Capture ideas like Taylor Swift

Read to the end for a funny linguistic coincidence

Hello everyone! Today we are looking into one of Taylor Swift's secrets to her success and as surprising as it sounds, it's her personal knowledge management system! I am Anh Tuan and this is Mind the Gap

Have you ever wondered how Taylor Swift could write hit after hit for 20 years straight? How her lyrics across multiple albums could vividly evoque so many intertwined events of her life (especially breakups)? This is in part thanks to her PKM system and more accurately to her capturing method. And if you remember my last newsletter explaining the CODE system, capturing is the first step.

So how does Taylor Swift capture her ideas? She simply writes them in a notebook she brings everywhere. It can seem obvious but having one dedicated space, doesn't matter if it's digital or analog, and always at hand is the way to go. So go buy a notebook, create a Google Doc, or if you feel fancy, setup Notion or Obsidian (my favorite PKM software, more about it in later issues) and start capturing.

But what should you capture? People often ask me that question and are very surprised by my answer. They are expecting a very rational and systemic way. But for that matter, I really like the intuitive way. After all, you are building a PERSONAL knowledge management system, emphasis on personal, here. But little rule of thumb, if you stumble upon an idea and are pondering if it's worth capturing, just answer these questions:

If you said yes to any of these questions, it means it's an idea worth keeping. For Taylor Swift, it's mainly lines of lyrics about her life. For you, it's probably completely different. That's why it’s important to know why you are building a second brain.

Another thing. The probability of something you read/write being useful to you right at the moment you encounter it is absurdly low. But if you capture it in a system you trust, the chance of it being useful later drastically increases with time. In this interview for Vogue, Taylor Swift said the lyrics of her song Blank Space came to her in fragments months and even years before she actually started working on it. For a long time, she wasn't ready for that song yet but once she was, her notebook (her capturing system) gave her back all the material she needed.

Very similar to this, I first learned about Taylor Swift's songwriting process last year when my friend Inês, a true Swiftie, told me about her amazing lyrics. Instead of just making a mental note of it that I would have forgotten very quickly, I captured it in my system. A year later, I was able to use it in this newsletter. You actually never know when an idea will be useful to you. So start capturing! If it's good enough for Taylor Swift, it's good enough for you

Next week, we will see how we can organize things after we capture them. It will be PART 3 of my series about how to start your second brain

P.S here is a funny linguistic coincidence (Instagram post)