What’s a Second Brain ?
The Term Second Brain was coined by Tiago Forte and describes how Digital Tools can be leveraged to help you in your personal and professional life.
Here’s what I do
- Write Plaintext files in the open Markdown format
- I Synchronize files across devices using My self hosted Nextcloud and Syncthing
- Additionally, I Version Control files in a private GitLab repository for Backup
Capturing Highlights
- I capture Highlights of Web Articles with Raindrop that syncs to my Digital Notes
- I annotate E-Books on Amazon Kindle that sync to my Digital Notes
- I annotate PDF’s with Zotero and XournalPP
Capturing Thoughts
- See my My Journaling Workflow
- Signal Chat with Myself
- In my Daily Notes through Interstitial Journaling
Task Management
- Tasks with Hard Deadlines go to Nextcloud Tasks
- For actionable items, prioritising tasks and tasks with hard deadlines
- Reminders to keep track of my Habits
- Prepoluate Personal Schedule by adding Tasks to Calendar automatically
- Tasks with Soft Deadlines go to Obsidian
- Tasks related to an Area (ongoing project/responsibillity) go to a Kanban Board in Obsidian.
- Tried out TaskWarrio, Todoist
Project Management
- Using Project Notes according to PARA
- I use Kanban Boards for visualising projects/processes/workflows and limiting WIP
- Switched from using Nextcloud Deck to Obsidian Kanban Board Plugin
Digital Notes
- See My Journaling Workflow
- Archive Long Term Knowledge in Ever Green Notes
- Stored in Obsidian Vault, and sometimes an Encrypted Vault
What do I keep in my Notes?
- Keep track of My Habits, My Goals, Compliments, My Experiments, My Fears, …
- Keeping Track of Personal Finances, People & Relationships, Tasks, My Projects, and My Areas
- Things I don’t want to forget for Work or Universtiry (My Lecture Notes)
- My Memoir through Daily/Weekly/Yearly Notes
- Blog Posts on my Personal Website
- Summaries and Insights of Talks, Books, Videos, Podcasts, Courses, Literature Notes, …
- Technical Documentation for my HL Home Lab, Commands, Code Snippets, Tools, Services, Hardware Specifications, …
- As well as Questions I can’t answer, Stuff I bought, Quotes, Ideas, Stories and much more.
Calendar
- Used to plan my Personal Schedule and enforce Time Blocking
- Keep track of deadlines, and any kind of events
- I use Thunderbird and Nextcloud Calendar