Inside Ali Abdaal s FULL Second Brain System

We talked with Ali Abdaal about his second brain. The idea factory he used to build a team of 20 employees and a 3 million subscriber YouTube channel. In this detailed walkthrough we'll talk about the four steps of Ali's second brain process, his system for where notes go, and the specific apps he uses every step of the way. This is Ali Abdaal's second brain. First, let's start with Capture. So Capture is about getting it outside of your brain, social media, the world, and into some trusted single place where you can start to work with it. What are the different ways that you capture information? Okay, so many. The first one is physical notebook. Perfect. I still like physical notebook. I kind of go between various ones depending on how I'm feeling. Recently, last week or so, I've started morning pages. So I have this notebook where I do three pages of handwritten-y text writing on the phone. And if I'm capturing notes on the fly, usually I just use Apple Notes because, well, the other apps, they kind of suck offline. And I'm often in, for example, if I'm in a restaurant and I'm in the toilet downstairs where there's no signal, there's no Wi-Fi, and that goes into Apple Notes. That's Apple Notes on your phone, right? Yes, that's right. Occasionally Apple Notes on my Mac as well. It's very easy to just pop it open with Alfred and I have multiple folders. It's basically, I think, to an extent, almost like Evernote, but it's just such an easy place to just chuck stuff into, and then I can kind of forget about it. And I know that, again, tip from your course, if I ever need to find something, I can just search for it rather than having to worry about the specific folder and the specific tag and all of that. Generally, I do a lot of automated capture stuff. Okay. So I don't have to think about it too hard. Perfect. So Readwise is like the center of my capture system so that if I'm reading on Kindle and I highlight on Kindle, it goes into Readwise. If I'm reading on Instapaper, it goes into Readwise. More recently, I am using the beta version of Readwise's reader app, which is sort of Mac web iOS. And so when I highlight on that, it goes into Readwise and then Readwise syncs into my room and my Notion and all that kind of stuff further down the line. I use day one as my journaling. Yeah. So if it's like journaling and it's private, I'll chuck it into day one. Often if I'm writing a daily note in room, I'll just copy paste it into day one anyway, just because I like having the data and I've been using day one for like five years plus now. So it always, it's a nice stream of daily journaling, daily thoughts, that kind of stuff. I do use Todoist as like kind of, if it's a task and I want to capture it, I'll chuck it into Todoist. Occasionally I'll just do, I'll do a voice memo, but the app we use most often is Otter. So if, for example, I'm having a conversation with someone and I know this is a conversation that would be useful to record and transcribe things, I'll just like open up Otter on my phone, turn it, put it face down in between us. Yeah. And it's just doing its thing. It's cool, isn't it? It's so cool. Do you have anything for YouTube videos, clips from, or transcripts from YouTube videos? No, I don't really watch YouTube videos for that kind of knowledge. I tend to watch them more for the entertainment or the, oh, that's a cool transition. Oh, but actually when that happens, I use an app called CleanShot, which lets me capture a sort of screen recording and turn it into a GIF. Perfect. And so when that happens, I get that GIF and I put it into a mood board for the YouTube channel, you know, nice title and subtle entrance animation. Very cool. From this masterclass by Gary Cosgrove. I want to do this for our channel too. And then I just send this to our editors to be like, Hey, this is a cool thing. In my mind, when I capture something, I have an idea of what I'm capturing it for. So for example, I tend to use Apple notes and Roam and a combination of the two for personal note taking and also for my book. But we exclusively use Notion for anything related to the team, anything related to YouTube videos. If for example, I have random thought in the shower of the daily highlight method for productivity or whatever, then I'm thinking, okay, is this relevant for a book thing or is it relevant for a YouTube video thing? If it is relevant for a book thing, I'll chuck it into Apple notes or into Roam. And if it's relevant for a YouTube thing, I'll just chuck it straight into Notion. Sometimes it's both. And then it gets a bit messy, but like, I don't think about it too hard. There's no speed limit. You can go as fast as you want. And if you know where to put something, absolutely. Like why waste the effort that you just put in to decide where that goes? Just put it straight there. What I would question though, is, is what happens when you don't know? Is there, what is the plan B? Is there like a safety net where things can go like a daily notes section or an inbox where in case you don't have time to decide where it goes, you can just stick it there. Yeah. I usually just stick it in Apple notes. And then I usually forget about it because I don't actually have a solid review process. The daily notes feature in Roam and the equivalent apps is surprisingly helpful. May 17th, I was just like, I need somewhere to put stuff. I happened to have Roam with me because I was on the computer and I was online. So if you don't come back to this and kind of redo it, there's no penalty. You don't feel bad that you like, didn't get to it. Yesterday I had a chat with Daniel and Tristan from Readwise, discussed book pitch, discussed Readwise and Readwise potential course idea. Course Readwise, we're aiming for August 22. And then as I was doing that, because I've been using Roam for a while, I was like, Ooh, this is a course. Let me make this course page. Oh, of course, property hub goal setting. When was this? I must've kind of done this course like two years ago when I was first getting into buying property. I often talk to people who seem to think they need one capture tool, one capture source, which is absurd. I mean, look at this list. What is the unit of output that I care about? And then let's just do whatever it takes to get to that as efficiently and as sort of frictionlessly as possible. And I think the mistake a lot of people make is that they're wedded to the organization of the system. Yes. As if the system is the unit of output. Yes. So for example, no shade on August Bradley or Marie Poulin, but if you're them and you're selling a course on how to use Notion, then it pays to have a really, really, really, really nice Notion setup. But I think people kind of overly index on, Oh my God, August Bradley has an incredible Notion setup. I Now, step two of Ollie's second brain, organize. And for organize, how I would think of this is just where things go. Where do they go in terms of an app? Where do they go in terms of a folder or a tag or a category? You just want some place that you know, when you have the idea, we want animations for YouTube videos, like you showed us with the mood board, you know where to go. The thing is a lot of these capture sources are also organized sources. And so for example, Apple notes tend to stay in Apple notes, unless it is a thing that's going to become a YouTube video, in which case it goes into Notion because that's how we manage our YouTube videos. Or unless it is a thing that's going to become part of the book, in which case it either goes into Rome or just stays in Apple notes. Cause I've even got book folders in Apple notes of like all the different parts of the book. These are all like various folders for various things. And I, you know, often just add to these, organize them over time. The chapter structures has changed over time. As you know, when you're writing a book, stuff changes. So I don't, I don't think about it too hard. I just trust that if it's something related to the book and I chuck it somewhere in this book main folder, it will resurface itself when I'm focusing on that relevant chapter. So like Apple notes itself is a bit of an organizing system. Similarly, if we go back to Rome, Rome itself is also, I mean, I don't really organize stuff in Rome particularly because I trust that the tagging and the searching and stuff will, will resurface things. So for example, um, if let's say I'm working on chapter one of the book, I have like this sort of subtitles and sort of been drafted and was drafting this yesterday, May 17th draft word count, quite handy, quite a handy feature. But I also then know that I've got a bunch of other pages related to autonomy and mastery and purpose and intrinsic motivation and stuff. I will trust the automatic organizing capabilities of the app. So something like Notion is a little bit more structured. We have this whole system with either we work with a team for all of our videos that we're making. And so if I need to capture an idea, I know specifically it goes into this page. Then Jamie, our YouTube producer will specifically take the idea and put it into the relevant place and decide what needs to happen with it. Back when I was doing everything myself, this was a lot simpler. It was just basically a glorified Kanban board where I could at a glance, see, okay, what stage of production or each of our videos are writing or filming or editing got hundreds to thousands of things in my readwise database in terms of books and articles, mostly books and articles, occasional tweets, occasional podcasts. And this all gets routed or routed into my room, which is quite convenient whenever I get around to refreshing the link, because sometimes it doesn't work. So depending on what kind of idea it is and how you're going to use it, you either want it in a hierarchy or you want it in a network. If I'm online, I will chuck it into Roam. Honestly, sometimes it's even the one, two, three milliseconds it takes for Roam to load and me to pick up the thing. Absolutely. If I need to find something, it will rock up at some point. So you trust that when you read a book, take a highlight, it's going to end up more or less automatically in Roam. Yeah, more or less automatically in Roam. And if I need to revisit it at some point, I kind of know that it's there. And what's interesting about search is it doesn't matter where something is located. Have you noticed like when you do a search, it just finds the thing you don't know or care which folder or link or tag it's part of? Exactly. Yeah. I find it so like often I don't actually organize stuff like this is my just general notes folder. And I'm like, all of all of this stuff should probably be organized somewhere. And then I'm like, I don't really care. Yeah, I'll find it in search if I need to. Totally. There's that nice phrase. I think it's from Andy Grove, which is like, let chaos reign and then reign in chaos. Nice. Yeah. Whereas I think the mistake people make is that they try to figure out the system first. But actually, if you just become chaotic first, you'll then you'll figure out what the minimum viable level of organization is. Step three is distill. So distill. Distill is about boiling down the essence. How do you start to corral to kind of survey all this different information that you've saved and organized so that you can create, say, a video or a piece of writing? Yeah. What comes to mind? For YouTube videos, when I do the distilling is when we have a video that I need to write. In the past and some of the time when I have spare time and I'll be like, oh, I have this idea. Let me just do a little slow burner on one of these 18 videos that we've got. We've got in the pipeline. But now that I've got a team, it's more like this week. The two videos that I care about are how to get started with investing and the club episode of building a second brain. Let's do the investing one. So when once you have that lens, that set of that kind of filter, where are you going to go to find basically like what you know about that subject? Step one is my first brain and step two is my second brain. And step three is the Internet. Yeah. Which is the optional step. This is a video I made about two years ago. And I remember writing it on a night shift when I was in the hospital because a friend messaged me on WhatsApp saying, hey, man, I want to get started with investing. How do I do it? And I started replying to him on my phone. I was like, well, this is inefficient. What's that web? What's that is blocked on the hospital computers. I was like, wait a minute. Notion's not blocked. So I opened up Notion. I made a tag. I made a card how to get started with investing and just started writing. I was like, OK, all the advice I'm going to give my friend, let me just chuck it into a Notion page because I know this will be a video at some point. I love that example. And then that video came out and now it's got like three or four million views and it's just done super well over time. I think now that I have got a more fleshed out second brain, I can think, OK, first or after, you know, let's say I'm doing a video called investing advice for your 20s. What I'd be doing is off the top of my head. What am I? What's my listicle? What's one of my bullet points? But also I know that I've read the psychology of money and I know I highlighted a bunch of stuff and I know I've got a video about the book. So I know that's going to be either in Rome or a Notion or in my readwise highlights. I know I've read some stuff on collaborative fund. I know I've read some other things by Morgan Housel. I know I've read some stuff on Mr. Money Mustache's personal finance blog. Theoretically, if I just search my room, I may come across some things which I hadn't thought of that. My first brain hadn't come up with that thing. Yes. And therefore, let me just chuck it into this video because this is a good point. Oh, so good. Look at this. December 19th, 2020, the rich man car paradox. I actually forgot that that was a thing because I read this two years ago. There you go. I've just searched money on Rome. I wrote, Oh, psychology. Oh, I actually read this as a blog post. This was a blog post before I read it as a book. I completely forgot about that. And I'd highlighted this thing at the time. This is, this would be a really interesting point that I would put in the video that my first brain hadn't thought about. Perfect. And to generate more respect to the fast cars. That's nice. That's beautiful. Well played Morgan. This is what I think people don't understand. And you kind of referenced it before. You don't need to do new research. Don't go to Google. Imagine if you went to Google right now, how to invest? Oh God, it would be the most pointless shitty listicle that some content marketer for HubSpot wrote at one point. It would be the worst. It would be the worst. And instead of what we're talking about here, you're drawing from years, even for a subject that you said yourself, you're not that interested in. Yeah. But even a subject like that, you could probably come up with a 10 or 20 pieces of content from the sources you've just mentioned. Step four, it's time to express. What do you do now that you've done in a sense, all this preparatory work you've captured, organized, and still to support, to make it easy to actually just get your ideas out into the world. What does that look like for you? Here's how I would actually go about it. And if in fact, to be honest, this is how I would do it. I would, I, I, so if it's a video that I'm just sort of typing a few notes and stuff for, I would actually just do it in Apple notes. What makes you go to Apple notes versus roam for this? The way I'm actually thinking of it, it's just like, it's just quicker to write things in Apple notes. And if I want to flesh this out when I'm on the toilet or something, I don't have to worry about roam loading and being offline and all of, all of the friction associated with roam. Yeah. Even though it's powerful, it's like more annoying to deal with. And so for a video like this, I think I'm going to draft it out in Apple notes. And then when it's ready to go into Notion, I'll just copy paste into Notion. So then the team can do stuff with it. That actually makes a lot of sense. I think often when it comes to expressing, you use the simplest app because the, the features of a more sophisticated app now, when we're in convergence are now friction, they're creating friction and you need to just sprint towards that end product. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's very true. I often find myself drafting a lot of book chapters in, in Apple notes as well. Cause they're all like, I know I just need to know it's new, not worry about it. And I can immediately start writing Apple notes. It's like, I can start typing as soon as I start thinking. Exactly. Basically what we need is an intro. What we need is a hook. We need an intro probably C O D E makes a lot of sense. And then productive capture. And I'm just sort of blitzing through these and looking at this kind of stuff, power, not a huge fan of power. Sorry. Oh, August 21st. My building second round system resources, personal notes, team projects. Oh, okay. I mean, I've just gotten rid of Evernote and replaced it with Apple notes, but that's interesting that that's what I was doing two years ago. Yeah. Now I'm, I am looking for cap. Ooh, hello. The capture habit. Cool. From, Oh, you're building a secondary podcast. Cool. Okay. That's interesting. So I've got my transcripts from this. This was when I was using air. That's handy. Oh, okay. Yeah. I like this valuing, valuing your own ideas. Perspective has something to offer a bit of a leap of faith. That's interesting. Oh, beautiful. It's the trust. You know, they're quite different document. Oh, mate, you were, you were, you were on form in this podcast episode. You can't predict that. Oh, organize distilled express. It's interesting what you're doing. You're sort of, you did the first search for BASB and now you're, you're drilling down, doing more and more specific searches to fill out your outline. This would be how I'd first approached the approach, this kind of video. And then I'd probably just like walk around a bit and be like, all right, what is the actual thing that I care about? I'd probably just flip through the book and be like, all right, cool. What's going on and organize. What would be the next stage after that? What do you do with this outline? Good question. So have we already building a second brain? We already got a book club about it. Oh yeah, we do. We're club building a second brain. There you go. On June 15th. Thank you team for already making that happen. Boom. Copy and paste into Ali's notes as part of our notes. Like we planned this or something. Yeah. Um, we also have this cool title idea thing. So, um, where it like automatically calculates the length in terms of characters because we want to keep it under 55 characters. And this book changed my approach to productivity. That's a potential title. I'd be thinking about this. The team would be thinking about this, how to build a second brain, my favorite productivity book. So keep going. Then what the team would do is think about thumbnail concepts. I'd be thinking, Ooh, could we get like a little model of a brain, like a little brain to have in the corner? And then we would do some market research to be like, all right, let's look on YouTube, building a second brain. What's going on with that one? Oh, wow. Second brain, a life changing productivity system. Oh, that was great. Million views. You've got a hundred, you've 200,000 views on what looks like a PowerPoint presentation. Okay. So that's, that's promising. So this is like junkies, but it's got 200,000 views. So that's a sign that this topic lands with people. Then I would chuck the content and my notes into this. One of our writers, he'll take my rough first draft of what I think I want to say, flesh it out into a, maybe you want to say this as well, this as well, this as well. And then I'd go through and be like, yes, yes, yes, no cut. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Cool. So that's, we just went through all four steps of code besides the actual filming in about 30 minutes. That's brilliant. To build your own second brain process, sign up for the code quickstart guide in the description below. Or if you want to start taking notes immediately, watch this video on how to pick your very own note-taking app. Nice. Great stuff. Well played everyone. Awesome. GG. Should we do some thumbnails? Uh, yeah. All right. Let's stop this recording. I hope it worked. Oh, thank God for that.