My Second Brain in Notion - Full Setup

I'm following up my first Second Brain video with all the details of how I set mine up - screencasts included. Having this structure for my notes has been one of the best decisions I've ever made and an amazing time investment for me - I do hope anyone else finds this also useful.

Shoutout to Tiago Forte and his amazing course for giving the BEST name to this concept: a Second Brain (although sorry Tiago, PARA didn't work for me).
And shoutout to the 'How To Take Smart Notes' book for the actual system that I've adapted for Notion rather than pens and paper.

This was my first explanatory video, and apart from struggling a bit with describing things, I also did not do the best job with the audio. Apologies. Advice is very much welcomed.

If you want to stay in touch:

To make your life easier:
0:00 - Intro
0:21 - Reasons I have a second brain
0:50 - Capture and Drafts Page
5:46 - The Second Brain page
13:53 - Outro

#zettelkasten

[Aisulu]

This is simultaneously brilliant and intimidating, i’m feeling both inspired and stressed

[SivaArunagiri]

Makes a lot of sense even after 2 years. You should do a refresher video on this. We would love to see how it has evolved in the last two years.

[syazaghouse]

Finally a youtuber who gives detailed explanation abt their notion use and does not make it boring 🤍

[leichterleben]

*2022 Notion Update* : Since the board feature has been updated, let me explain to you how you can work with more than 3 columns again. For me, it took some time to understand how this works, so I hope i can spare you some time. Step 1: Start a new database and choose board view. Step 2: Click the three buttons on the upper right hand corner and choose "Layout". Step 3: Click "group by" and then "status by". Open the drop down menu and swich from "Group" to "Option". Afterwards you click the three dotts again and choose "Properties" and click on "status". Here you can add options to "to do", "in progress" and "complete". Here you can add the headings to your new columns and also add colors. It actually doesn´t matter in which category you put the option, all of them will be displayed next to each other as columns. At the end you can sort your headings if you want to by clicking on the three dotts again and click on "groups". There you click "sort" and change to "manual". You then can drag and drop the options in their right positions. I hope that helped :)

[Adam-Butler-co]

This is the first "second brain" notion video I have found that fully clicked. I now feel I have the knowledge to set on up for myself, so thank you!

[fmj_]

Girl, if this was your first explanatory video, you have everything it takes to be a professor (if you are not already). Congratulations and thanks. It is inspiring to see you're so happy and involved in this work of yours.

[KharmaMedic]

not me watching this side by side with notion open

[sentientbeans]

Awesome! I love this concept a lot. As someone self-diagnosed with ADD I can be hyper focused on something, then quickly move on to something else, often forgetting the thing I was previously focused on. Having a visual and digital library of concepts that you WANT to remember is both empowering (because I’m putting effort and investing energy into knowledge I want to instill in my life) and comforting (I can refer back to these things without the stress of it knowing where to find them or if I’ll remember them). Thank you again! ❤

[ZoeCayetano]

Woah! This is so detailed! Would love to see the full workflow of you synthesizing content from a book, transferring the highlight, note-taking and then studying them

[BlossomWithJessica]

Your youtube content is so good! You've quickly become one of my favorite youtubers. I am a getting my Doctor of Nursing practice in psychiatric nursing. I need to work on my second brain in notion!

[daydreams]

IF YOU ARE TRYING TO DO THIS IN 2022

Apparently Notion made an update which causes a minor struggle to follow Liz's great tutorial, I'm going to try to explain how to fix it.
If you cant add/change the properties called "Status", you need to:
1. Click a card under any group
2. Under the card's title there will be several properties, one of which is labeled as "Status" - you need to delete that.
3. Once you deleted it, you will now create a new property of type "Select"
4. Name the newly created "Select" as "Status"

Hope this helps someone :v

[titabit]

I don't know why but this is the first short video I watched on building a 2nd brain workflow on Notion that just made sense. That's not to say everyone else's is wrong but probably more a comment on how this is closer to how my own way of thinking works. Thank you for sharing. It would've taken me ages to come up with the workflow you've shown here. You just saved me a ton of time.

[ermnho]

Thank you Elizabeth! Would be great to see a "full Tutorial" for example; how you add Articles, how and where you write your Ideas, Quotes etc.. how you categorized it and which apps do you use.. wish you all the best.

[Ullahussain]

My notion board: x+1 = x ☺️
Elizabeth’s board: {3:5} < 99^(6-9)/2 |3| 🧠

[iannarino]

This is what I needed to be able to make this process work on Notion.

[MostafaAhmedAhmed]

Inspiring
I have never thought of a second brain like this. I had a system in Evernote for more than 10 years. I used a traditional setup of project materials, archives, and knowledge base (for my programming work) that uses tags to organize things by topics or relevance. I always wanted a better way to organize them. As started moving to Notion late last year, it let me reconsider how I organize my life. Now with your video, I’m going to reorganize every thing as I move them from Evernote in a completely different way. Thank you for that.

[roshanmelwani]

This is so beautiful! I've been trying to optimise my Notion for Zettlekasten for 2 months, but this is by far the best model I've seen so far!

[DrSuga]

I need to sort out my first brain ffs 🤦🏽‍♀️ 😂 sick explanation as always yung filly

[pppp-njhg]

I felt so overwhelmed the first two times I watched this video but I’ve watched it again and it suddenly makes so much sense! It’s not as complicated as it seems at all 😂 I might not follow what you’ve done to a tee, but this has definitely giving me some much needed inspiration

[joel.pimentel]

Just dropping in the comments to confirm this was an UH-mazing walkthrough! - watched the whole thing at 1x speed and fascinated by your “workflow” when reading through books.
(Maybe even worth experimenting with a title like - How I remember everything I read) since it’s something myself and A LOT of people struggle with.

Thank you for sharing this👊🏼🔥