5 Rules for a Second Brain You’ll Actually Use

Photo by Hal Gatewood on Unsplash🍕 I’m JA Westenberg. I write essays about technology, philosophy, productivity, and what it means to be human. If you like ideas that take their time, you’re in the right place.While you’re here, a few things I’ve built: Kerouac, a writing app | Post Through It, a solo microblogging tool | Distributism.ai, my MCP platform | Laterware, all the AI news you need | Studio Self, a thought leadership agency for founders x VCs.You can buy my book Permissionless here.The central anxiety of the Second Brain builders: if we don’t hoard every digital scrap, any possible gem could be lost for all time. But that fear can only produce one thing: a large, overpopulated archive in disarray and decay, rarely visited by its owners, rarely more than admired, and never actually used for any practical purpose. The reality is that collecting information is incredibly easy. Anyone and everyone can save anything and everything. Every single day we’re exposed to vast amounts…