If we have even a passing relationship with productivity and time management then we will know about David Allen and his book “Getting things done”. (For my thoughts on GTD for today – check out this post) I heard someone refer to this book recently as the productivity Bible and David Allen as the grandfather of personal productivity. It isn’t really wrong to consider his work as one of the earliest attempts to help normal people get a handle on all of their time and commitments. David Allen’s most famous quote is perhaps “Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.” It is this quote that has been the birth of the idea of Building a Second Brain. This would be the brain that is designed to hold our ideas. And so I ask the question – Do we want our second brain to function in the same way as our first brain?
Let me put it bluntly. I want my first brain – the one that sits inside my head – to be the brain that is designed for and set apart for having ideas and my second brain – the one that sits inside my apps – to be the one that is set apart for holding them.
Generally speaking, there are two kinds of knowledge management apps on the market today. Those that base themselves around a hierarchical structure and search and those that base themselves around networked thought.
The basic idea behind networked thought apps, like Obsidian, Roam Research and Mem X is that these apps will create a network of ideas for you and will create links between notes and thoughts and ideas leading the generation of new ideas and new combinations of ideas organically as we work.
Tools such as Mem X that bring AI into the mix here, are incredibly powerful at this.
However, with great power comes great responsibility.
And apps do not have this sense of responsibility.
You see, the brain inside our head is specifically designed for pattern recognition, making links and spotting links. In fact, the reason we have a memory at all is to aid this process of making links and spotting patterns. This design serves us very well but it can also be a source of distraction. I cannot spell out the word beautiful without hearing the voice of Ace Ventura and then going off down a rabbit hole of ‘like a glove’ and ‘re he he he he hearly’ and so on. Sometimes our brain will make links and throw up thoughts and ideas that are just distracting. A big part of developing focus is being able to read through these patterns and spot which ones are helpful and which are not. This is spotting a pattern within a pattern if you will.
The problem with networked thought apps is first, that they do not have this filter, and second that their ability to make links and spot patterns is, at present, incredibly weak compared to that of our own brains.
Let’s examine the weakness first off. Obsidian makes links to other notes based on the text you write. Based on my limited usage, it will only make a link if the words used are a match. Correct me here if I am wrong.
Our own brains are much better at this. We can make links via words, ideas, concepts, images, locations, people and even emotions. For example, I have used the illustration of Brody in Jaws shooting a gas tank in the shark’s mouth, instead of the shark itself, as an illustration for strategic thinking. I am not sure Obsidian would be able to make this kind of link organically on its own. It may be that, down the line, AI will significantly improve this capability. Right now however, apps are significantly weaker than our own brains in this regard.
Do we want our second brain to function in the same way as our first brain, when it is weaker at doing so than our first brain?
But what about the filter? As we grow and mature, we develop the ability to filter out links and patterns that are not relevant and not helpful. Our apps cannot do this at present. Therefore, there is a huge risk that networked thought apps will simply be throwing up all kinds of distractions for us that we would not normally have to grapple with when we use them. This is especially the case when our work links to other things and those other things link to yet more things and so on and so on. We could even find that the thing we are working on has a trail of links to every other note in our second brain! Now obviously, we can still filter these things out ourselves but again I ask the question – Do we want our second brain to function in the same way as our first brain, when that will likely add to the distractions that we need to filter out?
Call me old fashioned (and many of you no doubt will!) but I prefer my second brain to rely on structure, hierarchy and search and for it to hold my information securely so that when I need something, I can find it. I trust that the information is there and will be easy to find when I want it. I do not need the app to do the job for me of suggesting what may be relevant for what I am working on right now. I already have a brain that does that. I don’t need a second one. What I need is a second brain that can remember everything and keep it all stored nice and safely so my primary brain doesn’t need to.
So in conclusion, I ask again, Do we want our second brain to function in the same way as our first brain? To me that seems like duplication. Our primary brain is for having ideas. Our second brain is for holding them.
