Second brain is a new buzzword around the writing community. I have written several articles on the subject. As writers, though, setting up a second brain can be daunting. But it is simple, and I am willing to bet that some of you already do it.
The theory is that, as humans, we spend most of our lives remembering things. That dentist appointment next week, the ingredients your children have to take to school or what ideas you have for your partner's birthday.
Keeping all this information in your brain clutters it and reduces the creative juices. If your brain is too busy remembering, it hasn't got time to create.
The solution is easy: write it down or store all this information using a catching system. This could be analogue in the form of a diary or bullet journal or digital using one of the many platforms on the market.
You are meant to pick one system and stick to it to collect all your ideas for writing, saved emails, appointments and everyday maintenance tasks. But I am going to tell you that it is a load of old rubbish. If you take the digital route, you do not need to use one application for everything.
My logic is simple: each platform on the market has different strengths and areas of weakness. What is a strength for one area of your life might not be for another. Sticking to one is less productive than building a second brain.
For example, I do all my writing on Obsidian. I love the clean interface and the distraction-free look. I also love that it uses markdown, making typing and formatting fast. Because my writing is on Obsidian, so is all my research and random facts that I will use in an article at some point.
However, when it comes to my business, Obsidian is awful for organising everything I have to do. It isn't structured enough and does not use a suitable folder system for me to have confidence in it for my tutoring business.
For this area of my life, I use notion. The structure of the links to one home page and the fact you can publish your pages make it an excellent choice for both the resources for teaching and the admin for the business.
When it comes to pure storage, the details you need to archive and keep, I use Apple Notes. It can be shared with my family easily so they can access the information. I like the security of knowing all my information is stored on iCloud.
If you want to know a secret, I also keep a bullet journal so I don't have to turn my computer on to note things down and become distracted.
My system might sound chaotic and excessive, but it works for me and continuously reduces my time on little tasks. I can create the articles I do every week because my head is clutter-free and left to be creative.
Your system does not make sense to anyone but you. Find a method that works for you and stick to it. There is no need to change to the shiny new buzzword; that takes time. What you need to do is work with the system to produce content. This is how I maximise my productivity as a mother and full-time teacher.
If you enjoy this email, please share it so more readers can find it.
Until next week stay safe
Sam 😊
Weekly Three
Vocal Media - Vocal Media is another writing platform with a difference. The challenges are worth joining alone. Challenges are writing prompts you can use to win competitions. This aspect of Vocal has doubled my earnings on the platform. They may not have the most extensive reach, but they look after their writers like no other platform I have written on. You can find out more in the article below.
Pieces of History - This is a new publication on Substack, set up by my friend Ed. If you like history articles then this is the publication to follow.
Title Case Converter - Even after ten years of writing online, I still struggle with capitalising headlines correctly. This simple little website takes all the stress out of that by doing it for you.
Quote of the week
If you don't like to read, you haven't found the right book. - J.K. Rowling
Short-Story of the week
My nan tells of a time when all the homelands were united against the Germans. Now, the Scottish are partners with Germany, and we are alone in Kent. All of England squashed into this tiny county once known as The Garden of England...