Comment by tolerance
3 hours ago
> Building a second brain is not Doing The Thing.
I hate the concept of a “second brain” but this isn’t necessarily true. Those guides you make at work seemingly precede the action of someone else, right? And even if the notes you write for yourself aren’t needed afterwards, don’t they contribute to “doing the thing”?
I think “second brain isn’t doing” is a good antidote to procrastination-by-organization, but it’s not universally true. Guides/runbooks are clearly “doing” because they enable action by others. Even personal notes can be “doing” if they change decisions, reduce re-entry cost, or prevent repeating mistakes. The failure mode is when system-building becomes a substitute for output, not a support for it.
These notes are explicitly part of the process, but they're just markdown files in a folder.