Your AI Second Brain
Capture everything you learn, organise it simply and ask AI questions across it: PARA and CODE methods, Notion, Obsidian and NotebookLM, context engineering and AI memory, meeting and reading pipelines, and building your own with MCP and automation.
Your AI Second Brain
Capture everything you learn, organise it simply and ask AI questions across it: PARA and CODE methods, Notion, Obsidian and NotebookLM, context engineering and AI memory, meeting and reading pipelines, and building your own with MCP and automation.
In one line
A second brain is a personal knowledge system outside your head: notes, documents, meetings and ideas stored in one trusted place. With AI, it becomes something you can talk to: ask questions across everything you've saved and get answers with sources.
The 8 classes
What a second brain is, and why AI changes it
Understand the idea, the PARA and CODE methods, and what AI adds.
- Capture → Organise → Distil → Express.
- Organise by where you'll use information (PARA), not by topic perfection.
- AI turns notes into something you can question and reuse.
Capture: getting things into the system
Set up fast, low-friction capture from phone, browser, reading and voice.
- One inbox, captured in under 10 seconds.
- Always note why you saved something.
- Pick one main app; don't spread across five.
Organise and distil
Turn a pile of captures into findable, useful notes.
- Weekly 20-minute review keeps the system alive.
- Summarise in your own words at the top of each note.
- Folders for use, links for ideas, few tags.
Ask AI across your notes
Use NotebookLM, Claude and ChatGPT Projects, Notion AI and Obsidian plugins to question your knowledge.
- NotebookLM and Projects answer from your files with citations.
- RAG = find relevant chunks + answer from them.
- Ask for quotes and sources; verify.
Context engineering and AI memory
Give AI the right context about you and your work, and manage what it remembers.
- Context beats clever prompts.
- Keep a reusable personal context file and project briefs.
- Manage memory: review, delete, separate, never store secrets.
Pipelines: meetings, email, reading and learning
Automatically feed your second brain from meetings, email and courses.
- Automate capture from meetings, email and reading.
- Structure summaries: decisions, actions, questions.
- Weekly review keeps it useful.
Second brains for PMs, students and teams
Apply the system to product work, exam prep and team knowledge.
- PMs: insight repository + decision log + interview bank.
- Students: notebooks per subject with AI quizzes.
- Teams: owned pages, permissions, privacy.
Build your own: MCP, automation and evaluation
Connect AI assistants to your notes with MCP and automation, and make sure answers stay accurate.
- MCP connects assistants to your tools safely.
- DIY: chunk, embed, retrieve, answer with citations.
- Test with known questions; fix sources, not just prompts.
Interview questions
What is a second brain?
A trusted external system for capturing, organising and reusing knowledge, so you don't rely on memory. With AI, you can ask questions across it and get cited answers.
Explain PARA and CODE.
PARA organises by actionability: Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive. CODE is the workflow: Capture, Organise, Distil, Express.
How does AI answer from your notes?
Retrieval-augmented generation: notes are chunked and embedded; the most relevant chunks are retrieved for a question and given to the model, which answers with citations.
What is context engineering?
Designing what information the AI sees: personal profile, project brief, task instructions and retrieved knowledge. Good context usually improves answers more than prompt tricks.
How do you manage AI memory safely?
Review and delete memories, keep projects separate, never store secrets or sensitive personal data, and prefer enterprise plans for work data.
How would a PM use a second brain?
An insight repository of user quotes, a decision log, metrics and experiment notes, and an interview story bank, with AI finding patterns and drafting documents.
NotebookLM vs Claude Projects?
NotebookLM is source-grounded Q&A over uploaded material with citations and audio overviews; Projects combine files with custom instructions for ongoing work and drafting.
What is MCP?
The Model Context Protocol: a standard way for AI assistants to connect to tools and data (Notion, Drive, GitHub) to read and act with permission.
