How to build a second brain as a software developer
I&#x27;ve tried to incorporate some of the ideas of the &quot;second brain&quot; and it didn&#x27;t really give me that much. My lessons:<p>1. It&#x27;s always super helpful to write things down. Taking notes from what I read&#x2F;learn is a great way to verify that I understand it. It sharpens my thinking.<p>2. However, maintaining the &quot;second brain&quot; is <i>a lot</i> work. It&#x27;s not only about &quot;linking&quot; together notes. You also need to maintain some consistency between them. I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about the <i>structure</i> instead of actually thinking about the <i>content</i>.<p>3. Most of my notes&#x2F;thoughts fall into two categories: (1) Either they are critical for something I&#x27;m actively working on or (2) it&#x27;s just loose concepts that I&#x27;m toying with. For (1) I immediately end up playing with it in code — which is far more concrete and tangible than notes. And for (2) it was rarely important to retain the knowledge accurately many weeks&#x2F;months later.<p>What I&#x27;ve ended up with is taking a lot of notes, but I hardly focus on organizing them.