More knowledge is better if you can access it when needed.
jeff x DALLE
By bundleIQ co-founder Jeff Robbins
The story goes — although it’s likely B.S. — that Albert Einstein was giving a lecture when a visiting Professor asked for his phone number. Einstein walked over and picked up a telephone book, looked up his number, and gave his number to the visiting prof.
I imagine the conversation going something like this:
Visiting Prof: Hey Al, you don’t know your own number?
Al: Nope, why should I?
Visiting Prof: Might come in handy in case there’s no phone book around.
Al: Well, maybe, but I don’t memorize anything I can look up. I save my massive brain for knowledge that will change our known universe.
Visiting Prof: Got it. That makes sense.
I’m sure Einstein could spout his number out without the aid of a phone book. But the story is an important one because it shows that even the geniuses among us can’t know everything off the top of their heads. We need aids, books, notes, mentors.
Even if we could store everything in our minds it wouldn’t be efficient. Information has to be accessible to be useful. Inspiration and progress come from connecting two thoughts from different worlds.
If we can’t access in a timely manner, we can’t connect and we can’t innovate.
We are creative animals. We are attracted to the new, bright, and shiny objects. We are neophyte junkies. Our brains are designed to solve problems not to store data.
We can barely hold two thoughts in our minds at once. And if these thoughts are conflicting, stress and anxiety ensue.
We need a place to store data that is easily accessible. It may have been a phone books for Einstein but a phone book is limited. We need to build ourselves a second brain.
A Second Brain — is a storage center of our ideas, our inspirations, our research materials, our books to be read, or those we’ve read. It’s our notes, and insights from the day, the week, the year. It’s the stories our parents tell us. It’s what we’ve heard and seen and felt and the collective experiences of all those around us. And it’s a method for collecting and storing this data. Most importantly it’s a method that allows for immediate access and that makes connections between these thoughts without us consciously attempting to make connections ourselves.
How I built my second brain
You are going to need a methodology. We are bombarded by so much data today that it is impossible to corral it all. Data’s like cats on speed in a stadium full of rockers in a windstorm.
Of course, I use bundleIQ.
Use these steps to build your own second brain:
- Notes — most of my life I’ve been a scribbler and a doodler. I read with a pen and a highlighter. I write daily in notebooks. Pen in hand. Paper always ready. But these notes and scribbles help me understand and comprehend my subject matter, and record my ideas around the topic, they are not accessible. My first step to building my second brain was to start taking all my notes in bundleIQ (bIQ). These notes are easily accessible and the AI/Analyze function in bIQ connects all my notes together, identifying common themes and ideas.
- Pdf’s — I get a lot of pdf’s sent to me. Presentations, reports, meeting minutes, and others. Pdf’s are easy to upload within bIQ. Once uploaded they are again, connected to my notes, growing my second brain.
- Books — you won’t find me without a book nearby. I read at lunch. I read during breaks. I read at night. I upload books from topics I’m interested in directly into bIQ. My go-to free book site is Project Gutenberg. I downloaded all the writings available from the Stoics. Now my data is connected to the writings of Seneca making connections between modern studies and ancient wisdom.
- Twitter — There is still value in Twitter for me. I can save any twitter thread that interests me. I just reply to the last tweet in the thread with, @bundleiq and #bundleit, and the tweet is saved as a note in my account. Now connected to everything else.
- YouTube — I throw in the url’s into bIQ. I don’t have time to watch every video I want so I bundle them. This grows my knowledge base and connects videos I’m interested in to my data.
- Studies and reports — Today it’s hard to know what is real and fake. Getting back to the source material can help you determine the diamonds from the zirconia. I upload the reliable studies on topics I’m interested in or studying. This is important because a report could be hundreds of pages. And most reports are boring to read. I can throw them into bIQ and get the insights and connections without even having to read the entire report. And bIQ gives me the source material as it makes the connections. Makes me smarter.
- Summarize — Often when a connection is made between one of my notes and a report, I will go the the source to learn more. My first step is to summarize it. I can summarize a page, a chapter, or the entire report. Huge time saver. I can also save the summary as a note. This adds to the data in my second brain.
This is much better than a phone book.
Get Your Second Brain to Talk to You
It’s amazing how quickly you will collect data and insights once you start approaching your daily process with collecting and storing information in your thoughts.
I built my second brain on many of the general topics I have interest in especially my notes and journaling. It’s been invaluable. I’ve loaded in climate reports, small business trends, AI advancements. These I’ve mixed with ancient wisdom and writings from the Stoics, from Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and others.
In addition to the connections that are made automatically as I work, I can now query my bundles and ask them questions. Here are some examples:
What is a life worth? Asked of Frederick Douglass.
And the same question of Seneca:
This has been invaluable. I can get specific. I’m hooked. I’m Doctor Frankenstein. I want to replicate the minds of all of our great thinkers. I want to be able to combine the knowledge of Lincoln and Douglass. Shakespeare and Steinbeck.
This is a crowd sourcing the knowledge of humankind. It’s an actual “Collective Unconscious.”
We have big issues to resolve and it will take everyone working together to solve these problems. Creating a second, a third, a tenth brain, we can tap into is a first step to improving our ability to manage data, educate ourselves, and leave our brains free for the important stuff.
It makes us smarter.
A smarter brain used for solving problems not remembering phone numbers.
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