Brandon J. Kessler's Blog

My Personal Ramblings

Building My Second Brain - Part 2

Previously I had mentioned these 4 tools as being essential for My Second Brain: Google Keep, Google Docs, Google Calendar, and Google Tasks. Since writing Part 1, I have tinkered with and used those tools in my “Production” Second Brain and discovered I don’t need one of the tools. I have also been reading more of Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and learned about Progressive Summarization. After reading about and using Progressive Summarization that solidified the removal of the tool in question

Changing your Toolset

I still want to utilize the Google Product Suite for my Second Brain as many of the apps work well across one another, and it’s accessible from anywhere there’s internet. Google Calendar has remained in the toolset and is one of the most important tools for me. I have a bad habit of losing track of time and events, so without a calendar I’m unable to function as an adult. Google Tasks helps me capture small tidbits of actionable items, such as if my wife asks me to do something, or I notice that a chore or task needs to be done and I’m already doing another task. Google Docs/Drive allows me to store all sorts of information in the cloud. That leaves Google Keep, and I ended up removing Google Keep from my toolset.

Removing Google Keep

Part of the purpose of a Second Brain is to retain information in an organized system. It’s important not just to keep that information, but also to recall it. While we generally think of information in the context of text, information is also in video and photo forms. It can also be in audio-only. Google Keep is capable of storing simple text, images, and audio fine, but it is far harder to organize Google Keep to fit within the structure of P.A.R.A. Doing so adds a lot of extra overhead, which ends up working against you in the process.

Utilizing your tools

The big takeaway from this is that you need 3 primary tools for building your second brain: \

  1. A place to store and reference information
  2. A task management system
  3. A time management system

Google’s suite of tools gives you that with Google Drive (and Docs/Sheets/Slides/Drawings), Google Tasks, and Google Calendar. Each of those tools can cross over, but they each do something better than the others. For example, you could use Google Drive/Docs only. You could have a master planner setup in Docs and use that for your task management and even calendar. However you miss out on the alerts built into Google Tasks and Google Calendar on your devices with push notifications. You also lose a lot of your collaboration with other people if you don’t use Google Calendar. What Tiago has shown in his book is that you can use the PARA system in multiple apps and contexts and maintain most of its benefits, but you also want to use the right tool for the job. That’s why I strongly recommend breaking your tools out into distinct functions.

Storing Information: Google Drive

Storing information and referencing it is the foundation for your Second Brain. The other important piece for my Second Brain is that I need to build modules of information. For example, I’m learning a lot about Intune, Azure AD, Autopilot, and PowerShell, all the time. So anytime I’m introduced to a new concept or term or problem I create a new Google Doc and title it “PowerShell - <The Thing I Just Learned>” and then proceed to type up my notes, or copy the link to the article I was reading and then summarize the important pieces. It can be just a few lines of a snippet of code or it can be a whole book summarization, the module’s length isn’t the important aspect here. The other benefit of doing modules is that when you search for that information in your Second Brain and find something that is similar, you can either add to that or make a new module if it’s not a great fit with the current information. It allows you to remix you information and knowledge as you gain more understanding around it.

Which brings me to why you should use Google Drive for storing your information. Each item is given a unique URL in your Google Drive. So as you create these little modules of information you can also link to them from other Documents. This includes videos, pictures, etc. So you can create your own little rabbit holes to follow on subjects, and it also makes that information easier to share out to others if you choose, and it is an integral part of the next set of tools

Storing Tasks: Google Tasks

Task management is such an important part of knowledge work, but also one of the most difficult things to really create a system that’s flexible. Luckily, if you are using Google Drive to store all your information, any task management software gets much more useful. You can copy the link to a file or folder in Google Drive and paste that into your task’s description if you have a lot more information that goes along with the task. If the task is part of a project, you can add that project folder’s link. The key is that you can easily access any information that relates to that task easily.

Storing Dates: Google Calendar

I am personally useless without a calendar. I just forget when things are supposed to be happening, and I can suffer from time blindness. I can get so engrossed in a thing that I don’t realize hours have passed and I missed that super-important meeting. So the calendar is where once plans have been suggested or solidified I enter that information. Even if friends are saying “Next weekend we should do this thing” I will block out a time window for them. The bonus to using Google Calendar is that if you put due-dates in your Google Tasks it will show up in your calendar, too. Neat!

Putting it all together

  1. Create a folder in Google Drive called “SecondBrain”
    1. Pro-tip: You can name it “!!SecondBrain” so that when you sort by Name it’s always at the top
  2. In your “SecondBrain” Folder create the following folders
    1. Projects
    2. Areas
    3. Resources
    4. Archive
  3. In your “Projects” folder create a folder called “Building My Second Brain”
  4. In “Projects/Building My Second Brain” create two (2) Google Docs titled “Building a Second Brain - Article - Progressive Summarization” and “Building a Second Brain - Article - The PARA Method”
  5. Copy and Paste this link into “Building a Second Brain - Article - Progressive Summarization”: https://fortelabs.com/blog/progressive-summarization-a-practical-technique-for-designing-discoverable-notes/
  6. Read through the entire series on Forte Labs and summarize as you read in your Google Doc
  7. Copy and Paste this link into “Building a Second Brain - Article - The PARA Method”: https://fortelabs.com/blog/para/
  8. Read and summarize in that Google Docs
  9. Create a Task in Google Tasks that says “List all open tasks”
  10. Create a Task in Google Tasks that says “List all open Projects”
  11. Create a task for each task that you can think of now, and throughout your day. All of them. No filter.
  12. Create a task with “Project: <Project Title>” for each project
  13. Now, check off “List all open tasks” and “List all open Projects”
  14. Now in your Calendar schedule 15 to 30 minutes of review time each day. Review your projects during this time:
    1. Take a project from your task list and create a folder in your “SecondBrain/Projects” folder with its name
    2. Create a Google Doc in that project folder and name it “<Project Name> Overview”
    3. Write out the overall goals of the project, what it’s about, people involved, etc.
    4. Gather all materials for that project and drop them in that folder
    5. In your Calendar add an event for when the project is due. In the description copy and paste the link to that specific project’s folder in Google drive

Final Thoughts