Welcome to QuintSmart Learner!
Edition 2 - December 6th
Hey, it’s Basti.
Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I write about how to unlock the art of effective learning, replace frustrating and outdated approaches, and finally achieve meaningful results while enjoying the process.
Today I want to prepare the foundation to build on with future newsletters.
I admit, I have a Second Brain. I think I need to explain what that means.
As you know by now, learning with joy is my passion. But it took me a while to discover that passion. Although I was learning quite intensively early on, I cannot say that I enjoyed it back then.
I remember one important moment when a colleague, David, introduced me to software called Obsidian. With enthusiasm, David showed me his collected set of notes and how everything was connected with each other.
I thought, what a nerd. At the first touchpoint, I did not yet understand the impact such a system creates. But this moment was enough for me to do a little experiment. I installed Obsidian and created my first notes. Not yet with a system, I just played with it.
And I had so many questions. - What should I write in a note? - How long should such a note be? - How do I organize that information? - How do I connect all that? - How does that Obsidian software work? With all its options, plugins,…
I can tell, it was for sure a learning curve.
What was driving me was my hope that this time, I would be able to bring a little more order to my scattered information. To the chaotic structure of all I had learned in 20 years of my professional career.
This exploration brought me to the discovery of the Second Brain approach by Tiago Forte. I first read Tiago’s awesome articles, then I read his groundbreaking book “Building a Second Brain”, I attended Cohort #18 of his Second Brain Online course, went to the first in-person Second Brain summit in Los Angeles in October this year, and I’m now a member of the Second Brain community.
I guess I’m a fan.
But what is special about it?
Back to my Obsidian setup and working with notes. I felt a little lost. Taking notes .. ok. But why, how, what to do with it really. It did not yet click.
It changed with the Second Brain approach to Capture-Organize-Distill-Express information. The CODE to working with personal knowledge.
Now I had an answer to various ways of retrieving information and how to filter for the ones that are important for me.
An answer on how to organize such insights so that I can easily find them again and have them available when I need that information the most.
An answer to distill everything to the core that connects with me. To make a vast amount of information tangible for me using it.
An answer for what to do next with it.
What I would like to achieve today is to create that spark for you. That you take this one step and experiment with Obsidian.
With the previous newsletter, I shared my LinkedIn-Second-Brain.
This is my externalized knowledge about LinkedIn, building on the wisdom of many amazing LinkedIn creators.
But it is much more than that. It is a basic implementation of organized notes in Obsidian. A starting point for growing a Second Brain. With the intention to make the start a little easier for you.
You can download your version including setup instructions via: https://digital-garden.ontheagilepath.net/linkedin-second-brain-setup-instructions-v1-0
Explore the notes, explore their connection, explore your questions. And if you want, send me your questions.
With next Newsletters, I will dive more into working with a Second Brain and how that amplifies our way to learn, to work with our personal knowledge.
Learn Smart,
Basti
P.S… To respond to this newsletter, just hit reply. I love getting replies, read all of them, and I will answer to as many as possible (And if you received this email from a friend, and would like to subscribe, please go here: https://pages.quintsmart.com/)
I will publish my newsletter every Friday at about 13:00 o’clock CET.
See you next Friday.
The history: Newsletter 001 - The Lip-Cut
