Second Brain? You Haven't Even Mastered Your First One
The internet wants you to believe that you need a "Second Brain."
It's everywhere. Your favorite productivity guru on Twitter. Your favorite YouTuber with the aesthetic desk setup. That dude with 15,000 unread emails who suddenly became a Notion ambassador. They're all chanting the same gospel: build a second brain, or you're falling behind.
Let’s pause.
Do you even know how to use your first one properly?
The Second Brain Hype Machine
The concept of a second brain was popularized by Tiago Forte. It’s not a bad idea. The core is simple: create an external system to store your thoughts, notes, insights, and learnings, so you don’t rely on memory alone.
In theory, it sounds like the future of thinking. In reality, it’s become an aesthetic trap.
People are spending hours tweaking their Notion templates, color-coding tags in Obsidian, and hoarding YouTube highlights into Readwise.
They’re building something.
But what are they actually thinking?
The idea was to free your brain. Instead, most of us are just shifting the chaos into cleaner digital boxes. We aren’t offloading thoughts, we’re just shuffling them around until they rot in digital graveyards.
Let’s Talk About the First Brain
Before you go full synth and start externalizing your entire mental load, ask yourself:
Can you focus for 30 minutes without switching tabs?
Do you retain what you read, or are you collecting bookmarks you'll never revisit?
Can you recall your own ideas without searching for them in five different folders?
Do you reflect, or just consume?
This isn’t a judgment. This is a reality check.
You don’t need a second brain. You need a functioning, resilient, focused first brain.
Data Check: Where Our Brains Are Failing
Average human attention span dropped from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2023. That’s less than a goldfish. Source
The average knowledge worker switches tasks 1,200 times per day. Harvard Business Review
Only 10% of people revisit their notes. The rest? Digital dust collectors. Tiago Forte Blog
So if your memory is foggy, your thoughts are scattered, and your notes are a mess, the solution isn’t another app.
It’s better thinking.
How to Actually Use Your Brain (Before You Build Another One)
Do a dopamine detox.
Stop juggling 19 apps. Spend 24 hours offline. You'll remember what thinking feels like.Journal. With a pen.
You don’t need tags and backlinks. You need clarity. Write about what you’re stuck on. You'll find your way out faster than any AI note filter.Single-task like a monk.
Don’t just close tabs. Kill the noise. Work on one thing, all the way through.Reflect weekly.
One hour. Just sit and think. Not scroll. Think. What’s working? What isn’t? What do you want next week to feel like?Limit your systems.
One app for notes. One calendar. One to-do list. You’re not a productivity lab rat.
The Punk Take: Don't Outsource Your Mind
This isn’t about hating tech. Build a second brain when you’re actually drowning in knowledge worth storing. When you have systems worth scaling.
But don’t build it just because it’s trending. Your mind is not a startup. You don’t need to optimize every idea. You don’t need to collect more. You need to think deeper.
And that, unfortunately, doesn’t sell as well on YouTube.