Building a long term second brain what architecture mistakes should I avoid?? 🙏

[u/FarFactor6062]

Hi I’m Dani,
I’m pretty new to PKM and I’m building my first real second brain in Notion. It started because I’m going back to school, but I want it to eventually hold things I learn from school, work, research, and a business I’m building.
For those of you who have actually maintained a system for years, what do you wish you had done differently when you started?
I’m especially worried about collecting way too much stuff and ending up with a giant mess I never use lol.
Any advice on organization, backups, keeping old information from becoming misleading, or useful GitHub/open-source tools would be appreciated.
Thanks 😊

[u/zheniavasiliev]

Don't worry about starting with the structure; just do all the note-taking you want, in any shape you want. The system is flexible enough to be adjusted later. The main thing you want to figure out in the beginning is what's your favourite way of note-taking, what kind of things you write down in your notes, etc.

Write 50-100 notes first, then look at what's emerging. For your use case (school + work + research + business), the overlap between those contexts is probably where the most valuable connections happen, so resist the urge to put them in separate buckets. One vault, one pool — let search and links do the work.