[Day 23] You Need a Second Brain

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the Oren Cohen podcast. This is day 23 of my 30 day challenge. Today, we're talking about. A second brain. And if you remember I said that during those last few days, I will be talking about building my digital course in public. And today we are taking a break from that because I'm still working on my ThriveCart page for the course. And tomorrow I'll have something new to update in that regard. But for now.

I want to spend today's time with you to talk about why I think it's so useful to have a second brain and why I started creating one for myself. So let's get right into it. So let's begin with the question. that you probably all have: what is a second brain? And in what context are we talking about? And for me as a software engineer. a second brain is essentially offloading all of the knowledge from my brain into a place where I can document it and find it easily.

Those two things are essential. I need a space where something is very, very easy to throw into, but it also needs to be easy to find later when I need it. If I have to sort through. Whatever it is, did I'm looking for. For hours or even for a minute. Then it's not worth it because. I would probably already remember it in my brain. And I would use my brain instead of using this and that's not helping me preserve brainpower.

This is actually making me use more brain power, so it needs to be easy to find any, it also needs to be able to record the documentation of what you are learning. And for me, there are a lot of things that I learn as a software engineer that are reproducible, like code snippets. And even whole projects. So having something like, a Second brain for coding is amazing. And it is something that I'm working towards making maybe more accessible to a wider range of people, not just myself.

Um, But in your context, If you're not a software engineer. It could be a different thing. You, you could know a lot about blogging or you could know a lot about some kind of industry. And putting down all of this information from your brain into a page, that you know you'll be able to find later you have that security that this is not just some random notebook that you'll stuff somewhere and never find it is something digital.

You can access it from your phone, from a computer from wherever it's very easy to search. Once you have that and you know, that you are safe in that regard. You can actually offload a lot of information from your brain. And then you find yourself. Finding new creativity, finding new brain power. You're not so bogged down by all of the things that you always need to know to do your job or to always remember, because if you don't remember than something horrible could happen.

That's the beauty of a second brain. You have it. It's there when you need it. It's useful and you know What to do to find the information that you put into it. One of the creators that Defined the second brain and used it in the best possible or teaches about it in the best possible way. Is Tiago forte. I'm Probably butchering his name. Sorry, Tiago. Tiago has a book which I will link in the description of this episode it is an affiliate link.

I'll disclose that because I have affiliate links for Amazon. So if you are going to purchase through my link, I'll probably get a small commission for it without any extra cost to you. That book is amazing. It helps you think about how to build your second brain. And. For coding. What I decided to do is actually create a new GitHub repository, which will serve As my second brain for code snippets, because it's very easily searchable. And I can also pull it up on my GitHub app on my phone.

If I need something. But usually I will not be accessing it. Like you access a notebook because we're talking about code. And I usually code from a computer, my laptop, my desktop computer, whatever it is. I need that second brain when I'm coding. So. If you think about it, I don't really need it on my phone. I can search for it for stuff on my phone, through the GitHub app, but I'm not coding on my phone. At least not yet. I don't know where the future will take us.

Uh, but for now I'm not coding on my phone. I'm coding on a computer. And that's why it makes sense. To have that on my GitHub where I can access it through a computer where I'm coding from. Whichever computer that is. GitHub is in the cloud. And I can. Clone my repo, wherever I need it. If your second brain is something different, like. It might be templates or something like that. Uh, writing related things and not specifically code. Then you probably.

Could use something like Evernote or even apple notes. Craft is also a great option. Notion is highly popular now. All of those options are available to you and all of them have a mobile app where you can find the thing that you're looking for. On your phone and also record new things on your phone and then find them on a computer because it's all in the cloud. There are a lot of other options. I'm not going to go over any other things, but, the ones that I'm mostly familiar with is Evernote.

Which I'm kind of slowly pulling away from. And moving towards craft because something in craft makes writing more satisfying to me. And it's also now being improved with searching ability and it's already been pretty cool. Now you can also, publish pages that you can share with people. So it is becoming more and more. Usable. The developers are very passionate about making Craft the best tool that they can. And that's why I'm kinda pulling more towards craft now.

For other types of knowledge, like blogging templates, social media. all those things that's I want to record and offload from my brain. And even things about podcasting that I know. Offload from my brain and then record them there where it's searchable. Once it's recorded and not in my brain. I can actually make use of that to create more content. So it's really good to have something like that written down. Once you realize your information. On a page. It's so good.

And also, The course that I've been participating in, since the beginning of the year ship 30 for 30. I signed up as a captain. And one of the things that they want you to do as a captain is record all of the information that you have on something in a file called idea file and it makes so much sense to save that idea file inside your second brain because that file is what you use as a base to create content to create a course to get everything you need.

So I think that's really important to have that. Whatever your profession is. Because. It's always good to offload things from our brain into a page and free up that mental energy. That way you can be more creative and feel better inside your own head. So that's all I wanted to share it for today. I love the idea of a second brain. Both for the things I do in blogging and podcasting. And for the knowledge that I have in software engineering from years of doing this.

It's time to free up that mental capacity. And start working on other things. If you have any questions, please leave a comment on this episode. if you want to dive deeper with me into content creation, concepts and ideas, you can sign up for my newsletter. You can find the link to that in the description of this episode as well. Thank you again so much for watching and I'll see you in the next one. Bye for now.