--- title: "Second brain for references (not notes)" description: "Most second brain setups are for notes. If you collect ads, pages, screenshots and PDFs, you need a different one. Where Notion and Obsidian win." source: https://savepad.app/blog/second-brain --- [Blog](https://savepad.app/blog) · 6 September 2023 # A second brain for references, not notes Most second brain setups are for notes. If you collect ads, pages, screenshots and PDFs, you need a different one. Where Notion and Obsidian win. *A knowledge base in Savepad with saved pages, PDFs and screenshots grouped into folders* **TLDR** - “Second brain” usually means a note-taking system: Notion, Obsidian, a Zettelkasten. - That’s great if your output is writing. If your output is ads, pages and designs, most of what you collect isn’t notes. It’s references. - References need different things: the thing itself, a snapshot, search inside images and PDFs, and a way to look at 40 of them at once. - Keep your notes where they are. Put your references somewhere built for them. ## What people mean by a second brain The idea, popularised by Tiago Forte’s *Building a Second Brain*, is that you capture what you learn outside your head so you can find it and use it later. Most setups are text: notes, highlights, links between ideas. Obsidian is brilliant at that. Notion is brilliant at that plus tasks and docs. And if you write for a living (essays, research, strategy docs), that’s probably the right system. No notes here. ## Where it falls apart for people who make things If you’re a marketer or a designer, look at what you actually save in a week: *A mock running shoe ad for a fictional brand, Stomp* 0860 · meta · ad library *A mock pricing page for a fictional SaaS, Lumen* 0957 · lumen.io · pricing *A mock onboarding email for a fictional meal kit, Freshbox* 0154 · email · freshbox *A screenshot of a pricing table* 0251 · screenshot · text found A normal week of saves for someone who makes things. One of these is a note. That’s an ad, a pricing page, an email and a screenshot. You didn’t save them to think about them. You saved them to look at them again when you’re making your own. A note app handles those badly: - **It keeps the link, not the thing.** The pricing page gets redesigned and your note points at the new one. - **It can’t search inside the picture.** The screenshot with “SSO add-on” in it is just `image.png`. - **It’s built for reading one thing.** You want to see 40 landing pages side by side and pick three. That’s a grid, not a document. ## A setup for references - **Keep notes in your note app.** Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes, whatever. Don’t move them. - **Keep references in a library.** Somewhere that saves the thing itself, snapshots pages, reads text in screenshots, and shows everything as a visual grid. - **Link from one to the other.** A strategy doc in Notion links to a public folder of the references behind it. That library is what we built [Savepad](https://savepad.app/use-cases/knowledge-base) to be. It saves 17 kinds of thing, keeps a full-page snapshot of every link, reads screenshots with OCR, and has no AI anywhere in it, so nothing gets “summarised” into mush. The [Notion comparison](https://savepad.app/compare/notion) is honest about where Notion is the better pick. If your “second brain” is really a pile of examples, what you have is a [swipe file](https://savepad.app/blog/what-is-a-swipe-file). Call it that and organise it like one. [Join the waitlist](https://savepad.app/#waitlist) ## Read these next - [Folders or tags? How to organise anything you save: Folders answer where a thing lives, tags answer what it's about. Use folders for the one home, tags for the three other ways you'll look for it. With examples.](https://savepad.app/blog/folders-vs-tags) - [What is a swipe file? And how to build one you'll use: TLDR: A swipe file is where you save every example you've seen and liked, so you can reference it in the future.](https://savepad.app/blog/what-is-a-swipe-file)