Ep 96: Backing Up Your Brain

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In this game-changing episode of our ADHD Summer School series, I reveal why your ADHD brain gets overwhelmed by trying to remember everything and teach you the exact "second brain" systems my clients use to capture, organize, and retrieve information effortlessly—without complicated setups or waiting for motivation to strike.

📌 Key Topics:

• Why forgetting things costs you time, money, brain power, and self-esteem
• The "second brain" concept: creating systems outside your head to hold information
• Digital vs. analog vs. hybrid approaches—finding what works for your brain
• How to capture ideas, tasks, and information without losing them
• Smart goal setting using the 12-week year method
• Collaboration strategies that keep everyone on the same page
• Building habits around capturing and organizing information

🗣️ Featured Quote: "Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them." - David Allen

💡 Strategy Breakdown:

• Use the "do it now" method for immediate information capture
• Apply proper labeling and categorization for easy retrieval
• Practice the 10-minute rule to overcome system-building overwhelm
• Master digital tools like Evernote, Notion, Trello, and Google Keep
• Implement hybrid systems that blend digital convenience with analog benefits
• Use mind mapping for project planning and creative thinking
• Create recurring reminders and automation to maintain your system

🎯 Four-Part Second Brain System:

1. Creating Systems Outside Your Brain: Choosing digital, analog, or hybrid approaches
2. Navigating and Retrieving Information: Making sure you can find what you store
3. Goals, Planning and Collaboration: Managing projects and working with others
4. Keeping Your System Going: Regular reviews, habits, and continuous improvement

🔑 Key Takeaway: Your forgetfulness isn't a character flaw—your ADHD brain just needs external systems to manage information overload. With the right tools to capture and organize everything outside your head, you can feel overwhelmed less often and accomplish more consistently. Start with one simple capture method, build momentum, and celebrate every organizational win.

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Transcript

Welcome. This is the A DHD Summer School. This is the kind that helps you build real life skills to make life with A DHD easier and more productive. These courses that will be released over the next month or so, were originally in my Learn to Thrive with a DHD group coaching program, but now I'm making it available to everyone right here on YouTube and the podcast.

So why now? Because summer is a great time to slow down, reset, and work on habits and systems that actually make a difference. These tools have helped my clients create lasting change, and now they're here for you. But don't just watch or listen. I want you to take action. You can download the free companion workbook at www dot.

Learn to thrive with adhd.com. Slash Workbook 2025. It's totally free and designed to help you apply what you learn here. Ready? Let's dive in.

Hello, we're doing backing up your brain, support your memory and free your mind. So our agenda is, part one is creating systems outside your brain. Part two, navigating and retrieving information. Part three, goals, planning and collaboration. And part four, keeping your system going.

With this course, what problems are we solving? Forgetting things is gonna be one of them, disorganization and overwhelm, and we're probably solving a lot of other problems too.

But these are the big ones Your mind is for having ideas, not for holding them. This is by David Allen and. That is probably a good segue to explain what we're doing here. What we're doing is we're creating a system outside of our brain in order to keep track of all the information.

So what are the areas of life that this can help? This can help with ideas. I know if you're like me, you have a thousand wonderful ideas and they need to go somewhere and they need to be managed, right? You can create systems for your work or your business for your home.

Your relationships, your health, your financial management, travel and adventure, creative projects, learning and education, problem solving. The list could probably go on, but these are just some ideas

I.

So why are we doing this and what system? Oh, here, you'll notice I have a computer, a tablet, a phone, but I also have a paper planner, a notebook, a calendar that you can write on with dry erase. So we're gonna talk about digital and analog solutions. So this course is based loosely on the book Building A Second Brain by Tiago Forte.

I would recommend reading this, it will be very helpful. He goes into. Some details on systems that I don't go into here that I just felt. Would've complicated things but it's something to definitely take a look at yourself and see if you want to apply any of the further ideas that are in this book.

But the key concept is creating a second brain using digital tools to efficiently capture, organize, or access information. This approach enhances productivity and problem solving by managing the information overload in the dig digital age. Okay. So the benefits enhances productivity, reduces information overload we just talked about those things boost creativity.

When you take these things out of your head, all of a sudden you have all kinds of space to think creatively, right? Improves organization, enhances problem solving, reduces stress, and will improve your time management. So choosing your system. We have digital analog and hybrid. Under digital, we have a computer, a phone, a tablet, apps, cloud, storage.

Under analog. We have paper planners, notebooks, journals, whiteboards, post-its. And there's probably more that I'm not even thinking of. But these are just some general ideas. And then hybrid might be. Using a planner with digital reminders on your phone. It might be digital management, but printing items or printing maybe articles or some of the information that you're storing, having that printed as well.

And it might be something like having Post-its, but also using software. So just some examples. Okay. So digital, we have Evernote Notion, Trello and Keep. And these are not the end all, be all options. These are just. Four options that most people know about. And I believe every single one of them has a search option, which is wonderful because once you store that information, you wanna be able to bring it back up.

Right. And I know with each one of these you can. Store things. Actually not with keep, you can't store things in folders, I believe with the other ones. You can store things in folders with Trello, you have boards and you can put things under the boards and you can have attachments and all that kind of thing, it doesn't really matter which one you choose, or you might use more than one.

For example, I personally use Trello and I also use Google Keep. You can just try 'em all out, play with them, see what you think, see if it's gonna be a good fit for you. analog notebooks, index cards, planners, post-its, are you a paper person?

Do you feel better if you write it down? There is that, hand to mind where if we write things out, we retain the information better Hybrid. Blending the best of both worlds. It's flexible. It can suit different needs and it can help you transition common concerns. Will I follow through with the system I build?

That's a, you can especially think of that with planners, right? Will I, if I get this planner all set up, will I actually use it? Is this the right system? Will security be a problem? Am I going to store passwords or information that is going to be an issue? Maybe you are resistant to making some sort of change.

Maybe you're afraid of the time investment. Maybe you're afraid of the money investment. There's a learning curve to even using a planner, right? Especially when we're using apps and software and things like that. So choosing your system style, are you going to do digital?

Analog or hybrid? Here. Is a way to take action. At the end of each section, there's gonna be ways to take action. Number one, what areas of life need a system for capturing? And really what you wanna do is look like, where am I having difficulty remembering things?

Where am I having difficulty moving forward with things? So choose your system and then try out some tools that is your homework for that section.

Part two, what and how to capture for success. Alright, setting up systems. We want to identify your needs, assess your tasks, figure out what your pain points are, your preferences, involve others. Consider your budget and research and explore. We're gonna go into detail with these. So identify your needs.

What do you want your system to do? What do you work best with? Do you work best with, working on your phone, working on your computer? Do you work best with a planner? Who else is involved? Are there other people? I'll give you a great example. I have a Trello board. We still use it to this day, have had it for years, where I do groceries and.

My husband has this app on his phone. It's to the same board. And when my son was living at home, he had the app on his phone as well. And so we all always knew what was on the grocery list and whoever got to the store first got the groceries So yeah. with the projects you're working on, is there somebody else involved?

Is there somebody you need to. Consult with, what is your budget? Some of these things are going to have costs, if it's paying for software, if it's buying an app. Assess your tasks. What tasks or activities do you do regularly? What new tasks will you need to do for your new goals and projects? Will your tools need to support these tasks? Pain points. Are there inefficiencies, bottlenecks, or areas where you struggle, identify pain points to help you address them in your system.

So where are you having a problem? Is it that you forget about appointments? Is it that you can't retrieve information? From your memory, or maybe you put it somewhere and can't retrieve it, maybe you need to tag it or put it in a different kind of system so that you can retrieve that information easier.

Just where are you having difficulty? Number four, your preferences. Think about your personal preferences and work style. Do you lean more towards digital tools for their convenience or do you prefer the tactile experience of analog methods? Understanding your preferences guides your tool selection.

if your system will be used by others, involve them in the needs assessment. Ask their opinion about it, understand their requirements and preferences to create a system that works for everyone. Consider your budget. Consider your budget and resources available. Some tools or materials may come at a cost, so it's important to line your tools up with your budget for creating the system.

Research and explore. Research your options. Write them down. What are the costs? What are the features? Do they align with your preferred system? Be sure to read reviews so consider your workflow. Consider the, compatibility, the scalability. As you bring in more and more information, is the system still gonna work?

Consider the ease of use, the cost to benefit analysis, and is there a trial period where you can try these things out and see what you think? Are you storing sensitive information? Are you storing passwords or something like that where, if somebody broke into your account, they would have access to that information.

Choose a tool. Strong encryption and data protection measures. If you're storing sensitive information, accessibility, consider your lifestyle. Your system needs to be with you most of the time. What can you do to not misplace your system? Those are the two most common ones. How are they carrying that with them all the time? Because they need to put information into their system throughout the day and they may need to access information in their system throughout the day. So capture point, where are you when you need to put information in your system, what habits do you need to build around capturing?

And then I have do it now. Okay. So I'll give you a personal example of this. When I first started doing this, what I started with was simply a family calendar of course, when I'm talking about a system the calendar would be just one part of your system. You would also have places where you are capturing ideas.

You would also have places where maybe you're putting links or articles or recipes or whatever kind of information you want to bring in. And so that would take more than a calendar, right? But. As far as building an exterior brain, for me, the starting point years ago was a family calendar. And what I did is just like that grocery app, which was on Trello.

But just like that I had a calendar that I had everybody have on their phone as well. And actually, I don't think everybody, I think just myself and my husband had it, but we shared the calendar and. What I did where it's like building a habit around capturing, well, where are you when you put the information in your system?

If I ever made an appointment right then and there, and that's where I have do it now, right then and there, right in front of the, you know, receptionist I was making the appointment with. I put that in our family calendar. I put the type of appointment it was where it was gonna be. And if you, if you store that information in your contacts, like for example, if you, you're adding a dentist appointment.

If you store the address of the dentist in your contacts, then you can just easily put that in and what time is it gonna be? And that way everybody knows. And same with any appointments that my kids had for activities or things like that. I would do it immediately. I would do it right then and there.

The ways to take action on part two, identify what you need as far as tools, research your tools, and then I want you to develop habits around using these tools.

Part three. Goals, planning and collaboration, goals and projects. What do you wanna accomplish? What have you been putting off? What has seemed too big or you didn't know exactly how to make it happen? And what are you excited to do?

Collect good stuff. All right, so putting stuff into your system. Notes and ideas, task lists, project outlines, contacts, images and visuals, web clips and articles, progress and metrics, and this is just a few things that would go into your second brain. It's any kind of information that you're bringing in.

Don't try to store things in your head. Every time I have a client that tells me that they're. Overwhelmed or like their brain is too busy. I always get them on some sort of system of offloading that information. Somewhere else. And so that's what we're doing here, is we're creating a system for you to offload information.

So sort things out, put things in categories, in files. You might have a system where you can add tags to make it easily brought back up or put things, in certain areas. Do proper labeling so that you can bring things back, and then schedule time to sort things out. So we were talking about smart goals, and I do like smart goals.

I don't bring it up a lot with my clients because we kind of just go through this process without creating, a smart goal system. But we want your goal to be specific. We want it to be measurable. So you want to know when you've completed it for sure. We want it to be achievable. We want it to be relevant to what you want, and we want it to be time bound.

So let's put a deadline on this. And what I put here was the book, the 12 week year. If you haven't read it already, I have a video on it, on YouTube. I think it's an excellent system for people with a DHD, and I actually need to do a new video to kind of update, things I've learned about the 12 week year.

But a 12 year is great for setting your goals moving forward with them, setting really good deadlines, and basically the concept is you're doing in 12 weeks of what you would do in a year. Breaking down projects. What are the major components? Break those into tasks, set priorities, estimate time and effort.

How long is it gonna take? How hard's it gonna be. Create a task list, monitor your progress, and then celebrate milestones. Alright, actionable steps. Are the steps small enough for your project? Is it something that you feel dread when you think about, or you think it's going to be hard or difficult? And if that's the case, you haven't broken it down small enough.

Is there something you need first? Are there supplies that you need? Is there information that you need before you can start your project? Consider that when you're planning and then get started. You can use things like the 10 minute rule, how much time can you give this thing that you don't feel like it's a problem that you're like, yeah, I can do that for five minutes.

It's not necessarily 10 minutes. That is a really good tool for getting started when you're having difficulty Are there other people involved? Are there other people you need to bring into this? And then when exactly are you gonna do it? Planning strategies, you could do time blocking,

on a daily basis or a weekly basis, give your project you know, maybe a 90 minute session or 60 minute session, or even a 25 minute session, but give it a block of time. Task prioritization. What needs to come first? Goal setting. Mind mapping. I love mind mapping when it comes to projects because you can, I like to just get out a big piece of paper.

I have a big roll of paper back here that I use, and I get out that big piece of paper and I just write down like the major project and then I, spin off of that. All the things that need to go into this project. Journaling helps you work out your planning strategies, sometimes checklists and to-do lists.

A collaboration who can help, who needs to be involved, who can you delegate to? How will they keep up with the project? So a great example of that. Back to that Trello board. How will they keep up with what groceries we need? It's because I added them to the Trello board. There's ways to, lots of apps and things like that, or maybe if you're going analog, maybe it's a meeting, maybe it's a phone call, maybe it's a Zoom meeting.

But gotta keep them up on what's going on with the project and keep them involved in some way, right? Teach others. We learn best when we teach. Is there someone that you can share your goals and projects with? Sharing information and resources you find with someone else will help you know how to best organize it.

Ways to take a action, decide what goals or projects you wanna work on, follow the process of breaking them down and add your tasks to your system.

Keeping your system going. Regular review sessions, schedule a regular review of your digital or analog notes. Is your system working? Are you using it? Is it simple enough? What is working? What's not? Continuous learning. Stay curious about what tools you could be using. Continue to learn more about the tools you already use.

I know for, like back to the Trello example, there are lots of things Trello does that I don't understand and what I'm gonna wanna do, if that's the tool I wanna continue with in the future, which it seems like it is it's just take some time, schedule out some time to learn about the tools that might be useful to me.

What new technology is coming? With ai, we have all kinds of new technology that's showing up every day, right? So keep an eye on what's coming to make your system. Simpler and more efficient automation.

Can you recur items? I think immediately my mind goes to a Google calendar, but it could even be a planner. If you're planning out your week and the same thing happens. Same. Time and same day then you can just write the thing and then maybe put an arrow through the week.

That's one way to automate that. But are there recurring items? Can you set reminders? Are there email filters that you want to put into place? Are there task templates? Are there tasks that reoccur on certain days. Goal check-ins. Make goal check-ins a part of your backup brain system.

Regularly assess progress and adjust goals and tasks recommit if needed. So don't make it a problem if you've stopped for a few days or something like that. That's okay. Just recommit. Backup and data management, regular backups to prevent loss of information. When we're talking about digital things, use cloud or exterior storage for your digital systems.

Consider scanning or photographing analog systems, so if you have information that you would have trouble recreating if you lost your planner, it might be a good idea to get some photos of that information so that if you had to get a new planner, you could easily recreate that.

Create habits for using your system. Make it a habit to capture. Make it a habit to organize and make it a habit to reevaluate

Simple and easy. Review your system for improvements. Can you streamline it? Can you simplify it? What are you finding challenging? How could you make it easy? Time management. When will you plan? When will you review? When will you carry out tasks? When will you maintain? When will you organize? How will you manage your time?

I know with these systems. For me, oftentimes my system will be post-its and then it'll go into my calendar or go into Trello, or go into Google Keep, and so I have to make time to take that information that maybe I just jotted down with. With a pen and a post-it and put that into my digital systems.

So that's a good example of creating time for these things. Celebrate progress, celebrate your achievements and milestones. Notice what's going right. We're so good at noticing what's going wrong, but what I really want you to practice is noticing what's going right.

Recognizing your progress within your system can be a great motivator to keep going. How are you gonna feel when you're noticing how well things are going compared to noticing where things aren't going well and that's gonna happen, right? It's almost guaranteed that with our goals, something's going to go wrong along the way, and we want to make sure that we are noticing the things that are happening that are going well.

All right. Ways to take action. Set up regular reviews. Create routines around using your system. Decide how you will manage your time. good job. You did it completed. Backing up your brain, support your memory, and free your mind. What I want you to do is take this very seriously. Instead of storing information in your head, I want you to go and create your systems, whether it's digital, whether it's analog, whether it's hybrid.

I want somewhere where you can take all that wonderfulness. What's going on in your head and get it out somewhere else so that you are feeling calmer and more focused and less overwhelmed.

All right. Thank you so much.