Why did I build a second brain?

Read to the end for some international gardening accident

Hi everyone, I am Anh Tuan and you received this email because you signed up for Mind the Gap, the newsletter about personal knowledge management systems and productivity. Since this is the first issue and I only had time to tell friends about it, I guess you all know me personally so I deeply thank you for your support. It means a lot to me, really.

To be honest with you, I had a lot of difficulties choosing the topic of this first issue. Personal knowledge management (PKM) is such a broad subject. You may have heard words like second brain, digital garden or even the PARA method. They are quite trendy these days. But how should I start explaining what a personal knowledge management system is at its core ? And that's when I remembered a quote from Nietzsche (can you believe this guy? Quoting some dead German philosopher in his first email, so pretentious) : “If you know the why, you can live any how”. So let's start with the "Why", then.

I started in March 2020 when the world was getting a little bit crazy. COVID was all over the news and like a lot of people, I felt overwhelmed by everything that was happening at the time. So I started writing small notes. At first, it was just a space where I could think outside of my own head. It also gave me a little bit of control about what I was watching and reading. I took a part of my attention back from the endless algorithms of social medias. Then the system grew little by little. Every day, I kept adding new interesting things (interesting to me, at least) I found online. And here is the result 5 years later, here is my digital garden, my second brain.

I have to admit, it does look like a (second) brain ... I guess some buzz words have some truth to them. Every dot you see is a note I wrote. Every color is a category but I'll explain that another time.

Have you noticed the straight grey lines between the dots. They are connections between notes, links I made myself. In this second brain, I have a note about Doestoevsky (a Russian philosopher now, really?) connected to a note about the fear of death in videogames. I have a surfing note linked to one titled “The entrepreneur mindset”. Funny thing is, I cannot ever predict those connections. They appear quite organically to me while exploring my PKM system. Very similar to neurons making connections in our biological brain. And these connections are always eye-opening. I love that aha moment when I see (discover would be a better word) a connection between two very different ideas. And what started as a way to filter all the noise around me became a fertile playground for my mind.

For me, this PKM system has always been great for organizing and generating new ideas. It also sparked so many good conversations. But these ideas were confined to the system itself, private in nature. So my "Why" has slowly evolved and nowadays, I want to publish my ideas more. That's why I started this newsletter and also writing non-fiction in general. All kindled by what I get from my personal knowledge management system.

By the way, here is the exact location where I stored this first issue of Mind the Gap in my digital garden.

Hopefully, you'll find my own experience useful and it will help you find why you would build your own second brain. Maybe you want to stop doom-scrolling, or you want to retain more of what you read. Maybe you want to get better ideas at work. There are so many good reasons to choose from.

Pfiou, the first issue of Mind the Gap is done. See you next Wednesday!
P.S here is some international gardening accident