In our day to day lives, there is so much we need to keep track of. To the point, at least for me, where its hard to think clearly about what needs to be done. Like many others, I’ve found that writing is a great way to gather my thoughts. When someone writes about the events surrounding their lives, it’s called a journal. But you can take this writing a step further.

When you decide to not only write for journaling purposes, but also to store your notes for school and work, your thoughts and wisdom, what you have is something greater. An archive of sorts some refer to as a second brain. Your notes become an extension of your mind, in a way that complements your own cognitive processes. Whenever you need to remember something important, it should be in this book of sorts. I should mention, this book can be either a physical book or digital note-taking service. I work at Lockbook, a note-taking company. We have apps on every platform, are open-source, and have a focus on privacy. A lot of interest in this subject stems from learning to build the best note-taking application.

You never know when you are going to get a jolt of inspiration, so its important that you have access to this second brain anywhere. I personally want to write things on my phone sometimes, and have access to them on my laptop, and Lockbook makes this possible.

This sort of note-taking is powerful. It’s all of your life’s knowledge at your fingertips. Of course you should know and remember many of the things you put into your notes, but no one can remember everything. Everyone is fallible. When you set up a mechanism to retrieve lost information, a backup storage for the mind, what you have is constant growth. I’ll end with a quote:

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.