Scott & Mark Learn To… Second Brain

Can you ask Copilot what we should talk about? Have it look at our... That's a good idea. Let me do that. ...and say what should they talk about next. Doesn't this literally mean this is the dearth of creativity, what you're just describing? Are we just giving... Giving it up right now? I'm cognitively dead. So I was talking to my buddy Mark, comma, and he says that he's cognitively dead, period. Take a look at this playlist and all of our shows and our podcasts, comma, specifically the topics.

as listed in the titles and the descriptions, comma, and suggest five new shows that we could talk about, period. We do well as an AI show, but we're thinking that we might not want to get pigeonholed, period. What are some other things we can chat about on the Scott and Mark Learn To podcast? I don't think this is the old transcriptionist style.

dictation you need to do period that's that's how i do it period it works extremely well exclamation point period i don't like i don't like inferred commas i think why not question mark So, Mark, people ask me all the time, how do you know that? How do you keep up on this? How do you keep track of stuff? It used to be a to-do.txt file on my desktop. It used to be sticky notes.

Is that to keep track of what you're doing or to remember things? Like remember long-term memory. Really? Give me an example. Okay, so...

There's all these little moments where in executive function, and not executive being in charge of something, but being an adult human. Pay a bill. Take your pills. Pick up the milk at the store. Don't forget to call so-and-so. Remind me that Amanda told me to write a paper. Mark said to work on this thing over the weekend. because he's a stern taskmaster. All the different things that one has to do in order to get to do it.

But there's to-do lists. There's the article I read on Hacker News. There's links. Some people have really big obsidians or really big notions or really big loops. Do you have a second brain? Do you have a place where all things go a single location? Do this. Piece of paper. Yeah. But this is just to do. This is just like here. And by the way, I mean, many, many studies show that offloading to a list like this, either on computer or.

paper is a huge savings and tax on your brain and you refer to it after the fact because some people say just it's the act of offloading but no one ever looks at their notes or you check it off and there's like a sense of like completion i've accomplished this i'm being productive which you might not recognize is if if you're not checking it off if you're actually just doing it and then going okay next thing but being able to check it off like there's this you know sense of accomplishment

do you have just that one spiral notebook or do you have dozens of different mediums no just this and i i mean you can see that's like Okay, so that's the kind of classic David Allen getting things done, have one source of truth for all things and keep it open all the time and available all the time. It's informal, too. It's not like this is real. I'm not.

totally completely rigorous about it it's just when i feel like okay i've got like six things now i need to keep track of them while i'm doing them let me write them down and then let me like pick off the easy one and then go to the harder one and then

And just having them listed without the checks next to them makes me want to go do them because I'm normally a procrastinator. That's a surprising thing to hear about you. Yeah. I don't get procrastinator vibes off of you. I am an incredible procrastinator.

But I found it served me well. Because I've studied this for a long time. Like, why am I waiting to the last minute for this? Because eventually it'll go away and you don't have to do it. No, actually, for the things that you know won't go away, I still wait till the last minute.

or close to the last minute, but you know why I do. Actually, I find that subconsciously I'm working on it, even if I'm not doing it. A background agent, perhaps? It is like a background activity. And so when I go to sit down. It's not like I'm starting fresh having not thought about it at all. That is a really great point because there is true procrastination, which is avoidance. And then there's just, I'm chewing on it. It's developing. It feels like avoidance to me.

The Altair thing that we've been talking about. Like, I think there was a sense that I may be procrastinating, but it was always there. I was always kind of coming up with it. Yeah. And then I did the talk in Portugal, and it went great. And some people were like, man, he just like...

Flew the plane right into the mountain at the last minute, went, pull up, pull up. But I felt like I was ruminating. I was luxuriating in the idea. And then I was ready for it. And then the pressure that it was coming next week. Yeah, well, that's the other thing, too, is.

You build up, you're thinking also, how much effort is this going to take? Is this like 20 minutes? Is it two hours? Because that way you're preparing for the, you know, okay, so this thing is really going to take me three hours of my time. let me just build up the stamina and okay, here I go. Rather than I start it and I'm like, well, this is taking me way longer than I thought and I need to step back and think about if I'm doing the right thing.

So that's part of the reason that I think I procrastinate. And like I said, there's some stress to it too, but then I'm like, I know this will work out. I've done this my whole life. Okay, so this is a great point. So we're at a certain age where this is not new information about ourselves, right? We're like, people know that panic is part of my process. Yeah. You've been backstage with me.

while I panic. And now it's just like, it's not pretty. Let this man freak out because, you know, it's going to be fun. I love your episode. You know, I step away. Stay out of your arms reach. And it's like, it's a low key panic. It's a lowercase p.

panic. Because on a panic attack, it's just like, and then it's like, I know it'll be fine because I've done it before. And you build that sense of yourself. So once you have a system that works, go with it. And I think that's an important thing to note, is that when you're younger,

earlier in career, try different stuff. Maybe it's a spiral notebook. Maybe it's a text file. Maybe it's freaking Git. There's always somebody who's got their to-do list in Git. But as long as you try a system until you find the to-do list. Oh, God. I've got that Remarkable, the e-ink thing. I've shown you that before. Yeah, you showed it to me. The thing you've got, though, it's a little big. It's not like the little notebook that an old-timey reporter would have.

How do you manage non-work stuff? Because that doesn't look like something that works. That doesn't go anywhere but the desk, right? Left column is work, right column is home. Okay. Okay. You see there's a line down the middle in this notebook. This is, by the way, it's not like I went in like shocked. Oh, where's the notebook for this? This is a notebook that you get in the Microsoft stock room on every floor.

You've stolen off the supplies is what I'm hearing. It's there for us to steal. So, okay. This... But it's large, though, is the point I'm making. If you're at Kroger or Fred Meyer or whatever, you don't have that. What do you do about on-the-move ideas? Yeah, I just wait and do it. Like I said, it's not like I'm super formal about this.

Okay. It seems pretty formal because you've got a pile of stuff. This is probably a year. Yeah. Because I've got over here in my office. There we go. I know you've got your whole history there. Yeah, I've got like... couple of years, but then I switched to the remarkable. I throw mine away after I'm, I mean, they're just, and by the way, you throw them away. Yeah. I also go back and I'm like, I don't even know. I can't even read my writing. Dude.

You throw them away. I just looked at mine. Mix 2007. That's pretty incredible. So that's like your diary, I guess. Yeah, I guess. But this is not sophisticated. Like .NET 4.0. It's like .NET 4.0, 10 minutes. Remember how you and I do our talks, like 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Demo, demo, point. Look at this. It says OData. Right? So like demo with Pablo Castro. And then it's like using MEF with WPF4. And a framework. I remember that. Yeah. It's CLR4 in process.

Oh, my God. Web forms versus MVC. Yeah, you're having major flashback here. I am. And, like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what is going on here. But I don't know what that is. What were you going to say? When do I what? I have time to even look back at this. I mean, I'm just like. Well, now on the show, right? Here's me in a meeting with Bill Staples. Talking about PHP versus Plan 9. Just page after page after page of stuff like this. The other thing that I do, by the way...

For sometimes, for collecting links, although it's just hard to keep them organized. Like funny links, I'll throw them into OneNote. Like I'll have AI hallucinations. Like where I just toss the hallucinations that I encounter using AI. So the ones that we have in our Teams chat, are those being double pasted into both the Teams chat and one of them? A lot of them are, yeah. So there's AI hallucinations, there's many chatbots.

But there's the coding ones. I've actually got a folder in OneNote with the project, and then I've got the AI craziness screenshots for that project. which is now, you know, multiple dozen examples in growing. You know, I do that. But then I've also got like, you know, what's going on with safety and transformers or jailbreaks. I'll throw in.

to a OneNote page, links to papers. I keep trying to wish that I was organized enough to have an Obsidian database or a OneNote. I see people with these exquisitely organized, you know, hierarchical tree view type. knowledge base. I don't know if you know about this, but the way that people do their PhDs now in 2025 are very much throw everything into a hierarchical tree-based thing. It'll generate the...

The citations and everything, like knowledge-based systems are a common thing now. But for me, this is a 10-year-old blog. When I get stressed out, I synchronize to paper. I've been doing this for 20 years, but I still feel like maybe I should do better and that I deserve a central synchronized super one note. With any of these things, there's effort.

and the the return on that investment of the effort yeah you think you would get it because i have not gone to anything organized and i'm not rigorous about it just because that requires effort you got to be consistent about it yep

And then what's the value you're getting? Like, are you getting the return on that time you're spending? Well, the thing is that people always, the argument that people always make is that it's not searchable. And I would argue it hasn't needed to be searchable. So why not? What do you mean?

I'm saying that you can't search. You can peruse, you can browse, you can explore your notebook, but you can't search it. Oh, you mean the paper one? Yeah. Because this is so ephemeral. Okay. Because I'm not putting the links in there. So the links live in OneNote and your to-dos live in... Paper. In paper. And you never need to search for your... No. You never search your notes. No. Okay.

One thing that I do is if I haven't finished something that's in the to-do list, I'll just make a horizontal line to represent the current to-do list, and I'll just copy the thing that I haven't finished to the new one. The tool that I've been using with the remarkable e-ink thing, it synchronizes all your stuff. So like where I'm speaking. Taekwondo Heung's, my TED Talk, a file you sent me about billionaires writing highperformance.net code, like all this stuff. I think I was doing...

I don't know what I was doing here, some statistical thing, you know, like random math calculations, you know? Why were you doing that for? Probably helping my son with the SATs. Like this was like two weeks ago, you know? But you don't remember. I don't, but this is, oh, and there you go. And I don't remember because I don't think I've realized how much I have.

offloaded stuff yeah i think the reason that i sleep like a baby is that once it's written down i can sleep again you know what i mean yeah that's so important that goes to why it's such a cognitive load off when you just write down your to-do list. Yeah, yeah. And I have noticed with my kids that they are not yet using calendars.

And I would say if there's one thing that takes the cognitive load off, for me, what I call the psychic weight. It's not the piece of paper. It's not the to-do list. It's not the remarkable. It's the freaking calendar. Like I've had tiny lowercase a arguments with my wife about like, what are we doing this day or whatever? She's like, it's on the calendar, but she forgot to invite me. Yeah. And it's like, well, that didn't exist. That's not a thing. Yeah. I think every partners.

We're not going anywhere because I don't know. I've never heard of that thing. Well, I mentioned it to you, but it's not in the calendar. So many arguments can be solved by simply having a shared calendar with your spouse. So true. Oh, my goodness. Trying to get the boys to do that has been really challenging. Only now the 20-year-old in college has started to use the calendar as an authoritative thing.

I think that's a thing that happens when you're third. You can't keep it all in your head anymore or when it becomes too taxing. You know, I can keep a few things and cruise around. I can't keep anything in my head anymore. Well, yeah. Another thing that I really like that I don't think gets used enough. I think I've told you about this, was geofenced reminders. Have you ever used these on the iPhone? No. Dude, so you say, remind me the next time I'm at Fred Meyer to buy milk.

And then you throw it out there. You tell Siri and you throw it out there. And then the next time you enter the geofence, it'll pop up. Whoa. I didn't know that. Dude, it's so good. You can go, remind me the next time I'm at work to call my boss.

And then it says, oh, you don't have a work listed on your contact card. So then you go and you put in your contact card, you put in work. And then the next time you say, remind me the next time I'm at Fred Meyers to buy milk. And then it pops up a thing. And now it says, when arriving, Fred Meyer. Yeah. Buy milk. There it is. Buy milk. Arriving, Fred Meyer. I didn't have no idea. Built in, built in, built in. So you just hold the thing and it does the little.

Sparkle. Wong. Wong. I love the Wong. Yeah. Those little bits of metadata I find really, really delightful. And I feel like people don't utilize. That stuff enough. I go nuts with it. I love it. I just had to take insulin. I noticed my blood sugar is high. Sorry. I am paying attention to you, but I'm also trying not to die. Mark and Scott learn about the awkward pause.

I think we've drained this one. I think we've drained this one too. I just wonder, is this something that just everyone has to suffer with? Or did anyone teach us to do this stuff? Because I was big into productivity for a time. I was doing talks and reading books. I never find those things useful. Thank you for grabbing on my life's work. You probably had to do this when you got your PhD. How did you organize all the material?

No, there wasn't a lot of material to organize. Citations and references and all that kind of stuff. My wife is working on her PhD. She's overwhelmed with citations. I think I put it on punch cards. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. I'm going to get, it makes me, I'm going to get down here into my office. Yeah, this is Mark Brasinovich's PhD thesis on punch card. You can get that, or you can also get the floppy edition.

I've used those. I've also used punch cards. Have you? I have only used punch cards at the Living Computer Museum. But you never have. I have made a single-sided disc, double-sided disc. Yeah. which I think is an important skill for the young people to have. I just have a fond memory when I look at those floppies. Having my little case of floppies, you'd flip through.

I think I told you, you've got to go to the Interim Computer Museum in Tukwila. Yeah. Well, I've been to that. It's part of Tukwila. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the place, man. There's also the Computer History Museum in San Francisco. Yeah, and there's also the MIMS in Roswell, Georgia. A lot of the Cray is there, and a lot of the bigger Paul Allen stuff is down in Roswell. Well, there was a piece of a Cray at the Computer History Museum in Seattle, too. I think it was...

They took like 30 or 40 pieces, and they split them between the Interim Computer Museum and Roswell, and the MIMS and Roswell. Cool. Okay. Well, this is Scott and Mark learn about their own second brains. The question is then, can we rag over them with AI? Or do we even need to? It sounds like we don't need to. Give it to our interns, right? Give it to our interns so that they can hallucinate and tell us that we're absolutely right. What's the next thing on the to-do list? Yeah.

I think at some point, that's what we're all going to get. We'll all have interns that will keep track of this kind of stuff. But it is funny that I have to tell Siri in the paper, there is no true second brain right now. There's just a hierarchy of brains. Cool. Well, that's probably an episode, not our finest hour, but I will take a note to do better next time. Yes. All right.

Like and subscribe, our friends, and let us know in the comments what you use for your own second round. Let us know what you think of this kind of rambling version of our podcast. Yeah. And give us suggestions on topics, right? Like we've had some shows that were very much directly out of the comments, right? This show existed because that person said that would be a good idea for a show. And then other times it's just like this, which is of questionable value. Cool. There you go.