Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to build a second brain as a software developer

aseemthakar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 177 posts

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#51

Post by tconfrey »

genghisjahn wrote: post #38
iratewizard wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any particular reason why you use an iPad for note taking over a Wacom or remarkable?

I bought an iPad for other reasons (I like the apple ecosystem in general). And I really liked the notability app. Being able to take hand written notes and have them be indexable is fantastic. I'm sure there are other ways to do it but that's the one I've settled on.

I've gone back and forth on the ideal platform over time. I loved the feel of iPad/pencil but it was too closed a system. I'm currently using a Galaxy Note with the pen for mobile and emacs/org on laptop. I type faster and more legibly than I write but you need that paper and pencil type feel for capturing thoughts IMO.

BTW @genghisjahn given your tool usage I'd love to get your thoughts on BrainTool (which I've been pimping throughout this thread!) Since most of my inflow and things I need to keep track of come via browser and most of my notes are in orgmode text, BrainTool is the thing I built to bridge the two. I'm hoping its a more generally useful lightweight organizational tool which doesn't require the maintenance of other solutions and have been gathering informed feedback wherever I can.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#53

Post by bachmeier »

tompark wrote: post #47

Articles like this are nice for picking out ideas to incorporate into your own system. I try to avoid reading much "productivity porn" because it gets repetitive and what captures your attention is the novelty of an idea rather than its effectiveness. There's no system that works for everyone. You have to develop your own, and it will evolve because you change. I started journaling over 10 years ago - it was a simple…

> I try to avoid reading much "productivity porn" because it gets repetitive and what captures your attention is the novelty of an idea rather than its effectiveness.

I keep seeing this term, but I have trouble understanding it. I open lots of productivity articles. It's not often that I make it past the third sentence because it's too general or not relevant to me.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#54

Post by brw »

thrower123 wrote: post #28
bodge5000 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have meant this as a joke, but I honestly think this is a better way of doing things than a rigourously designed system of organisation and workflows and all that. There are a million ways to approach this kind of thing, and whilst browser tabs aren't nessecarily the best way, they're certainly up there

Oh, I'm absolutely not kidding. I've tried to do the OneNote thing, or get into org-mode, or manage collections of bookmarks. Too much overhead, not enough value to justify the work. So I have a browser window per "thing" that I'm dealing with, with a whole bunch of tabs, and when I'm done with the thing, the browser gets closed and the tabs go away.

This is also my exact workflow. Currently at 260 tabs after an OS reset but I've gone up to 1-2k before (though that was a particularly bad time for me). Every tab or bookmark manager I've tried just didn't feel right, too much friction, too little return, eventually forgotten.

I feel like the tool I'm looking for doesn't exist, but I don't really know what I'm looking for either.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#55

Post by tompark »

bachmeier wrote: post #53
tompark wrote: post #47

Articles like this are nice for picking out ideas to incorporate into your own system. I try to avoid reading much "productivity porn" because it gets repetitive and what captures your attention is the novelty of an idea rather than its effectiveness. There's no system that works for everyone. You have to develop your own, and it will evolve because you change. I started journaling over 10 years ago - it was a simple…

> I try to avoid reading much "productivity porn" because it gets repetitive and what captures your attention is the novelty of an idea rather than its effectiveness. I keep seeing this term, but I have trouble understanding it. I open lots of productivity articles. It's not often that I make it past the third sentence because it's too general or not relevant to me.

You have a better filter than I do. :) I went through a phase where I gobbled up anything productivity related, and eventually had to stop myself because it was too distracting. I still want to believe someone can tell me a valuable trick that I don't know about. Often even just the headline or title of a productivity-oriented article or Kindle book seems to evoke an appealing idea that I'm curious about, and after reading the text it's not always clear to me that the idea would work or not without trying it. But now I've developed a system that I'm happy with, it's much easier for me to filter.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#57

Post by andrewljohnson »

Nah, he should have stopped with the first diagram.

Google plus the internet is your second brain and is the optimal approach for almost everyone. This heavy approach seems like make work that will waste time, and the data will rot, leading to calcified and inaccurate knowledge.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#58

Post by spiderice »

> These categories are all nested. Tasks are nested under Projects which fall under Areas which fall under Resources, with Archives serving as the catch-all category.

This article got me reading about PARA. But it seems like this sentence is very much the opposite of what the creator of PARA says to do. Sounds like there shouldn't be any nesting of categories: https://fortelabs.co/blog/p-a-r-a-ii-operations-manual/

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#59

Post by peterburkimsher »

judofyr wrote: post #11

I've tried to incorporate some of the ideas of the "second brain" and it didn't really give me that much. My lessons: 1. It's always super helpful to write things down. Taking notes from what I read/learn is a great way to verify that I understand it. It sharpens my thinking. 2. However, maintaining the "second brain" is a lot work. It's not only about "linking" together notes. You also need to maintain some consiste…

Yes! and suggest "write things down" -> type thoughts in.

Organising: suggest event in {iCal, Outlook}, can search by date.

Other categories: suggest adding names of people to notes. Search (grep) for those extra names.

Suggest scheduling future event {date/time, person} to delegate task.

Suggest fractal recursion of self-sacrifice in Sierpinski Triangle, delegate out half the work, then half again. Say "thank you" to those who accept delegation; thank back to those who suggested ideas to you.

Can parallelise {reading, writing, listening, speaking, typing, singing, doing going} e.g. reading code and singing music. Can double available brainpower.

Thank you judofyr for your bug report; hope this workaround will help!

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#60

Post by agumonkey »

judofyr wrote: post #11

I've tried to incorporate some of the ideas of the "second brain" and it didn't really give me that much. My lessons: 1. It's always super helpful to write things down. Taking notes from what I read/learn is a great way to verify that I understand it. It sharpens my thinking. 2. However, maintaining the "second brain" is a lot work. It's not only about "linking" together notes. You also need to maintain some consiste…

point 2 is a bit saying the brain2 is its own information system with tech debt and accidental complexity
Post reply on HN