About a year ago I took some cognitive tests. All tests passed quite well, except for those that were relevant. working memory. I’m actually Dory from ‘Finding Nemo’.

Since then, I’ve taken the second brain trend much more seriously: underlining, annotating, and digitally archiving anything that might come in handy in the future to free up space in short-term memory, one of my most limited resources.

Structure and order are necessary to have a truly functional second brain. A. incomprehensible mixed bagBut an Internet addict, exposed to a constant bombardment of information through videos, articles, tweets, newsletters and podcasts, must write everything down so that the information is not erased from memory.

In general, there are two things I can never forget: My grandmother’s home phone (even though my grandmother is no longer there, she does not answer it) and the television commercials I watched in my childhood; especially the jet expander ones. If I intend to keep it, I need to write everything else down.

Luckily, actively taking notes helps me process and integrate information better; This is something every student will see for themselves. Since the bandwidth is as small as mine, the goal is to underline everything.

Highlight, annotate and archive

I don’t follow a specific method for writing everything down, and I don’t have a perfectly indexed database. Concept or ObsidianLike the productivity gurus, but for lazy people, I do something that can be described as Getting Things Done (GTD).

The first step is to collect all the information that catches my attention or can be used for something I can access more in the app. This nuance is important because it helps me avoid catching everything I mentioned above. What do I mean by the closest implementation I can get to?

Your book. I normally read e-books and long articles on my Kindle before going to sleep. If I see something interesting, instead of going to my phone and copying the quote into a notes app, I underline it with the Kindle’s own underlining function, which also supports annotations.

Underlined text and descriptions sync via the Amazon cloud to the Kindle app on all my devices, so I always have them on hand for later processing.

Podcasts. I do the same for podcasts. There’s an app called Snipd that combines the classic features of a podcast player with AI-generated transcripts that can be highlighted and annotated. It also does summaries, automatic sections, and other things that AI is starting to enable in many applications.

The most interesting thing is that annotations sync with Readwise, Notion, Obsidian and other popular annotation applications. In my case, I use Obsidian because it is free, but Readwise has interesting functions for these purposes, such as annotating articles and PDFs.

Videos. There are also services for annotating YouTube videos, but until Google releases its own tool, what I do is copy the parts that interest me from the automatic transcription that is included with the description in all videos on the platform.

Long videos can be summarized with Microsoft Edge Copilot or ChatGPT, both of which are free. A useful indicator in these cases is to ask the AI: “List everything the video says about (a specific topic that interests me).” Video excerpts, like podcast excerpts, go to Obsidian.

Tweets. If what I see is a tweet or a podcast script that I can use for an article I’m working on, I save it directly to my X account with saved items (or the “bookmarks” option).

The best thing about

Websites. I no longer use RSS, but the content format I consume most is still web articles. I’ve tried everything to highlight and annotate websites, including Notion and OneNote’s advanced web clipping tools, but… I’m sticking with Telegram.

Telegram is one of the applications I use most in my daily life. I started saving links and notes there when I realized I was referring to it more than specific task and reminder apps.

If I think of something I want to remember, I write it down in “Saved Messages.” When I see news about Xataka, I paste the link into a private group called “Xataka”. If I find a relevant title or description, I’ll note it as a reply to that link.

I have dozens of Telegram groups with me for such statements. I have one for every podcast I record with my colleagues. My wife and I have a few for things like “Malaga Restaurants” and “Movies”. And I know many people who do the same, just on WhatsApp.

Receiving, unloading and processing

Once you’ve distributed all those notes across Kindle, Obsidian, X, and Telegram, it’s time to commit them.

When I want to group web pages by topic (for an article I’m writing or a podcast script), I use OneTab, a browser extension that does nothing but archive open tabs.

If I’m writing an article and want to document it with quotes from different sources, I use Obsidian to structure everything into an outline. The process is as simple as it is rudimentary: I search for notes I’ve kept in other apps, draft them in a specific order, and expand on what I want to write.

Obsidian doesn’t have much of a mystery. It has a very fast search engine that allows me to quickly access all my annotations, and it works with Markdown, the language in which I format such articles.

I used to use Apple Notes, but for whatever reason, I regretted it after spending time on Windows and Android.

Image | give 3

in Xataka | The rise of the ‘second brain’: the new trend defining productivity this decade