I deleted my second brain
138 comments
·June 28, 2025barrkel
motorest
> I would never delete my own archive of notes, because it contains a different kind of information: howtos for things I do infrequently, current state for personal projects I rotate in and out of over years, maintenance logs for my vehicles, identification details for every important account (account numbers, insurance expiry details etc).
It struck me as odd how the blog post waxed lyrical about "second brains" but the description of the notes seemed to point at mostly to-do lists. That's not what I would call a second brain. The definition of "second brain" is in line with the old tradition of engineering logs, where engineers write down things they did, measurements they took, and observations they did. On the other hand, to-do lists is just work you assign to yourself.
No wonder those notes caused anxiety. I would also be anxious if I was faced with a log with 7-years worth of chores that are both late and stale.
Logs are logs. You write down what you feel is important, and forget about them. After some time, you can delete them without a second thought. You write down stuff today because you feel it will help you in the future. If what you wrote down today is not a present from your past to your present, and instead is causing you grief, then just remove it from your notes.
As all things in life, you need to preserve the things that cause joy and push away those that cause grief. Your second brain is no different.
tommica
I'd hate to lose the ability of just going back 20 years later and read my own thoughts and ideas, to meet the person I was at that point.
I have a project/idea journal that I've had for over 10 years, and going through it sometimes is really fun. I remember being so proud about my code-generation tool that allowed me to quickly start a new html+css project that I was doing that work as a freelancer. Seeing that page in my journal brings up a smile.
keysdev
I recently recovered about 3TB of data from over 15 years ago. It was just on a hard drive with a friend that we thought was lost. I dont really miss the data, but oh it was nice to see some old photos and notes!!
So what I recoomend is put on a hd and hide it some where. Go check it in 15 years
TacticalCoder
[dead]
1dom
I don't really like this. I think the author let their own personal issues lead to the destruction of knowledge. I relate to the issues, but the nuclear option seems extreme.
They could have just left their library for a bit, there was no need to burn it to the ground.
"I've just lobotomised myself and I look forward to having to relearn everything and doing it all again".
If nothing else, in 7 years time, they'll regret not being able to compare how their new manifestation of internal knowledge anxiety compares to their previous.
There was no need to do this. Please anyone, if you're considering this, just zip them up and put them on a usb or cloud storage somewhere out of the way - that's a lot harder to regret.
manmal
The problem with hoarding is that, on the whole, the hoarded items are worthless. There’s too much noise and too little signal. Finding the gems takes an active effort, which author found daunting. Hoarders usually need help from the outside, and if they don’t get that help, it’s IMO fair to throw it all out.
motorest
> The problem with hoarding is that, on the whole, the hoarded items are worthless. There’s too much noise and too little signal.
I don't think that's a problem. What turns logs into a problem is misplaced expectations on what is their purpose and how you should use them.
Logs are collected with the express purpose of being ignored, and as a safeguard in case in the future you need to check an audit trail of what you were doing. After a while, once the odds of those logs providing any value drops enough, you can safely delete them.
Your tool is only as good as you make it out to be.
noisy_boy
> Finding the gems takes an active effort, which author found daunting.
Who knows what are gems are what are not? I scan tons of stuff related to my children's school/activities etc. One day when I'm gone, maybe they will enjoy going through them and find some things they will call gems and lots of other junk. Or maybe they will consider it all junk and just get rid of it. But I can't be the judge of that now, I can only be the custodian.
manmal
You are perfectly describing the issue when sorting out a hoarder‘s stuff. There‘s no way of knowing what‘s precious and what not for most of the things. There might be some obvious things (wooden furniture / ISO documents that are still relevant), but the rest goes in the trash usually.
> One day when I'm gone, maybe they will enjoy going through them
My mother used to say the same thing. But I‘m not looking at that old stuff, ever. Maybe your kids will. It’s your decision whether it’s worse to be false negative or false positive here. If the stuff is not taking up too much space, it’s probably a good idea to keep it. Hoarding is something else though.
dist-epoch
Realistically they will use an AI to find the gems.
tareqak
With respect to knowledge and notes, I would say that the knowledge (gems) may not be worthless in an absolute sense but its relevance may no longer be worth the cost of keeping said knowledge organized under a given person’s organization scheme.
For what it is worth, I still find it frustrating when I cannot find a certain piece of information that I am looking for but I know exists because I came across it before but didn’t record it at the time. However, I also appreciate being able to forget distressing events that would find ways to remind me about their existence.
I guess all of this may depend on the exact definitions of knowledge, data, and memory, and how an individual reckons with acquiring, organizing, and forgetting information.
KHRZ
We just entered the era where LLMs could mine his gems for him though.
alternatex
I find it wild to suggest an LLM would be better at scouring data for gems than the person who wrote them. LLMs are better than us at going through large amounts of data, and that's it. They have no idea what is valuable there.
qwertox
That's an effort that can be handled by an AI.
qwertox
Let alone the fact that he could have fed an assistant with that information in 3 or 5 years, and would never have had to bother with that information again, but would be able to talk about it and ask in huge detail about things that were once relevant. The AI would have enough information on how he wants the data to be structured, it could have kept doing it for him.
johanneskanybal
I mean most of us don’t keep any organized notes and are fine. I can giggle sometimes when I find old notepads from the past but nothing I’d miss.
Sounds like the author for sure made an obvious choice even if that doesen’t mean you have to do the same.
Veen
It’s not knowledge unless they actually know it. It’s just a collection of information.
Havoc
These types of impulsive grand swings ("Remember everything -> Delete everything") are in my experience always mistakes in the long run.
Would have been better to figure out how to prune 50% in a way that hits the right spots.
tasuki
> I still love Obsidian. And I’m planning on using it again. From scratch. And with a deeper level of curation and care - not as a second brain, but as a workspace for the one I already have.
Different, but reminds me of something I have regrettably witnessed at several of my workplaces: "Our knowledge base is in disarray. It's disorganised, full of out of date information, and it's hard to find the things you need. Let's discard it and create a better one!" Then the new one quickly falls into disarray just the same. Now you have to search two badly-organized, partially out of date knowledge bases.
I wonder why people are so resistant to organising whatever they have already. I'm surely never deleting my personal knowledge base. I might rework parts of it in the future...
Dylan16807
> Let's discard it and create a better one!" Then the new one quickly falls into disarray just the same. Now you have to search two badly-organized, partially out of date knowledge bases.
I could blame the idea of moving to a new knowledge base here, or say it was a waste of time, but instead I'm going to blame a stark refusal to make a schedule for a simple job and then follow it. "Discard it and create a better one" is very easy to understand. If you still have two after a few weeks you failed at a fundamental level. The problem wasn't the idea.
tasuki
> The problem wasn't the idea.
I'll double down: yes, the initial idea is the problem. In a large organization, you can never discard the old knowledge base because you do not understand it well enough. No one does. No one knows which pieces of the old knowledge base are useful to whom. So it sticks around indefinitely.
The best you can do as an individual is to gradually improve your corner of the knowledge base. The idea that "we'll create a new one and it'll be up-to-date forever" is unrealistic, it's wishful thinking. If we weren't able to do it with the old one, why think we'll be able to do it with the new one?
recursivecaveat
Organizing your stuff means starting a big unpleasant task today. Starting a new knowledge base lets you have fun today, and you cross your fingers that future you will eat their vegetables and diligently keep it up to date forever.
Ezhik
I don't know about everyone, but I found the whole PKM/second brain "industry" a bit much, I was never able to stick to complex rules and things like atomic notes.
Instead I mostly just write notes with hyperlinks: https://ezhik.jp/hypertext-maximalism/
I like hoarding my notes. I don't actually have to come back to the notes I write unless I need them. Because I keep my system very simple, having lots of notes doesn't weigh on my mind.
My notes are glimpses of my old selves and old interests, but I like being able to trace a line between my old self and my present self. At the same time, I'm not really at odds with my past self - but we all have different relationships with time.
DavidPiper
I'm in a similar spot to the author. I have a stack of notes curated over years. Got hooked on the whole Second Brain thing. But I think it's time to trash the lot.
I'll probably keep some of the how-tos and syntax reminders for various tools -- looking at you, ffmpeg and defaults -- but most of it, even many of the curated notes from books, is just junk that I carry now carry around, with the added bonus of that little voice saying "hey, you haven't reviewed me in a while, maybe you should because _this time_ there'll be some productivity hack or life-changing insight you'll glean from it".
When I look at the physical hoarding tendencies of some people close to me, it looks scarily similar.
A long time ago someone told me that you should always be wary of the difference between what you know and what you can look up. Trying to merge those things seems to have been a mistake for me.
rwnspace
Intentionally wiping almost all of my obsidian vaults and accidentally wiping my 2TB HDD was the most freeing thing.
I'd amassed so many books and papers and notes and half-finished projects over a frenzied couple of years where the main drivers were stimulant abuse and low self-worth.
It turns out that the excitement of finding some resource that's perfectly fit for your requirements is it's own rare pleasure, and it can be harmful to make them a demand on yourself in their own right, and especially harmful to try and catch'em all
I think I'd decided to grind my way out of my situation and channelled that energy into the most elaborate resource-hoarding and procrastination. I did genuinely learn a lot but very, very inefficiently, and in such a way I was sick of computers and self-motivated learning for a couple years.
Second-brain culture definitely provides an open door to hoarding (and stimulant users). I still like using obsidian but I don't care for the various "methods", I just do what makes sense. It turns out when I enjoy the process of doing/learning things, I remember stuff about them pretty well.
dist-epoch
> I'll probably keep some of the how-tos and syntax reminders for various tools -- looking at you, ffmpeg and defaults
or maybe just ask an LLM for the exact command each time you need it.
runjake
I can’t count the number of times my notes have saved me or my team some serious grief. I don’t have to keep everything in my head. I can offload my brain into notes.
Godspeed, but there’s no way I’d give any of that up.
thom
Why do you keep what is clearly critical project documentation in your personal notes though?
mrweasel
Possibly because a large number of organisations don't really have a good system for capturing somethings as "messy" as notes.
I'm not big on note taking myself, but when I do, the things I capture is very different from the version I put into the official documentation.
There is a good article: A rational design process, how and why to fake it.[1] Basically how we reach our goal and how we present them are two different things. The personal notes have the details on failures, wrong turns and alternative ideas, the official documentation won't have that.
1) https://www.cs.tufts.edu/~nr/cs257/archive/david-parnas/fake...
motorest
> Possibly because a large number of organisations don't really have a good system for capturing somethings as "messy" as notes.
To build upon this point, there's a problem that writing docs is a thankless job: those who benefit from it do so silently, whereas those who selflessly shared notes later can find themselves involved in issues they have no involvement.
It's a lose-lose situation.
XorNot
I'd posit a simpler explanation: most large orgs buy Confluence, and you cannot find anything in Confluence.
navane
Because it's less friction to put it there? Because only he can find it in the sparse context it lives in? Because he can use it then for multiple projects, and might he change, multiple companies? Because that way it's his and not the companies? Imagine leaving a job and all you learned stays at that job instead of with you?
robocat
[flagged]
motorest
> Why do you keep what is clearly critical project documentation in your personal notes though?
a) how can you tell some random note you took today is critical project documentation?
b) why do you believe people read through project documentation?
wiseowise
Because then it spares you the maintenance of bullshit? The moment you put something public, there are 10 wise-asses that will start bikeshedding about MD flavor, where to put it, who maintains it, can we automate it, can you update this, can we expand it, etc.
4ndrewl
Where do people draw the line between a PKM (which is yours) and team documentation (which belongs, presumably to your team to which you have a transient relationship with)?
dudinax
personal notes become cryptic team notes when you leave. If something ought to be team knowledge before that, it needs to get translated into a form that more people can easily read.
bentinata
Product focused (plans, documentation, snippets) notes for team, people focused (1-on-1, performance review, birthday) notes for personal.
kashunstva
Part of the problem with these collections of notes, whether you call them Zettelkasten, Second Brain, PKM or whatever, is the expectation that something unique, amazing, or earth-shattering emerge from the process of using it. The expectation is strongest in the Zettelkasten community where they trot out the story of some academic sociologist of old who invented the system and cranked out tons of publications. Never mind that those publications have practically zero impact on the field currently. There is also the apparent expectation that you follow a specific and arcane method, with specific types of notes that evolve in a certain prescribed way. I’m a reasonably smart person and the ZK ontology perpetually escapes me. Maybe because it’s needlessly reductive. Yes maybe Luhmann used the system to generate a lot of publications. But the academics I know have never even heard of this. My spouse has a few hundred published papers and her process is nothing like this.
Anyway, I don’t see the point in destroying one’s notes. It seems performatively symbolic; and if that helps you get past a block of some sort, more power to you. My own notes are half-organized, half-chaotic. Vestiges of a dozen different systems live on in it. It shows that I suffer from collector’s fallacy. I don’t care.
Tomte
> some academic sociologist of old
> Never mind that those publications have practically zero impact on the field currently
You‘re so cool and edgy.
Luhmann is still one of the most cited, grappled-with and thought-about sociologist across a number of disciplines.
M0r13n
I can absolutely relate to this. I had similar feelings for the last year or so - although I couldn't express these thoughts as well as the author did.
I've developed this weird addiction to making notes in Obsidian. It wasn't really about learning or understanding anything. I bought into the illusion that having notes in my PKM meant I had actual knowledge. Bigger graph = smarter me, or so I thought. I even started reading books just to feed the system: Look at me with my 3,587 notes this year - aren't I clever!"
Currently, I am just taking notes where it really matters: Readme, documentation and some loosely organised markdown files
melvinroest
So...
I just use Apple Notes and almost never reread my notes. The search functionality is almost always enough to find what I'm looking for. If I really need to dive deep/search deep, then I just open up the SQLite db that's somewhere on my Mac to find a very particular note. That's only needed if I have 100s of notes to sift through.
I guess I don't need to know all the link between what I know?
The reason I write my experience is: I never got it. Why make things so complicated? How do you write stuff up if you're severely sleep deprived but still have a fun thought? I just become a mess of old habits and even can't be bothered to open my Apple Notes so I just WhatsApp my thoughts to myself, to sort it out later what to do with them when I'm not sleep deprived.
Can anyone relate and did they make the switch to something like Obsidian? If so, I'm curious what I'm missing out on or what it is that I'm not understanding.
I'm currently around 2500 notes, I started 2 years ago. I wanted a note taking habit for years, none ever stuck. The Apple Notes habit is the only one that really stuck. It's a very KISS-style approach, on purpose. When it becomes more complicated I can only follow through 50% of the time. Now I can follow through 98% of the time.
SirHumphrey
One senior researcher I know, though an extremely early user of computers and Emacs, still uses basic paper notebooks for writing things down. The system is not searchable, not hyperlinked - but he still finds things almost effortlessly even though he hasn't been young for a long time.
So if the only habit that sticks is Apple notes - keep doing that. At least in my experience hyperlinking was never that useful, because the act of remembering what to hyperlink where was about as difficult as just remembering the what other notes exist - in which case, what do I need hyperlinking for? I also find hyperlinked text hard to read because you end up in Wikipedia style 3 pages deep hyperlink hell - a fun way to spend an afternoon, a terrible way to work and understand.
k310
I always used and use paper notes. Computer files are mostly downloads, and saved articles for better search (ahem) than DDG or Google because their results are almost entirely name matches with movies or shit to buy.
And stuff disappears. Hopefully saved at IA, but not always.
That said, I have all my old note books with great ideas :-) whose time may come yet, etc.
The only notes I tossed were from years just prior to a divorce. Nothing useful, just griping. The other ideas are still interesting to review.
For example, lists of questions for games, and unusual names, such as Ebenezer and Florence, aka Ebb and Flo.
Photos are always saved, including ones I scanned from parents' prints and daughter's growing up prints. (Film days) A few old slides have been scanned, but I keep the originals. One more adapter ring, and those will also be scanned. My brother and I have Dad's original paintings and good quality photos (from the digital camera age) for showing off.
kelvinjps10
I maintain a very simple system a folder my ideas, another for my projects and one for thoughts I think that with the current search tools at our disposal there is no need to set up a complex system
I understand what the author deleted and why.
I would never delete my own archive of notes, because it contains a different kind of information: howtos for things I do infrequently, current state for personal projects I rotate in and out of over years, maintenance logs for my vehicles, identification details for every important account (account numbers, insurance expiry details etc).
When I'm doing something complex, I narrate what I'm doing in my notes. Most of these logs are write only. They can help as a kind of written rubber duck. And about 1 in 100 turn out to be extremely useful when I want to remember how I did something 10 years ago.
I use the same app (of my own design) with a different storage at work, and there I use it to remind myself what I did for performance reviews. Every edit is logged with a timestamp and I have a different tool which puts all the edits into chronological order.
For the author, their system served as a way of dealing with anxiety over self-improvement, it seems. But it turned into an anxiety of its own when the weight of unexplored ambition became manifest. It wasn't really a second brain IMO.