Building My Second Brain

By Rainer Selvet ·

second brain graph

Over the years, I’ve tried pretty much every note and task manager out there. I’ve probably went through nearly 50 of them and even built a couple. There’s something extremely satisfying for me in discovering new tactics for maximising personal productivity.

Counterintuitively, a system that I stayed with for the longest period, was a physical bullet journal. This 1 years worth of tasks and ideas now exists as an artifact on my bookhelf. But this isn’t about physical notetaking, which still has a place in my workflow. It’s just not fast enough for most things I do.

One of my all-time favorite guilty pleasures is indulging in productivity porn. - Marc Andreessen 1

What’s has become increasingly important for my digital work:

  1. quick entry
  2. effortless recall
  3. owning the source text (markdown) off any platforms
  4. great iOS support - I need to capture the fleeting thoughts when I’m in the line for groceries
  5. not being tied to pre-defined structure (folders) - our brains don’t work this way

I’ve used Roam Research for a period of time, but due to the lack of great mobile support back then, I dropped it after a couple of months. I also didn’t put much thought into what was worth tagging, what not, which ultimately led to a workspace that wasn’t productive.

I’m halfway through Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and giving it a second attempt, now in Loqseq.

The header image shows my second brain after week and a half, let’s see it grow 🧠


  1. Marc Andreessen’s Guide to Personal Productivity from 2017 ↩︎

Tags: Productivity