What If You Can Develop a Second Brain?
The human brain is a marvel with lots of capabilities. As more researchers study the brain, we get to know how much information the brain can store.
According to the Scientific American journal, The human brain consists of about one billion neurons. Each neuron forms about 1,000 connections to other neurons, amounting to more than a trillion connections. If each neuron could only help store a single memory, running out of space would be a problem.
What if you can not only store more data but easily retrieve them and make more room in the brain for problem-solving and creativity?
You can easily cope with the growing body of knowledge by building a second brain.
What Is a Second Brain?
Millions of people across the world are struggling with information overload in our modern society. Information overload is overwhelming because it taxes your mental resources and leaves you anxious.
This is where the concept of the second brain comes in.
Building a second brain doesn’t involve creating a man-made copy of your mind or recreating the human brain. It involves building an external system that captures, organizes, retrieves, and archives the ideas and thoughts that come to mind. The second brain enables you to optimize how you record, organize and recall information.
While you can use analog tools to build a second brain, digital tools are superior in every way.
Digital tools are more portable and accessible compared to physical tools. Due to these advantages, we are going to focus on the digital ways to build a second brain.
Enter the Digital Brain...
A Digital Brain is similar to an external hard drive. You can store additional information if your hard drive is full. However, it records, organizes, and recalls. This means that you won’t have to struggle to improve your memory. This memory has a lot of elements.
From a computing perspective, memory involves three key elements:
Like a computer, having a Digital Brain will work in the same way as this memory framework to manage how information flows into and out of your brain.
For example:
When setting up a new account on a website, due to strict security settings, many sites require you to come up with complicated passwords with special characters that you don’t usually use.
As a result, you now have to memorize this new password?(Record), associate it with the other passwords that are stored in your brain?(Organize)?and enter that password the next time you log in?(Recall).
Even in this simple example, there are several parts in the process that will make it all too easy to forget. Because this new password is unique, we have a hard time recognizing it with our regular patterns. And if we don’t use the password every day, it’s easy to forget it after a few days. One day you’ll try to recall the password but enter the incorrect one over and over again.
领英推荐
It’s one of the most common things that happen. Is it because the information is complicated? Nope. A password is just a bunch of characters, numbers, and symbols.
It happens because our brains are not made to memorize. With a Digital Brain, you can delegate it to do the heavy lifting.
Why You Need a Digital Brain
I've been managing my work and family life in a more productive and organized manner all these years thanks to my Digital Brain.
I don't need to go through the trouble of painstakingly recalling passwords for my 1001 accounts. I never forget a single item from grocery lists my wife gives me.. I've never forgotten a meeting. And I'm able to retrieve and recall important information and documents easily, anytime and anywhere.
When you delegate the task of remembering to a second brain, you’ll minimize stress and anxiety because you’ll know what’s needed to be done with every piece of information.
You’ll gain confidence when dealing with information because nothing can be forgotten. You’ll manage your fears and anxieties better by getting them out of your mind and making solid plans to address them. You’ll make a sense of the volume of information that you encounter every day and have a clear mind.
And here're 7 solid reasons why you should build yourself a Digital Brain.
How to Develop Your Digital Brain (Your Second Brain)
Does it cost a lot to build a second brain? The answer is no, and yes.
It doesn't cost a lot of money, but it does cost some effort.
Here're the 3 steps to take
I have dived into the details with exact actions you should take to develop an effective Digital Brain in How to Develop Your Digital Brain (Your Second Brain). Check out your article and learn how to build yours!
Conclusion
Building a Digital Brain (second brain) allows us to save information systematically, come up with new ideas and turn them into reality. Your second brain serves as an extension of your biological brain. And it protects you from the effects of forgetfulness thus allowing you to take on bigger creative challenges!
Leon Ho?is the Founder and CEO of?Lifehack?– a productivity blog he started in 2005. He was listed as Business Week’s #4 “Top 24 Young Asian Entrepreneurs” and has grown Lifehack into one of the most read self-improvement websites in the world – with over 12 million monthly readers. You can check out his book?The Full Life Essential Guide, and take a look at his self-improvement mastercourses?here?or join one of his free classes?here.
This article originally appeared on Lifehack.