Listen, I’m three bourbons deep and still trying to find my car keys from last night, but we need to talk about this whole “second brain” nonsense that’s making the rounds. These tech wizards have apparently decided that my regular brain - already pickled in Jim Beam and running on four hours of sleep - needs a digital twin to function properly.
The latest buzz is all about these fancy AI productivity apps that promise to turn your scattered thoughts into some kind of organized masterpiece. It’s like having a digital personal assistant who doesn’t judge you for showing up to meetings with yesterday’s clothes and bourbon breath.
Let me break this down while I pour another drink.
First up is Google’s NotebookLM, which sounds like a rejected name for a boy band but is actually their attempt at creating an AI research assistant. Some guy named Steven Johnson helped develop it - he’s written 13 books, so I guess he knows something about organizing thoughts, unlike yours truly who can barely organize his liquor cabinet (though that’s mainly because I keep drinking the evidence).
The thing about NotebookLM is it only works with information you feed it. It’s like that friend who remembers everything you said while drunk, except it doesn’t use it against you at inappropriate moments. You dump your notes, recordings, and documents into it, and it spits back summaries and connections that your hungover brain missed. Not gonna lie, that’s kind of impressive, even through my whiskey goggles.
But here’s where it gets weird. These productivity gurus keep talking about building a “second brain.” Let me tell you something - I can barely handle the first one. It’s like buying a second car when you can’t even remember where you parked the first one. They’ve got apps like Notion and Capacities that want you to organize every aspect of your life, from your daily tasks to your deepest thoughts about that podcast you half-listened to while nursing a hangover.
The kicker? There’s this app called Reclaim.ai that tries to schedule your life, including “decompress time” after meetings. Buddy, my whole life is decompress time - it’s called happy hour, and I don’t need an AI to schedule it.
And now they’re working on AI “agents” that can do tasks for you automatically. Book flights, make purchases, schedule meetings - basically digital minions that handle all the boring stuff while you focus on the important things, like figuring out why you woke up with a traffic cone in your bedroom.
Here’s what these tech prophets don’t get: productivity isn’t about having the fanciest digital filing system or the smartest AI assistant. Sometimes it’s just about having enough coffee to counteract the whiskey and actually sitting down to do the damn work.
The truth is, these tools are like those fancy exercise machines people buy in January - they look impressive, promise amazing results, but end up being really expensive coat hangers. Sure, they might help some people, but for most of us, they’re just another way to procrastinate while feeling productive about it.
And the real punchline? While we’re all busy trying to build these digital second brains, our first ones are getting softer than a marshmallow in a microwave. We’re outsourcing our memory, our creativity, and our decision-making to algorithms that don’t know the difference between productive work and productive procrastination.
Look, I’m not saying these tools are completely useless. Hell, maybe if I had them, I wouldn’t have lost my phone three times this week (it was in the freezer - don’t ask). But let’s not kid ourselves into thinking that downloading another app is going to suddenly transform us into productivity powerhouses.
The bottom line? Your brain might be imperfect, it might occasionally make you send embarrassing texts at 3 AM, and it might completely forget where you put your wallet, but it’s yours. No amount of AI-powered note-taking or schedule-organizing is going to change the fundamental truth that sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is close all the apps, turn off all the notifications, and just do the damn work.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go find my phone. I have a sneaking suspicion it’s in the refrigerator this time.
[Posted at 2:47 AM, probably from a bar somewhere in downtown]
Source: ‘Have your bot speak to my bot’: can AI productivity apps turbocharge my life?