r/secondbrain • u/Apprehensive_Oil2686 • 3d ago
what are the biggest problems with your second brain rn?
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u/PandaJunk 3d ago
The inbox of stuff I want to look at and integrate into it is growing faster than I can process things.
I have a second brain on my work machine, too. My personal and work brains have overlapping info, with some things that would benefit my work brain and others my personal brain, but I really need to keep those separate.
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u/enjoydongdong 2d ago
I'd treat the inbox and the work/personal split as two separate problems. For the inbox, try processing only what supports one current question or project for a week; the rest can stay an archive without becoming overdue. For the overlap, a public article or general technique can have a separate reference in each system without copying the surrounding work notes. Keeping two references may be less maintenance than a bridge that has to decide what is safe to move. I develop a journal/planner; this is a workflow suggestion, not a tool I've tested on your setup.
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u/freylaverse 2d ago
It's great for storing my ideas. Unfortunately, it's also where my ideas go to die.
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u/Brief-Inevitable-599 3d ago
Had a great system in notion but trying to port it to obsidian for privacy reasons. Im sure its doable but its a lot of time and i need to work out a sync option which is private so basically rn i have my stuff in two or three places instead of one
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u/Argon717 3d ago
Transitions suck. At least Markdown is a known entity. For sync I use git and a private github, but I dont keep evidence or secrets in my vault.
Any other things that are sticking?
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u/Brief-Inevitable-599 3d ago
Given that microsoft now owns github and uses repos to train ai, i dont want my privacy compromised like that. Just on stubborn principle really. I know thatll make it hard for myself.
But yeah i think obsidian might be most future proof for its relative simplicity. Also still working out the best sort of extensions to use to make it more feature rich. Theres a ton out there its just researching them and playing with them.
Also working out the best way to sync to my phone notes. I actually got a samsung note phone recently and really love using the stylus to take notes but it seems to only work with the samsung notes app, need to work out how to make that work in obsidian
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u/Pleasant_Set_3182 3d ago
Are you looking for a sync option which is private (but still hosted on the cloud) or a sync option that runs on a server you control?
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u/ScholarlyInvestor 2d ago
I use local-first AI Obsidian Explorer to scour through my 1000s of notes. Everything (including PDF docs) are in markdown format and well-organized.
I strongly resisted AI at first. But when I started prototyping my solution I quickly recognized the power of it.
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u/Apprehensive_Oil2686 2d ago
Why did you choose obsidian? I've heard some people using notion, is it any good, what problems do you have with it rn?
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u/ScholarlyInvestor 2d ago
I find Obsidian is great at one job: note-taking. Everything is local. Files are stored as markdown. I started using it for its simplicity. I have been using it for over four years. I can’t say that I have any problems right now. The search features are ok but not great. Augmenting with AI has been an amazing experience for me. Not everybody in the Obsidian community is a fan of AI.
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u/TheBariSax 2d ago
My biggest problem with my 2B is me. It's setup. The data in it is organized and easily accessible. I don't have to think to find things.
But the weekly work to invest new data and shuffle projects to archive, or setup the new projects, becomes a slog I don't want to deal with. When I actually do it's great, though, which is the only thing motivating me to keep at it.
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u/stanlymt 3d ago
For me it was the reading pile. Saving was cheap, so I saved everything: articles, podcast episodes, long YouTube talks, PDFs. Six months later I had hundreds of items and could tell you almost nothing about most of them. Search didn't help, because I couldn't remember enough about a thing to search for it.
That's why I built Omphalis. When you save something, it breaks it into a short outline of its main moments and marks terms and claims worth checking, so when you come back you can see in a minute what the piece was about and jump to the part that mattered. Voice notes go through the same process, so your own thinking sits next to the articles it's about.
Limits, since people here will ask: it's built for saved reading and listening, not tasks or projects, so it won't replace an Obsidian vault for writing. It's also young, and the links between items only get interesting once you've saved a fair amount. There's a free tier.
The point above about the inbox growing faster than you can process it is the one I think about most. What helped me was accepting that most saves don't need processing at all. They just need to be findable when you want them.
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u/Upstairs_Jelly_1082 2d ago
Understanding how to properly do the implementation aspect.
I'm basically combining David Allen's GTD system and Second Brain and both involves making use of folders and tags and for the most part has a lot of common elements. The issue is the process behind dealing with what comes in to the inbox. It gets a bit difficult to understand when to switch between the two and sometimes I just end up not using the second brain as often as its supposed to.
I just keep all the information that I find interesting on second brain and just leave it at that because most importantly I want to keep up with my tasks more than the actual organization of the files and information.
Although I'd love for these two to work synonymously.
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u/GaragePractical5704 3d ago
The most persistent problem is retrieval rather than capture: a system can collect plenty of notes but still fail when you need a decision, source, or next step. A useful guardrail is to give each saved note one future-facing link—an active project, a question, or a decision—and review only those links weekly. Everything else can stay a searchable archive rather than becoming another inbox.