I’ve spent the last few weeks burrowing in an online rabbit hole. In an effort to find a method that would allow me to better collect notes and random bits of information I come across in daily life, I began exploring possible solutions. For years I have used some form of a paper notebook or writing pad in which to take notes and record my thoughts. I still have my notebooks from graduate school in which I took all my class notes. When I retired last year from an organization I had worked at for over 25 years, I cleaned out drawer and cabinet after drawer and cabinet of all the notebooks and legal pads I had taken notes on through the years. It was my habit to keep all my notes in a single running notebook or legal pad and once that notebook or legal pad was full, I filed the old one away and I started a new one.
One of the things that always frustrated me about this approach was that it was always hard to go back and find particular notes after the fact. I did not have any meaningful system for tracking or pulling past notes from these notebooks and legal pads. I wasn’t a total rube and Luddite though. Anything more formal than a note was digitally stored but day to day notes from meetings and quick scribbles to write down something for later perusal was recorded down in whatever notebook I was using at the time. Through the years I tried various types and styles of notebooks, but they were always in written form. I also love me a sweet post in note (traditional yellow not any of those bright fancy colors) or a good ole fashioned To Do List.
Frustrated by my inability to meaningfully interact with these books and books of notes, I began exploring various note-taking applications and programs. I had heard of Evernote and had even played around with Microsoft’s OneNote a little bit as it came with Microsoft Office suite of programs on my work and home computers. Somewhere among the recesses of the world wide web I stumbled across a YouTube video by a guy who did a short video on the popularity of various note taking applications and programs over the last few years. He reviewed survey data from the last 4 years that broke out changing utilization rates of various apps and programs for note taking. I want to say that one of his videos mentioned close to 70 different applications for taking notes, but the same few ones tended to keep showing up on the survey lists. The most common note taking applications on these surveys were Evernote, Notion, Roam, Apple Notes, OneNote, Obsidian, and Google Docs.
Note Taking Types
The creator of this YouTube video even talked about the different types of note takers and which applications tended to be best for each type of note taker. The note taker types are apparently Architect, Gardener, Librarian, and Student.
The Architects
Architects want to fit all their information into an all-encompassing “ultimate system” with a clear hierarchy. The same way a real architect needs a precise blueprint that details exactly where each part of a building goes, information architects tend to use a single overarching goal as the driving force in their knowledge collection.
They enjoy planning, designing processes and frameworks, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily structure their ideas.
The Gardeners
Gardeners are the exact opposite of Architects. They tend to think in a “bottom-up” way, cultivating many kinds of ideas and possibilities at the same time like seedlings sprouting in a wild garden. They are most at home imagining, dreaming, wandering, and making spontaneous creative connections in a way that no upfront plan could ever predict.
Knowledge gardening is about favoring relationships and connections, so that each individual seed can entangle itself with others and grow into something greater than the sum of its parts. The Gardener’s job is to create space for them to emerge, to cross-pollinate promising ideas, and harvest them once they’ve matured. This requires a nurturing, exploratory approach of protecting new ideas until they’re ready to make their debut.
They enjoy exploring, connecting various thoughts together, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily grow their ideas.
The Librarians
Librarians have a fundamentally practical relationship to information, valuing books and ideas for their own sake but also seeking to organize information for specific purposes. They have a deep desire to find and save the most useful, interesting knowledge to be able to retrieve it as needed.
Librarians often have a project orientation, like Architects. But unlike Architects, instead of architecting their entire lives, they prefer to do research that informs their projects, goals, obsessions, and curiosities. They like to capture information from a wide variety of sources, though not all the sources have to fit into one overarching system to make sense. They thrive on the varied and eclectic.
Librarians are all about curating a collection of knowledge, deciding what’s in and what’s out, and organizing it to be easy to find in the future. With that in mind, they often adopt a hierarchical system with “a place for everything and everything in its place.” In other words, they will try to stay consistent with their organizing for the sake of clarity and minimizing the effort required.
They enjoy collecting, building a catalogue of resources, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily retrieve their ideas.
The Students
Students types are often beginning their note taking journey. Whether they are actual students in school or university or merely novices in knowledge management, the scope and complexity of their notes are limited to specific use cases, such as preparing for a test, writing an essay, or applying for a job.
Students have a lot of things going on and juggle different priorities, so they are often focused on one specific part of their life that requires them to manage a lot of information. It could be their college studies, their first job, a complex project, or learning a brand new subject. Their approach is “purpose built” to help them be effective in that area, without going too deep in the others.
Students are oriented toward the short term, since they’re not sure where their thinking will lead or which is the right system to get them there. For that reason, they prize ease of use above all else – something quick, easy, and accessible on different devices.
A Second Brain
After digesting this video, I skimmed through some of this guy’s other videos. I discovered that he (Tiago Forte) had written a book called Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential. Essentially, Building A Second Brain is about how to capture, remember, and benefit from the vast quantities of information around us by building a personal system for knowledge management.
Information lies at the heart of everything we do. Yet, in today’s digital age, where the world’s knowledge is more accessible than ever, we’re paralyzed with indecision about where to focus our attention and from where to seek out information. And once we have that information we seek, what to do with it and how to retrieve that information when we want to interact with it again.
We need to manage information more effectively to get ahead and arm ourselves with the knowledge that will help us achieve our biggest, most audacious goals. We need, what Forte calls, a Second Brain.
A Second Brain is a digital commonplace book. Part study notebook, part notebook, and part sketchbook for new ideas, a second brain is a private knowledge collection designed to serve a lifetime of learning and growth.
If you’re a knowledge worker—a professional for whom your knowledge is your most valuable asset—your knowledge is the basis for regularly coming up with ideas, solving problems, and communicating effectively with others.
Forte goes on to talk about how digital notes applications are ideal for helping us to build a second brain. The book goes into more detail about the ideal way for this process to work and principles to guide your own personal knowledge management system but at this point I was several hours into this rabbit hole and decided to delve into figuring out my note taking type and trying out some note taking applications.
My Note Taking Type and Chosen Application
Turns out that the Librarian and Student probably best capture me. I tend to approach knowledge like a Librarian but have historically used note taking as a Student, with a short term specific focus for any note taking I did.
So, you might be thinking then he decided to use a Librarian note taking app but I actually decided to go the Gardener route. Well, actually Gardener and Librarian. I want to learn to think more like a Gardener who can do more bottom-up thinking and grow connections between existing node of my knowledge network. But I also need a way to capture and store all the notable things I find daily.
So, I landed on using the Obsidian and Evernote apps (at least for now). Obsidian https://obsidian.md/ Evernote https://evernote.com/ I have also experimented with OneNote https://evernote.com/ , Diarium https://diariumapp.com/ , and RocketBook https://getrocketbook.com/
I use Evernote (Librarian) to keep lists (e.g. To Do and Shopping List), store recipes, and clip things I encounter online that I want to be able to reference at a later time. Evernote is my digital assistant of sorts which helps to keep me on track and record things I want to revisit at a later time.
I am using Obsidian (Gardener) for recording thoughts, reactions, reflections, and establishing connections between nodes of my knowledge network. I record a daily note in Obsidian in which I report out on various things I track and record daily (weather, mood, sleep, steps, meals, gratitudes, connections, news, media consumed, books read, etc.). I record “Atoms” or Atomic Notes which are single, irreducible ideas that are meaningful to me. I record book reflections from books that I have read. I record “Encounters” of things I come across that I want to capture and incorporate into my network of knowledge. I record things I have written or published so that they too are incorporated into my knowledge network.
Obsidian then lets you link various nodes in your network of knowledge by formally connecting nodes in your network which you can then visualize graphically much like neurons might be connected in your real brain.
It can be a little hard to wrap your head around at first and has a bit of a learning curve but Obsidian allows you to visually see the connections forming in your second brain. The idea is that connections between your thinking will emerge and for those who create or write, new works will almost create themselves.
We will see how it turns out for me. Be warned if you go down this rabbit hole. I clicked on a link hoping to find a better way to organize and search my notes after the fact and now I am lugging around this second brain everywhere.
certifiable 
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