Whether it’s Zettelkasten, PARA Method, or pretty dashboards… it’s all outdated
I’ve been through it all:
- Spending hours in Obsidian to link my thinking
- Creating new tables & pretty dashboards in Notion
- Learning PARA, Zettelkasten, the Cornell Method
- Trying Mind Mapping or Progressive summarization
Every time I see someone fall for “linking your thinking”, I can’t help but see it as self torture. Really, I mean it. This is a horrible, outdated approach to note taking.
Common symptoms include:
- Creating a table in Notion for every new thing you encounter in life
- Using the [[text]] syntax in Obsidian to link related notes
- Adding links to google docs for other google docs
Let me remind you: the OG goal in life isn’t to be hunched up in front of a screen all day.
It’s to delegate, breathe freely and walk the earth like you were designed to (ideally with the people you love).
Think about how your brain connects ideas. You’re not sitting there manually drawing lines between neurons saying “this thought goes with that memory.” Your brain does it automatically, instantly, and often in surprising ways.
Here’s something wild about your brain
Every new experience doesn’t just add to your knowledge—it actually changes how you understand everything that came before it.
Remember when you first started making coffee at home? Maybe you thought it was just about buying good beans. Then you learned about grind size. Suddenly, every coffee experience from your past made more sense.
- “Oh, that’s why that cafe’s espresso was so bitter!”
- “Now I get why my French press coffee was always so muddy!”
I wanted a system that automatically connects my ideas. I wanted a system that doesn’t make me a slave to information.
Every new note I capture reshapes the entire network of my Second Brain OS.
- That concept related to tracking events and scoring my lead? It clicked when I was setting up Email Campaigns
- That content repurposing framework from Nicolas Cole? Came to me when I was turning my Newsletter into 5 short-form twitter threads
- That idea for positioning the Second Brain OS brand around AI Agents? Surfaced when I was setting up my SubStack
And the best part? I didn’t lift a finger to make those connections. I did absolutely nothing other than capturing my ideas.
No tagging, no linking, no Zapier, no duct tape, no glue— just capture and forget.
Today’s Action Step
Calculate how many hours you’ve spent in the last month:
- Organizing notes
- Creating systems
- Making dashboards
- Manually linking ideas
Now imagine what you could’ve created with that time instead.
P.S. Ready to stop organizing and start thinking? Here’s how to set up your Second Brain OS today:
