Five Tips for Building a Second Brain on a Budget
I enjoy reading, researching, and following my interests. This hobby can be expensive, especially if you’ve found your way into the Second Brain/PKM/Zettelkasten world. It may start innocently enough but then you’ve drunk the Kool-Aid, and dropped a bunch of money trying various apps working to perfect your “productivity stack.” Or trying to find that one app that can do it all. (Don’t!) I’ve gotten a lot out of being involved in this community, but saving money has not been one of them.
Here’s a list of costs for my “minimal ideal setup:”
- $25/month - digital subscriptions (Substacks, magazines, etc)
- $50/month - Books
- $3-10/month - Notetaking app
- $10/month - Readwise (syncing highlights and read-it-later).
- $5-20/month web publishing costs/Digital Garden
Total: $93-115 per month or roughly ~1,200 per year
I would say this is a very low estimate as well.
I suppose this may not seem like much to some people, but I like to save money where I can. So for those of you in a similar boat, here are some ideas on how to save some money and still enjoy this hobby to the fullest extent.
Limit your paid digital subscriptions to ones that are “gold” every time.
Use your public library for what you can: physical books, digital books, audiobooks, magazines, etc. This means you need to collect your highlights before you return your books.
- For physical books, I use book darts1 to mark passages as I’m reading them and then wait at least a week before adding them to my Second Brain. This filters out much of what I thought I wanted to keep.
- For digital books, I use the Libby app and focus on books that I can download to my Kindle. I can then use Bookscision to extract those.
- When I do have to buy a book I buy used. And I try to read a sample of the book to be sure I want to spend the money on it. I will often use audiobooks for this purpose.
Find cheaper alternatives to common functions:
- I use Omnivore instead of Readwise for my read-it-later app
- This is my workaround for collecting highlights instead of using Readwise
- I use Bear instead of a more expensive note app
- I use Blot instead of Obsidian Publish for both this blog and my digital garden. I use this method to have them both on the same site.
Use friction to your advantage: Accept that you won’t be able to eliminate all friction in your system. Flip that on its head and use it to help you! I touch on this here.
Accept what is “good enough”: Avoid churning through different apps and overlapping subscription costs. If something is “good enough” stop using optimizing to procrastinate and use your system for your purpose.2
Using these techniques I spend about $8-10 per month on this hobby, just a tenth of the cost of my “ideal” setup! Paying that extra money would add automation and decrease friction, which isn’t always a net positive. Instead of seeking to decrease friction throughout your entire system, consider each instance and decide whether you are optimizing for something you want. For example, I could use Readwise to make collecting my highlights a lot easier, but that means I’m likely to save more of what I don’t need and have more to parse through later. Figure out where friction will benefit you in your system. That’s where you will save some money.
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