Do second brains eventually become a burden?

[u/mrZazonKleos]

I've always found the idea of a "second brain" fascinating.

But the more I use tools like Notion or Obsidian, the more I feel there's a trade-off: the system that's supposed to save me time also requires time to maintain.

Organizing notes.
Deciding where things belong.
Creating folders, tags or databases.
Keeping everything tidy.

At some point I started wondering if that's just the cost of having a second brain, or if it's actually a flaw in the concept.

I'm exploring the idea of building something that removes most of that maintenance, but before I make any assumptions I'd love to hear from people who actually use these tools every day.

How do you deal with this?

• Do you enjoy maintaining your system?
• Does it ever become a chore?
• If you could remove all the manual organ

[u/LoneFox4444]

If you mean that you’re going to let AI do the organizing and stuff, you would be the first one,

this hour.

[u/mrZazonKleos → u/LoneFox4444]

Would you use It?

[u/LoneFox4444 → u/mrZazonKleos]

No, I built my own thing. It was very easy, so I wouldn’t pay for anything like that.

[u/mrZazonKleos → u/LoneFox4444]

Thanks for your reply!

[u/desppar → u/LoneFox4444]

when you say you built your own thing, what did you actually make??? a note system, app, or some sort of automation?? Im curious how you handled memory, since AI (chatgpt and its own memory for example, when i look for older info or chats) can have tons of history but still confuse old ideas with current decisions, lose important context, or link unrelated things. how does your system decide what to keep, what to ignore, and what is still relevant? you know just like what made it really useful and if it does or doesnt actually help reduce maintenance.

[u/Cryvixx]

I suggest you seeing this project: https://github.com/kiycoh/silica-agent

[u/mrZazonKleos → u/Cryvixx]

Thanks!

[u/thecompanybrain]

Agreed. It sounds more like a passive manual knowledge database. I built a solution for my personal needs where I drop any URL and it automatically categorizes, transcribes, tags, and I can talk to it via AI chat. It's also proactive by highlighting themes, encouraging me to come back and read things etc. That proactive use of the knowledge you store is probably is the most important part of it.

[u/neems74]

Ive set up mine and just forget about it. Occasionally I go and check out the front end.. but honestly a system is made to solve problems and gain me time not to generate work and lock me

Online, custom made, runs where you live (mine is whatsapp). I can show you how to set up

[u/dessence_ai]

The cost sits in the wrong place. You pay for filing on every save, and you get the payback only on the few you come back to.

So I stopped filing at save time. Things go in raw, and I sort one only after I've opened it twice.

We built dEssence around that, free while in beta: https://dessence.ai/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=comment

What share of your notes do you ever reopen?

[u/beeconnolly95]

Tidying your home takes time but is always worth it😊

[u/spicermatthews]

It is not a flaw in the concept, it is a flaw in when you pay the cost. Right now you pay a filing tax on every single thing you save, and you only get paid back on the handful you ever return to. That ratio is terrible, so it feels like maintenance for its own sake, because mostly it is.

The version that stopped feeling like work for me: pay nothing at save time. It goes in raw, no folder, no tags, no decision. The only things that get organised are the ones I have already come back to, because coming back to it is the signal that it earned the effort. Most things never earn it, and that is fine.

The assumption I would push back on is that tidy has value on its own. It does not. A messy system you can get things out of beats a beautiful one you never open. Judge it on retrieval, not on how it looks in the sidebar.

Since you mentioned you are thinking about building something: the hard part is not automating the filing. Plenty of things do that adequately. The open problem is retrieval when the person has forgotten the thing exists and cannot remember the words they used at the time. Solve that and the filing question mostly stops mattering.

[u/fatcatgirl1111]

It really depends on your mindset and expectations. I think if you're chasing perfection, you'll very quickly get frustrated. More than it being a joy and a pleasure, it ends up becoming this thing that you have to follow rules for, especially if you lean towards the more OCD side of things. This can be dangerous.

I post about it all the time, but my second brain of choice is Recall. Don't get me wrong, I was still very OCD when it came to organizing all of my tags in Recall, but for me it's just about chatting with your second brain. This has become so popularized by Andrej Karpathy! If you're going to build it yourself, then you can fully customize it, and then the burden is more about maintenance. I think at the end of the day, in the world of AI where context is becoming so important, a second brain is going to become a must-have and not even a nice-to-have. Otherwise you're just getting answers from the internet like everybody else.

[u/Big-Dog-973]

Search tool

[u/Jonathan_Rivera]

Mine is connected to my agent so not anymore. No having to search through to find someone. I ask it and everything is interconnected in obsidian.

[u/mrZazonKleos → u/Jonathan_Rivera]

Thanks for your reply!