Tarot and information management? Yes, they absolutely go together, and in this article I’ll share my ongoing investment in building a second brain.
Building A Second Brain
What does it mean to “build a second brain”? Tiago Forte published his book, “Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential“ in June of 2022. Forte’s idea is to create just a few places where information is stored. The storage should have robust search features and the ability to interlink, to link one page or piece of information to others that are related.
I’ve really simplified his process, but the key takeaways for the purposes of this article are:
- Save everything in one (or two) places.
- Use keywords within your notes so they can be easily found later
- Expand on pieces of information with your own words, understanding, and insights.
- Use these insights to create something.
How I Am Building My Second Brain
I use Evernote because I’ve been using it for years and have a lot of information in there already. Evernote’s search features are very robust – it will even search inside images and PDFs. When I’m reading, working on the internet, or have an idea pop into my head, I save whatever it is to my Evernote inbox. Other inboxes are in Dropbox and Google Docs.
Once a week, at a minimum, I go through all of my inboxes, email, and calendar. I process all email and make a task in ToDoist with a link to the email which I can then archive. Next, I look through my Downloads folder. These are mainly work ephemera that can be deleted, but sometimes I’ll throw screenshots, downloaded documents, and images in there. If it is a resource to be used in the future it goes into Evernote with some text description. Images are usually ideas for painting or sewing, and memes I want to save. I put everything into the appropriate folders such as “To Paint”, “2022 Pictures”, or “Business Reference”.
By the end of the week, all of my inboxes are empty and my notes are in one place where I can search to find them again. This takes very little time because I depend on search rather than organization to find information. Each client has a folder, but there are no subfolders. I find everything related to my client by searching on their name, which is on each page.
Building My Second Brain and Using It
Getting the information into my second brain is the first part. The second part is finding the information again. One type of information I keep are symbols and their meanings. We find lots of symbols on Tarot cards; flowers like roses and lilies, astronomical signs, and animals such as storks, lions, and dogs.
If a certain symbol seems important in a reading I can quickly look up what I have about that symbol in my second brain. Since I keep my anonymized client readings in my second brain, I can also see where that card has appeared and for which client. This is really nice for clients I’ve read for over a long period of time. I can look through the progression of their readings and see where and why that card appeared previously
When I take photos of my cards for client readings I save the images, along with the card and deck name in the title. For the decks I use a lot, this means I already have the images there and can just drag and drop them into the reading report. While writing about different card meanings, I can open that card for each deck I have an image for and look at the similarities and differences across decks.
Tarot and Information Management
Forte advocates always leaving a piece of information better and more useful every time you touch it. When I sort through my inbox and file pieces of information away,
I also re-read the information, highlight the points that are important, add MLA style citations, and sometimes, synthesize the information into content that I can drop into a future writing project or client reading.
However, at times I’ll save a piece of information and have no idea why or what use it might be. I could just delete it, but I can pull a Tarot card for an explanation. This sounds wacky, I know, but I’ll usually remember the connection after pulling a card. I can then add keywords and my reasoning to the note so that I can find and use it in the future.
I even use Tarot to generate an idea by taking keywords from the card and searching on them in my second brain.
Conclusion
I’m building my second brain in order to clear my own brain, lessen the potential for forgetting, and preserve interesting data and concepts for the future when I may need them. With hundreds of readings in my second brain, I can study how cards appeared in different situations, deepening my Tarot knowledge.
Building a Better Brain has changed the way I read, surf the internet, and work. I suggest taking a look at the book and sharing your thoughts below!
What Clients are Saying about Sophrosyne Tarot
I was advised to ask open-ended questions instead of predictive questions which I thought was helpful because I never would have known if it weren’t for the reader. The reader provided the reading along with some advice too so the entire reading was very thorough and explained in an understandable manner.
Everything said was accurate and helpful for me to identify my flaws in order to grow as a person. I have learned a lot about tarot and what it does to help me.
So, I am a work, always in process, about keeping my life organized. However, WOW, I never considered organizing my electronic data. You have given me lots to think about, I am adding it on my “to do list” to clean up and organize this part of my life.
Diane, your post went places I had not imagined. The idea of a second brain is intriguing. I had not heard anyone mention Evernote for years; perhaps I’ll have a look at it. The idea of pulling information from the Universe using cards is not very familiar to me. How did you get into Tarot?