Building my second brain and becoming 10x productive as a software engineer

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In the video, I discussed the importance of having a second brain for storing thoughts and learnings efficiently. I shared my preference for Obsidian over Notion due to its speed, offline capabilities, simplicity, and extensibility. I highlighted how I integrate various sources like books, blogs, articles, and research papers into Obsidian using tools like GoodNotes and Hypothesis. I emphasized the joy of revisiting old notes and the convenience of having everything organized and searchable in Obsidian, which I continuously back up on GitHub for data security.
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Things you will find amusing
Knowledge Base: arpitbhayani.me/knowledge-base
Bookshelf: arpitbhayani.me/bookshelf
Papershelf: arpitbhayani.me/papershelf
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[@sarveshhiwase193]

A small demo of Obsidian would be much more helpful like how you exactly use it.

[@manthanguptaa]

Perfect timing just when I started dumping things on obsidian

[@the_humble_lazy]

Thanks a lot for starting to share your productivity hacks with us Arpit

[@sabujmaity5427]

Thanks Arpit Sir, learnt a new thing. It's an amazing tool, need more awareness things. Please keep letting us know these cool things.

[@NitinKumar-gv4hs]

Arpit, this is awesome, had been struggling with the same thing , thanks for this 💛

[@MicroRishi]

Love the video! Just what I wanted

[@AkhilDad]

Quite interesting and as a developer it would be a moment of proud for you to achieve this, Do you use Obsidian for your TODOs as well, also do you use it on mobile too?

[@ashleymavericks]

Really insightful, though I'm still using Notion for all my notes mostly due to easy image embeds and some API automations I have created along with it. Exploring obsidian these days, btw would love to know more about your obsidian structure. Waiting for that one.

[@sgroxatdgp]

Hello Sir..thanks for the video...the whole thing you explained is on PC right? what about when you read on mobile ? Do you have to open your PC to take note every time?

[@ShivamSharma-sg7dk]

Great video Arpit. However, could you also show how you are organising the notes. I am always confused when to use tags and when to use backlinks in Obsidian as I am just starting out.

[@kurrucharan9376]

Great. I would like to try this.❤

[@muleyshubham]

Just awesome! I used to write in GNotes & it's hell slow. Today, this has blown my mind. Thanks Arpit! Waiting for how you read papers & structure you follow in obsidian ❤️ Giving all of these things a try!

[@AsliEngineering]

On it. That would be the next one in the productivity series

[@muleyshubham]

@@AsliEngineering Superb!

[@harshpatel105]

Good going Arpit. What's that "h." app? Edit: NVM. Did google image reverse search of screenshot. Hypothesis app for annotation.

[@abdullasuhail6070]

Arpit - Can you give tips on how to read long architecture documents or feature documents in software engineering which helps in understanding them quickly. How do you go ahead with this in your day to day life ?

[@hemanthsavasere934]

Hi Arpit, can you also please make a video on how do you keep track of your tasks

[@rajkumarvb2602]

Thanks a lot!

[@SaketAnandPage]

Which pen choice are you using in goodnotes for this sparkle effect?

[@SaketAnandPage]

How do you record your ipad screen, video and the voice together? If I project my ipad on the mac, it won’t let me record screen. Please guide

[@praoon1]

Obsidian + Excalidraw complemented with Goodnotes is all one needs!

[@ashutoshkumar4565]

I use notepad and simple paper-pen and I write way too much and I do want some features with my notes but maybe sometime later. Saved the video for revisiting again. Please make videos as mentioned at 15:03

[@-BarathKumarS]

Amazing video! Been relying on notebooks for so long and I'm thinking it's time to ditch em.

[@anupampandey3758]

Thanks!!

[@gmmkeshav]

What device and digital pen do you use?

[@yinyang1773]

I'm getting started with this. So can you provide list of plugins you are using with Obsidian? Also make video on how you use obsedian, like which features you use frequently and how do you connect your thpughts using it?

[@AsliEngineering]

definitely.

[@DAdnani]

Looking forward to the research paper video 🙃

[@mayanksharma1729]

Just recently purchased the book on Second Brain, excited to hear about the same from you😅

[@AsliEngineering]

Not as good as Tiago or Ali, but I have built my own little system that helps me be highly productive. plus this is the first time I am doing a video like this, hoping you find it helpful.

[@mayanksharma1729]

@@AsliEngineering Definitely looking forward to it.😊

[@thomaseni474]

@@AsliEngineering please can you help build Bitcoin flashing website

[@abhishekrawat2978]

This is very nice. Thanks for sharing Arpit. Please share which python package you are using to extract pdf content. I am looking for pdf data comparison.

[@AsliEngineering]

pdftotext==2.2.2

[@mrbuddhu]

Insightful :)

[@swagatochatterjee7104]

How do you export diagrams/annotations from those pdfs to obsidian?

[@AsliEngineering]

I don't export diagrams just text using pdftotext

[@PEqualsN.P]

I tried obsidian, 6 months back and with the lack of cross device sync, it didn’t work for me and ended up using Apple notes. I prefer having my notes synced both in my work laptop and personal laptop and iPad.

[@geekySRM]

Cross device sync is there. Look at syncthing.

[@dwayneneckles]

i use the toggle feature in notion a lot, if obsidian had that I'd give it a try

[@SaketAnandPage]

Could you please share the Script to export and save?

[@liberatingtruthseeking5513]

How do u compare to OneNotes ?

[@kartikrawat3610]

I've been using notion for 2 years now and would like to try out obsidian. Just need to figure out a way to port my notes from notion to obsidian ;p.

[@AsliEngineering]

Just export the entire workspace as markdown and import. Pretty straightforward. Because Obsidian is just markdown files nothing fancy.

[@avradeep]

Obsidian is extremely buggy. I moved back to notion. I just want an app which works nth time I load it.

[@manassharma9496]

I did started obsidian for the same thing but I stuggle to make any notes 😂

[@exciteddude]

Arpit how do you update this second brain with the information you get while working on business deliverables in office? Usually personal notes sync is not allowed in office laptop.

[@AsliEngineering]

both are mutually exclusive, which means zero overlaps. persona stuff is not logged in on office machine, and vice versa. each has its own.

[@exciteddude]

@@AsliEngineering That's where I am confused. There will be an overlap always. Being a software developer, you spend hours in your job delving in new technologies every now and then. You would want to keep that knowledge with you in your second brain across companies you work. Like you must have gained something while working in Amazon that might be useful now in Google and in future too. How did you manage to do that? Keep personal laptop open to interact with your second brain? Not efficient enough 🤔

[@AsliEngineering]

@@exciteddude I don't manage that. That's an over optimization. Plus office work is under NDA, I should never copy or take that on a personal device, no matter what. Hence I keep them mutually exclusive.

[@anurag01a]

Bro, Loved the video but I am not getting how to use Obsidian...it feels intimidating! though I have downloaded it but m clueless what to do...or how to get started

[@AsliEngineering]

A video on it soon :)

[@anurag01a]

@@AsliEngineering Thank you

[@deepakparamesh8487]

This video is a high level design of "Aripit Bhaiyani note taking system"

[@AsliEngineering]

Yeah. While editing I felt the exact same thing :)

[@akshaychavan2019]

Hi Arpit may i know how make such videos i m planning to extend my Yt channel

[@Chowmeinchor]

I use one note, works well for me

[@charan775]

nitpick. why do you use dropbox? why not gdrive for everything?

[@AsliEngineering]

Because that is what I have been using since 2011 so didn't find a need to switch. It just holds all the papers and free press books and thesis. GDrive contains other stuff as well but everything around learning all goes in Dropbox.

[@meditationdanny701]

Hey arpit is there any chance that we can get a copy (fork) of your second brain ; }

[@AsliEngineering]

Hahaha. No. Too precious 💎

[@charan775]

@@AsliEngineering you should maybe try to sell it xD?

[@HustlerCoder]

one reason here to against of this tool. In principal we are using repository to save ourself to avoid unwanted circumstances of disk failure. I am listening that author is almost popping 100 times saving on local disk as an advantage. I believe I do have liberty of sharing my opinion. Please ignore if you don't like it

[@classicaf]

Anytype is better, obsidian is not opensource

[@charan775]

does hypothesis store data locally?

[@AsliEngineering]

No. That's stored on Hypothesis's servers.

[@charan775]

@@AsliEngineering wow. and they offer it for free 🤔

[@AsliEngineering]

@@charan775 Yes. it is free as of now.

[@thomaseni474]

Look I need bitcoin flashing website can you help me build that’

[@muleyshubham]

Hey Arpit, will you be revealing how to built second brain just like you?

[@AsliEngineering]

I will be talking about the flow of information from various tools I use into Obsidian.

[@harshpatel105]

@@AsliEngineering Please provide some vault name suggestions as well haha. I just downloaded obsidian and after thinking hard I named my vault "vault"!

[@MuchlisNopq]

What tools do you use to draw diagrams and scribble on the screen?

[@AsliEngineering]

GoodNotes on my iPad

[@pranjalmishra2602]

@@AsliEngineering pen tablet link pls? : )

[@AsliEngineering]

@@pranjalmishra2602 I use iPad and this is the exact one I use. You can go for air because pro might be an overkill. amzn.to/3S9JBJ8

[@pranjalmishra2602]

Thanks Arpit! Ab paise bhi bhej do sir :P Jk jk

[@somnathroy102]

@@pranjalmishra2602 you can get the 29k ipad

[@harrypottah9862]

Do you recommend the paid version of obsidian

[@AsliEngineering]

I have never used the paid version because I don't need cross device access.

[@Enjoyablewalks]

Interesting everyone is promoting Obsidian.. every productivity blogger seems to attach themselves to obsidian.. not sure channels get paid for promoting certain products

[@sassydesi7913]

This How-to set of videos around peak productivity while consuming content is really going to be interesting. Thanks for sharing. We have a small request. We would like to know your recording setup for most videos where you are talking and using GoodNotes in presentation mode. I'd like to do something like this in meetings n such. Please share your hardware+software setup in detail for the same :)

[@AsliEngineering]

recording setup is minimal. I record on OBS on my Windows machine. Camera is my phone, and Mic is Boya. Recently switched to BlueYeti.

[@sassydesi7913]

@@AsliEngineering Thank you. How do you feed iPad GoodNotes screen to OBS? Through screen-mirroring or using some sort of cable?

[@siddhantprakash.]

At 2:33 , Java be like : Mujhe kyun toda 😂

[@AsliEngineering]

Hahaha. Java is very dear to me 😂😂

[@amansaxena4446]

ab Dimaag me bhi system design lagana padega kya? indexing krlo cheeze yaad rahegi humesha 🤣

[@AsliEngineering]

yes

[@rjarora]

Just wondering, why this suspense? To gather more audience?

[@cowabunga2597]

It's obsidian. A note taking app.

[@AsliEngineering]

Not really. More about predictability. That video drops every Sunday.

[@snehanshuphukon728]

"second brain" is a cringe idea