Your Brain's Not Broken: Use This Notes System

Dig inside YouTuber and medical student Elizabeth Filips' up-to-date Second Brain Notion system to discover the productivity apps and note-taking philosophies that fuel her prolific creative output.

👉 Subscribe to Elizabeth Filips' YouTube channel: @elizabethfilips

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Elizabeth: "Our main brain is not meant for storing information"
00:34 Tiago: "So, your whole Second Brain is one page🤯?"
00:50 CAPTURE
00:55 Pen & Paper - "It's awful and not sustainable"
01:05 Books - "Start with books"
01:11 Readwise - "It's the ultimate app"
01:34 Kindle - "It's easy and highlightable"
01:42 Instapaper - "It's like your own curated newspaper"
02:05 Twitter - "I hated it before"
02:19 Air - "I don't really like it"
02:28 Elizabeth's Book Reading Strategy
02:31 Kindle - "Super information-dense book"
02:41 Audio Only - "Fluffy books"
03:23 Apple Notes - "Art is a good thing to capture"
04:14 Elizabeth's Task Management
04:33 Google Calendar - "I'm not very rigid with these"
04:48 Elizabeth: "I've accepted that I've a very poor memory but, I'm a very passionate person"
05:07 ORGANIZE
05:10 Readwise Inbox - Raw highlights from sources
05:32 Notion - "Only the important things will go here"
05:55 The Zettelkasten Method
06:47 Tiago: "The digital equivalent of an index card"
07:08 Progressive Summarization - "My favorite thing in the world"
07:40 Turning reading cards into personalised note cards
08:46 Elizabeth's Second Brain Overview - "This will need a bit of explaining"
08:59 Topics of Interest - "Life, design, yourself, mental frameworks, emotions..."
09:27 Create a Strong Statement - "A straightforward Life is Depressing"
10:00 How to Separate Information - "I didn't do any mental gymnastics here"
10:26 The 3 C's - "Connected, contradictory and, crazy"
12:08 "This was the only thing I couldn't adopt from Building a Second Brain"
12:35 Elizabeth's Numbering Notetaking System
13:48 What's Elizabeth’s Notetaking Style?
13:58 How to figure out your own notetaking style...

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🎥 CONTRIBUTORS
Video Editor: Nikolay Ofitserov
Animator: Nikolay Ofitserov
Executive Producer: Marc Koenig
Host: Tiago Forte
Guest: Elizabeth Filips @elizabethfilips

[rihfbtz]

she actually speaks that fast? woah, I always thought her videos were sped up to save our time but she's actually that fast AND eloquent? Impressive.

[natalievanrooyen]

From an outside perspective, this is completely and utterly insane, but at the same time mind bogglingly genius

[cthulhu]

I feel like Notion helps her design/see how her brain works and how it makes connections through life. She's able to talk as fast as her thoughts, it's overwhelming but very impressive. Also she seems extremely in tune with her thoughts and who she is. The way she takes notes must have taken years to master. It's refreshing to see someone working WITH her brain, instead of fighting and going against it.
Understanding how your brain works is probably the most powerful tool you can have in this world.

[KayaRaleigh]

This video editor is exceptional. Elizabeth is engaging already, but this editing is on point. Great content, great video - subscribed!

[PaisaWaisa]

I had to double-check if my video setting was set to 2x. Elizabeth is amazing, so is Tiago!

[BrunoFrac]

The way she articulares and talks about her experience is just amazing. Thanks for another great video.

[AnneLopezlovesLife]

They are so in sync. I love how tiago finished Elizabeth's sentence... :)
I just had to slow down the speed to fully digest what Liz was saying :)

[rosejpercy]

Just discovered this channel this week, and I am loving what I am learning so far. I, I’m pretty certain I have undiagnosed ADHD, and have been trying to figure out ways to implement systems and help me get through life. I also just love learning about how people think. This is great

[dbrakowski]

Good to see how someone else's system works. I used to think her videos were edited to have her speaking so fast, but apparently that's just how she is. ;)

[Jusangen]

As a person who works in the fire and building codes for my job, we use the analog style of reference titles, chapters, sections, and subsections.
Elizabeth make me think of my zettlekasten in this way and I was so excited to think about how to incorporate it! It’s something that makes a lot of sense the more you get into it and really helped me get towards making those connected, conflicting, and crazy relations she was talking about. Thanks for posting Forte Labs team!

[j.d.]

Id argue a hybrid system is FAR better for actually learning and maintaining what you read and study. I read physical books and use it in tandum with a dedicated physical journal throughout the week. Then at the end of the week during my weekly review I take just 30 minutes to distall all that info simply using google lens. This allows me to easily transfer it digitally and at the same time review the key things I learned that week from the books I read. I've found I actually retain the information much better.

[Trippy_Space_Bunny]

Love this, Elizabeth is the one who first introduced me to the Second Brain idea and as an late DX'd AuDHD 2nd🧠 is amazing. All through school I had the nickname Scribe because everything got written down or it was lost forever, was always carrying a huge binder full of paper.

[dayanidhisharma]

Love this. I was trying to copy this Elizabeth's second brain framework from last 3 days and didn't expected this to come in so detailed .

[joseamezola]

I have all of my Second Brain under the Microsoft suite of tools - OneNote, Outlook, Microsoft To Do, OneDrive, etc. I love it.

[LifewithMar]

This was so fascinating. Would love to see a template of her setup. Echoing other comments, I was positive this was on 1.5x speed I had to check. It wasn't lol.

[LinkEX]

Didn't expect this interview.

Followed your email series in the past months and discovered Elizabeth just recently through her video on going with the flow instead of the schedule.

Eager to hear how her approaches maps with your framework's creative steps.

[penimeth]

At first, I was thinking this is too intense
After finishing the video and on second thought, this could be a really good way to work around over stimulation and information overload...
To pick what you’ll keep or leave

The trick is the effort it takes when you’re already overwhelmed 😅

[xfuttex]

This might be the first time I've had to slow a video down to catch everything in it. She is very well-spoken! Great video!

[dear.aprisa]

Elizabeth is amazing! Thank you so much Elizabeth. I've been wanting to apply PARA or second brain but always failed to incorporate it into my current note taking system. It turns out, with my ADHD, her notes and my notes look more similar, especially compared to complex PARA system with some Notion advisors. (I'm also using Notion, so naturally I'm drawn to them - and shame myself for not being able to make it work). Also shoutout to Tiago who balances the conversation with his warm tone, summary, that helps us to understand what's going on. Also, I watch on 1x here. Hihihi. Thanks you both! Will definitely check Elizabeth's page, also a medical doctor here!

[danielhaven]

9:20 That "Topic" column is scaring me lol

My feeble architect mind is telling me that could be more efficient as a relation and then achieve a similar look with a group by.

Otherwise, this looks like a pretty solid system. Very inspirational.