"How many brilliant ideas have you had and forgotten?"
Tiago Forte opens up his summary of second brains with that fantastic question. Forgetting amazing ideas is what pushed me to create my second brain. The Second Brain is more than a tool; but it is a methodology. A system that allows you to lean on something else. It prepares you to offload some of your thinking to a SYSTEM that you can trust—freeing your mind up to have the ability to focus on more important things. It may just be me, but often if I do not write something down, it will continuously bounce around in my head. When I have enough of these notes or tasks floating around in my head, it often causes severe anxiety and constantly thinking the words "What's Next?".
I have two methods of clearing out my mental fog. The first method is a planner from the Full Focus Store. It is an amazing planner that allows you to keep your goals aligned with your daily actions. I also created a system for Personal Knowledge management on Airtable. These will enable me to capture all vital information and align my daily tasks with my long-term vision. The blog, YouTube channel, and podcast will essentially act as a second brain. Cataloging experiences and situations that are important to me on my growth journey.
For my second brain, I use an airtable. I find it easier to understand because it reminds me of excel. From my current benchmark, I have shared a template that you can also use as a foundation to try out. If you would like a quick walk-through of the template, watch my video that corresponds to this article. For a longer walk-through feel free to watch video below.
I know I do not use the system to its maximum capacity. Still, as I go through the process of creating the Growth Work down below, I am also updating my existing second brain, so at the end, I will have a completely new system. I want to combine my knowledge database with my content planning so I can also have a database of my perspective and ideas. As I create content through the viewpoint of growth, it could be helpful to someone out there in the future.
If you can't get airtable to do what you need to, you can try other services. I do suggest checking out notion. If you want to learn more about notion, I recommend Demetri Panici. He is a Productivity YouTube with 4k subscribers and runs a consultancy service on the side. If you want to skip learning how to use notion, you can always pay him to make you a solution and teach you how to use it. He also has a lot of templates that you can start with as well.
Growth Work: Create your own second brain. From scratch or making tweaks to the template that I provided you. The growth work walks you through some education that acts as a starting point to creating your own system.
Additional Reflection Questions:
What information is so valuable you do not want to lose?
How can I create a system to keep all the information in one place?
How can I make room for the good that is on the way?
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