Build a Powerful Knowledge Management System in Notion (Second Brain)

I will show you how to build a powerful knowledge  management system in Notion so that you can start  

building your own second brain. I would like to  introduce you a framework that I formulated called  

the 5C Framework for knowledge management to suit  my workflow as a content creator. In my Notion  

system, I have a separate dashboard called the  Learn Dashboard. Here, under the bookmark section,  

I will be having all the content I need to  consume under different categories. These are  

the bookmarks that have clipped from the web.  Then I have this note-taking section. In here,  

I will be writing notes on the content I consume  to help me capture the essence of the content in  

my own words. Right? Note-taking. And below that,  I also have topic-specific pages to consolidate  

the various pieces of content I consume. Here, I  can mix and match the ideas from various sources  

and create my own organizational structure for  storing information. I also make sure to link  

related content pieces together with the help of  relational property and also most importantly the  

backlinks feature in Notion to help me connect  the related ideas together to get new ideas and  

insights, thus helping me in creating new pieces  of content as a content creator. You can see how  

in this process the input that is the content I  consume is systematically converted into unique  

ideas that I can share with the world as a content  creator. So let me explain how to implement each  

of these stages one by one in Notion. Coming up.  Hey friends if you're new here my name is Akshay  

Hallur. I'm a professional blogger, YouTuber and  an avid learner. I believe in building efficient  

digital systems for effortless business outputs,  mainly in content creation. Before starting this  

video, I would like to let you know that  this video is part of an ongoing video  

series where I explain how to create your  own life operating system or a second brain  

in Notion. This system helps you manage your  life areas, goals, projects, tasks, knowledge,  

manage content you need to create and much more.  All in Notion. It's a foundational life operating  

system called the CoreOS that we are building.  If this is of interest, make sure you subscribe.  

In our Notion system we have three different  databases, Bookmarks, Notes and Topics. So all the  

bookmarks that we clip from the web and also all  the notes that we take on the different content  

that we consume will be linked to the different  topics that are stored in the topics database. Let  

me explain each of these stages one by one. The  first one is the consumption layer. At this stage,  

I typically make use of various apps like Kindle,  various Read-it-later apps and Airr for podcasts  

to consume content and use their integrations  with Readwise to further sink in the highlights  

to Notion. Well, I have a separate video on  Readwise coming up, but for this video, we make  

use of Notion Web Clipper to add the content  we want to consume directly to our Bookmarks  

database. Here under the Learn dashboard, let me  go under the Bookmarks database and here we have  

all the bookmarks that we have clipped by making  use of Notion Web Clipper. So if I open in any  

of these bookmarks, it has different properties.  First would be the category. So in this case this  

would be a resource or this would be a book. And  I can favorite this bookmark so that I can filter  

only my favorited bookmarks that I will be showing  you soon. And this is the URL for the Amazon page  

of this book. I can archive this bookmark to  filter it out of the system. I can associate  

this bookmark to any of the topics that I'm  managing in the Topics database for consolidating  

the knowledge. And let me go back to the Learn  Dashboard. Here I need to create linked view for  

the Bookmarks database so that I can create a  mini bookmark management system right here that  

can potentially replace apps like say, Raindrop  or even Pocket. So here let me type in linked and  

here let me select bookmarks as data source and  create new view. And here I need to enter in last  

updated. So in this view we will be displaying  various bookmarks in list format and these will  

be sorted by the descending order of their created  or last edited time so that the latest bookmarks  

will be always on the top. And now we need to add  a filter here to filter out the archived bookmarks  

and we may need to limit the load on  this specific view to only 10 pages.  

The next view that we'll be creating  is for grouping all the bookmarks by  

the categories that we have assigned to  them. So we can name this as by categories  

and here we need to group this by category. Now  we need to create another view to view only the  

bookmarks that we have favourited. For that we  may need to again duplicate this and name this  

as favourites, heart icon and here go to filter  and add an additional filter that says 'favourite  

is checked' so that only the favourited bookmarks  will be visible. This will be especially helpful  

if you do space repetition. You can just head over  to the favorites, maybe revisit the articles that  

you may have highlighted. And when it comes  to bookmarks, the only template that we will  

be making use of is this, which is a default  icon for aesthetics. The next step is capture.  

When you're consuming any content, you need to  highlight important sentences or concepts and  

also maybe comment your views on specific concepts  so that the next time you revisit the bookmark,  

the revision process will be easier. As a side  note, personally, I don't do highlighting in  

Notion because I use Readwise reader app that is  especially meant for reading, highlighting and  

managing the knowledge. And I use its integration  with Notion to automatically sink in the  

highlights. I majorly use this bookmarks database  only for clipping, important links or resources  

related to the projects I'm working on. And in  fact, this functionality alone can potentially  

replace apps like Raindrop, Pocket or Instapaper,  that too with powerful AI assist features.  

You may read a lot of articles and capture  a lot of highlights. It may not be enough,  

especially for high value content that are worth  deeply synthesizing. In fact, the process of  

highlighting doesn't capture the information to  its entirety. Sometimes you strongly feel like  

you need to take notes in your own words to help  you in linking new ideas to your existing ideas  

that is helping you in better comprehension.  In our CoreOS, we manage all kinds of notes  

taking in a separate database called notes. If I  scroll down here I have a database called notes,  

here all the literature notes that have taken  are present. For example if I consider say  

course design formula, this is the category. I  have different categories for different kinds  

of notes. So if I'm taking any fleeting note,  just a note about some random idea in my head,  

I can just assign it the category idea. Or  as if I'm taking project notes inside of the  

project workspace, I can assign it projects or  if it is a meeting note, then I can assign it  

a meeting note. I have this paused status as well  so that I can indefinitely pause reading any book,  

for example, without feeling guilty. And we have  the URL, the creator field, the favorite field,  

and also I can relate these notes to different  topics. In this example it would be course design.  

So let me go back to the learn dashboard  and here under notes I need to create a  

notes manager. Here I need to create linked  database. So this is notes new empty view.  

We will be creating almost the same views with  similar sorts and filters here. So here we need  

to exclude the notes that are having the status  as archive and sort this by last edited time  

descending order. Now I need to create a view to  display all the book notes in an aesthetic way  

with the book covers. For this let me duplicate  this view so that all the filters and shortings  

will be automatically added and I need to change  the layout to gallery view and here I need to  

select the card preview as page content because if  you see any of the books here the first block here  

would be the book cover so I can just go here and  add in the card preview as page content and select  

this as fit image and after that I need to show  some properties here like the category of the book  

and also status. Now I need to add an additional  filter that will only show the books that are  

categorized under Kindle, Physical Book, maybe  Book Summary, Audible, this is pretty much it. So  

that all the different formats will be covered.  Now I can just rename this as Books and add  

in a nice icon. Now the next view that we'll be  adding is for web content like articles, videos,  

podcasts, related notes. So let me duplicate this  and add in web content and an icon of a globe.  

And I need to group this by category. So let me  first hide all. And here I need to only display  

the notes that I took reading the articles,  watching the videos and also maybe while  

listening to podcasts. And at last, I need to  have a view for displaying the favorite notes.  

So let me duplicate this name it favorites and  add a filter here. That is favorite is checked.  

So that only the notes that have favorited will be  on the top. Now that we have built our bookmarks  

manager and also notes manager systems. The next  phase for us is consolidation. In this stage,  

we need to have a convenient place to display  all our topic-specific bookmarks and notes in  

a separate page. Now here we have the topics  database under the Learn dashboard. And here  

I have listed in all the topics that I need to  excel to take command over all areas of my life.  

Here I have a topic page called mental models.  This is marked as a core topic so that this  

topic will be prioritized throughout the system  using sorting. And also archive, I can archive  

any topic so that it will be filtered out of the  system. And also we have already established the  

relation between the notes database and also the  topics database here so that all the notes and  

the bookmarks related to this specific topic  will be conveniently available here. And also  

additionally we have two more roll-up properties  here. We'll be counting the number of bookmarks  

we have related to mental models here. So if you  go here, we are using an existing relation that is  

the bookmarks. We will be counting the number of  bookmarks that are present in this relation. The  

relation is already established. Similar to that  we are also doing it for notes. Alright so let  

me go back and go to the learn dashboard here and  here under topics I need to create a linked view  

to the database that is the topics and here I  need to create a new empty view and name this  

as all topics. Set an icon for this and here  let me select this as gallery and card preview  

as none but we need to display some properties  here those would be the bookmark count and also  

the notes count. I need to add a filter here  to filter out all the topics that are under  

archive. Archive is unchecked. And also sort this  so that all the core topics will be on the top.  

So now once I scroll back up here, I need to  include a section called Quick actions that I had  

in my clipboard. Here I have a table of content  block and here I have included a link to view to  

the notes database that is a gallery view and  have set the filter as created time is empty.  

That means all the time, this view will be  empty, waiting for me to capture a new note.  

By this time, you may be thinking like the topic  pages can be only beneficial when you have enough  

bookmarks and notes to work on. But that's not the  case. You can use these topic pages as a place to  

start your research on any topic. For example,  if I want to excel in any particular topic, say,  

product design, I can use this topic page as a  launch pad to gather all my necessary resources  

and develop my own learning curriculum for a more  streamlined learning experience. Now that we know  

how to consume content, capture the highlights  and nodes and consolidate the knowledge in  

topic specific pages, we need to move on to the  next step that is the connect. In this stage,  

you will be connecting the different ideas that  you have captured and consolidated in your system  

with each other leading to new insights. For this  we use Notions features like backlinks, relational  

fields or also include block level references  or synced blocks. If you would like to take this  

connecting phase further you can even make use of  Zettelkasten system for taking evergreen notes on  

the important ideas you have in your system and  connect them with each other. Only for this I  

make use of obsidian and more recently, Tana,  especially for my personal research projects.  

But for most people out there, this may be too  much. Instead, you need to properly integrate  

the system we built just now to the rest of your  Notion system to help the knowledge resurface  

organically at relevant places in the system.  Let me explain how the knowledge management  

system we built just now can be integrated  with the rest of the CoreOS that is the life  

operating system we are building in this video  series. And let me explain how to integrate.  

So here we have the learn dashboard that we just  created and let me move this dashboard under the  

dashboard section and let me go in and I have  these three different databases. Right. So we  

have a separate section to house all our databases  inside our core dashboard. So let me right click  

move and move this to our build that is the core  dashboard. And here I have the three databases.  

Let me move these here. Now here you need to go  in and here let me name this as bookmarks manager.  

Let me go back, let me name this as Notes Manager  and let me go back and here this would be Topics  

Manager. After that I can go to the main core  dashboard and here we need to create quick  

links for the Bookmarks Manager. We created Notes  Manager and the Topics Manager. Now afterwards we  

have the areas database here. These are the  different life areas that we are managing. We  

need to link different topics that we are managing  with life areas. For example, if I go to YouTube  

here, in order to accomplish all these macro level  objectives and eventually reach my goal, I need to  

master various skills. For that, I need to add  a relational property to the topics database.  

We need to show this on topics. And here,  these are all the various topics that I need  

to be mastering. Saying, if I'm editing the videos  myself, video editing, YouTube as a general skill,  

maybe storytelling, and yeah, various other  topics. So whenever I'm dealing with YouTube as an  

area inside this area dashboard. I have all these  topics conveniently in front of me to explore  

and also I can go back, go to projects and here I  have various projects right so here I may need to  

have relational fields to the bookmarks  database and also a relational field  

to the notes database with these two properties  whenever I'm dealing with any project, I can  

import in any project relevant bookmarks and notes  to supercharge my project management experience.  

In addition to this, you can create a database  called people, link it with the notes database  

to help you, say, like, group the meeting notes  by your contacts or group book notes by different  

authors. So it unlocks a whole new dimension of  possibilities. This functionality of of linking  

the people database with your knowledge management  system is built in our life operating system that  

is the CoreOS. If you're still wondering the  system we built just now is a small part of  

our complete life operating system that is the  CoreOS. CoreOS is a life operating system that  

is entirely built from the ground up to give your  Notion workspace a modern kernel so that you you  

can build on top of it. It offers you a truly  interconnected approach when it comes to managing  

your life, like all the way from your life areas,  goals, projects, down to your daily tasks, habits,  

and notes you take. Added to this, it  also comes with specialist dashboards  

for managing your content creation, finances,  and whatnot. If you're interested in exploring  

more about the CoreOS visit coresystem.io. And  here are some more videos related to knowledge  

management. Make sure you check them out. And  if you have liked this video, just hit that  

like button. Make sure you subscribe and hit  that bell to get notified of my new videos.