Second Brain

A second brain is an external, trusted system for everything you want to remember and act on. This skill sets one up using the PARA method in any notes app (Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, Logseq).

The PARA model

Organize every note into one of four top-level buckets, ordered by actionability:

• Projects - short-term efforts with a goal and a deadline (e.g. "Ship Q3 launch").
• Areas - ongoing responsibilities with a standard to maintain (e.g. "Health", "Finances").
• Resources - topics of interest for future reference (e.g. "Prompt engineering").
• Archives - inactive items from the other three buckets.

Rule: a note lives where you will next act on it, not where it topically "belongs".

The four workflows

1. Capture

Lower friction to near zero. Set up one universal inbox note or quick-capture shortcut. Capture anything: ideas, links, quotes, tasks. Do NOT organize at capture time - speed beats structure here.

2. Organize (weekly)

Once a week, empty the inbox. For each item:

• Is it actionable now? -> attach to a Project.
• Is it an ongoing standard? -> file under an Area.
• Might it be useful later? -> Resource.
• Otherwise -> delete or Archive.

3. Link

Connect notes so recall works by association, not folders:

• Add 2-3 [[wiki-links]] or relations to related notes when you file something.
• Maintain a few index/MOC (map of content) notes that link out to clusters.
• Tag sparingly - links beat tags for retrieval.

4. Recall (Express)

The point of the system is output. When starting work:

• Search the relevant Project/Area note first.
• Follow links outward to gather supporting Resources.
• Distill into a working draft. Progressive summarization: bold the best lines, highlight the best of the bold.

Note template

# <Title>
Bucket: Projects | Areas | Resources | Archives
Created: <date>
Links: [[related-1]] [[related-2]]

## Summary
<2-3 sentence why-this-matters>

## Notes
<content>

## Next action
<the single next step, if any>

Maintenance rituals

• Weekly review (20 min): empty inbox, mark finished projects, archive the dead.
• Monthly (10 min): promote hot Resources, prune stale links.

Anti-patterns to avoid

• Over-tagging or building deep folder trees - PARA stays flat (4 levels max).
• Collecting without expressing - capture is only valuable if you later create.
• Organizing at capture time - it kills capture velocity.

Quality bar

• Capturing a new thought takes seconds and zero decisions - one inbox, no filing at capture time.
• Every existing note lands in exactly one PARA bucket, placed by next action, not by topic.
• Filed notes carry 2-3 outbound links, and each major cluster has an MOC note pointing into it.
• The weekly and monthly rituals are written down with a trigger (day + time), not left as intentions.

Deliverable

Produce a working second-brain setup in the user's chosen app: the four PARA top-level buckets created, a universal capture inbox wired to a quick-capture entry point, the note template installed, 2-3 starter MOC/index notes for their main clusters, and a written maintenance checklist (the 20-minute weekly review and 10-minute monthly prune) with a scheduled trigger for each.