Why Building A Second Brain Is The Ultimate Moat in the AI Age

AI Atrophies Your Brain - Here's How To Stop It

In this Ark Letter, you'll learn:

↱ Why AI dependency is quietly eroding your most valuable creative asset (and how to protect it)

↱ The counterintuitive practice that gives you an unfair advantage as other creators become AI-reliant

↱ A 3-step system to build your "cognitive moat" while still leveraging AI strategically

If you want to watch the video version of this article, click here ↴

AI is everywhere.

AI tools, workflows, prompts, and tutorials to help you automate your entire life with AI are flooding the internet.

Everyone wants to automate their entire business and life with AI, and teaching you to do so.

And I'm gonna be honest:

I'm part of it.

I write about how to create content with AI, I design workflows for creators, and I use it every day.

So I don't blame the people who are using it and writing about it.

But I'm also aware of all the potential dangers of using AI.

And that's why in today's email…

I want to show you why building a second brain is the ultimate moat in the AI age, and why it's the most crucial practice you can have as a creator.

But before we dive into this, let's recap the dangers of AI usage.

The 3 Main Dangers Of AI Usage

Danger 1: The Dependency Trap.

Laborit's Law, named after the French neurobiologist Henri Laborit, states our innate tendency to instinctively avoid stress and pain and prioritize tasks that require the least amount of time and energy to complete.

We prioritize the easy and postpone the hard for later.

This law is also known as the Principle of Least Effort.

This desire for Instant Gratification can lead us to become very dependent on AI usage.

Of course, thinking is hard. Writing is hard.

There is a lot of resistance that comes with it.

If it wasn't, Steven Pressfield would never have had such massive success with his book "The War of Art," which is about overcoming the creative resistance.

And the thing is, AI instantly bypasses this resistance.

With a simple prompt, you can generate entire essays, YouTube scripts, newsletters, and notes and manage your entire content creation with it.

(Even though if you want the output to be good, you will need a bit more than a simple prompt, but you get the idea.)

The problem is that there is value in overcoming this resistance and facing the creative process head-on, even though it's painful.

Which leads us to the second danger:

Danger 2: "If you're thinking without writing, you only think you are thinking."

I love this quote from Leslie Lamport because it really describes how writing is not the process of transcribing already recorded thought, but actually the process of developing those thoughts.

When you're writing, you are developing parts of yourself.

This growth is invaluable, and if you're a content creator, you probably started for this reason, whether you consciously realized it or not.

But when using AI, we aren't going through this process of self-reflection and miss the benefits in clarity, perspective, insights, and creativity that writing brings.

And this transitions perfectly into the third danger:

Danger 3: "What technology amplifies it atrophies."

People stopped learning arithmetic because of the invention of calculators.

We stopped remembering other people's phone numbers now that we have all our contacts in our phone.

Social media was made to make us more social and connected, yet we are more lonely and divided as a species.

We don't know how to use a map and find our way without Google Maps.

(How many times do you use Google Maps to find a bakery that is 500m away from you? Because me? More times than I would like to admit lol)

By using technology, we delegate the execution, leading us to forget how to do things ourselves.

Is it good or bad?

I don't know.

But as Alfred North Whitehead said:

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them."

That's how we evolved as a species, for better or worse.

But the point is:

What AI amplifies (and thus atrophies) is cognition.

Your own ability to think.

And a recent research paper from Microsoft demonstrated that:

This study by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University explored how generative AI tools affect critical thinking among knowledge workers.

Using a survey of 319 professionals and analyzing 936 real-world GenAI-assisted work tasks, the research examined both the perceived effort required for critical thinking and the influence of confidence, both in oneself and in AI, on these cognitive processes.

Knowledge workers reported that GenAI tools generally reduce the cognitive effort required for critical thinking, especially for tasks such as information retrieval and content creation.

While GenAI automates routine aspects of work, users increasingly focus on verifying, integrating, and overseeing AI-generated outputs, rather than generating content or solutions from scratch.

They also found out that higher confidence in the capabilities of GenAI is associated with a reduction in critical thinking engagement.

Workers who trust AI more tend to scrutinize its outputs less, leading to potential over-reliance and diminished independent problem-solving.

Conversely, individuals with higher self-confidence in their own skills are more likely to critically engage with AI outputs, investing additional effort in verification and integration.

The study observed a shift in cognitive effort from active problem-solving to the stewardship of AI outputs, verifying accuracy, integrating responses, and ensuring alignment with task requirements.

Motivators for critical thinking include improving work quality, avoiding negative outcomes, and developing skills.

Barriers include time pressure, lack of awareness, and difficulty improving AI responses in unfamiliar domains.

While GenAI tools increase efficiency, they also risk reducing hands-on cognitive engagement, especially for routine or low-stakes tasks.

Over-reliance on AI may erode independent critical thinking skills and lead to “digital amnesia," the tendency to forget information that is easily accessible via technology.

And what further demonstrates this, is that this whole survey summary you just read was copy-pasted from Perplexity that created this for me from the original study.

(Which I haven't read, of course)

The AI dangers for our cognition and thinking are real, and the impact is already there.

But does that mean we should stop using AI?

I don't think so.

But, with great power comes great responsibility, that's why I believe we need to make sure we have practices in place that prevent the decay of our brain.

Which leads us to the main idea of this article:

Why Building A Second Brain Is The Ultimate Moat

The evolution in technology led us to have a more sedentary lifestyle, which created its own set of problems.

And now if you're not going to the gym or having some kind of physical routine in your life, you'll very quickly face health issues, because it isn't built-in into our modern lifestyle.

While physical activity was naturally integrated in our daily lives, we now NEED to create dedicated routines to make sure we still have enough activity to maintain our health.

It's exactly the same for our brain.

As AI will automate some aspects of our thinking, we NEED to create dedicated practices to make sure we maintain and improve our brain capacity.

Which is where your Second Brain comes into play.

So first things first, let's define what's a Second Brain.

To put it simply, it's a place where you gather your notes, thoughts, and writing.

I personally use Kortex App to manage my entire Second Brain system because:

• UI/UX is slick

• You can create folders with docs like in Notion

• You can create links between documents like in Obsidian

• You can sync it with Readwise and have access to all of your highlights

• There is a "Capture" feature which allows you to note down any idea or thought inside a dedicated chat, useful for later reference (you can open it with CMD+C on your Mac or set up a shortcut on your phone)

• You have access to all AI models in one chat and have the ability to reference all of your documents in your chat to give context to AI (which is a game changer)

If you don't use Kortex yet, you can try it out for free here.

Now, more than the Second Brain in itself, the keyword here is building.

Because it's the act of building the Second Brain that's really important, more than having one.

And by building, I mean having deliberate practice for creating notes and content.Which means, having a routine and dedicated time block in your schedule for both of these activities.

Having these dedicated practices in place is the equivalent of - and sorry for the overused analogy - going to the gym for your mind.

In a world where AI can think and create for you, these practices serve as the ultimate moat to protect your critical thinking, creativity, and ability to make connections.

It's also the ultimate competitive advantage against other creators.

As more people become over-reliant on AI, you make sure you are fortifying your mind against entropy and creating solid foundations for your philosophy.

I also believe that as cognition is being replaced by AI, the n°1 edge creators will have is their authenticity and unique perspectives.

The combination of your personal story, sensibility, taste, and special worldview is what will make you unique and valuable in a world where the value of information is zero.

Having dedicated practices for both note-taking and writing is the key to developing your unique perspectives and philosophy, as we've seen previously with Leslie's quote.

And finally…

When you're using AI to delegate some tasks to free up time and resources for other activities, you can actually feed the AI with your OWN thoughts, notes, and writing that are the reflection of your soul and thinking.

If the AI is fed on your own context, it becomes an amazing tool for repurposing your message without sacrificing your authenticity and unique voice.

Which is the main philosophy behind all the systems and workflows I create with AI.

As always, the goal is amplification, not replacement.

I don't think using AI is bad. Because being a creator is hard.

Contrary to what people want you to believe, it isn't just about creating content.

It's also creating products, delivering to clients, managing administrative tasks, networking with people, and dozens of other stuff.

All of these tasks are necessary to build a profitable business, but can quickly get overwhelming, especially when you aren't full-time working on it yet.

In that case, using AI to strategically invest your energy where you have the most leverage (e.g. creating products) while being able to maintain consistency in other areas like content creation is amazing.

Before, you needed entire teams of people to repurpose your content and assist you with all your tasks.

Now you have access to it for $20 per month.

Not leveraging it would be folly.

BUT you need to be strategic.

And develop the discernment to know when to use it and when NOT to use it.

Be honest with yourself when you are over-relying on AI.

We are amazing at lying to ourselves as humans, so try to regularly review your AI usage and evaluate if you are using it to assist you and amplify you or if you are starting to be a prompt engineer spending more time behind AI chats than writing.

So now, how to actually build your Second Brain so you can develop your thinking, refine your unique perspectives, and develop an intellectual edge in the AI age?

The 3-Step Process To Build Your Second Brain

Step 1: The Learning Routine

The first step to creating is consuming.

Of course, I'm not talking about mindlessly scrolling, but intentional learning.

I personally use a combination of tools to maximize my learning inputs throughout the week:

• Kindle - to read books and highlight paragraphs

• Snipd - to listen to podcasts and save snippets

• Reader - to save articles and newsletters and highlight them

All of these apps are then synced to Reader, which is synced to my Kortex Library.

This way, every highlight from any content I'm consuming is directly available inside my Second Brain for future reference.

I have an entire video on youtube that shows the entire system, so click here to check it out.

Step 2: The Zettelkasten Method

The second step is taking notes.

And the best way to take them is the Zettelkasten Method.

It consists of 4 key steps:

• Creating Fleeting Notes (which are basically your highlights from the learning routine)

• Turning those Fleeting Notes into Literature Notes - documents that serve to summarize the main big ideas with your OWN words (don't use AI for god's sake)

• Extracting the key big ideas from your Literature Notes into Permanent Notes - Notes that summarize one big idea, again, written with your own words

• Connecting those Permanent Notes together by linking related concepts and finding unexpected connections that stimulate your creativity and understanding

Your Permanent Notes then become a living library of the best insights and key concepts you've ever come across, written with your own words and referencing unique connections that only you saw, serving as the foundation of your unique perspective.

I also have an entire video on YouTube that shows my Zettelkasten system in Kortex, so you can also click here to check it out.

Step 3: Creating Content

The final step is actually writing.

All of your learning and note-taking now leaves you with dozens of ideas and cool connections to talk about.

And the best part is it's easy now that you have all of this material to use as reference.

It becomes more about organizing ideas in a clear way rather than starting from scratch and facing the blank page.

This system is the keystone behind all of my content.

It's where I develop my thinking, refine my perspective, and develop my unique voice and philosophy that makes me unique from other creators.

And when I use AI to help me in certain parts of the process?

I still produce unique outputs that no one else could have produced, because it's fed on my own content, my own notes, and my own thinking.

Maintaining these practices can be hard.

And to be totally transparent, I often find myself stopping taking notes or writing by myself and using AI to help me.

Of course, I always have a perfectly rational reason to do so:

I'm building a new product, I'm focusing on a new strategy, I'm creating systems that will help me later down the line…

And even though it's true, I know that if I don't maintain these routines, my thinking will atrophy, and most importantly, I will lose the love of the craft that made me start in the first place.

I initially wanted to talk about this subject in a YouTube video.

And usually, for my video scripts, I go through a complete workflow that I've built that helps me craft scripts optimized for the YouTube meta.

Then I turn these scripts into newsletters.

This process works well, but today I thought that I wanted to write the script myself.

I've found out that I haven't been writing by myself as much as I want to recently.

The reason is that I'm focusing on my next digital product

(Which is about all my AI workflow, ironically enough lol)

So I focused my energy on creating the modules, recording them, editing them, testing the different workflows…

But I started to miss this process of writing.

Because I don't know about you, but for me, the pleasure of entering flow state while writing is the n°1 reason why I decided to become a full-time content creator.

And as much as my nerd side loves building AI systems and workflows, nothing beats that sensation.

This article is both a reminder for you than it is for me.

As we evolve within all this digital madness, and experiment with all that stuff, I thought that this perspective would serve you.

If you want to learn more about how to create your own AI Second Brain in Kortex, I highly recommend you to join Noah's Ark Bank.

It's a collection of 21+ templates, AI prompts & SOPs that will help you implement everything we've said in this video inside Kortex, from my learning system, to the Zettelkasten method, and you'll even have content templates and custom AI workflows.

It's totally free and more than 820 people have already joined it and started building their own Second Brain, so feel free to join them.

And if you want to receive weekly essays about building an AI Second Brain with Kortex, blending human & AI creativity and achieving purpose & profit with your creator business…

Thank you for reading,

And welcome back to Noah's Ark.

Noah.