Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential

by Tiago Forte

In my experience, there are four kinds of content that aren’t well suited to notes apps: Is this sensitive information you’d like to keep secure? The content you save in your notes is easily accessible from any device, which is great for accessibility but not for security. Information like tax records, government documents, passwords, and health records shouldn’t be saved in your notes. Is this a special format or file type better handled by a dedicated app? Although you could save specialized files such as Photoshop files or video footage in your notes, you’ll need a specialized app to open them anyway, so there’s no benefit to keeping them in your notes. Is this a very large file? Notes apps are made for short, lightweight bits of text and images, and their performance will often be severely hampered if you try to save large files in them. Will it need to be collaboratively edited? Notes apps are perfectly suited for individual, private use, which makes them less than ideal for collaboration. You can share individual notes or even groups of notes with others, but if you need multiple people to be able to collaboratively edit a document in real time, then you’ll need to use a different platform.