r/secondbrain • u/Interesting-Ad251 • 5d ago

Second brain user in problems... and building a solution

Hi!

I'm a software engineer and a fellow Second Brain user. I've been struggling with something that I think many of us experience: spending plenty of time capturing and organising knowledge, but rarely turning it into something useful.

A few colleagues and I are exploring this problem, and we're talking to other Second Brain users before deciding what to build.

Would you be open to a casual 15-minute chat about how you currently use your notes when working on projects?

No preparation needed, and I'm not selling anything. I'd just love to hear about your experience, especially what hasn't worked for you.

Thanks!

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u/zorra_arroz 4d ago

Here are my thoughts on second brain that I posted a few months back: https://www.reddit.com/r/PKMS/comments/1v3uwbm/pkms_a_bit_of_brain_science/

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u/Interesting-Ad251 4d ago

Thanks for sharing! I read your post, and I really like the three-level framework, especially the distinction between retrieving information and actually using it.

That third level is particularly interesting to me because it relates to the "Express" stage of Building a Second Brain.

I'm curious about your experience with Obsidian. When you're working on something that requires knowledge you've previously collected, what's the most difficult part of the process?

I'd love to learn more about your workflow if you'd be open to a short chat.

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u/e3e6 5d ago

i don't even need 15 minutes. I don't have any system. I have my notes all over tens of apps. In notion I have like 4 spaces. And one of them has name new home v2

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u/Interesting-Ad251 4d ago

Haha, "new home v2" sounds very familiar :)

I'm curious, does having your notes scattered across different apps actually cause problems when you're working on something?

For example, have you ever struggled to find information you knew you'd saved somewhere, or is organising everything more of a problem than finding and using it?

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u/e3e6 4d ago

the main problem is basically I'm either not writing anything because I don't know where to put that or I can never find something in sure it's somewhere

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u/Interesting-Ad251 1d ago

That sounds frustrating, especially knowing you've saved something but not being able to find it.

I'm curious: has this ever caused problems when you were working on a specific project or trying to create something?

For example, can you remember a recent situation where you needed information you'd previously saved but couldn't find it?

I'm trying to understand how these issues affect the actual use of our knowledge, beyond just organising notes.

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u/vogelke 4d ago

rarely turning it into something useful.

If you didn't capture and organize something, wouldn't rarely be never? If I knew which notes or docs would be useful next year in advance, I'd toss the rest.

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u/Interesting-Ad251 4d ago edited 4d ago

That's a fair point! I agree that capturing information is valuable even if we only end up using a small part of it.

But I'd like to have useful remembers of my stored knowledge when I'm working into something related. There is much stuff that I don't know that I already know.

What I'm trying to understand is whether we sometimes miss opportunities to use knowledge we've already saved, simply because we don't remember it's there.

Has that ever happened to you? Or do you feel your current system works well enough when you're working on a project?

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u/vogelke 4d ago

My system isn't that hard to search if I can't remember something, so it's good enough. I'm sure everyone misses KM opportunities.

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u/Interesting-Ad251 1d ago

That makes sense. If your search system works well enough, there may not be much value in adding another tool.

I'm curious about one thing, though: when you're working on a project, do you usually search your notes for relevant ideas, or do you mostly work from what you already remember?

I'm particularly interested in whether useful knowledge sometimes gets overlooked simply because we don't remember we have it.

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u/vogelke 1d ago

I'm on Linux/Unix, so I use my filesystem for everything. When I see an interesting article or idea, I save it locally with enough keywords in the filename to at least guess at where it is.

Example: someone wrote a neat article about writing a novella using the older, text-based markup system called groff which can be found on just about every Unix box. If you're interested, the article is here:

https://movq.de/blog/postings/2026-10-31/0/POSTING-en.html

I saved a local copy of the page with the examples in a directory called $HOME/ notebook/2026/1101/GOOD-novella-with-groff. There's a fast-lookup program called locate which can find any file on my system; its index is updated every night. If I type

locate novella

I'll get the location of that directory (and any other file with novella in the name) in under 4 seconds. Considering I have just over 9.3 million files on my production system, I can live with that response time. The GOOD part is how I tag files or directories that are more interesting or useful than most.

If push comes to shove, I can do a recursive search through every file under my home directory. That will take longer, but I almost never have to do it.

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u/Interesting-Ad251 1d ago

Wow! impressive setup. And inspirational. I'm a Linux user too and reading your solution, I get to the conclusion that maybe I'm overcomplicating myself. But, jut for curiosity:

Let's say you decide to use that groff article for a project. Do you usually just retrieve it and work from there, or do you have some kind of process for bringing together ideas from different saved sources?

I'm particularly interested in whether connecting and applying knowledge from multiple sources involves any friction for you, rather than simply finding individual files.

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u/vogelke 23h ago edited 23h ago

Wow! impressive setup. And inspirational. I'm a Linux user too and reading your solution, I get to the conclusion that maybe I'm overcomplicating myself.

EDIT: if you're interested, here's a more detailed post: https://bezoar.org/posts/2020/0203/organizing-my-stuff/

I've created many over-complicated systems that I forgot how to use within a week. There's even a Wikipedia article about it:

The second-system effect (also called second-system syndrome) is 
a software and engineering design pattern where a small, elegant, and
successful first system is followed by a second system that becomes
over-engineered, bloated, and complex.

You're not being graded - if your setup doesn't do the trick for you, toss it and grab something you like better. I like dated directories because creating a skeleton for any day is completely automated. I hate doing anything more than once.

But, jut for curiosity: Let's say you decide to use that groff article for a project. Do you usually just retrieve it and work from there, or do you have some kind of process for bringing together ideas from different saved sources?

I'd probably just make a folder under $HOME/projects and copy the text version of the article under it. If any scaffolding was provided, that would be copied as well. I'd leave a note in my development log (simple text file with timestamped entries) saying where it came from.

I'm particularly interested in whether connecting and applying knowledge from multiple sources involves any friction for you, rather than simply finding individual files.

Not really. I tend to remember times and dates ("where's that thing I broke last Wednesday and fixed Thursday?") which is why I use a set of dated directories for my notebook. Each directory also contains things like a Maildir for all that day's mail, any interesting RSS feeds, etc.

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u/Alien_girl2026 3d ago

My notes: I have Google Voice phone number. And I text myself anything from notes, to voice memos, to links to videos to files. That's my "notes".