Why I Stopped Using My Second Brain (and What I Did to Fix It)

I haven’t been updating as much as I normally would have, but I can assure I’m not dead, thankfully. Rather, I’ve only been busy with a few other obligations as of late, and those have eaten up my time I would otherwise use for writing here.

But despite my recent attempts at time blocking, I have been getting other things done in my professional and work life much more efficiently! Still, I noticed I wasn’t quite coming back to this blog, and I realized a big reason for it.

I haven’t been using my second brain as much lately.

Oddly enough, I never thought about this as a possibility for myself compared to the various times I dropped using a bullet journal and came back to it. There are so many videos and articles about how and why people stop bullet journaling sooner or later, but I hadn’t so much as considered the faintest possibility of such a thing happening to my second brain.

I still have a second brain, and I still use Obsidian Sync and everything (I recently paid for a year in advance to net a discount), but despite that, I’ve noticed what was once a habit of always opening it up has since dwindled. Of course, I always drafted my posts here in my second brain, and if I don’t open it, then no new posts go up! In addition, there are several pages and notes I haven’t updated in a while (my reading list comes to mind, as I just recently finished reading Night Angel Nemesis by Brent Weeks).

But why is that? Why have I not wanted or remembered to open up Obsidian and use my vast wealth of personal knowledge lately?

Still, make no mistake: I want to go back to using my second brain.

I have a few reasons that I can likely point to as the culprit, including steps and notions (heh) on what to do going forward to get some useful content here, both in my second brain and on my blog, once again. I wrote this whole thing primarily as a means of reflection, but hopefully it can serve others as well in terms of thinking over how and why we have our second brains at all.

My Bullet Journal Has Taken the Spotlight

I’ve fallen back in love with bullet journaling this past month. I can tell since I started to time block that I’ve used more pages in a single month than I ever have in any previous journals.

Of course, I also fell down the rabbit hole of watching JetPens videos on Japanese stationery I didn’t know about or know I wanted. While I am happy with some of my fancier writing tools, I don’t recommend looking up the videos. Like myself, you may go from skeptical to placing repeat orders. While you may enjoy what you get, your wallet may not, especially if you try to add the minimum for free shipping.

Needless to say, I have spent much more time detailing my tasks, days, plans, and inspirational ideas in my bullet journal and my pocket-sized memo book. Speaking of which:

My Pocket Notebook Is Faster for On-The-Go Notes

This reason is somewhat connected to my next one (it’ll become clear in a bit), but I wrote recently about carrying around a pocket memo book for quick on-the-go notes while using a main bullet journal. I fell in love with the indexing system I stumbled upon as shown by EZ Book Notes, a drastically underrated YouTuber, and I found myself wanting to experiment with the setup.

Fast forward to now and I’ve already filled up 3 pocket notebooks of various styles, shapes, and sizes. I’m currently carrying a Rollbahn Mini M, a Japanese spiral notebook featured prominently in videos by minimini diarist, another great and underrated YouTuber.

Anyway, I’ve really come to like quickly jotting things down when I’m idling somewhere or whenever I’m possessed by an idea or thought and can’t reach my full-sized bullet journal for whatever reason.

The reason this is relevant at all is because opening up Obsidian on my phone also feels much slower, especially when I have to wait for all of my notes to sync on a 5G connection. It’s not as fast as it should feel, and I usually have to wait for the servers to finish with my screen turned on.

If I end up in a situation where I’m given the choice to jot a note down in a pocket notebook or on my phone through my second brain, the notebook is going to win every single time. Should I try to use my second brain from my phone the same way, I have to open it, wait for it to load, hope nothing broke during sync, wait for my notes to update fully, and only then would I have to worry about which note to open or if I want to start a new note at all. There’s so much friction in the process.

Compared to a notebook, I finish writing the same idea or thought down in seconds. On the go, a second brain only ever seems to serve me well in rare instances where I want to look at a note I took a while back. For taking actual notes, the inefficiency of waiting for syncing is a deal-breaker, especially if I want to write something fast and can’t afford to have a plugin spontaneously misbehave, and that leads me to my next point.

Obsidian Plugins Can Be a Pain

Nothing is more irritating than opening up my second brain and finding out a lot needs to update to be fully-synced with all current changes.

It’s even worse when so many plugins need to update and some settings are even lost entirely, especially my preferred hotkeys. Not being able to easily hit Alt+Shift+L to toggle the left sidebar as I used to was infuriating.

Then factor in how my other shortcuts were either erased completely or reset back to defaults. Worse still, imagine my shock when the Vim-like shortcuts had to be re-enabled from the beginning. As a keyboard shortcut ninja, I hate this so much.

I know this seems minor, but it’s the minor things that can have a tremendous impact. If I had to point out a single culprit behind why I’ve used my second brain less frequently, I would say it was this.

Getting Back Into It

Now that I’m here, what are immediate steps I can take to get use from my second brain again? After sitting down to think about it, I had a few simple ideas on how.

It’s Still There!

I need to remind myself that I still have a second brain at my disposal. I can also use it for certain things that would be less convenient to write on paper. An immediate idea that comes to mind is perhaps anything I would normally have to copy over from one bullet journal to another whenever I finish my current one. Why copy it over again on paper when my second brain can just have the one master copy always ready to reference? This is one of those instances where the second brain truly shines in terms of convenience.

Purge Some Plugins

It was high time to declutter my Obsidian plugins. To help remedy this, I already started scrutinizing my list of plugins and seeing which ones I’m willing to remove altogether. Turns out I had several calendar plugins I promised myself I would get around to really using eventually, but that never came to fruition; I had difficulty telling which plugin was which in the first place.

I also scrapped a dictionary plugin I never used or remembered installing. Same with another plugin that would let me annotate PDFs. In essence, I asked myself which plugins actively added to my experience or were merely “nice to have.” The former would stay installed while the latter would be purged for a more streamlined second brain.

Cutting back on plugins should make syncing a lot less of a burden. Fewer extensions to break means I should have less friction saving and syncing on my computers.

Take Advantage of the Archive!

Simply asking myself about why I started using a second brain in the first place is already helping me get back to basics. While there are chances here and there that I might want to keep a note I had somewhere, I lost the plot somewhere along the way and started taking a lot of notes I didn’t really need all that much just for the sake of it.

Since not all of my notes are still useful to me, it benefits me to finally throw some over into my Archive, as per the second “A” in the PARA system coined by Tiago Forte, the inventor of the second brain PKM system.

Instead of asking myself “What if I need this note again?” and having it take up valuable real estate in my immediate second brain files (or worse, important decision-making time and energy as I debate what to do with a note), I can stow it away into the Archive. Should I ever need to revisit it, it’ll always be there just a keystroke or two away. Until then, out of sight, out of mind.

Time Blocking To Update

Manually going back through notes to revisit and revise things can seem like a daunting undertaking, especially if you had a whole lot of lists. Instead of attempting to tackle the whole task at once, I can now start segmenting time through my recent endeavors to get it done.

This is why time blocking has really saved me since I first gave it a serious shot a few weeks ago. I went from being outrageously stressed out to actually having some semblance of my life together again.

Reconnecting With My Second Brain

I think I’ve set myself up to succeed from here, especially with my recent plugin purge. I have a master list of topics still saved for future coverage on this blog, and said list also needs a bit of an update itself.

The first list I updated as I drafted this? My reading list. I was proud to have finished such a fun fantasy novel like Night Angel Nemesis recently (and that could be where some of my free time went this past several weeks too).

Have you ever dropped your own second brain before? Or have you always used yours? Have you had issues with your second brain in the past that interfere with how you use it? If so, what did you do to solve those? I would love to know what others think about this subject (or if I should bring back the Sudo Science Book Club with Night Angel Nemesis).