Generate Endless Ideas With A Second Brain OS While You Watch YouTube Videos and Read Articles

Welcome to the final day of the Second Brain Operating System.

 

If you’ve made it to day 4, then know that it’s no ordinary achievement.

 

The reason is simple. While everyone around you continues to:

  • Lose their best ideas to bad memory
  • Pay a hefty subscription tax each month
  • Spend hours in Obsidian linking their thinking
  • Build and abandon productivity systems in Notion
  • Glue 10 apps together and call it their Second Brain
  • Struggle to find what they need, when they need it most
  • And wind up on Google again to find solutions to problems they solved

 

You moved forward from these 7 big mistakes.

 

Your hunch that there’s a better way has proven to be true. You were right.

 

But also know, having a meal plan isn’t enough. In fact, having the food cooked and stored in the fridge isn’t enough either.

 

You need to eat the food regularly to unlock great shape.

 

Because when it comes to eating the food, your mind still has a choice. You can Deliveroo/FoodPanda something regretful.

 

Just like that, having the Second Brain Operating System isn’t enough. You need to make a habit of capturing and searching your knowledge. If you can add writing to that mix, you’re on Cloud 9.

 

Today’s goal is to set a quick routine which makes being creative feel like a button press. So before we get into the mechanics, it’s time for our little chat.

 

The idea I am going to introduce to you today changed how I view the internet.

 

If you had to categorise every piece of content on the internet, what would that category be called? YouTube Videos, Research Papers, Course Videos, Newsletters, Twitter Threads?

 

I want to bias you here. The word I’d recommend is “Articles”. Every independent unit of information is an “Article”. And all of these are just the different “types” of articles you consume.

 

Something interesting happens every time you read or watch an article. Your neurons light up. Especially if the information is new. It’s even better if its something new and something you’re interested in.

 

Now take a random newsletter or youtube video. And try to go into the mind of the person who wrote it. You will quickly notice how before it was written, the article was a mere “thought”.

 

You know by this point all of these have one name:

  • Ideas
  • Concepts
  • Highlights
  • Epiphanies
  • Reflections
  • Observations
  • Breakthroughs
  • Deeper Understandings

 

They’re all a thought. And when you note down a thought, it’s a note.

 

So at some point, the articles you consume were just a few random thoughts. It could have been an idea, a few concepts and a few observations “stitched” together.

 

By this logic, the internet can be simplified to a “bunch of people stitching together their thoughts and sharing them in public”.

 

Every time you consume an article, your neurons light up along a similar pathway as the original author’s (from when they wrote it).

 

But instead of having the exact same journey, your intelligent brain creates one that is very unique to you.

 

I touched on this briefly yesterday. But long story short, perception is what makes you unique.

 

So “Articles” and “Notes” have a lot of back and forth between them.

 

Some random notes of the Author —> Article by the author —> Some thoughts in your head while consuming the article = your notes —> You stitching together thoughts that occurred to you while consuming articles from different authors —> Your article

 

It’s safe to say that we are not known by the people we keep.

 

We are shaped by the people who influence our thoughts. The voices we carry in our minds matter most. Those whose ideas echo loudest in our heads are the ones who have the greatest influence on us.

 

I had to establish this because the Second Brain OS gives you a choice to pick who gets to be loud and who gets to be quiet in your head.

 

Apart from articles and notes, there are two other entities at play. Authors and platforms. So lets put this all into a neat, easy to remember logical statement.

 

Authors publish articles to platforms that make us think and take notes.

 

There’s a couple of experiments I’ve done which maybe relevant to you:

  1. Setting up a slack bot which notifies me when authors I am interested in publish an article on any platform
  2. Setting up Feedly which creates a gallery view of articles from different authors from across different platforms
  3. Setting up an AI Agent which sends me an email summary or creates a notion page when an author I am interested in publishes an article on any platform

 

Honestly, these automations are better for keeping track of your competition. But our goal is to trigger creativity. So I will cover them in my other newsletters for a different them.

 

So instead, todays mechanics are very easy.

Because you have something far more powerful for creativity. A Second Brain Operating System.

 

 

Fun fact. You’ve already trained Medium, YouTube and other platform algorithms to serve you correctly.

 

Social media platforms learn from what you search, what you browse, what you read or watch. And especially from how much time you spend on a specific article.

 

We are going to take advantage of this with an organised routine thats gets us into a creative flow.

 

While there’s no hard time limit, I recommend a minimum of 60 minutes twice a week.

 

Phase 1: Shortlist (10 minutes)

 

I start by visiting YouTube, Medium and Substack to see what my feed is serving me. Then I instantly click & open in new tab any of the “headlines” that interest me.

 

Now I treat each piece of content as a startup founder trying to pitch me their idea. They have 30 seconds to give me a reason to continue.

 

If it doesn’t excite me, I close the tab.

 

If it excites me, I copy the link and paste it into the Second Brain OS customGPT, asking it to crawl and summarise the key points in the author’s voice. It’s one of my favourite prompts. Keep in mind content behind a paywall or platform limitation won’t get crawled. You can just copy/paste the text of it in that case.

 

Important: I don’t read the responses just yet. I continue to shortlist until I have closed all tabs.

 


Today, I will be giving you one article after another. These articles are from different authors, which is an important nuance you must keep in mind at all times. For each article, follow these guidelines. Sometimes, I will provide you a link without any transcript or text. In this case, use the crawlText action to get the text. If it's a youtube video, use the article_type "video". If it's a website or text article, use the article_type "blog". In all your responses, make sure to include the original link as "Source: {Link}" at the beginning. Let me know when ready.
// guidelines
You are me.
You are the author of the text.
Task: Use the given notes at the beginning of our conversation to format them to identify and structure the text into 5 or more key Headings. Then following the same language and writing style, rewrite my notes verbatim in points following my style of writing under each heading. Ensure that points are detailed and nuanced, not missing out anything in my notes.Constraint: Use the same language and writing style as witnessed in the provided text. Remember, you are me and you are the author, so write and speak like the author.Respond with: Heading --> Summary --> Questions, Bullet Points & Examples (together). Do not use the labels heading, summary, Questions, Bullet Points & Examples. This is just a reference for you to structure your response.

 

 

Phase 2: Filter (15 minutes)

 

Once all the tabs are closed, I read each responses and it makes me feel one of 3 things:

  1. I already know this
  2. I know this, but I like how it’s done differently
  3. I don’t know this and I think it would be valuable

 

If I naturally capture a thought while reading a response, its worth moving forward. So I reopen the link BUT I make sure not to start consuming the article straight away.

 

Instead, I patiently go over all the remaining responses.

 

The result? I strategically filter out articles that lack value inside or contain things I already know.

 

Which means my time won’t be wasted.

Phase 3: Consume (35+ minutes)

 

It’s time to start consuming.

 

I let this be a very natural process, hitting the “Quick Capture” shortcut to instantly add ideas that occur to me. I literally dump the exact words going through my head, without thinking twice.

 

I strongly recommend you do the same: no editing, no rephrasing, no finding better words. Capture it raw!

 

Now it’s interesting, but unlike others I haven’t built a “Web Clipper” chrome extension (yet). Those extensions copy and paste the text you’ve highlighted. They don’t focus on capturing the thought in your head.

 

So instead of adding the author’s text word for word, you’re capturing your thoughts.

 

Also! You’re not limited to the quick capture. If you want to keep pen and paper by your side, do so. To capture those notes, just open the official ChatGPT app on your phone, go to the Second Brain OS customGPT and take a picture of what you wrote by hand. Then ask it to push the text to your knowledge.

 

Do what makes you comfortable! And just know, behind the Second Brain OS is doing the heavy lifting of connecting your ideas in real time.

 

Also remember: you don’t have to consume all the articles. Set a time limit, even if it’s 6 hours. Consume what you can.

Phase 4: Review (Time Varies)

 

Since all the ideas are fresh in my head, I want to do my long term memory a favour and summarise what I’ve learnt.

 

So I simply type the words going through my head and ask the Second Brain OS customGPT to bring together & present my ideas.

 

And if you want to go the extra mile, you can ask it to learn from the results it got and do another search by itself. This really gives it deep context. Here’s the prompt to do exactly that

 


Based on what you've learnt from my knowledge, please write a a userQuery for each specific aspect to learn more about what more exists in my knowledge relevant to that specific thing. For each query, use a searchK of 10. Based on this, please bring my knowledge together for each specific thing separately. Combine this into a formatted summary, showing clear separation of concerns between the different specifics we've discussed today.

 

Then I ask it to push a combined summary to my Second Brain OS.

 

This summary has two big advantages: it’s something I can go back to and resurface all the connections my brain made. It’s something AI can use to find pretty much all the different notes I captured that led to it.


 

With that, we are the end of this journey.

 

Now that your unfair advantage is in place, all you have to do are 3 things regularly:

  • Capture
  • Search
  • Write

 

While the research says it takes time to build habits, I’d argue doing something multiple times a day can shorten it (by a lot!).

 

You will keep hearing from me as I discover new and unique ways to use the Second Brain OS. My goal is to create a new campaign every 1 to 2 weeks.

 

I hope you enjoyed this journey and keep in touch. I can’t wait to see everything you achieve with your Second Brain OS. As always, feel free to drop me a message on newsletter@umairkamil.com

 

This is part of a Crash Course on the Second Brain OS. Access all the Automations and the Second Brain OS CustomGPT to start capturing, searching & chatting with your notes by clicking the button below
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Umair Kamil