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'I Deleted My Second Brain'
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Posted by satis
Jul 14, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Interesting post from Joan Westernberg, who has written for years in major publications about technology, creativity, and lifehacking. This piece discusses why Joan decided to nuke their Obsidian vault and all their Apple Notes, and the way deep Obsidian use can be a trap.
The post ends with an intention to start over and use those tools as a workspace rather than a catchall second brain.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/p/i-deleted-my-second-brain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjSWwmg-JRM
Posted by Paul Korm
Jul 15, 2025 at 02:51 PM
The trap is thinking of software as a “second brain”. There are no second chances. Best to use the one in the skull.
Posted by Stephen Zeoli
Jul 15, 2025 at 09:17 PM
Well said, Paul.
Paul Korm wrote:
The trap is thinking of software as a “second brain”. There are no
>second chances. Best to use the one in the skull.
Posted by MadaboutDana
Jul 23, 2025 at 07:23 AM
Totally! I’ve read Tiago Forte’s book on your second brain, I’ve experimented with Zettelkasten, and no, they’re all associated with such an enormous organisational overhead.
Yes, I’m a collector. I have thousands of PDF files in my knowledge repository, saved because they represent items of frangible information I don’t want to lose (either due to the vagaries of the internet or because Google’s AI-driven search no longer feels like finding them).
But no, they’re not organised. If I want to find something, I use my favourite search engine (FoxTrot Pro) to ransack them for specific details. And occasionally I get rid of swathes of older stuff that’s no longer relevant to my interests. But linking, tagging etc.? Nah, what a waste of life! At least my collection only wastes storage space ;-)
Posted by James Salla
Jul 24, 2025 at 04:45 AM
My experience has been that these tools and techniques become more valuable as the size of your data collection grows. When you only have a small amount of notes to deal with, almost any system works pretty well.