How to Build a Second Brain as a Content Creator
One of my first inspirations when I started to learn about the second brain comes from the ’s Capture Workflow:
I was fascinated by that system, so I started building my own second brain for a couple of months.
This is my current configuration:
I’ll give you a quick overview about which these tools are.
About that: I am trying to validate a PKM idea/startup called ZenPKM and I’m looking to talk with passionate like yourself about the subject.
Here is my project
https://yep.so/p/zenpkm?ref=medium
Ok, now let’s dive into the nitty gritty.
First things first
The most important decision for me was choosing the note taking app.
It’s the foundation of your knowledge.
I have decided, as far as possible, to use similar software to those suggested by Tiago.
Since I already knew nothing of the philosophy of the second brain,
if I had used his tools, I would have eliminated a variable and saved time.
So I decided to use Evernote.
And as second thing, I setup the P.A.R.A. on .
Master the inputs
After setting up the knowledge base, I focused on my inputs.
We mainly have 3 categories: text, audio and video.
Any of these will converge into our Second Brain
Capture the text
The core of my knowledge consists of text type inputs.
The first tool can’t miss from my toolbox is a read it later app.
I use Instapaper, the 's creature, which contains my text inputs:
- articles I read from InoReader (which contains the RSS feeds of my favourite blogs)
- articles from Medium
- newsletters
Important configuration to do:
- go on Settings > Connected Accounts
- connect your Evernote account
- check the heart and highlights icon.
This is the reason:
once I have my reading stuff organized on Instapaper, I pick an article and during the reading, whether I found something interesting I want to capture, I highlight it.
Automagically the highlighted sentence will ends into your Evernote.
And if you press the heart icon on an article, you’ll have the whole post saved into Evernote, just after a few seconds.
This is so powerful.
To take advantage of the highlights power, you need to sign up for the premium version.
Non-subscribers get 5 free highlights per month:
absolutely useless in my opinion.
Capture the audio
My audio basically comes from podcasts I listen, and I yet explained 7 ways to take notes from podcasts.
I currently use inspod as capture tool beween my podcast app, Pocket Casts and Evernote
Capture the video
I rarely take notes from videos, but when I do, I use Liner.
Inspod offers a way to note taking too.
Other tools I quickly tested are the following:
I talked more about that here:”How To Take Notes From Videos (For Second Brain)”.
File storage
I use both Google Drive and OneDrive.
When my pdfs need to be well organized and quick to find, then I store them here.
Instead, when I have a random pdf, than I feel free to save it on Evernote.
For my personal choice, Google Drive contains documents about my web projects, such as my PianoRebel.com website, where I help people play the best rock songs on the piano.
OneDrive contains my personal stuff instead.
The P.A.R.A structure folder is located on both of my cloud storages.
Little useful services
Before to meet the second brain methodology, I used to manage everything into my task manager (more details later).
So I used Todoist to save my tasks, but other kind of things too, like bookmarks, articles to read, my wishlist.
it was a bad habit.
Only later I learned that a task manager should manage just actionable items.
That seems trivial, I know, but for me wasn’t.
Once I understood the error, I moved some items into dedicated apps, such as:
- Raindrop.ai it organizes all my bookmarks, and I can access them from my desktop or smartphone.
- Bitwarden I was paying LastPass, but I tried Bitwarden, and I liked sooo much! And it’s free 😉
- Wish Explorer it’s a simple app where I store all my ideas about my shopping list. I can access it from my browser too.
Manage tasks and calendar
I’m such a fan of GTD method by , and I love to manage my tasks workflow with Todoist.
I can’t help but advice you to learn how Tiago Forte executes his own Weekly Review.
Todoist has a great integration with Google Calendar:
when you add a task on Todoist, you find it on Calendar, and vice versa.
Manage the Content Creator Life
Here is a bunch of tools to getting things done as a content creator.
Obsidian
I only use Obsidian for a few things.
I manage my life plan taking advantage of its powerful feature: the workspaces.
I learned the life plan stuff from , and about the template I use, any credit goes to him (thanks Andrea!)
In my life plan, we start from the end, with a very long vision of one’s life, and then go backwards, towards goals at a distance of 5 years, annual, 3 months, monthly and weekly.
Thanks to the workspaces, I have a vision of many panels, assembled together. Each panel has a goal with its own time-span. And that’s how I get a life overview.
On Obsidian I also keep my Standard Operating Procedures about the workflow I use to publish videos on my YouTube channel
Notion
I tried to use Notion as my hub (instead of Evernote), but didn’t worked for me.
I needed something less structured, where to throw my ideas seeds, and let them grow.
On notion, my ideas simply didn’t grow. Instead on Evernote they do.
So I’m using Notion just for informations needing more architecture, like Kanban, Pages and nested pages.
At the moment, I’m managing my learning stuff there, with a kanban.
( & , look at the screenshot: someone will be proud here 😄)
Google Keep
For my “Rock on piano” newsletter I needed something easy to manage.
Here too, nothing complex, and I’m getting along well with Google Keep.
I use it as a large inbox, and as I compose my newsletter, I delete the content that I no longer need.
I was fully inspired by a podcast episode from (thanks so much Robin!)
Airtable
I needed a tool helping me track the production workflow of my videos.
I used Notion, but for some strange reason, I was no able.
So I tried Airtable and I fallen in love.
If you are a geeky dev, you’ll like the spreadsheet/database style of this application.
Here is an example of my piano covers list I could publish as content on my channel:
And this is the kanban view of my content production (I love it)
Backup
I never thought I could lose my files, until I lost some of my data a few months ago.
To have a small safety net against these accidents,
my data is on my computer, on the cloud storage, and I periodically make a backup of this information.
I have a lot to improve in this area, which is very critical..
Conclusion
Building a second brain gives you magical moments:
The first magic moment is when you realize that you are storing a lot of data in another place, out of you!
The second magic moment is when you start using it, invisibly, forgetting all the configurations and automatisms that are triggered in background under the hood.
The magic might end when you think, “But how much does all this goodness cost?” 🤣
Let me know if you are interested and I will consider writing about it.
