Episode 2: Building a Second Brain with Cassidy Scott
Show Notes:
My guest Cassidy Scott and I discuss our latest book club read: Building a Second Brain by Tiago Forte and how we're planning on incorporating it's lessons into our daily lives.
Links Mentioned in the Episode:
Books Mentioned in the Episode:
Transcript
Personal Update
Hello, hello, wonderful people!
This is the personal update segment of this episode. I'm so excited to be recording my second episode!
It's taken me a bit longer to publish than I'd first anticipated, but I got quite ill in January and I have also been re-evaluating my life and commitments. I've decided that for now a monthly release schedule is something that I can actually manage and stick to. So you can expect a new episode of Curious, Chaotic, Creative to be published every four weeks.
I'd love to get to a biweekly release schedule, but as I'm learning all of the tech parts that go into making a podcast, it's taking me a lot of time, not to mention I still have my day job and I'm building my book, coaching and editing business as well.
So far 2023's theme has been trying to be realistic with my limits, so that I don't over-commit, flame out, and then completely abandon my projects.
You may have also noticed that I've changed the name of the podcast. The name that I published the introductory episode on just did not feel right and so I've changed it to Curious, Chaotic and Creative, and I'm much happier with this name. Would you believe that naming the podcast was one of the things I found hardest about starting it? I find naming things incredibly difficult and it kept me stuck for ages.
And so in reading news, I've finished two books since we last chatted: The Good Girl's Guide to Murder by Holly Jackson and Laziness Does Not Exist by Dr. Devin Price.
A Good Girl's Guide to Murder was a solid YA mystery book and I didn't find it was anything extra special, but I enjoyed reading it. But Laziness Does Not Exist by Devin Price was a great book, which dove into the damaging cultural and societal narratives that we have around work and that force most of us to push ourselves to be far busier and more productive than is actually sustainable or healthy for us.
This is a topic that I've slowly been learning more about for a while and I've also been seeing a lot more support for rest enter my corner of the internet, which I fully support. There was a super fascinating section in the book on creativity, which highlighted the need that we have as creatives for quote, unquote, laziness or downtime, and the idea that rest is required for creativity. If we're busy all the time and have no idle time our creativity tanks.
I really enjoyed the book. I think that if it's a topic you're at all interested in, it's a great book to get started. And I'm considering recording a future episode on the topic.
Failures
I'm going to try and be as transparent as I can on this show, which is not something I'm the greatest at doing on social media and some other places in my life. But for me, it's really important that I do that on this show. And in order for me to feel like I'm doing that, I have to talk about my quote unquote failures, the places over the last four weeks where I didn't hit the goals I wanted to, or I've learned a difficult lesson, or things just plain didn't work out like I expected them to.
So here's a few of the things I've "failed" at in the last month:
I entered a short story writing contest that I was super excited about, and then I didn't write or submit anything for it. Which was doubly frustrating as it was a paid competition. Part of it was due to being sick, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my own insecurities around my writing and my chances of success didn't also stop me from doing any writing for it or submitting anything. Fear got the better of me.
After a promising start of getting to the gym at the beginning of the year, I didn't go for the second half of January or the first week of February. Yes, this was partly due to being sick, but it's so frustrating to watch my progress getting halted.
This episode is out, two weeks later than I wanted it to be and I almost didn't even get it out today. I mean, here's hoping I do get it out today. [Dear reader, she did not get it out that day.]
I'm already about four books behind my reading goal for the year. Great.
And I haven't done any meal planning at all, which was one of my goals this year to do more meal planning and grocery shopping around that.
But honestly not reaching goals as frustrating and annoying and sometimes depressing as it can feel is actually really normal.
We usually set goals around things that are difficult or in order to try something new and challenging, so it makes complete sense that we're not going to hit all of them. I'd argue that if you're achieving every goal that you're setting, you're either likely on a path to burnout and/or you're not setting goals that really challenge you.
Successes
The flip side of sharing failures is also sharing my successes. I think that it's critically important that we take time to reflect on things that have gone well and to celebrate our wins, because we need to be proud of ourselves. And this goes for me as much as it goes for anyone else.
So here's some of the things I'm most proud of from the last four weeks:
I'm still going strong using my habit tracker! And I'm finding it very satisfying to see my progress day over day. I've updated it slightly for February, switching some habits around and adding new ones. I'm also trying to move away from outcome-based habits. And instead of embracing process-based habits. So for example, I changed “finished a book” to "read at least 15 minutes”. I also get to market off more often this way, which brings me joy.
I'm just about done my proofreading course! I have one final assignment to submit and then it's done. I've really enjoyed the class, learning more about proofreading, like I got to learn the actual proofreading marks for hard copy and stuff. And I'm excited that it is a service I will be able to offer for clients if they want it.
And I finished two book club books in time for the book club meetings. This is a massive success for me as you'll hear, I hardly ever managed this. I want to try and actually read the books before the book club meetings this year for all of the meetings that I commit to attending and kind of break the habit I've developed of not ever finishing books in time for book club.
Goals for the next four weeks
Looking ahead to the next four weeks, there's a lot I want to accomplish, but here are my main goals:
I want to also publish episode three, four weeks from now, I'm doing my interview with the guest next week and I'm really looking forward to it!
I want to find my final practicum client for my book coaching certification program. I'm ready to complete my final practicum, and I'm really hoping to find a writer to work with within the next four weeks. If you happen to be interested in learning more about becoming my practicum client, I'll have a link in the show notes.
I'm also planning on sending out my first newsletter to my mailing list. To be fair, I'm planning on doing this right after I publish this episode today, so it should be an easy one to accomplish.
And finally, I want to find more podcast guests! I have a wonderful network of indie authors and creatives that I'm hoping to interview on the show. But I definitely don't want to limit it to just people I already know. So if you're interested in being on the show, I'll have a link to a form in the show notes that you can fill out and let me know that you'd like to be on the show.
I'll provide an update on the next episode, on which ones of these I hit along with any I miss or any failures that happen. And if you head over to my website, www.ciannemckinnon.com, you can also find a transcript of the whole episode and you can leave comments there. So if you have anything that you particularly want to hear about or episode ideas that you think would be great, feel free to leave it there, cause I would love to hear from you and make these something that you find interesting and useful.
Now, enough talking about myself, let's get on to the interview!
Pre-Interview Note
I'm adding a quick note here to briefly explain the second brain system, if you're not already familiar with it. Cassidy and I were a good 15 minutes into the interview before I realized that I forgot to explain the system. A second brain system is a system for collecting and managing your personal ideas and the knowledge that we consume. Tiago Forte, the author, describes it as "the combination of a study notebook, a personal journal and a sketchbook for new ideas."
The goal is to have your second brain become a central depository, where you store all of your digital notes and collect your knowledge. The things stored in a second brain are varied. And often include both internal knowledge, such as your own thoughts, experience, and memories from journal entries, and external knowledge that you found useful such as notes from websites, podcasts, books, courses, or anything else that you want to remember in the future.
The magic of the system comes from putting all of this into one space that you can then easily search through and find the knowledge when you need it again, instead of trying to roll up the lie on your brain to remember it all.
The book focuses on why and how to build your own second brain, which the author argues and I agree is an essential tool for the modern human.
Interview
Cianne: Cassidy Scott started her career as a journalist with a Bachelor of Journalism from Kwantlen Polytechnic University. After a few years as a journalist and hoping to build on the skills she already had, she went back to school and got her Master's of Library Information Science from the University of British Columbia.
Her studies focused on how people find information in digital spaces, and she worked a few digital library jobs before landing a co-op job in one of the user experience UX departments at UBC. That's where it all started to click, and she decided to focus her career on UX work and eventually found a home in content strategy.
Cassidy worked for four and a half years at a digital agency called Yellow Pencil, where she helped mostly public sector clients through large, complex website redesigns. She now works at the CRA as one of the first content strategists for the organization. She organizes structures, writes and works on web content with the hopes of making it useful and accessible for everyone.
Welcome to the show, Cassidy!
Cassidy: Thank you for having me. Hi, Cianne!
Cianne: Hi! [That] felt very formal. Cassidy is a really good friend, but she is also very knowledgeable about information and how to structure it and how people find it. And because we run our own private book club of two, which is where we've read the book of today, which is Building a Second Brain, I was extra excited to get her insight into this area as she has the library sciences background and does content management, and I thought that they had a very cool overlap.
Cassidy: That's very kind of you. Thank you. And you're absolutely right. I'm sure we'll get into it as we discuss, but it felt very complimentary to the work that I do.
Cianne: Yeah, I can only imagine. So what we're gonna talk about today is Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential by Tiago Forte. It's a fantastic book that I will right here, right now, admit to only having finished 54% as of the time that we record this episode.
Cassidy: I feel like I need to mention that it's maybe like half of the books for our book club of two that you finished over the years.
Cianne: I think that's being generous.
Cassidy: Yeah, that’s generous?
Cianne: I think that's, I am, I'm not a great book club partner, I'll have to admit to that. But Cassidy keeps putting up with me, which I am endlessly thankful for.
Cassidy: As we've discussed. I really need the buddy to force me to work on it. So it works for both of us cuz you read as much of the book as you feel like and then I have the accountability to finish.
Cianne: And this book, I know that I am actually gonna finish it after this conversation cause I, part of the reason I haven't finished it yet is it feels like every page I kind of have to just stop and stare off into space because I'm like, this is fundamentally changing how I understand information and how to store it and think about it.
So, Yeah, I guess we can dive right into it.
Cassidy: Sure.
Cianne: What were your general thoughts about the book as you read through it?
Cassidy: My general thoughts is I enjoyed the book. As you had said, it's very complimentary to library science in that most of it wasn't new for me. I probably read it a lot faster than most people might, having never been introduced to a lot of the concepts, because for me, it's like you could go to a library school or you could read this book. Almost. Like there's a lot of the same concepts in there.
So honestly, for somebody who's sort of knowledgeable about information management, I know that Tiago Forte, the author, he writes a lot of blog posts, so I might actually, you know, recommend people check those out if they don't feel dipping into a full book on the topic, because I think if you're already fairly knowledgeable about that, you probably don't need to read the book, but if these are very new concepts to you, I thought it was very approachable in the way that he framed a lot of the concepts and he used a lot of like popular culture examples, or he would bring in famous writers, musicians, artists, and how they incorporate this into their workflows. So I thought that was very accessible for people.
But by and large, I think for me, it was just interesting in the way that he framed a lot of the pieces where I knew them in more of a high level , I guess, or some of them, or some of them in a very, very detailed level. So sometimes it was very nice to approach it from sort of his higher level where you're in the weeds on it and vice versa.
So I had a good time reading it, but I don't know if everybody needs to read it, you know what I mean? If you're already knowledgeable in this area, it might not be for you, but I think if this is something you've never heard of before, it's very approachable.
Cianne: Yeah I think that makes a lot of sense and as I was reading through it, there was even, there was one line that I thought was very funny cause it talks about discoverability and then it was like “in library sciences” and I was like, Cassidy already knows all this.
Cassidy: But as the worst part on that one was, he cited Wikipedia and I was like, you cited Wikipedia for library sciences. You know that Wikipedia is where you start but it's not where you finish your reference.
Cianne: Oh, tactical error number one. Probably not number one, but one that we're calling out. But I agree. I thought, well, I agree with a slightly different lens cuz I have not done a masters of library sciences, although they sound really cool.
But I have less knowledge, a lot less knowledge, on information structuring and finding in this way, but I thought it was very approachable, so even though it kept challenging how I think about information and note-taking and all this other stuff that I wish I had learned years ago when doing any of my post-secondary education. I also found it really approachable even without that background.
And what I really have loved so far about the book is Tiago's like focus on always coming back to bringing it to action. Like, what are you going to use with your notes? What are you going to do with this? And that makes it so much more approachable and usable. It makes it so much clear how it all ties together. If you're thinking through, okay, well how would I use this? And then he actually gives you mini assignments that you can do to get used to using the topics, which I love. Not all nonfiction books that are introducing new concepts do that.
Even if they're trying to be like, this is how you can do it. They don't then tell you how to put into action. So that was something I really liked about the book.
Cassidy: Absolutely. He actually lets you look behind the curtain of his system and here's however many years that he has been working on his second brain, he's like, here's the things that I've worked for me.
Which is nice, you know, where you can talk to experts who have never actually done the thing that they're talking about. Right. And it feels very much like "oh, okay. I guess I'll try and take this and figure it out." And he's like, here you go. Here's a template. And that just is so much nicer. And it feels a little, I guess, kinder to the audience to be like, it's not that hard. You can give it a try for yourself.
Cianne: Mm-hmm.
Yeah. His focus on like making it easy was super great and I am definitely one who's prone to over-complicating systems and organizing and then getting overwhelmed and abandoning it. And I felt that this book did a really good job of being like, Hey, this is a common pitfall. Maybe don't do that. I was like, way to call me out person who's never even met me.
Cassidy: I am attacked by this statement.
Cianne: But it was good though because it really, I know I would've fallen prey to those mistakes if they hadn't been called out. So again, I really appreciated it.
Cassidy: Absolutely. He's probably, it seems like he's done this type of work for quite some time, so he's probably has a lot of experience with folks who come to him with these sorts of issues, so it feels like he has a lot of experience in like teaching and training on this topic and you can tell that he is approaching it from, how an educator would be in the sense that he wants you to be able to like, here's a bit of information, here's a little activity that you could do. Here's an example. So that's really accessible that way.
Cianne: Yeah, actually he started out by teaching this as a course, like first, just less like telling people he knows, but it was a full-on, online course before he wrote the book.
Which I usually see done the other way, like somebody will write a book and then make a course. So I think that really informed how he wrote the book and made it easy to follow along at home.
Cassidy: Okay. That makes sense cuz I feel like the book is probably a bit too long. Cuz I went through my notes for this and in a lot of places they're repeating like it's the same kind of thing, but later on.
So I was like, I don't know if part of that is him trying to sort of hammer that point in, or it's just that he's like, run out of material and is using the same points. So I was like, you know, you might have been able to cut a few pages and like maybe provide some more examples or more activities. I think that's perhaps an area where it could be, you know, strengthened a little bit. Like there's probably some filler that he is putting in to make some extra chapters. I don't know if that's a thing that people do in this kind of scenario.
Cianne: Definitely can be. I mean and that kinda tracks, cuz I'm only, as I said, 54% in, but I feel like I have the base of the book.
Cassidy: We have like a shared note page here and one of your questions is, what do you think was the most transformational idea of the book?
I think it is the notion of the second brain itself. Like just the idea of the book.
Cause I think a lot of times folks are under the assumption that to be very smart, you have to remember all these things that you have to in your brain and just amass all this knowledge so that you can, you know, be the best at trivia and you know everything and you can just answer any question.
And I don't think that's the case. I've always been a proponent of like, write it down, save it somewhere. You know, there are a lot of smart people in this world, and you don't have to be an expert at everything. You just have to be an expert at finding what it is that you need. So at least it really is in line with my thinking and that it's like you don't have to know all of these things, you just have to know where to find it.
So the fact that he is giving people permission to, like, you don't have to be super duper smart and memorize everything constantly. You just have to remember to save it or write it down and that's enough.
Cianne: Well, and I think he takes that one step further too, and it's like saving it and or writing it down is super important first step, but then to put it in a central location so that you can find it later, like that I think just makes it so much even more useful that you're not hunting for it later.
I think that is a very astute thought of the most transformational idea in the book. I think the most transformational for like me personally, it sounds really simple and I feel like it shouldn't have been such a simple idea but it was, is just the idea that the knowledge that you collect or things that you learn, their purpose should be to create more things.
This idea that knowledge is to be used to be put into action, and that just has me feeling like my head's exploded and wanting to dive into this so much. As I've been reading it over the last couple weeks, I've been starting to try using some of the systems and ideas, and the more I read, the more excited I get, which is not always the case. Usually I kind of taper off in excitement, this I'm just getting more and more excited.
Cassidy: Oh, that's good. A lot of this stuff is, it's not difficult to implement, it's just not something that is commonly done, right? Where most people are like, oh, I need some big fancy content management system to do all of this. Or I don't have the time to write these things down, or, I don't like writing, I don't wanna save any of these things. But it's really, it's just about putting a little bit of effort in at first to get something set up and then just, you know, remembering when you encounter something interesting to save it there and categorize it in whatever system you're using and then you have it forever.
Cianne: Yeah. I really, I had never encountered someone suggesting to organize information or knowledge by what you plan on doing with it. What did you think of that suggestion? Of organizing it by the project you're gonna use it in?
Cassidy: Yeah. Cuz what did he calls it? His PARA [Projects, Areas, Research, Archives] system.
Cianne: So if an information is useful to any projects you're working on, benefits, any areas in your life you're responsible for, so things that don't have an end date, like finances or personal health, then you can do resources, so just areas or of general interest to you. And then if it doesn't fit in any of those, but you wanna keep it, it goes into your archives or as those other areas or projects get completed or are no longer relevant, it goes into your archive.
Cassidy: Yeah. For me, and you've heard me say this one before, Cianne, the best system is the one you actually use.
And this is literally something they teach you in library school, at least the library school that I went to. There are you know, hundreds of different ways you can organize things and there are very official ways that you can organize things, but by and large, the best system is the one you'll actually use. I think that for him he has developed a system that works based on how he likes to work. So his is obviously, he thinks about things from a project perspective or maybe like areas is sort of like a topic. And then resources obviously are like things that he's going back and referencing. And I think if other people wanna think of their work that way, then that's great. They should use that system.
For me personally, I don't think I'll organize my work like that. I don't usually organize it like that. I'm much more like topic focused in how I like to organize things, but that's just personal preference, right? That's how I will know how to search for things because that's how I think about them.
So if somebody is like starting their own system for this, it can help to actually like, take a step back and think about how do I think about things? It's a weird question, but if you don't immediately resonate with like, organizing things by projects and areas and resources then you can take a step back. Like, do I think about things based on like when, like the time period that they happened? Cuz maybe you should organize things by date and year. Like maybe that makes the most sense for you to be able to retrieve that. Like I said, I like topic. So if there's something that I will find for work, if there's a resource for like content strategy, I'll go and find that and maybe tag it with its subcategory so that I will know how to find it that way.
Or I might tag something by author that could be useful for me, cuz I'll look things up that way. So there's kind of an infinite number of ways that you can organize things and his system seems fine. It works for him. I know as soon as I read it I was like, I'm not gonna do that. That's not how I do things.
And that's fine. I'm glad that he has a system that works and I imagine it would work for a lot of people. But I guess maybe cuz I've spent so much time with systems that I've like developed more of a personal preference, for how to store things.
Cianne: Yeah. And I think that makes complete sense cuz you really do come to this book with a more unique perspective from library studies. Like I really like the idea, I'm gonna try it out and I like that there's flexibility in that it can go into resources or like areas which are topics or it can go to projects. And that project focus for me is gonna help me again, think of how I can use this to create more because I really this focus on generating new works from everything that you kind of consume information wise. And I am a bit of an information hoarder. I just wanna learn more all the time to the point where I like have to turn my brain off cause I cannot even absorb anything else. But then I'm not great at doing things with it, so I'm gonna I think I'll try out this system, but you're right, like I have, I've heard Cassidy say it so many times, the best system is the one that you actually use. But I've never successfully like managed to keep things by topic or anything, so I'm gonna give this a go and see how it works.
Cassidy: Absolutely. As we've said, he's provided a very good framework for it. So if you have no idea about how to organize your digital life and you're like, I need something. It's a great place to start and if that doesn't work for you, you can evolve it from there. Cuz he also talks about, you know, making sure that you just get going. Like it doesn't have to be perfect.
A lot of people are plagued by, well, I need to get it all done and perfect and beautiful and then I can start. And it's about just starting anyway and then you can make adjustments as you go. But if you're not starting, you're missing all of this information that you were accumulating every day.
As we as humans on the planet right now, are just accumulating information constantly.
Cianne: So much, the statistics at the beginning of the book blew my mind with like the amount of information we're apparently consuming.
Cassidy: This is in chapter two. According to the New York Times, the average person's daily consumption of information now adds up to a remarkable 34 gigabytes. A separate study cited by the Times estimates that we consume the equivalent of 174 full newspapers’ worth of content each and every day, five times higher than in 1986.
Cianne: That is insanity to me. That is so much. But on the other like spectrum of that, what also shocked me is he's talks about how this system pays in dividends. Like it's a compounding of your knowledge. And he was like, on average I write two notes a day. And from like listening and how he describes the book, it sounds like it's so much more than that. But that really kind of just, brought reality back and I was like, oh, only two notes a day like that seems super doable, but at the end of the year, that's 700 notes that you can then go and access and rearrange and use for whatever else. So I thought that was a helpful frame of reference for me as well.
Cassidy: Absolutely. Where you don't have to be constantly throwing things into the system or like, you know, one day you might read a couple of really interesting articles and write down a lot of stuff, and that's great. And then some days you just like won't read anything that you wanna save or store. And that's fine too, right?
It's meant to be flexible and it's meant to suit. what you're doing. Like if you really like cooking and you've developed your own recipes, like write them in your second brain and then you can, you know, build on them from there. Like, Cianne and I both like crafting, like, this could be a great spot where you can put all your different patterns or the different shops that you're looking into.
Like there are so many different ways that you can adjust this and grow as you start incorporating it into your life, right? Like I imagine it'll start small, but as you're like accumulating more information and you're like, “Hey, this is a thing I like to do! Maybe I should, you know, keep some notes on it.”
And then, you know, over the course of a few years, you can have a whole library of stuff in there.
Cianne: Yeah, definitely. I have to actually use a great segue to like our next discussion question. Do you plan on building a second brain system? It sounds like you maybe already have one, at least professionally.
Yeah. Tell me about that. Is this something that you think you'll try out, or do you already do something along these lines?
Cassidy: Absolutely. I will definitely give this a try. So I have personally, an imperfect system, I think that I like, I am not an organized person typically, but I have, I think he talks about it in the book actually, like organization is a habit.
Like it's something that you build habits around so that you can get better at these sorts of things. So every now and again, I'll have like good habits around these things where I'll like store stuff that I wanna find, so I have a lot of things saved up over the years, but none of them are particularly organized, nor are they in the same system, so I think what my big plan after reading this is get everything into the same system so you actually know what you have. Like my Google Drive is full of stuff. My notes on my phone is full of like emails, tons of stuff in there. Okay. My task I think is gonna try to be to consolidate all of it.
Cuz for work I'd like to say that it's more organized. But I don't often get to be in charge of the systems that are being used, nor often have control over how other people are storing those things. So I work in content strategy, which is like content management, information management adjacent, but I'm not doing like records management and actual, like library work.
I'm doing more like web content which all goes into the content management system, so that's all in one place and doing its own thing. But all of the like ephemera. and records of the organization is not my job, so I just get to look all of it. And it's extensive glory all over the place. Oh, it's everywhere.
I try to keep the stuff for like myself and I try to encourage my team to be more organized about how they're keeping these things and putting them in one place. It's a bit of an uphill. As probably anybody who has worked in the corporate world will know it's a bit of an uphill battle.
But I have always tried to employ at work, having all of the information in one place. So that's something I was, guess, kind of already doing. But it's not something that I have ever done in my personal system, where I've never really thought about having a personal system. Maybe that's what it is, where I'm like, I know about this in the professional sense, but I've never thought about like, “Hey, I could have my own knowledge management system at home. That would be a good thing to have.”
And a part of me is kicking myself or never having started one for the resources that I've used at work, cuz there's so many of them that I've read over the years that I'll probably spend a whole bunch of time trying to track down. But that'll be nice once I actually have it so that it will make, you know, creating presentations and documents a breeze after that.
Cianne: Mm-hmm. I have much of a less cohesive employment history than you do, so a lot of my things don't tend to transfer from one job to another. But I'm very excited to try and make one of these personally, I also don't, like I keep things like I have a million bookmarks and I have some things on a, like, read later app from 2013.
Cassidy: Oh yeah. When those were really popular .
Cianne: Oh, I know. And you know, I have the notes and my phone and in my Google Drive and journals and everything. I'm also wanting to organize them a bit. I think I'm gonna try to not go too much into that, cause I know I'll like overwhelm myself if I try to kind of reorganize all of the past. But I'm definitely gonna be using this going forward, and I think I'll at least try importing a bunch of that stuff into one space so that I can find it if I do inevitably need it later.
I don't know if you, like, I've been thinking and trying this, for, like I said the last couple weeks, but have you thought about like what system you want?
This is not gonna be an evergreen part of the show, so if you happen to have found this 5 or 10 years from now, please skip this section cuz it'll no longer be relevant, I'm sure. But like there's been a couple of different softwares and I know for me, that was a little bit of a stumbling block when I was first thinking about it. But I don't know if you thought about what system or how you wanna do that?
Cassidy: Right. It's a good point because how do you know that the system that you choose is gonna be around in five years? Right? Like cuz in this anyway, we're talking about digital note taking systems, like there can be physical systems that people are using for, you know, physical documents.
But you know, in this book specifically, he's talking about digital tools and he actually has, what is it? Is it a blog post? An article. He has some other items —
Cianne: Resources.
Cassidy: That you can review about the different software systems. Cuz I read the ebook of this so there was a little section at the end that was like, “Don't know what you're gonna use?” Like click.
I was like, great, I will click this link and read through them. So I set up a Notion account, but there was another one that I'm not gonna remember the name of that looked interesting to me as well. So I might play around. with both of them and see how I feel. But Notion seems to be quite popular and it's stuck around for a little while.So that makes me feel like it has some longevity.
I have a ton of stuff in Google Drive, so part of me is like, can I somehow make Google Drive the system? Because there's already a ton of stuff in here. Probably not. That's just wishful thinking.
Cianne: I know I have a ton of stuff in my Google Drive as well, but I don't think, like, I'm struggling a little bit because like I've also, I looked at that same resource, so I was like, I wanna know what your thoughts are and because I've tried Notion, I've tried Notion a couple of times and never been able to stick with it. And I don't know if you saw the little section in there and it was like, “What is your note taking archetype?”
There's four. So there's the Architect who is really systems focused and likes things to be planned out more and very systematized, and they tend to gravitate towards Notion.
And then there's like a gardener who just kind of likes to throw things and follow them. And it's much more about creating and nurturing and seeing where information flows and goes.
And then there was the librarian. And which is what he identifies as. And you might as well but you can go have a look at it. But they said that Evernote and I've really been kind of going back and forth between if I wanna do Evernote or if I wanna do Notion. I've tried, I tried Roam Research was one that he suggested, but that one does not have good multimedia support and I know I have too much multimedia.
And then I tried like a Google. Or not Google, mostly Apple specific one called Craft Notes, which I really liked on my iPad, but they don't have any kind of database or sheet function, which I love my spreadsheets and I love a good database, which Notion has. So I think I'm gonna be with Notion just because I like that, but I find it, the one thing that I struggle with Notion, and I don't know if you've used it enough to encounter this yet, but like with Evernote or on your phone or whatever, you can just click the plus button and it's a whole new note and then you can connect it later. Whereas with Notion, it's not as easy to get a page and to get them to connect. So I'm trying to figure out how to best capture those quick small things that don't need a new dedicated page before I process.
Cassidy: That's totally fair. Where it has to be a very easy system to use whenever you'll need to use it. So if there's like too much friction in adding information that you're probably less likely to do it, which is not at all part of setting up the second brain.
Cianne: Exactly, and so I'm kind of running into that and so we'll see. I'm gonna keep experimenting and see I'm getting better with it. I created with myself an inbox, which is just this blank doc where I have bullet points of things that I'm adding and then I can process it and organize it afterwards. But, I don't know we'll see.
I’'m interested to hear more too from you as we go on and see what you end up settling with than if you like.
Cassidy: Yeah, I will be happy to keep you updated. I'll probably mess around with a few different things, but I don't know, when I did a cursory search of all of it, Notion seems to be the most popular, so might be the easiest to go with the crowd, cause there's a lot of templates that you can crowdsource on that, which is maybe another thing to point out that if a system is popular, there's often a lot more. not just within the product, but within the community that uses it. So you'll likely be able to solve a lot of the problems that you might have with the system from other users, not just with the company.
So if you pick something that is not as popular, or as used, you might not get that same support. So something to consider.
Cianne: True. And like Second Brain, even though this book was only published last year in 2021 [editor’s correction: Building a Second Brain was published in 2022], he's been doing this work for several years now, and we're actually starting to see a rise of softwares that were built to be second brains. And so I'm interested.
Cassidy: Oh, interesting.
Cianne: Yeah, so there's a few, even like outside of the ones that he recommends that were kind of like custom built. So I'm really interested to see where that goes. And as you said, like he's been doing this I think probably for a decade or more, just from the judging of the book, and he's already switched systems, so, we'll, you'll have to switch them over eventually over time. But we'll be really interesting to see.
So you work with like content management and content strategy all day. How did you find, or did you find like similarities between that work that you do and this and did anything like really resonate with your day-to-day that you're like, “Ah, yes, I really, I see this all the time.”
Cassidy: That's a good question and I don't know. And I say that in the sense that I work with content, but mostly for what ends up being on a public website. So the content management is dictated by a very large, convoluted system that the organization has gone through a long procurement process to, to get and to set up in precisely the way that they want it. So you have very little flexibility in terms of how a lot of that is, is set up and even sometimes how it's brought in, you just sort of get what you get and then you have to support people through it.
But I, what I actually found it very interesting for was, internal company knowledge management, like thinking about how companies organize information for employees, whether that's like an intranet, like intra with an “a”, so internal systems or like a wiki or wherever that information is being stored, because that's often where companies have a lot of flexibility and usually implement it quite poorly and without any sort of system, like any company that I've worked for doesn't do internal records management very well from what I have found.
Obviously, there'll be some who are really focused on it, who have, you know, a lot more requirements around that storage. They can, you know, they invest in doing a good job in that, but most organizations, they're not investing a lot of money in these systems. People don't usually write things down anyway to be able to store them in the first place is part of the issue that I've found. So I find the sort of wild west to be the internal content management as opposed to the public facing web because you don't usually get a lot of flexibility there. You just get given a system and then you have figure out how to shoehorn whatever you have into it.
But I do think a lot of his methods could apply for people who work in sort of nine to five knowledge worker jobs where, you know, thinking about resources that are useful to you in your job, you know, be that different, like process documents or things that you're, you're gonna. That's where you can start building things like as you were talking about those knowledge blocks. So people who have to do more repetitive tasks. You can make yourself a template and then go back to that template and use it as you need it. So thinking about how can you optimize the tasks that you're doing throughout your workday by using something like a second brain.
I can see this being really powerful for people who spend a lot of time doing knowledge work. Having you know, whether you have a separate second brain for your work or personal or if you have them all in one system. I feel like that probably depends on the work that you're doing and the, you know, security and restrictions of that. But I see this as being very powerful for like the resources that you need to do your day-to-day job and being as sort of efficient and effective as you can be there.
Cianne: Yeah. Yeah. And I something there that stuck out to me that you said that so much of the content management you see is inflexible.
And I think that's really interesting because this book highlights how important it is for your second brain to be flexible and to change and evolve. And would you say that like, that inflexibility is a big hurdle that you see in your content work?
Cassidy: That's a good question. I think, yes. I think that oftentimes because I work in the public sector now and when I worked a digital agency we had mostly public sector clients.
So you are working with systems that are 5, 10, 15. years old, so they're not even on the current technology that everybody else is using. You can't make a lot of adjustments for a content management system that is powering a website that was made 10 or 15 years ago. You don't have a lot of options, in terms of like how you're making adjustments. And that does make it hard for some people who have spent 10 years working with the system, they don't want it to change. They're very happy. They have their routines, they're good. But then you have the people who have used more modern tools and have an understanding of what it could be like if you just had something a little more flexible.
I guess like an example for you is I would make what are called content models. So essentially they were the Lego block. So as he talks about his knowledge building blocks. So if you take his concept of knowledge building blocks. So I, in my previous role, I essentially like created the whole blueprint for a website. So I built the website and then somebody would code it to actually make it a functional website, but I would build all of the functionality in just a spreadsheet.
Cianne: That's crazy!
Cassidy: Well ended up, that ended up being the best tool, surprisingly, because it had the most flexibility. So we built these very large, complicated websites in just a spreadsheet, and then you give it over to developers and help them work through that.
But what I noticed when I started this job, we didn't really have a lot to go on, so we're just making these spreadsheets as it happens, we're like, okay, it's fine. Put it together, it'll be great. And then as we started doing more of these, I was like, “Hey, we've already built something.”
So say on a website, you have a Call to Action, which is usually where a company wants you to buy something, where they want you to sign up for something where they're like, “Hey this is starting, give us your email address.”
That sort of block, I was like, you know what? All of our clients love a call to action, big fans of a shiny picture and a button and, you know, fill in a form. It's great. So I was like, well, it's the same every time. I'm writing the same structure for this. Why do I rewrite it every time?
So I started making my own repository of these little building blocks for the website. So whenever we had a new project, I would go to my repository and I was like, okay. The client said they want this great copy paste, copy paste out it goes. And I am now saving myself days worth of time to create this.
So all the clients are, you know, oh, this is great. This is fantastic. This is just what we are looking for. I didn't put in hardly any extra effort. I put all that effort in two or three years ago when I developed the system and I figured out how to make the particular building block in the first place. And then nearing the end of my time at that workplace, I had a big, large repository of all these pieces that when I had a new project, I just took all my Lego blocks, dumped them out on the table and was like, all right, how are reassembling them?
And then, you know, you'd have to create some bespoke pieces for the clients, but for the most part, I was just reusing stuff that I had already created. And then our designers and developers were putting, you know, a new coat of paint on it based on the branding for the client and what have you. But it was able to save the company a lot of money because we still charged, for me, putting in all that effort because I had put in all that effort. They were paying for essentially what was my repository of all this work that I was just reassembling for them. But that's the best case that I can think of in terms of how I've used, having never heard of this system, this is what I ended up employing, which is basically just taking knowledge building. and reassembling them. So I didn't actually have to do the same work over and over and over again.
And it is fantastic when you have a system like that set up. I highly recommend it. It takes many years to get it going. But by the end of my time at that organization, it was just like I could build a website in a couple of days because I had spent all of that time doing it previously. And probably the most powerful piece of it is that you just get to benefit off of all of that hard work that you have already done, and it frees you up to do whatever else you need to, you know, create your next big thing.
Cianne: Yeah. And I think that highlights, like you said the power of having this system. And I love, very librarian of you, to do this information management system without, well before ever reading about it. I love it.
And that, that's great cuz as you said, you already did do that effort. You're just able to then leverage, you're able to leverage without having to repeat it. And that is so powerful and I think that you really hit the nail on the head for why this kind of idea or creating these are so powerful.
And I think that as like a creative, as professional, creative, you get that and then you also get this other really cool effect of getting to see all of your ideas that maybe you don't initially see a link to, but seeing all these different pieces together, you can kind of be like, oh, there's a connection here that I never would've seen if you hadn't seen such opposites close to each other. So it's both a good tool to help you work more efficiently and kind of iterate in a positive way on all this work you've done while also setting you up to make some very cool creative connections that you maybe wouldn't have seen if things weren't easily accessible to each other.
So it's, I think it's a very powerful system. I think overall this book has been really good. It's like, I'm very excited to still finish it. I strongly recommend this book. I recommend it for any knowledge worker, creative. Person who just wants to kind of like capitalize on all the information they're already thinking about and absorbing and just be able to supercharge it.
Cassidy: For sure. If even if it's something that you don't think you're interested in implementing, give the book a try anyway or give his blog posts a try. Just to see what might be useful to you. Because if you're, you know, if you're a knowledge worker, if you're a creative, if you're somebody who spends a lot of time at the computer for your work, there's a good chance that something in this book is gonna be useful to you.
Maybe you don't wanna create a whole second brain system where you've just got a ton of information stored in this that's just not your thing, but maybe you'll take away something where you're like, Hey, I never thought about taking notes this way. This is gonna be really helpful for me. Or, I never thought about storing my files in this system. That's gonna be super helpful for me at work.
Like there are lots of different levels. Lots of different bus stops as I will often say. Like you can just go a little bit on the bus or you can take the bus all the way to the last stop, but you can get off at any point.
Cianne: Yeah and because this has become such a popular system and idea, because God, do we need it in our information age, there's also tons of like YouTube videos that are 10 minutes long that will take you through some of the highlights. There's other podcasts episodes like this one, but, yeah, it's transformed the way that I think about writing notes, taking notes, and storing my digital assets and how to leverage them into making so much more.
Cassidy: It's a pretty cool system once you figure out how you wanna make it work for you.
Like, you know, my example of using it as a spreadsheet that I did not even know that this is what I was doing, nor is it anything really like what he's suggesting. The principles are the same and that like I, it's a spreadsheet. I'm not gonna be able to access it really in any other format, but it's the idea of taking a lot of work that you've already done or a lot of thinking that has happened on a particular topic. Putting it somewhere where you can go back to it and reference it so you don't have to start from scratch every single time.
I think that particularly because you work with a lot of creatives, just thinking about the amount of time it takes to be creative and to come up with ideas if you already have those somewhere written down that you can go back to you've just saved yourself a ton of time and energy that could be better spent coming up with the next thing that you wanna work on.
So there are so many different ways where you can make this work for your life.
Cianne: Yeah, I a hundred percent agree. And I think like there's this one quote from the book that has stuck with me so strong and it's,
“When the opportunity arrives to do our best work, it's not the time to start reading books and doing research. You need that research to already be done. You can prepare in advance for the future challenges and opportunities you don't even yet know you'll face by taking advantage of the effort you're already spending, reading books, learning new things, and simply being curious about the world around you.”
And that is, that is it on the nose there. Just don't work harder, work smarter and don't try to remember everything. Write it down.
Cassidy: It's a great quote. It's yes, exactly. Your brain can only do so much.
Cianne: Yeah. Brains are remembering. Brains are not for remembering. They're for creating, they're for thinking.
Cassidy: Absolutely. Set yourself up for success and whatever that means to you.
Cianne: Yeah. Is there any other comments or ideas that you wanted to talk about with the second brain? Any, anything else you think we should touch on?
Cassidy: Oh gosh. I feel like there are, we've covered all of it and also there is so much more that we can talk, you know, it's one of those things where it can apply to you in so many different ways.
But there was a point somewhere, was it where he mentions that information isn't a luxury. It's the very basis for our survival, which I thought was an interesting point because as we live in an ever increasing digital world, information becomes increasingly important to how we all function. Thinking of it less as a passing piece of your every day, but as something that's vital to how you operate within the world, I think is an interesting way to frame it.
And I agree. I think that as we continue to seep ourselves in information, if you can create your own system to sort through that and access it whenever you need to, and the very of that information for you, it's only going to make, you know, living in our very digital world even easier for you.
Cianne: Yeah. And I think along with that, like this idea that the more you use this, it actually can extend our cognition that we get more and more used to using the tool and it can just expand what we can do with our brain.
And we need somewhere to keep all the information those 186 newspapers that we all read every day but we don't need to keep all of it, but we need to keep the most important stuff or interesting stuff. So I think, so information is no longer a luxury. It is how we all survive in this crazy too fast digital world.
Cassidy: Right, right. It's just the water that we're swimming in now.
Cianne: Thank you so much, Cassidy, for taking the time to discuss this book with me and bringing your wonderful experience in library information studies and just what you do every day.
Cassidy: Thank you for having me, Cianne. It was great.
Cianne: It's been a pleasure!
