Second Brain

A second brain is an external, trusted system for everything you want to remember and act on. This skill sets one up using the PARA method in any notes app (Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, Logseq).

The PARA model

Organize every note into one of four top-level buckets, ordered by actionability:

• Projects - short-term efforts with a goal and a deadline (e.g. "Ship Q3 launch").
• Areas - ongoing responsibilities with a standard to maintain (e.g. "Health", "Finances").
• Resources - topics of interest for future reference (e.g. "Prompt engineering").
• Archives - inactive items from the other three buckets.

Rule: a note lives where you will next act on it, not where it topically "belongs".

The four workflows