Second Brains are a Lie

what if I told you your second brain was worthless shocking I know as the scholar I'm sure you are you either already have a personal Knowledge Management System or you're endeavoring to build one perhaps an obsidian Vault with a Gras so large it has become self-aware or mayhaps a notion template so perfectly put together that the Angels themselves sang out or perhaps a little tasin so deeply interl you can follow the back links to the beginning of the universe itself but all these things have one fatal flaw I am not one to destroy without rebuilding

but we have to understand why these personal Knowledge Management Systems these second brains are not the Panacea that productivity gurus have sold us we must understand their flaws so we can come out the other side and manage draw knowledge with purpose from the very invention of personal Knowledge Management Systems otherwise known as writing Plato or more accurately Socrates perhaps lamented their effects in their fadis dialogue as follows for this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it because they will not practice their memory their trust in writing produced by

external characters which are not a part of themselves will discourage the use of their own memory within them you have invented an Elixir not of memory but of reminding and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom not true wisdom for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things knowledge and wisdom we seem to be towing a very thin line what is the difference knowledge is the repetition of the facts and figures of those that have come before you wisdom is the living and lived experience of the lessons

you have collected and understood and integrated into yourself without wisdom you are always reliant on consuming the recorded wisdom of others as knowledge wisdom is what allows you to produce knowledge for yourself if writing and reading produce knowledge does that make them worthless by no means knowledge can be very useful the knowledge that entering a particular cave will result in being mauled by a bear very useful knowledge to have I do not think that you need the lived experience to recognize avoiding that cave would be a great idea knowledge simply needs a purpose if you

entered someone's home and it was overflowing from every crevice with useless objects held on to simply because they might be useful someday you would consider that person a hoarder it should be no different with the knowledge you collect to self diagnose whether you are serving your notes or your notes are serving you ask yourself one simple question what is the last thing you produced using the notes you have created now look I myself have fallen victim to the self-gratification of personal Knowledge Management I used to collect all sorts of notes on random thoughts I had

I was overflowing with them and they never turned into anything I deleted all of them and I started recording the things I cared about I started recording my theories on a well-lived life the very scripts for this YouTube channel are produced from my notes about a well-lived life and I am overflowing with content of script ideas for this channel knowledge is helpful but only when it's serving a cause to revisit the art of ZL tasin for a moment we can look at its historical Prodigy Nicholas Lumen Nicholas was a massively productive social scientist he produced

over 50 books and 600 written articles proponents of zedel tasin look at him and say that the key to achieving and producing things like Nicholas is to follow his personal Knowledge Management philosophy however this is not so they have incorrectly tied his success to his particular note-taking system this is the opposite of how it should be Nicholas didn't find his purpose because he collected a bunch of notes he collected a bunch of notes because he had awesome things he was trying to do he was passionate about his field of study he consumed massive amounts of

information and the note taking system was produced is a byproduct of it his passion did not come from the notes the notes are simply a byproduct of the passion you will not wake up one day and have suddenly published 50 books simply because you put every interesting quote you found into a journal however you may wake up one day and find you have a wealth of notes you have collected while diving deeply into a topic you passionately care about remember knowledge is a he helpful guide but do not put it ahead of purposefully getting things

done get your hands dirty live the experience and collect that wisdom and don't worry the notes will come before you click away pause for a moment and consider what is one project you're passionate about getting done and what are the steps you need to take today to start moving closer to it being a reality I know you're going to do great and I look forward to hearing about the a awesome things you achieve soon have a good one