Second brain · Coming soon
Turn the notes you keep collecting into notes you use
You use PARA to file notes by what you are working on now, and Zettelkasten to turn the best ones into short linked notes you can write from. One weekly review moves material from capture to use. It runs in the notes app you already have, with no new tool and no theory reading required first.
The course: Capture to clarity: PARA and Zettelkasten that stick
$15 $29 early-bird price
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If this sounds like your week
- You save highlights, links and quotes every week and rarely open any of them again.
- You spend more time deciding whether something is a Resource or an Area than doing the work.
- Fleeting, literature, permanent: the note types confuse you before you write a single note.
- You have hundreds of notes and almost no links between them.
What you do now, and where it stops working
Today you capture into an inbox or a Resources folder and trust that future you will sort it. Future you never has the time, so the pile becomes something to feel guilty about, and the next book or video adds to it.
What changes after the course
- Every note sits under a project or area you are working on, or in an archive you can ignore.
- You write one short permanent note, in your own words, for each idea worth keeping.
- One topic you care about has a small web of linked notes you can draft from.
- A weekly review empties the inbox, so capture stops feeling like debt.
How it works: Capture to Clarity
- 1Sort only active material into Projects and Areas; everything else goes to Archive in one move.
- 2Apply one rule to Resources: a note goes there only if it serves a decision you expect to make.
- 3Write permanent notes: one idea, your own words, linked to at least one existing note.
- 4Pick one topic and grow it into a small linked network you can write from.
- 5Run the weekly review: empty the inbox, add links to new notes, and archive finished projects.
What you get
- PARA sorting guide and folder templates
- Permanent note template with examples
- Weekly review checklist
- Video walkthrough of both methods in Obsidian and Notion
This is for you if
- You have read about PARA or Zettelkasten and want a version for a normal working week.
- You write, research or study, and want your notes to feed that work.
- You want to keep the notes app you already use.
Skip it if
- You want the history and theory of Luhmann’s slip box. The books cover that.
- You want one app set up click by click. The Obsidian and Notion courses do that.
- You rarely collect material and do not write. A plain folder system will serve you.
Before you join
- I have tried PARA and Zettelkasten already and dropped both.
- Most people drop them at the sorting step, trying to file every old note before starting. This course archives the backlog in one move and applies both methods only to new and active material, so the first day is small.
- PARA or Zettelkasten: which one should I use?
- Both, for different jobs. PARA files notes by what you are acting on. Zettelkasten grows ideas into linked notes. The course shows where each one lives inside a single system.
- Will this work in my notes app?
- It works in any app that supports folders and links between notes. The walkthrough shows both methods in Obsidian and Notion, and the rules carry over to other apps.
- Does AI make linked notes pointless now?
- AI can summarise what you read. It cannot write what you think about it. Permanent notes in your own words are the part only you produce, and a linked set of them is the context that makes AI drafting useful later.
- Who is teaching this?
- Jay West. He writes How to Think (howtothink.ai), a curriculum built as a linked knowledge graph of single-idea lessons, the same structure this course teaches. He also writes Physics of Connection, a knowledge graph on improv and communication.
Rather have it built for you? Describe the project and the same work can be done for your team.