Create a Minimal Second Brain Setup in Notion To Transform Your Digital Life
This is my simple second brain setup in Notion. It is very minimal and focuses on how you can make the most of the content you consume, rather than having a fancy setup which you're not going to use anyway. I use some of Notion's cool features such as links, databases and synced blocks and keep it basic and to the point, without going overboard with complex features, as this makes it more difficult to use and detracts from the main point of the second brain - to help you consume and store digital content and create a library of your knowledge and ideas.
What is a Second Brain?
A Second Brain is a system to organise and manage your content. As the term implies, it's a place for storing things that you don't necessarily all need to remember in your brain, but you know you have that information if you need to access it.
You can essentially create a second brain using paper and a nicely organised filing system. However, Notion makes creating a second brain easy with its database, links and synced blocks features.
Since I consume a lot of content in the form of YouTube videos, website articles, books and so on, and since most of them are digital, I've found that using Notion is a great way to organise all the information I consume and tag it, so that I can reference it later on and also use it to curate content from.
My Simple Notion Brain Setup
I've seen a few guides on creating a Second Brain using Notion. However, they all seem to be too complex and use advanced features of Notion. I like to keep mine very simple, so that it is actually functional and not too complicated to use.
After all, what is the point of a second brain if you spend 80% of it maintaining how it works and making it look good and only 20% of it to store and retrieve information from?
So, my second brain in Notion consists of just these six pages:
I will go through each page, how I use it and how to create it in this guide. But if you just want to duplicate my Notion template into your workspace and play with it yourself, feel free. You can get my Second Brain Notion template below:
My Simple Second Brain Notion Template
Get my Notion Template for my simple Second Brain. You can duplicate it into your own Notion Workspace and customise it according to your preferences!
In the rest of the article, I will explain each page of my second brain setup and how to create it from scratch and how I use it. If you prefer to watch a video instead, you can watch my video guide on my Second Brain in Notion here:
Without further ado, let's get started in creating your Second Brain in Notion!
Organise Your Books, Reading List and Book Notes
One of my goals this year is to read more books.
I use Notion to keep track of my yearly goal for reading books, manage my reading list and store my book notes.
The first thing on the top of the Books page is a synced block of my goal for how many books I want to read this year:
As you can see, when you hover over the block, there is a red highlight around it, indicating that this is a synced block. What this means is it is a block that you can copy and paste into many different pages and whenever you edit it in once place, it will automatically update in all the other pages.
I have my original synced block in my yearly goals page, and as you can see the block contains things like why, inspiration, habits and tracking, obstacles, etc, all as part of my process for creating yearly goals.
I paste this as a synced block into my books page, since it allows me to remind myself of my goal. It also allows me to make any changes as I review this page regularly. For example, if I feel like I'm reading at a good pace and am on track to exceed my goal, I can update the goal directly from here, and it will update on my yearly goals page. This makes things easy to review when I do my monthly reviews.
Next, I have a callout block for the book I am currently reading and the book I want to read next:
I then have a section below that with my reading list:
Here, I basically just write down any books that are recommended to me to consider reading next. It is not necessarily in order of which book I am going to read next, since I will decide that based on priority and what theme I feel like reading next. However, it is a place to just store any book recommendations and potential books to read next.
Below that, I have a section where I store my book notes:
The first page is a list of the books I've read in order and my notes. The template page is just a template for how I create book summary and notes to publish on this blog. You can check out some of my book notes here:
Abhiyan Bhandari
Book summary sites are websites where there are book summaries and notes:
A good one I recommend is called GetAbstract. This is a book summary website which has a rating, some themes and detailed and useful book summary notes.
Learning Database When Consuming Digital Content & Workflow
Next, I have a section called "Learning". This contains the following pages, where I store notes from the digital content I consume:
In the videos page are my notes from the YouTube videos I watch. I have a database with videos that I have made notes from. This database contains tags and URL as the main properties, so I can organise what the video is about and the original source:
I have created a video notes template to include "What changes will I be making after watching this video?" at the end. I think this is useful as it allows you to think of action points from the video, rather than just consuming content passively.
My courses page is a list of the courses I am taking or have taken, with notes. I have a database inside, with the main properties being the name of the course and the status (whether I have completed the course or it is currently in progress):
My Podcasts page is just a list of podcasts that I would like to consider listening to at some point in the future:
Currently, I haven't incorporated listening to podcasts regularly as part of my habits, so these are just a list of podcasts I would like to listen to, rather than any notes or anything else of value.
As I get into a habit of listening to podcasts regularly, perhaps whilst going on long walks, I will evolve this page to contain my notes from podcasts or clips of my favourite segments. For now, not much to see here!
My articles & blogs page contains a database of the website or blog articles I have read online and the notes from it, as such:
Events page is just a list of events I have gone to and notes from it. I don't tend to go to as many events now, so this page is a bit dry currently:
People Database and Audit
This is an important section as it contains the important people in my life, their birthdays and contact history.
It starts off with a callout block reminding me to audit the people I spend time with:
Basically, if someone makes me feel bad, I'm not being my true self, are negative vibes, I don't like spending time with them and/or I'd rather not see them, then I should re-consider why I have them in my life.
Conversely, if someone makes me feel energised, I can be my true self, are positive vibes, make me feel good about myself, I like spending time with them and I want to see them, then perhaps I should spend more time with them.
Up next, I have a page called Birthdays:
As the name implies, this is literally just a page with the months of the year and, next to each month, birthdays of people in my life. That way I can remember to wish them and remind myself which birthdays are coming up:
The next section "Updates/Motives" is just a list of motives I have had, any summary of things I did, learned or experienced. It acts as a memory bank to reflect on good moments.
Below that I have a database of each person and inside each page, I have their Birthday, Contact history and Notes. For contact history, I just link the motive page into it and notes are things like what they like, anything important, so I can remember those and perhaps think of gift ideas.
Success Journal Page
My success journal is just a page with a list of quotes, motivational advice and general life advice that I have saved. It is an area that I can refer back to when I am needing a bit of extra motivation.
For example, a good one I need to keep reminding myself when I'm feeling lazy:
Unless you make a change, nothing is going to change.
Resources/Records Page
This just contains a dump of many pages with things I need to refer back to such as guides, manuals, tools/apps I use, ChatGPT prompts, what I pack for a staycation/trip, how to do a gratitude journal entry, how to deal with problems in life, etc.
Literally anything. I even have pages on how to water my plants and how to solve a Rubik's cube (back when I got into the hype of wanting to solve Rubik's cubes very quickly)!
Saved Database & Workflow
Next, I've got a Saved database. This is literally just a database with tags and URL of things I want to save:
I will tag them with a relevant tag, such as:
That way, I can create views for each particular tag, for different areas of my life.
Whenever I'm reading an article, I can just click the Notion Chrome extension and save that page into my Saved Notion database:
It will save the page and also copy the article, good for if you want to save a copy of the article, in case the link stops working in the future.
You can also save things into the database from your phone using the share option, for example, to save TikToks/Instagram Reels. That way, this database acts as a sort of inbox. You can then sort through things using tags and search through things you have saved using the search feature on the Notion database:
