How To Bottle Dopamine

An Adventure into Pragmatic Second Brains, Obsidian, Zettelcasten And Beyond

I'm seeing my brain change and evolve in front of me.

After more than 2 decades of coaching, writing and investigating the power of the unconscious, I’ve been floored.

And I love it.

2 months ago, my approach to coaching and personal change has entirely shifted.

And over the past week, my whole approach to Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) has shifted again; and I’m now running and beta testing a course for coaches, therapists and hypnotists called Building A Pragmatic Second Brain To Become A World-Class Coach.

This is still a work in progress. Changing daily. You can see this on Twitter:

• 7 reasons to love Obsidian

• Obsidian-Zettelcasten Twitter Thread

• Building A Second Brain Twitter Thread

The shift is this:

Most of my peers are brilliant at what they do. Incredible, skills, talent and commitment. I am in awe of them, and grateful to have them in my life,

However, they almost universally lack the ability to:

• Create products

• Market services in the way they would wish

• Move forward on their B-I-G goals

And they tend to feel guilty, frustrated or stuck.

This insight hit me light a large wave. Knocked me off my feet.

What if the problems people were having were not internal or related to needing yet more training but related to their overall personal knowledge management workflow.

Seeing the changes in me in the past 2 months, I put this to the test and spoke to as many coaches, hypnotists, psychotherapists and psychiatrists I mentor.

Everyone said the same thing: “That is exactly my problem. This is exactly what I need.”

So I want to dive a bit further in this, and make sure to keep mind one key concept:

AND

None of this has to be exclusive. AND I am busy integrating these approaches:

• Obsidian for note making and creating links

• Nick Milo’s Linking Your Thinking

• Tiago Forte’s PARA system

• Building A Second Brain

• Cal Newport’s Deep Work philosophy

• Cal Newport’s Pragmatic Corner Marking Method

• Zettelcasten

• The relationships between projects and growing knowledge - and how to keep them separate

Now the above might seem like jibber-jabber or, if you are “in the know”, that these couldn’t, shouldn’t or mightn’t work together.

And if you’re a coach, it might seem unnecessary or another “have to” to give thought to.

I mean a Second Brain to organise your thinking when you’re already stressed and overloaded?

So I want to break down into a few areas and show how creative tension between these ideas and approaches is helping me, my clients and students grow.

Why capture notes efficiently

Without a way to be discerning and capture your ideas, 2 things happen:

1. You forget your ideas

2. You can’t access ideas when you need them

Either way, the result is the same: stress, frustration and inefficiency.

What a Second Brain can do for you

If stress and overloading your working memory is the core weakness and block to getting things done, then any system that reduces that is welcome.

That’s where understanding basic principles is a solid place to start.

My epiphany some time back was realising that I was not getting things done because of a lack of clear separation between projects and areas.

Like many epiphanies, a quick note as above (Zettelcasten call this a ‘fleeting note’) is the way to go. My brain realised that “areas” are parts of life to keep an eye on and “projects” are something I would make happen in the next 6-8 weeks added a lot of clarity and precision.

Everything else can be archived…for now.

That one insight alone changed things in seconds.

But getting organised around knowledge with a project-based focus. As powerful as it immediately was. And as effective as it is for me in getting projects done in hours or days that had sat around for a long time, it was nothing compared to what came next.

Workflow

This is a simplest end-to-end way to handle information.

It’s your over-arching systems.

You want this to be so simple, it almost happens without thinking. Certainly without having to make decisions in the moment.

Here’s one part of how I do it now.

Note: It’s not perfect, and it’s evolving.

I have a separation between cultivating knowledge and projects:

• Admin ‘paperwork’ for project-based tasks goes in Evernote

• I grow my knowledge garden in Obsidian

I still use Evernote for projects. One notebook per project. All related information goes there. e.g. I am planning my son’s 12th birthday, and having information on bikes and list of things to do e.g. party and invites can go here.

Pretty simple focused stuff that a basic system can do. It’s helpful to have the resources collected together in one place.

Structured around Tiago Forte’s PARA system.

But here’s where I love to integrate.

Digital has huge advantages but I love the corner marking method Cal Newport teaches. In fact I used it to read Building A Second Brain. And you know what: there is no faster way I know to review a book. And, having something unique and physical can make a huge difference.

But wait. How can I integrate that into my digital Second Brain?

How about:

• Write your associations and ideas in Obsidian

• Share them on social media as you make new relationships

• Share them in blogs, daily emails and twitter.

• That way you can do some list-building, make new connections and get feedback right away

I love to have both digital and physical version of books on occasion too.

Case in point, I am re-reading parts of The Einstein Factor by Dr Win Wenger. His early ideas on freenoting seem really far ahead of their time for all the stuff I am seeing now on Zettelcasten and Obsidian. But now I can appreciate those associations more richly.

Now back in 2000, we only had physical books, and I love my old copy of that. Gives me a warm glow. But I also have a copy on iPad. So now the sections that I want to share, discuss or come back, or use as quotes in social media or blogs, I highlight. And they go straight to ReadWise.

So in that case, I get to use both.

With Building A Second Brain, the Corner Marking Method, I was able to implement PARA in a few days and transform my digital life.

Like I say, that had a knock on effect.

It frees up working memory.

I call this the principle of shifting media: you get different insights when you move from one medium to the next. There are huge advantages to physical books: they are uniquely anchors for knowledge, readily accessible. And you can’t flick through Kindle and iPad books in the same way…

The power of “AND”

Which is to say, the ability to read and make connected notes in a simple to use system that shows you the map of your Second Brain is a game changer. I don’t need to rule out anything.

I love Obsidian, and I am using that now to make notes, generate new insights and write papers and books.

There are other Zettelcasten systems, but Nick Milo inspired me so much with a clear succinct intro video (that’s what happens when you cut out the noise in your comms and express your passion). It is so simple to use. It is clean so my attention is not distracted. A huge HUGE advantage.

As above, I don’t want to exclude physical and digital. I am currently using the PARA system principles in my physical workspace and home environment. And it is working really well.

AND is really important because the systems I mentioned can complement each other.

For example, Smart Notes suggests a separation between projects and building your Zettel-based Second Brain.

Totally on board with that!

However, it also suggest that assets / Intermediate Packets should be binned after each project. Which is crazy for any of us who work in Universities, the corporate world and use similar types of projects. The beauty is that we can recycle the good stuff like those sexy checklists and PowerPoints!

Obsidian is a special place where I note relationships, insights, and perceptions about perceptions. It makes me calmer, more focused and confident I am headed in the right direction.

Workflow And Achieving Your Outcomes

Picture this:

No matter what comes at you workwise, you have a simple way to organise that in bulk whether it is important now or later. Evernote and my emails programs do this.

And for “working documents”, I mirror exactly the same folder structure on Dropbox. That’s day to day “need to make happen” stuff.

But we don’t just want that. Although that alone was a huge relief.

We want the adventure and thrill of creation, contribution and expression of ideas. We want to know that we can assimilate new ideas, grow, evolve, link them together. Make informed choices, become more efficient, and make our own contribution.

So imagine that throughout the day you have ideas, you read, you listen. As you do, you have a simple way to capture these. A way that you know works. You can do almost anywhere. And the more you do this, the better your system gets.

Now whenever you want inspiration you have all your best ideas linked.

You captured them at source.

That’s the place I am at. And, as this evolves, I will capture it and share.

At this point, I am nube with Obsidian, and I have finally found a tool that can capture my rapid fire thoughts, organise them, link them, make new connections - without any unnecessary noise.

As coaches, therapists and hypnotists, we need to be able to organise our own thinking and be models for moving in the direction we want to head.

Obsidian, linking ideas, and PKM has a huge role to play in coaching and reaching goals. It makes it a joy. Because you either need more information, to make new connections or expand perceptions.

You can implement pragmatically.

They aim is a simple workflow where you know you have your ideas collected together, and you can link insights to create new blogs, emails, products, presentations, courses, books and other tangible outputs.

Creatively combining to bring your own flavour to bear.

When you can capture your ideas and insights at source, and reliably organise, mix, combine and find new connections, you bottle the dopamine.

At the point, people become a lot more interested in what you have to say.

Rich

P.S. If you’re interested in more, the RICH Report. I’ve made this available for Substack subscribers