Editor’s note: Besides following developments in tech, our author is also a musical composer (Juilliard-trained), He has provided a musical composition for you to listen to while reading this column. This piece is titled “Long Brazilian.”
The dictionary defines auxiliary as providing supplementary or additional help and support.
Many of us have been attempting to augment our brains for 50 years or more. Filling notebooks with notes was the normal thing for any student since paper became affordable.
The concept of an auxiliary brain is certainly not new. We have been using calendars, daytimer planners, and journals for quite a long time. We have also been using computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), such as the PalmPilot, and, in the last ten years, smartphones to capture notes, appointments, shopping lists, and all sorts of other things. To address this, Microsoft OneNote appeared in 2003, and Apple Notes appeared in 2007.
Some of these have been used to extend the capability of our brains for hundreds of years. In the last twenty years, many of us have managed to become less reliant on paper files, cabinets, and notebooks. While most of us have still not gone completely paperless, we have been using auxiliary brains to supplement our own for a very long time.
The thing is, there are many different kinds of people with many different kinds of brains, and they each need different types of augmentation. We do not all have large numbers of appointments, enormous numbers of cross-referenced notes to construct books from, blueprints, sketches, musical scores, or videos in various stages of blueprints, sketches, musical scores, or videos in various stages of editing.
Many people have devices that seem somewhat specialized—some are best for reading, others best for watching movies, and still others that are more portable and, therefore, better for traveling. In fact, however, the devices we have accumulated in the last twenty years are tending to become increasingly multipurpose to such an extent that they can easily distract us from what we intend to focus upon.
I know I am not the only one with laptops, desktops, tablets, and more than one phone. Even though there is considerable overlap, they do not all run the same apps because they do not have the same operating systems. And why do we even need to know about operating systems anyway? We never intended to become IT managers, did we?
Somehow or other, I have managed to accumulate hundreds of apps running on dozens of platforms. If you have been using these devices, as I have, since the 1980s, you, too, probably have more accounts, passwords, email addresses, and digital identities than you can keep track of. I sure hope you have a password manager, which is another critical type of auxiliary brain.
It has become impossible for me to keep track of everything I want to keep track of, and it probably has for many of you as well. We all seem to have lists of lists, and then we need to remember where we put them. Calendars cannot hold all of this information. Notebooks can, but digital is a lot easier to search than analog, even if I do still like writing in notebooks.
I have found a workaround. I use notebooks and note managers at the same time but with different amounts of information. For example, I may mention in a paper notebook on a given day that I need to do something about an upcoming activity but not laboriously write down all the information since much of it can be digitally cut and pasted into a digital journal or note manager. The connective tissue is usually the date, although sometimes the type of topic, such as tasks to do at home, but there are too many items to write when they can be more easily digitally pasted together
At some point, we all need to capture information in the form of notes that can be labeled (or tagged), sorted (into folders), prioritized into to-do lists (task managers), secured (password managers), delineated, tabulated, and presented (spreadsheets, slide show programs like PowerPoint and Keynote).
Wouldn’t it be easier to have a single search and capture place? That is to say, a single place where you put everything—and not on your hard drive, which is now replaced by a solid-state drive (SSD), which is now replaced by your cloud account?
The way to deal with this is to store information in the form of text files, as they are likely still to be readable on future devices. You do not want your system to become obsolete, even though your devices will.
This system needs to hold many thousands of notes, which means you need a way to sort these generally by using tagging and/or folders. There are many systems, and the choices depend in part upon what sort of ecosystem you have been living with, which is often a function of your industry. For example, most lawyers use PCs, and most musicians use Macs.
The systems that will be not only future-proof but unbelievably powerful are the ones that permit you to link individual notes, records, and files to each other visually and bidirectionally. It is these connections that dramatically increase the value of the information you have laboriously stored. And you may not have much of a choice, unless you are retired, because everything is becoming increasingly data-driven. Data-free decision-making is becoming a thing of the past. In most professional environments, we are expected to know where our information is, what it means, and how the pieces relate to each other.
It’s time for you to find a version of an auxiliary brain that permits you to do this more easily.
To reap the benefits of creating an auxiliary brain, the first requirement is that you enter data into it often. Otherwise, when you search for things, you will not know where to look.
You need to find a system that works well for you. if you intend to create a lot of notes, you should run your system on a computer, not a phone. Mobile devices are better for consuming information than for creating content. So, your system needs to be compatible with the kind of computer you use.
Among the favorites is Day One, boasting robustness across iOS, Mac, and Android. It has been a staple for over a decade now and allows you easily to add images and sound files. Day One’s largest competitor is Bear, which operates on multiple platforms but leans towards markdown language. I find it to be less intuitive, but many prefer it. Both are primarily note-takers with a journaling aspect. They are powerful and actively supported.
Apple Notes, pre-installed on Apple devices, suits many users, while Microsoft OneNote is favored in PC environments.
Although Evernote and Notion have their advocates, Curio by Zengobi stands out for its flexible canvas that accommodates various file types, albeit with a steep learning curve. For more advanced users, Obsidian and Roam Research offer intricate Personal Knowledge Networks (PKN) featuring bidirectional linking and graphic relationship depiction.
While creating an auxiliary brain is time-consuming, tools like Day One, Apple Notes, and Evernote suffice for most users. However, deeper exploration into Obsidian and Roam Research can yield significant advantages. As I delve further, I see that integrating AI into this system is the next frontier, potentially revolutionizing personal cognitive enhancement.
