Build a Second Brain they said,
it will help you stay on top of your life.
It will help you manage your personal knowledge,
and keep you from informational overload strife.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it will definitely be something you’ll want to pass on.
It even comes with a fancy name.
It will be what they call a Zettelkasten.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it will be much more useful than note-taking.
It will help you organise all kinds of content,
while developing your skills in note-making.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it will help you make connections.
It will join up all of your different ideas,
rather than keeping them separate in sections.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it’ll stop your mind being like a sieve.
It’ll help you solve problems and find new solutions,
by helping you be more creative.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it will allow you to keep track of all your tasks.
It will help when you’re not quite sure what to do,
and not say ‘yes’ when ‘no’ is the best response if anyone asks.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it will lead to all kinds of digital high-jinks.
It will make you think about graphs and blocks,
and connect up your notes with links.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it does not matter which software you use.
It won’t eat up hours and hours of your time,
as you try out each one and can’t choose.
Build a Second Brain they said,
it really will be loads of fun.
It will give you so much more mental bandwidth,
than you have with just brain number one.
Build a Second Brain they said,
but I am really not sure.
I’ve enough problems working the brain that I’ve got,
that I doubt I could cope with one more!
(c) Tim O’Hare, July 2023
About the poem: I had been reading a lot about an area that is known as ‘Personal Knowledge Management’ (PKM) which is based on an older system of keeping discrete notes on index cards in slip boxes (in German this is called a ‘Zettelkasten’). One recent book on the topic (Building A Second Brain by Tiago Forte) has popularized the idea of a PKM-system as being like a ‘Second Brain’ and all kinds of claims are made by many authors about the usefulness of building a Second Brain for information storage and retrieval, creativity, task management etc. Me being me, I threw myself into building my own digital second brain and then (also me being me) I became a bit obsessed with making it perfect, consistent, all-encompassing etc. It rather took over my life for a bit.
Tim O'Hare 