The Stafford Voice

Our little place to talk about and share about life.

second brain

The ‘Four Mind Banks’ System for Note-Taking

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I tend to skim over a lot of articles and posts throughout the course of a day. The ones that stand out as something I want to spend more time on, I save a link in Google Keep. (Don’t ask me why because I have yet to fully understand it myself.) My intention is to review these in the evening or over the weekend when I have a little more time to digest them.

I was trying to decide how I wanted to go about tackling a post about Warren Buffet, when I saw a note-taking article I saved. As I clicked on the link, an Amazon truck pulled up to drop off another load of books I ‘accidentally’ ordered. To my surprise, when I opened the package, it was for a book on note-taking.

That’s enough of a nudge to know that some force in nature was wanting me to work on something about taking notes.

In my hands, I’m holding a new book about how to take smart notes in one hand, and my phone with the article, “A Better Note-Taking System for Your Scattered Brain” by Ria Tagulinao.

Her teaser for the post says that the “‘Four Mind Banks’ can help you process information in a simple, engaging way.” (It’s now that I’m remembering why I saved this article to dig a little deeper.)

Ria discussed how she had recently started a new job where she was ‘constantly bombarded with new and unfamiliar concepts.’ And, that during meetings, she was finding herself taking a ton of notes ‘trying to soak in as much information as possible.’

Let’s be honest. There are a handful of note-taking systems, devices, and apps that can handle whatever gets thrown its direction. And, yet, it seems none of them worked for Ria.

During a meeting, she realized that her mind was trying to sort through four things at the same time:

  1. She was gaining new information.
  2. She was coming across things she wanted to dig deeper on.
  3. She was coming up with new ideas and insights.
  4. She was caught up in her feels about certain things.

So, she created a framework to help her capture notes and sort out her thoughts and calls it the ‘Four Mind Banks system.’

Here’s how she says it works: You divide a sheet of paper into four quadrants – or banks if you will – and record your thoughts and feelings in each respective section.

Minutes Bank

This is basically anything noteworthy to include high points, facts, quotes, and any other key takeaways.

Question Bank

This is for things you want to dig deeper on. If there was something you don’t understand, this would be the place to ask yourself a question to be answered at a later time.

Idea Bank

These are your light-bulb moments. If you think of a new idea or concept, this would be the place to record them for further expansion.

Reaction Bank

This is your holding cell for your emotions and reactions. (There’s an interesting link between how we feel when we learn something for the first time and how we retain that knowledge.)

To sum all of this up… it seams like a lot of extra busy work for someone who is already feeling under the pressure. Either that, or their scatter brain is far worse than they imagine and yet they are willing to feed the monkey mind.

This system can easily be incorporated into something much more simpler in my opinion. It would all take place in the review phase. You do review your notes afterward, right?

If I learned one thing from my few years in the Army, it’s the power of the After Action Review (AAR). When you would complete a mission or higher level task, you take time to review and reinforce what you learned and experienced.

During your AAR of your notes, you could highlight those things that raised questions, created those light-bulb moments, or even draw a little emoji to express your reactions and/or feelings.

Again, I can understand Ria’s intentions, and rightfully so, create a system that works for you. However, this ‘Four Mind Bank system’ is quite energy-sucking and would be somewhat of a distraction for most people.

3 Key Practices I do to Keep Up with My Monkey Mind

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monkey mind

Let’s all admit that 2020 has thrown one hell of a wrench into our lives and plans. But, that hasn’t slowed down my monkey mind. If anything, it’s amplified most thoughts and put most areas of my mind into hyper-drive. 

So what did I do? I renewed my focus the best I could. I went deep. Deep into some of the practices I used to do that gave me some results. We’re not talking life-altering changes here, but little changes that felt like huge victories at the time.

What are they?

  • Bullet Journaling
  • Commonplace Book/Second Brain
  • Morning Pages

Let’s dive a little deeper into these three practices and see just how I’m trying to keep up with my monkey mind.

According to Buddhists, the term “monkey mind” refers to being unsettled, restless, or confused. One Psychology Today post adds:

It’s the part of your brain most connected to the ego, which contends that you can’t do anything right. It’s also the part of you that stifles creativity and prevents you from moving forward with your passions. The monkey mind insists on being heard, and sometimes it takes a lot of self-control to shut it down. It is also the part of your brain that becomes easily distracted.

Yup! Sounds about right. I’m constantly in my own way!

Bullet Journaling

bullet journal

I discovered bullet journaling quite a few years ago. In all honesty, before I knew what bullet journaling was, I was already doing it at some level. You see, I’m a structured, list orientated kind of guy. So, needless to say, it only felt natural.

Bullet journaling was “discovered” by Ryder Carroll who tags it as “the analog method for the digital age that will help you track the past, order the present, and design your future.”

Without getting into too many of the boring details of the ins and outs of the BuJo method, as of late, it’s become more of an artful expression of a planner. 

In my opinion, the BuJo community has perverted the original intent. When it was first introduced, it was simple and sleek. More of a minimalist take on planning and organizing your day to day life. Now? It’s all about doodles on the page with fancy handlettering that took hours to plan out and complete. It more resembles arts and crafts than anything.

Nevertheless, it is something you are to modify and make your own. You can add and/or delete anything as you wish.

For me, the ability to simplify something to help me simplify my life and keep things somewhat organized in my head is a staple. I slowly moved away from using it, and always longed to go back to it. So, when my monkey mind started to get the best of me, I knew I could rely on this tried and tested method that had already worked for me.

Commonplace Book/Second Brain

evernote second brain

This concept is still relatively new to me, but again, something not entirely foreign.

Let’s think of a commonplace book as more of what you think of when you think of a teenager’s diary. It’s a place where you can store all of your thoughts and notes throughout life. Read a book and found something that stood out and you just had to say something about it? This commonplace book would be just the go-to place to store the quote and whatever it was that you wanted to say.

Ryan Holiday defines it as, “a central resource or depository for ideas, quotes, anecdotes, observations and information you come across during your life and didactic pursuits. The purpose of the book is to record and organize these gems for later use in your life, in your business, in your writing, speaking or whatever it is that you do.”

People known to have used the practice of a commonplace book are Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Leonardo daVinci, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Locke, and Isaac Newton. I’m sure the list of people throughout history who have used a commonplace book, or some variant of one, is much longer. They’ve been around for quite some time and have been used by much smarter people than myself, so why wouldn’t you want to adopt the practice?

But, you ask, “What is a Second Brain?”

As I understand it to be, it is very similar to a commonplace book. Almost the same thing but in a digital format. One made into popularity by a gentleman named Tiago Forte.

Again, I’ve used something that resembles this concept in the past by using Evernote, but I just couldn’t get too far into it to make it work for me. I always would find myself reaching for my bullet journal to keep all of my ideas and thougts and other musings. It was more enjoyable to write things out longhand. Besides, there’s something magical about how the right pen feels in your hand and the feel and look of the ink flowing out and being transferred onto the paper.

Times change and so do people, and I now find myself reaching for my phone to open the Evernote app to store whatever it is that stands out. What I’ve found is that it definitely helps to carefully organize the structure of your digital system. Thanks to watching a few YouTube videos of Tiago explaining some of how he does it, and applying some of the commonplace book system, I’ve been able to adopt this system/concept in better detail.

Morning Pages

morning pages

Last of the three practices of keeping up with my monkey mind is a little thing called “Morning Pages.”

What are morning pages you ask?

Three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. According to Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way and creator of the practice, says that it doesn’t matter if you do them in the morning or night, or even at any point of the day. Just that you do them. It is taught in the book that it’s the very thing that can help unblock your creativity that has been lying dormant within you.

I’ll admit, I’ve had this book on my to-read list for a few years but I just never got around to it. Maybe I should have put it as a must-do task in my bullet journal? Knowing what I know now, and having only been doing morning pages for about a month now, I wish I would have started years ago. 

It sounds like a simple thing. Get up in the morning, grab your favorite pen and some paper, and just write. Three pages doesn’t sound all that intimidating, but let me tell you right now, IT IS! I have yet to be able to do three pages. I’m quite comfortable with starting out slow and building up to it.

One of the key things I’ve noticed since doing them is that my brain is still sleeping for about the first hour or so after I get up. I can’t just get started writing. I have to take a few minutes to ensure my brain isn’t still asleep or in a complete fog. When it is, I can hardly fill one page. When I feel that it’s primed and ready to roll, I can get two pages. I have a feeling that once I can further dial in my morning routine, I’ll be able to let loose with it.

Summary

Over the past month or two as I’ve re-introduced these concepts and systems, I’ve been able to calm some of my monkey mind. No, not to a point where it is completely calm and quiet. I don’t think that will ever happen. But, it is much more manageable now. And, I feel like I can keep up with myself.

If one were to ask me to rate these three key practices in order of importance, I would suggest to start with morning pages. From there, I would implement the second brain/commonplace book system. Lastly, I would say to put into practice the bullet journal.

Each one of these systems by themselves are super beneficial and would stand on their own if one wanted to go that route. However, it is my opinion that when you are able to combine the three of these and make them and extension of your own superpowers, will you really reap the benefits of them. Much like an onion has layers, so too does your mind and if you give it the tools to operate in a clearer capacity will you realize what you’ve been missing all these years.