tools are more about feeling more productive than actually being productive. And then there is the kind of people who spend time on productivity tools to avoid spending time on real, hard work.

Yes. Note taking apps were very much the precursors of modern agentic coding.

A key part of maintaining a second brain is revisiting and pruning it. Much like a todo list, without that practice it absolutely just accumulates bunk.

So I operate more in line with how you do, but having tried some organizational systems I think I understand the "second brain" people.

One, it forces you to do a crude approximation of critical thinking. It allows you to examine and organize your thoughts, either physically or digitally. It isn't the same as being able to sit and break something down in your mind, but for those who struggle with that, a "second brain" allows them to reap some of those benefits.

Two, it allows you to turnover things quickly in your head. By training yourself to immediately dump out an idea into an organizational system, you don't have to hold so many things in your head. Furthermore, words are immutable and the thoughts in your head aren't.

But for me, the good thoughts usually rise to the top. And there are a lot of things I'm thinking about that are so vague, it's just a feeling. And trying to write those down robs those thoughts of the long term, "on the backburner" mental processing they need to become actual ideas. They're thoughts that are still in the embryonic phase. I can't write down the qualia of them, and when I try to I move them into a "second brain" I lose it.

I think organizational systems are work dependent. Running a business lends itself well to an organizational system. Where it's good to try a lot of shallow things. But something like physics, for example, requires playing with ideas in your mind over a long period of time until they become solid enough to chase more seriously.

I think programming probably straddles that line and it depends on what you're doing at any given time.

Hey, love the hivemind comment to mine. Maybe we do have kind of a second brain...? /s

How do you take notes, generally speaking ?

I've never been a good note taker. In the things I think about, when I'm really invested in something, I have to reverse engineer it to experience the why.

Reverse engineering can take several forms for me: it started with writing parts of systems from scratch, and now (due to academic training) it oftens looks like "thinking about how to explain the system to a group of colleagues", which is one degree of separation from writing the system from scratch, but is much faster - and seems to work well when working with LM agents on code (because you have to confront your ignorance)

part of the training in academia is how to know when you don't understood the thing, so this ends up working well for me now.

One trick: you can force yourself to understand something better by making a presentation and imagining you're going to be grilled by someone smarter than you. This is kind of the feeling of pressure that academic paper reviews give (in an ideal world) and it translates when you think about explaining something to someone else.

I like to to think while talking. Nowadays I don’t have always somebody to talk to so I talk to myself and record on the phone; then voice to text to obsidian.

I have a lot of interesting notes and I can also plug them to AI to get some reminders, insights etc.

But I agree with your general message - thinking is still superior

I don't know if that's what people mean when they say second brain? My "second brain" is basically a memory expansion/thought recorder. With the understanding that the memory isn't truly integrated like regular memories, which has plusses and minuses. A lot of value for me is just getting an idea out of my head if it's in the way, even if I never revisit it. Helpful for adhd and otherwise distracted minds as long the process of recording is very cheap. Which, as you say, yields mostly garbage.

Where it works better is as a place to store more careful thoughts, and as a place to force you to express those thoughts in writing.

That is, it works best if you don't try to use it as a literal second brain, don't rely on it doing any thinking for you.

All that being said, confession time: using obsidian for 6 months as second brain among other things, i don't believe it has really helped me think other than as being a place where I also create more polished notes where I must crystallize ideas.

What it has done is enable my idea hoarding/belief there's gold in them there old thoughts, so I spend too much time checking if I already had a thought rather than just thinking. So the verdict is still out for me.

> I don't know if that's what people mean when they say second brain?

Note taking app, personal wiki, etc, broadly any central thing you store information in solely for yourself that's searchable. It's an artsy term that doesn't seem to add much of anything but confusion.

The whole idea of second brain is simply cringe. I know using this word itself is cringe but it's the most accurate one for how I feel.

While it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with AI, the trend of glue AI onto everything certainly didn't help.

For you guys' 5 min of entertainment: https://youtu.be/6NukGtwJb7Y?t=256

I love Eric. He is up next for sure.

When I have some important problem I don’t know how to solve, I of course think about it all the time. Every now and again I’ll think of something that seems extra useful and write it down.

Eventually I’m looking at a whole page of good ideas, and some pattern jumps out at me. I attribute many of my best ideas to this process. Writing lets you work beyond the limits of your own brain, especially the constraints of working memory.

I think that is the primary value in a “second brain” - externalizing your thoughts and reasoning makes them stronger - though the productivity community may use the term to mean some other thing.

>I don't get the second brain thing. I don't keep a second brain, I just read and think a lot.

Yes, but writing also helps you lens your thoughts in a completely different way. This is why so many people journal, or blog, or vlog, even though only a handful of people might actually audit their output. Obsidian sort of abdicates a lot of the value of journaling, but I think there's still some (although much less, perhaps 5% as much) value in the actual act of directing the journaling, even if the rest of the thinking is outsourced to the clanker.

the second brain is very useful if it have instant search.

Just wanted to say you're not alone. I've also never understood the appeal of a second brain. Most of our ideas are garbage, and we're often way too precious about our ideas