How To Organize Your Note-Taking App And “Second Brain” (Barbell #10)

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“Second Brain” refers to your digital reference system, containing all the information you find valuable and can be activated at any moment to propel you forward. The repository (primarily your note-taking app) allows your brain to let go of remembering and can thus create insights freely.

To get the most out of your second brain, these four criteria need to be fulfilled:

• Effortless Input. There should be no friction at all to add and edit the system.
• Reliable Retrieval. Information is useless if you cannot find it whenever you need to. The primary use of the system is to equip you with the right material for any given situation.
• Zero Overhead. Every second you spend consciously organizing can be spent creating value instead. The less you need to organize, the better.
• Antifragile. The system must be better the more chaos there is in your environment. The more misery you experience, the more reliable your system must be.

Avoid folders, tags and other organizational top-down methods

The two conventional methods are tags and folders. However, both have their drawbacks:

A system relying on tags forces you to consciously decide how all new notes relate to your existing ones. In other words, you have to expel precious energy just by thinking about where you can retrieve it in the future. Aside from the scale problem, you must make no mistake at all, which is totally unrealistic.

A system relying on folders still forces you to decide which information belongs to which. You can use the same file in multiple instances, which requires some cognitive load. You also suppress the serendipity and randomness of seeing the same file in multiple contexts and become less creative.

In A Perfect Mess, the authors give many convincing arguments against excessive order. It is super fragile and simply not natural and beneficial enough, compared to the steep costs.

By imposing your current procrustean view on how everything should be, you restrict reality to unfold at its terms and miss precious opportunities. Innovation happens by looking outside the general perspective and juxtaposing different entities. Still, you want to find the information as well, without breaking a sweat.

After 2.5 years of experimentation and messing around with systems such as GTD and PARA, I have come to the following solution, breaking free from tags and folders.

How to organize your note-taking app

Your four best friends are search, favorites, hyperlinks, and a random generator.

Search allows you to quickly get a file based on certain keywords regardless of where it is. Therefore, if you know or sort of know what you are looking for, you should always search for it. My preferred note-taking app Mem.ai has the fastest and most powerful search function I have ever experienced, thus ranking is very high.

Favorites allow certain information to be quickly accessible via a sidebar. In real life, your notes follow a power-law structure. A few notes receive almost all attention from you, thus making them as visible as possible.

In other words, if you visit a certain note regularly, you want to add to favorites. In Mem.ai, you click on the star to add it to the sidebar.

Hyperlinks allow you to relate different information on the fly, making them easy to go back and forth when you are working. They are temporary constellations and do not require extra overhead. Therefore, you get the benefits of the folders without needing to organize. In Mem.ai, you type + and the name of the note you want to link.

Finally, a random note generator provides the ultimate way to see your notes unconditionally, breaking free from your worldview and boosting your creativity to space. This one is optional but highly recommended. In Mem.ai, you type “Surprise Me” in the search bar and can enjoy the dopamine hits.

How it looks like in practice

To add new information, simply create a new note and type. In Mem.ai, you can just type.

Easy right? Has your jaw reached the floor yet?

Then, when you want to retrieve information, you have the following options.

• Search, if you sort of know what you are looking for. Multiple searches are WAY better than a fragile sorting system.
• Favorites to access your most referred notes via the sidebar
• Hyperlinks to link related notes, making it easier to travel across them without worrying of collapse.
• Random note generator if you want to be unconditionally inspired, transcend your current understanding and generate insights you never could have foreseen otherwise.

Why This Organizational System Is By Far The Best

You get all benefits with the second brain without thinking about organizing. Thus you fulfill the Zero Overhead criterion.

You also become antifragile and unstoppable. You can have 100, 1000, 3000, or even a billion notes, and the system will not change at all. It is still as easy as having just ten notes. Therefore, no amount of stress and chaos can harm you, rather the opposite.

You benefit from more notes in the system since you get better results in search. Your favorites will still be at a manageable number (because you can replace some). Hyperlinks exist free from other notes. Your random note generator now has a mind of its own.

The only way to make it even better is to apply Artificial Intelligence to the process, a constant advisor that can guide your thinking. Fortunately, the wonderful Mem.ai is already working on a solution, called Mem X. I look forward to the great revolution it will give to the existing note market. In the meantime, you are already set.

Monday’s article will apply the same principles to your file managers such as Google Drive, Dropbox, and local hard drive.

If you like this article series, you will enjoy the full e-book (a full expansion on how to use the Barbell System in your daily life). Click here to learn more.

Originally published at The Total Living.