After using several of these "second brain" apps & systems and ultimately creating my own "second brain" app, I agree with this, and the general sentiment behind it. This space is just a rebranded subset of self-help. It's the productivity porn market. Roam Research was the first to realize the cash gains to be made in this space. Their marketing hook took off, they got their VC handout, and they haven't been heard from since.
People who use these things are fooling themselves. I used to fool myself. We're not really achieving or producing and we're certainly not "assimilating knowledge." What we're doing is procrastinating. We're wasting time. We're struggling at our current, real endeavors, and we turn to a scapegoat: "oh darn, it's my knowledge management system that needs work; oh, it's just my productivity system that's just not efficient enough". So we find a nice game, a tool game [1], to: (1) distract ourselves (2) give us the feeling of accomplishment - "I'm taking second brain notes in a fun new app - I'm learning!".
For me, the first step to actually getting things done wasn't to optimize my productivity workflow, it wasn't to find the perfect knowledge management app/system, it was to...get things done. When I became dissatisfied with my work, when I hit a difficult obstacle with my projects, I felt pain, and procrastinated to avoid that pain. There was no secret cure. I just needed to realize that playing with these tools and systems is not getting things done - it's just procrastination.
It's been quite a while since I disagreed with something this intensely.
I built my own "digital notebook" and use it literally every single day for almost everything I do. When I'm in the middle of a project, I use it to take notes, write down questions, organize my thoughts, and save useful web links. It's hard for me to overstate how critical this to is to my day-to-day life. My notes ARE the thing I need most in order to "just get shit done."
Yes, there are "tool fetishists" in this space, just like you'll find in any career or hobby. They get their enjoyment out of tinkering with these apps and cataloging the hell out of their notes. I'm not one of those which is why my app has practically no curation abilities. But I also think it's in extremely bad taste to shame those who apparently enjoy it.
Right but the important part is the notes, not the notebook. It could be notecards, google drive, text files in git, sqlite, whatever. The fact that you take the notes and can find them later when you need them are literally the only two important factors here.
The "fooling themselves" element is in thinking adding sophistication beyond two those things improves the usefulness of the notes themselves. And there's some personal flexibility here too sure; if you truly can't ever find a note when you need it and adding a tagging system gets you there then that's useful additional sophistication.
I think the point they were trying to make, definitely the one I'm making, is that the line between useful system and hobbyist tinkering is a lot lower than people want to think, because they want to ascribe purpose or benefits to their tinkering. Which is where the productivity porn comes in, a framework that only values things if they are or contribute to "productivity" demands everything be productive, demands that you justify it.
But truly and honestly if you have a flat folder of text files and grep you have what you need and beyond that is tinkering. That's what people are fooling themselves about.
Yes, thatis the problem The post mentions over two dozen theories/frameworks/techniques that amount to useless sophistication. Taking notes is the point, you don’t need two dozen theories
> After using several of these "second brain" apps & systems and ultimately creating my own "second brain" app, I agree with this, and the general sentiment behind it. This space is just a rebranded subset of self-help. It's the productivity porn market. Roam Research was the first to realize the cash gains to be made in this space. Their marketing hook took off, they got their VC handout, and they haven't been heard from since.
Honestly, this is probably a good description of your situation, but certainly not everyone's. I use Obsidian every day and nothing you've written resonates with me. I dump things into the tool. I find those things when I need them. I'm much, much more productive as a result. Plus the sync is the best I've ever used. Works flawlessly every time on my Linux desktop, my Surface running Windows, my Chromebook, and my Android phone.
Did you fuss over the differences between obsidian and one note and google keep or whatever? Or did you just decide one day you need to note things down more and found obsidian and stuck to it?
If there’s any productivity gain to be had here, it’s because you chose to write things down in a system you can search. Maybe the hyperlinking works, maybe it doesn’t. I’ve met a decent number of productive smart people and have seen zero correlation between note taking styles (or even note taking at all) and their outputs.
> If there’s any productivity gain to be had here, it’s because you chose to write things down in a system you can search. Maybe the hyperlinking works, maybe it doesn’t.
I realized that my system was useless if it didn't do 100% of what I needed. Sure, search usually works, but sometimes I need linking. If I'm taking notes on a paper, search doesn't help - I need a link to the paper and convenient storage.
> I’ve met a decent number of productive smart people and have seen zero correlation between note taking styles (or even note taking at all) and their outputs.
That's because needs vary widely. My father ran a business doing things like installing water and power lines. He didn't have an elaborate notes system, but he had one that was elaborate enough. Some things had to be captured and had to be retrievable with certainty. It had to be something he could do from the inside of the backhoe.
I'm an academic. My needs are vastly different. His system would not have helped me at all.
I'm not denying that some people waste time on these things. I don't see that as an argument that all of these apps and systems are useless though.
Most smart people I know are academics though. Professors. They’re actually notorious for NOT taking notes! Except maybe when they’re writing a book or something.
I think I found the easiest solution to this. I only change my knowledge management system at the top of the year. Whatever I decide on for that year, I stick to it, whether I like it or hate it by June.
Some years I use filing cabinets. Some years I use OneNote. Some years I use Markdown. It all depends on the collection of tasks I expect to be doing.
At the end of the year, I make everything (worth saving) a PDF, no matter what system I used - because they're very utilitarian. Then I decide if I'm going to keep using the same system. For the last three years, I've used self-hosted GitLab exclusively, even for non-code stuff.
I doubt I'll adopt Obsidian next year, but if you don't already have a system, it's probably as good as any.
> (1) distract ourselves (2) give us the feeling of accomplishment
I agree. A lot of personal systems like this are indeed unconsciously used to (1) and (2). This is especially the case when you try to implement a very complex+generic one like this vault. I can guarantee 90-99% failure, albeit you may learn something along the way !
Also, it is not a "BRAIN". It is worth stressing that because It is a bad and misleading name (almost as bad as PKM)
But you are generalizing too much. The problem is the "just" in your "it's just procrastination."
The thread is pointing to many benefits. For ME, it is not even about productivity anymore. It is about "healthier" work environment (in research-intensive activities).
More than that, It is not even about "ME" anymore. It about creating better tools and systems in the long term. Obsession and Fooling-ourselves (at the "MICRO" level) is exactly what feeds that larger MACRO evolutionary dynamics.
> We're not really achieving or producing
Speaking of fooling-ourselves, I feel that getting things done itself (at any cost) is also sometimes just a way to distract ourselves and give us the feeling of accomplishment, and also to "avoid that pain" (all three you cited). We may also be fooling ourselves at occasions here too in our rush to “producing” and "“producing” stuff. just saying…
And just like that we've hit infinite regress and the core existential questions to it all, why must we accomplish, is it to be happy? Accomplishments are finite and can die/fade away/stop, so placing your worth and peace of mind on them is subject to eventual failure and maybe even a crisis down the road, you'll keep wanting more, Kiarostami once said, responding to if he feels proud of his work, something to the affect of, 'proud is too big a word for humans'. So what is curation then? Is a PKM just a technology to help us remember? Again, to what end, I suppose it's all just instrumental
a page from Lao Tzu comes to mind
> Those who think to win the world
> by doing something to it,
> I see them come to grief.
>For the world is a sacred object.
>Nothing is to be done to it.
>To do anything to it is to damage it.
> To seize it is to lose it.
People should start using these apps as simple note-taking apps and extend/adapt them based on their needs, rather than diving head-first into these complicated methods/systems to form a "second brain".
If you go straight into OPs system you'll spend way more time trying to figure out how it works (and it might not even work for you) rather than getting actual work done
Start simple. Write a few notes. Maybe you need to draw things: add Excalidraw. Maybe some note structures are similar: consider Templater.
> People should start using these apps as simple note-taking apps and extend/adapt them based on their needs
This. I'm a hardcore Obsidian user both at work and at home, and I started both vaults from absolutely nothing - no user scripts, no organisation, literally no plan at all. Since then, they've evolved and optimized in radically different ways. Taking someone else's "system" is just a way to fool yourself into thinking you can be more productive than you are; you have to find that for yourself and what works specifically for you.
My personal vault is geared much more toward organizing creativity, with a little bit of task-oriented stuff and technical documentation, while my corporate vault is heavily schedule based and contains mostly tactical information, meeting notes and thoughts, etc. For it to be a "second brain", you need it to model your brain - and I work very modally. I have a "work mode" and a "non-work mode" that order things pretty differently, and it shows in the hierarchies and organization of both vaults.
Interesting that you have so few vaults. I have dozens of them, each for a different project, or for different aspects of the same project. The way folders work in Obsidian is quite bad, when I am creating a new note it insists in putting it into the top folder instead of in the folder where I am currently in, so I prefer to keep it flat. I am just using the default setup and cannot be bothered much with plugins. There is no proper API documentation either.
Exactly. At its core Obsidian and similar apps allow you to make notes, connect them easily _and search for them_ using GUI. That's it. That is how I try to explain what it does to someone interested. These modern apps are a huge step forward, if someone prefers emacs or vim/fzf - no problem.
This is the note-taking version of Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) in practically any hobby, e.g. camera bodies and lenses for photography, instruments and software for music. After the initial honeymoon phase, you realize that achieving that idyllic lifestyle advertised by the new gear actually requires work instead of purchase or download. The only antidote is to actually start using the damn thing.
I've dubbed this "theoretical productivity"[1] and also fall into this trap. I keep thinking that just moving to a different app/system with X feature will make this 100x better for me. That goldilocks app/system doesn't exist and is always a moving target. Spending time on solving these problems mean I'm not thinking/writing/completing the things I really want to, hence the "theoretical" nature.
1: There's a good chance this is already a term with a different meaning. If that's the case I don't mean to rip it off, it's just what sounded good at the time.
I think I historically suffered from a form of this: I loooooved setting up for a project but didn’t really like doing the project. Whether it was downloading the resources and setting up a workspace for a code project or setting up a physical work area for some electronics work.
Same! And that's why I'm now a DevOps engineer. In my role, DevOps primarily means automation and pipeline creation, working with teams to build and release their apps reliably and effectively. For me, it really scratches the itch of "setting things up".
Gosh I love dev ops. Smaller company so I have many hats. I saved a whole week of “clean up CI/CD and make the integration tests 3x faster” as a “treat” for the last week before vacation this year.
People like you are heroes in the workplace to me. I hate anything devops related because I feel like it takes time away from the stuff I'm trying to do, so I appreciate anyone who does it!
It is also simply called procrastination, bike shedding, yak shaving, fear of success, fear of failure, Forest of the Infinite [0], list goes on... depending on the context.
On the other side, as we are already using computers, we might sometimes want to explore and get lost in this forest of problems and possible solutions and have some fun.
After all, as Douglas Adams put it:
“(..) a nerd is a person who uses the telephone to talk to other people about telephones. And a computer nerd therefore is somebody who uses a computer in order to use a computer.”
I've really only dipped my toe into what Obsidian is capable of (very few plugins), but I took it up a month or two ago as a sort of minimal-resistance place to do simple but interlinked text mind dumps, and for that use case I've come to enjoy it more than I thought I would.
Thoughts that were dissipating into the ether now increasingly get written down there, which frees up mental bandwidth for other things, which has translated in increased motivation to actually do the things I'm writing about.
I'd tried doing similar things with Apple Notes and Bear in the past, but it never stuck very well and I didn't find myself revisiting notes too often. Something about Obsidian has worked better so for though and I'm not sure what it is.
That said, I could see easily getting lost in the weeds and "overmanaging".
Hmmm! Please don't discourage them. I actually feel I should write a lot and just put it out. What I have learnt the most are from other people, comparing them, "stealing" from them and modifying them. There should be more opinions, and ideas.
I like it when people feel good about what they do, spend a few minutes each weekend and then in months or even years, they publish it. Or just publish as you go on. I also like "work-in-progress" in the wild.
I think there is an ultimate unproductive productivity local minima there somewhere. I suspect if someone kept a knowledge base of productivity hacks it would tend towards recursive collapse.
- Look at the endless threads in /r/fitness discussing the 0.01% gain of getting the exact rep range right vs likely just going to the gym.
- you can browse /r/language for days and prepare yourself fully for the day you actually begin ... learning a language
It's a type of productivity illusion, I think there is just a greater overlap of this community with HN.
That being said, I highly recommend obsidian to anyone, it's a great place to journal, and capture ideas. But just start typing, and don't worry too much about organization (ironically this is the biggest benefit of the tool).
I agree with you. I take a hell lot of notes and I still don't fully understand what the OP's post is really about. I don't understand the second brain philosophy at all.
I disagree in terms of my own actual usage, after the initial excitement, but that is a real danger. That said, the most beneficial usage of my notes system has been the flat "tech notes" directory of tagged files on how to do various twiddly computer things (steps and commands to "get X to work"). I used Obsidian briefly but find abandoned it for just the markdown, vim, and a helper python script to search tags.
Thats funny to me because my main gripe with Obsidian et al is this Reductio ad absurdum down to unformatted text as the central organizing principle of modern knowledge. Rich text, screenshots, video snips, audio, etc are shoehorned in and don't quite fit. Give me a better organized system of Infinate canvases of whatever I want to throw in there over a souped up html file any day.
I get by with links - either URLs or just file paths (and I have a vim short cut which passes the file name to "open" on OS X). Not great for everything - inline math for example. I just write raw LaTeX and pretend some tool will eventually come along and render things nicely if I want.
If all the files are open at the same time in the same canvas with multilayer deep linking , easy search, great graph summary and diagnostics and tools like local OCR and speech to text etc then sure yes a file system sounds fine.
I disagree personally, but I don't use Obsidian like most people. The majority of my notes just have a couple sentences. I mainly make notes about new project ideas, cool things I find online (eg. a note for each new programming language I discover), and cheatsheets (eg. a bash scripting cheatsheet).
I probably spend 15 minutes total writing in Obsidian each week. I'm not writing down things that I don't have difficulty remembering or things that are very easy to search for online. Obsidian is a place for me to store info that I might want later but would have difficulty finding/remembering again.
I am inclined to agree. I have switched to simple journaling, and so far it's been better. Basically I just journal every day with one file for every day, no branching out into other files.
Then I have a "timeline view" which let's me quickly see what I journaled in the past. This helps me focus on actually writing something down instead of thinking about naming things etc. So far it's great. And I can still use ripgrep to find all notes/occurrences with e.g. some specific word quickly.
Exactly! It actually has helped me because I've quickly seen things I wanted to do e.g. last week but somehow forgot.
But I still can rest knowing that everything is archived.
I use it, I don't write stuff outside hn comments lol. Obsidian is very cool, like onenote but more siliconvalley-ish and smarter.
I hate that I needed to install flatpack for it but that is literally my only complaint. Sadly, it can't replace a text/code editor lime sublime which is where I dumped a lot of non-note knowledge. If only sublimetext copied some of this stuff for markdown.
In school,I never, ever took notes unless threatened. I mention that to show you how even someone like me liked Obsidian.
> people who use these “second brain” knowledge systems spend more time writing about using them, then actually using them.
All people is far too strong of a claim I think, though if you'd said (or in fact mean) many I might agree.
Is systems attract people who feel they need a better system surprising though? Or is it surprising we hear most from those who go on to spend much of their time talking about systems?
I think there are many who have and use a second brain effectively, but perhaps most don't know that term.
Disclaimer: I use obsidian myself