CG艺术实验室

This Week's Main Course#

Last week finally ended smoothly. In the first article, I mentioned the topic of "how to deal with information overload" which I need to write about sooner or later.

The method I use to deal with information overload is something I learned bit by bit from the internet, and by "bit by bit" I mean I took a lot of detours. Currently, I have found the most useful tool to be creating my own second brain.

What is a Second Brain?#

To truly understand the meaning of a second brain, we must first understand the human brain. We must admit one fact, that our human brain is not good at rote memorization. Do you remember the phrase "memorize the entire text" from your Chinese textbook? Think about how much of the ancient poetry you memorized back then you can still recall now. That's right, you will find that you can remember the texts and poems you can recite are the ones you can basically understand the meaning of, or the images, characters, and stories they depict. In other words, the reason you can still remember them after so many years is not because you memorized the order of the words, and pay attention, it's also not because you understood their meaning at the time. The fundamental reason is that you engaged in thinking (whether intentional or unintentional). For example, the reason you remember "a panoramic view of the mountains" is not because you were punished by the teacher for not writing "I will stand on the highest peak" correctly on a test and had to write it 20 times, but more likely because you wanted to recite it perfectly in front of the person you secretly liked during a recitation event. What your brain did was link this sentence, the person you liked back then, and that recitation event together, which is why you are likely to never forget it. And thinking, precisely, is about connecting seemingly unrelated things together. So, our human brain is actually better at thinking, and remembering this knowledge happens as a byproduct of thinking.

The essence of knowledge is useful information. Let's take a look at the process of memorization. Every time you learn a new text, the first thing you do is read it out loud, which is actually the brain collecting information. Then, the teacher starts explaining the meaning of new words, the structure of paragraphs, the techniques used by the author, the thoughts expressed, and so on, which is actually the brain organizing information, or in other words, turning information into knowledge. Finally, when it's time for the exam, in order to get a high score, you don't have to intimately touch a copper belt at home, you have to be able to recall this knowledge at the critical moment. This is actually the brain extracting knowledge.

My second brain is a set of biomimetic systems that I use to collect information, organize information, and extract knowledge.

Why Create a Second Brain?#

Exams train us on how to solve problems.

When we enter society, the problems we need to solve are social problems. The exams we had as students were just small-scale competitive games under simple rules. If our brain is a basket filled with knowledge, then this game can be easily played with the basket we already have.

However, solving social problems requires knowledge with a systematic structure. That knowledge is not only vast, but also complex. Any problem placed at the professional level in society cannot be easily solved by one or two university majors, let alone a single online course. This is when you will realize:

• Our basket is too small, we need a bigger basket to hold knowledge.
• Our basket consumes too much power, weighing 3% of our body weight, it consumes 20% of our energy every day, and we still have to be on standby for 8 hours a day.
• Our basket is too unreliable, we can even lose important things like keys and ID cards, and can't remember our ATM PIN even if it's just a name and birthday.

These problems can all be solved with a second brain.

Now our brain can save a large amount of energy to think more efficiently, discover connections between knowledge, and focus more on solving problems.

How Did I Construct My Second Brain?#

Here, I will share the set of tools and methods I am currently using for reference:

In terms of tools, I registered for Evernote out of curiosity in 2011 and used it for 5 years. It stored thousands of articles, images, and links that I found "useful". Of course, 90% of the articles I haven't opened again to this day. I restrained myself from using the premium membership, so I only had 60MB of free sync traffic per month, and even so, these data took up about 2GB of space over 5 years. After that, I tried OneNote, but the editing and reading experience on the mobile version of OneNote was unbearable for me. I also tried other note-taking apps like Youdao Cloud Notes and Apple Notes, but that's beside the point.

Coming back to the topic, in 2018, I registered for Notion. Currently, the only software tool I use is Notion. What attracted me the most was not its clean and beautiful UI, but its high degree of freedom and flexibility. I can build tools that truly meet my needs based on my requirements. For example, 90% of this website is implemented using Notion, as well as my business project management, task tracking system, and so on. Now it seems that Notion can basically meet all my needs for a second brain.

Of course, more important than the tool itself is how to use the tool. If the method is right, the software used is not important. I even saw someone using a simple text document to achieve all of this (link at the end of the article). So, I set a principle for myself: if it's not necessary, don't add physical entities.

• Step 1: Collect Information

  • My sources of information mainly come from RSS subscriptions, newsletters, Telegram channels, books, and videos. They all have their pros and cons, the only common point is that there are no algorithms constantly guessing my interests. In short, I completely reject any media platform that uses algorithmic recommendations for reading and prefer to use search engines. The ultimate result of algorithmic recommendations is that you only see what they want you to see, you know what I mean. Algorithms can be utilized, but they shouldn't enslave us.
  • Collecting is not just about saving various "useful information", but also recording your own thoughts, even if it's just a note in an article. This way, your future self will understand why you left this article.
  • Note that at this stage, it's still information, not knowledge.

• Step 2: Organize and Review

  • Empty your basket regularly. If you're busy with work or other things and always have a pile of unread content in your basket, it's better to stop collecting and first organize the unprocessed content before continuing. Believe me, slow is fast.
  • Also, I believe organizing is not about categorizing or adding a bunch of tags to each piece of content, marking it as read doesn't mean the job is done, that's deceiving yourself. The truly effective approach is to record your thoughts at the moment with questions. For example, why did I mark this sentence? Is the mentioned knowledge related to my work? How will it help me? Do I agree with the author's viewpoint? Do I have any similar cases around me? In other words, let your brain start doing what it's best at - thinking. At this point, information becomes knowledge.
  • Furthermore, the significance of organizing and reviewing is to build trust in yourself. After persisting for a while, you will gradually start to understand yourself psychologically and believe that everything you have organized and reviewed meets your standards. You may not be able to do everything comprehensively, and it's impossible to achieve everything at once, take it slow and trust time with this process.

• Step 3: Establish Connections

  • Now we have reached the stage of truly building a second brain. I do this step simultaneously with organizing and reviewing, or more accurately, it can be done at any time. It is at this stage that we start to deeply think about the knowledge we already know. My specific approach is to organize articles of the same type into a topic, integrate the knowledge points scattered across several articles or videos into a single note, and then connect the content you think is related. Here are a few things to note:
    • If there is no clear topic, you can start from anywhere based on your interests.
    • You must express and summarize in your own words. Because even if you don't look at the original text in the future, you can still understand what it means.
    • Don't be afraid of not being comprehensive, it's not possible to achieve everything at once, take it slow and trust time with this process.
    • It's best to have two-way connections, so you can always come back.
  • At this point, knowledge starts to collide with your thoughts in various wonderful ways, and valuable ideas are hidden in these collisions. Establishing connections for knowledge is like building a series of portals in my knowledge base. Only then can the second brain truly have vitality.

• Step 4: Output Value

  • Investing in something is definitely for the sake of getting returns. This step is about how to use the second brain.
  • Why go through all the effort to absorb knowledge and create a second brain. On the surface, it's to better solve the problems encountered in life and work, but I believe that in reality, the true purpose of acquiring knowledge is to allow us to output more value in the future, and only with value can there be returns. Whether you paint a picture, write a diary, or complete a business project, the essence is using your knowledge, making a series of decisions, taking a series of actions, and ultimately outputting your value to the outside world.
  • Usually, the difficulty lies in the fact that there are no visible returns in the present because the growth of this value is an exponential curve. This is where another management system called GTD comes in, which is a book I've been reading recently and also practicing myself. I will talk about it in future articles.
  • So, without using GTD, how can we make it easier to persist in creating a second brain? The method I use is quite straightforward - directly linking the second brain to the business design projects I rely on for survival. For example, when a client requests a poster, I limit myself to searching for composition, color, and font choices only in my own library of materials. If the library doesn't have what I need, then I can search online. This way, the relationship between output and input is established, and they naturally connect.
  • At this point, with a second brain in place, the entire internal system of the second brain forms a positive feedback loop.

Creative Fragments#

Yesterday, I finally completed all the storyboard frames. Overall, it went smoothly.

But one possible difficulty is that drawing the storyboard frames doesn't mean everything will go according to plan. It is just a tool for communication within the team. This tool needs to continue iterating throughout the creative process.

I think this is a challenge that all content creators face. The nature of content creation is that outsiders only care about the results, but creators should focus on the process. It's not necessary to achieve perfection before having the confidence to share it with others. Sharing the creative process makes it easier to discover unknown flaws and mistakes.

The next step is to start drawing concept maps and character modeling. Let's go.

Weekly Highlight#

Translation | In the Past 12 Years, My Productivity Tool Has Only Been a .txt File - Appinn

Whether it's for fun or efficiency, tools are only part of it. What's more important is our own methodology.

• Since I learned how to reinstall the Windows system, I often spend a lot of time tweaking my computer to make it feel cleaner. I need to be vigilant about this, tools are meant to be used for work, use whatever is convenient, and don't reverse the priorities.

Whenever I feel overwhelmed by my long-term commitments, I weaken that feeling by actively unmarking emails, deleting things from my calendar that no longer excite me, and reducing the workload I assign to myself in the future.

• This reminds me of a line from the movie "3 Idiots," the essence of which is to learn how to comfort yourself at critical moments.

See you next week.